Is the newest call for a return to the Moon the beginning of a quest for the stars, or just another asterisk in history? Aerospace management consultant Mark Oderman '78 considers the future of NASA and the exploration of space.

Societies are etched by a handful of "shared instants" that seem to capture and distill a broader and more complex experience--moments that we recall in great detail, remembering exactly where and with whom we were, what we were doing and what we felt.

For those who grew up in the Baby Boom generation, these snapshots were taken against the backdrop of the social and political turmoil of the 1960s and the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, many of these events were tragedies--the killings of President John Kennedy, his brother Senator Robert Kennedy, civil rights leader Martin Luther King and four students at Kent State University.

However, there was at least one positive counterpoint: the NASA space program, culminating with the Apollo 11 mission that landed two men on the Moon in July 1969.

At a time when America seemed to be separating at the seams, NASA thrilled and inspired us. Whether it was watching a Saturn rocket lumber up into space, pictures of "Earthrise," or grainy television images of astronauts bunny-hopping across the lunar surface, most of us who saw these images agreed that space exploration efforts "for all mankind" were noble achievements consistent with American progressive ideals and frontier spirit. In the 1930s, Gertrude Stein noted that "In America there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is--that is what makes America what it is." By extension, the heavens looked like a particularly American opportunity. Perhaps because of the daily political and social turmoil, we needed that feeling of shared inspiration and accomplishment.

Less than half of the U.S. population today was alive when NASA astronauts last walked on the Moon. For Generation X, the mental snapshots are dark images of the destruction of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Bureaucratic sclerosis, engineering hubris and political self-doubt appear to have replaced the "Right Stuff" as the drivers of the national space effort. Critics deride NASA as a costly stunt no longer relevant to the needs of our country. Even within the space community, heated divisions have emerged. The science nerd faction argues that scientific knowledge can be more readily and cheaply obtained with unmanned robotic spacecraft; the trekkies argue that people in space are high-tech extensions of our inborn need for challenge, the innate desire to explore, or some variant on American manifest destiny.

Our national space policy (i.e., the purpose, objectives and priority of our national space program) is rarely considered outside of the small, incestuous community of people who are directly affected by policy and budget decisions. Images from space frequently capture the public's attention, but support for the space program is shallow and NASA is politically insignificant. Presidential leadership, which underpinned the Apollo era, has been tepid and inconsistent. Few in Congress--other than those from districts that are home to NASA's major installations (oxymoronically designated as 'field centers')--show any sustained concern for space issues. The agency's $15 billion annual budget sounds like a lot of money (and it is), but it accounts for less than seven tenths of one percent (.007) of total federal spending. (Most Americans think NASA's absolute and relative shares of the budget are much higher.) This share has been declining steadily since the 1960s, and NASA's budget in real terms is less than one third of what it was during the Apollo program. In the absence of any consistent national leadership, NASA defends its budget every year and is left largely to its own devices to determine priorities (with the help of its indentured servants--the space scientists it funds through research grants and the aerospace engineers it funds through program contracts).

This political apathy has created what one NASA engineer once described to me as the phenomenon of the "self-eating watermelon"--the majority of the agency's budget nutrients are used to sustain the operations and maintenance of already existing, costly, and long-lived programs such as the shuttle. Very little funding is available for new technology or any ambitious new missions. Stability is preferred to potentially disruptive innovation. Bean counters often trump design engineers in program decisions. NASA has tried on occasion to break out of this stasis, but every attempt has been cut off by the agency's unwillingness to give up the capabilities it has in order to develop those it would like. ("I can't be bothered with fixing the boat; I'm too busy bailing to stay afloat.")

The Columbia accident has pushed NASA and the Bush administration out of their lethargy, for an obvious reason: We are running out of space shuttles. NASA now has just three orbiters, with no real prospect of building more. (The production lines and tooling have been dismantled.) Once the agency resumes shuttle flights, it will probably conduct no more than six missions per year--assuming nothing else goes wrong. But something probably will go wrong. Although it is politically incorrect to say it, the chances are about 50/50 that another shuttle will be destroyed in the next decade. Under the best of circumstances, it will take about a decade to design, develop and deploy any new space transportation system capable of carrying human beings (although NASA claims that it could have a limited replacement capability much sooner). In short, a decision is required today to ensure continuity; a decision to return to business as usual with the shuttle is a decision to risk a decade-long disruption of the country's manned space flight effort.

In January, President Bush unveiled a "new vision" for space exploration. The announcement contained several key elements which, if adequately supported, would provide direction for the American civil space program. The plan lays out a renewed commitment to human exploration, with a target date established for a return to the Moon (between 2015 and 2020) and then further to a first manned mission to Mars. NASA's unmanned space missions would be adjusted to support the exploration objectives (implicitly, less pure science and more effort at scouting and studying the new destinations for human activity). Equally important, the vision anticipates retiring the shuttle as soon as its current role in the assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) is completed (sometime around 2010). Any gap in U.S. space transport capabilities to support the manned ISS would be met through the use of the Russian Soyuz. A new Office of Exploration has been established at NASA, and the President's new budget request includes modest (5%) growth over the next few years to help get the effort moving. These new funds are to be combined with reorganization of many existing programs and the eventual 'savings' from the close out of the Space Shuttle program. In total, NASA will have approximately $12 billion over the next five years to define an overall architecture, develop and demonstrate new technologies and fund a number of precursor missions. In theory, a successful effort would provide future administration and Congressional leaders with the confidence necessary to justify the full program.

It was equally notable however, that many of the key elements of the strategy were not defined--what specific systems would be required, how much it would cost, or what roles NASA, industry and other space-capable organizations (notably the U.S. Air Force and foreign space agencies) would play. In short, the 'vision' does not provide any specific blueprint or even stipulate who would be responsible for managing the effort. Accordingly, Congressional reaction to the proposal has been neutral to negative. Democrats are taking a predictably partisan election-year stance, claiming that a new space initiative is a waste of taxpayer monies at a time of growing deficits and urgent domestic requirements. Republicans generally see little advantage to getting in front of an issue with little direct impact on their own constituents, and hence have been largely silent.

Although the details of the Bush space exploration strategy are opaque, the overall framework has a sound internal logic that addresses many of NASA's current political and programmatic shortcomings. First, by establishing manned exploration as a core mission, it provides a long-term (and by definition, open-ended) goal that can be used to evaluate alternatives and measure progress. Second, NASA now has a political directive to retire the costly and obsolescent shuttle--deciding this issue will focus NASA's thinking on next-generation systems. Third, the continued operation of the U.S.-led International Space Station maintains the nation's manned space flight program, even while retiring the shuttle, and helps to provide this program with a new role as a laboratory and test bed for technologies needed for exploration. Fourth, a significant new challenge should have positive benefits on NASA itself. The agency has faced increasing difficulty in hiring top caliber scientists and engineers; a challenging exploration program will help attract the technical and management talent that NASA needs to regain its reputation for success.

Of course, it is premature to declare victory for NASA or the U.S. space program. The Bush administration's proposal will undoubtedly face rough sledding in Congress this year, and the program itself would extend far beyond the current administration and be subject to the vicissitudes of multiple budget cycles and shifts in priorities. More importantly however, the new proposal rests on an untested proposition--that the U.S. public wants a civilian space exploration program. Public opinion polls reveal ambivalent perspectives: Americans are supportive of the space program in abstract terms, but are also woefully uninformed when it comes to the specifics. This is not surprising, as there has never been a true national space policy debate that has engaged the U.S. public. NASA was established by administrative and legislative fiat, not in response to public desire, but as a governmental response to early Soviet successes in space (missile envy?). Indeed, one of the more subtle ironies of the space race was that the U.S. response to the tyrannical, undemocratic Soviet Union was to implement a centrally planned, command-economy system to develop Apollo.

How does the country hold such a debate? Aye, there's the rub. The country has no mechanism for addressing such issues other than through its elected representatives (just as it has none for direct national deliberation on such issues as foreign policy, gay marriage or reproductive rights). Our elected officials rightly rely on a mixture of direct input (constituent letters--both those with and without checks attached) and their own gut instincts to guide them. However, space exploration is not exactly a burning question for most of the government, and has usually been managed in reaction (i.e., what to do after the Columbia accident) rather than by intent.

Will Bush's proposal help to galvanize public opinion, or will it become another footnote of failed initiative? Much depends on whether the administration takes its case to the public and whether the public responds in the affirmative. Personally, I believe that an informed national debate would yield a "yes" vote for exploration. The benefits exist on several levels. At the most basic, a major exploration effort will require the creation and mastering of a whole new generation of technologies relevant to life on Earth--power and propulsion, closed-loop life-support systems, advances in computation, materials, to name a few. Such 'spinoffs' from large science and engineering projects are difficult to project and are, by themselves, a poor justification for large government outlays. Yet they do occur; they create jobs and prosperity, and to discount them in a decision calculus would be shortsighted.

Space exploration also fulfills national political needs. For example, a strong, bipartisan civil space program offers a rare opportunity for common cause --a not insignificant benefit in our increasingly lumpy melting pot and increasingly divisive political arena. Moreover, a well-crafted exploration program can be an effective tool of U.S. foreign policy--an opportunity to solidify bonds with allied countries and to establish them with those with whom we have disagreements. Further, we should not discount the positive benefit which a space exploration program can have on projecting American values to the rest of the world.

Finally, there is a metaphysical argument. For any who have gazed up at the stars in wonder, space exploration scratches a most basic itch: to discover and to understand our universe, our place within it, and to rejoice in that knowledge and the possibilities it affords. Every child in the country understands this; it seems it is only the parents who become confused and hesitate. As a boy, I remember sitting with my father in front of our (American-made) RCA color television, watching space missions while Walter Cronkite emceed. Born at a time when airplanes were still a novelty, he was thunderstruck and often speechless; I was part of the New Frontier, and it all seemed quite normal.

Today, when I sit down to watch a shuttle launch with my son, he wonders why we haven't gone to Mars, and I don't have an answer that makes any sense to a nine year old. I am not thunderstruck, but I am speechless. Is a space exploration program worth a penny of our tax dollar? You bet it is.

—Mark R. Oderman '78 is managing director of the aerospace consulting firm,
CSP Associates, Inc.

Composite photo courtesy of NASA