For Space Glory, Reach for the Stars, Experts Say

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: January 10, 2004

[D]isasters big and small have struck the federal space 
establishment with alarming regularity of late: satellites 
have failed, space shuttles have blown up, astronauts have 
died.

NASA has captivated the public this week with dazzling pictures 
from the rover it just landed on Mars. But closer to Earth, at 
the International Space Station, air is slowly leaking and no 
one knows why. The Pentagon, after spending billions, is having 
trouble making a booster rocket for the antimissile system it is 
trying to build. A new generation of spy satellites is behind 
schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Landsat 7, a federal 
satellite that observes the Earth, is sending back fuzzy pictures 
and acting like a malfunctioning video camera.

All of these troubles raise the question of whether the nation 
has the technical muscle to achieve President Bush's vision of 
setting up a human base on the moon and sending Americans to Mars, 
a plan he is expected to announce next week.

"NASA has gotten obese and encumbered," said Rick N. Tumlinson, 
a founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, a private group in 
Nyack, N.Y., that advocates bold exploration. "It's like a former 
Olympic athlete eating potato chips and drinking beer while 
watching reruns of past glories."

The consensus of experts is that NASA and the nation's wider
space community are damaged in vital areas and now clearly 
unable to do anything ambitious.

But the space program could soar again, they said, even with 
modest funding increases - if it is revitalized by bold leadership 
and tough political calls, like finding a graceful way to end the 
shuttle program, which has already outlasted its intended life 
span and is a huge drain on NASA's resources.

If done right, they said, the initiative could end the string of 
failures and replace them with new achievements.

"This is a way of fixing a lot of that by providing a focus that 
will draw good people back into the space program," Dr. John M. 
Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington 
University, said. "The current problems are a result of a lack of 
focus."

Any return to the moon, let alone a much more ambitious and 
dangerous foray to Mars, would require new generations of 
advanced rockets, engines, air and food supplies, communications 
gear and shields to protect humans from blasts of solar radiation.

But Jerry Grey, policy director of the American Institute of 
Astronautics and Aeronautics, a professional group of aerospace 
engineers based in Washington, said the technical woes were not 
insurmountable or uniform. He noted that the Spirit robot that 
recently landed on Mars was apparently working flawlessly as it 
readied to explore the planet.

"The technical establishment is not fine," he said. "There are 
a lot of things wrong with it. But it's not about to fall apart. 
And an initiative like what President Bush appears to be ready 
to announce would open up a lot of opportunities."

Mr. Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation said no big budget 
increases would be needed for President Bush's plan but that NASA 
would have to be completely restructured, with unneeded centers 
shut down and new divisions set up to mobilize new talent.

"We're at our best when we're given our biggest challenges," he
said. "When the challenges are mediocre, when they don't call 
on us to reach beyond ourselves, we have a tendency to perform 
in a mediocre fashion."

Such work, Mr. Tumlinson added, now characterized the space 
shuttles, which are grounded, and the space station, which is 
down to two crew members from three and leaking air. "We have 
to call on NASA to do something beyond itself," he said.

Experts who have consulted in the decision-making process said 
Mr. Bush's plan may call for retiring the shuttles and ending 
station work sometime early next decade as the nation begins a 
new round of moon landings.

But the political handiwork needed just to end the shuttle 
program would be significant, requiring major assaults on 
entrenched interests: When up and running, the spaceport in 
Florida employs some 14,000 people and each year pumps 
$1.4 billion into the state's economy.

Analysts said the current slump began after the cold war when 
the federal government cut back on its enormous investments in 
space technology. At the same time, scientific research in the 
nation's private sector took off, drawing into computers and 
medicine many of the best students who otherwise might have 
gone to NASA or the space programs of other federal agencies, 
including the Defense Department.

This loss of talent was one of the factors behind the Columbia 
space shuttle disaster last year, which killed seven astronauts, 
according to the panel that investigated the accident. It singled 
out a "broken safety culture" at NASA that played down potential 
problems and was too influenced by the need to meet flight 
schedules. It found that decision making was flawed, safety 
procedures incomplete and communications poor.

Similar problems have been identified in the military's space 
programs. Last May in a thick report, a high-level advisory 
panel to the Pentagon, the Defense Science Board, said those 
efforts were suffering from major cost increases and schedule 
delays, with "a devastating effect on program success."

It said the problems grew out of bureaucratic failings in 
which estimates had grown unrealistic and undisciplined, and 
that good managers were so scarce that the government's 
abilities to lead and manage acquisition programs "have 
seriously eroded."

Despite wide atrophy and decay, many experts said that bold 
leadership could revitalize the nation's space establishment.

Dr. Bruce C. Murray, the former director of NASA's Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory, who is now at the California Institute 
of Technology, said the plan that Mr. Bush is expected to 
announce could work if clear and properly structured.

An important part of the initiative, he said, should be for 
the human spaceflight program to shed its historic aversion 
to computers and robotic technology and to integrate them 
into the heart of the new work, cutting costs and empowering 
bold technologies for opening new frontiers.

"On earth, humans and computers are developing an enormous 
symbiosis," Dr. Murray noted. "But none of that is happening 
on the human side of spaceflight. The future belongs to that 
symbiosis. And we of all nations have the maximum capability 
to take advantage of this evolving symbiosis, and we of all 
nations have not."


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company