To Infinity and Beyond

Early Monday morning, America saw the last nighttime space shuttle launch in history. After the Endeavor touches back down, only four more shuttles will ever leave Earth again. At that point, NASA’s 30-year  shuttle program will be over.

While the end of the shuttle program is historic, it is also expected — the workhorse of the American space program was more than overdue for a replacement. President George W. Bush’s 2004 plan for NASA led the space agency to begin work on the next generation, a collection of rockets known as the Constellation Program that was designed to both transport astronauts to the International Space Station, and eventually send them to the moon and Mars. The program, however, was underfunded from the start, and NASA had already given up on their original goal of returning to the moon by 2020.

It was at this point — with the shuttles on their way out and their replacements far behind schedule — that President Barack Obama had his new vision for the space program. If Congress adopts the president’s suggestions for NASA’s budget, which they traditionally do, the future of human space flight in America will look very different.

First, the failing Constellation Program will be scrapped and plans to return to the moon will be put on hold. Instead, NASA will be given a planned $6 billion to invest in and use privately built and operated spacecraft to reach the ISS, whose life has been extended from 2015 to at least 2020.

Many commentators have decried this decision as America “abandoning” space, possibly to the Chinese. These people, however, seem to have forgotten what country they are in. This is a nation that believes the entrepreneur will always outperform the bureaucrat. It is the private sector, not the public, that is the engine of American growth, and this will be as true outside the atmosphere as it is inside it.

In fact, this privatization of high technology is not unprecedented. Until the  ‘20s, U.S. airplanes were all run by the Air Force. Then, once the complexities of safe air travel were worked out, small private companies were allowed to begin their own airlines. Part of the success of this plan was airmail. The government needed packages delivered across the nation, so these new airlines could rely on guaranteed business until they began reaping more profits though civilian travel. Similarly, by both investing in commercial spaceflight, and providing the guaranteed business transporting astronauts to the ISS, NASA will be sowing the seeds of a true space industry.

Better yet, while NASA is moving us closer to a future that includes commercial space travel at prices that might rival today’s air travel, they can also be free to focus on the science NASA is best at. The underfunded Bush-era moon plan was stealing budget dollars from the far more successful robotic missions NASA has been sending around the solar system.

The Obama plan has pushed the United States onto a much better course in space. Our world-class entrepreneurs can begin making commercial space flight a reality, and NASA can spend its time pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.

We have truly reached the final frontier.

William Lee-Wagner is a senior in Newcomb-Tulane College. He can be reached for comment at wleewagn@tulane.edu.