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...current Constellation program, which plans to build a permanent settlement on the moon as a stepping stone to Mars, seemed good on the surface. Its ambition rivals the Apollo program, and its announcement came on the heels of China’s first manned rocket launch, suggesting a new space race was underway. Constellation also seems to have the support of Congress, which this year proposed increasing funding for the program (at the expense of NASA’s science budget) in order to return to the moon...
...scientific value to a permanent moon settlement. Mars is hardly realistic, because the lengthy cruise to get there would severely disfigure our astronauts. Prolonged habitation in zero-gravity environments might permanently cost astronauts a quarter of their skeleton due to osteoporosis. While many Americans view China’s space program as a threat, there is hardly enough political will necessary to fund such an ambitious proposal on a rapid timescale. The Orion capsules that will replace the space shuttle have already been delayed to 2015. It’s only a matter of time before waning interest spurs Congress...
...Perhaps diverting funds from Constellation into unmanned missions makes more sense, as robotic exploration accounts for most of the important science being done by NASA today. The conventional counterargument asserts that the manned space program justifies its expense and its danger because it attracts the most attention, not just to NASA, but to science in general. But, even if that’s true, NASA severely underestimates the appeal of robots. Tiny Mars rovers launched five years ago for nearly half the cost of a single shuttle mission continue to receive nearly constant coverage, even for minor milestones...
...government also doesn’t understand the reason that people follow manned spaceflight. Yes, there’s a childish glee in imagining Americans sifting Martian soil through their gloved fingertips. But people gravitate back to the manned space program because they see it as mankind’s cosmic destiny, not a way of proving American dominance here on Earth. Human space exploration has enormous potential to unite the people of the world in a project of mutual benefit...
...fact, it’s likely that international cooperation to extend humanity’s reach past Low Earth Orbit would help bring about peace here at home, especially given that the major space players would probably be our erstwhile enemies China and Russia. The International Space Station shows that international cooperation is possible, at least on a small scale. Rather than try to leapfrog so far past China that they’ll never catch us, we should instead co-opt them into our plans for planetary exploration and let them help cover costs. It?...