So what’s next for NASA? For the Orbiters, the path is clear. Discovery will be displayed in the National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. Endeavor will reside in the California Science Center in Los Angeles, and Atlantis will be at the Kennedy Space Center. Enterprise, the early Orbiter test vehicle, will be displayed on the retired Intrepid aircraft carrier that is docked in New York harbor. The path forward for NASA’s human exploration program is not so clear. The current policy, which relies on commercial companies to develop human rated launch vehicles, means that NASA will depend on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the Space Station for the next few years at a minimum. If US companies are successful in developing this capability, then NASA can pay them for astronaut rides to the Station and eliminate the dependence on Russia. The risk with this approach is that if the commercial companies cannot make money, they will do what all companies do; stop and do something else. So there needs to be another reason to travel to low earth orbit, another market. Space tourism is a very limited market right now. To date, 7 civilians have paid between $25 and $35M for “vacations” in space courtesy of the entrepreneurial Russian Space Agency. If US companies can reduce the price for a ride to space to a level where it is affordable for the very rich instead of the incredibly rich, then tourism may be a viable future market. NASA cannot be the only customer for commercial launch services if this model is to work.
The very important but less publicized science side of NASA will continue on largely unaffected by the Shuttle’s retirement. There are currently 84 active NASA science missions in phases from formulation through extended operations. These missions fall into 4 categories: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Astrophysics, and Planetary Science. The Hubble telescope, launched in 1990, that recently provided us with images from a 13.2 billion year old galaxy, is one of those missions. Orbiting satellites with instruments pointed towards Earth collect data on weather, the water cycle, and atmospheric changes among other objectives. The Opportunity rover that has been rolling along the surface of Mars for 7 years looking for signs of life is another. Opportunity will be joined next year by a larger rover, the Mars Science Lab, that is scheduled for launch in November, 2011. Science mission spacecraft which are launched on expendable launch vehicles provided by companies like United Launch Alliance and Orbital Sciences Corp., can travel longer and farther than manned missions because there are no human physiological restrictions.
The signature moments in the manned space program have been “firsts”. Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space. Alan Shepard was the first American in space. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. Neil Armstrong, the first human to step on the Moon. The Shuttle was the first reusable space plane. What is the next “first” for NASA? A return to the Moon would not be a “first”, but establishing a permanently occupied lunar base like the Space Station might be considered so. Sending an astronaut to Mars would be a huge “first”, but the distance and time involved (7 months one way) may be impractical with current propulsion technology. Perhaps we should focus on an asteroid. A recently selected NASA planetary science mission called OSIRIS-ReX will send a spacecraft to asteroid “1999 RQ36” in 2016. This asteroid is of particular interest because its orbit is close to that of the Earth and there is a 1 in 1800 chance of it colliding with our planet in the year 2182. To avoid a fate like that of the dinosaurs, learning more about this dangerous little neighbor is a good idea. Possibly a manned mission could augment what is learned about the asteroid from OSIRIS-ReX and enable us to safely alter the asteroid’s orbit sometime in the future.
The scientific value of these and other potential missions and their cost need to be evaluated by NASA, Congress, and ultimately the American people in the next decade. There are no easy answers and in a time of large deficits, any new government program must make a compelling case for funding. Mankind and the US economy have benefited from our investment in NASA. Taking on the challenge of solving difficult problems has led to some of our greatest achievements as well as germinated new products and markets (cell phones, GPS devices, improved medical imaging equipment, cordless power tools, memory foam, etc.) The difficulty now is deciding what that next challenge should be.
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