COLUMN: Space program is about research, exploration

A question was raised in the Statesman recently about the continuing value of NASA and the American space program now that the cold war is over. It is a fair question, given the differences between today’s space program and the heady days of Apollo and our great race for the moon. I believe the space program is as important today as ever, and it may be our best bargain in government.

Having said that, I want to stipulate that NASA is not as important as our critical social programs, or the defense of our country, or the education of our young people, or care for veterans, or people’s health, or housing, or even servicing the national debt. I know of no one in NASA today who would argue otherwise.

Any critic who wants to argue that space should take a back seat to more important “people” programs need only look at the U.S. budget to find that Congress is way ahead of them. People programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and “means-tested entitlements” (such as food stamps) already account for 60 percent of the current federal budget. Then comes defense, the debt, education, veterans, housing, etc. At the bottom of the federal food chain is NASA, which gets along with less than one single percentage point. It is not an either/or issue.

Each year the president and Congress decide what funding each federal program needs and deserves based on individual merit. They don’t need to kill little NASA to fund the higher priority issues. Nor would that help. Look at the new budget President Bush has proposed for next year. It shows significant increases for health, defense, Social Security, education, transportation, veterans and the administration of justice, whatever that is. Just the increases alone represent a figure nearly 10 times larger than the whole NASA budget.

So rather than argue about priorities, it might be better to focus instead on what Americans do get for this fraction of one percent of the federal budget. For starters, various studies have shown that NASA returns between $7 and $10 to the economy for every dollar spent. Notice I didn’t say, “for every dollar spent in space.” That’s because we have yet to spend a single buck in space. This money goes into the pockets of American working men and women (many of them right here in Utah). Their money gets handed down to grocery store clerks; to barbers and hairdressers; to cities in the form of taxes and, yes, to schools. And even to churches as tithing. In return, the taxpayers earn a big dividend in terms of technologies that improve our way of life right here on Earth.

The personal computer I’m typing on right now was made possible by the Apollo program. Oh sure, the computer revolution would have come along eventually even without Apollo. Right about now your neighborhood bank would be installing a huge 48K machine that cost millions and takes up three large rooms in the basement. Apollo drove the miniaturization that made your laptop, watch, cell phone and pacemaker possible. And much more. What is our economy’s top seller in terms of balance-of-trade with foreign nations? Airplanes. And “aeronautics” is NASA’s middle name. Our aviation industry dominates the world market in large part because of innovations created by NASA and its predecessor NACA over the last 60 years. NASA engine technology in the Boeing 777 fleet alone saves airlines millions of gallons of jet fuel each year. That’s a nice selling point.

And what about health technologies? Virtually every Shuttle mission carries medical experiments aimed at helping find cures for cancer, AIDS and other dread diseases. Hundreds of protein crystals from the AIDS virus have been taken into space already. The idea is to grow them large enough in microgravity that they can be characterized back on Earth. The problem is the two-week flights of the shuttle are over too soon. Researchers need the long-duration space station to really accelerate research into unlocking the secrets of these building blocks of the human body.

I do have to agree with critics who say the Space Station isn’t jazzy or as exciting as the Cold War space race. It can’t be. Its purpose is to do science research, primarily in human physiology. But these days NASA is more interested in results and useable applications than in generating excitement. But anyone who has ever watched an episode of Star Trek knows exploration is a legitimate goal unto itself. Great nations dare to explore, and great nations that stop exploring stop being great nations.

China, once a seafaring power with a fleet that connected it to a world of other nations, actually burned that fleet in a policy move aimed at converting the money spent on exploration into roads, granaries and other infrastructure improvements at home. By doing that, China stepped off the world stage and turned inward for centuries.

The Space Station isn’t an end unto itself. It is just one small step forward – an affordable step in a time of austerity. But it is a step that will help pave the way for the eventual exploration of the Solar System – an exploration which, thanks to the groundwork put in place aboard Space Station, will be a multinational cooperative effort rather than another space race. Because great nations do dare to explore. And now they have chosen to do so together. It doesn’t get any better than that. That’s how I see it.