IN THE wake of the Columbia disaster, NASA鈥檚 goals are coming under fire from Capitol Hill. Should the agency focus on science, or on sending people to explore space? As NASA chief Sean O鈥橩eefe appeared before the House Committee on Science last week to defend the agency鈥檚 budget proposal for 2004, members on both sides of the argument were using the disaster to press their points home.
The proposal was drawn up before the loss of Columbia last month, so most of the questioning focused on how NASA should proceed. Central to the debate was the split between those who want human missions and others who call for unmanned space research. NASA鈥檚 $15.5 billion budget request calls for $7.6 billion to be spent on science and unmanned exploration, and $7.7 billion for human space flight, of which $5.6 billion will to be spent on the International Space Station and the shuttle. The unmanned side of the budget includes an ambitious new programme called Project Prometheus, under which NASA proposes to spend $3 billion over 5 years to develop nuclear propulsion systems for long-distance planetary probes.
But while the proposed budget is evenly split between manned and unmanned exploration, members of the committee no longer seem convinced of NASA鈥檚 ability to focus successfully on both. Some complain that manned programmes are choking out valuable science. Their opponents want science projects to be cut and the savings spent on crew safety.
Advertisement
鈥淭he Columbia accident has reinforced the priority of astronaut safety,鈥� Texas Democrat Ralph Hall argued at the hearing. He was among those who questioned whether NASA should be spending $3 billion on a probe designed to explore Jupiter鈥檚 icy moons instead of investing in ways to help astronauts escape from the shuttle in an emergency.
But others see the Columbia disaster as a clear sign that NASA should concentrate on unmanned science missions. 鈥淢anned programmes are exorbitantly expensive,鈥� Vernon Ehlers, a Republican from Michigan, told 快猫短视频. 鈥淚f we are serious about doing science, we cannot spend as much on manned programmes.鈥�
鈥淭he debate is not new,鈥� observes Kei Koizumi, who analyses federal science spending for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 鈥淏ut this is a crisis point where there is an opportunity to re-examine what the right balance is.鈥�
O鈥橩eefe insists that NASA can support both manned and unmanned missions. But his plans for keeping the ISS running while the shuttles are grounded could not hide the strain space science is now under. Until the shuttles are flying again, as O鈥橩eefe insists they will, the ISS crew will be cut from 3 to 2, with the crew replaced every 6 months by Russian Soyuz modules.
He told the committee that two astronauts could carry out some science projects as well as running the space station. Yet previous NASA statements have said it takes 2.5 crew members just to do necessary maintenance work. O鈥橩eefe also admitted for the first time that it might be necessary to bring back the astronauts and 鈥渄im the lights鈥� on the space station if there were any problems with the arrangement.