To Boldly Go

The nattering nabobs of negativism, to use William Safire's phrase, are out in full force, beating the drums of defeat and retreat for NASA.

Manned spaceflight is too expensive, they say. Too dangerous, they say.

And they say this in perfect innocence, failing to see the relationship between the expense that is necessary, and the risks that we rightfully choose to take.

There is no gainsaying that manned spaceflight is expensive. But where does this money go? Not into a giant space furnace, but into spaceflight itself. Why is it a "waste" to spend money on NASA when trillions have been spent on social programs that could be better performed by charities? And yet we don't hear liberals who want to abolish the space program, talk about the huge amounts of waste in everything from educational grants to welfare.

All the great things that we take for granted -- the Hubble Space Telescope, the ability to repair satellites in space, and countless other aspects of technological life -- were made possible because of risk-taking by NASA. Private manned spaceflight was made possible only because the flight dynamics and procedures of suborbital flight were confirmed by numerous NASA flights back in the 1960's. Similarly, current NASA operations will allow future private enterprisers to follow through.

How much are you willing to pay for safety? We could cut staff, cut corners, and subject NASA astronauts to much worse safety margins. But we've tasked NASA with assuring flight safety almost to unreasonable degrees. There's a 40% safety margin for every critical part. So how much is this worth? $50 million per flight? $500 million? How about zero? Of course, if zero, then there might have been six or seven Shuttle disasters, instead of two. The fact is that space is inherently dangerous. The money that is spent is well-spent to protect life and to accomplish things that no other nation has done, or can do.

This isn't worth it to you? Fine -- and the same attitude would have resulted in our quitting the space race after the Soviets beat us into space with Yuri Gargarin. After all, spaceflight is expensive, isn't it? Why bother?