Source: The Toledo Blade
PRESIDENT Obama’s critics don’t believe he has the right stuff when it comes to charting NASA’s future.
Yet the President’s vision of the space program, which he outlined recently, will keep it viable in the decades to come. It calls for a visit to an asteroid by 2025 and an orbit of Mars by the 2030s. A return to the moon, however, is not in the cards.
Critics are disturbed by the large and unprecedented role Mr. Obama sees for the private sector in space exploration. For a president who is often accused of being a socialist, he has more faith in the ingenuity of the private sector than his detractors do.
NASA’s previous plan was to develop a new generation of heavy rocket boosters, similar to those that powered the Apollo moon missions. Former President George W. Bush renewed NASA’s goal of returning to the moon and shooting for Mars. Unfortunately, the previous administration neglected to fund the program adequately.
Mindful of economic realities, President Obama has put together a more-realistic trajectory for the space agency that emphasizes unmanned exploration and research. Aside from funding private-sector initiatives in space, he proposes hitching rides from Russia to the International Space Station after the shuttle fleet is retired.
This has outraged critics who believe he has ceded America’s space supremacy to its competitors, and angered those in Congress whose districts have NASA-related jobs.Mr. Obama has attempted to mollify these skeptics by reviving the Orion capsule program. Once it is redesigned, Orion will serve as an escape ship for the space station.
Mr. Obama also has ordered NASA to begin work on a heavy-lift rocket by 2015. He even threw in a $40 million stimulus package to retrain workers at the Kennedy Space Center.
The President’s plan is a departure from the Cold War vision of space exploration that defined NASA’s mission for half a century. If the agency’s mission is to survive and thrive, it will need new partners in the private sector, along with a revival of the “can-do” spirit of the 1960s and early ’70s.