NASA

Aeronautics vs. exploration

An editorial in Monday’s Hampton Roads (Va.) Daily Press minces few words in its assessment of the Vision for Space Exploration:

Congress’ willingness to sink billions into a controversial and ill-defined space plan, at a time when war, homeland security and escalating domestic needs have strained the budget, is sheer fiscal irresponsibility… [G]iving O’Keefe latitude to shift money from other priorities to manned exploration is irresponsible. Spending billions on such a patently discretionary program while the deficit is soaring is irresponsible. Heaping money on a program with a stratospheric price tag, a still-fuzzy plan, and no clear payoff is irresponsible, especially while Congress is cutting domestic programs that target high-priority needs and yield real benefits, like environmental programs, financial aid for needy college students, and small-business loan subsidies.

If funding the exploration plan is, as the editorial repeatedly describes it, “irresponsible”, what should NASA be spending money on?

Congress and NASA would better serve the nation by investing in aeronautics research like that conducted at Langley Research Center. What Americans really need is not to put a few astronauts on the moon, but to get millions of people from one city to another and to deal with the congestion choking airports… Yet NASA cut aeronautics funding in half between 1998 and 2003 and wants to cut still more.

Needless to say, NASA Langley is located in the Hampton Roads area. If that editorial didn’t make it clear enough, an accompanying editorial criticizes NASA’s full-cost accounting measures that have increased the fees charged to uses of wind tunnel facilities at Langley, hurting the US aerospace industry while European rivals take advantage of similar, subsidized facilities. While it seems like a minor point, the editorial argues, “it is linked to larger and complex issues involving NASA’s priorities, management and commitment to space and aeronautics missions that make sense to the nation.”

9 comments to Aeronautics vs. exploration

  • Kevin Davis

    Let me see here.. An increase in NASA is bad, but spending money on failed social programs is good.. Go figure..

  • Kevin Davis

    Let me see here.. An increase in NASA is bad, but spending money on failed social programs is good.. Go figure..

  • Watch out when you roll out the X vs. butter trump card. There are no people clamouring for faster airport service. They are clamouring for subsidized medical care. Watch out how far you go down the road when you NASA bash.

  • While I deplore the NSF cut, these quotes reveal an interesting ignorance of the history of science. Exploration _is_ science — remember, among countless other examples, Darwin and the Beagle? In fact, I would argue that there is no purer form of science.

    Physical exploration and observation are close to synonomous, and observation is _the_ key to good science.

    — Donald

  • Toro

    A good “exploration” start would be simply to “explore” ways of getting los personas to and from Earth orbit … at some peso fraction of both the current dollar cost and deficit spending style (unacceptably high) fatality rates. No cargo or food service needed. That brave “exploration” could then be applied later to personas entering & leaving Mars… seems among the most obvious dangerous future task. Its obvious where the “clear and present” and future dangers are. And what’s the rush? The rush is an Apollo era tequila sunrise hangover. Do some crash dummy testing instead of one or two Enterprise drops and pretending all is perfect.

  • mrearl

    This editorial is exactly what a good “home town” newspaper should be writing to protect the home team but it is hardly unbiased, hence it’s inclusion in the editorial page.
    What we are talking about here is a new direction or vision given to NASA, something that it hasn’t had since July 24th, 1969. This new direction is MANNED and unmanned exploration of solar system. This vision was left intentionally vague to allow for flexibility.
    As far as this spending increase being irresponsible in light of a large budget deficit, that’s just so much hot air. NASA’s increase is infametesimal compared to the full federal budget or even the deficit. NASA’s entire budget can be written off as miscellaneous in the defense budget, or fraud in the welfare budget. If every agency included in the budget bill that included NASA was eliminated, all $300 billion bucks worth, there would still be a deficit of over $100 billion bucks!

  • Part of the reason there’s such a deficit in the first place is lack of investment in science and technology.

  • Leonard C Robinson

    Part of the problem in discussing “Aeronautics v. Exploration is the reference from which we discuss the problem. As long as the Federal Government is involved in the issue, we will have the annual whines by the adherents of social programs v. NASA spending. Whittington mentioned the contest in his fiction, while Clarke laid it waste in his comments in the Time/Life “Beyond Apollo.” What we need to do is to get the Feds out of the picture, unless other National Governments get into the picture (examples are the PRC & the Republic of India).

  • Leonard,

    The aerospace sector is unwilling or unable to invest in R&D at an internationally competitive scale. Without the Feds filling the shortfall who’s left? Can we change the companies? If so, how?

    The Europeans would argue that NASA is in effect a subsidy to the US aerospace industry in order to justify their subsidies, and the argument is used in reverse too. But if NASA is supposed to be a shot in the arm for US aerospace, then we’re not well-served by it.

    Here’s a suggestion: Take NASA’s aeronautics budget and use it to subsidize (tax breaks etc.) the formation of corporate R&D centers, analogous to Bell Labs or IBM research labs but for the aerospace sector. There will probably always be unfair subsidies to overseas competitors, so we will always have to match that monetarily. But at least let’s maximize the bang for our buck and put the research back into the aerospace companies rather than a Federal bureaucracy whose present benefit is debateable.