April 12, 2011

This April 12, however, the single greatest threat to the United States was not the Soviet Union’s space program. Instead, it was the risk posed by years of deficits that have only grown larger. Indiana governor Mitch Daniels ’71 has previously compared the debt crisis with the Cold War in general, and the comparison is equally apt for the space race in particular. Our economy’s future growth requires a readjustment of the federal budget soon, and despite the president’s rhetoric to the contrary, not every cut will be painless. If we needed any further reminder, it came on Monday when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the outlook for U.S. Treasury securities from “stable” to “negative.”

In fact, the very existence of the space shuttle is a reminder of how NASA’s budgetary wings were clipped in the early 1970s. The concept of a partially reusable launch vehicle was only one part of a broader plan for manned spaceflight that never quite materialized. Instead, for the majority of time since we first explored space 50 years ago, we’ve been puttering about in low Earth orbit.

Although I obviously wasn’t alive during the Apollo program, I was a pretty serious space nerd growing up. I soaked up books, miniseries and films about the astronauts and the engineers of the early years. There was something inspiring about so many people with different fields of expertise working together on a project of true national importance. Their shared sacrifice made the eventual achievement of six moon landings one of America’s finest periods of time.

My ability to rattle off trivia about NASA began to wane during high school when I turned away from science and towards history and politics. I also became — spoiler alert! — a staunch fiscal conservative. Reconciling my love of spaceflight with my belief in the principled and economic reasons for smaller government has always been a tricky business.

The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, as well as the concurrent work on satellites, did serve a legitimate national purpose. It would have been irresponsible to allow the Soviet Union to have unchallenged dominance over manned and unmanned spaceflight during the dark days of the early Cold War. At that point, no one could be sure what military advantage a space program would bring. But that imperative is now gone at a time when space is largely demilitarized, aside from spy satellites, and appears likely to remain that way for the forseeable future.

Since then, NASA and the Department of Defense continue to do important work in satellite technology. It would be unwise to scale back our unparalleled unmanned capabilities. Likewise, the federal government will have to remain as involved in the space business as it is in the civil aviation business. And should another state ever challenge the current peaceful status quo in space in any serious way, a new calculus would emerge.

Like Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, our new national challenge will demand the steely resolve of a test pilot from even more Americans than the space program did. It will also require hard work on the part of congressmen, presidents and staffers no less than that of the engineers at NASA during the 1960s. And unlike Apollo 11’s touchdown, there will be no visible act of success that people around the world will watch on television.

Fortunately for space nerds everywhere, difficult cuts to things like NASA hardly mean that we must turn our backs on manned spaceflight or innovation in general. For example, SpaceX, founded and funded by PayPal cofounder Elon Musk, became the first private corporation to launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft in December of last year. Harnessing the private sector, with proper federal safety regulations, has the potential to achieve new things in space exploration. As long as we look to the stars with curiosity and ambition, we never have to worry about giving up on the dream of Apollo.

For us, the problem surfaced locally last week. A series of articles appeared in the ‘Prince’ about the impact on Princeton’s science research of (relatively minor) budget cuts that are only the first step towards fiscal sanity. It is natural that we would react negatively to such cuts and understandable that those who are directly affected would fight them. But eventually we will have to accept that the cuts will impact us all, directly and sometimes painfully, in ways that easily dwarf something as trivial as an attachment to spaceflight.

These challenges will be matched only by the necessity of our success in the matter. Should we need a slogan, a good place to look might be the autobiography of legendary NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz, who brought back the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission 31 years ago last Sunday. The title he chose was, “Failure Is Not An Option.”

Brian Lipshutz is a politics major from Lafayette Hill, Pa. He can be reached at lipshutz@princeton.edu.