It’s an argument we have all heard many times: why should we spend money on space when we can spend it on X (where X is education, health care, medical research, etc.) That’s an issue that Eric Hedman tackles in this week’s issue of The Space Review, looking at the struggles for funding NASA versus other agencies, and the battle for funding within NASA itself. Perhaps the best piece of advice is the following passage:
Proponents of space exploration need to continuously improve the ability to communicate their ideas and explain why we need NASA to have a clear mission and a sufficient budget to carry it out. We need to be able to explain the benefits in ways that people who do not regularly follow what the space program is doing will understand. We need to be able to explain to lawmakers what the benefits are not only to specific congressional districts but also to the country and the human race as a whole. We also need to be able to sell it without overselling individual points and losing credibility.
While Hedman is talking about NASA specifically, his arguments also apply to state-level space efforts. This is something backers of a New Mexico spaceport may want keep in mind, particularly given an editorial in Sunday’s Albuquerque Tribune, where managing editor Kate Nelson lays into the spaceport plan with all the subtlety of a chainsaw. “I know, I know, we have this gaping hole in our Medicaid program,” she writes at one point. “And, sure, our schools are some of the worst in the nation,” she adds elsewhere. Sound familiar?
I find it instructive that nobody has responded to “making the case for space funding” while the arguably academic “prehistory of the VSE” has generated considerable heat. I think that summarizes much of what is wrong with our “movement.”
Aerospace companies advertise the VSE in AvWeek and Space News, we write for each other in a number of space publications including Jeff’s, and (although I write the occasional Op Ed piece for a newspaper and I often write for popular astronomy publications) I too am guilty of preaching to the already converted. The Religious Right, much as I personally despise their goals, have shown us how to make a single issue that is not necessarily subscribed to by the nation at large into a political force to be reconed with. That is, organize around a small set of consistent messages and keep voicing them to the wider public for thirty years, with a minimum of self-destructive civil warfare. We’ve been voicing our message for longer than that, but only to each other.
I once conducted an interview with John Pike, who I often disagree with, but he made a key point that I think is valid to this date: “He said, ‘You have this very small minority of people who have had this personal “revelation” that [human] spaceflight is important and means something. They have to trick the other ninety-five percent of taxpayers into paying for their own private, religious obsession.’ Does Mr. Pike share this ‘religion’? He laughed, and said, “Yes! My first conscious memory was when I was four years old and went out into the back yard and saw Sputnik-1.'” The lesson here is that Mr. Pike and I do not have to agree about very much, even regarding spaceflight, to share a common “religion” and overarching goal.
Many frontiers have been colonized by religious movements, not least some of our own. People motivated by religion are often willing to endure great hardship for no apparent material gain. Using the broadest definition of “religion” (according to my desk OED “a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion”), how do we make our movement into the Solar System into the type of “religious” movement that does not need a reason beyond our belief in it, and can movivate people for centuries?
— Donald
“Many frontiers have been colonized by religious movements, not least some of our own. People motivated by religion are often willing to endure great hardship for no apparent material gain. Using the broadest definition of “religion” (according to my desk OED “a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion”), how do we make our movement into the Solar System into the type of “religious” movement that does not need a reason beyond our belief in it, and can movivate people for centuries?”
Well, first you’d have to enable people to actually get to that new “frontier” – which, right now, is about as accessible as the American West was to 2nd century Christians living in Jerusalem. That is, it is not.
The VSE is just another feeble attempt at trying to keep the industrial base funded, NASA centers operational, and various special interests happy. The average American doesn’t give a hoot, and over the next decade will have many more pressing interests/issues at home to deal with – mundane little things like feeding their families, dealing with retirement, the perpetual war on (insert noun here), etc.
After 2008, when a new President is installed in the White House, VSE will drop off the agenda and we’ll move on to yet another “vision” that won’t lead anywhere.
JMHO, of course.
Senator McCain has been supportive of VSE. There is no reason to believe future President McCain will be less so.
“There is no reason to believe future President McCain will be less so.”
i suppose not. but since i don’t live in fantasyland, i don’t have to consider that option.
Well, if you are assuming President Hillary, you are far beyond the outer bounds of fantasyland and well on the trail of Timothy Leary.
“Well, if you are assuming President Hillary, you are far beyond the outer bounds of fantasyland and well on the trail of Timothy Leary.”
And what ever made you think I presumed that witch could be elected president? Don’t try to make your fantasy justifiable by pinning an equally ludicrous one on me.
So much for a united front advocating human expansion into the Solar System. . . . It’s enough to make one cry.
— Donald
Well Subber, the odds you are going to get one of the two is considerably greater than 50% so I think it is quite beyond the level of fantasy. I am no big McCain fan but I feel it is proabale that he will be the next Presient barring a major health problem.
It’s funny, but my ‘fantasy’ predictions have held true in every election since 1980 when I made my first one. Mabey I will get this one wrong.
Actually, although I frequently disagree with him, this liberal is something of a McCain fan. I like his willingness to stand up to anyone and everyone for a principle _he_ agrees with, rather than any party line, and, as far as I can tell, he seems to be one of the few truly honest politicians out there.
Anybody got any ideas about what he really thinks about spaceflight?
— Donald