Space Race 2.0

The budget for NASA in fiscal year 2011 was released yesterday (along with the budgets for everyone else) and it's not a wet, sloppy kiss for NASA officials or their friends in congress.  The new budget, while still larger than last year's, calls for the end of the Constellation program--which was to take us back to the moon--as well as the Ares rockets that were going to actually get us there.  The budget points out that NASA was both over-budget and behind schedule on both projects.

Instead, the budget intends to fund further robotic space exploration--which has proven to be very cost efficient in the past decade--focus NASA's priorities on climate science, fostering commercial space flight, and eventually establishing a manned mission to Mars.  If I might paraphrase, the budget reads something like this: "NASA should be focused on the sciences and the unexplored space while fostering commercial exploration of that which NASA has already conquered."  

On the one hand, I find this new budgetary direction disappointing.  I had hoped to see moon landings in my lifetime, and now, barring some incentive for a commercial program to undertake it, that is essentially out of the picture.  On the other hand, however, there is a certain pragmatism to this new direction that is one part based on getting the most our of our science dollars and one part based on the crawl of inevitability.  Robotic exploration is an efficient expenditure.  Robots can operate in space and other harsh conditions in ways that humans cannot, and at a fraction of the cost.  They aren't as glamourous in the public eye, but they get the job done.  Commercial space flight is also a worthy expenditure of NASA's time and money.  Even if all the commercial space community achieves in the next twenty years is low earth orbit maintenance schedules to the ISS, launching commercial satellites, and maintenance of existing satellites then it will have achieved more in that time than NASA has in the previous twenty.  Regular, safe commercial spaceflight in our immediate orbit is a requirement for any future exploration beyond our moon.  There will be complaints from numerous parties that manned space flight is too dangerous for private enterprise to be trusted with, but the truth of the matter is that private space launches are already common and used by the government and the military to launch critical satellites all the time.  

Virgin Galactic's Space Ship TwoThe most important thing that this budget does is create a second space race--the race to be the commercial leader in cargo transportation and maintenance in space.   The budget sets aside billions of dollars in incentives and rewards to private enterprise that reaches the goals set forth by NASA for manned and unmanned spaceflight.  Companies like Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and Spaceport America are well positioned to take advantage of these incentives and speed up their ambitious projects to make space travel a safer and more common practice, with NASA acting in much the same way the FAA currently regulates air travel.  

Undoubtedly there will be congressional representatives from Florida, Alabama, Texas, and Utah who will hope to "reform" this budget and bring it--and its massive governement contracts--back to the facilities in their states.  However, in this political and economic climate, my guess is that they will be unsuccessful and that the NASA budget will pass through congress largely as it was submitted.