Posted by
Bert Chapman on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 5:53:57 PM
The space shuttle is currently on its last mission delivering supplies to the International Space Station. Once its mission is completed it, and its remaining companion shuttles, will return to earth and be stored at various locations in the U.S. including the Air and Space Mission. The shuttle has had a three decade operational life and experienced some successes but has been marred by cost overruns and the Challenger and Columbia tragedies. The U.S. space program has experienced remarkable successes but has also experience political parochialism and short-sightedness that have kept it from reaching its optimum potential. The shuttle program began as a successor to the Apollo program during the Nixon Administration but it took nearly a decade before Columbia was launched in 1981.
This final shuttle mission is a good time for America to look at its role in space. Let's start with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This agency was originally founded in 1915 as the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) to promote aeronautical research. It became NASA in 1958 and while most people associate it with the space program it also does aeronautical research. Thanks to political and financial earmarking by Congress, NASA developed a presence in many areas of the country including Florida, Mississippi, Texas, and California The trouble is there is another federal agency that already conducts such research and its the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). A future incarnation of NASA should discard its aviation functions to the FAA and morph into a National Space Administration (NSA). This agency should focus on giving the U.S. a permanent manned presence in space. One part of this administration can focus on expanding international scientific knowledge and striving keep a permanent U.S. civilian manned presence on the moon and also focus on a manned landing on Mars.
The primary focus of this agency should be working with the military (particularly the Air Force's Space Command) to develop a permanent manned military presence in space and on the moon including claiming the moon as sovereign United States territory. Despite sanctimonious United Nations rhetoric about space being part of humanity's common heritage and a venue for international cooperation, space is another arena of international geopolitical conflict. The former Soviet Union viewed space as part of its strategic interests and China is slowly but steadily seeking to expand its military presence in space. It's high time for the United States to regain the initiative while we can before we are faced with the possibility of a space-based Chinese preemptive stranglehold against our national security interests. Do we really think Russia will be a dependable provider of space launch capabilities and services? If so, we are appallingly naive.
We should encourage collaboration with the emerging commercial U.S. space industry to develop and launch affordable but effective spacecraft and support vehicles to carry some civilian but mostly military personnel into space to ensure that we have hegemony over space extending to and including the moon. We should strive to achieve these objectives by 2025 and encourage financial, scientific, and military collaboration with truly friendly nations who have not succumbed to unctuous United Nations space policy humbug. Despite such possible collaboration with allies, we must make it clear that we are the final arbiters of how to use these human and technical resources to defend our national interests in space. The 21st century will be the era in which space truly becomes an arena for human strategic competition just as the skies did in the 20th century. Let's seize the initiative while we still can or China, Russia, or some other detrimental combination of powers will.