Waving goodbye to human space flight
Michael Hanlon
SO WE won’t be going to Mars, not in my lifetime anyway. And not back to the moon either, not for decades. Buzz Lightyear fantasies are dashed. Don’t believe the spin – the dream is over.
OK, the of NASA’s human space-flight plans outlines several options. Mars may be out, but the moon is still in with a shout, and plans to go to the Lagrange points and even the asteroids are mooted. Technically, all this is probably doable. But it won’t happen, and here’s why.
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The problem is not money: the US can afford an extra $3 billion a year. It is psychological. NASA, the only game in town, has no idea what space is for, and no audacity.
“NASA, the only game in town, has no real idea what space is for, and no audacity”
There certainly was audacity in 1961, when John F. Kennedy made his lunar pledge. The key line was not the crazy bit about landing a man on the moon, it was the hubristic promise to do so by 1970. If Wernher Von Braun had insisted the moon was unreachable before 1975, they probably would never have gone. Why? Because by 1975 Kennedy’s presidency would be ancient history. Some other guy would get all the glory as Old Glory was hammered into the lunar regolith.
Of course that happened anyway, but Kennedy’s reasoning must have been that, even in 1969, he would be able to bask in the glory of a successful moon shot.
It may simply be that space exploration is incompatible with US democracy. A Mars shot would take four presidential terms at least. No president will ask taxpayers to fund something he won’t be around to take credit for.
Another big problem is the legacy of some terrible decisions that left NASA with the expensive, dangerous space shuttle and a white-elephant space station that manages the feat of making space seem as dull as cardboard. The whole thing is a mess.
So where now? Probably nowhere. Expect the Augustine report to be quietly forgotten. After all, we’ve been here before. In 1989 George Bush Snr promised the moon and Mars too, and that came to naught. The problem with these visions is that they are too sane. Human space exploration requires a tinge of madness – that theatrical Kennedy hubris – to work.
They’ll probably keep the International Space Station going out of bloody-mindedness. The shuttles will fly a few more times. There will be some vague plans, more studies. Robots, of course, but no concerted attempt to look for alien life, the most compelling raison d’être for space exploration. But as to the moon, Mars, infinity and beyond, I’m afraid, in all likelihood, Buzz Lightyear will just have to wait.
Ivan Semeniuk
FOR Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, the transformation was astonishing. Between her first visit to the International Space Station in 1999 and her second in July this year, the orbiting platform had grown from a pair of dormant, empty modules to a gleaming complex lit up and humming with human activity. “We were coming to a place where people live,” says Payette.
Conceived in the cold war, reinvented as an emblem of international cooperation, then repeatedly dismissed as a white elephant, the space station has nonetheless come to pass. The scepticism continues, but so does human space flight. Budget crises and periodic refocusing notwithstanding, this is not going to change. Why?
The act of putting a human into space remains a high-profile and politically potent showcase for the world’s major industrial nations. What began as a race between the US and the Soviet Union has morphed into a multinational display of membership of the modern world. Like Olympic competition, human space flight has become one of the few acceptable outlets for overt displays of national pride. The fact that China has now entered the game virtually guarantees major western democracies won’t back out. Like the US, China will use its space capabilities to cement ties with allies while demonstrating to its own people that it is the equal of other great powers.
“The act of putting a human into space remains a high profile and politically potent showcase”
In the US, the jobs and material resources invested in human space flight are substantial and politically significant. As long as Florida plays a key role in determining who gets to be president, no US politician would lightly consider disbanding the programme. Early in his nomination campaign, Barack Obama flirted with the notion of redirecting resources from NASA to education. The space industry was unimpressed and by the time he was battling for the White House, Obama had backed off.
Politics aside, there is a subset of the science and technology community that simply will not let human space flight die. If governments abandon their programmes these individuals will keep the dream alive as a private venture. Perhaps not surprisingly, they include some of the brightest young minds on the planet. Earth will always be too small for them, and the conviction that humanity should and will one day reach the stars too strong.
To be sure, the desire to fly in space and journey to other worlds is impractical and risks becoming an escapist fantasy. Yet there is a deeper force at work. Space calls to us, as a species, to be more than we have been. It is a call we have, so far, proved wonderfully incapable of ignoring.
