NASA’s next giant leap
Last weekend’s 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing prompted a number of television shows and newspaper stories. Their general theme was that going to the moon was expensive and risky — but worth it.
Several presidents since, including President Trump most recently, have said that NASA, the space agency, should set its sights on a journey to explore Mars. Yet no matter who has called for a trip to Mars, the idea has not caught on with the public the way the moondance did in the 1960s.
That’s probably because the moon, if you use average distances, is 560 times closer to us than Mars. A full moon low in the early evening sky is a beautiful sight. Mars, viewed from Earth, is never more than a reddish speck among many stars.
Cost also is a factor. However many billions the government spent on the space race with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, rest assured that expense will multiply greatly if NASA gets the green light to send astronauts to Mars. It’s difficult to justify this when we’re already running trillion-dollar budget deficits. What’s the payoff from a Mars expedition other than going someplace we haven’t been yet?
Riding the wave of the Apollo anniversary, along comes a former NASA deputy administrator, Lori Garver, with an idea that the space agency should be deployed to address one of today’s difficult problems: our own planet.
“NASA was not created to do something again,” Garver wrote on The Washington Post website. “It was created to push the limits of human understanding — to help the nation solve big, impossible problems that require advances in science and technology.
“Fifty years ago, the impossible problem was putting a human on the moon to win the space race, and all of humanity has benefited from the accomplishment.
“The impossible problem today is not the moon. And it’s not Mars. It’s our home planet, and NASA can once again be of service for the betterment of all.”
Garver is now in charge of Earthrise Alliance, a philanthropic group that uses data about the Earth to call for action to prevent climate change, which she describes as “today’s existential threat.”
Her column said NASA’s satellite data is predicting that climate change will lead to future food and water shortages, increased disease and conflicts over diminishing resources.
NASA, she added, already does an outstanding job of collecting data from a number of sources, including government agencies, universities and the private sector. It could continue this while retooling itself into an agency that comes up with ideas to help areas most at risk of drought, floods or extreme heat.
Garver’s idea might prove controversial. After all, it requires an acknowledgement that the Earth is warming. But she points out that the 1958 law creating NASA directed the agency to develop a program to understand and maintain the integrity of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Besides, humanity’s intrinsic need to explore is driven by our need to survive,” she concluded.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
