|
[an error occurred while processing this directive][an error occurred while processing this directive][an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
  
|
|
A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL WHICH WAY IN SPACE
2/4/2003
Still, it is high time for the federal government to call on the National Academies of Science to nominate the nation's best science and engineering minds for advice on the next steps in space. Does it make sense to complete the still half-built space station as a site for experimentation and manufacturing as well as research into prolonged weightlessness on human beings? Or can the existing station serve most of the important purposes envisioned for it? Should the station simply be mothballed while the nation focuses on unmanned probes that are cheaper but highly productive scientifically? Once the future of the space station is decided, that will help guide decisions about the best way to get crew and materials there and back. After two accidents in 113 flights, the shuttles are suspect. One alternative is unmanned supply rockets and some version of a space plane that would carry only crew. This discussion of the future of US space exploration should begin even before the reports are filed by the two Columbia disaster commissions, one an internal NASA panel and one ''independent'' of NASA. On that front, the Bush administration should act quickly to broaden the membership of the second panel. While no NASA officials are members, it consists entirely of current or former US government officials, five from the military alone. If the commission is to have any credibility, it should have prominent members from the private sector or academia. Also, it should report directly to the president, not NASA. Among all those Columbia mourners who were not immediate family members, none seemed more stricken than Grace Corrigan, mother of Christa McAuliffe, the schoolteacher who died on the Challenger in 1986. Grace Corrigan's anguish over this second shuttle disaster should steel the work of scientists and government officials as they ask the broadest questions of where -- and why -- we go from here, how we get there, and how we get back.
This story ran on page A14 of the Boston Globe on 2/4/2003.
|
|
|
|
|
|
© Copyright 2003 New York Times Company |
|||||||
N HOUSTON and Washington, no statement of mourning for the lost astronauts seems to end without a commitment to maintaining manned space travel and specifically the shuttle. Outside of NASA and the government, critics are calling for an end to both manned space flight and the shuttle program until the country can build a clearer and stronger consensus about its space mission. These are the extremes of a debate that was overdue before the Columbia disaster but should be unavoidable now. The debate should take place, but it might not, because it is in the interest of too many decision makers not to address it. Both the shuttle program and the $100 billion International Space Station are mainstays of congressional districts all around the country. This has muted congressional oversight of NASA.
