Candidates’ outer-space interests take a turn towards the substantive

November 23, 2007

Lately, presidential candidates have been fielding some odd questions when it comes to space — space travel, space invaders, space conspiracies, etc. Bill Richardson talked recently about his intention, if elected, to open the classified files on the weather-balloon incident in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Rudy Giuliani was asked a town-hall meeting whether he believes the United States is prepared, just in case, for an intergalactic attack. Dennis Kucinich, of course, recently conceded during a debate that he believes he saw a UFO.

Thankfully, this week, the space discussion took a turn towards the serious.

The major presidential candidates pummel each other daily on issues ranging from the Iraq war to health care. But when it comes to President Bush’s ambitious initiative to send humans back to the moon and on to Mars, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is all but alone in staking out a formal position — and it’s one that lends support to key aspects of the president’s effort.

She initially outlined the need for a “robust” human spaceflight program last month during a Washington speech on science policy, despite being broadly critical of the Bush administration’s record on scientific issues.

The question of future manned space exploration took on greater prominence this week when Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made clear that he is not enamored with NASA’s effort to build a new spacecraft to take astronauts to the moon and beyond.

In a position paper on education unveiled in New Hampshire, Clinton’s rival advocated delaying for five years the program to build the new multibillion-dollar Constellation spacecraft and using the savings to fund a variety of education initiatives.

Asked for a response, Clinton spokesman Isaac Baker said, “Senator Clinton does not support delaying the Constellation program and intends to maintain American leadership in space exploration.”

Candidly, I should admit that I know very little about the Constellation program, and just how much it costs. Having said that, I’m fairly encouraged that leading candidates would explore a policy difference about investing quite a bit of money in a space-exploration initiative.

Bush may have gotten the ball rolling in 2005 with a plan for a new generation of spacecraft that can fly to the moon and perhaps to Mars, but most Republican presidential candidates seem to be leaning in Obama’s direction.

When asked about their candidates’ positions on the moon-Mars project, a spokeswoman for Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) did not respond, while one for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said, “I’m not sure anything is out there on this subject.”

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s campaign responded by providing an article from the Florida Today newspaper that said: “During the first campaign visit to the Space Coast by a 2008 presidential candidate, Republican Mitt Romney said he supports Bush’s vision for space exploration and has no reason yet to propose a new direction.”

It’s a pretty interesting subject; perhaps reporters can dig in a little more on this. After all, the clock is ticking — as the WaPo noted, “[A]fter NASA’s three space shuttles are retired in late 2010, the United States will have no spacecraft capable of launching astronauts into orbit.”

While Rapture is not an exit strategy, Mars maybe, .

  • Manned space flight has a nice gee-wiz factor, but these days I just don’t see what we are gaining from it. The money we are spending on it would be better spent on unmanned exploration (the Mars Rovers have been a wild success, for instance), remote earth monitoring, energy research, or just not spent until the budget situation is under control.

  • I’d be much more interested in knowing the candidates positions on the little discussed policy of the US maintaining military superiority in space.

  • She initially outlined the need for a “robust” human spaceflight program last month during a Washington speech on science policy, despite being broadly critical of the Bush administration’s record on scientific issues.

    I don’t know what one thing has to do with the other.

    George Bush made a speech about going to the Moon, then did nothing. (The fact that he called it a plan to go to Mars tells you how serious he was).

    Since then he’s eviscerated NASA’s science program and even attempted to kill the Hubble telescope. He’ll undoubtedly take credit whenever America decides to move forward again, but he’s still terrible on scientific issues.

    And lets be serious about how much it costs. It’s a tiny fraction of what we’ve already committed to the Iraq war. Scrapping the Constellation Initiative isn’t going to change the world. But funding it might.

  • Unmanned exploration is the answer. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that you can do ten times the science at one-tenth the cost, unmanned vs. manned, and that’s what the space program should be about.

    Conventional wisdom is that the public won’t support a space program that doesn’t consist mainly of entertaining manned stunts in space, but I think that’s bogus. I think the current space program helps satisfy the voracious appetite of the military/industrial complex. That’s what the manned program is about in large measure.

    Every pointless shuttle flight is another telescope not built, an unmanned probe not sent to promising areas in the solar system, where there’s still a chance of finding life, like Europa, or a canceled project for finding earthlike planets beyond.

  • Good for Obama – the Constellation project probably has as much to do with going to the moon and Mars as Missile Defense has to do with missile defense and the war in Iraq has to do with terrorist interdiction.The size and scope of such programs/projects/crusades are massive M/I Complex Welfare.

    In the 2000 election cycle Lockheed Martin/Northrup Grummond/Halliburton et al supported Bush and the Rs to to the tune of millions in contributions. Pay back? Hundreds of billions in no bid contracts. Like a 1000% ROI.

    I do not know if Clinton is a M/I Complex insider – I sure would like to though.

  • Is space exploration an either/or situation? Do we have to chose unmanned or manned and not both?

    While I know it is reasonable and responsible to funnel the money into education, I think that overlooks one of our core traits as a species – curiosity. Curiosity makes our vistas bigger. Without curiosity we all become Republicans.

    This is one of the first issues where I agree with Hillary totally. I want to find out how human bodies respond, how humans respond to space. I want to see a settlement on Mars in my life time. If we can channel some of our aggression into exploration, our planet will be a better place.

  • I would prefer the government use the space program funding to deal with Mother Earth’s global warming problems first. This issue should take prominence over the space program until we get a grip on it.

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  • I tend to agree with #s 2 and 5. That is, if I were to agree that space exploration is any sort of priority at all.

    Number 8: “Curiosity makes our vistas bigger. Without curiosity we all become Republicans.” Now, just why is it necessary for our vistas to become bigger? I don’t even know much about my own back yard and couldn’t begin to in a life time of serious micro-exploration. But I’m pretty sure that my backyard will die without proper attention on my part. It will not get that if I pump my energies and resources into outter-space exploration. And my backyard is really not where the problem lies.

    All of the Tang in the world is not worth the life of one starving child here or elsewhere. Solving that problem is where my vistas should become bigger.

  • To me it’s a specious argument that we should funnel every penny into combatting poverty, death and ignorance and not allot money to space exploration. It’s like saying all education money should go into teaching math and science and improving test scores, that money for the arts is a waste. Imagination, creativity, exploration – those feed our dreams. Dreams keep us growing and developing. Dreams are not luxuries.

  • I don’t even know much about my own back yard … But I’m pretty sure that my backyard will die without proper attention on my part.

    Does that statement even make sense?

    All of the Tang in the world is not worth the life of one starving child here or elsewhere.

    Where did this fantasy that the space program is stealing from starving children come from? You know what you’d get if you canceled the entire space program? You get another 2 weeks of Iraq war funding. No cures for cancer, no end to famine in Africa, no end to poverty. We wouldn’t suddenly become greater philanthropists. We’d simply spend more on the things we already spend money on.

    And as for solving our climate problems by canceling the space program, we wouldn’t understand half of the effects of global warming if it hadn’t been for the planetary missions to Venus and Mars, not to mention all the data we get routinely from Earth orbiting satellites. Without the space program, we’d still be arguing about whether there was really a global problem at all.

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  • (I had a nice long post that specifically addressed people, but my computer locked up before I clicked the submit button – thus, I only have this shorter post).

    For everyone who is saying we don’t gain anything from manned spaceflight, or that we need to solve the worlds problems first – if you bothered looking at space, you’d realize that space can help us deal with the worlds problems. To solve a lot of the major problems here on earth, we’ll need more resources than the earth can provide. And I don’t just mean something like mineral resources (althought they are there). Space offers increadible amounts of energy, that is clean, and is large scale, so we can provide enough energy for everyone (using Space based solar power). The economic impact of space in the next few years will be stagering – things like zero-g manufacturing, and point-to-point transport will have a transformative effect on the economy, on a scale that will rival the internet. Above all, Space will give us a greater perspective, so we can deal with the worlds problems (as discussed in The overview effect).

    But if we end manned spaceflight, we won’t be in a position to take advantage of all those possible benefits. Space isn’t just about science, or even primarily about science – its about helping to save the earth. And any one who wants to be president needs to be aware of these resources, because spaceflight will change drastically sometime next decade, and if we are well positioned, we can take advantage of it.

  • The lack of a coherent strategy for space exploration among the presidential candidates is frankly disturbing. Obama’s approach is an absolute disgrace and practically advocates a permanent retreat from manned US spaceflight for the next ten years; all this while other nations, China, India and Europe are beginning an aggressive focus, both military and scientific on Earth’s nearest neighbour – the Moon. I’m from Britain ( I won’t call it Great Britain) because it’s truly not any longer, and I’ve witnessed what this kind of wishy washy ambiguity laden political cowardice can do to a country. Britain has retreated completely from manned spaceflight; every week our papers are full of stories of science departments closing within colleges. Children are simply not inspired to pursue science because there is no where to go with a science education – our economy has turned from away from being one of high industrial merit, to focus almost exclusively on the vulnerable financial service sector. Tragically the US now seems to be following the UK’s example in viewing manned spaceflight as some kind of exotic and frivolous waste of money. So now the US stands at a crossroads. Without a manned US presence on the Moon, the US will hand over control of the entire Earth-Moon system to foreign powers. A Chinese presence on the Moon without a US counter base would leave the entire US satellite based ground and air war fighting system vulnerable to space borne attack. Remember Pearl Harbour? How about a thousand orbital kinetic weapons platforms targeting every US city? Sound like fun? My point is that other nations will not stand idly by while US astronauts are denied access to space through the ineptitude and short sightedness of men like Obama. China and other nations will colonise the Moon and then set the rules by which the US is permitted to visit this territory! Come on people, the US won’t have a future if it doesn’t have a manned space program. It’s all well and good talking about health care and education, but how’s any of that going to seem when you are denied access to telecommunications because Beijing has imposed sanctions upon you from orbit! It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee America – your leadership is in danger because your presidential candidates are populists who pander to ignorance and the flat earth mentality. Fund NASA! Fund Project Constellation! Lobby for NASA’s budget to be increased to 1% of the Federal total. Don’t burn your ships America!

  • Hi Scott,
    I really enjoyed ‘Did You Know?’ and had no trouble with the global-alarmism. I’m concerned that you feel the need to downplay the global-alarmism and to make the presentation attractive. As an educator and administrator, I feel that far too often we sacrifice reality for a dose of whatever feels good, whatever makes everyone happy, or whatever looks visually appealing. Your initial project was on target. Why water it down…and for whom…and to what end? Hopefully you’re not ashamed of the good work you did, or that you’re feeling politically compelled to “make others happy” as we educators so often do.

    “Karl and I are working with XPLANE to update the Did You Know? video because it seems to resonate with folks. We’re going to update some of the facts, reframe some of the slides, turn down some of the global alarmism, and turn up the visual attractiveness several notches.”

    What will be served by turning down some of the global alarmism? What will be served by making it visually appealing?

    Look at the excerpt below from a recent CNN article:
    “I’m not alone in the view that free-trade-at-all-costs has harmed American workers. Princeton University economist and former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman Alan S. Blinder has joined Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson and Joseph Stiglitz and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as skeptics of the benefits the faith-based economists in this administration love to tout.

    Blinder is now stating loudly that a new industrial revolution will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decade or two. Blinder has said, “Economists who insist that ‘offshore outsourcing’ is just a routine extension of international trade are overlooking how major a transformation it will likely bring — and how significant the consequences could be. The governments and societies of the developed world must start preparing, and fast.”

    Scott, while this information itself may turn out to be totally inaccurate (who knows?), I don’t think educators need to be sugar coating the impact of globalism. Not trying to sound rude here, but simply saying that we need to face the music rather than burying our heads in the sand. The potential of loosing 40 million jobs in a decade or two is nothing that needs to be “turned down” or made “visually appealing.”

    Outsourcing is already happening rather quickly. It’s even happening within the field of education as students can now be tutored from abroad. This is nothing new:

    I could continue giving example after example, but will stop here. Believe in what you say, “We need action on multiple fronts: schools, universities, policymakers, business people, local communities. But we can’t start moving without having some important conversations. So with that in mind…”

    So with that in mind, important conversations can NOT happen unless educators begin dealing with reality – not appealing words and pretty pictures.

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  • Obama’s “uninspired” opinion of space exploration shows his lack of vision. Take the money from withdrawing from the Iraq war and invest it in the education, infrastructure, and development of space exploration. If Clinton can do this, she’ll make America stronger by reaping the technology benefits of space discoveries.

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