Will China beat us back to the Moon?
Published on Oct 5, 2007 at 8:47 pm.
4 Comments.
Filed under politics, space exploration.
I read a rather disappointing news report recently. In the AP story that I read, reportedly NASA’s chief administrator Mike Griffin said he believed that China would make it to the Moon before the United States makes it back. Given what I’ve seen in the last few years, I don’t doubt it.
Sputnik was a shock to us. When the Soviet Union managed to upstage the United States and put a satellite into orbit, it was a surprise to many. We finally managed to put something into orbit, but the Soviets managed to put a man into orbit long before we did. The Soviets even managed to send the first unmanned spacecraft past the Moon. These continued defeats and blows to our national pride galvanized the American people, and more importantly the United States government, to do what it takes to send Men to the Moon before the Soviet Union. We almost failed on that one, too. Were it not for a disastrous failure to a massive N-1 Moon rocket, the Soviet Union would have possibly made an orbit of the Moon before the United States. We’d likely have still landed first, but that would have seemed a lesser prize. Though I feel that the effort was worth it, and that there has been a fantastic return on our investment in the Apollo program in terms of both science learned and technological spinoffs, I have no illusions about why we went to the Moon. President Kennedy established a goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth not to further the goals of scientific investigation, nor to explore a new frontier, but rather to beat the Russians at something. It was a national pride matter. We believed that we had the best scientists and the best technology. Yet, the Soviets had done something that we hadn’t. So, we had to show them up.
But, after Apollo, interest in space exploration waned in both the government and in the American people’s minds. Now, that doesn’t mean that people are not interested. If you look at popular news stories about science, astronomy and space exploration topics are covered far in excess to their actual proportions of science news happenings. The public is fascinated with the images returned by the Hubble Telescope or the Mars rovers. The Deep Impact mission garnered an enormous amount of public attention. But, NASA receives a fraction of the funding that it did in the Apollo days (adjusted for inflation and as a percentage of the federal budget).
Furthermore, NASA has sometimes seemed to lack direction and focus. Sure, there have been a series of extremely successful and popular unmanned missions. But, manned spaceflight at NASA has seemed to lack direction. From NASA’s beginning, a major agency goal was to catch up and pass the Russians in space accomplishments. President Kennedy’s goal of sending men to the Moon set a target for NASA. But, after reaching the Moon, there was no clear institutional goal. Sure, people at NASA had goals. It seemed clear to them all that they would continue making progress at the rate that they had been doing. Apollo was a first step towards the Moon. It would be followed within a few years by an even more ambitious program of establishing a permanent base on the Moon. Vast orbiting space stations would be built. A manned mission to Mars was in the near future. And, there would be a space shuttle system making spaceflight routine. But, none of that happened. There is no moonbase, and the International Space Station is just a shadow of the space station NASA was envisioning in the early 1970s that we’d have by now.
Now, let me make it clear that I don’t think that NASA has been just sitting doing nothing. There have been phenomenal unmanned missions. The Martian rovers are a marvel. The Hubble Space Telescope, Deep Impact, Stardust, Cassini, Galileo, Magellan, etc. have been well worth the effort and have returned far more science data than we ever imagined at first. But, manned spaceflight has languished. The Space Shuttle was initially used for a variety of missions, until the Challenger accident. Following that accident, President Reagan implemented recommendations that restricted shuttle missions primarily to those that could not be done with unmanned rockets. The Shuttle program became a shadow of what it had been dreamed of being.
Nearly four years ago, President Bush announced a new vision for space exploration at NASA. Among the goals set forth was a return of manned flights to the Moon, and plans for an eventual mission to Mars. This was styled to sound like President Kennedy’s goal of sending men to the Moon. However, it was much smaller in scope and with a much longer time frame. It did not pump additional resources into NASA. The new vision for space exploration did not have the urgency of Kennedy’s Moon plans. NASA is hobbled by lack of funding for the new vision. They are doing what they can, but there is only so much that they can do. Furthermore, over the decades, they have become a typical government agency, bogged down in red tape and bureaucratic mentalities. It is not clear that NASA can orchestrate a return to the Moon without someone lighting a fire under them.
Now, other nations are talking about sending spacecraft to the Moon, and even landing there. Italy, ESA, India, China, and Japan have all turned their sights on the Moon. But, these agencies all seem to be more driven than NASA to accomplish their tasks, and they are better funded proportionately. So, they will give us a run for the money, unless NASA gets a major infusion of funds and support.
Now, NASA’s top administrator is saying that he doubts that we’ll be able to return to the Moon before other nations get there. Huh? We have a head start! We’ve got the technological ability and we already have a well established space program. We already have a trained astronaut corps. We already have the mechanisms in place to mount a Moon program. Granted, we don’t have the hardware, and we can not simply use the hardware from the 1960s that got us there the first time, but we have the ability to beat these others to developing and implementing the hardware. We have a good track record. So, how can he say that China will beat us to the Moon? Well, this is simply a statement that we don’t have the direction, funding, or government support to do the job as quickly as we did before. We already are partway there, but we don’t have the government support to keep going. Yes, we have a head start, but we are moving very slowly.
So, it is really disappointing to think that we have fallen so that we can’t keep up with other nations. And, how do you think that the folks at NASA feel? What are they thinking after hearing their top man say that he doesn’t think that they can get the job done as quickly as the competitors? Talk about demoralizing!
Now, Griffin might be planning on taking this back to Congress to say, “See, we really need your support or we won’t be able to do the best job that we can. We need money in order for us not to fall behind the rest of the world.” But, this doesn’t seem to be the best choice of words that he could have had. Honestly, I think that if we tried, we could beat everyone else in getting to the Moon. But, Griffin may be right, because it doesn’t look like we have the backing from the government to do that. So, perhaps the American people will take the hint and vote people into office who will support science and space exploration. Maybe. But, I doubt it. I suppose that I am becoming a bit jaded here. But, I see us languishing like this until we actually do get beat. Then, the public will wake up and realize too late that we have fallen behind. At least, I hope that they realize that …
-Astroprof
India » Blog Archives » Will China beat us back to the Moon? on October 7, 2007 at 3:53 am: 1
[…] Will China beat us back to the Moon? sending spacecraft to the Moon, and even landing there. Italy, ESA, India, China, and Japan have all […]
Space Cynic on October 11, 2007 at 6:20 am: 2
Three comments, Astroprof:
1) Great blog! Glad I found it
2) They were the Soviets, not the “Russians”, back then
3) Why does it matter if the Chinese get to the Moon before we return? They can’t claim “first” because we’ve already done that. More importantly, what are they going to win if they get there? They can’t claim the Moon, anything we’d “discover” there will still be there, and since they are building an architecture (as we are as well, at least on paper) that is still extremely wasteful and non-reusable, it’s not like they’ll have a permanent base on the moon from which to, um, do something….
Regards,
The Space Cynic
Ronald on October 24, 2007 at 4:23 pm: 3
I’ll just be happy if anyone gets there. It’s an achievement of which all mankind can be proud. It doesn’t have to be a competition, though competition is good source of motivation.
Nice blog!
Moonie on August 31, 2008 at 10:38 am: 4
What if the chinese we to get to the moon and found that we (US) were never there in the first place? (moon hoax)