The Curse of Apollo

Nicole from Connecticut sends in the following question:

Dave, You are spacey--why is Barak coaching NASA on how to do things other than space race kinds of things? Is the race over? Did we win?

Great questions. I have had a hard time keeping up with recent US space policy due to all the recent events. I want to be as objective as possible and not get wrapped up in partisan politics. It makes blogging about this stuff difficult. Hopefully this post will be objective. Here we go...

If the definition of the "space race" is sending someone to the moon then the US won. The Soviet Union did not land anyone on the moon. Maybe the success of Apollo is really a curse because we tend to use Apollo as the measuring stick for human space exploration. As times change this has been causing many discussions in how to handle future space exploration with humans.

Your questions also leads me to believe you're curious about recent statements by administrator Bolden on outreach to Muslim countries. NASA clarified that NASA's mission and direction has not changed. Administrator Bolden was talking about NASA's outreach programs and not the main goals of NASA.

Although this makes one wonder if a US President could use NASA for international relations and outreach based on the policy to be implemented. I can think of several past examples of using NASA for international relations include as directed by previous administrations:

• Apollo link up in orbit with the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in the late 70's. (started by Nixon)
• the US space shuttle making visits to the Russian space station Mir (Bush-I)
• the International Space Station itself (Clinton)

NASA is apart of a government agency that is ultimately directed by the President. President Obama sees a different future than what we experienced during Apollo. The new national space policy was recently released and highlighted more international cooperation.

Remember that even though the President sets the direction, Congress gives the funding. Right now there hasn't been any funding passed.

Remember that:

Government Sponsored Human Space Flight = Politics

So many other points to discuss, but I want to keep this short ;)