BUILD ON LESSONS OF SPACE RACE
50 years after the moon landing is no time to relaunch a go-it-alone space race
We should remember the lessons of the space race and embrace international cooperation to explore the universe.
It was a warm Sunday night in July with less than an hour to closing, but customers continued to come. Why weren’t they home watching the most spectacular event of the century?
The Eagle was on the moon. Two men were about to step onto the lunar surface. It was to be broadcast live on TV.
It was then that my mother shooed a 15-year-old me and the other teenagers working at the family Dairy Queen to the tiny back room, where we huddled around an equally tiny black and white TV brought in for just this event. You must watch this, it’s about your future, she told us. She would wait on the oblivious customers.
I was enthralled and, like millions who watched on the night of July 20, 1969, believed that if our country could get to the moon, we could do anything. In my teenage naiveté it was akin to believing we had “saved the world.”
Neither my mother nor I, of
course, knew that about 13 years later I’d begin a decade or so of writing about military space endeavors and often civilian ones as the overlap between the programs was – and remains — huge. In 1989, I was the primary author of a special newspaper section for the 20th anniversary of the moon landing with the theme “Is America Adrift in Space?”
We could ask the same question today, as our space exploration game plan is a bit unfocused and spending has fallen far below that of the Apollo program era.
The United States won the space race against the Soviet Union by being first to land a man on the moon. Over 3 K years, 12 men from the United States spent about 80 hours on the moon and brought home rocks, dust and data. They left behind six U.S. flags, mementos, lunar rovers, trash and equipment for about a dozen experiments.
But talk of a lunar colony and manned missions to Mars evaporated with NASA budget cuts. While most citizens embraced the idea of forging into the space frontier, the cost and risk of such adventure raised issues and the political winds for NASA’S priorities and funding changed often.
The United States, however, did not want to squander its lead, and sought a cheaper reusable transport system to get people, satellites and experiments into space.
The Space Transportation System, known as the shuttle, flew 135 missions over 30 years, supplying the International Space Station and delivering satellites into orbit. It was not cheaper and after tragic accidents in 1986 and 2003 that killed 14 astronauts the program was eventually ended to avoid pouring more money into the outdated technology. The last mission flew in 2011 and the three remaining shuttles and the prototype (which never flew in space) are now on display at different locations.
Certainly, in the 50 years since the first moon landing there have been impressive science discoveries and a move toward international collaboration, forced in part by the enormous expense of space exploration. Indeed, since the shuttle was mothballed, U.S. astronauts have flown into space aboard Russian Soyuz capsules for about $81 million per ride.
Work is underway on a new U.S. launch vehicle for manned flight, and since NASA confirmed in August 2018 the presence of water ice at the moon poles there is renewed interest in returning to the moon. President Trump wants a moon landing — as a step to reaching Mars — by 2024.
NASA has dubbed the project Artemis.
“Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the Moon in Greek mythology,” the space agency says on the program website. “Now, she personifies our path to the Moon as the name of NASA’S program to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024, including the first woman and the next man. When they land, our American astronauts will step foot where no human has ever been before: the Moon’s South Pole.”
NASA says it will return to the moon with commercial and international partners.
Other countries are interested so there’s plenty of room for collaboration and that should be pursued to the extent possible. In May, Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced an agreement to work together on space exploration.
Joint projects simply make sense.
For years during the Cold War the United States and Soviet Union spent billions pursuing similar spacecraft and missions — lunar probes and orbiters, lunar landers, rockets, reusable shuttles and so on. If they had joined forces, all Earthlings might have benefitted because together we could have done more science, more exploration. We might have reached Mars by now.
When I visited the Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow a few years ago, I was overwhelmed, if saddened, by the duplicate programs. If only we had worked together.
Russia, China, India, Japan and the European Space Agency all have sent probes to the moon — a Soviet probe launched in 1976 and an Indian probe launched in 2008 discovered the presence of water. Russia, China and the United States have landed spacecraft on the moon.
Politically and militarily the United States may see space as another conquest — a place to own and control. We have not — so far — run into any extraterrestrial life from which to steal land, so it’s merely the other space-faring nations that some might be wary of now. They, likewise, may be wary of allowing the United States unfettered supremacy in space.
With potential resources on the line — water ice that potentially could be broken down into oxygen for supporting human life and hydrogen for fuel — the idea of a lunar way station for a Mars mission does not seem farfetched. Neither does a military base, although that was prohibited by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty signed by 105 countries.
The treaty, designed to prevent the colonization of space, also prohibits weapons of mass destruction in space.
It became the basis for international space law and proclaims that no celestial body should be “claimed” — the universe and the benefits derived from exploration should be available to all nations.
Noble words that should make international collaboration a given.
In 2011, however, Congress expressly prohibited joint ventures with China, which in January landed an unmanned spacecraft with a rover on the far side of the moon, the first to do so.
India is poised to land a rover on the moon’s south pole, although the launch was scrubbed early last week “] because of technical problems. A private Israeli lander crashed on the moon in April.
Space could be a platform that continues to encourage international cooperation, as has been the case with the International Space Station. But in a world fraught with military and economic tensions it’s easy to see how we could end up in another expensive space race.
So while we may cheer space exploration, which has been a boon to the Colorado economy, we must be thoughtful and cautious about what the technology and discoveries provide us in term of power and military advantages. We should not forget past lessons of how our rush to tame, dominate and reap the riches of a frontier brought heartbreak and destruction.
We should hold our government accountable to the Outer Space Treaty and urge the full extent of international cooperation to explore the cosmos.
This is no time for wide-eyed wonder and naiveté.