Obama's Space Plan - a Conservative Argument
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects. Other conservatives like the commercial space part of the Obama policy and tend to gloss over the cancellation of space exploration or even denigrate the Constellation program as "unworkable" or "unsustainable."
In a way the discussion is a clash between two threads of conservatism, one that touts limited government and the empowerment of the private sector, the other that touts national security and national greatness as virtues as well.
Charles Krauthammer wrote a piece in Friday's Washington Post that bemoans the retreat from space exploration that the Obama plan entails. Krauthammer also doubts that the private sector can step up in the timeframe suggested by the Obama plan.
"It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. It's too expensive. It's too experimental. And the safety standards for getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high.
"Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time."
Krauthammer also denounces airy talk of how the Obama plan will get us to Mars, sometime in the 2030s.
"Of course, the whole Mars project as substitute for the moon is simply a ruse. It's like the classic bait-and-switch for high-tech military spending: Kill the doable in the name of some distant sophisticated alternative, which either never gets developed or is simply killed later in the name of yet another, even more sophisticated alternative of the further future."
On the other hand, Newt Gingrich and Bob Walker, both former members of Congress, like the commercial space aspects of the Obama plan just fine.
"The use of commercial launch companies to carry cargo and crews into low earth orbit will be controversial, but it should not be. The launch-vehicle portion of the Constellation program was so far behind schedule that the United States was not going to have independent access for humans into space for at least five years after the shutdown of the shuttle. We were going to rely upon the Russians to deliver our astronaut personnel to orbit. We have long had a cooperative arrangement with the Russians for space transportation but always have possessed our own capability. The use of commercial carriers in the years ahead will preserve that kind of independent American access.
"Reliance on commercial launch services will provide many other benefits. It will open the doors to more people having the opportunity to go to space. It has the potential of creating thousands of new jobs, largely the kind of high-tech work to which our nation should aspire. In the same way the railroads opened the American West, commercial access can open vast new opportunities in space. All of this new activity will expand the space enterprise, and in doing so, will improve the economic competitiveness of our country."
Gingrich and Walker tend to gloss over the cancellation of the space exploration program in the Obama plan.
"Getting the agency out of the low-earth-orbit launch business frees up budget to do other exciting and valuable things. It permits development work to start in earnest on a heavy-lift launch vehicle capable of solar-system exploration. It enables expansion of the aeronautics budget, particularly in helping develop the next-generation air-traffic-control system, a technological goal that will pay huge dividends to the United States. It will permit new investments in robotic space missions and Earth science missions. In essence, the new spending plan takes NASA back to its roots of advanced technology development, experimentation and exploration."
What the Obama plan does not do is to permit American space explorers to venture beyond low Earth orbit for at least the next two possibly three decades. The decision is purely budget driven. Leaving aside the calumny that the Constellation program was somehow flawed, a position hotly disputed by the Augustine Committee, the sad truth is that the Obama administration does not want to explore space, does not want to pay the extra three or so billion a year it will take, and therefore has settled from a low level technology R&D program and has kicked a return to the Moon or any other deep space exploration down the road well past the end of the Obama administration.
The irony is that both Krauthammer on the one hand and Gingrich and Walker on the other are right about certain aspects of the Obama space proposal. But like the blind men examining the elephant they are each only getting part of the truth.
Krauthammer is right that the Obama space plan represents a craven retreat from the high frontier of space, a cancellation of space exploration for decades to come. But Gingrich and Walker are also right that empowering the commercial sector in space will have great benefit. The two views are not incompatible.
The strategy implied by the space approach first conducted by the Bush administration was that as commercial industry took over space activities in low Earth orbit, NASA would be free to explore space beyond low Earth orbit. But that space program was undermined by flawed execution. Space commercialization was restricted to cargo and not people. The Constellation program was vastly underfunded and therefore was mired by schedule slippages and technical challenges.
This all suggests the possibility of a unified conservative response to the Obama space proposal. This would embrace the commercial space empowerment goal, but at the same time insist that there be a space exploration effort that is vigorously pursued and adequately funded. Such a response would embrace the spirit of the Bush space policy, while fulfilling its promise.
Sources: Closing the new frontier, Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, February 12, 2010
Obama's brave reboot for NASA, Newt Gingrich and Robert Walker, Washington Times, February 12th, 2010
Published by Mark Whittington
Mark R. Whittington is a writer residing in Houston, Texas. He is the author of The Last Moonwalker, Children of Apollo, Dark Sanction, and Nocturne. He has written numerous articles, some for the Washington... View profile
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3 Comments
Post a CommentI must take issue with the careless substitution of "space exploration" for "MANNED space exploration." The new plan has absolutely not killed extra-LEO exploration; it is just focusing on good, cost-effective robotic exploration. There is simply no reason to send humans to the moon or Mars at this point. All the serious exploration is robotic now; the manned program is just flagpole sitting. Compare the Apollo missions to the Mars rovers; the latter has provided many times as much useful research and data. This is not to minimize the usefulness of flagpole sitting...if we're going to spread our kind past this planet, we need to learn how to live outside. But that's what the ISS is for. This plan gives us what we need: privatized human spaceflight and robots-only exploration.
As you know, space travel is a Russian Inwention. So yes, just let them build all the space wessels. :-)
I'm a democrat and I think their both right. Three billion dollars added to the current space program would simply be returning the funding that has dried up over the last two decades. Either explore or get out of the game and let the Chinese and Russians do it.