- Editorial cartoon drawn by Ho Yi Lau
In 1969, the U.S. celebrated a milestone achievement when Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. Since then, no one has performed a feat equal in magnitude.
With NASA’s history of accomplishments dating back to the late ‘60s, many at the time may have thought that there would have been more trips made to the moon by 2010; obviously, that has not happened.
President Barack Obama announced Feb. 1 that he would seek to eliminate the Constellation project — a program created by President George W. Bush’s designed to send astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars — from the nation’s fiscal year 2011 budget.
This seems like a setback to a great deal of people that would only decrease America’s opportunity to be at the forefront of space exploration.
Termination of the program would also lead to a great deal of lost jobs. In a Washington Post article published Feb. 2, Joel Achenbach reported that 7,000 jobs would be lost in the state of Florida alone.
Interestingly enough, Obama addressed the job loss issue during his State of the Union as being a concern, and he stressed the importance of creating new ones.
These actions seem a bit contradictory to that goal, but Obama’s plans to cut the program are an attempt to save the nation money; since the Constellation project was approved, approximately $9 billion in funding has been allocated for the program’s use.
Initially, there was some criticism that the project was working with old technology, slowing it down and creating more expenses.
Under Obama’s plan, however, money would be spent on new technology to create shortcuts, and would not require as much funding.
Although Obama would be placing a limit on spending toward space exploration instead of completely cutting it off, NASA would still be forced to rely on private companies to fund various aspects of its program.
It is a shame that the nation is being set back in the advancement of space exploration. Just as the U.S. was able to put the first man on the moon, many would also like to see the country make first claims to other accomplishments of that extent.
But with the economy suffering the way it has been, certain sacrifices need to be made for the good of the nation.
They may unfortunately affect a great deal of people, but not doing anything would make us all sacrifice much more in the end.
Karen Ramirez is a psychology junior and may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com
You know… the same statements were made back in the early 60′s when JFK made the declaration to go to the moon. The economy was not in good shape and critics, like you, made the same arguments.
There will always be national issues (Health care, jobs, etc.), there has never been a time when the nation was “ready” for exploration. Imagine the consequences if pioneers such as Columbus, and Luis and Clark were not able to accomplish feats due to lack of funding? The times weren’t any easier then, and they aren’t now. It takes vision to see past the current issues and look toward future possibilities.
By the way, if your argument is money. Obama’s plan for NASA includes an increase of 6 billion over the next 5 years (On top of the already planned budget). This plan doesn’t save the country any money.
I agree that Constellation was a poorly conceived and implemented project with significant cost overruns, but it is an exaggeration to say that terminating the program without establishing a replacement is fiscally necessary. In fact, NASA’s overall budget is set to increase this year, so it’s hard to say that this is about saving money. Almost no expert believes that private industry will be capable of orbital launch of human spacecraft before 2017, and it still would be far short of NASA’s capabilities under the shuttle program.
There is no getting around the fact that the current plan will result in thousands of job losses, but perhaps more importantly, a loss of technical expertise that will be hard to recover. Some of this brain power will go over to the European Space Agency, or to Russia and perhaps even China. The economic fallout of these losses needs to be weighed against the dubious budgetary gains of scrapping Constellation without a realistic alternative.
I hope that the administration’s claims that they are redirecting efforts to new technologies in human spaceflight is more than political cover. Constellation was not simply a rehash of earlier systems, and if NASA is focusing on even more novel designs for eventual missions to the Moon or Mars, it would help if they made that an explicit goal. After all, NASA is a highly mission-driven organization, which allocates its resources according to well-defined goals and timelines. Vague promises and hopes that private industry will eventually come to the rescue doesn’t sound like much of a plan.
Should we rush headlong, with reckless abandon, sacrificing all other science and technology research, just to do one thing – get to the moon (something we’ve already done) with old technology? Or should we take a step back to prepare for a large leap, to strengthen funding to science research and technology development across a variety of fields? After all, when human space exploration has cost overruns, it tends to be science and research that gets gutted with the excuse that “it’s not consistent with the nation’s space goals”. Perhaps it’s time that science research and technology development be allowed to be national goals again, even if some might see it as a “set back”. P.S. I still think we can get back to the Moon and even Mars eventually, but maybe in a smarter way.
At least do a little bit more research when writing this article. A lot of the Constellation construction has already been contracted, for multi-year contracts. Stopping them in the middle is likely to be really costly and protracted, probably upwards of the money saved by cutting the program.