I know I still owe you guys an article on the new Afghan constitution that was signed into being a few days back, and I intend on getting that written up hopefully on Sunday. (There, you've gotten me committed to a date. Look what you've made me do!) I'd intended on getting that knocked off today, but along came one of those "?!!" moments on the news that made me doubletake and decide something else should be today's topic.
That's precisely the initial point of what I'm going to talk about, but I'm well able to multitask and will get back to my usual charming self by the time you've read this, I promise.
Now, I think you guys know that I'm something of a space buff. Despite that, I usually leave the space and tech articles to the Fourth Man to write about, as he tends to be a little more authoritative on such things than I am. However, this is a Big Thing, and sorta like some Big Things that have been covered earlier on NFZ, I'm asserting my right to inflict redundancy on y'all.
Oh, the story. Yes, I almost forgot. You might not have though, as it's nearly everywhere. If you've glanced at just about any significant news site out there, you'll have caught the news: there's increasingly not-subtle hints out of the White House that President Bush is planning on making a major space policy announcment planning for manned expeditions back to the Moon and possibly even to Mars, with a somewhat long-term plan of about a decade or so.
There've been hints about this going on for a few months now, since China put their first man in space on the night of October 14 and cumulating in a flurry of speculation at the Kitty Hawk centennial in December. Those rumors turned out to be just that for the most part, and an initial air of hopefulness faded back into reporting more pressing matters, which certainly explains why the Indo-Pakistani peace conference of the past week has been utterly overshadowed by days of media coverage of Britney Spears' "marriage." But alas, I've never been one to have a sense of priority, and dismissed the latter for the none-of-my-business triviality that it is, and continued to hope for better things of the world.
Now, I'll be up front. I'm a technophile in a number of ways, from my basic computer-geekishness to transhumanist leanings, but one thing I'm quite fanatic about is space exploration - by which I mean manned space exploration. Among my greatest hopes for my life is that I last long enough to see either a manned landing on Mars, or a permenant - by which I mean span of generations, not weeks - presence on the Moon. We as a species have a window, I believe, in which we can get our act sufficiently together to get the eggs in multiple baskets, before something happens on Earth which will make us have to climb back all over again for one reason or another. That window may be ten years, it may be five hundred, but I think it's comparatively narrow in the grand scheme of things, and a human offworld presence isn't a neat thing as much as should be a species imperative, with all the urgency and vigour such a thing should imply. Suffice to say, a significant offworld presence, or even just demonstrating that we could begin one, will make me Very, Very Happy. I'd settle for a space elevator (which would probably be cheaper and even - in the long term at least - more useful, but people are afraid of the technology for purely irrational reasons), but this works.
However, the person apparently preparing to announce one of the literal plans of my dreams is President George W. Bush, and so I find myself unable to get too excited. Why is that?
Well, for starters, it ain't the first time such an announcement has been made. The Fourth Man notes his recollection of Bush I's announcing a twenty-year plan for a trip back to the moon or to Mars. Now, that was fifteen years ago now, and I don't see the infrastructure going anywhere. In fact, I haven't seen a finger lifted. And now we're on the cusp of the same announcement. The problem is, Dubya is even more of a cynical, PR-ploy president than his father. He's announced grandiose plans, like not abandoning the Afghans to their fates, and made grandiose statements, like the war in Iraq being over (not "major combat operations" - Bush announced the fighting was over) when it was just getting started. My initial reaction to this is a combination of two things: (1) it's a cynical election-year ploy to drum up some PR, and (2) Congress would never even think of tolerating it in the current climate.
The first doesn't need terribly much elaboration, of course. Read my lips: we're all used to that. Bush has had a tendency over the course of his term to come up with astonishing news stories at the oddest times - the Hussein capture announcement on the same day parts of PATRIOT II are ridered into law; numerous well-timed terrorist "threats" springing up whenever public pressure gets a bit too high on him, etc. They almost always distract the public just enough for him to get away. Is this one more of those cases? I don't know, but I do know the track record.
The second is the primary stumbling block on this, however. American culture these days, especially since the late eighties and early nineties, has become absoluetly obsessed with the idea of perfect safety. Any plan with a more than zero percent chance of failure is totally unacceptable. If it's an expensive plan, it becomes totally unacceptable-er. The Columbia disaster back in February started a number of backlashes against American spaceflight, most of which were calls to put an end to it, permenantly, or at least until the Shuttles can be made 100% absolutely safe. Now, you guys are reading this, so I'm going to assume you're sentient, but at the risk of insulting your intelligences I'll have you know that 100% safety is impossible when it comes to taking a shower in the morning, much less putting a human into orbit.
Does that make it not worth doing? Hell no.
The main complaints are a combination of the cost and the danger. The cost issue is almost nonexistent in my eyes - NASA's budget at any given time, even during the supposedly ruinous expenses of the Apollo era, was a drop in the bucket compared to just about anything else. The plan from Bush I's shot would come to $500 billion over twenty years. That's what, five percent of the current defense budget? Less? Cry me a river at that "expense." The real cost of the mission, of course, will depend on how it's done. If the point is to get the person on the Moon - or Mars, or Europa, or whatever - then the cost will be somewhat less of an issue than it would be if this is a purely political goal like the ISS, which has gotten mired in nationalistic ego-stroking. The technical capacity is there - unmanned probes with redundant systems stripped out to save costs and manned, multiply-redundant spacecraft are two entirely unrelated things - and if the procurement is properly managed it wouldn't even be terribly expensive. I wouldn't be astonished at the thriftiness if a Marsshot could be pulled off for as low as $150-$200 billion, nevermind the $1 trillion figures certain jerkers of knees are flinging about.
This is a matter of the will to do it, and that comes more down to the human angle. You're going to have a lot of Luddites, technophobes, or I-don't-care-so-you-shouldn't types trying to find one reason or another to scupper any space plan. Most of them fall back on the zero-sum idea that you must either spend all of your money on social programs or you are spending none of it on them. This has been used to attack China, India and Brazil a great deal in the past. In addition, there's the "you're sending people to their deaths" argument, which not only assumes that the astronauts will die, but that you wouldn't be able to find willing crews. Even if it was a one-way trip, a volunteer pool of hundreds of thousands wouldn't be inconcievable.
So we've got the ability, we've got the manpower, and we've even got the finances if people are willing to actually look at a typical American budget or historical spending. This is a matter of political and social will to do this sort of thing, and that is what's going to make or break this.
The ball is in the court of President Bush. George, if you make this announcement, then you'd damned well better put your money where your mouth is and make it happen.
The ball is in the court of Congress. You've established that you can blindly rubberstamp anything Bush wants as long as it's militaristic or unconstitutional; now you can try to erase at least a bit of your current term's shame by throwing some support behind something that is positive and in the long term far more important for a change.
The ball is in the court of the Democratic presidential candidates. Are you going to tear down this policy after the election in the name of dismantling Bush's admittedly horrific legacy? Or are you going to take one of the few positive things to come out of it and try to build something great?
The ball is in the court of the American public, who are in a sticky position of hopefully supporting an initiative like this while still tossing the dumbass out of office this fall's election. As much as I loathe Bush, I want to see this happen, and the United States desperately needs projects that exist on a term of more than one administration for their own culture's sake.
This depends on the responses of a great many people, a pool of people numbering in the scores of millions, to make it work. As it is, we stand poised on one of the greatest moments in the history of life on this planet. I look at the months and years ahead with a great deal of trepidation, really wanting this to succeed while not being sure of people are going to see far enough past their noses to let it happen.
I'm trying to hold up hope, and I think I'm doing so. My hope is cautious and laced with more cynicism than I'd like, but it's there. If just this once my hope isn't in vain, then I can be just a little bit more certain that we're capable of great things after all.
Posted by zibblsnrt at January 9, 2004 12:16 PM