Washington Times Op ed - The future of NASA


Message posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on July 19, 2003 at 4:48:48 PST:

Sorry I don't have the link. It does look like NASA is still trying to look ahead even with it's current political, technical, economic, and public relations problems.

Editorial: The future of NASA
Washington Times 17 Jul 03
(Copyright 2003)

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board will soon issue its final report,
and although it is important for NASA to fix the most glaring problems that
the board identifies, it is also necessary for the agency to look toward the
future of manned flight. Fortunately, NASA has an administrator in Sean
O'Keefe who seems willing to address those pressing problems with pragmatic,
practical solutions, as demonstrated by his recently announced plan to open
an independent safety office.

At a recent meeting with editorial writers and reporters of The Washington
Times, Mr. O'Keefe outlined his vision for NASA's future in greater detail.
After finding Columbia's problems and fixing them, Mr. O'Keefe said that his
first priority is to get the shuttles launching again next spring, he
expects Atlantis to be taking flight to the International Space Station
(ISS). The essential components of the ISS will be added in the next four.

Mr. O'Keefe said that while he believes the shuttle will continue to be the
best platform to launch additional components to the ISS, the Orbital Space
Plane will be the best way to get personnel there, thanks to its expected
ability to use fairly wide launch windows and its much greater in-space
maneuverability.

Moving beyond that to long-distance, long-duration exploratory flights will
require NASA to overcome the significant losses in bone and muscle mass that
astronauts experience during long periods without gravity. While cosmonauts
doing year-plus tours of duty aboard the Mir found that consistent exercise
helped to reduce the magnitude of those losses, they still represent
significant challenges, especially coupled with the high levels of radiation
that space travelers are expected to receive.

The scale of those problems could be reduced by shortening trip times.
That's the point of Project Prometheus. The goal of the project is to
develop high-powered nuclear propulsion systems which will allow spacecraft
to traverse the solar system much faster than they are currently capable of.
Mr. O'Keefe hopes those systems will be sufficiently far advanced to drive a
probe to explore the moons of Jupiter around the end of the decade.

Those challenges must be overcome before NASA can proceed with any of the
plans space enthusiasts and advocates have called for -whether a trip to a
potentially threatening near-Earth object, the establishment of a permanent
base on the moon or a trip to Mars.

Another challenge NASA must address is personnel. According to Mr. O'Keefe,
the agency will lose up to 30 percent of its workforce to retirement over
the next three to five years. Congress could ameliorate part of the problem
by legislating NASA the ability to use better management practices, but
those proposals have essentially stalled in committee.

What clearly has not stalled is NASA's drive to extend the human frontier in
space. The agency has needed, and still needs, Mr. O'Keefe's steady hand to
deal with the Columbia crisis and his outstanding management skills. His
plans to address the power and physiological challenges of long-term space
travel are vital. But Mr. O'Keefe's statements and NASA's recently released
2003 Strategic Plan concerning specific vision for the future of manned
space flight remain somewhat nebulous. We look forward to more specific
plans soon.


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