Final frontier

The ISS has been orbiting for years, and we need to keep it flying beyond 2024.

Fifteen years ago, the first day of February started out like any other quiet Saturday morning.

All around the Houston area, people picked up the newspapers on their front lawns, kids watched cartoons on television and their parents sipped their morning cups of coffee. Space shuttle flights had become so common most folks didn’t know that seven astronauts were flying home after 16 days in orbit.

So it was a shock when Columbia disintegrated during its re-entry into the atmosphere. Just a few days after the 17th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, the nation lost another crew of seven space explorers. Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Michael Anderson, Ilan Roman, Kalpana Chalwa, David Brown and Laurel Clark died on the final flight of America’s first space shuttle.

On the anniversary of that tragedy, it’s appropriate we remember Columbia’s fallen crew members. At the same time, we suspect they would also ask us to pause and seriously consider the future of the nation’s space program.

Lawmakers and policy experts in Washington are now debating a proposal to abandon the International Space Station in 2024. The White House isn’t releasing details until next month, but there are reports that the Trump administration has drafted a proposed budget that would end support for the ISS. Some serious questions have been raised by legitimate critics, who point out that maintaining the ISS will become more expensive and complicated the longer it stays in orbit. But scuttling the space station after just six more years of service would waste decades of work and investment in a unique international resource.

During the last 25 years, the United States has spent about $87 billion building and operating the ISS. Congress has authorized extending the space station’s operations until 2024. That’s projected to cost NASA between $3 billion and $4 billion a year. Space agency officials from the United States, Russia and other international partners have floated the idea of keeping the ISS flying through 2028.

Vice President Mike Pence has announced that the Trump administration plans to return astronauts to the moon, using it as a foundation for a mission to Mars. Abandoning the space station may be part of juggling the budget for that plan, but there’s serious doubt whether the moon and Mars missions will ever become a reality. NASA’s marching orders seem to change every time a new president moves into the White House. History has given every reason to suspect the next president will scuttle Trump’s ambitious agenda, leaving the nation with no space station, no moon mission and nothing to show after decades of investment in manned space exploration but photographs and footprints.

Scuttling the space station would not only be a serious blow to the fledgling private space industry — which relies on contracting opportunities with NASA — it would also essentially abandon lowearth orbit operations to other nations. The Chinese space agency plans to establish its own space station in 2023. With due respect for Beijing’s ambitions, the United States should not cede the high ground of space to the Chinese.

On a memorable morning in 1986, President Ronald Reagan delivered to grieving employees of the Johnson Space Center an unforgettable eulogy to the fallen crew of the space shuttle Challenger. In his tribute to the lost astronauts, he vowed “we will build your space station.” The construction project in orbit began a dozen years later.

Now the shuttle program has been scrapped and the space station’s future is up in the air. It’s as though America built the transcontinental railroad, sent trains to the frontier for a few years, then tore up the tracks.

The space station can’t fly forever, but grounding it after just six more years in orbit would be a waste. Our congressional delegation needs to make sure the ISS keeps flying.

The Chinese space agency plans to establish its own space station in 2023. With due respect for Beijing’s ambitions, the United States should not cede the high ground of space to the Chinese.