How Important is It?

The Altair Lunar Lander, proposed by NASA

I’ve been swapping a lot of email with a colleague lately about the future of space exploration. He and his minions are working on a project that explores humanity’s future, not just in space, but in science research in general. One of the core “nubs” of our conversations have been about what it takes today to get people excited about the ideas and technologies needed for space exploration.

The political environment today is very mixed and muddled about space exploration. For example, at least one candidate for U.S. president, Barack Obama, has called for a postponement of some NASA programs (notably the Constellation program) and the money saved to be put into education. Of course, the obvious fact is that we (as a country) are pouring a lot of money into education already. So, I have to ask, how will the little dab (comparatively) of money that is taken from NASA benefit the behemoth that is U.S. education, especially if ALL that other money didn’t do the job? If we really want to pour some money into education, well, there’s a whole big military budget that could use a little trimming…

Now, I’m NOT anti-education, so don’t go there. But, if we’re going to go to space in the future (and this is something that the U.S. as a country HAS pursued for these many years, then we need to have educated workers. No doubt about it. But, it’s not smart to take away the projects that will provide the jobs that we’re educating the kids for… I think that is pretty obvious.

Well, we COULD do what Senator Obama wants to do, although I doubt we should. Reality will set in for the senator, pretty fast. But, the bigger issue here is, how do we excite people about the future in space? Particularly when things here on the ground are SO unsettled?

Is it going to take another space race? The U.S. isn’t the only player in town when it comes to off-Earth research and development (and future plans for such). Plenty of other countries are interested in and working toward some sort of space-based presence for humans. Is this the future? Will seeing a group of Chinese/Japanese/Russian/French/you name the country entrepreneurs building a hotel on the Moon be enough to spark the planet’s will to put differences aside and go to space?? What is it about space that will excite the next generation to want to live there, travel there, study the other planets?

These are questions we continue to mull…