NASA Gropes for Relevance in Space

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright December 7, 2011
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                When the Space Shuttle Atlantis finished its last flight July 21, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was left holding the bag, no new manned space vehicle for the foreseeable future.  NASA began manned space flight with astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. with his Mercury spacecraft May 5, 1961, only three short weeks after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin blasted into space April 12, 1961.  With no manned space operations in the offing, NASA gropes for relevance, boasting about its Kepler  Telescope discovering a new planet Kepler-22b, paralleling earth’s life-supporting characteristics.  While discovering some 500 planets revolving in alternative galaxies around Sun-like stars, NASA latest discovery raises the distinct possibility of life beyond planet earth.  NASA’s new discovery says much about how far the U.S. Space Program has sunk to new lows.

            A year before retiring the Shuttle fleet, President Barack Obama delivered his April 15, 2010 speech on the future of the U.S. Space Program.  He talked about developing a new space vehicle during the next 25 years to land on a distant asteroid.  No mention was made of any new space vehicle to replace the Space Shuttle, the way NASA always ended one program with a new improved space vehicle.  Nor did Barack mention anything about returning to the moon, something China plans to do with its Shenzhou spacecraft.  When it lauched its first manned Shenzhou 5 flight Oct. 14, 2003, the Chinese had surpassed the U.S. with a more space-worthy spacecraft, with objectives of landing on the moon.  With the first U.S. moon landing with Apollo 11 July 20, 1969 and last landing Apollo 17 Dec. 11, 1972, NASA took a risky gamble with the less space-worthy Space Shuttle.

            Obama’s speech on the Space Program was a pathetic admission of failure by NASA, admitting that the U.S. had contracted out manned space operations to the private sector.  While there’s nothing wrong with encouraging space entrepreneurs, there’s something sadly deflating about admitting NASA has no immediate plans to return to space.  Contracting future manned operations to Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. or SpaceX, hands China and Russia supremacy in the space race.  Contracted by NASA to shuttle supplies to the International Space Nation, SpaceX is not yet ready for manned space operations.  Musk’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket is well on its way to manned space operations but only to deliver supplies to the somewhat archaic ISP.  Without plans to return to the moon, China, and possibly Russia, has now surpassed the U.S. Space Program.

            Talking about Kepler-22b, some 600 light years from earth or trillions of miles away, reflects NASA’s low state of affairs.  “We are honing in on the true Earth-sized, habitable planet,” sad San Jose State University astronomer Natalie Batalha, deputy team leader of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.  Batalha knows that no matter “habitable” distant planets may be, there’s no future space vehicle that can ever travel to such planets. Speculating about habitability or alternative life forms present the kind of science fiction that now dominates NASA.  Instead of assiduously developing an alternative space vehicle to replace the Space Shuttle over the last 20 years, NASA has dropped the ball, surrendering space supremacy to China and Russia.  When NASA finished its Apollo space missions in 1972, it was only nine years before the Space Shuttle Challenger launched April 12, 1981. 

                NASA has always replaced one space program with the new and improved version.  With the Shuttle’s retirement, NASA has failed the nation, pulling the rug out from a generation of idealists looking to its leadership for hope and inspiration.  Watching China or Russia take to the skies, explore the moon and replace the U.S. as the leader in manned space exploration delivers a crushing blow to the America’s forgotten youth.  Instead of worrying about future jobs, the youth should set unbridled goals of conquering new mountains in science, arts and culture.  Scientists like San Jose State’s Bathala can only dream with her students, now that NASA has abandoned manned space operations for the foreseeable future.  Students don’t need to dream, they need to aspire, like prior generations of astronauts, to pursue space exploration as the highest and most difficult challenge.

            President John F. Kennedy said it right when he told a young generation at Rice University Sept. 12, 1962 that the sky was the limit.  Only six months after astronaut John Glenn orbited the earth, Kennedy promised to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.   “We choose to the go to the moon and do the other things, not because it is easy but because it is hard . . . , “ Kennedy said, raising the bar and driving a generation to new heights.  NASA’s current fixation on distant planets, speculating about life in remote galaxies shows how far backward the U.S. Space Program has gone.  “As soon as we find a different, separate, an independent example of life somewhere else, we’re going to know that it’s ubiquitous throughout the universe,” said Mountain View’s SETI Institute astronomer Jill Tarter. Speculating about life in distant galaxies does nothing to reclaim supremacy in the U.S. Space Program.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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