Space Rorschach
“One Way Up: U.S. Space Plan Relies on Russia,” a front-page story by John Schwartz in The New York Times today, should last in our collective imagination for a long time. On a day when the stock market reeled yet again (at a retirement dinner I went to tonight, a retiree quipped that the market was retiring along with him) and the campaigns moved into attack mode, we heard that there’s A Gap in the U.S. space program that will run from 2010 to at least 2015.
During the Gap, the U.S. will have to rely on the Russian space program for transport to the International Space Station.
What this story says about our national outlook depends on who is doing the looking. Some commenters seem bent on reading the story as encouragement to demonize Russia, missing the sub-point that there’s a lot of honor in space and among scientists. As a quote towards the end of the article points out, “there is a longstanding etiquette: you do not mess with the safety of humans in space.”
Some see the Gap as a huge, sudden symbol of American decline. Some see the story as a moment to crow that America has actually been in decline and without real scientific imagination for a long time. Some are using the story as an opportunity to point out that private enterprise will have the answers, not NASA (even if that won’t be completely true for a while). Some see a future of golden cooperation in space travel predicted here - we can’t do it alone.
I spent the day pulling together all the elements I could think of for a next-Administration tech policy menu, in preparation for a session later this week. Just as prone to preconceptions as everyone else is, I mentally bent the story into the shape I wanted: “Depending on someone else for transport puts innovation and economic growth at risk.”
Maybe that’s the wrong lesson to take from that story. It may be more meaningful to note that this story, coming at this time, won’t spark outrage. By contrast, almost exactly 51 years ago, the idea that the Russians were beating us into space launched a thousand educational initiatives and investments - and ultimately drove funding towards what became the internet.
As I’ve written in the past, it was then that the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite.
On February 7, 1958 (just a few months later, and arguably directly in response to the launch of Sputnik), the U.S. Department of Defense issued directive 5105.15 establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
Four years later, J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to run ARPA computer research. Read The Dream Machine for the rest of the story.
Now, all we can do is squabble, point fingers, bemoan various things - and there doesn’t seem to be much hope of a collective, well-led response back towards public investment in space and/or other basic infrastructural research.
Now, that could be wrong. New leadership could emerge in this next administration that cared about super-charged investment in long-term technical initiatives.
I’m ready with my wish-list, and I’ll start posting the menu items tomorrow. Meanwhile, contemplate space, the apparent global recession, and the many different ways to read a Times story.