Mark Whittington is appropriately skeptical of the notion that obscure astrophysical discoveries will energize the public and maintain support for the Vision for Space Exploration:

As interesting as such things [as a magnetar explosion] are, I’m afraid that NASA need something else besides that to sustain public interest. I had never heard of this discovery before I read it in Blandford’s piece. It certainly did not supplant the death of the Pope, or Terri Schiavo or (please God) the Michael Jackson trial.

However, like the scientist he criticizes, he’s much too unobjective and overenthusiastic himself when he continues:

A human return to the Moon this year would have done all of those things.

Why?

What’s so exciting about NASA sending a few government employees back to the Moon? NASA’s been there, did that, got the hat, a third of a century ago. The public found it boring then. Why, in the twenty-first century, amidst the explosion of technological wonders that we’ve seen since, would they get jazzed about it now? What would make it so newsworthy as to knock the death of a great Pope off the headlines? Why is NASA astronauts walking around on the Moon any more fascinating to a modern, jaded public than NASA astronauts circling the earth in a can, something that is never in the news unless something goes wrong?

I can tell you that, as a die-hard space enthusiast, I sure can’t get excited about it. In fact, I don’t think that the current VSE, at least as put forth by some of the major contractors (and like the Shuttle and ISS), is worth the money. And I (unlike most of the public) actually know what a tiny percentage of the federal budget it constitutes. If Mark can’t sell me on it, why does he think that those who don’t have that much interest in space (the vast majority, at least when it comes to relative depth of interest), and think that NASA consumes half the federal budget, will be excited?

I will tell you what might have knocked those other things off the headlines, at least temporarily (at least based on the response to the SpaceShipOne flights)–if Paul Allen walked on the Moon, with his own money, and was selling tickets so that others could do so.

[Update at 11:20 AM EDT]

Mark replies with a post that’s mostly straw.

The way the Vision for Space Exploration is shaping up will make it a bit different than Apollo. It will not, ultimately, consists of just “a few government employees.”

That remains to be seen. My point (and my only point, really) is that contra Mark’s claim, NASA astronauts walking on the Moon per se will not excite the public much more than space science discoveries, or knock other stories out of the news. I think that most people are pretty jaded about technological advances, unless they can see how they’ll actually affect their own lives. If NASA can show how astronauts on the Moon will do that, then it may be sustainable. If they can’t, it will be Apollo redux.

I do think he sells people short, projecting his feelings and assuming that most people share them. I think (again) the polling data backs me up.

That’s pretty amusing, considering that I think that’s exactly what he’s doing. I’m not aware of any polling data that backs him up. He’ll have to show some, rather than simply asserting it, if he wants to convince me or (I would hope) my readers.

By the way, he also has a new column about the promise of Mike Griffin.

[One more update, at 11:55]

I should add that when Mark writes in comments that “It’s virtually certain that the first human return to the Moon will be the biggest story of the next decade,” he displays a paucity of imagination about potential stories of the next decade (and once again confuses his own interests and preferences for those of the masses).

Bigger than a cure for cancer? Or indefinite life extension? Or artificial intelligence, or artificial life? Or the opening of a major LEO space hotel by Disney? Or a major terrorist attack killing thousands or millions? Or a 9+ earthquake in Seattle? Things like that will be knocked out of contention simply by a repeat of something we already did a third of a century ago?

I seriously doubt it.

Gamma-ray bursts.

We really need some kind of overarching committee to keep track of these kinds of things, and prioritize them, and postulate potential solutions to them in keeping with those priorities. I think I feel an article coming on…

Aleta Jackson emailed me this news last night. This is a big breakthrough for XCOR, and should make it easier to get capital for some of their more ambitious projects.

Aleta Jackson emailed me this news last night. This is a big breakthrough for XCOR, and should make it easier to get capital for some of their more ambitious projects.

Aleta Jackson emailed me this news last night. This is a big breakthrough for XCOR, and should make it easier to get capital for some of their more ambitious projects.

Keith Cowing has a quick take on Mike Griffin’s confirmation testimony before the Senate this morning. I’ll be interested to see the full transcript, but there’s some interesting stuff here for now.

I’ve rarely heard such bi-partisan praise for any nominee, for any position. This will be one NASA administrator that at least begins the job with powerful support from both the White House and the Hill, and that can’t hurt. Senator Stevens said that he sees it as vital, almost an emergency, to get him into place as soon as possible. We’ll see how long this era of good feeling lasts, because he’s got some tough decisions ahead, that are certain to alienate at least some constituencies.

He’s clearly a man in a hurry. He wants to get CEV up before 2014, to avoid (or at least minimize) the gap in (government) human spaceflight beginning with the end of the Shuttle. He also sounds like he’s inclined to reverse O’Keefe, and do the Hubble servicing mission. He’s had to backpedal on his previous criticism of the ISS, showing that he’s no fool politically. Who knows what he’ll do about aeronautics?–it doesn’t sound like he’s given it much, if any, thought.

I’d say overall that he has a very ambitious agenda (and this testimony confirms my take a couple weeks ago). He definitely wants to do it faster and better, and since he’s not likely to get much more budget, he’s going to have to figure out how to square the circle and do it cheaper as well. I’m sure he believes that he can do it. We’ll have at least three and a half years to find out if he’s right.

[Update at 2:30 PM EDT]

His prepared statement is up now.

I’m always a little leery of using the Columbus analogy, because I think it’s flawed in many ways, but I suspect that it will go over well, regardless. This bit is worth repeating, because we tend to think of the 1960s only in terms of Apollo:

NASA in the Apollo Era was hardly the “single mission agency” in the simplified view that is often heard today. In addition to the manned spaceflight development programs of the time, NASA executed dozens of Explorer-class missions, a dozen Pioneer missions (including Pioneer 10 and 11 to Jupiter and Saturn), Ranger 1-9, Surveyor 1-7, Mariner 1-10, the Orbiting Solar Observatory, Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, and Orbiting Astronomical Observatory series, and paid for most of the Viking missions to Mars, which were launched in 1975. Communications satellite development was initiated with Telstar and Early Bird, while the TIROS, NIMBUS, and ESSA series did the same for weather satellites. In addition to these robotic science and technology development missions, NASA also executed 199 X-15 flights (which still hold the speed record for piloted flight within the atmosphere), and accomplished an otherwise vigorous program of aeronautics development, including the liftingbody research which enabled the development of the Space Shuttle.

Before he died, former administrator Tom Paine once told me that during Apollo, NASA did a lot of things that they didn’t even realize that they were doing, there was so much going on. But there was a sense of urgency then, and I’m not sure that stories about the far-sightedness of Isabella can restore it.

It’s been forty-four years since the first man went into space, and orbit. On April 12th, 1961, the Russian Yuri Gagarin was the first human to go into extended weightlessness, a major event in the development of the race to the moon in the 1960s. For those who are into raves and partying, it has provided an excuse for young people to commemorate the event, so go see if there’s one in your area.

In addition, it is almost a quarter of a century since the first flight of the Shuttle (next year will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first flight of Columbia). That the two anniversaries are the same was not deliberate, but due to a computer glitch on the pad. It was originally supposed to launch on April 10th, 1981, but a timing anomaly between the flight computers caused them to scrub for two days. I was down at the launch, and took advantage of the delay to go over to Tampa for the day, and check out the beach and Cuban restaurants. Columbia’s last flight, of course, ended tragically a little over two years ago, when it disintegrated on entry, on February 1st, 2003.

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that the Shuttle program has a much longer past than it does a future, and while it’s done some interesting things, it was also a policy mistake in many ways, so this isn’t a bad thing.

[Update at 10:40 AM EDT]

I didn’t mention it yesterday, but it was the thirty-fifth anniversary of the launch of Apollo XIII. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the oxidizer tank explosion that ended the mission, and almost the lives of the astronauts.