space.com Press Release
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Nurturing public understanding and support for space research and development is critical for the space industry in the next millennium, Alan Ladwig told the National Space Club's 12th Annual Wernher von Braun Memorial Dinner Thursday night.
"It's an appropriate moment to start being positive about our collective future and pull together," Ladwig said.
The dinner was held in honor of the seminal work by rocket pioneer and leader, Wernher von Braun, bringing together some 600 top leaders in NASA, aerospace industries, the military, and academia. It was the late von Braun who masterminded America's early entry into space, and provided the technical know-how to reach for the moon. Huntsville, Ala. was the home of von Braun's famed rocket team.
The evening event was held in conjunction with the first annual Space Transportation Day, "Creating a Highway to Space," sponsored the previous day by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. For the first time, NASA unveiled its Integrated Space Transportation Plan, an orchestrated blueprint for building safer, more affordable, more reliable space transportation -- from today to 2040.
There needs to be "less pining for Apollo" and more celebration for the wide panorama of achievements that are part of the contemporary space program, Ladwig said.
One clear step toward placing space into the national discourse is public engagement. One successful example is that there were over a billion Internet hits in the July 1997 Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner Rover exploration of the Red Planet.
Ladwig told the dinner audience that von Braun understood the value in building alliances with the public to gain support for his vision. "Wernher von Braun had a full appreciation for the magnitude of the commitment and expense he felt would be necessary from the public," he said.
"Yet, von Braun felt the expense was justified, and felt it was the obligation of those doing the planning to justify the cost to the public," Ladwig added. "As an engineer, he had a remarkable instinct for the convergence of science, education, psychology, economics, and the political factors that determined the national agenda," he said.
Ladwig underscored the recent NASA budget battles on Capitol Hill. That brutal budget exercise began by chopping one billion dollars from President Clinton's fiscal year 2000 budget request for NASA. In the end, however, the space agency's budget was restored, with Congress adding an extra $75 million.
"But was it necessary to put the NASA team through such a traumatic experience? Did anyone believe that reducing NASA's budget by more than 10 percent was good policy or good government?" Ladwig asked. Sensing that breakthroughs in space are near at hand, "the turn-around on NASA's budget request is an encouraging sign," he said.
To sustain and increase space spending, those that value the space program must become more politically active, Ladwig said. "They need to let their elected representatives know that NASA is not cutable," he said.
Borrowing the icon slogan from the hit movie, Jerry Maquire, Ladwig stirred the audience into a unified shout that he said Congress needs to hear: "Show me the money!"
"That line is appropriate... because it's the only thing holding up the full implementation of the Integrated Space Transportation Plan," Ladwig said.
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