Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Has NASA's Vision for Space Exploration Become Nearsighted?

Episode Date: February 13, 2006

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As the vision for space exploration become nearsighted, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. We will make the hard choices necessary to get our desires for the space agency to be consistent with our funding. That was NASA Administrator Mike Griffin at a press conference last week, summing up the challenge presented by the space agency's new budget proposal. It may have sounded like he was talking about a budget cut. Not exactly, but the devil is in the details. And those details have left many supporters of space science and robotic missions questioning NASA's priorities. We'll hear from Planetary Society Executive Director Lou Friedman and former Society President and Jet Propulsion Lab Director Bruce Murray.

Speaking of robotic missions, Emily Lakdawalla's Q&A will tell us if New Horizons, now headed for Pluto and beyond, is really the champion speedster of our solar system, and Bruce Betts wants you in his free online astronomy course, but you'll have to stay tuned for this week's What's Up segment to find out more. Spirit is safe at home. Home plate, that is. That's the name given to an interesting layered Martian plateau. There are some wonderful photos taken by the Mars rover in Emily's blog at planetary.org. While you're there, check out the images of far away and not so far away moons of Saturn taken by Cassini. There's an especially eerie one of Enceladus and the rings, but that's

just my opinion. I bet you thought Planetary Radio was the one place you could go to escape the Winter Olympics, right? Wrong. NASA has teamed up with some of America's top athletes in Turin, or is it Torino, to show how they'd shush and slide in a very different environment, the moon. The space agency has created a series of short TV features on the topic with the goal of exciting kids about space. And they may not be entirely full of hot air or cold vacuum. Apollo astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmidt said getting around on the moon reminded him of skiing.

Quoting Schmidt, I think downhill techniques would work very well on the moon reminded him of skiing. Quoting Schmidt, I think downhill techniques would work very well on the moon. You even have built-in moguls, the impact craters on the slopes. Lunar gravity would allow all kinds of jumps and hops that you might find difficult on Earth. You can check out the video clips at nasa.gov. Lunar luge, anyone? I'll be right back with more on the NASA budget. Here's Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked,

Will New Horizons go into true interstellar space? If it does, when will it be farther away than the Voyagers? After it flies by Pluto, nothing will stop New Horizons. It will go on to explore two or three objects in the Quaper Belt, and after its death, it will still be traveling at such speed that the gravity of the sun will not be sufficient to cause it to return. As a result, New Horizons will become the fifth spacecraft to travel into interstellar space. The other interstellar spacecraft are Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2. Many people have heard the fact reported that New Horizons was the fastest spacecraft ever launched, so it's widely assumed that it will pass by the Voyagers someday. In fact, it's unlikely that New Horizons will ever pass the Voyagers.

How can this be? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. NASA had good news and bad news when it announced its nearly $17 billion budget proposal last week. The good news was a small increase of either 1% or 3.2%, depending on whether you figured in last year's special funding of hurricane repairs. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin likes the latter figure and points to the bad fiscal news for many other federal agencies and initiatives. I would say that in a fiscal environment where domestic non-defense discretionary

spending is decreasing at one-half percent, that NASA's overall increase of 3.2 percent is very welcome, frankly. Fans of the space shuttle might also have taken heart in the plan to make up a $3 to $5 billion shortfall in the shuttle budget between now and 2010, when the space agency hopes to decommission the aging space transportation system. NASA wants to make just 17 more flights to complete the International Space Station. But those billions have to come from somewhere, and the somewhere is mostly space science and some of the most promising robotic missions that were being planned.

These areas would get a 1.8% increase this year and just 1% in each of the following two years. An increase, yes, but it still represents $2 billion less than was planned for space science and about $1.5 billion less for exploration. Griffin had just said last month that such cuts would be avoided in the new plan. The administrator was candid in his more recent remarks and spoke of the reductions as a temporary necessity. Science and exploration are each paying to help complete our pre-existing obligations to the space station and the space shuttle. And when those obligations are completed,

the other major pieces of our portfolio will be able to do better. Mary Cleave is NASA's Associate Administrator for Science. She said headquarters staff had worked hard to balance the load among many missions and projects. Our overarching principle was trying to develop an executable program that was balanced, rebalancing the Mars. We were using strategic goals as set by the National Academy to scale plans to help us prioritize. We were trying to keep a balance between small, medium, and large programs. Some programs that had definite programmatic challenges, like SOFIA, will be going into review as earlier we put DAWN into review because of programmatic issues, okay, because we have to

keep control of these programs. We can't let one program get out of control and hurt anybody else. So that was the biggest thing on our mind. The SOFIA project put a large telescope in a high-flying, heavily modified 747. The Dawn mission, already on hold, was planned to reach two big asteroids, Ceres and Vesta. Meanwhile, NASA's plans for the next generation crewed space vehicle, along with a so-called heavy lift launch vehicle, will move forward. Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems, Scott Horowitz, says the actual budget for development of components like the crew exploration vehicle will depend on the proposals received from the companies hoping to build them.

We have these, you know, we have a line there right now that protects the money that we're putting to commercial crew cargo. Right now, of course, you know, we had the announcement here in early January, and we're waiting for the responses here in early March. And based on what we get back from industry and those responses, we'll first of all lay out our milestone payments that we plan to make. But that budget line isn't going to change for now. When we see the proposals and see the progress they make, then we'll have to revisit, you know, what are we going to spend on commercial crew cargo? It depends on what they can deliver.

With the budget proposal now laid out, other groups are beginning to voice their opinions. The Planetary Society issued a press release expressing serious reservations about the cuts in space science and robotic exploration. I called up two of the Society's co-founders to get their thoughts. Executive Director Lou Friedman joined past Society President and Director of the Jet Propulsion Lab, Bruce Murray. Lou Friedman, let's start with you. Society President Wes Huntress said that NASA is essentially transferring funds

from a popular and highly productive program into one scheduled for termination. Does that summarize the position of the Society? Yes, I think it summarizes it very well. The administrator had to make a tough choice in feeling that the budget was not big enough to accommodate the increases in the shuttle that were estimated over the plan of a couple of years ago in the recovery after the Columbia accident. So the way they're going to provide that increase for the shuttle is to basically take all of the planned programs that were in the science area, many of them scheduled for growth, new missions, research and analysis,

and cut them back drastically. The administrator, of course, says that this actually represents an increase. It's a 1% increase over, I guess, the final budget for NASA, but he says now it's really 3.2% if you subtract the money that came in to take care of Katrina damage. if you subtract the money that came in to take care of Katrina damage. I guess he claims that the space science side of this, particularly for robotic exploration, is being held level, so he's able to say it's not being cut. Well, it is an increase for NASA overall, and that just shows one of the difficulties of claiming that they can afford to pay for the vision.

They never meant they should be affording to pay for the new vision for space exploration by cutting the productive parts of the program. Yes, space science has increased in the past, but look at the great results of the last 15 years. They've all been space science results. The Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars Exploration Rovers, Cassini-Huygens, Deep Impact, Stardust. These have been NASA's crowning achievements of the last 15 years. So to say that space science has grown completely ignores the fact that space science has been far more productive. What are the missions that are going to suffer the most if this budget passes as proposed? Well, the Europa mission, which Congress had directed NASA to start this next year,

is not in the budget at all. In fact, they canceled all work in developing it. Terrestrial Planet Finder, a mission that has been very high on everybody's list for the possibility of discovering terrestrial planets around other stars. They've stopped the development work on that. They've cut back the Mars program, including plans for a Mars sample return and preparations for future human exploration missions. Those are some of the most notable areas that have been cut.

Let me add that this is not the first time all this has happened, and that the basic tension over the decades of NASA's history is between short-term crises and long-term needs for investment. And this is the same situation. In this case, the things that are getting cut are those that build for a very rich future in order to solve near-term financial problems. And that's for an organization like NASA, which represents the future to the American public. It's one of the most future-oriented organizations in the whole U.S. government. The short-term view is a very bad thing.

That's Bruce Murray, of course, the former director of JPL and founder and past president of the Planetary Society. Bruce, you did run the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. What do these kinds of cuts in, well, basic research and robotic missions mean for JPL? Well, I don't know the details in this particular case, mercifully, I must say. Well, I don't know the details in this particular case, mercifully, I must say. But in general, there's both a direct effect in terms of lost jobs or restricted possibilities of pursuing things, and there's an equally significant one, which is morale.

Because when the cutting is not related to performance, in other words, if JPL had failed in some missions and NASA decided, okay, we're going to rebalance our efforts and JPL is cut, that's one thing. But JPL has been very successful. It is not related to performance. And so if you compare that to American business practice, it's a difficult thing for the employees to understand. Former JPL Director Bruce Murray putting the just-announced NASA budget in a historical perspective. We'll have more from Bruce and Planetary Society Executive Director Lou Friedman in just a minute. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars.

We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail. We didn't just build it. We attempted to put that first solar sail in orbit, and we're going to try again. You can read about all our exciting projects and get the latest space exploration news in depth at the Society's exciting and informative website, planetary.org.

You can also preview our full-color magazine, The Planetary Report. It's just one of our many member benefits. Want to learn more? Call us at 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. Last week, NASA announced its budget plans for the next three years.

We're talking about those plans with the Planetary Society's executive director, Lou Friedman, and former Jet Propulsion Lab Director, Bruce Murray. Here's Lou Friedman. Bruce, I think, made an excellent point about the investment in the short term versus or the lack of investment in the future being cut by short-term problems. I'd say it even goes further in this case. The shuttle was scheduled for retirement. That was the whole point of the redirection of the human spaceflight program. So the shuttle is basically not an investment in the short term. It's an investment in the past. We know

the shuttle is going to retire, and to be pouring more money into it now at the expense of these science programs is really backwards. Lou, what do you say to people who point to international commitments to completion of the International Space Station and say that that's one of the reasons the shuttle flights have to be a priority? Oh, we at the Planetary Society take international cooperation very seriously, and it's a valid concern. However, the real problem with the International Space Station

is that it's an international problem, and it demands an international solution. So I think we should declare a crisis that the shuttle can't get there. After all, the shuttle-only architecture of the space station was not just an American architecture. It was one that the Europeans and the Japanese bought into. And if... They would never do that again, I'm sure. Yes.

And what I think now is that we have to bring everybody together, declare a crisis, say we can't get there with the shuttle. There are other ways. We're going to be building a heavy-lift launch vehicle, which is shuttle-derived, and so we wait a few years more and complete the space station with that, that's just fine. There's no, a few years we've accepted those kind of gaps because of other reasons.

We certainly can accept it because it's a good plan to do. Right, and we've used the Russian proton system in the past when we had similar problems. It kind of irritates parts of the U.S. government and NASA to have to do that, but in fact it's a practical solution for many of these problems. So it seems that you're implying that politics enter into a budget decision like this, and I suppose that would be a rather obvious statement. Well, it's politics. It's always politics. Does it go to Texas? Does it go to Texas?

Does it go to California? I mean, there's always these substrate of competing interests. I think here the politics is those who would like to see the U.S. as a completely independent space entity, able to do what it wants without needing support from other countries. And although this was true in the early days when the other countries didn't have much capability, and we had most of it except for the Soviets, that's not true now. There's a lot of capability throughout the world.

And in fact, it is our policy, as well as a very wise thing, to look for opportunities to share this among other countries. And I think that's where we need to be looking now, more back in that direction. Lou Friedman, what are the next steps? Will a society be participating in an effort to try and change this budget plan? Well, I urge all the listeners to keep watching our website. We started this out as an Explore Europa campaign because we thought the budget was going to focus on

the cancellation of Europa. But the issue is much broader now. It's really a devastating cut all throughout the space science program. And we have several statements up on our website. You'll see more in the next week. There's an upcoming hearing to the House Science Committee in which we will present a statement, and that will be on our website. And we'll be asking our members to send in letters and to really participate in the process of trying to convince the Congress to overturn the proposed budget cuts and redirect that money back into space science and exploration. It was only a couple of years ago, though, of course, that President Bush stated the vision for space exploration that this country,

this administration was putting forward. Is it fair to say that, in a sense, you're arguing for a return to that vision? Right. I think that's a very good point, that, in fact, what we're asking and urging is that the administration get back to the vision that it proposed,

which wasn't a bad one. It had a lot of good things in it and was affordable and still is affordable. And that somehow, in all the distractions that accompany a national administration,

I think this one has gotten lost. Lou, any final comment? Well, I think that's true. We're in the ironic position of defending the administration's vision for space exploration from the administration, a shuttle-centric policy at a time when we know that the shuttle retirement is something that is on everybody's near-term plan. Remembering, especially in this, that the shuttle represents 1970s technology, and that every billion we invest in that, and most of it is just keeping it going, is basically an investment about 30 to 40 years in the past.

So that is, to me, the most disturbing part of it, is that we're not building the kind of thing we should be for our future. Gentlemen, we'll have to leave it at that for lack of time, but we will remind our listeners of your suggestion, Lou, that they check in on Progress at Planetary.org, the Planetary Society's website. And we will, in fairness, remind folks that Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society, where Lou Friedman has been executive director right from the beginning. Bruce Murray is professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology.

He's been there since 1960, past director of JPL during one of its most glorious periods of solar system exploration, and a co-founder, along with Lou and Carl Sagan, and past president of the Planetary Society. We're going to continue with more Planetary Radio, in particular, What's Up with Bruce Betts, right after this return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. If New Horizons was the fastest spacecraft ever launched, how is it that it will never surpass the Voyager's distance from the sun? It's because the Voyagers received more boosts after their launches than New Horizons will. New Horizons did leave Earth after launching faster than any other spacecraft to date, having launched

about 4% faster than the previous record holder, Ulysses. And New Horizons will receive one further burst of speed during its flyby of Jupiter in 2007. However, both Voyagers also received gravity assists from Jupiter, and because they both flew closer to Jupiter than New Horizons will, their gravity assists were larger. In addition, both Voyagers also received boosts from Saturn flybys and Voyager 2 went on to further flybys of Uranus and Neptune. The Uranus flyby sped it up, but the Neptune one actually slowed it down. New Horizons, on the other hand, gets only one more close flyby of Pluto

and Pluto's mass is so tiny that it will be unlikely to add enough speed to new horizons to allow it ever to overtake either of the voyagers got a question about the universe? send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org and now here's Matt with more

Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is here, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, to tell us what's up in the night sky and lots more. In fact, an opportunity to hear a lot more from Bruce Betts about what's up in the night sky. That's my little tease. That was my tease. Oh, it's a tease. Yeah, that's what that was.

So it should be a tease for later in the show? Later in the segment. Okay. All right. Good. Stay tuned. Stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen. In the meantime, let me tell you planets to look for.

We've got Mars high in the south just after sunset and then heading towards the west looking orangish as usual and still looking like a pretty bright star. We've got also in the evening sky Saturn, fabulous small telescope object that is up rising before sunset but up in the east after sunset. And then in the early evening, look in the east. It'll be high up. It's hanging out there below Pollux and Castor, the Gemini twin stars.

Looking kind of yellowish, groovy tunes. Up in the morning sky, we have Jupiter is just dominating things very high up in the sky in the pre-dawn. It's actually rising around midnight now. So if you're up late, you can pick it up in the east, looking like a really bright star. And Venus starting to show once again in the pre-dawn sky coming up in the low in the southeast right just before dawn. It's like clockwork.

I know. It's amazing. There seems to be some kind of pattern in these things. You know, I bet if you figured it out, there'd be rules for this kind of stuff. We'll work on that. It's true. You know, well, I'll save it for later.

Okay, so on to this week in space history. Tenth anniversary of the launch of NEAR, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission, later renamed Shoemaker-NEear after Gene Shoemaker, which went off and visited the asteroid Eros, eventually landing on it despite being an orbiter. That happened 10 years ago. On to... Random Space Fact! Okay, this time, I didn't realize it last week until after we had finished, but that was Tarzan.

You're good. Tarzan in space. Tarzan in space. Just keep doing it until you recognize it. All right. On to our random space fact. The mirror, mirrors, it's actually 36 of the Keck telescopes in Hawaii, 10 meters when you put all of them together. They are so smooth that if they were...

How smooth are they? Oh, very nicely done. They are so smooth that if they were a bowl of whipped cream... Wait, no, no. They are so smooth that if they were the size of the Earth, there would be no bumps that were bigger than 3 feet or about 1 meter high. Is that... Wow, that's great.

That's very smooth. That's really smooth. That's really smooth. Okay, on our trivia contest, we asked you last time around, what was the name of Hayabusa's failed lander? Hayabusa, successful in its studies of an asteroid,

had a little lander that was supposed to land and it didn't. Missed the asteroid. What was its name? How'd we do? A lot of people looked it up or remembered. Our winner for this time around, Mike Tate. He says it rhymes with like, like late, which I've been, like late man. No, Mike Tate. Mike Tate from Plano, Texas.

Micro-nano experimental robot vehicle for asteroid or Minerva. Yeah. So congratulations, Mike. You're going to be getting an Explorer's Guide to Mars poster. I love those. You helped create them. Jeez. I can say that.

They're terrible. All right. So I have a biased opinion. But they are really nice. They're very cool. Should we give another one away? Yeah. Yeah.

Why don't we? All right. Another Explorer's Guide to Mars poster. If you are randomly selected as one of the people who answers the following question correctly, how many flybys of Mercury did Mariner 10 have where it took data? So Mariner 10 flyby spacecraft of Mercury in the 1970s, how many flybys where it took data going past Mercury? Go to planetary.org slash radio to find out how to send us your entry and be eligible for that unbelievably incredible,

fabulous poster. The Explorer's Guide to Mars. Thank you very much. The deadline this time around is the 20th, the 20th of February at 2 p.m. Pacific time, Monday the 20th at 2 p.m. Pacific. The 20th of February at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Monday the 20th at 2 p.m. Pacific. Get your entry in to us. You will love your poster. Okay. All right. Follow up on the tease.

All right. Here's the tease. I am once again teaching an introduction to astronomy planetary science course that is available via the Internet. Ooh. That's so today. It's so today. I'm doing it with Cal State Dominguez Hills. And it's on Monday and Wednesday.

You can find out more information if you're interested in either enrolling or just watching for fun. You can go to planetary.org slash special, because they consider me special, slash Betts class, B-E-T-T-S class, and you will find out how to watch these over the Internet. If you're in Southern California, you can actually watch them in the L.A. area on various cable TV stations, which are also documented on the website. And we've just had a couple of classes so far, so you can still jump in. You can also watch them archived as well, which you'll find information on the website. And this was very popular the first time around, right? It was.

It was. It was also amazing, the geographical distribution kind of with this show. So we had people all over the world that were tuning in. Yeah. Might even get a trivia answer or two out of this if you listen closely. But I'm just guessing here. I don't know for sure. We've got to go.

All right. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about flying fish and how that works. Thank you, and good night. He's special. He's special. He's Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He's here every week with What's Up and online teaching astronomy. Join us next week for a progress report from Alan Stern,

the man most behind New Horizons, the first mission to Pluto. In the meantime, why not give us your thoughts about the new NASA budget, our coverage of it, or anything else that strikes your fancy. Write to Planetary Radio at planetary.org. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week, everyone. Thank you.