Mr. President,I was happy to see your FY2011 budget included some drastic program cuts for NASA. Ending the Constellation program is a significant step forward against pork barrel spending, as almost every review panel agreed the money was just basically being being dumped into large corporations as tech-sector stimulus with open-ended, unattainable goals. Almost no one can name a good reason to return to the Moon. Almost no one can explain what good a permanent moon base would do.
And so President Obama, you are set to make a "major" announcement on April 15th (isn't that the day taxes are due? How ironic if it is). I fear the announcement is this: a bold and expensive new direction for NASA, and by "new" I mean Mars.
President Obama, I know you read my blog. I know this because you are basing most of your NASA policy on my opinions, weak and unsupported as they are. So let me point you to my suggestions for a new direction for NASA. Let me tell you that it chokes me up to think of gifted engineers out of work. It saddens me to think of an estimated 32,000 people trying to find a new career in this economy. But the retirement of the shuttle fleet has been scheduled for 10 years. Scheduled and extended, and extended. These people should know the circus lights eventually do go down. With their high quality lines on their resumes, they should be able to find work, just as easily as the rest of the unemployed, if not easier. And maybe, just maybe, a large percentage of the space-knowledgeable engineers and scientists that are dropped into the private sector will get swooped up by the private companies attempting to develop their own spaceships. They can use their knowledge and skills there, and help ensure America does not stay out of space for long.
President Obama, you are a smart man, and a moral one. And we both share an excitement for technology and space travel. But we need to be realistic about how to get humans there. And getting humans into space in the next ten years is simply not a sustainable, smart option. America needs to remember long-term goal setting, and understand that while "going to Mars" sounds ambitious to the uneducated, it sounds like pointlessly wasted tax-dollars to those with intimate knowledge of the current state of technology.
Someday, in the far future, I have no doubt that we humans shall boldy dash from star system to star system, and wax poetic about the futile, barbaric attempts we made to explore space back in the early 21st century. Our species will land on other planets and stake our claim as the greatest species that God in His wisdom ever evolved. But for now, we need to learn how to do that. Throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at Mars will not get us any closer to Jupiter. We need to break the fundamental barriers of current physics knowledge before we can obtain our rightful place amongst the heavens.
We can start by aggressively pursuing faster-than-light (FTL) travel. In his science-fiction classic "Songs of a Distant Earth," Sir Arthur C. Clarke suggests that the people of Earth spend decades attempting to develop (or prove the impossibility of) the "Quantum Drive", the essential component that would allow humans to travel between stars in a realistic amount of time. Clarke is right, until we have completely proven FTL travel impossible, we must seek it; and if proven impossible, then we must accept that our species will never depart from this solar system in a manned spacecraft.
NASA should also realistically explore cryogenic suspension of humans. Unless we can develop FTL travel in the near future, the only realistic method of sending humans across the depths of space is to freeze them in cryogenic sleep, and then awaken them at their destination. This is simple truth; with current technology going to Mars would take several months...going to the nearest star system would take decades.
NASA should aggressively pursue the identification and utilization of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. If 98% of our galaxy is made of it, it is simply ludicrous to not develop methods to identify it. And upon identification, we can begin to find ways to harness it.
Finally, NASA has recently ramped up efforts to find extrasolar planets. This effort should be massively expanded, and new technologies developed to not only find these planets but to view them through telescopic means. We must develop technologies to send autonomous craft to any planet of interest, as fast as possible, and we must research new ways to receive data back from these craft. Even if it takes 400 years to reach the nearest habitable planet, should we not send a probe there immediately? Even if our progeny, 200 years from now, build a ship that blows the doors off said probe and reaches the aforementioned planet first, should we not still send the probe?
Why can NASA only create goals that are ten years or less long? Why is our country so demanding of immediate ROI? Do I want my great-great-great-grandson to watch the first images of a distant world? Absolutely. Will I be jealous of that gift? Absolutely. Will he be forever indebted to us for sending the probe? Absolutely.
What do we owe the Founding Fathers, for building this nation? Did they expect it to be the most powerful nation in the world within two Presidential terms? No! They assumed that perhaps a hundred years would pass before our nation would rise to its Manifest Destiny.
If you are going to propose a bold, new direction for NASA, Mr. President, I beg you: make it a good one. Don't waste another ten years of human society on pork.
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