The Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee has now, after nearly five months of intensive work, delivered its final report to the Obama administration, Congress, and the American people. The 155-page report provides our country with options for the future of human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit. I served as a member of the committee, and am especially proud of the report for several reasons.
First, the report makes clear that the key choice facing us is one of goals, not destinations. Too often the debate over human spaceflight becomes an argument over destination: Should we go back to the moon? Mars? But this risks choosing a destination first, then searching for reasons to justify that choice. At least in part, that is what went wrong with the International Space Station, a destination in low-Earth orbit that is still searching to explain its purpose.
Instead, we need to decide on our goals for human spaceflight, and have the destinations flow from these goals. The committee concluded that human spaceflight serves a variety of national interests, but sending humans beyond low-Earth orbit has as its fundamental goal charting a path for human expansion into the solar system. This is ambitious, but if this is not our goal, we should restrict ourselves to destinations in low-Earth orbit. Human expansion into the solar system is a goal worthy of a great nation working in concert with other space powers.
Second, the report insists on scientific integrity. Too often, human spaceflight has been justified with exaggerated claims about its scientific payoff. Exploration with astronauts can have significant scientific benefits in several areas beyond the tautological justification of studying what happens to humans in space. As was emphasized by scientists’ testimony to the committee, astronauts have a tremendous advantage over robot spacecraft when it comes to field geology. Simply being able to pick up a rock, turn it over, expose a fresh surface with a hammer and then use geological expertise to decide whether to move on to another rock is a human capability that blows away what robot rovers can do. Similarly, the ability to service and repair space observatories that face unanticipated problems favors the astronaut over the robot.
But astronauts are also far more expensive than robot explorers, and have their greatest advantage in the most complex environments and circumstances. Mars is the most complicated surface environment we will face, so it is where astronauts will provide the greatest advantage. But it will be decades before humans walk on that world, and for most other science in space, humans only get in the way. Worse, if NASA’s space science budget is not protected, it can be raided to fund cost overruns in the human program. NASA’s budget for science missions dropped by 30 percent in the six years prior to 2007. Human spaceflight needs to be aligned with national priorities. Cutting key space-based research, especially Earth climate observations, instead puts human spaceflight into opposition with those priorities.
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