A Modest Proposal

A great editorial by Charles Krauthammer in today's Washington Post regarding Bush's announcement of the new plan for space. (Hat tip Instpundit) bq. Four years ago, I wrote an article ("On to Mars," the Weekly Standard, Jan. 31, 2000) advocating phasing out the space shuttle, abandoning the space station, establishing a moon base and then eventually going on to Mars. It was greeted with yawns by those who noticed it at all. bq. Even my friends excused my fondness for the moon as the kind of eccentricity one expects from a guy who has an interest in prime numbers and once drove to New York to see a chess match. bq. Well, things have gotten worse. This week, when the president of the United States proposed to phase out the space shuttle, phase down the space station, establish a moon base and then eventually go on to Mars, he was met not with yawns, but with ridicule. And more: bq. As for the Kennedy stuff, the Bush proposal has less to do with a vision of man's destiny than with a totally dysfunctional government agency. NASA gave us the glory of Apollo, then spent the next three decades twirling around in space in low Earth orbit studying zero-G nausea. bq. It's crazy, and it might have gone on forever had it not been for the Columbia tragedy. Columbia made painfully clear what some of us have been saying for years: It is not only pointless to continue orbiting endlessly around the Earth; it is ridiculously expensive and indefensibly risky. bq. The president's proposal is a reasonable, measured reconfiguration of the manned space program. True, he could not go all the way. Binding agreements with other countries made it impossible for him to scrap the space station -- a financial sinkhole whose only purpose is its own existence. But he is for phasing it down and for retiring the shuttle within six years. bq. That frees up huge amounts of NASA money to do what is useful and exciting: going to other worlds. For this generation, the only alternative to wandering about in low Earth orbit -- other than the Luddite alternative of giving up manned flight completely -- is to return to the moon. And this time, stay there. bq. Establishing the first human habitation on a celestial body would not just allow for extraordinarily interesting science (from geology to astronomy) and be the locus for extraterrestrial manufacture. It would be -- those without an ounce of romance in their souls are advised to skip the rest of this sentence -- the most glorious human adventure since the Age of Exploration five centuries ago. Great stuff! The budget isn't out of line either - Bush's proposal is to sideline the big-ticket items while laying in the infrastructure needed to support such a program (tracking stations, bases, support systems, etc...) If we cut down on the space shuttle (a money pit if there ever was one) and back out of the ISS (money pit II), we will have enough funding for a Lunar base and maned Mars exploration with little problem. Plus, the spin-offs - people under 30 are too young to realize the immense benefits that came to everyone from the Apollo program - science, medicine, remote sensing,weather prediction, materials science, electronics (and miniaturization), the list goes on and on. Imagine what a program like this could do for today's slashdot crowd!