Which way for NASA? A step-by-step path

James Oberg NBC News space analyst

HOUSTON - As a retired rocket scientist and avid space historian and strategist, I’ve been watching the debate over NASA's future in human spaceflight with great interest. I've been quite impressed by the questions coming from the independent panel charged with laying out the options for that future.

Now that the panel's members have released a report summarizing the options available to the White House, I have even more respect for their analysis.

Next, it's going to be up to the Obama administration, and those deliberations will follow a logic I'm not familiar with. None of us really knows what criteria the White House will use to select NASA's future course, or how policymakers will mix and match among the options. In all my years of experience observing the Space Age, working within the heart of it, and writing and speaking widely about it, I've found that expecting rationality in the debate over space policy is often a folly that ends in tears.

I do want to make one plea, however. My own contribution to the national debate is going to be a defense of the much-maligned “look but don’t touch” option — what the panel calls "Flexible Path." I think it deserves more respect than it’s been getting, and I'd be content to see it emerge from the process. But I'm not getting my hopes up (see "folly," above).

I deeply respect the parade of "planetary partisans" who have argued for the moon next, or Mars next, or an asteroid next. Many are old, old friends of mine and I wish them all well. But whenever the answer comes before the logic, the argumentation is bound to be a little suspect.

So, suppose a strategy emerges that does not call for big-world surface footsteps anytime soon. Imagine astronauts flying up to another world, but not immediately descending down onto its surface.

I think there's a lot of new technology that's become available since Apollo that could exploit this strategy, for exciting missions that would mark a breakout from half-century-old mission concepts. We have to be careful to give it a fair shake. This changed course could well be hopeful, imaginative, inspirational — and affordable.

Attitude adjustments required
First of all, in this scenario, the international space station would be continued, with research expanded to the technologies and life sciences issues associated with very long space missions — a year, maybe two, or more. To date, NASA’s experts in the life sciences have been uninterested, even contemptuous, of the idea of flying people longer than six months. Some attitude adjustments would be required.

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Innovation could be re-funded. The station would also be the test range for promising new inventions that can shorten planetary trip time from years to months — in particular, the VASIMR plasma engine developed by astronaut-physicist Franklin Chang-Diaz, a good buddy (and former crewmate) of new NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. 

NASA has already approved plans to fly a prototype VASIMR system (a.k.a. "Chang Drive") on the space station, but it won't be ready until after the end of the shuttle program, so as of now it doesn't have a ride. That will need to be fixed.

If the device works as hoped — and Chang-Diaz has been testing larger and larger versions for 20 years — it could bring a piloted spaceship to Mars in two months instead of 10, with the same speed on the return leg. But that's getting ahead of my essay. I’ll return to the Chang Drive later.

NASA has begun serious studies about privately-owned "space taxis," a good idea. Commercializing human transportation into low Earth orbit and back down to Earth would free NASA to optimize its next spaceship — the Orion — for deep space missions. That's a good plan. To get to the space station and other destinations near Earth, NASA can buy tickets on stripped-down taxis that will be a lot cheaper.

Ever since Apollo, NASA’s “people-mover” operation has relied on vehicles with capacities far in excess of what's needed to send spacefliers into Earth orbit and back. Some of the taxi design suggestions are astonishingly — even unbelievably — lightweight compared with what was used for Apollo orbital missions, let alone shuttle missions. I look forward to seeing better ideas along these lines.

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