A Progressive Vision of Human Space Exploration

By Thomas Gangale
California Progress Report
4 December 2007

George W. Bush’s "Vision for Space Exploration" is well into its third year. While a welcome departure from Bill Clinton’s zero vision, and the elder Bush’s tragicomically fumbled Space Exploration Initiative, Dubya’s vision is... well, the Texans have a saying: "Big hat, no cattle."

He wants Americans to return to the Moon, but it’s going to take longer to get there than it did the first time under John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. To boldly go where Democrats have taken us before, only slower. George W. wants to take us to Mars as well, but when that will happen is anyone’s guess... before or after we get win the War on Terror? The old saying in the aerospace industry is, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers," and George W. hasn’t requested much from Congress to fund his vision. It's vision on the cheap, like buying a pair of reading glasses at a supermarket.

Some Democrats who would step into his shoes next year would also take up this weakly-held baton of space leadership. Dennis Kucinich has said that he would triple NASA’s budget. If that sounds extravagant, it’s not. It would return the NASA budget to about half of what it was at the peak of the Apollo program. Recently, Hillary Clinton has made some strong statements in support of the human exploration of the solar system. On the other hand, Barack Obama would delay the Constellation program by five years, which, given its already snail’s pace, amounts to a less than candid way of saying he would kill the program. Other presidential candidates, both Democratic and Republican, seem not to have given space policy much thought. Indeed, except for Clinton's, none of the official campaign websites mentions NASA or human space exploration.

As I have written elsewhere, there is a libertarian, no-holds-barred free enterprise vision of space development. There is also a neoconservative rationale for militarizing space. A progressive vision of space to counterbalance these has yet to be articulated to a comparable level of prominence. This is of particular importance to California as a leader in the aerospace and high tech industries.

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