Patch design by The Heads of State Here is a set of rational priorities for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in descending order of importance: (1) Conduct research, particularly environmental research, on Earth, the sun, and Venus, the most Earth-like planet. (2) Locate asteroids and comets that might strike Earth, and devise a practical means of deflecting them. (3) Increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe. (4) Figure out a way to replace today's chemical rockets with a much cheaper way to reach Earth orbit.

Here are NASA's apparent current priorities: (1) Maintain a pointless space station. (2) Build a pointless Motel 6 on the moon. (3) Increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe. (4) Keep money flowing to favored aerospace contractors and congressional districts.

Only one priority of four correct! Worse, NASA's to-do list neglects the two things that are actually of tangible value to the taxpayers who foot its bills — research relevant to environmental policymaking and asteroid-strike protection. NASA has recently been canceling or postponing "Earth observation" missions intended to generate environmental information about our world. For instance, a year and a half ago the agency decided not to fund Hydros, a satellite that would have provided the first global data on soil moisture trends. NASA focuses its planetary research on frigid Mars rather than Venus, which suffers a runaway greenhouse effect. The agency is conducting only a few sun-study missions — even though all life depends on the sun, and knowing more about it might clarify the global-warming debate. But $6 billion a year for astronauts to take each other's blood pressure on the space station? No problem!

Meanwhile, geologic studies increasingly show that catastrophic asteroid and comet hits were not confined to ancient times. In 1908, a small asteroid smacked Siberia with a blast impact equivalent to the strongest nuclear bomb ever detonated by the US; recent evidence suggests an enormous object struck the Indian Ocean a mere 4,800 years ago, causing global tsunamis that may have engendered the Flood referred to in the Bible. Yet NASA has no program to research ways of deflecting space objects, and the agency recently told Congress it could not spare $1 billion to catalog the locations and movements of potentially dangerous asteroids. But hundreds of billions of dollars for a moon base? No problem!

Of course, "Keep money flowing to favored contractors and congressional districts" is not a formal NASA objective, but these words explain the agency's core problem. Since the end of the Apollo glory days, NASA seems to have been driven by the desire to continue lucrative payments to the contractors behind manned spaceflight (mainly Boeing and Lockheed Martin) while maintaining staff levels in the congressional districts (mainly in Alabama, Florida, Ohio, and Texas) that are home to huge centers focused on manned missions. If the contractors and the right congressional committee members are happy, NASA's funding will continue and NASA managers will keep their jobs. The space station project was built to give the shuttle a destination, keeping the manned-space spending hierarchy intact. With the space station now almost universally viewed as worthless, the manned-space funders need a new boondoggle. The moon-base idea, pushed by President Bush, fits the bill.

For a sense of how out of whack NASA priorities have become, briefly ponder that plan. Because the Apollo missions suggested there was little of pressing importance to be learned on the moon, NASA has not landed so much as one automated probe there in three decades. In fact, the rockets used by the Apollo program were retired 30 years ago; even space enthusiasts saw no point in returning to the lunar surface. But now, with the space station a punch line and the shuttles too old to operate much longer, NASA suddenly decides it needs to restore its moon-landing capability in order to build a "permanent" crewed base. The cost is likely to be substantial — $6 billion is the annual budget of the space station, which is closer to Earth and quite spartan compared with what even a stripped-down moon facility would require. But set that aside: What will a moon base crew do? Monitor equipment — a task that could easily be handled from an office building in Houston.

In 2004, former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, now an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, calculated that NASA can place objects on the moon for $26,000 a pound. At that price, each bottle of water a crew member uncaps will cost the taxpayer $13,000. Even if the new moon rocket being designed by NASA cuts launch costs in half, as agency insiders hope, that's still $6,500 for one Aquafina (astronauts and moon base are extra). Prices like this quickly push the total construction bill for any serious facility into the hundreds of billions of dollars. A private company facing such numbers would conclude that a moon base is an absurd project — at least until a fundamentally different way of reaching space is found — and would put its capital into the development of new propulsion technologies. But NASA takes a cost-is-no-object approach that appeals only to those who personally benefit from the spending.

Given NASA's politicization, we should hope that the space industry evolves as aviation did — transitioning from ponderous government-run projects to mostly private-sector activities attuned to customer needs. That raises the question: Could entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos eventually put NASA out of business? Perhaps, but not for the next couple of decades — space has colossal economic barriers to entry. Given that NASA is sure to be around for a while, taxpayers should insist the space agency be recon figured to produce tangible benefits for all of us. With any luck, private space enterprise will eventually find success and begin to exert competitive market pressures on the government space program. NASA's success in putting men on the moon in the 1960s is one of history's enduring achievements. But it's the 21st century now — long past time for a new set of space priorities.

Gregg Easterbrook (www.greggeasterbrook.com), author of The Progress Paradox*, wrote about the origins of life in issue 15.02.*

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