First NASA laid out its new vision for human spaceflight, putting the moon on hold and focusing instead on new technologies and space commercialization. Then Congress weighed in. Now former astronauts, an aerospace guru and Hollywood's hottest director are boosting the debate to a higher level.
The next few months are likely to bring a far-reaching debate over America's future in space, based on the reactions that have greeted the budget proposal for NASA since Monday's release. The debate won't be just about one year's spending, but about the next decade or two. That's why space aficionados are so passionate on both sides of the issue.
One former shuttle astronaut, Tom Jones, said that the decision to cancel NASA's Constellation back-to-the-moon program signaled that "human spaceflight is unimportant to U.S. national interests."
"Starting next year, and for the foreseeable future, we will launch just four Americans into space annually, as passengers on foreign rockets, to a space station slated to be decommissioned in 2020," Jones wrote in his Flight Notes blog. "What will Americans do in space beyond that gloomy date?"
He expects that China will pursue increasingly ambitious space goals and become the next country to send explorers into deep space. "We will watch, helpless to follow," he wrote.
Jones doesn't say much about the commercial spaceflight companies that are angling to provide NASA with rides into orbit, other than to note that none of them has "built a human-rated booster or spacecraft."
Another former shuttle astronaut, Ken Bowersox, is more bullish on the commercial prospects - perhaps in part because he's now an executive at one of those companies, California-based SpaceX. Today Discovery News quoted him as saying that space contractors "should be able to come up with new and innovative ways" to fill NASA's needs for resupplying the International Space Station.
Yet another ex-astronaut, Leroy Chiao, says in his blog that "we are ready for commercial human spaceflight." Chiao was a member of the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee, also known as the Augustine panel, which laid out a spectrum of options for NASA's future.
"Anytime there is significant change in the air, the establishment gets nervous," he wrote. "This is to be expected. Sometimes dramatic change is necessary to achieve fresh results. Time will tell if the private companies will achieve [low Earth-orbit] access, but I for one remain optimistic."
Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin went even further, praising President Barack Obama for redirecting America's space policy "away from the foolish and underfunded moon race that has consumed NASA for more than six years." In The Huffington Post, Aldrin sketched out his expectations for a "flexible-plus" approach to exploration:
"If Congress agrees, we'll turn over all space taxi services to the private sector and aim NASA at fully using the station - extended to at least 2020 in Obama's plan - and spending a billion dollars a year in creating these new private sector spaceships. When the time comes to start building deep space transports and refueling rocket tankers, it will be the commercial industry that steps up, not another government-owned, government-managed enterprise. And if we want to use the moon as a steppingstone in the future, we'll have to join with our international partners for the effort. No more 'go it alone' space projects. If you or your children or grandkids ever hope to fly into orbit, these new vehicles are their only hope for a ride to space."
Aldrin said the decision to change NASA's course ranked as Obama's "JFK moment." That's an interesting phrase, because in a commentary last year, NBC News' Jay Barbree said that Obama was facing a "Kennedy decision" - and that the right choice would be to stick with the Constellation program.
One of the most successful figures in the private-spaceflight industry, Scaled Composites' Burt Rutan, also weighed in on NASA's future. Rutan, the aerospace designer behind the SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo rocket planes, has delighted in tweaking "Nay-Say." He sometimes jokes that the space agency's acronym stands for "No Adult Supervision Apparent." But he turned serious in an e-mail sent to several journalists after this week's unveiling of the NASA budget proposal:
"I am for NASA doing either true Research, or doing forefront Exploration, with taxpayer dollars. Ares/Orion is more of a Development program than a Research program, so I am not depressed to see it disappear.
"I am concerned to see NASA manned spaceflight disappear, since they provided world leadership in the '60s and part of the '70s. The result was America’s universities being the leader in science/engineering Ph.D.s. Many American kids will be depressed by the thought that our accomplishments will not be continued and thus America will fall deeper away from our previous leadership in engineering/science/math. I believe our future success depends on our ability to motivate our youth.
"I would support a restructuring of goals and funding so NASA can be allowed to perform like the '60s on space Research and on Exploration. There is not a shred of evidence that the president sees any value in those goals."
Even James Cameron - the director of the world's two top-selling movies, "Avatar" and "Titanic" - had something to say about America's future in space. At one time, Cameron was in the market to go into orbit himself, and he still talks about making a Mars movie someday. Here's the bottom line from his op-ed in today's Washington Post:
"Over the past 15 years, I have gotten to know a lot of people at NASA while working on projects to advance space and ocean exploration. I've found that many, if not most, started as starry-eyed childhood dreamers. Maybe they loved science-fiction stories, with their promise of alien worlds, or maybe they were geeks like me, peering through a telescope in the back yard until their moms yelled again for them to come inside - "It's a school night!" They grew up to become engineers, brilliant planetary scientists and steely-eyed missile men who collectively have pushed our human presence out to the moon and our robotic presence not just to Mars but also to the outer reaches of the solar system. I applaud President Obama's bold decision for NASA to focus on building a space exploration program that can drive innovation and provide inspiration for the world. This is the path that can make our dreams in space a reality."
There's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt out there, especially among NASA employees and contractors who are wondering what will happen to their jobs. Earlier this week, I asked whether NASA's new vision marked the beginning of a new era or the start of a death march. Feel free to reflect on such questions over the weekend - perhaps as you follow the coverage of the shuttle Endeavour's launch - and offer your own perspective as a comment below.
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