Failure to Launch, Failure to Lead

President George H. W. Bush (1989-1993), flanked by First Lade Barbara Bush and Dr. Neil Armstrong on his right with Vice President (and head of the National Space Council Dan Quayle) with Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins on his left, celebrates the 20th anniversary of the first manned landing on the Moon, July 20, 1989. The president announced the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI), the first major presidential initiative beyond Earth orbit, and successor to the Space Shuttle, since 1961.

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

In the aftermath of a major Space Shuttle accident, an incumbent President decides that our civil space program needs a bold new strategic direction.  In a major public speech, he outlines a path to return to the Moon and go to Mars.  The space agency responds with full-color sales brochures, committee meetings, community workshops, and a thousand charts outlining the steps they will take to carry out the new direction.  A couple of years pass, a new President takes office, and then – promptly cancels the initiative of the previous administration.

Sound familiar?  This has happened in our space history – twice.

President Bush, with Vice President Quayle, join the crew of Apollo 11
by the unused Lunar Module, now an exhibit at the National Air and
Space Museum, July 20, 1989.

In 1989, after much agency soul-searching following the loss of seven crew members aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, President George H. W. Bush took to the steps of the National Air and Space Museum and announced what was soon dubbed the “Space Exploration Initiative," (SEI) a long-range program to send people beyond low Earth orbit, first to the Moon and then to Mars.  NASA responded to this challenge by outlining an architecture imaginatively named the “90-Day Study.”  It called for the development of new launch vehicles, new modules, transfer spacecraft and numerous robotic elements, including lunar and martian orbiters and landers (most of them extensions of existing hardware and designs).  Financial analysts somehow arrived at an aggregate cost of $600 billion (which also included assembly of ISS) and everyone gasped.

After numerous politicians and bureaucrats scoffed disapproval, a special ad hoc group was convened to re-examine the objectives and devise a less expensive approach for implementing SEI.  Their report was delivered and immediately put on the shelf.  In the ensuing three years, a new NASA Administrator was named, Congress refused to increase the NASA budget, and President Clinton cancelled SEI.

In 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry, killing its crew of seven.  The agency investigated and concluded that foam shed during launch destroyed the integrity of the vehicle’s thermal protection system, causing the loss of the Shuttle.  In January of the following year, President George W. Bush announced a new strategic direction for space – the “Vision for Space Exploration," (VSE) a long-range program to send people beyond low Earth orbit – first to the Moon and then to Mars.  NASA responded to this challenge by outlining an architecture to implement the new direction that called for the development of new launch vehicles, new modules, transfer spacecraft, and numerous robotic elements (including orbiters and landers for both the Moon and Mars – most of them extensions of existing hardware and designs).

President George W. Bush (2001-2009), following the release of the official investigation into the causes of the Columbia accident, announces the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) at NASA Headquarters in Washington in 2004.

Once again a committee was convened to examine the agency’s implementation of the new direction.  Another report was written and put on a shelf.  During numerous meetings and workshops spread over several years, an architecture emerged – accompanied by many charts (all electronic this time – technology marches on!). President Obama terminated the VSE in April, 2010 during a speech at the John F. Kennedy Space Center (“We choose NOT to go to the Moon!” – the historical resonances astound!).

What, if anything, is to be learned from these two sequences of events?  According to Mark Albrecht, Executive Secretary of the National Space Council in the Bush-41 White House, it means that the space agency is fundamentally broken – comprised of various constituencies that protect turf and resist implementing any new direction that may challenge or threaten their existence.  However, there is another possible reading of the situation.  The space agency was in a very different predicament during SEI than it was during the VSE.  In 1990, NASA had a clear but unfulfilled mission – Space Station Freedom, for which not a single element had yet been launched.  NASA’s anxiety at the time was uncertainty in being able to execute both Station and SEI simultaneously.  The oft-quoted 30-year, $600 billion cost of SEI, repeated by the media to denigrate the effort, included construction and operation of Station, which was to serve as both an orbital platform for missions beyond LEO and as a source of hardware (e.g., habitation modules) that could be adapted to trans-LEO missions.  Even so, most of the costing assumptions in the 90-Day Study were inflated beyond reason, presumably following in the footsteps of former NASA Administrator James Webb, who after reportedly being told that Apollo would cost about $20 billion, asked for more than $35 billion as a cushion.

In contrast, the VSE came along just as NASA was in the middle of ISS construction, with the program’s end clearly in sight.  There was no future plan for human spaceflight beyond Shuttle/ISS and the agency sorely needed some high-level direction.  The idea of Shuttle replacement came from the Columbia Accident Investigations Board report, which contended that the Shuttle system was inherently dangerous and that we ought to develop a new space transportation system as soon as possible.  In contrast to uninformed reporting and Internet mythology, President Bush did not “retire” the Shuttle – he ordered that it first be brought back to flight status (so that ISS construction could be completed) and then transitioned and replaced with new human spacecraft capable of journeys beyond LEO (which became the now-cancelled Project Constellation).  In contrast to SEI, the VSE came to NASA with price limits already in place – after a small incremental increase in the early years, it was to cost no more than we were then spending on human spaceflight (about $8 billion per year) with funding available from the gradual decline in spending on the Shuttle/Station program.  Finally, unlike SEI, which never had much Congressional support, NASA was given two Authorization bills (in 2005 and 2008) that strongly endorsed the VSE (many VSE goals, though ignored, remain in the current 2010 Authorization).

President Barack Obama (2009- ) joins Buzz Aldrin, Michael
Collins and Dr. Neil Armstrong at the White House to mark the
40th Anniversary of Apollo 11, July 20, 2009 [White House].

Although neither SEI nor the VSE succeeded in their principal objectives of sending people beyond low Earth orbit, they did manage to greatly advance our understanding of just what is at stake.  In the case of the former, a variety of people from the defense and civil space sectors worked together on SEI, creating networks that advanced an outbound agenda.  One accomplishment was the Clementine mission, a joint effort by the Department of Defense’s Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and NASA.  Flying in 1994, Clementine successfully mapped the entire Moon in eleven spectral bands, mapping its mineral composition in detail.  Clementine made the first global topographic map of that body and most significantly, found evidence for the presence of water ice in the dark areas near the south pole of the Moon.  The success of Clementine led to the Lunar Prospector mission, a robotic orbiter flown under NASA’s Discovery program, that both confirmed the excess hydrogen at the poles of the Moon and globally mapped the Moon’s chemical composition.

The intriguing results from Clementine and Lunar Prospector resulted in an international fleet of six spacecraft being sent to the Moon in the past decade, adding to our knowledge of the processes, history and potential utility of that body.  From this exploration, we now know that the Moon contains millions of tons of harvestable water.  We possess detailed maps of lunar physical and compositional properties.  In short, we now know that the Moon is habitable and is both an appropriate near-term destination for people and a unique enabling asset for future spaceflight within and beyond the Earth-Moon system.

Now, just as we find the Moon to be an attractive destination, we shrink away from the challenge, watching as others blaze trails we once traveled.  We willingly accept the pablum to not fret over new space powers who do not cancel their programs.  We are told they have not yet done all that we have and that we still carry the mantle of the world’s leading space power.  This is not logical. Similar thoughts once prevailed in Portugal, during an earlier age of exploration.  One doesn’t assume or retain the mantle of leadership by fiat or declaration – it must be earned and exercised.  Perhaps the real issue is not whether NASA is up to the task but rather, whether we as Americans are blind to the truth, unable to recognize that by having our nation withdraw from this arena, that we are retreating from our position, thereby ceding our prosperity, leadership and greatness to other nations who do have the will and the vision to press forward.

Originally published at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

"Everyone's gone to the Moon..."

A lunar base creates new capabilities [Pat Rawlings/SAIC].

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

Where does the Moon fit into plans for future human space exploration?  From reading the space media, you might get the idea that the very notion is dead and buried, killed by President Obama’s casual dismissal of the idea in a speech over two years ago at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, followed this year by Mitt Romney’s dismissive remarks on the Moon during the Republican primaries.

Nevertheless, many in the international community (and in the United States) are keeping the lunar flame alive for a variety of reasons, not the least among them being that it is understood that politicians aren’t rocket scientists – nor should we expect them to be.

The Global Exploration Conference (GLEX) held last month in Washington DC was remarkable for the fact that most of our international space partners are proceeding with plans for lunar return as though its abandonment had never occurred.  The Russians were particularly eager to express their desire to establish capability on the Moon at the meeting, while in recent months strong interest in permanent lunar return has been expressed by the Europeans, Canada, India, Japan and of course, China.  Moreover, unlike many within our own national space agency, the world sees the Moon not simply as a box to be checked-off on the way to Mars but as the enabling asset for space exploration.  As Vladimir Popovkin, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos put it, “It’s a new Moon,” pointing out that the recently confirmed discovery of water at the poles of the Moon enables sustainable, permanent habitation of that body and the creation of new capabilities for voyages to the planets.

Our international space partners believe that spaceflight beyond LEO should entail incremental steps that will gradually extend reach and capability.  Once such a paradigm is adopted, expensive designer missions to plant a flag or do a “touch-and-go” at an asteroid are seen as having limited value and making no economic sense.  On the other hand, the gradual expansion beyond LEO using nearby assets builds a permanent, lasting space faring capability.  The Moon fits into such a scheme by virtue of both its proximity and usefulness.  In the absence of some technical miracle, such as the discovery of new physics that fundamentally change the nature of spaceflight, we are wedded to rocket technology for the foreseeable future.  The rocket equation dictates that it will remain difficult and expensive to reach space and operate there.  Given such problems, some now recognize and conclude that the Moon offers provisioning capability and for this reason and many others, is a desirable destination and near-term goal.

Our pioneering (and current) model of space access requires launching everything from Earth’s surface, taking months to complete a mission, yet gathering minimal information (due to limited time in the vicinity of its designated target) and leaving no lasting or reusable infrastructure in space.  This template guarantees that human spaceflights will be infrequent, expensive and subject to abrupt cancellation due to political whims.   If one views the civil space program primarily as an annoying expenditure whose ambitions must be constrained by making a previously small portion of the program (such as “commercial” launch services) the raison d’être of the entire effort and deferring any real goals to an indefinite and nebulous future, our current path might seem completely reasonable.  However, it appears that the international community believes that space is a real theater of human endeavor and their goal is to make it part of their domain and utility – until recently, also a goal of the American space program.  Perhaps it still is.

Despite common perception, the Moon has not been officially abandoned as a goal for the United States space program.  The current NASA Authorization Act of 2010 lays out the goals and approaches to be followed by the agency in executing its mission.  The Findings by the Congress (section 301) outlines the rationale and goals of the space agency’s human exploration efforts.  As I have written previously, in the seven points dealing with future agency activities, cislunar space is mentioned in four and the lunar surface is called out twice as destinations.  Development of the ability to use the in situ resources of space to create infrastructure is specifically cited in Sec. 301a (4).  The entire section 301 is worth a careful reading.  It calls for a program that uses a gradual, incremental approach to the extension of human reach in space beyond LEO, specifically specifying both commercial and international participation.  There is nothing in the current law that is at odds with the plans and desires of the international community as expressed at the recent GLEX meeting.  The only place one reads about the Moon being abandoned as a national goal for America is in the press and such cases, it is always in the context of a single off-hand remark in one Presidential speech.

From the perspective of two years later, that off-hand remark sounds increasingly ill thought-out and hollow.  Given its context in the speech, the statement seems to derive from the idea that lunar return must perforce be a repeat of the Apollo experience of 30 years ago.  NASA itself has fed this idea, depicting the return to the Moon as the equivalent of a Gemini program within the Apollo-to-Mars fixation of many in the agency.  In their 2006 preliminary plans for lunar return, NASA started out properly by describing the development of an outpost at one of the poles of the Moon and emphasizing human presence and development, but over the next few years architectural studies increasingly drifted away from an outpost and towards the sortie concept, in which we would stage (entirely from Earth) and execute one-off missions to sites of scientific interest all over the Moon for visits of limited duration.  Such an exploration approach dissipates assets and thus increases costs and reduces surface capability and infrastructure.  It was this exploratory approach to lunar return that the Augustine committee evaluated and declared to be “unaffordable,” not the concept of building a centralized outpost that could support ISRU and space development (an approach that the committee did not even consider).

President Obama signed the NASA Authorization bill of 2010 – a bill crafted when his party controlled Congress – and the findings presented in that bill are now law.  So even though the agency and most of the media seem to be blissfully unaware of it, NASA has been charged by Congress to develop space systems capable of conducting missions to and throughout cislunar space, including to the lunar surface.  Our international partners agree with this intended direction, convinced that the Moon is the appropriate next destination for humans in space.

NASA’s reluctance to go in this direction, even while other nations are making plans, forfeits the opportunity for our international leadership in space.  Our space program has to demonstrate the feasibility of using lunar resources to secure us a place as participants and entrepreneurs in the vast economic future of space.

Originally published at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

Ares I not dead yet...

Ian O'Neill
AstroEngine

You may be forgiven for thinking that President Obama had decided on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight plans yesterday, but in an official (note: official) statement from the White House today, Obama says that he has made no such decision.

In a nutshell, NASA would get an additional $1 billion in funding and start work on a new (yet undetermined) heavy-lift launch system. Good news for NASA, but not-so-good news for the Ares I (and possibly Ares V, although the larger rocket wasn’t mentioned). Also, this magical silver bullet of a “new” launch vehicle would be ready for blast-off in 2018.

Read the Skinny, HERE.

Space Panel Finds No Good Options

Jefferson Morris
Aviation Week

Early results of cost analysis by the Augustine human spaceflight panel have found no good options for continuing human exploration of space within the constraints set by the Obama administration's fiscal 2010 budget plan for NASA.

"This budget is simply not friendly to exploration," panel member and former astronaut Sally Ride said during the group's final public meeting in Washington Aug. 12. "It's very difficult to find an exploration scenario that fits within this very restrictive budget guidance that we've been given."

Read the Full Article HERE.

Will President Obama keep or break space promise

John Kelly
The Flame Trench
Florida Today

A year ago this week, President Barack Obama came to Titusville.

Then, he was a candidate locked in a fierce battle for the White House. He needed Florida.

People packed the room at Brevard Community College. Many were space workers or people with ties to the industry.

They longed to hear him outline his plans for NASA. Until then, Obama's campaign had released conflicting policy statements, one cut NASA's budget by billions to fund education and the other boosted space spending and added one extra shuttle mission.

In light of coming decisions about NASA's future, it seems worthwhile to check back on exactly what the president said last August in Titusville.

Let me be clear," the president said, "we cannot cede our leadership in space. That's why I am going to close the gap, ensure that our space program doesn't suffer when the shuttle goes out of service."

His goal was "making sure that all of those who work in the space industry in Florida do not lose their jobs when the space shuttle is retired because we cannot afford to lose their expertise."

He promised a space program that would "help grow the economy right here in Brevard County and right here in Florida. That's what we're going to do."

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and legendary astronaut John Glenn, stumping for Obama, reached out to reporters. Aides pressed the media to keep noting Obama's commitment to "close the gap" and save space jobs in Florida.

My point: The promise was neither ambiguous nor subtle. The campaign wanted voters here to know Obama was good for space and good for space jobs.

Read the Editorial Comment HERE.

Bolden likely NASA administrator

Five months after reports in January, Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden (USMC Ret.) is likely to be appointed NASA administrator as early as Monday.

There's not much more to be added to THIS.

Griffin blasts Obama's plans for NASA

In an opinion piece by Mark Whittington of Associated Content former NASA administrator Mike Griffin blasts the Obama administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for quietly planning to transform NASA into a "Potemkin Space Program," Griffin said.

Griffin was appointed NASA Administrator by President Bush in 2005 and resigned in December. President Obama has yet to appoint Griffin's successor. He was recently appointed an eminent scholar and professor by the University of Alabama at Huntsville. The accusations were delivered during a speech to a National Space Club Dinner on Friday, April 17.

The term "Potemkin Village" refers to an artificial American town constructed in the former Soviet Union for the purpose of training agents to live underground in the United States during the Cold War.

Read the Article HERE.

Barack Obama's Quest for a NASA Administrator

Opinion/Editorial from Mark Whittington - who asks...

Is Obama Being Rolled by Bill Nelson?

President Barack Obama has been having problems staffing his government and has had a number of embarrassments of nominees who have had to withdraw for various reasons, some having to do with nonpayment of taxes.

No greater illustration of President Obama's continuing woes can be seen than his quest to find a new NASA administrator.

Engage in speculation HERE.

Why NASA's top job remains unfilled

Politicians, outside interests maneuver to influence choice

By STEWART M. POWELL

Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON — During the past few weeks, the names of three retired generals have floated around Washington and Houston as candidates for the top job at NASA.

Each time, though, aides to President Barack Obama failed to say whether they had selected the space agency’s administrator, and the guessing game continued.

Now, some supporters of the manned space program with ties to NASA say that one of the key reasons for the prolonged selection process is that powerful politicians and rival space contractors are maneuvering behind the scenes to influence the choice.

At stake is a multi-billion-dollar project to develop the Ares rocket for the space shuttle replacement.

NASA thought it had put the decision behind it to use the Ares to propel the Orion moonship into space when it selected a consortium of ATK Launch Systems Group, the Boeing Co. and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to develop the moonship. The space agency has spent $13.6 billion on the rocket so far.

But the United Launch Alliance — a joint venture forged by Lockheed Martin Corp. and the Boeing Co. — never accepted Griffin’s decision as final, says John Logsdon, space expert and Obama intimate.

The alliance favors the Atlas V or Delta IV rockets, which the Pentagon uses to launch military satellites. Lockheed’s Atlas V rocket is built in Littleton, Colorado; Boeing’s Delta IV is constructed in Decatur, Alabama.

“They see the choice of a new administrator as an opportunity,” said Logsdon, a former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University who served on the Columbia accident investigation board.

Read the story HERE.

Reporters, not in trance, given closer look at Constellation's Lunar Rover before Inauguration Parade

It didn't draw much of a crowd, not as much as the Guest of Honor certainly, at the festivities in Washington, January 20, for President Obama. CNN went to commercial when it finally came into view as they were covering the Inaugural Parade, where the crew of STS-118 made up the rear, coming up dead last. But for those reporters who heeded the call, and those lucky enough to have chosen the particular Starbucks behind it's sidewalk station in downtown N.W. Washington City, NASA entertained those interested in taking a look at the Lunar Electric Rover.

There was plenty of ink ahead of its appearance, and a little after, but engadget got pictures, inside and out, though the context, curbside in DC, made it about as impressive as a Chevy S-10, which was really an injustice. Or like some kind of street fair or museum exhibit, of future glory or possibly a forgotten vision of something that never got off the ground. Yes, "we can" decide the level of irony in this sideshow, from the beginning of the new administration and new president who has apparently not bothered to decide who will run NASA after Michael Griffin.

The burden of proof is on those who inexplicably believe the new administration heralds a new Age of Reason. NASA and Commercial Space exploration has, as a matter of history, had no better friend than the former president. Space Exploration as national policy has had its friends in the White House, famously Democrat John Kennedy, of course, and both before and after the Kennedy Administration, Lyndon Johnson.

Republican Richard Nixon and a Democrat-controlled Congress in 1971 grounded Apollos 18, 19 & 20, of course. No one planned the Gap that, aside from Apollo-Soyuz and the impromptu though admittedly useful Skylab missions, put all America's Space Eggs into the single Space Shuttle basket that was supposed to get off the ground in 1976. Columbia would launch with John Young at the helm in April 1981.

Time passes. History awaits, pen at the ready.

For more on NASA's Lunar Electric Rover, visit HERE.

NASA Invites Media to View Lunar Charior Rover at Inaugural Parade

Washington -- Reporters are invited to attend a briefing about the NASA Lunar Electric Rover concept vehicle that will be driven down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington as part of the presidential inaugural parade on Jan. 20. The rover is part of a new generation of prototype vehicles that NASA is evaluating for use when astronauts return to the moon in 2020.

The briefing will be held in the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E Street, SW, on Wednesday, Jan. 21, at 1:30 p.m. EST. After the briefing, NASA officials will escort participants to the vehicle and demonstrate some of the rover's capabilities for reporters.

About the size of a pickup truck, the rover can house two astronauts for as long as 14 days with sleeping and sanitary facilities. Among the rover's many unique features is a "crabbing" movement that enables it to drive its six pairs of wheels in any combination of forward and sideways motion to scramble over rough terrain. As an additional benefit, the vehicle is helping NASA develop new technologies that will be applicable to electric vehicles on Earth.

For a high-resolution photo and more information about the NASA lunar rover, visit: HERE.

Obama team considering new Space Race

Ed. Note: Jeff Foust of the essential Space Review, has skillfully disputed this story as a leap taken from unrelated facts, and then repeated, as it has been, all over the Net in the past few days. The incoming Obama Administration has been asking questions about EELVs and NASA's relationship with the Air Force, etc., but has not, as Bloomberg implies, set policy to this remarkable extent. Yet.

The first American in space was a Navy aviator flying on an Army Redstone medium range ballistic missile. The first American to orbit Earth was a Marine Corp aviator flying on an Air Force ICBM, but the first American to walk on the Moon was a civilian, his achievement combined glory for a U.S. Agency organized to put the most peaceful face possible on the Cold War battlefield for the high ground of space.

Aside from their payloads the only purely civilian manned-rated booster prior to the Space Shuttle was the legendary Saturn V. Mercury and Gemini orbiters flew on Atlas and Titan rockets, respectively, and their descendants are still carrying vehicles into space to this day. Almost the same combination of rocket designs, with the familiar names of Atlas and Centaur, that sent Surveyors and Lunar Orbiters to the Moon in 1967 are scheduled to send the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to the Moon in 2009. The mighty Saturn is history.

Now Bloomberg reports the Obama Administration will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China.

Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team.

The potential change comes as Pentagon concerns are rising over China’s space ambitions because of what is perceived as an eventual threat to U.S. defense satellites, the lofty battlefield eyes of the military.

Read more HERE.

Presidential Space Out

JCR Principal Investigator
Lunar Pioneer

Over at the Space Coalition, another report has been posted to show where the probable next U.S. president stands on space exploration, regarding federal spending in general and obligatory congratulations to NASA's on its 50th anniversary in particular.

In less than 100 days either Senator John McCain (R-AZ) or Senator Barack H. Obama (D-IL) will be president-elect of the United States.

Their positions will not decide which of the two will be elected, of course, but at least a hundred thousand among 140 million voters will cast ballots based these positions on America's steadfast commitment to manned space exploration. Both camps feel it is important enough for them to make their positions pretty clear. It wasn't always a priority in presidential politics.

Most reports posted in the blogosphere on McCain and Obama's respective visions for manned spaceflight have mostly been posted by younger Americans who, tending toward the fashionable and also the socially liberal, are loath to report Senator Obama's unconcealed hostility toward NASA and its present policy and seem equally unaware of the reason for the Illinois Senator's ambivalence toward NASA.

No effort better symbolizes "American Exceptionalism."

Senator McCain is presently an enthusiastic booster, though his statements reflect either an ignorance or indifference to certain details of NASA Space Exploration Policy, addressing as he or his Space Policy Guru does the supposed, impending Gap in NASA's logistic support for the International Space Station after Discovery and Atlantis are mothballed in 2010.

Neither nominee is thought likely to bring major changes to NASA or the immediate timetable of the Constellation program. After a divisive battle for the White House and Congress, it's unlikely either would expend precious First 100 Day political capital on making expensive quick changes in NASA's present commitments. The "Out Years," however, are a different story.

President Obama has made clear his belief that NASA no longer "inspires," and has said he would fund expanded social programs with a decade delay in manned lunar exploration, and increase international support, and his supporters in Congress hint at an increased reliance on "automation" in the design of the lunar South Pole-Aitken Station, scaling back permanent manned presence in favor of advances in virtualization. His overall statement ignores NASA's recent history since the Columbia disaster, however, as though the past seven years of near "sea change" in NASA's operations had never occurred.

Obama's statement on NASA seems better suited to 2000 than 2008.

President McCain's statement seems to show that its author is slightly shy of being fully-informed of NASA's full range of function, involving JPL and Aerospace as well as Outer Space, and some the fault for that belongs to the Agency. An increasingly atomized media has done a poor job also of reporting on SpaceX and the progress, even the existence, of NASA's funding for COTS.

Both candidates are in need of a full briefing on just what NASA is and does. Could either name four of NASA's operational centers? A reporter with nothing to lose could have a lot of fun asking some basic questions about the Apollo program, before being banned from the press plane.

Obama may have been just out of diapers when Dr. Armstrong stepped onto the Sea of Tranquillity in 1969. How much the first-term Illinois Senator could have been directly inspired by seeing this live on television past his bedtime is a mystery.

McCain, of course, was in a prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam at the time. Just when and where he first received the news of Apollo 11 would be interesting to know, whether or not he heard the news from his brutal captors and what effect, if any, that news might have had on his jailer and fellow POW's should be a part of our national historic record.

McCain obviously knows what Obama and most Americans do not, that NASA is a creature of Congress, and is associated with presidents in our thinking only because of John Kennedy's remarkable Man on the Moon challenge in front of Congress in 1961. The assassination in 1963 made the matching of his challenge, its incredible fulfillment in those daring manned moon missions later during the Nixon Administration as much a memorial to America's lingering emotional trauma for a murdered president as they were demoralizing to the Soviet Union.

Lyndon Johnson, again, through Congress, was easily the most influential figure in NASA's history. This week NASA remembered President Eisenhower's signing of the NASA charter in 1958, but, as Senate majority leader, Johnson created NASA, and it was to Johnson that Eisenhower deferred.

The statements from McCain and Obama reflect popular opinion about the future of our manned space program as it was six months ago. Since then Congress, controlled by Obama's Democrats, has answered with a billion more in funding than NASA requested, in the midst of the most bitter partisanship in Congress since 1860 iconic Washington liberals like Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) "worked the pork" for Greenbelt through Appropriations.

And NASA is deliberately spread through the United States because Johnson, in designing NASA in the Senate, tied long-term self-interests in influential States to what he had to know would have to become long-term policy in a short-term nation. As Vice President Johnson led the rarely mentioned National Space Council he had created, and only later, as President he accelerated funding for Gemini and Apollo at a breakneck pace; almost too fast, in retrospect.

Johnson's personal interest in launch schedules in NASA's formative years, added to the legendary power of presidents over space policy. (He died a month after Apollo 17.)

Congress and its half-dozen Representatives of districts where NASA's centers are, and the Senators who represent Florida, Texas, California, Maryland, Ohio, Alabama, etc., together have much more to say about American space policy and funding for NASA than even NASA does, let alone the man or woman who, for a brief time, occupies the White House.