NASA Should Not Abandon International Cooperation

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NASA Should Not Abandon International Cooperation

Given the high costs of NASA's plan to return to the Moon by 2018, the fiscal constraints that now exist and the danger of manned space flight, it would be wise for the space agency to encourage more - not less - international cooperation, and according to this editorial from Spain's El Pais, more - not less - unmanned space exploration.

By Eduardo Mendoza

September 24, 2005

Original Article (Spanish)

Rendition of NASA's New Crew Exploration Vehicle

NASA has announced that it plans to return to the Moon in 2018 with a mission that is more ambitious than its pioneering one of 1969 - four astronauts and a one week stay on the southern hemisphere of the satellite [the Moon], utilizing its new capsule, called the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), which is expected to be operative by 2012 and which will replace the present Space Shuttle with a combined system of rocket engines, similarity to the Saturn rockets, and reusable systems. The experts maintain that the plan is feasible, but many doubt that the commitment announced by NASA’s new director, Michael Griffin, can be carried out due to skepticism and resistance in Congress over increasing the space agency’s budget by more than $100 million per year, spread out over the next the 13 years.

[Editor’s Note: NASA says that the project, to cost $104 billion, will be spread over 13 years, and, adjusting for inflation, represents 55% of the comparative cost of the Apollo program].

Picture From the Spirit Rover on Mars, Taken Near the 'Colombia Hills' Last Week

But the winds on Capital Hill are not blowing favorably for NASA, despite the fact that President Bush committed himself in 2004 to a return to the Moon before 2020 and an arrival on Mars around 2030. The people in charge of the agency are immersed in the preservation of the present shuttles, which in theory must continue in use until 2010, when it is hoped that the International Space Station is finished (ISS), the construction of which has been greatly delayed by the Challenger accident in 2003. The future and utility of the ISS, a project of the U.S., with Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Union, will in the end be considerably more modest than first envisioned and is also the subject of divisions within the world’s scientific community. But it would be mistaken to abandon the philosophy behind joint [international] programs of this kind.

Space exploration should not be the exclusive task of one nation, but the fruit of world-wide cooperation, in order to both lower the costs and spread the benefits to all. And within that line of thinking, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to increase the number of unmanned missions, which are less costly, much safer and provide an abundance of scientific data, which has been demonstrated by the most recent mission to Mars.