FLUG REVUE April 2004: NASA has ambitious new plans

BUSH FORCES NASA STRATEGY CHANGE

By Volker K. Thomalla

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has received new terms of reference from the American President George W. Bush. In the future, the agency should no longer waste its energies on a plethora of small programmes, but instead pursue a big vision, starting with the return of mankind to the moon and then, as the next step, sending astronauts to Mars. In his speech on 14 January, in which Bush publicly unveiled NASA's new objectives for the first time, he did not exclude the possibility of even more ambitious targets. The change of strategy will be paid for largely by redistributing $11 billion of NASA's existing budget from the fiscal year 2005, but also by an additional billion dollars of funding, although this still has to be approved by Congress.

Whether the United States can foot the bill for such a vision on its own is questionable. In his speech, Bush therefore stressed the international nature of the plans: the new vision was not a race, but more a journey, in which other nations would be invited to participate.

NASA critics like the former astronaut, Eugene A. Cernan, welcome this change of strategy as an important step in restoring NASA to its role as the engine of and impulse giver to progress. Amongst other activities, Cernan was the Commander of the Apollo 17 mission and he was also the last man on the moon in December 1972. He is still an active pilot and, in a record flight, it was he who flew Bombardier's brand new Business Jet Challenger 300 from California to the Asian Aerospace trade show in Singapore. There I spoke with him, amongst other things, about NASA's new guidelines. According to Cernan, since its lunar flights NASA has suffered from a lack of vision. On the Apollo missions, humans were carried 386,000km into space and returned home safe and sound. Not a single mission in the last 30 years has transported any human more than 620 km from Earth. The Shuttles were of course a major project, but, according to Cernan, the big vision and associated strategy were lacking. Now it seems that the exploratory spirit is finally being resurrected. “I have been the last man on the moon for far too long!” says Cernan.

Spaceflight is not an end in itself. Spaceflight, and especially manned spaceflight, has had a lasting impact on life on earth, thanks to technologies everyone uses today which were originally developed for space travel. The miniaturisation of electronics is one example of how, at the very least, spaceflight has triggered the impulse to development. The revolution in navigation using GPS is a shining example of the benefits of spaceflight. Although intended as a military system, today GPS also assists with the navigation of civilian aircraft and makes it possible to conserve natural resources thanks to precision agricultural production. Another example of the benefits of spaceflight are the advances that have been made in weather prediction and earth resource surveys. We have learned more about our own planet through spaceflight than through earth-bound research. Thanks to accurate satellite weather forecasts, it has been possible to give thousands of people advance warning of severe storms. And, last but not least, pictures of the blue planet which astronauts have brought home with them from space have helped us to develop a kind of environmental awareness. We cannot predict today what expeditions to other planets will bring, but we can be sure of one thing, namely, that we will be the richer for them.

From FLUG REVUE 4/2004, page 4

Last updated 12 March 2004

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