Says China Will Probably Beat US To The Moon

It's not exactly what "The Right Stuff" was made of, over 45 years ago... but current NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is taking a more pragmatic, albeit far less inspiring, approach to America's presence in space.

In a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle, Griffin admits it's likely China will beat the US back to the moon. Furthermore, he's fine with that, really... so long as the agency has clear priorities -- such as completing the International Space Station -- and a stable funding stream to accomplish them.

"I will raise my hand and say I do not want another space race," Griffin asserted, when asked whether it bothered him that China, or India, could reach the lunar surface before NASA returns there. "What happens when you do that is, you tend to get a short period of intense funding, and then the attention goes away, funding dissipates, and it's like an army dealing with a retreat. The hardest thing to do in military circles is to manage an effective retreat.

"What I want for NASA is stable and predictable funding and a stable set of goals," he continued. "Finish the station, retire the shuttle, return to the moon, go to Mars. Those are great goals for the next 50 years. I certainly wouldn't mind a higher level of funding, but the stability of funding is more important than the absolute level."

In a statement likely to raise a few eyebrows among the storied ranks of the Apollo spacefarers, Griffin then states the race to the moon in the 1960s may not have been the best thing for NASA, in the long run.

"What the Apollo engineers did was one of the miracles of human accomplishment," he told the Chronicle. "But I could make a pretty good case for you that, for the long-term mastery of spaceflight by our nation as a strategic capability, Apollo did more damage than good. We built up an industrial base, we built up a set of expectations, we accomplished one of the most marvelous things that's ever been done, and then we dismantled it all. It brings to mind the fable of the tortoise and the hare."

(Editor's Note: It's worth noting critics of the space shuttle program -- and NASA's focus on low-earth orbit manned missions for the past 30 years -- say much the same things about NASA's more recent priorities.)

Griffin compares NASA's current mission -- and the questions posed by it -- to the decision posed by American lawmakers in the 19th century, as they faced the question of sending pioneers out to conquer the New Frontier.

"I'd like to see answered the policy question for the United States of what role do we want to have in putting life [in space,]" Griffin says. "Human beings are confined to the Earth today. For a very long time, we're going to be confined to the solar system. What use do we want to make of it in human affairs?

"That was exactly the question, on a smaller scale, facing the people in Congress in the 1830s. They had purchased enormous tracts in the American West, and they had been briefly and barely explored. You had influential politicians standing on the floor of Congress saying the American West was forever unusable because it was arid and dry and of no conceivable value to human beings, so why are we spending money on military expeditions into the West?

"Probably most people in Houston today would not view that as a particularly far-sighted set of comments," Griffin admits. "So we need to decide what role the United States is going to play in putting life out there."

From the sound of it... a rather limited one...

FMI: www.nasa.gov