There’s a story at the LA Times. Not much new, but I thought that this was worth a comment:

Logsdon said he believed the skepticism about Obama’s support for manned flight was “misguided” from the first. The comment about taking money from NASA was made by a junior campaign aide, he said.

I’m disappointed in Professor Logsdon. His own comment is more than “misguided.” It’s disingenuous, and in fact false, though I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume that he’s unfamiliar with what actually happened, and was told this by someone else (though he should be following it closely, being a premier expert on space policy and all…).

It wasn’t merely a “comment” from a “junior campaign aide.” He says this as though it was just an aside on background. No. It was the official position in a white paper at the campaign web site. Jeff Foust described the history of the Obama space-policy shifts, and their ongoing nebulosity, back in August.

If Senator Obama didn’t pay any attention to it at the time (we know how much trouble he has getting good help) and he’s since reversed it (and he seems to have) that’s great, but I see no point in whitewashing the history of what happened. It was an area of legitimate concern for space (or at least NASA) enthusiasts at the time, and it does provide legitimate cause to question how deep his enthusiasm is now. His supporters might claim that he had a road-to-Damascus moment, and now talks about how excited he was by Apollo growing up in Hawaii, but he was talking about that prior to the “funding education by delaying Constellation” time period as well.

I remain an agnostic on the degree of support of this president for either space, or NASA. Only the future will tell.

Frank Sietzen says that we should remember them as well on Memorial Day.

I agree — in their own way, particularly in the sixties, they were on the front lines of the Cold War. Even if you don’t believe that Apollo and subsequent events (such as ASTP) really helped to bring down the Soviet Union, the people supporting it believed that it was vital at the time, and on Memorial Day, we commemorate all who have served or fallen, regardless of the strategic significance of their efforts in retrospect.

Unfortunately, we’re a little nationally schizophrenic on the subject. We consider what they do vital and important, yet we consider them too important to allow them to take risk, and when they die, the symbolism of their loss overwhelms common sense. This is one of the reasons that human spaceflight is so expensive — we consider astronaut loss unacceptable and will spend billions to prevent even a single incident, even though it’s inevitable if we are to open the final frontier, and economically insane.

Occasional commenter Paul Dietz once noted that if we were serious about opening up space, we’d force America to grow up, and set aside a huge cemetery, like Arlington, to symbolize the numbers of lost pioneers that we expected in the endeavor. I agree.

But in a sense, we have. Down at the KSC Visitor Center, there is a memorial wall that contains the names of those who have died so far, including the crews of Apollo 1, and the Challenger and Columbia disasters. It’s worth noting that there are a lot more than seventeen squares on it. There’s room for many more, should we have the boldness to continue.

[Update late morning]

This post brings to mind what I wrote the day after the Columbia loss:

The crewmembers of that flight were each unique, and utterly irreplaceable to those who knew and loved them, and are devastated by their sudden absence from their lives, and to paraphrase what the president said after September 11, seven worlds were destroyed yesterday.

But, while this may sound callous, the space program will go on just fine without them. They knew their job was hazardous, they did it anyway, and by all accounts, they died doing what they wanted, and loved, to do. There are many more astronauts in the astronaut corps who, if a Shuttle was sitting on the pad tomorrow, fueled and ready to go, would eagerly strap themselves in and go, even with the inquiry still going on, because they know that it’s flown over a hundred times without burning up on entry, and they still like the odds. And if yesterday’s events made them suddenly timorous, there is a line of a hundred people eagerly waiting to replace each one that would quit, each more than competent and adequate to the task. America, and the idea of America, is an unending cornucopia of astronaut material.

When it comes to space, hardware matters, and currently useful space hardware is a very scarce commodity. People are optional. A Shuttle can get into orbit with no crew aboard. It could return that way as well, with some minor design modifications (actuators for nose-wheel steering and brakes, and gear deployment). But no one gets to space without transportation. Many of us would walk there if we could, but we can’t.

Yesterday, we lost a quarter of our Shuttle fleet. The next time we fly, we’ll be putting at risk a third of the remainder. If we lose that one, every flight thereafter will be risking half of America’s capability to put people into orbit.

So, when I grieve the loss of Columbia, it’s not because it was just a symbol. What I truly grieve is the loss of the capability that it not just represented, but possessed. That vehicle will never again deliver a payload or a human to space. It cost billions of dollars to build, and would cost many billions and several years to replace. That was the true loss yesterday, not the crew. I think that people realize this on some level, but feel uncomfortable in articulating it.

As I said, we have to grow up on this issue if we want to open a frontier.

[Update a couple minutes later]

In rereading that post, and following the link to my initial post on hearing of the disaster, I found this sadly prescient (actually, much of the post was, including my initial second guess as to what had happened):

Someone in the comments section asks if the vehicle will be replaced. No, that’s not really possible — much of the tooling to build it is gone. It would cost many billions, and take years, and it’s not really needed at the current paltry flight rate. Assuming that they have confidence to fly again after they determine the cause, they’ll continue to operate with the three-vehicle fleet, until we come up with a more rational way of getting people into space, whatever that turns out to be. Unfortunately, because it’s a government program, I fear that the replacement(s) won’t necessarily be more rational…

My fear, at least to date, has been borne out. I hope that the new Augustine Commission and the new NASA management can rectify it, but it’s only a hope, not an expectation.