Why Explore Space from the NASA administrator, Michael Griffin.
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http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/main/griffin_why_explor…
"Why Explore Space?
By Michael Griffin
01.18.07
Administrator
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
As NASA resumes flights of the space shuttle to finish building the
International Space Station, many are questioning whether the project
– the most complex construction feat ever undertaken – is worth the
risk and expense.
I have been asked, and asked myself, this question many times during my
career, particularly when the United States lacked a plan to go beyond
the space station to other destinations in the solar system.
The issue was addressed eloquently in the report of the Columbia
Accident Investigation Board, which examined the 2003 loss of the
shuttle and its crew. That report pointed out that for the foreseeable
future, space travel is going to be expensive, difficult and dangerous.
But, for the United States, it is strategic. It is part of what makes
us a great nation. And the report declared that if we are going to send
humans into space, the goals ought to be worthy of the cost, the risk
and the difficulty. A human spaceflight program with no plan to send
people anywhere beyond the orbiting space station certainly did not
meet that standard.
President Bush responded to the Columbia report. The administration
looked at where we had been in space and concluded that we needed to do
more, to go further. The result was the Vision for Space Exploration,
announced nearly three years ago, which commits the United States to
using the shuttle to complete the space station, then retiring the
shuttle and building a new generation of spacecraft to venture out into
the solar system. Congress has ratified that position with an
overwhelming bipartisan majority, making the Vision for Space
Exploration the law of the land.
Today, NASA is moving forward with a new focus for the manned space
program: to go out beyond Earth orbit for purposes of human exploration
and scientific discovery. And the International Space Station is now a
stepping stone on the way, rather than being the end of the line.
On the space station, we will learn how to live and work in space. We
will learn how to build hardware that can survive and function for the
years required to make the round-trip voyage from Earth to Mars.
If humans are indeed going to go to Mars, if we’re going to go beyond,
we have to learn how to live on other planetary surfaces, to use what
we find there and bend it to our will, just as the Pilgrims did when
they came to what is now New England – where half of them died during
that first frigid winter in 1620. There was a reason their celebration
was called "Thanksgiving."
The Pilgrims were only a few thousand miles from home, and they were
accomplished farmers and artisans. And yet, when they came to an
unfamiliar land, they didn’t know how to survive in its harsh
environment. They didn’t know what food would grow and what
wouldn’t. They didn’t know what they could eat and what they
couldn’t.
The Pilgrims had to learn to survive in a strange new place across a
vast ocean. If we are to become a spacefaring nation, the next
generation of explorers is going to have to learn how to survive in
other forbidding, faraway places across the vastness of space. The moon
is a crucially important stepping stone along that path – an alien
world, yet one that is only a three-day journey from Earth.
Using the space station and building an outpost on the moon to prepare
for the trip to Mars are critical milestones in America’s quest to
become a truly spacefaring nation. I think that we should want that. I
want that. I want it for the American people, for my grandchildren, for
my great-grandchildren.
Throughout history, the great nations have been the ones at the
forefront of the frontiers of their time. Britain became great in the
17th century through its exploration and mastery of the seas. America’s
greatness in the 20th century stemmed largely from its mastery of the
air. For the next generations, the frontier will be space.
Other countries will explore the cosmos, whether the United States does
or not. And those will be Earth’s great nations in the years and
centuries to come. I believe America should look to its future – and
consider what that future will look like if we choose not to be a
spacefaring nation"
