Conclusion Space Politics and Policy: Facing the Future
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CONCLUSION SPACE POLITICS AND POLICY: FACING THE FUTURE John M. Logsdon* The essays in this volume individually and collectively do an excellent job of laying out the many dimensions of space activities to date, provide various conceptual frameworks for the analysis of those activities, and guide the reader to the body of policy-oriented literature that has grown up around the space sector. Taken together, they comprise an extremely valuable resource for understanding the political and policy aspects of the space sector as its development has gone forward. This concluding chapter reflects on how the policy issues related to space activity have changed and continue to change today. The general perspective is that new approaches and new understandings are needed, ones that will challenge not only those who have been working on space issues for some time, but also the new generation of space analysts who will read this and similar works. This challenge lies in learning and applying multiple frameworks to the analysis of space policy. The thoughts expressed in this concluding chapter reflect the views and “authority” of someone who has observed space affairs close-up, but from some analytical distance, since the beginnings of the space age.1 These thoughts are a product of the “golden age” of space development as exemplified by the Sputnik launches in 1957, Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering flight in 1961, John Glenn’s three-orbit mission in February 1962, and the Apollo lunar landing of 1969. ONCE WE WENT TO THE MOON Space politics and policy is a product of this golden age of space development, when President Kennedy committed the US to sending Americans to the Moon. The US was taking the lead in bringing the benefits *Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University. 389 390 Space Politics and Policy of satellite communications to the world, while ensuring US political and industrial leadership in this new area of commercial activity, and NASA was mobilized to achieve space “preeminence” that was Administrator James Webb’s highest priority objective. Every mission seemed to achieve something new and exciting, and the Mercury and Apollo astronauts were nationally known heroes. NASA had begun to send spacecraft to Venus and Mars, and was getting back from the Moon close-up images of its forbidding landscape. Working on space policy issues at the time was the chance to share vicariously in the adventure of exploration. Such an experience is not likely to be replicated for some time to come. There is no compelling reason to send people once again beyond Earth orbit. A return to the Moon and missions to Mars are at least several decades away. This means that future space analysts will primarily focus their attention on repetitive activities in Earth orbit, carried out for research, commercial, public service, or military reasons, with an occasional robotic deep space science or exploration mission. These are all valuable activities certainly, but not ones to excite the imagination. The US civilian space program, as most people understand it, peaked on 20 July 1969 with the Apollo 11 lunar landing and has been on a long, sometimes slow, sometimes precipitous, decline, coasting on the momentum of Apollo ever since. The exceptions are the robotic program of Solar System exploration, which continues to provide both scientifically valuable data and publicly attractive images, and the achievements of the Hubble Space Telescope. Back in the 1960s, almost everything about space was new. The space program operated largely outside the realm of “normal” politics; it was an instrument of national policy, where bureaucratic and advocacy group influences were secondary. It is even questionable whether the benefits that NASA provides to the country at large today justify a $15 billion budget, a budget with approximately half of the spending power of the NASA budget at Apollo’s peak funding.2 Currently, the primary determinants of NASA’s budget are a combination of incrementalism, advocacy group influences, and bureaucratic politics. The material presented in this book has great utility in understanding those factors, and to the degree they remain important influences in space politics and policy, they will remain quite relevant. In the euphoria produced by the first lunar landing, to those of us close to the space program anything seemed possible. On 4 August 1969 Wernher von Braun presented to Vice President Spiro Agnew NASA’s plan for an initial human mission to Mars in 1982. Agnew had been charged by President Nixon with chairing a “Space Task Group” to prepare “definitive recommendations” for what should follow Apollo.3 When Agnew and the rest of the Space Task Group let it be known to the White House that they Conclusion 391 intended to recommend such a fast-paced, expansive post-Apollo program, they were told that such a suggestion would not be acceptable. The Nixon Administration was not interested in significant new investments in space. NASA in 1969 was honest in its ambitions, and learned from the experience that honesty in program terms was not politically prudent. Over the next twenty-plus years, NASA has told its supporters almost anything they wanted to hear in order to get its major programs approved. The results are the Space Shuttle and space station programs that promised to be all things to all people. Trying to implement them, NASA lost much of its technical and managerial integrity. The nadir in NASA’s political credibility came with the Agency’s response to President Bush’s 20 July 1989 call for a Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) focused on completing the space station, returning to the moon, “this time to stay,” and then sending people to Mars.4 NASA presented an uninspired, self-serving, and very expensive plan for achieving these goals to the White House,5 and was essentially told to go away.6 As Roger Handberg suggests in this book, space had become by 1989 “a secondary public policy priority.” This experience convinced the White House that NASA could not even carry out programs aimed at second-order priorities very well. A decade later, this concern has been reinforced with the current cost and management issues facing the International Space Station (ISS). REINVENTING THE SPACE PROGRAM By 1992, the Bush White House had despaired of NASA’s current leadership being able to revitalize the organization, and brought in as administrator an outsider to civilian space, Daniel Goldin, with a mandate to reinvent the organization. In his ten-year tenure, Goldin made significant progress towards this objective, but left the task incomplete. NASA, with its close links to congressional and industrial supporters that developed in the 1970s and 1980s, has proven to be very resistant to change. Nonetheless, Goldin understood and advocated some of the fundamental shifts needed if NASA is to become a relevant twenty-first century organization. Goldin pushed to make NASA an agency developing cutting edge capabilities in areas like nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technology, and taking the lead in applying those capabilities to space efforts aimed not only at science and exploration, but also to commerce and national security. If those shifts do take place successfully, they will be a lasting Goldin legacy. Moreover, they will also require a new approach to the understanding of space politics and policy. 392 Space Politics and Policy The kind of NASA that will emerge if the changes started by Goldin continue will be difficult to understand completely if space is only treated as a separate area of government activity. Space also needs to be examined in terms of mainstream public policy concerns. In order for NASA to remain relevant, it must join that mainstream. If it does not, it is likely to gradually fade into irrelevance. The same might be said for those aspiring to the understanding of space politics and policy, if they do not prepare themselves for the space issues of the future. A NEW CONTEXT FOR SPACE One particularly cogent analysis of the new situation in space is a November 2000 report to the Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) prepared by three widely experienced “wise men.” The report comments on the future of space activities in Europe, however, it is instructive to read the following excerpt substituting “United States” for “Europe”: For long, space was seen as a special, separate, and exclusive activity, very much apart from other types of activities. During the initial decades of space activities, this was to a large extent true. And, as far as it relates to the unending quest for improving human knowledge about our universe and origins, as we reach further and further in outer space it will indeed remain so. But now, space is coming down to Earth. Increasingly space-based assets are integrated with other key developments in our societies. ...we can no longer see space and space policy as separate from other European activities. We are convinced that space policy in Europe must enter a new phase, where it is no longer seen as an exclusive and separate activity, but where it is an integrated aspect of the overall efforts of the countries and institutions of the European Union. The implications of this perspective for students of space politics and policy are profound. Not only must they learn about the space sector; they must also understand how it is linked to other societal activities in both the public and private sectors; they must be able to discuss the pros and cons Conclusion 393 of government-industry partnerships to employ space assets for a variety of purposes. Also, they must understand which applications of space capabilities, for providing security, protecting the environment, generating widely used new technologies, carrying out public functions, such as infrastructure development, and forming the basis of new industries, like obtaining energy for Earth from solar power satellites, make sense and which do not.