Later this week the Air Force Academy’s Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies will be holding its annual National Space Forum in Washington, with this year’s topic being: “Space Challenges Facing the New American Administration of 2009″. In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Mike Snead offers some suggestions for discussions during the event. There are many issues that attendees can and likely will discuss there, but Snead focuses on a core issue:
However, the real strategic issue on the table for the next administration is about the needed transformation of America into a true spacefaring nation. We are not yet at this point and our current civil and commercial programs are not bringing us closer to this goal where Americans, as spacefarers, will be able to safely and routinely access and operate in space. To change course to enable America to successful compete and win the new space race, the next American president will need to set new strategic goals for civil and commercial space.
So is everyone in agreement that America is in a new space race, one which involves the commercialization of low Earth orbit transportation and orbital infrastructure, and that the president’s VSE and Griffin’s ESAS are finshed?
I agree that this should be where the action is for human spaceflight. This is not what the Apollo wannabes want though.
SNEAD: To change course to enable America to successful compete and win the new space race, the next American president will need to set new strategic goals for civil and commercial space.
I agree that we need to set new strategic goals (more accurately, adopt the strategic goals proposed by the Aldridge Commission), but Snead does not answer the primary question that politicians will ask?
WHY do we need to win the new space race?
WHY do we need to become a “true spacefaring nation”?
WHY do we need to safely and routinely access and operate in space?
If we can’t compellingly answer the “WHY” question, then politicians will continue to ignore us.
– Anon
I guess you (and they) missed the part about the oil based economy, the national debt, the carbon dioxide and global warming, the soon to be 9 to 10 billion souls on the planet and the global mass extinction, eh?
If there ever was a time that we needed a new and improved 50th anniversary year post post Sputnik educational system in America, then by your comments, now definitely is the time. Cantcha see them commies?
Just a quick glance at the Committee for Public Works and the Environment should be enough to convince any rational soul why we have space programs.
Hillary just accepted an invitation to a presidential debate in Houston, but Barack hasn’t. Perhaps space could come up in a debate in Houston.