Augustine: Lack of national will is greatest
obstacle for NASA
Space policy expert questions whether US will be
first to Mars

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News
staff

The man picked by two
presidents to lead comprehensive reviews of the U.S. space program told a packed
crowd at Rice University Wednesday that the greatest obstacle to human space
flight is the lack of U.S. political will to fund costly missions beyond
low-Earth orbit.

NORMAN AUGUSTINE

Norman Augustine, who was
tapped by the White House to lead comprehensive reviews of the U.S. space
program in both 1990 and in 2009, spoke to more than 250 in McMurtry Auditorium
as part of Rice’s Space Frontiers
Lecture Series and the Rice
NASAversary.

Augustine, speaking on the
same day that NASA unveiled plans for an expensive new rocket capable of
carrying astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, said, “If you remember one
thing from this talk, make it this: Do not take on a new program with grand
goals and insufficient resources. It will fail as surely as I am standing
here.”

Augustine,
now at Princeton University, is a former CEO of Lockheed Martin and a member of
both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science.

Discussing the 2009 space
program review he led at the behest of President Barack Obama, Augustine said a
key finding was that NASA’s Constellation program, which had the bold goal of
returning astronauts to the moon, was doomed because the scope of the project
was well beyond the funds appropriated by Congress.

NASA is now on a
sustainable path, he said, and he lauded both the space agency and the people
who work there. He said ending the space shuttle program was positive for NASA
because it freed up resources to develop new programs.

“One problem NASA has
faced is that there never seems to be enough money to both keep existing
programs and to build the next one,” he said.

Commercial spaceflight —
particularly for low-Earth orbit missions — is not only viable but vital, Augustine
said. He drew an analogy to the nascent aircraft industry, which relied upon
federal contracts for airmail service in the 1920s and 1930s until passenger
traffic grew to the point where the industry could sustain itself.

He said the next
“quantum leap” in human space flight would come from space tourism,
which he said is neither far-fetched nor far from reality.

“People will line up
to pay if it is safe,” Augustine said. “Space is not for amateurs
today, but the day will come when amateurs can enjoy the experience of space in
the hands of a trained astronaut.”

NASA’s new heavy-lift
rocket and Orion
crew capsule will be capable of taking astronauts to the moon, to an
asteroid or to Mars, he said.

“Make no mistake,
Mars is the ultimate goal,” he said. “But we are not ready to go
there yet, and we will not be for some time.”

The technical challenges
of sending humans to Mars are daunting, he said, but the biggest obstacle to
sending humans beyond low-Earth orbit is not related to engineering.

“Do we have the
staying power to fund a program for 20 years?” he asked. “That is
five presidential administrations, 10 Congresses and 20 federal budgets.”

Surveys consistently show
that Americans are willing to fund human spaceflight, Augustine said. But, he
said, the 2009 review of the space program convinced him and other panel
members that the tangible returns on the U.S. investment in space — medical
breakthroughs, new products and the like — do not justify the cost of the
program, even at current spending levels of about 7 cents per U.S. citizen per
day.

The cost of human space
exploration can only be justified by “the abstract things that go beyond
dollars and sense — the things that inspire young minds,” he said.

Augustine said the
American public needs to be reinspired about space exploration so that it will
continue to support NASA. He urged the audience members to tell NASA’s story
and to remind their friends as often as possible about the space program’s
inspirational and intangible payoffs.

“There will be humans
on Mars some day,” he said. “The only question is, Will they be
Americans?”