Posted on 01/12/2004 11:14:49 PM PST by anymouse
Two of the most common words used to describe the US presidential election process are “marathon” and “circus”. Marathon because of the extended nature of the election process: the first party primaries and caucuses are this month, although the general election is not until November. Moreover, most of the candidates announce their intention to run many months—sometimes years—before the first primaries and causes, and those announcements are preceded by longer periods of exploratory committees and other preparatory work. Circus comes from the byzantine and sometimes bizarre election process, one that gives undue weight to voters in small states like Iowa and New Hampshire that are home to the early stages of the election process. (Growing up in Iowa, I can recall being bombarded with TV ads and candidate visits in the months leading up to the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses—the image of Jesse Jackson speaking in my high school’s cafeteria is burned in my mind—only to be ignored for the remainder of the election.)
This type of campaign creates a preference for simple hot-button issues that can be easily summarized in a sound bite or two: the economy, Iraq, homeland security, healthcare, and the like. Lesser issues, like space policy, will receive little notice now or at any other stage of the election process. This lack of attention is understandable: few voters will base their decision primarily or even secondarily on a candidate’s stand on space policy. Moreover, there are often only minor differences in the opinions of candidates on space policy, even across party lines.
Regardless, though, some people are curious about where the candidates stand on key space issues. Because most candidates have issued few statements on space issues, The Space Review contacted the campaigns of the nine major Democratic candidates—Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman, Carol Moseley-Braun, and Al Sharpton—to directly solicit their opinions. In early December we sent a letter to each campaign, asking them these four questions:
1. Have you been satisfied with NASA’s response to the Columbia accident and resulting investigation? If president, would you make any major changes to the shuttle or International Space Station programs?
2. NASA’s current budget is about $15 billion a year. Do you believe this funding is adequate? If not, how much more (or less) money should NASA receive?
3. There has been considerable discussion about the need for a new “vision” for the space program, one that could include resuming human missions to the Moon or a manned expedition to Mars. What vision do you have for NASA and space exploration in general?
4. Are there any other major space policy initiatives—civil, military, or commercial—that you foresee your administration pursuing?
We followed up this letter at the beginning of last week with an email message with the same question to the campaigns. The results, while disappointing, were not entirely unexpected: only the Kucinich campaign responded to the original letter, and only the Kerry campaign replied to the followup email. We’ve tried to fill in the gaps by looking at statements that the candidates have made in the press, often in passing, on space issues. In the last several days a number of candidates who did not respond to our survey did make statements in response to reports that President Bush will announce a bold new space initiative—likely including human missions to the Moon and perhaps Mars—this coming Wednesday. Dean: on to Mars… maybe
Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, has emerged in the last several months as one of, if not the, frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, thanks to a grassroots effort that propelled from relative obscurity compared to other, more established candidates. As a governor of a small state, Dean has no track record on major national issues, like defense, let alone smaller issues like space exploration. Dean’s campaign has also not issued any official policy papers or other statements on space issues.
Dean, though, has made a few statements that suggest that he might be interested in a human mission to Mars. In a November 6 online chat organized by the Washington Post and Concord Monitor, Dean was asked if it was time to retire the shuttle and instead pursue human missions to the Moon or Mars. His response:
I am a strong supporter of NASA and every government program that furthers scientific research. I don’t think we should close the shuttle program but I do believe that we should aggressively begin a program to have manned flights to Mars. This of course assumes that we can change Presidents so we can have a balanced budget again.
The Scientists for Dean weblog, an unofficial campaign forum for Dean supporters with an interest in science issues, points to a Birmingham News article that notes that Dean, while visiting Alabama in September, said he was a “strong supporter” of NASA, calling it an agency that “explores the very boundaries of who human beings are.”
Some people have seized on Dean’s apparent interest in a human Mars mission as a potential weakness. In a column published in The Space Review last week, Taylor Dinerman argued that a human mission to Mars would be very expensive—perhaps $250 billion over 10 years—and thus would not only be difficult to afford, but opened the door to other Democratic candidates to propose alternative plans that could be sizable but still less expensive. This column was criticized in some online forums, including the Scientists for Dean weblog, by people who believe that a human Mars mission would be far less expensive. While indeed some, like Zubrin, have proposed missions that could cost “only” $20-50 billion, NASA does not have a strong track record of conducting major human spaceflight programs under budget.
Interestingly, some Democratic candidates have criticized the rumored new space program Bush plans to announce this week by claiming it is too expensive—some have thrown around numbers as large as $1 trillion for the total cost of the project, although they provide no justification for that figure. Dean is among those criticizing the cost of the rumored venture, according to Reuters, although without mentioning a specific price tag. “I’m very much in favor of space exploration,” Dean told Reuters. “Where is the tax increase to pay for it? We already have a half-a-trillion-dollar deficit. It is not worth bankrupting the country if that’s what’s going to happen.”
Clark’s 20-year vision
Retired US Army general Wesley Clark is a relative latecomer to the campaign: he did not officially declare until the early fall, long after the other candidates had started their campaigns. Clark, though, after a rough start has emerged as one of the frontrunners, running close behind Dean in a nationwide poll last week and gaining ground against Dean in New Hampshire. Clark also has no political experience on a national or even local level, so his viewpoints on many issues are not clear.
Clark shed a little light on his opinions during an address in New Hampshire on Saturday where he laid out his “20-year vision” for America. In that speech he said he was inspired as a youth by science fiction books that included “space flight that was an everyday occurrence, and journeys to far-away planets.” Clark then offered where space fit into his vision:
We’ll move beyond the Space Shuttle and a few unmanned missions within the Solar System with more substantial efforts to help humanity explore the frontiers of space. We’ll do it with real programs designed to most efficiently and effectively generate the science skills and technology we need to meet what I believe will be our destiny.
Clark then hinted that those plans could include human missions to Mars:
Imagine if in the next twenty years, we actually sent humans - not just rover robots—to Mars—which we can do if it truly advances our ambitions. Astrobiologists today believe we will, and as a result, we’ll have a better understanding of our own planet and our own people.
Clark hasn’t offered any specific proposals or price tags, and has remained quiet to date on Bush’s rumored new policy. A few pro-space Clark supporters have created their own weblog where they are discussing what role Clark should play in space policy issues, but it’s not clear what influence, if any, they have on the campaign. Kerry’s bland support
John Kerry, a US senator from Massachusetts, was once considered a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. However, his star has faded in the last several months, primarily at the expense of Dean. Kerry is now running well behind Dean and some other candidates in both Iowa and New Hampshire, and could be forced to pull out if he does poorly in those two early races.
Kerry’s campaign did respond to our email query last week, the only campaign to do so. However, rather than answer the questions, the campaign provided a copy of a statement that Kerry entered into the Congressional Record shortly after the Columbia accident last year. In the statement Kerry states his support for the shuttle program and space exploration in general, but provides no specifics:
We must continue the exploration of space. I have always supported the space program because I believe it is in the best interests of mankind to unlock the mysteries of life on earth and beyond. The shuttle missions have helped us understand global warming, weather patterns, and the effects of weightlessness on the human body, aided in the understanding of disease, and exponentially increased our understanding of the universe. It would be impossible to quantify the knowledge we have gained from sending men and women into space.
Space flight brings out the best in us. It challenges us to think big, to strive for greatness, and to work together to achieve the most important goals. There is no doubt in my mind that we should continue these missions and prepare the next generation of astronauts for the challenges that lay ahead.
Gephardt’s caution
Congressman Dick Gephardt of Missouri, a former House minority leader, was among the first Democratic candidates to comment on the new space policy the president is expected to announce this week. Speaking Friday in New Hampshire, Gephardt said that he was supportive of space exploration in general, but had other projects, notably alternative energy research, he would rather spend large sums of money on. “I have nothing against NASA programs. I’ve been a supporter of them because I think you need that vision out there, especially for young people,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “But you can’t shortchange the research that we need for things that need to happen here on Earth. That’s why energy research is so vital.”
Gephardt expanded on those comments on the CBS program Face the Nation Sunday morning, wondering if it was a wise idea to pursue a new space initiative while the International Space Station remains incomplete:
I think that before we make that decision, we’ve really got to decide what we’re doing with the present space program, which is revolving around the space station. I think we need to do a—a real analysis by our scientific community on what the best thing is to do. I don’t think—I haven’t looked at the numbers lately, but I don’t know that we can go off on a new moon mission or Mars mission, if that's the suggestion, and—and just have the money to do something in addition to completing the space station. I think we’re pretty far down the road on the space station and we need to complete it and have the success from it that we need. One of the good aspects of the space station is that we get to work with the Russians, and we give them an important role, and other countries in the world. I think that’s very important. And maybe down the road we can look into—into other projects.
Lieberman and Edwards
Senators John Edwards and Joe Lieberman, of North Carolina and Connecticut, respectively, have fallen from the top tier of candidates but remain in the race, looking for a better-than-expected performance in the early states to revive their campaigns. Lieberman, who had been silent on space issues prior to the reports of Bush’s announcement, spoke out against a potentially expensive new initiative. Bush, Lieberman said in Saturday’s Baltimore Sun, “must be from another planet if he thinks that, with his fiscal priorities, we can get there [Mars] and at the same time make America stronger… We should find a way to go to Mars—but not at the exclusion of improving health care, shoring up Social Security, creating jobs and strengthening homeland security here at home.”
Lieberman elaborated on those views on the CNN program Late Edition on Sunday. When asked if sending humans to the Moon or Mars was worth the money, he said:
You know, I have very mixed feelings about it, but I’ll make clear where I end up. Remember, I was attracted into politics by President Kennedy, so the moonshot program thrilled me, and I’ve always supported the space program. But if you ask me whether the best use of $1 trillion of American taxpayer money in the coming years is to land a mission on Mars or the moon, I’d say no. We need it right here on Earth to give health care that’s affordable to everybody, to improve our education system, and do better on veterans’ benefits and homeland security.
Lieberman went on to describe a plan he had to develop “an American center for cures” that would seek cures to cancer, diabetes, and other diseases. “[F]rankly,” he concluded, “I think that’s more important to the American people than that kind of space voyage at this point in our history.”
Edwards, on the other hand, had remained silent on both the proposed new space policy and space in general. A review of releases on his Senate web site turns up virtually nothing, other than a June 2002 release where he announces he has arranged for a North Carolina State University graduate student to receive a $24,000 grant from NASA to “design a commercial space hotel”. The language of the release showed that the senator or his staff seemed a little unfamiliar with the topic, referring at one point to a “NASA space hotel”. Bringing up the rear
The final thee candidates—Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, and the Rev. Al Sharpton—are near the bottom of virtually all polls and have no chance of winning the nomination. But while Moseley-Braun and Sharpton have remained quiet on space issues, Kucinich has been more active. He has introduced legislation in recent years to ban the use or stationing of weapons in space (known as HR 3657, the Space Preservation Act of 2003, in the current Congress), and is a cosponsor of Rep. Nick Lampson’s Space Exploration Act of 2003 (HR 3057), which sets ambitious goals for human missions to the Moon and Mars.
Kucinich was the only candidate to answer our original query to the campaigns last month, providing fairly detailed answers to each question. “I believe that abandoning manned space exploration would be an enormous mistake,” he wrote in response to the question about the shuttle and station. “The Columbia tragedy underscores a need for the development of safer space vehicles. Of particular interest to a Kucinich administration will be developing designs for spacecraft that take off and land like airplanes. Revitalizing the U.S. space fleet will be an important step in the United States regaining the edge in the broader field of space-based technologies.”
Kucinich also supports a sharp increase in the size of NASA’s budget and new initiatives to bolster the agency’s workforce:
The current budget for NASA is far from adequate. It is only due to a lack of funding that our shuttle fleet is based on 30-year old technology. Although the shuttle program requires $4 billion a year to operate, NASA has been forced to operate under shuttle budget of only $3 billion a year. I strongly believe that one of the best investments we could make for the future of America would be to triple the budget for NASA.
Increasing the funding to NASA would be an empty gesture if we fail to invest in the human capital of the aerospace industry. Only six of every hundred American engineering students are training to pursue careers in aerospace. This must change if we hope to restore our prominence in space technology… Initiatives such as designing new spacecraft, new propulsion systems, and planning international missions into space will help to renew national interest in NASA.
However, while Kucinich has expressed his support for a bigger, stronger, NASA, he does not endorse the expected new space initiative Bush is set to announce. Speaking at a debate in Washington, DC, on Friday, Kucinich said he was a “strong supporter” of NASA, but opposed the Bush plan. “Maybe what they’re getting ready for is a war on Mars,” he quipped. “We have to keep an eye on them since they’re into unilateral [action] and preemption.”
Even with the new presidential space initiative, space will continue to be a niche issue in the 2004 campaign: it will simply be too small in the grander scheme of affairs to matter to more than a small fraction of the American public. We can expect to see some more comment on the topic, particularly once the President formally announces his plan and offers some specifics as well as a price tag. We will revisit this topic later in the election cycle to see what additional insight the remaining candidates offer the electorate.
None of them have an understanding of outer space. They don't know where it is. They probably know how little is being spent on NASA, but of course they might also claim that $trillions could be wasted that way.
Pres Bush's campaign said that he would look into private property rights in outer space. There are a handful of people on earth that know what the implications of such a thing might be, so it is under the political radar. Other countries have no idea of private property at all, so it won't come up at the UN.
So increase NASA's budget a small amount, replace the space shuttle, retire the ISS when it was going to be retired anyway, and see about keeping a couple of scientists alive on the moon for a couple weeks maybe a decade from now. Oh, and some extended flights that might culminate with a flight past Mars that takes a couple years and doesn't land.
All in line with the Chinese schedule and the Euro schedule, neither of which would be considered ambitious on American terms. No, this new goal isn't ambitious, but it's way ahead of the past 30 years.
Who cares? Whoever the nominee is is going to lose in a landslide.
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