Star Dreck: It's High Time For a New Space Policy

Several important events in human spaceflight occurred in 1961. The first man and first American were shot into space fifty years ago this spring -- but the most important anniversary is May 25th. Half a century ago today, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech before Congress in which he famously announced that the nation should, "before the decade was out," accomplish the goal of "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." Thus was the Apollo program born -- and thus, many believe, we began to get serious about space.

But they are mistaken. That day was actually the beginning of a long national detour in space development, at least for human spaceflight. It's one from which we are only now emerging, with the change being fought in a rear-guard effort by entrenched interests in a few key states and Washington.

There are a lot of myths about Apollo and human spaceflight, starting with the speech itself. Many believe that the moon announcement was the focus of the speech, but it was actually more of a supplemental state of the union message. The space policy was just one of nine areas covered, and the last one at that. Nor was it really about opening up the frontier, as others continue to imagine. It was about winning a crucial battle in the Cold War, in a technological area that was viewed to be of high military significance. The speech was not spurred by visions of a new ocean, but by yet another defeat in the space race (Yuri Gagarin had beaten Alan Shepard into not only space but orbit a month and a half earlier), and by the ignominious failure at the Bay of Pigs a month before, which was viewed as another lost battle in the Cold War to a Soviet proxy. The moon announcement was viewed as a means of trying to regain the initiative.

Of course, as it turned out, Apollo was a spectacular success, both in terms of winning the Cold-War battle and (a secondary goal, vigorously pursued by Texan Vice President Lyndon Johnson) in creating a "Marshall Plan" for the industrialization of the American South, with new high-tech activities in Houston, northern Alabama, and central Florida, among other places.

But in terms of actually opening up the space frontier, it was nothing short of catastrophic. We have spent hundreds of billions on it over the years, to send a few hundred government employees into space, at a cost of over a billion dollars a flight. And in July, with the last flight of the Shuttle, we won't even be able to continue to do that.

In fact, from that standpoint, the speech itself carried the seeds of destruction. The very next words after the statement of the goal quoted above were the following:


As a cautionary tale of what happens when a nation ceases to be visionary, many space enthusiasts note the abrupt end to seafaring undertaken by China's Ming dynasty. With its advanced ship technology, it sailed to not just only the east coast of Africa but the west coast of America -- only to retreat back to its own shores and await the European age of exploration. But as I wrote years ago, those critics draw the wrong lesson:

The fact was that Zheng He's journeys were a failure. They sent out vast amounts of the nations' treasure with which to impress the heathens and gain tribute and the appropriate respect (just as is the goal for the current Chinese space activities). But when trade occurred at all, the ships often came back with items that were perceived to be of less value than what had been sent out to the ports. The trade was not profitable -- it was draining vital resources. The bureaucrats [who shut down the program] were right.

Their problem was that they were doing it for the wrong reason, just as reaping prestige and proving prowess are the wrong reasons to have a space program -- if, that is, one expects it to be both effective and cost effective. Kennedy was even more wrong when he put it this way, in his Rice speech of a year and a half later:


I rebutted this logic a few years ago, too: