Will we ever leave planet earth?

I am from the generation of space enthusiasts who looked up at the sky with an awe and determination to explore. Living in a world where man had conquered the moon decades ago (1969 to be exact, if it really happened   ). My imagination as a child was filled with a future where humankind would become spacefarers. I was sure back in early 90’s that by 2005, we would have made commercial space tourism possible. Don’t blame me, even Sir Arthur C. Clarke thought so.

However, today we see that the American space program has run into a brick wall. What was such a promising development for the future of humankind has fallen victim to the petty politics. It is so sad to see that the funding for the space program is being cut, and the future plans of NASA to send a man back to moon is in jeopardy.

I read in a book by Stanley Kubrick ( Cant remember the title) that there is only a slight window of opportunity for humanity to colonize extra terrestrial worlds. What he meant was that we would have to colonize other worlds and extract resources from them if we are to sustain the growth of human population. The population is growing at an alarming pace that the resources required for space travel have to be diverted to them, in turn ruining the chances of humanity leaving its birth planet. Of course if this happens… we will be stuck on earth forever with no chance of colonizing other worlds. This is a pessimistic view, but a view that requires attention.

The contract to build the shuttle program was signed in 1972, based on a technology vision sketched in the 1960s. It was developed and built in the ’70s and first flew in the 1980s. Back in the ’70s when it got going, one could argue that the shuttle broke new ground, but at present the giant budget is all about keeping it working. The thousands of people that prepare the shuttle for launch aren’t inventing something new—they are trying to make very old machines keep working.

Scientifically speaking, the shuttle program seems very hard to justify—the cost is too high, and the benefits are too low. There aren’t the technology follow-up benefits Apollo had—to get that you’d have to develop a new system. The pure science benefits are modest compared to many other projects inside NASA (and out), all of which are unmanned probes. Indeed, many people with a deep interest in outer space believe that the shuttle, and NASA generally, unintentionally did more to stifle progress in space than drive it since the 1980s.

So, if the shuttle isn’t about science and technology benefits, what is it about? The reason this continues is yet another level in the analysis—the political aspects. The R & D benefits that Apollo brought were not why Kennedy proposed it and subsequent American presidents supported it. Manned space flight is an enormous source of national prestige. After Apollo worked out so well, the natural thing was to stay in the man-in-space business.

This also explains part of the fallacy in comparing the cost of the shuttle program to other uses of the money—whether inside NASA or for other causes. We collectively have a special place in our heart for the manned space flight program—Apollo nostalgia is one element, but that is only part of it. We earthlings want to think of themselves as supporting exploration. This public interest translates into politician interest.

So what I think should be done is to go back to the drawing board and think of a better, more cost effective alternative to the shuttle, one which is affordable and accessible to the public, so that space tourism may grow and itself fuel the expansion of humankind into space. Surely what was designed in 1970s with the then available technology can be done thousand fold better with the computers and types of new technology available today.