THE beauty of juggling in space is that nothing ever falls or breaks. Not so back on Earth, where NASA has demonstrated it can only keep two out of three balls in the air at the same time. Faced with the competing demands of fulfilling commitments to the International Space Station (ISS), developing a new vehicle for human space flight and maintaining a robust science programme, NASA鈥檚 chief administrator Michael Griffin has chosen to drop science 鈥� something he pledged never to do.
This is bad news and Griffin knows it. It means that several science missions are on indefinite hold, including a space telescope to look for Earth-like planets, a probe to Jupiter鈥檚 intriguing moon, Europa, and a gravitational wave observatory (see 鈥淣ASA takes a wrong turn鈥�). Sadly, it is difficult to see a way out, except in the unlikely event of Congress agreeing an increase in NASA鈥檚 share of the federal budget, which now stands at 0.7 per cent.
To avoid cutting back on science this year, NASA would have to reduce its support for the ISS or the shuttle, or go slow on the development of the shuttle鈥檚 replacement, the crew exploration vehicle (CEV), which is the cornerstone of the Bush administration鈥檚 vision for returning astronauts to the moon. Critics of the ISS would say good riddance. It has become a floating white elephant, unable to deliver on its original promise as an orbiting lab for microgravity research. Doubts also remain over whether the space shuttle can be made reliable enough to resume regular flights.
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So why not cut the shuttle loose and move on? The answer lies in bitter experience. Between 1975 and 1981, during the hiatus in human space flight between Apollo and the space shuttle, NASA lost both expertise and national prestige. Griffin is clearly determined not to take NASA down that road again. The only way to save significant money by retiring the shuttle early would be to offload the army of engineers and contractors who work on it 鈥� and yet these are the very people Griffin says he needs for the next phase of human space flight. At the same time NASA is unable or unwilling to renege on US commitments to international partners to complete the ISS.
Perhaps, as some argue, this is all the more reason to kill off an ill-conceived and underfunded vision for human space exploration. But this misses the point. Whether or not Americans return to the moon or venture to Mars as Bush wants, NASA still needs a way to get people into space. Quite simply, human space flight is what NASA was invented for. The destinations and the rationale may change, but NASA would surely implode without it. As things stands, there will be a gap of two to four years between the shuttle鈥檚 retirement and the maiden flight of the CEV. Widening that gap would invite the very crisis Griffin is striving to avoid.
Last week, while appearing before a Senate sub-committee, Griffin took pains to point out that science is far from starving at NASA. Since 1992, its share of NASA鈥檚 budget has grown from 24 to 32 per cent. The unspoken implication is that other directorates within NASA suffered while science prospered.
Now that NASA is burdened with finding another way of sending people into space, science is paying the price. This also has a precedent. Even a casual follower of the field will notice that American space science has had two golden ages. The first is associated with names like Mariner, Viking and Voyager, the second with Hubble, Cassini and the Mars Rovers. In between was a dark age when science took a back seat to the shuttle鈥檚 teething problems. That another such period is upon us seems all but certain. Its severity will depend on whether NASA can complete the shuttle programme without further mishap, and keep the CEV on budget.
鈥淚s there any way to avoid this harsh arithmetic? Only if the US public speaks up as it did over Hubble鈥�
Is there any way to avoid this harsh arithmetic? Only if the US public speaks up as it did over Hubble. It is because of public pressure that Hubble will be fixed when the shuttles resume flying. Also, if Europe and Japan accelerate their space science programmes it is far more likely that NASA will find the political leverage to do the same. There is no time like the present for a European-led mission to Europa. It is precisely the kind of challenge that would improve the lot of space scientists everywhere.
