If I had to pinpoint the event that launched me on a career in
science, it was watching those grainy black-and-white images of Neil Armstrong's historic first step on the powdery lunar surface.
Nasa, the American
space agency, has come a long way since the Eagle landed in July 1969. It has given us feats of breathtaking bravery; the most remarkable rescue in history, when the crew of Apollo 13 was returned safely to Earth; jaw-dropping insights into every major object in the solar system; and even the first interstellar mission. Two nuclear-powered Voyager probes, launched in 1977, remain on course to reach distances well over 10 billion miles from the Sun within the coming decade.
This week, there has been
much agonising over the future of Nasa, prompted by
the final flight of the Space Shuttle programme. The mission marks the end of three decades in which the Shuttle never managed to rekindle the excitement of the great Apollo adventure – or, as promised, to make spaceflight cheap and routine. It also saw two catastrophes – the losses of Columbia and Challenger, along with 14 astronauts – that shattered public confidence in Nasa.
Many today believe that the agency has lost its way. It has cancelled its Ares launcher programme – which would have provided the boost to take humans back to the Moon, and on to Mars – and is about to convert its Shuttles into museum pieces without a clear idea of what comes next. After this mission, America will be dependent on its former rival, using Russia's Soyuz and Progress vehicles to supply the International Space Station. Neil Armstrong, along with other astronauts, has expressed his alarm that Nasa has ignored a golden rule of space exploration: always have a back-up plan.
Nasa's budget has fallen victim to wrangling between Congress and the Obama administration. The House just released its appropriations Bill, which gives Nasa funding of $16.8 billion, $1.6 billion below last year's level and $1.9 billion below the president's request. It has also axed the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble's successor, to the consternation of scientists.
As for where Nasa goes next, the president has given only a vague outline, in the form of missions to an asteroid and Mars. From the perspective of any space cadet from 1969, this isn't very impressive. Moments before Armstrong's Apollo 11 booster lifted off from Cape Kennedy, vice-president Spiro Agnew declared that the next goal should be a manned landing on Mars by the end of the century. A presidential committee on post-Apollo objectives – which Agnew happened to head – predicted that America could send astronauts to Mars by the mid-Eighties for not much more than the $24 billion cost of Apollo. No wonder Armstrong has criticised Obama's plans.
Nasa's administrator, Charles Bolden, insists that his agency has a future and has promised to maintain American leadership in space travel for the next half-century. He wants to leave low-Earth-orbit missions to the private sector, so that Nasa can focus on deep space exploration.
In part, this is an acknowledgement of how much has changed since the Cold War spurred Kennedy to declare that he wanted to reach the Moon. Private space ventures have taken off. There is Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which will use a spaceplane strapped to a mothership to reach the edge of space. Meanwhile, Armadillo Aerospace in Texas is developing vertical takeoff, vertical landing spacecraft.
Then there's SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, led by the internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, which has tested the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon space capsule, which the company hopes to use to run a taxi service to the International Space Station. Boeing is working on a crew capsule of its own, called the CST-100. The Las Vegas company Bigelow Aerospace plans to create orbiting hotels in inflatable space stations. And why stop at missions around our home planet? Musk is even talking to getting to Mars in a decade or two.
The nature of the space race has also changed profoundly since 1969. In all, nine countries have placed payloads in orbit. Citizens of almost 40 countries have now flown into space. Meanwhile, India and China have announced ambitious plans.
There's no doubt the current economic situation is going to hold back space exploration for a while. But I, for one, have no doubt that over the next half-century, space will maintain its ability to grip the human imagination as only the final frontier can. Is the dream over? Far from it. Be prepared for the next giant leap.
Roger Highfield is the editor of 'New Scientist'
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