Hubble and the new Space Initiative
I have not yet written up my thoughts on decommissioning Hubble. However, my friend Jeffrey Bennett, an astronomy at Colorado, has written a good essay on it. I post it here with his permission. Enjoy.
Quote:
Today's e-mail is primarily my response to feedback sent about my commentary last week, but first a note about two timely developments:
Another Mars landing coming up on Saturday! The Opportunity rover will land on Mars on Saturday night (Jan. 24), 10pm Colorado time. More information on the Mars rover home page http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/index.html. Many science centers and universities will have live programs that night: in Boulder, go to CU (for info see http://lasp.colorado.edu/mer); in Denver, go to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (doors open at 8:30pm, program starts at 9; $5); call local organizations elsewhere.
This past weekend, NASA announced that it is cancelling next year's planned Shuttle mission to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. This decision will reduce the telescope's life by several years at least, and is devastating to astronomers --- particularly to my colleagues at CU's Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, who have been building one of the new instruments that would have been installed on Hubble during the now-cancelled mission. More on this below...
Most of the feedback on my commentary about the new Moon/Mars exploration initiative boiled down to two issues: (1) Scientists worry that the space science budget will be decimated to pay for the new initiative, a worry substantiated by the almost immediate cancellation of the Hubble servicing mission. (2) Others wonder how we can possibly afford the initiative. So here are a few additional thoughts...
On the question of how the new initiative will affect the science budget: The issues have been wonderfully summarized by a former Chief Historian at NASA; I've copied his essay below. Regarding the Hubble cancellation, NASA's Administrator claims the decision was NOT based on money, but rather on a variety of factors of which post-Columbia Shuttle safety was paramount. The scientific community is understandably skeptical, so we'll see where it goes from here. Personally, I think that Hubble and other space science missions are among the only really inspirational things that we as a nation have at present, so it seems pretty self-defeating to cut them in order to make room for a future program whose most important aspect is its inspirational value.
Turning to the question of where the money will come from, let's start with a painful truth: the President's proposed budget for the initiative is woefully inadequate. He is essentially asking to get started with very little new funding now, leaving all the big costs to be dealt with by future presidents. A more serious approach to such a bold initiative would admit that it's going to cost a lot of money and then make the case that it's worth the cost. Yes, I think it's worth spending a couple hundred billion to start a Moon base (for all the reasons outlined in my commentary). Thus, we should get started by finding significant new funding for NASA right now --- not by raising its budget by slightly more than inflation, as the President proposed, but by being prepared to double or triple the budget for space exploration. So now to the obvious question: even if the program has long-term benefits, where do we get the money for it now, when we are running a $500 billion deficit this year?
Well, I've got to admit that borrowing $500 billion from our children in a single year borders on the criminal. But, that said, borrowing can be worth it if it is for an investment that will provide a positive return in the future. And consider this: The average error in projected budget deficits a year out is about 12%, which means about $60 billion on the $500 billion projection for this year. Thus, the uncertainty in this year's budget deficit is four times NASA's entire budget --- meaning that even a substantial increase for space is effectively lost in the "noise" among our other budgetary problems. If you accept my contention that there's a long-term positive return for the space initiative, then we ought to go ahead and find the necessary funding. (It's also worth noting that even in the short term, money spent on the space program essentially all goes to the creation of fairly high-tech, high-paying jobs that usually stay right here in the U.S. --- exactly the kind of jobs that we are most in need of.)
But, you ask, isn't my claim of a positive return based primarily on the unquantifiable value of "inspiration"? Well, yes, but it's not quite as loosey-goosey as it may sound. First, for those of you who may have missed my appearance on Denver's 9 News on Saturday morning, I gave the following analogy to illustrate the importance of inspiration in general:
For those who say that we need to deal with our problems at home first, I liken it to a child with behavioral problems. We have a national behavior problem. We have too many people uninsured, we borrow too much money from our children, and we sometimes have difficulty getting along with other nations. But you don't solve a child's behavior problems by locking him a closet and telling him he can come out when they're fixed. You solve the child's behavior problems by inspiring him, by making him believe that he has a great future ahead. If we truly want to solve our problems here at home, we'll have a far better chance if we can give the same type of inspiration to every child, here and around the world. Building a Moon base will do that, because we'll be reminded of human potential every time we see the Moon in the sky and know that people are up there, living and working, right now.
In addition, while inspiration is generally considered priceless, let's try to put a value on it anyway, just for the sake of argument. For example, suppose that building a Moon base as a stepping stone to Mars and beyond provides only enough inspiration to cause an additional 1% of the U.S. population to go on to get a college degree. This is a pretty conservative assumption, especially when you consider that the percentage of the U.S. adult population (over age 25) with a 4-year college degree has already risen from 7.7% in 1960 to about 26% today. (Yes, I do think much of that can be traced to Apollo, but that's a different argument.) Statistical studies of income show that, over a lifetime, the average college graduate earns some $1 million more than a high school graduate. Now run the numbers:
If an additional 1% of the U.S. population of 300 million people gets a college degree, that's 3 million more people earning college graduate salaries rather than high school graduate salaries. Over their lifetimes, these people earn an additional $1 million each. The total economic impact is then 3 million people times $1 million each, or $3 trillion.
This $3 trillion return is roughly 20 times the estimated cost for the Moon base. That's an investment that's hard to beat, even if the cost has been underestimated by a factor of 2 or 3 or 4.
Bottom line: Building the Moon base is the right thing to do, even if the particulars of the President's current proposal are inadequate or wrong-headed. Rather than trying to kill a great idea, we should all be working together to make sure the great idea is implemented the right way. Let's not pretend it can be done on the cheap, but instead say that bold ideas require bold steps. As President Kennedy said in 1961, "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win..." The Moon should never have been a one-shot deal. It's time to go back and complete a dream that has been on hold for more than 30 years. The future depends on it.
Best to all,
Jeff
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Essay below from Roger Launius, the former Chief NASA Historian
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Greetings:
I'm sure everyone has been following with great interest the president's
initiative to return to the Moon and go on to Mars.
I am cautiously optimistic about what I have heard about this initiative.
The devil is in the details with this proposal, however, as I suppose is
the case with everything. I'll be very interested to see the details and
the ramifications that will result from this change of focus. The space
enthusiast in me says, great, let's go back to the Moon and on to Mars. We
need to get out of low-Earth orbit and now is as good a time as any. I'm
very excited by the prospect of a return to the Moon, this time to create a
permanent human presence there. For a whole lot of reasons, not the least
of which is that it will provide a reasonable testbed for technologies and
procedures necessary to undertake a human mission to Mars, going to the
Moon now makes sense.
But, the cynic/curmudgeon/realist in me wonders about how all of this will
unfold and what hard choices it will engender. Is it "unfinished business"
from the first Bush administration, as many think about the second Gulf
War? Is this, therefore, "son of SEI?" Where is the money going to come
from, and two questions about this come immediately to mind: (1) is it
enough to fund these major initiatives, even taking into consideration the
reprogramming of other funds within the NASA budget? and (2) what is the
likelihood that Congress will agree to this given the record deficits
already being recorded and lots of other priorities for precious tax
dollars? Am I the only person who thinks this is essentially an unfunded
mandate what has tremendous potential to backfire on the spaceflight
community? An unfunded mandate, as you know, presents enormous if not
insurmountable difficulties.
Moreover, the early statements on this proposal talk about refocusing NASA
to accomplish this new human exploration function, and either discontinuing
or having another organization carry out missions that do not directly
support it. What does that mean for the Earth science mission, the
aeronautics research mission, the planetary exploration program beyond the
Moon and Mars, and the great observatories such as the proposed Webb Space
Telescope, to say nothing of continuing Hubble astronomy made possible by
another servicing mission? Does this initiative signal the end of NASA as
we know it? One of the scientists at NASM said that a useful analogy to
this proposal would be for the president to tell NIH that its task is now
to cure cancer but that it do so within only very modest increases to its
current budget, and that all activities of the agency should support that
goal. Anything that doesn't should be ended. No AIDS or Diabetes research,
no CDC, etc. He thought that was what the president had done to NASA.
In addition, what about space access? If we cannot put humans into orbit,
and hopefully the Crew Exploration Vehicle will be able to do this earlier
rather than later but I am mindful of a landscape littered with failed
human space access projects, how can we go anywhere else?
Finally, although I'm a big believer in returning to the Moon will that
part of this proposal resonate with the public, or is it something that is
basically saying, "to boldly go where nine Apollo crews have gone before?"
The answers to these, and a lot of other questions that I have will have to
await the further delineation of the proposal. We'll see. It's going to be an interesting next several months.
Roger D. Launius, Ph.D.
Chair, Division of Space History
National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian Institution
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--
Jeffrey Bennett
jeffrey.bennett@comcast.net
http://www.jeffreybennett.com
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21-January-2004, 10:15 PM
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