Debate on NASA coming, but no big changes expected

Congress and the media are about to conduct a long debate over the merits of NASA's manned space program. But almost no observer in Washington believes that Congress will significantly change the program, whose central focus is the periodic launch of astronauts toward the $30 billion space station, where they conduct research on how to stay healthy in space.

At a price of roughly $500 million per shot, the astronauts are launched from Florida, with backup facilities in Texas and Alabama. Many private-sector companies in many other states are also involved in the launches.

"I find it highly unlikely that anyone would pay the political price of ending that," said Robert Park, a scientist at the American Physical Society who has long called for an end to the manned space program. Chances are "probably closer to 1 in 100 than 1 in 10."

Congress and the White House must continue the manned space program, said Howard McCurdy, a professor of public policy at American University, "unless one wants to de-orbit the manned space station; and I don't think there is any politician of any stature who wants their fingerprints on that decision."

Even now, after the highly critical report on the Columbia disaster, legislators who suggest a change to NASA's manned program do so sotto voce: "You cannot resolve the issue about NASA's basic mission without looking carefully and in a fresh way at the direction of the manned space program," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., at a September 3 hearing on the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. "Within 90 days, or at most six months, NASA should prepare and furnish this committee a cost-benefit analysis on the manned space program," Wyden said. His press secretary declined to comment further.

Legislators who urge deep changes to the manned program don't see much prospect for change. "We're not going to be changing or increasing the NASA budget in 2004," said Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., the chairman of the research panel of the House Science Committee.

The accident board, chaired by Adm. Harold Gehman, blamed NASA's management and culture for the loss of the Columbia. Yet the report's authors don't offer much confidence that the problems will be fixed. Aside from a consensus that the nation needs a way to get people into space, the report said, "the U.S. civilian space effort has moved forward for more than 30 years without a guiding vision, and none seems imminent."

One possible vision, said James Oberg, a Texas-based space consultant and author, would call for NASA to dust off proposals to send astronauts on a two-month mission to a passing meteorite or asteroid by about 2015. Such a mission would be easier than a trip to Mars-which is priced by some at $500 billion over perhaps 40 years-and would yield useful knowledge about such potentially dangerous bodies. It would also provide NASA with a stepping-stone for further exploration. The project, Oberg said, could be funded over the next 15 years within NASA's current budget.

But NASA's chief problem, in McCurdy's view, is that it has failed to develop a better way to get into space. The price of getting one pound into orbit is much the same today as it was in the 1950s-anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000, he said. The shuttle was slated to decrease that price by 90 percent, but technological and political considerations, including President Nixon's re-election commitments to California's aerospace industry, prevented any cost reduction, he said.

In all likelihood, McCurdy predicted, NASA will try to develop a new, reliable, low-cost launcher over the next 10 years, leaving the nation "trying to do what we were supposed to do in the 1970s."

McCurdy also noted that cultural change across an entire agency "has happened before, but it is slow and torturous." The most difficult problem is making sure that agency officials really change their beliefs, he contends, because "after three to five years, they slip back" into the old ways of doing business.

But Smith says he has faith in Congress's ability to govern NASA. "I'm not that cynical, to think that Congress is not going to very carefully evaluate the safety and cost and benefits of manned space flight," he said. The Science Committee is planning to hold four hearings on NASA, he added.

Leadership will come from the president, not from Congress, predicted Hans Mark, deputy NASA chief from 1981 to 1984. "When the president says go, Congress goes along," partly because "nobody has ever gotten elected or thrown out of Congress because of anything to do with NASA."

But no one can predict whether Bush will set a new direction for space exploration, said Mark, who is a teaching professor at the University of Texas. "Nobody knows.... Not even Bush."

The long-range plans in Bush's 2004 budget request did not include significant spending increases for NASA, either for manned missions or for the less-glamorous series of robots that it is dispatching to Mars and other planets.

Over the next 15 months, NASA will try to launch another shuttle, the Chinese space agency may try to land on the moon, the presidential election will be fought and won, and various unforeseeable events will occur, McCurdy noted. Bush "may be forced to make some sort of a decision, and if history teaches us anything, it could be a bold decision."