Is space exploration like a bottle of whiskey? Both are items I’m especially fond of, and that fondness will never make me more employable. The study of outer space and our species’ endeavors to explore it has done very little to resolve humankind’s greatest problems: poverty, war, famine and the thousand natural shocks flesh is err too. Like a bottle of whiskey, so much of our fascination with the heavens stems from a deeply seeded need to escape very real terrestrial problems. At least for those of us not working at NASA or its associates, the driving public support for the past 60 years has been based on a largely hedonistic impulse not always anchored by practical considerations.
As the future of human space travel moves into its most precarious position since Vostok 1 shot Yuri Garagrin into the history books as the first man in space, the only area where practical advancements are set to be made and putative financing exists is in charted low-orbit joy rides for the obscenely wealthy. To wit, later this summer, the American Space Shuttle fleet, which has been running missions since the early 1980s, will be retired, and no replacement fleet is anywhere on the horizon.
Plans made only a few years ago to redevelop the intellectual and material capacity to return to the Moon by 2020 have been scuttled. The Constellation Program to develop a new generation of space-faring vehicles with the intention of getting to nearby asteroids (and eventually Mars and beyond) was effectively canceled by President Barack Obama last spring. The plan now, and this should sound familiar, is to develop “public-private partnerships” between NASA and commercial interests. This transition effectively marks the end of public sector leadership in space exploration and the beginning of a new era where for-profit interests outweigh publicly supported scientific and humanistic objectives.
Like a hangover, a glum reality should be setting in upon those who dream of stars and exploration of the unknown. There is a very good possibility mankind will never again set foot upon our moon, much less reach Mars. Given our planet’s grim socio-economic inequalities and the trillions spent carelessly on imperial wars of occupation, the best we have to look forward to in the coming decades may be Richard Branson staring down at us from a low-Earth orbit.
This Friday when the Space Shuttle Endeavor launches for its 25th and final mission, the expected attendance of Obama and recovering Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona – who is seeing off her husband, Mark Kelly, the mission commander – may well make this the last, celebrated launching of a publicly financed human space mission many of us will see until our twilight years, if ever.
Many will argue this isn’t such a bad thing. After all, poverty, unemployment, epidemic disease and the struggle for peace around the world are easily more important areas of concern and better targets for taxpayer dollars. Publicly funded space exploration is not traditionally profitable, though it does generate many dreams in the elementary school set and those of us still beholden to that starry-eyed mentality. Pointing expensive orbiting telescopes toward the black abyss to divine the origins of the universe will never feed starving children, but even more so than some good drink, the expansion of our knowledge of the cosmos puts perspective on life, our insignificance and the importance of living for the day as it is.
In a hearing last February, Giffords noted concern about NASA’s proposed scaling back of American space exploration: “My concern today is not numbers on a ledger, but rather the fate of the American dream to reach for the stars,” she said. Indeed, the inspirational narrative we’ve all been taught about how human space flight pushed the envelope of technology and the human character has begun to dead-line. And while it is hard to think beyond one’s own short time on Earth, the international effort to push the limits of space exploration goes beyond simply unifying the human imagination around a common goal, but addresses a never-ending project whose sweetest fruit will not ripen fully for generations.
While too-often adulterated by bush-league Hollywood sci-fi, the Earth will not always sustain us, even if we do find a way to come together and seriously combat existential crises such as global warming and resource scarcity. Nonetheless, technologies and resources that may be discovered and harvested within reach of Earth have, in themselves, a relatively near-term allure.
The choice between battling poverty and inequality or exploring space is a false one; we mustn’t sacrifice more than imperial military operations and corporate welfare to reignite NASA. The estimated cost of going to Mars is less than $150 billion and returning to the Moon would cost less than $35 billion. In contrast, the estimated cost of the Iraq war is $3 trillion, extension of the Bush era tax cuts will cost $3.7 trillion over ten years and the bank bail-out of 2008 cost $700 billion.
In the end, space exploration might not be so much like a bottle of whiskey, but the moribund state of NASA and our plans to reach beyond this warm, blue rock certainly has me reaching for one.
Sam Stevenson ([email protected]) is a graduate student in public health.
