NASA Chief: Space Program at Historic Turning Point

Space dot com ^ | posted: 02:00 pm ET 31 March 2004 | By Leonard David

[vannrox]

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado ? The dream of interplanetary exploration is alive again, but crawling out of the gravity well of skepticism and cynicism is as challenging as landing humans on other worlds, it seems.

Sean O?Keefe, NASA Administrator, called upon the public, the Congress, and the aerospace community today to back a broader space exploration agenda. The tragic loss of the crew of space shuttle Columbia last year sparked a reappraisal of NASA?s exploration goals. Those long-range objectives of the exploring the Moon, Mars and beyond with both robots and humans can be sustainable and affordable -- a message that must be tirelessly backed, O?Keefe said.

O?Keefe spoke at the 20th National Space Symposium held here this week. The meeting is conducted by the Space Foundation.

Counter the skeptics

O?Keefe said the space program is at a "historic turning point." But there is much work to be done to fend off doubters that exploration beyond low Earth orbit is too expensive and lacking in worth, he said.

"The advocates must become as vocal as the skeptics," O?Keefe said. "We can win this debate."

There is no reason to turn back the clock to the 1960s and revisit the space race climate of U.S. versus Soviet Union one-upmanship in space, the NASA chief said. That was a "crash program to make a global statement. That?s not the environment we live in today," he said.

The new space exploration initiative posed by President George W. Bush in January "is not a budget buster," the O'Keefe said. He chided "establishment newspapers" as mischaracterizing the agency?s new space goals as far too costly.

"This is an affordable program," O?Keefe stated, one that can be measured by step-by-step progress to create "new beachheads in the cosmos."

Technological spinoffs

By reenergizing NASA with a new visionary plan, O?Keefe said, there will be myriad technological innovations stemming from the work. Unexpected breakthroughs and a host of spinoff capabilities are sure to evolve from reaching out to other worlds, he said.

There are those that see the Moon and Mars as a worthless pieces of rock, O?Keefe said. They are wrong, he countered.

The ongoing exploits of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers have shown the value of robotic exploration. But they have also demonstrated the need for human explorers.

As an example, O?Keefe explained, the Opportunity Mars robot spent some 36 days working its way around a small crater at Meridiani Planum. While it found amazing things, a human could have done that same investigation in a matter of a day, he said.

What?s ahead

Given some 9 billion hits of NASA?s key web site in recent months ? due in part to the Mars rovers ? "people are voting with their finger" demonstrating keen public interest in space exploration, O?Keefe reported. (The hits reflect files downloaded, not individual visitors.)

The recent X-43A hypersonic flight, zooming to seven times the speed of sound, has also captured public imagination, according to O?Keefe. He also lauded projects that will soon be in the public eye, from the soon-to-launch Messenger mission to Mercury to the Cassini spacecraft?s arrival at Saturn this summer and its Huygens probe's plunge through the atmosphere of Titan.

The NASA Administrator stressed the need to "extend the life" of the Hubble Space Telescope, which will not be serviced under the recent controversial decision he made. The telescope is likely to last into 2007 and perhaps beyond, but will not make it into the next decade as would have been the case if it were serviced. O'Keefe said that various options are being explored to lengthen the astronomical service of the orbiting space telescope. "The great news is that we have time," he said.

[vannrox]

Veeery Interesting...

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[kezekiel]

By reenergizing NASA with a new visionary plan, O?Keefe said, there will be myriad technological innovations stemming from the work.

More Tang and Food Sticks.

[PatrickHenry]

It's a bit more than Tang: NASA Spinoffs.

[Mamzelle]

I don't think a hiatus would be such a disaster...except in re PhD Welfare. The Martian probes were fun--but I didn't see anything there that we need to sort through by hand. When we figure out a good reason to do it, then the US will do it. Presently there doesn't appear to be a lot of reasons.

One reason might be the leapfrogging of robotics tech that would take place--we're so much farther now than we were even five years ago. If NASA devoted all energies to robotics, they could help us usher in the equiv of the microchip. But, alas, the emphasis is ever on giving the pilots the ride they "dream" about, and that makes the whole thing a big mess.

It'll be helpful, too, when the astronauts get too old for the lecture circuit. Then, finally, some new ideas will have room to grow.