President's new vision for NASA

The core of the President's space policy was revealed not yesterday, April 15 2010, but months earlier in February and March of this year. Granted, some retooling has occurred in response to muted pubic support to the initial outlines of the plan. But the take home message is that NASA is setting aside its top goal of returning humans to the Moon as articulated in the Vision for Space Exploration (2004). Instead the top goal is something that others have termed a "flexible path," which is an array of objectives that includes emphasis on enabling technologies, greater cooperation and partnerships with private sector, and an assortment of exploration targets in the Solar System. There are many things to like in the strategy, including additional funding for NASA, a retooling of the cancelled Constellation program to complete a rescue vehicle, and additional development of a heavy lift vehicle whose design will be finalized in 2015.

Political commitments to our nation's space program are simultaneously easy and difficult. They are easy in the sense that NASA is one of the few federal agencies that enjoys broad bipartisan support. NASA centers are an undeniable economic boom to the communities that support them. So maintaining funding for NASA and the centers is an easy way to garner short-term support. But it is much harder to make a commitment to a concrete goal that is beyond the next election cycle, or two, or four. Lay a great foundation for future success in space, and it will likely be your predecessor, not you, who is there to reap the political rewards when that foundation bears fruit.

So many of the individual elements articulated by the President are praiseworthy endeavors for NASA. But I sense a vague feeling of unease in those passionate about space in that we have replaced a concrete goal with a diffuse one. Personally, I have a much harder time now in elevator conversation or plane conversations with people about what exactly NASA is up to these days. Yea, we're doing a lot of great stuff, but I'm not certain what the next top item on the agenda is. Of course, with a shattered but recovering economy, two wars abroad, a Supreme Court nomination to select, and a growing mob of tea-partiers, I understand the administration has its hands full. And any time you set a direction for a space project, an agency, or a country, there are going to be those who vociferously claim we should be heading in the exact opposite direction.