According to an April 5, 2013 post in Space Politics, a clash over the future course of American space exploration flared up at a recent joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. In one corner was Al Carnesale of UCLA, who headed the recent study issued by the National Research Council that found fault with the Obama administration’s plan to send American astronauts to an asteroid. In the other corner was NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who has been charged with carrying out the policy condemned by the NRC report.
Carnesale, noting the conclusions of the NRC report, added that a great deal of enthusiasm existed for a return to the moon. He implied that the only thing standing in the way of such a change in policy was pride.
Bolden disagreed. While he suggested that NASA might be willing to be a junior partner in another country’s return to the moon program, he rejected the idea that NASA would be the lead in such an effort. There would be no return to the moon program in his lifetime, Bolden stated. He even went so far as to warn that if the next administration were to change course back to the moon, “--it means we are probably, in our lifetime, in the lifetime of everybody sitting in this room, we are probably never again going to see Americans on the Moon, on Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere. We cannot continue to change the course of human exploration.”
Bolden is simply echoing the sentiment of his boss, President Barack Obama, who denigrated the very idea of returning to the moon in his now infamous speech at the Kennedy Space Center almost three years ago. There are a couple of takeaways from his statement that policy makers, especially in Congress, might consider.
First, the current administration is quite willing to see the United States in second place where lunar exploration is concerned, even if it’s to China, a potential adversary due to the nature of its ruling regime. The moon was, in many ways, the venue of America’s greatest glory where human space exploration is concerned, something that might be thrown away if the United States is seen as being the help mate for another country’s exploration and eventual occupation of that body.
Second, the Obama administration and the current NASA sees its exploration program, visit an asteroid and then Mars, as set in stone and that it regards subsequent administrations as being committed to that course, whatever the assessment of independent bodies such as the National Research Council or the policy preferences of future presidents and congresses. It is not prepared to even contemplate such a course change even though it is unable to defend the utility of the current space exploration program. In short though others see the cancellation of the Bush era return to the moon program as a mistake, Bolden and Obama refuses to concede the point, perhaps, as Carnesale suggests, merely out of pride.
The question now arises, will Congress question Bolden and other NASA officials on this stance? That remains to be seen.
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