Obama and the Space Program

A few days ago several famous astronauts including Neil Armstrong issued a letter to President Obama protesting his cancellation of the Constellation program and abandonment of the American manned space capability. Obama replied with a speech in which he expressed his support for the manned space program. He made several predictions of future accomplishments.

Aspects of Obama's speech bothered me but it took a few days to put my finger on why.

Obama's reason for dropping a return to the moon from the program is that "We've already been there."

Obama is too young to remember the space race that culminated in a moon landing. I am older and had watched documentaries on it and read books written by people involved. Most of the race to the moon took place in earth orbit. Technologies had to be tested, one at a time. Going to Mars is much more difficult. It is hard to imagine solving the logistics of this undertaking without trying them out on the moon.

Obama is also rejecting the Constellation booster in favor of a new booster to be designed later. He gives a similar reason for this - that the Constellation is built on "old technology" and we need new designs. Reading between the lines here, Obama seems to be captivated by SpaceX. He has visited their site several times and their founder is an enthusiastic supporter of Obama's plans. My suspicion is that Obama wants to cut the existing contracts and start from scratch with SpaceX as the new prime contractor. That is what he was driving at when he talked about new technologies.

The big question is how committed is Obama to the space program? The big clue here is his suggestion that future missions to the International Space Station be contracted out, first to the Russians and later to private industry. Several Libertarians have applauded this since they see commercialization of space to be a good thing. This may be true but I doubt that President Obama would agree. He has a history of being hostile to profit-making enterprises, especially one in competition with the government. He felt so strongly about bank-issued student loans that legislation to discontinue that program was inserted in the amendments to the health care bill.

If the manned space program was really important to Obama then we would see more government involvement. The fact that he is outsourcing it means that he has little or no interest in it. This has nothing to do with the merits of outsourcing. It is how Obama thinks.

The space program has been good to America. During the Cold War, it became a peaceful proxy for armed conflict - a way of showing which philosophy could produce the greatest scientific advances. As the Cold War cooled, space became a source of new advances. Our advances in communications and weather prediction are direct benefits of the space race. The technology that powers our computers and allows me to write this blog is an indirect benefit.

Being a space-capable country with a manned flight capability is a status symbol. It is a far more exclusive club than having nuclear weapons. By giving up our manned flight capability for decades to come, we are voluntarily giving ourselves second-class status. This will hurt us in international relations in the long-run.

The space program has always been about more than circling the earth. Obama needs to realize this.