Is the U.S. Retreating from Space? Part III

President Obama visited NASA today to present his vision for America’s space program. In doing so he responded to critics who said that his plan would endanger America’s status as a preeminent space power. In his speech, Obama provided an overview of past U.S. space efforts before moving on to describe his plans for the future. You can read the full text of his speech here. I was impressed with his passion, this was not the kind of speech that a president intent on diminishing the role of the U.S. in space would give. Take this part, for example:

And on a personal note, I have been part of that generation so inspired by the space program.  1961 was the year of my birth — the year that Kennedy made his announcement.  And one of my earliest memories is sitting on my grandfather’s shoulders, waving a flag as astronauts arrived in Hawaii.  For me, the space program has always captured an essential part of what it means to be an American — reaching for new heights, stretching beyond what previously did not seem possible.  And so, as President, I believe that space exploration is not a luxury, it’s not an afterthought in America’s quest for a brighter future — it is an essential part of that quest.

This suggests to me that he gets it, that he is a genuine space enthusiast and isn’t merely checking off “support NASA” from his presidential to-do list. This makes it all the more mystifying as the specifics of what he outlined today have not addressed my initial concerns or those raised by the critics of the policy. Take for example his decision to “save” the Orion crew capsule from the Constellation program. Sure, this is good news, and on the surface it appears to be an effort to mollify supporters of the Constellation program as well as those fearful of losing jobs, but when you examine the details we find that a craft intended to take astronauts to the Moon will now become a slimmed down version attached to the space station as an emergency escape pod. So, in essence, the Obama plan means that American astronauts will not be able to get to the space station without first asking permission from another country and paying millions of dollars for the ride but if something does go disastrously wrong on the station they can at least escape on American hardware. How comforting.

To be fair, Obama is proposing a funding increase for NASA, and that is good news for the space agency. He also hopes to use government money to stimulate private industry to create a new commercial space sector, and that is also good news. It’s the kind of private sector pork that even Republicans can love. Companies with names like SpaceX, Bigelow Aerospace, Space Adventures and Virgin Galactic stand to profit. In short, Obama hopes to hand off low-Earth orbit to civilians while NASA does Big Things, like building next generation spaceships with propulsion systems we can’t even imagine now so we can land on asteroids and orbit (and maybe even land on) Mars in twenty or thirty years.

So, why do I still have reservations about the Obama plan? After all, it’s a grand vision for America’s future in space and NASA should be a forward looking organization. Still, I can’t quite get over the fear that if the next president decides to make some changes to his plan, or scrap it entirely (the way he has done with the Bush plan), we will literally be lost in space. We will be without the shuttle or any kind of replacement, and without access to space except with the help of the Russians and maybe a few commercial space taxis (that hopefully have moved beyond the prototype stage), and with no heavy-lift capability. The Constellation program was a methodical step-by-step plan that built on past success and proven technology to reach achievable goals. The Obama plan removes the step-by-step process and proven technology and asks us to go on faith and check back in twenty or thirty years to be amazed at how far we have come. I’m not sure I’m ready to take that leap of faith.