"Pathways to Exploration—Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration" is a report from the National Research Council that describes the rationales for, and value of, human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit. Commissioned by Congress, two years in the making, and written by a diverse committee of experts, the report develops recommendations that could guide the U.S. human spaceflight program in a sustainable manner.
A recent Popular Mechanics article,
"5 Things to Know About the New Report on NASA’s Future," highlights five basic issues from the NRC report:
1. There Are Only Four Places Human Explorers Could Go
2. Why Are We Even Doing This?
3. They Need More Money
4. They Need Political Stability and Long-Term Support
5. Don’t Fear Teamwork–Even With China
Point 1 is merely a statement of fact regarding where we are in the Solar System with respect to where other celestial bodies are, the nature of their environments, and our ability to cross distances and to access them; we can go back to the Moon, to near-Earth asteroids, to Mars, and to the two Martian moons that are no bigger than asteroids. Point 2 is the core of the problem of the United States human spaceflight program, it always has been, and it has a cascading effect on Points 3 and 4. As to Point 5, my first reaction is a bit of impolite "aviator speak" expressing utter astonishment, best not repeated here.
Regarding Point 2, Cornell professor Jonathan Lunine, one of the lead authors of the report, says: "There are two main sets of rationales for supporting human spaceflight: There are pragmatic rationales, and there are aspirational ones. The aspirational rationales are tied to the enduring questions. Pragmatic rationales alone are inadequate to justify human spaceflight. Aspirational and pragmatic rationales in combination argue for a continuation of our nation’s human spaceflight program."
Unabashedly, I am a Kennedy kid who was raised on the vision of the New Frontier, a Star Trek child who was raised on the credo "To boldly go…." I was a boy who worried that I was too young to be the first man on Mars. I accepted the aspirational rationales of human spaceflight not simply as articles of faith, but as the purpose of life, and I remain a true believer.
There are few of us who are truly dedicated to the aspirational rationales of human spaceflight. Even in the 21st century, many human beings die a few miles from where they were born without ever having seen much else of the world, still more are only a generation or two removed from that circumscribed existence, so it is understandable that most people have little idea what goes on in the vastness of outer space, or its importance to us. The myopia of the human race has a direct effect on Point 3, the need for more money.
Most people feel vaguely positive about having such a human spaceflight program, but they don't understand what it does, and they think it costs a lot more than it actually does. Many think it consumes as much as one quarter of the federal budget, whereas in reality, with the exception of peak spending during the Apollo program, it has historically accounted for less than one percent. To put it in perspective, it's about what we spend on national and state parks.
Most Americans are math challenged. Any number with a lot of zeros makes their eyes glaze over. So $150 billion to send Americans back to the Moon seemed like too much money for something they sort of kind of liked, and so the Constellation program was canceled. However, they tolerated spending anywhere from $3 trillion to $6 trillion on a "war of choice" in Iraq. Wake up and smell the burning money.
Is it really about money, or is it about choices? There is always plenty of money for dealing out new death, and damned little money for seeking out new life. Actually, there is a certain perverse logic to it: why should we be interested in seeking out new life when we value so little the life that is here on Earth?
The politicians who set the priorities are no more than the reflection, no so much of the general electorate, but of energized pressure groups who are no better informed than the average Joe but a hell of a lot louder. Since most people think that NASA already gets plenty of money, progressives prioritize for social programs rather than NASA, and neoconservatives prioritize for national power projection rather than NASA; meanwhile, libertarians believe that private enterprise can entirely replace NASA. The political constituency for NASA is a signal that is well below the noise level.
Reiterating part of Point 2, "Pragmatic rationales alone are inadequate to justify human spaceflight." This alone is sufficient to explain the unhappy fate of military human spaceflight programs such as Dyna-Soar (canceled in 1963), the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (canceled in 1969), and military Space Shuttle flights out of Vandenberg Air Force Base (canceled in 1986). On the Soviet side, the list of abandoned military human spaceflight programs is far more lengthy and exotic, including manned space interceptors. In the end, pragmatic military rationales favored unmanned systems. It should also be remembered that the Space Shuttle system was supposed to be a pragmatic human spaceflight program, paying for itself by reducing the cost of launch operations; it did not.
From this history, a prudent person cannot choose but to cast a jaundiced eye on the libertarian "NewSpace" cheerleaders who, having never suited up to play on the gridiron themselves, have long been critical of NASA. Whereas the old NASA contractor's mantra was "under-promise and over-deliver," the "NewSpace" hype has reversed that wisdom. Few wish to remember that in September 2004 it was publicly stated that SpaceShipTwo would begin commercial flights in 2007; ten years later, that project is at least seven years behind schedule. NASA managers would have been forced to resign over such a delay, and Soviet managers would have been sent to forced labor camps. The "NewSpace" crowd is finding out the hard way that they aren't any smarter than Wernher von Braun, Sergey Korolev, or Maxime Faget. But I give Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Robert Bigelow their due, for they they are "doers" and I believe along with them that there are niches opening up for private enterprise in the ecology of human spaceflight. The cheerleaders, however, are ugly.
So, "Why are we even doing this?" If one is a true believer, the answer is self-evident, and if one is not, persuasion based on pragmatism is problematic. There are quicker and more certain returns on investment than human spaceflight. One can build great machines that are economic failures: the Space Shuttle, the Concorde, the L-1011 Tristar. National policy can put human beings on the Moon; it is not pragmatic on its own merits, it is the resultant of a larger political calculus. Thus, analysis triangulates on Lunine's conclusion: "Aspirational and pragmatic rationales in combination argue for a continuation of our nation’s human spaceflight program."
Which brings us now to Point 4, "They need political stability and long-term support." John F. Kennedy knew that there was a good chance that he would not be president when the first American landed on the Moon, but there was also a good chance that he would have been the president to make that historic telephone call from the Oval Office to the Moon. According to schedules that NASA produced shortly after he addressed a joint session of Congress in May 1961, committing the nation to "achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon," that goal would have been achieved in mid-1967. Except for two events, a bullet in Dallas in November 1963 and a fire at the Cape in January 1967, Kennedy would have been on the other end of the conversation with Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin. As it turned out, Lyndon Johnson missed the phone call by only six months.
We are beyond the era of doing anything that momentous that quickly. Landing humans on Mars will require a political commitment beyond the eight-year presidential cycle. It must be a legacy shared among three or more presidents. This is not an insurmountable obstacle. American national policy need not be short-sighted. The Cold War strategy of containment of the Soviet Union was born in the Truman administration, and was carried through by Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Also, protracted wars had been carried over from the president from one political party to that from another (Vietnam, Johnson to Nixon; Afghanistan and Iraq, George W. Bush to Obama). The American political system has demonstrated the ability to initiate, to sustain, and to achieve long term goals across party lines.
However, history suggests that it must be a national commitment, not a "feel good" exercise. Here is where Russia and China have an advantage over the United States. America is a satisfied and complacent power, having won two world wars and the Cold War, and having taken the lead role in constructing international institutions. On the other hand, Russia and China, our fellow victors in the Second World War, are anxious to prove themselves as great powers in the international order of the 21st century. Outer space, no less than in the 1960s, is a venue where great powers can prove themselves. The next nation that lands a human on the Moon will present a challenge to American leadership, despite a professed American ennui of "been there, done that" before your father was born. A nation can rest on laurels only so long; eventually, the champion must climb back into the ring and defend his title. Again we come to the question of choice: can national leaders convince Americans that it is in the national interest to spend as much as one percent of the federal budget to achieve truly astonishing things in space, or are we going to keep treating NASA funding as a minor expense like buying deodorant and anti-fungal cream?
We now come to Point 5: "Don’t fear teamwork – even with China." This is the sort of policy recommendation that only a politically un-savvy physical scientist could love.
Looking at the history of international partnerships in human spaceflight, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project of the 1970s was a limited exercise during the Nixon-Brezhnev "detente" that was extinguished by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Cooperation did not resume until after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, at which time American space policy became geared to seeking any opportunity to keep Soviet rocket scientists gainfully employed lest they market their expertise to unsavory and dangerous buyers.
The second era of Russo-American cooperation lasted two decades, but it is probably coming to an end. Russia, stung by global reaction to its annexation of Crimea, has stated its intention to withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS) project by 2020. Two bites at the apple, Russia has proven to be an unreliable partner.
In contrast, the Europeans and the Canadians have been steady partners with the US in human spaceflight for four decades, beginning with the Space Shuttle program. Japan is also a long-standing and steady partner with the US in human spaceflight, having joined the ISS project in 1988. The difference between these countries and Russia is obvious. They are liberal democracies, and they do not menace either their neighbors or each other.
That China is a rising economy with an increasingly ambitious and capable space program is hardly sufficient reason to include it in international partnerships in human spaceflight. It is an authoritarian, single-party state, brutally suppressive of internal dissent, increasingly threatening in its territorial disputes with its neighbors, and predatory in its use of cyber warfare capabilities around the world.
It is not necessary to think through the national security implications of technology transfer to conclude that this an outstandingly bad idea. Contemplating a partnership with China runs counter to the logic of Point 4, the need for political stability and long-term support, in apparent pursuit of Point 3, the need for more money. It is inconceivable that a partnership with China could be politically stable for the several decades it would take for a human Mars landing program to come to fruition.
The choice of international partners becomes more crucial as we pursue human spaceflight goals farther from Earth. It is bad enough that the future of the ISS program beyond 2020 has now been thrown into doubt because of Russia's reversion to revanchism, but the ISS is just a few hundred kilometers above Earth, and we have a few years to make arrangements that do not include Russia. The last thing we should want is to have crews hanging out there in deep space for want of critical components or supplies, months and possibly years from possible return to Earth, while an international crisis between "partners" plays out. Such a scenario makes for good science fiction, but it would be unconscionably bad policy.
There are more palatable choices available if we want to look for international partners for the next grand human spaceflight project in addition to our proven partners in Japan, Canada, and Europe: rising economies, which, unlike China, are within the zone of the "liberal democratic peace." Most obvious is India, not only the world's largest democracy and an increasingly dynamic and diverse economic powerhouse, but a spacefaring nation that is pursuing its own independent human spaceflight program.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin, an old man, is a short-timer on Earth, and it is conceivable that his successor could set Russia on a course back toward the sphere of the "liberal democratic peace" and make it once again a reasonable partner in human spaceflight. At least it is a far better bet than rolling the dice with China.
