Congressional Fingerpointing At NASA Way Out Of Line
by ANN Associate Editor Pete Combs
If some members of
Congress have their way, what the aerospace world worried would
happen will happen. The Columbia disaster will be used as an excuse
to permanently ground manned shuttle flights. That's just
wrong.
NASA deserves a lot of the heat it's gotten since the February
1st disintegration of Columbia over Texas and Louisiana,
just 16 minutes from scheduled touchdown at the Kennedy Space
Center (FL). Seven astronauts, including Israel's first-ever man in
space, were killed in the disaster.
Sure, you can make the case against NASA's "culture of
self-preservation." You can argue that cost cuts and a lack of
vision plague the space agency to the point of serious
handicap.
But you simply can't kill the space program. Redefine it.
Re-engineer it. Reinvest in it. But don't kill it.
We find it tearfully amusing to hear suggestions from
Congressional wanks like Representative John Mica (R-FL) and
Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) who criticize NASA for budget cuts.
Where do these budget cuts come from? It's as if Administrator Sean
O'Keefe woke up one morning and decided to carve $4 billion out of
the manned space flight program. Wrong. Let's remember just who it
is holding the pen full of red ink. It's the administration and
Congress. NASA is simply stuck doing the best it can with budgets
that constantly grow smaller and smaller.
We saw a very funny
cartoon the other day, depicting Homer Simpson eating a donut,
carelessly pushing buttons on a high-tech NASA control panel. A man
and woman at the door look at each other knowingly and say, "That
explains everything." No, it doesn't. Anyone familiar with aviation
will tell you that NASA is a foremost authority on doing more with
less. But at some point in the process, you spend nothing and you
get nothing.
The Space Race of the last century was certainly based in large
part on "point-of-pride" issues. America, mired in the Cold War and
Vietnam, needed something peaceful and yet powerful to demonstrate
our ability to keep a commitment, to reach for a star. We found it
in the space program. But deep down, it's shallow to think that the
United States' success in space and its position as a world leader
in all things technological is solely driven by a "keeping ahead of
the Joneses" mindset.
Our space program does need redefinition. We applaud the
recommendations of some that call for a return to the thinking of
the Apollo days. But those in Congress who demand a return to the
glory days better be ready to spend the money it takes to get from
here to there.
Plagued by spending mandates that look worse on paper than a
journalist's credit report, it's no wonder that NASA has trouble
with the "vision thing." What do we, as a nation, want to achieve
in space? Do we want to explore strange new worlds, etc? More
importantly, what are we willing to spend our hard-earned money
on?
Give our brilliant engineers and planners at NASA the chance to
regain their glory by giving them a clearly-defined, unambiguous
mandate to explore the heavens. And give them the money they need
to do it.