WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas),
Ranking Member on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee,
recently authored an opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle on the future of
NASA.
March 5,
2010
Houston
Chronicle –After 50 years of NASA, we must not leave space
By U.S. SEN. KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON
More than 40 years ago, our nation and the world paused to
witness history as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin saw firsthand the
“magnificent desolation” of the moon. That defining moment reminded our nation
that America can overcome insurmountable challenges and achieve great things when
we are committed and dedicated to a singular purpose. But NASA’s strong history
of innovation, as well as our dominance in space, is in danger because
President Barack Obama has decided to shift the agency’s mission to more
Earth-bound tasks.
If President Obama has his way, the U.S. will retire the
space shuttle program later this year, just as the International Space Station
is finally complete and without a viable alternative to take its place. America
has spent billions of dollars building and maintaining the space station. Now
that it is complete, the Obama budget plan ensures that we will no longer have
easy access to it.
Current plans for the next-generation space vehicles are
years away from completion. This human spaceflight gap threatens not only our
nation’s access to the International Space Station and other areas of space but
also our national security and economic interests. America’s decades-long
dominance of space will finally come to an end. This is wrong.
Instead of sending up a white flag for our nation’s premier
science agency, I believe we must close the gap in human spaceflight. To do so,
I have introduced legislation allowing NASA to extend the shuttle’s service
while work continues on development of the next generation of space vehicle. My
legislation will make the retirement of the shuttle dependent on the
availability of a replacement ship or until NASA determines that the space
shuttle’s capabilities are not needed to keep the space station viable. The
measure will also provide acceleration of the nation’s human spaceflight
programs to ensure we continue to have future access to space.
Unless we make every effort to close the gap in U.S. human
spaceflight, we will have no choice but to face the reality that we will be
totally dependent on Russia for access to space. Should Russia, far from our
strongest ally, “renegotiate” the terms of our cooperation, the U.S. could be
blocked from space for years. This would leave Russia and China as the only
nations in the world with the capability to launch humans into space.
This must not be an either-or proposition in which we are
forced to choose between continuing to fly the shuttle and maintaining our
independence in reaching space or investing in the next generation of space
vehicle. We can and must do both. By maintaining our independence from other
nations in reaching space, the U.S. can fully realize the research potential of
the space station as a national lab while protecting and promoting our national
interests.
We must seize our nation’s proud history of innovation and
dominance in space as inspiration to move forward. As President John F. Kennedy
said at Rice University in 1962: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade
and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,
because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies
and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we
are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” Investing in the next
generation of space vehicle while continuing to fly the shuttle will not be
easy, but we must accept the challenge and overcome the obstacles to reach our
nation’s goals.
Hutchison, a Republican, is the senior U.S. senator from
Texas.