NASA Needs Some Momentum

By Deseret Morning News editorial

Barbara Morgan’s trip into outer space re-energized a space program beset by recent embarrassments. But it also illustrated one of NASA’s biggest problems.

A successful space program is one that quickly becomes so routine it loses the public’s interest. A loss of public interest can translate into a lack of momentum for public funding.

But an unsuccessful one gains public interest for the wrong reasons. Accidents delay timetables and raise suspicions that the high costs may not be worth the risk. Embarrassments, such as a report that indicated some astronauts abused alcohol, or the high- profile cross-country trip by Lisa Nowak to confront a rival for a fellow astronaut’s attention, have a worse effect. They poke holes in the notion that astronauts are heroes.

NASA, then, has to find ways to generate attention while preserving its stature and integrity. By any measure, the space program has been an overwhelming success since its inception, despite the accidents and embarrassments. However, it has lost a significant measure of the public interest that fueled imaginations and stirred national pride in the 1960s.

Morgan’s flight is an inspiration to school teachers and students. It has the emotional component of fulfilling the mission started by Christa McAuliffe, cut short in the Challenger explosion. But, under the best of conditions, the attention and the good feelings will be short-lived. The next mission isn’t likely to generate the same buzz.

Morgan is a former teacher. In 1998 she became a full-fledged astronaut. NASA can’t afford to allow untrained people to begin flying just for the publicity. And yet it needs publicity for the good it does.

The space program is trying to finish an international space station and begin moving into its next phase, which will be a return to the moon. President Bush has set a goal to eventually send a manned mission to Mars. But that process will take many years and a lot of money. The will to provide that funding may be lacking.

The great race to the moon in the 1960s was an enormous national unifier — at a time when the nation seemed to be coming apart in many other ways. It lifted the imaginations of millions of children, and it engendered a belief in mankind’s ability to do virtually anything it could imagine.

However, it was fueled mainly by a desire to get there before the Soviet Union. Today, space exploration is an international endeavor. The Russians cooperate with the United States. This nation’s enemies, terrorists and rogue states run by dictators, do not have space programs.

NASA has provided a lot of the technology people take for granted in the modern world. It holds the hope for discovering much more. Astronauts, despite their human frailties, are modern Magellans courageously seeking new worlds. They represent the optimism and faith that says man can accomplish the impossible.

But that story can get lost amid other priorities for the national treasury.

(c) 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.