As the T-shirt grumbles: this was supposed to be the future!

It’s 2010, the date picked by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke for the sequel to his seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey. The followup, Odyssey Two, paints a grand picture of moonbases and interplanetary exploration, culminating in (spoiler warning) the discovery of aliens on Jupiter’s watery moon Europa. But our present reality is distinctly more down-to-Earth. No first contact with sentient seaweed beings, no off-world jaunts to unwind in mid-semester break, and an American space progam that has radically scaled back its ambitions in recent weeks. President Obama’s budget request includes no funds for the Constellation program to return to the moon and then send a manned mission to Mars, and with the shuttle due to be retired after only a few more flights, America will lack a manned program for the first time in decades. It seems like the inspirational vision of the 1960s, a time when astronauts were superheroes, has been lost. Where did we go wrong?

As it turns out, perhaps we didn’t. It could be that, fed by rose-tinted memories, nostalgic pride, and imaginative science fiction, we have been chasing the wrong dream in the recent past, and it’s time for a new approach. Let’s examine why countries – especially the USA, who have set the pace since Apollo – invest in space programs, and what that can tell us about how governments will choose to shape them in the near future.

Firstly, there’s the undeniable fact that human spaceflight is an inspiring and engaging endeavour. As it was described in The Dish, the film about the Parkes radio-telescope’s contribution to the Apollo missions, space exploration is “science’s chance to be daring”. The thunder and light of an ascending rocket is visceral and immediate in  a way that other ‘big science’ projects, like the Large Hadron Collider, can’t match. Try explaining the Higgs Boson to the average person on the street: they’re unlikely to be clamouring to hand over their tax dollars to search for it. NASA enjoys high approval ratings from the American public, in the vicinity of 70%, as evidence of this attraction.

Next, there’s an economic argument, which is no less important. Spaceflight is a good investment, as confirmed by many models of employment and investment return. This windfall comes in two ways. First, there is the direct gain in knowledge that can only be provided by having a presence in space, like satellite communications and imaging. Second, because space and the journey there and back are such demanding environments, a tremendous amount of innovation is required, and this breeds new technologies that often have other applications. From nanotubes to microwave ovens, plenty of economically significant inventions have been created or refined in space programs. One problem NASA faces is that many people don’t know this. A study investigated whether ordinary citizens thought NASA was relevant to their lives. At first, only 53% agreed; after being made aware of what spin-offs the program has produced, that number climbed to 94%.

The question is, where should we direct a limited spaceflight budget to ensure that those two elements – inspiration and innovation – are maximised? In a weak economy, any space activity that is returning tangible benefits will be a much easier sell to governments, so it seems that it might be wise to prioritise research and development over ambitious interplanetary flight for now. Unmanned missions may actually achieve more in key growth areas like robotics, virtual reality, and teleoperation, which have obvious application to the way we live and work back on Earth. A major problem with the Constellation project was that the public couldn’t see how repeating the achievements of Apollo was useful in the 21st century, and they may have been right. Additionally, when the Moon and Mars plan was announced, NASA was not allocated a much bigger budget to go with its radically expanded mandate. This led to postponements and cuts in science programs, like the Beyond Einstein project on general relativity. Some of these may begin to come back to life now, to the relief of scientists working on them. It’s also important to consider that commercial spaceflight capability is growing fast and will help to fill the void left by NASA’s exit, and that other nations like China and India are developing their own programs and will make strong contributions in the future.

On the whole, then, I don’t think scientists and space enthusiasts should despair about the changing focus of the American space program. It will still have the opportunity to perform high-quality scientific investigations; maybe even moreso than before, when it was struggling to squeeze multiple priorities into a restrictive budget. There will still be people in space, and kids won’t stop wanting to become astronauts, even if their exposure is often through sci-fi movies rather than witnessing the real thing. Spaceflight will continue to generate wealth and knowledge, and perhaps in a couple of decades, augmented by more advanced robots and rockets (or even a space elevator), we will strike out for the planets and beyond.