Our Opinion: Manned space program will have to evolve

Posted Tuesday, January 27, 2015 10:42 am

It didn't get much media play in light of the more colorful elements of his speech. but President Obama gave a shout-out to astronaut Scott Kelly in last week's State of the Union address. That constitutes news.

"When was the last time the space program was acknowledged?" in a State of the Union speech asked First District Congressman Richard Neal rhetorically in a visit to The Eagle last week. NASA gets little coverage (especially compared to deflated footballs) but maybe that will change. It should.

In March, Mr. Kelly will return to the International Space Station where he will become the first American to live and work on the orbiting laboratory for a calendar year. He will be conducting many experiments but perhaps the most significant will be the charting of changes to his body during the year in space — with his twin brother Mark back home serving as the control in this experiment. A retired astronaut, Mark Kelly is the husband of former Arizona congressman Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat who was shot and severely wounded while meeting constituents.

Representative Neal mentioned the acknowledgement of Scott Kelly in the context of his visit earlier in the day to General Dynamics in Pittsfield. The congressman, a long-time advocate of the space station, said he hoped recent boosts to the space program will help General Dynamics and similar industries. Last month, NASA successfully test-launched the Orion spacecraft designed to someday take humans to Mars.

Today, of course, marks the anniversary of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, a tragic event that the U.S. manned space program has not entirely recovered from. The crew was lost, including Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire history teacher. This was back when an over-confident NASA was planning to launch a variety of civilians into space, largely for PR value. On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas and over the next decade the shuttle program slowly petered out of existence.

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If humans are to leave Earth orbit again, it will involve the establishment of programs different from the extraordinary Apollo effort that brought Americans to the moon. The prohibitive costs will mean that the programs will be private and/or involve many nations pooling their resources. A resurgent China may emerge as the next world leader in space exploration.

The summer movie "Interstellar" caught the drama of space exploration lost since the end of the lunar program. The film's premise is that a discredited NASA operating undercover steps forward when it becomes necessary for mankind to abandon a planet decimated by global warming. Ideally this will not be the motivating factor for the next advances in manned space exploration, but who can say?

America's unmanned space program, which is far less expensive and hazardous than manned flight, has advanced successfully and often spectacularly in recent years. The Mars rovers have dramatically increased our knowledged of the red planet, as have fly-bys of the outer planets.

Extraordinary advances in telescopes and related technology have enabled scientists to discover earth-like planets in far-off reaches of the galaxy. These advances, like the advances made in manned space flight, push science forward in general, drawing in the engineers so valuable to General Dynamics and to the communities in which they are their families live.

While the Challenger disaster we remember today is a cautionary tale about the dangers of space exploration, all forms of exploration carry hazards, and there will always be brave men and women willing to confront those hazards to push mankind forward. There is no way to predict if, when or how, humans will succeed in walking on Mars or, as in "Instellar," traveling to other sections of the universe through a wormhole in space. Those dreams, however, should never be allowed to fade away.