I’ve written a fair bit recently about what Obama’s second term in office might do to help the nation move forward in space. On the surface, Obama’s reelection means his space agenda will remain intact – we should theoretically see NASA return to the Moon and send crews to an asteroid and Mars with the agency’s Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket. But whether or not we’ll see this grand plan come to fruition is another matter. SLS and Orion are costly programs still far from flight ready making them targets for budget cuts. But there’s another factor at play. Obama, like presidents before him, has set audacious and long-term goals that risk losing momentum.
Past presidents have set big goals in space to sway voters and gain support. Notably both Bushes who tried to set the nation on a course for Mars on two different programs that were financially unfeasible and eventually cancelled by their successors. Interestingly, though Obama cancelled the Constellation program Bush Jr. started, he’s retained the goal of a Mars landing with the Orion and SLS. It’s not the Mars goal that strikes me as a problem, its the focus on Mars as the only endpoint.
In the 1960s, NASA laid a solid foundation in space while the Soviet Union designed and launched missions to derail its adversary – I looked into the run of Soviet firsts beginning with Sputnik in my recent article on Discover’s blog The Crux. While the Soviets beat Americans to major goals in space, this demonstration of dominance didn’t pay off in terms of Space Race objectives. It was NASA’s methodical approach to solving the problems associated with spaceflight that gave the agency the technology and skills it needed to complete the Apollo program successfully and on schedule. But again, this was a short term gain.
NASA’s Apollo-era programs gave the agency a knowledge base on how spaceflight works. What it didn’t do was leave NASA with a sustainable, long-term technology. That, and not some placeholder exciting mission of a planetary landing, should be our goal in space. I don’t think NASA is in any way poised to repeat the series of one-off goals accomplished by the Soviets in the 1960s, but looking at the two programs side by side does highlight the importance of a solid, progressive approach to building sustainable technology with long-term applications in space.Author’s note: This short post is meant as a segue way into the aforementioned Discover article.