For the greater part of the Atomic Age, the United States has been the global leader in space travel and interplanetary exploration. It was the US that developed jet-rocket technology in the 1940s and 1950s, that famously led mankind to the moon in the 1969, that landed the first probes on the Martian surface in the 1970s, that orchestrated the seminal Space Shuttle program from the 1972 to 2011, that cooperatively deployed the International Space Station in 1998, and that, along with many other accomplishments, is now leading the world into the new age of commercial space flight. As this nation has reaped the consequent and obvious technological benefits of these endeavors to both further its own interests and improve the quality of life abroad, the world may direct its collective gratitude largely to the organization that wholly conceived, developed, and executed these milestones for humanity, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Despite NASA’s profound contributions to global progress in all conceivable forms of medicine, materials science, lifesaving technology, engineering, biological disciplines, national morale, international national economies and more, legislators of both parties have, in recent decades, repeatedly sought to drastically reduce the agency’s annual operating budget. With a current allocation of $17.77 billion of the federal fiscal year budget, NASA comprises about 0.48% of the government’s total annual expenditure; that is, for about every $207 dollars spent on national defense, social security, various income securities and more, just one dollar supports the Agency’s stated mission to “pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.” President Obama’s approved FY2013 budget will further slash this to under $17.71 billion, the lowest operating budget that the agency has had in four years, and, by proportion, the smallest in its nearly 55-year history (Brastaad). This action, which is gravely consistent with the aforementioned annual reduction of allocation to NASA, neglects the scientific and economic benefits that a prosperous space agency offers, and, equally importantly, fails to meet lawmakers’ obligation to American citizens. To meet the technological needs of a rapidly-growing international population, US lawmakers must, as the men and women charged with tending the world’s preeminent expeditionary space power, reverse this trend and strongly consider a dramatic increase in NASA’s annual funding.
Of the multiplicity of reasons to consider raising the agency’s funding for future exploration and experimentation, perhaps the most important requires a brief look to the past. Since 1976, NASA has maintained an online database of the scientific innovations which have directly resulted in improving the quality of life around the world. As of this writing, the current list includes fully 1,760 uniquely identifiable advancements in every existing field of practical science (Spinoff). President Obama himself, in a speech to the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, reminded Americans that the Apollo program, “produced technologies that have improved kidney dialysis and water purification systems; sensors to test for hazardous gases; energy-saving building materials; and fire-resistant fabrics used by firefighters and soldiers” (qtd. in Tyson 27). The president could have easily expanded such a list of revolutionary “spinoffs” by mentioning NASA’s direct role in developing the technologies behind digital imaging in modern medicine, collision-avoidance systems in fixed-wing aircraft, LASIK surgery to restore vision, global positioning system infrastructure, the military’s essential Meals-Ready-to-Eat, radiation detectors, and, seemingly, nearly every achievement in applied science in the last 40 years (Tyson 28).
In considering the president’s list above, it should be emphasized that it includes only a small selection of NASA’s achievements made during the Apollo era, a twelve-year period that ended in 1972. If the plan that the president ambitiously laid out in an April 2010 speech at the Kennedy Space Center, in which he calls for the nation to land on Mars by the mid-2030s, produces any tangible results, each of the world’s more than seven billion inhabitants should be optimistic aboutobt the potential technological benefits to be reaped; lives can be saved, mouths can be fed, and diseases can be cured -- all directly through NASA’s endeavor to touch down on its celestial neighbor (Kennedy).
Lest there be any doubt about just how direct and how critical the type of help that the agency can provide may be, critics should look at the Hubble Space Telescope and the optical problems with which it was plagued for the first three years after its launch in 1990. Though it was eventually fixed manually by a NASA crew, the issue, that the images it produced were deeply out of focus, was solved in the interim with a software algorithm developed by astrophysicists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore (Tyson 31). At the same time, researchers at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University, with help from the Hubble scientists, realized this algorithm could be applied just as well to mammography; because of the efforts to repair a design flaw in Hubble, the medical scientists at Georgetown were able to improve the accuracy in tests for the early detection of breast cancer (Tyson 32). It is to NASA, as much as to researchers at Georgetown, that countless women owe their lives. It is easily conceivable what further discoveries could be made -- and what further lives could be saved -- if American legislators restore the agency to its prior budgetary allocation (on average, about twice as much by proportion since 1976).
Increasing NASA’s budget will also directly improve an American economy, which like nearly every one of its global counterparts, is currently in recession. Given the most recent Congressional voting record on federal spending, in which the legislature has repeatedly cut from federal programs, many elected lawmakers will prickle at the thought of increasing spending by even a dime for an agency which, as noted previously, is already allocated 11 figures of tax dollars every year. Such thinking is myopic, ignorant of both history and formally-researched scientific truth. Research conducted by Nature, which “examined 259 non-space applications of NASA technology during an eight-year period,” noted that “the economic benefits of NASA's programs are greater than generally realized. The main beneficiaries (the American public) may not even realize the source of their good fortune” (Bezdek). Of course, these applications constituted “only 1% of an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 Space program spin-offs” (Bezdek)
More concretely, and more critically per the consideration of the nation’s elected lawmakers, it is an undeniable reality that expanding NASA’s budget, and consequently expanding the agency itself, will generate employment by a proportionate amount. With ten field centers, its headquarters in Washington, and various other scientific facilities across the country and around the world, NASA is a sprawling, robust agency that employs approximately 19,000 scientists, pilots, engineers, researchers, mechanics, clerks, various laborers and more at its current level of funding. Despite its size and its prominence as an employer, the aerospace industry as a whole has lost more than half a million jobs in the past 20 years, a trend that has more or less mirrored the declining relative funding to the world’s preeminent space agency (Arnold et al. 3). As a tool to help reverse this trend and create thousands of jobs in the US and abroad, and to fundamentally contribute to the improvement of the American economy, Congress should be further compelled to expand both NASA and its budget.
If legislators are not to be convinced with solutions of science and health and economy, perhaps they can be persuaded with a reflection on the continuous existential crisis presented by the infinite amount of space debris on various high-speed trajectories within the galaxy. The Earth, as should be reasonably expected, is not immune from an impact with a given non-orbital space rock, be it meteor or comet or something else unforeseen, and there is realistically only one organization that could be tasked with preemptively detecting and eliminating the possibility of such a catastrophic event. Indeed, what may be the most critical justification for increasing the federal government’s annual budgetary allocation to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is also the simplest, a reality observed in recent events within the solar system.
A meteorite struck in the Ural Mountains earlier this year, injuring about a thousand residents of the Russian town of Chelyabinsk. These people were mostly casualties of the shards of broken glass created by the object’s eruptive sonic boom as it streaked across the morning sky on Feburary 15 (Marson et al.). Although there were no confirmed fatalities, 43 sought medical attention, and, in addition, 3,000 buildings were damaged by either the meteor’s supersonic flight or, as in the case of a local metals factory which had a large hole blown in its side, by the impact itself (Marson et al.).
Of course, it should be understood that this meteorite had no connection to the 130,000-ton asteroid that passed within 17,000 miles of the Earth on the very same day (Marson et al.). Nor should it be confused with the elegantly-named Comet C/2013 A1, which is on a possible collision course with Mars, the Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor (Economist). As it is travelling against the typical Martian orbit, and is doing so at an unusually high rate of speed, its potential impact would be equivalent to that of one billion megatons of TNT, a blast size for which there is no contemporary comparison; astronomer Phil Plait simply compared it to the blast that eradicated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago (Economist).
While many would point to the heavens and note the absence, in modern history, of an event even remotely similar to the pending Martian catastrophe listed above, it is fallacious to think that an event could not happen at all because it has not happened recently. Astronomers have said the earth will be pelted with a space object the size of a football field about every 2,000 years; the impact event in Russia was merely a fraction of this size (Economist). An entire race was swept from existence by this very phenomenon, and surely it “would be rather embarrassing if big-brained, opposable-thumbed humans were to meet the same fate as the pea-brained dinosaurs” (Tyson 32). It is likely only through NASA that mankind can develop solutions for categorically preventing such events from destroying or otherwise significantly depleting life on earth, and it is certainly only through expanding NASA’s budget that it can optimally equip the agency to find such answers.
Many who oppose the expansion of NASA’s annual budget offer the same Cold War argument used to quash various ambitious, high-tech military projects; essentially, as the US is no longer engaged in a technological race with a conventional superpower, it should no longer squander its cash on projects ostensibly created for the purpose of “keeping up” with its rival. Such thinking may be worthwhile for national defense policymakers, but to apply this archaic thinking to the national space program is to neglect the country’s hope and ambition for galactic accomplishment; simply because the nation is not engaged in the “Space Race” of the Cold War does not stand to mean the government should forsake space entirely. The dreams of a people, domestically and abroad, loudly proclaim the desire for the exploration of deep space.
If budget hawks in Washington cannot hear such cries to explore humanity’s last frontier, they perhaps should consider several truths about public support for space and space voyaging. Washington’s own National Air and Space Museum (NASM) is, after The Louvre, the most visited museum in the world (Arnold et al. 8). Visitors have made the pilgrimage from around the world to see the technological marvels of the aerospace world and to glimpse into its rich history. Many of these same patrons likely helped to make movies about space and space travel four of the ten highest-grossing films of all-time (Arnold et al. 6). Surely some of NASM’s roughly eight million annual visitors also rallied against the announced possibility to not repair Hubble several years ago, successfully motivating NASA to restore the implement and allow it to continue to capture the breathtaking images over which millions of jaws have dropped (Arnold et al. 6).
Americans want to go to space, and want their government to fund missions to land men on Mars and visit the deep unknown. They want answers to the hard questions about extraterrestrial life and the habitability of other planets and they’re willing to pay the very low cost to do so. If Congress is confused about this reality, they need look no further than astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson’s account of an interview on the Today Show in 2005, in which he discussed the Cassini probe’s mission to Saturn:
But then Matt Lauer wanted to be hard-hitting, and he said something like, “But Dr. Tyson, this is a $3.2 billion mission. Given all the problems we have in the world today, how can you justify that expenditure?” So I replied: “Pause. First of all, it’s $3.2 billion divided by 12. It’s a 12-year mission. So now we’ve got the real number, which is what? Less than $300 million per year.” Then I said, “Three hundred million dollars. Americans spend more than that each year on lip balm.” When I uttered those words, the cameras shook and the lights flickered, and Matt had no reply. He practically stuttered and said, “Uh, over to you, Katie.” And I realized in that instant that people just don’t understand how inexpensive this space exploration really is, when you place it within the context of what we, as a nation, spend money on. So I walked off the Today Show set and headed out to the street. On the Today Show, as you may know, bystanders gather in front of the studio, and watch through the glass. I did not know that they pipe the audio signal to them as well. So on my way out of the studio, from all the people hanging around outside the door, up came this spontaneous applause. And everyone held up their Chapstick and said, “We want to go to Saturn!” (Arnold et al. 7)
Exploration of the unknown has, since prehistory, been an inherent part of man’s existence, at once a driving force for innovation and the consequence of it. It is with this mind--this basic understanding of the nature of civilization--that federal executives and legislators must be compelled to increase annual funding for, and, consequently, expand the capabilities of, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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