COLORADO
SPRINGS, Colo. - The U.S. civil space exploration program is a matter of
national strategy. But the country's space policy -- of returning to the Moon,
trekking onward to Mars and beyond -- needs to fly high above partisan
bickering.
NASA
Administrator, Michael
Griffin, spoke here today at the 23rd National Space Symposium staged by
the Space Foundation.
Griffin
said that NASA is a nearly unique government agency in the sense that it enjoys
enormous name recognition and immensely positive public approval...a level of
popularity that manifests itself in terms of "brand loyalty."
Nevertheless,
Griffin continued, the same people who resoundingly approve of NASA are not
sure why, or at least cannot express it clearly.
"But
when those being questioned are informed of even some of the more prosaic
contributions of the space program to their daily lives -- things like
the development of integrated circuits, medical monitoring equipment for
hospital patients, navigation and weather satellites, materials used in joint
replacement surgery -- their approval shoots up into the 90 percent range,"
Griffin said.
Touchy-feely feelings
Griffin
suggested that a number of touchy-feely feelings resonate with the public. For
one, NASA involves the deep satisfaction of overcoming extremely demanding
technical challenges. "And, yes, feeling for NASA invokes the concrete benefits
we obtain for our entire society when we tackle, and learn to overcome, those
challenges," he said.
Harkening
back to the Apollo
era, the public rebound of thinking "if we can do this, we can do anything"
was a spinoff sentiment that speaks volumes.
"I
believe this thought provides more of a justification for our space program
than any rational, dollars-and-cents explanation I can ever hope to provide as
to what NASA represents to the American public and those of us in the space
business," Griffin said.
However,
Griffin posed the questions: "Are America's best days behind us? Will our
future be dimmer than our past?" Human spaceflight is a strategic capability
for a nation, he emphasized.
Strategic choice
Griffin
spotlighted the fact that today is the 46th anniversary of humankind's
first foray into Earth orbit - the pioneering sojourn of Russian, Yuri
Gagarin, in his Vostok 1 spacecraft on April 12, 1961.
Human
spaceflight has been accomplished only by the United States, Russia, and most
recently China, Griffin said.
"India
has announced its intention to develop such capabilities. Having visited several
space facilities in China and India this past year, and meeting their
aerospace engineers, I must say that I am very impressed by the methodical,
disciplined approach both countries have taken in developing their space
industrial base and capabilities. The national economies of these countries
exceed in scale the economy of the United States as it existed in the early
1960s," Griffin said.
The
NASA chief added that both Europe and Japan also have the economic and
technical wherewithal to carry out their own human spaceflight program. "It is
again simply a matter of making the strategic choice to do it."
Tasks ahead
Be
it human spaceflight, output from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as human
telepresence via the Spirit and
Opportunity rovers working away on Mars - these activities demonstrate the
strategic impact of the civil space program
Restating
the slogan, "If we can do this, we can do anything," Griffin also added: "We
could also do nothing. It is a fairly simple choice, really. We
could choose to do great things, we could simply sit back and watch, or we
could choose to mock those who dare even to try."
"What
we really need is to focus on the tasks ahead of us and the pace of the work to
be done, rather than fomenting discord and putting space policy in partisan,
political terms," Griffin said.
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