40 Years Hence and Still Important

Tennis shoes, home insulation, water filtration devices, metallic alloys, velcro, GPS, the microchip, and firefighter jackets are just a few of the things that have resulted or improved as a consequence of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. While the climax of these programs occurred 40 years ago today with Apollo 11, the buildup was decades in the making, first with unmanned rocket testing beginning in the 1930s and manned missions in 1961. Given the direct benefits listed and the others I couldn't think of, most anyone can conclude that the $170 billion (in 2009 dollars) combined for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were well spent.

In addition to the societal improvement as a consequence of these missions, there was a personal pride in the country for accomplishing something so grand in such a short amount of time. Manned missions are still being conducted today to the International Space Station via the space shuttle, and improvements to life on Earth continue to be developed as a consequence of experimentation and innovation from these missions.

Unfortunately, the NASA budget hovers between $17 and 18 billion, or approximately 0.55% of the federal budget, for each of the next three years. For some reason, most American people do not believe that space flight is something that requires significant monetary investment. Political pressure to do things faster, cheaper, and better, coupled in some instances with general societal disconnect with manned missions to space, have contributed to nearly every blunder and accident in the history of the space program.

The most obvious consequence of political pressure and societal disconnect is the design of the space shuttle. Putting wings on a spacecraft and forcing it to land instead of splashdown is one of the most costly mistakes that NASA has made. Being pressured to create a system that could be largely reused the engineers sacrificed safety for tactfulness, mostly by introducing a significant amount of complexity. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that if more things can go wrong, there is a better chance that something will go wrong, and apparently a rocket scientist isn't the person to convince a politician of that fact.

Because of this re-design, another re-design is currently under way to go back to the rocket concept. And as result, the world is about 50 years off from mastering the technology to send a man to Mars, which is about what it was when the Apollo program was canceled prematurely as a consequence of societal disinterest. Few people seem to realize that things like establishing a lunar base and having a person walk on the surface of Mars has significance far greater than historical. The technology needed to do these things does not exist, which means that it's going to have to be invented. Rarely does an invention have only one use, and rarely does an invention happen without trial and error. Both of these realizations mean that the future of manned spaceflight has the potential to offer plenty of new products that directly benefit mankind.

Today is as good a day as any to get excited about manned spaceflight. Just reflect on how your life would be different without the things listed at the beginning of this post, and think about what giant leaps in design and efficiency of products lie ahead. Then, once you're excited, petition your Congressman to work to increase NASA's budget; $18 billion dollars a year is inadequate. Considering the federal government has promised auto makers and suppliers more than double that in loans this past year, an industry that does little to improve the world, offering money to something that improves many areas of our life seems like a no-brainer to me. Luckily, Capitol Hill should have no problems doing something that requires no brains.