COMMENTARY | The Space Politics website relates what President Obama said about the future of the U.S. space program in an interview with local media in Ohio recently, among the first the president made on the subject since his infamous Kennedy Space Center speech:
"Well, I believe in the space program. Look, I'm turning 50 in about a month and a half. But, that means that I grew up being inspired by Apollo and the Moon landing. So the key, even though the space shuttle is phasing out, is, what's that next big leap? And that's going to require research. That's exactly part of our plan is to make sure that we're researching new fuel, new mechanisms to allow for long-term space flight. There's some additional technological leaps that we have to make because, basically, we're using the same technologies that we were using back in the 60s, in a lot of cases. That's why a research facility of NASA's is going to continue to be critical because we want to find what are those next technological leaps that will take us not just to the Moon, but take us to Mars and beyond."
The emphasis on technology development is not a surprise. Obama emphasized space exploration technology development when the original budget was announced that cancelled the Constellation space exploration program. The president's focus was certainly relevant for Ohio, the home of the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Obama is very keen to keep as many jobs as possible in a state that he must win in 2012 if he hopes to be reelected. The last statewide poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling, showed that 46 percent of Ohioans approved of Obama's job performance as opposed to 49 percent who disapproved.
The technology development program in the space plan has been criticized for lacking direction and not being tied to a specific program of exploration. Furthermore, the strategy of emphasizing technology over actual exploration has run headlong into congressional opposition, which has mandated the development of a spacecraft that looks pretty much like the Orion and a launch system that looks pretty much like the Ares V that were part of the now canceled Constellation.
Obama announced belatedly in his April 15, 2010, speech at the Kennedy Space Center an exploration program that would send astronauts to an Earth approaching asteroid, and finally to Mars over the next several decades. The Moon would be, in effect, bypassed. This program has been criticized as well for being too vaguely defined, not tied to any overarching strategy, and heading in the wrong destination.
That was what makes the last sentence the president uttered all the more interesting. He said the Moon and Mars -- he did not mention an asteroid. Could it be that the president has yet another change in direction for the space program in mind, perhaps to be announced at an appropriate moment in the presidential campaign?
The recent discovery of water on the Moon would certainly provide an excuse for heading back there and away from chasing asteroids. Indeed, such an announcement would tend to shake up the narrative that has taken home of Obama as destroyer of America's space future.
Of course, one must be cautious when approaching any promise that the president makes on the campaign trail. During the 2008 campaign, he implied support for the Constellation program in a speech before aerospace workers in Titusville, Fla. That promise turned out to have an expiration date. Anything that comes out of his mouth in the future likely will as well.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.
