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Stanford University
Stanford, California

CONTACT:
Mark Shwartz, News Service
(650) 723-9296, mshwartz{at}stanford.edu 

2/4/03 

Re-thinking NASA's manned space program 
=======================================
By Norman H. Sleep

It is time to rethink the manned space program. Despite the Columbia 
shuttle disaster on Saturday, which took the lives of seven 
astronauts, NASA officials have called for the shuttle program to 
continue. The cry, "Let's go on to Mars," has even been heard from 
some quarters in NASA. 

What has post-Apollo manned space flight provided beyond adventure? 
There have been some scientific spin-offs, to be sure, but any large 
technical program -- even a more ill thought out one, such as trying 
to live at the bottom of the sea -- would have done that. The science 
contributions have been mostly targets of opportunity. For example,
scientists have skillfully studied organisms in weightlessness. 
Extensive space sickness studies are necessary to keep the crew 
healthy. Yet no benefit to the 5 billion-plus people on the ground has 
come out of this work. No engineering application, such as making 
crystals or chemicals in space, has panned out. After 40 years, it is 
not too soon to ask for some practical results. 

In contrast, unmanned satellites benefit everyone on Earth.  One 
cannot turn on a television, make a long-distance phone call or turn 
on the Internet without having signals go through space. Weather 
satellites provide minute-to-minute worldwide coverage and timely 
warnings, and satellites image the ground motion around earthquake 
faults and volcanoes. Satellites also have revolutionized astronomy.
No one would think of sending up people to get in the way of these 
applications. It would be like having a cloak-and-dagger guy aboard a 
spy satellite. Yet NASA has designed numerous robotic satellites to be 
launched from the shuttle -- including the much-vaunted Hubble Space
Telescope, which was placed into orbit by astronauts aboard the 
shuttle Discovery in 1990. 

Manned space flight in Earth orbit is inefficient, somewhat dangerous 
but not overwhelmingly expensive. Mars space flight is another story. 
The cost of getting people there and back is more than a trillion 
dollars -- yes, "trillion" with a "t." The popular and
scientific 
interest in Mars is biology. Can we find evidence of living or fossil 
microbes?  If not, can we catch the origin of life, frozen billions of 
years ago, in the act? A speck of organic dust or a live microbe would 
be a monumental discovery. A manned spacecraft with its life supports 
would risk contaminating Mars, which would likely defeat the 
scientific purpose of the mission.

-30-

EDITORS: Norman H. Sleep is a professor of geophysics and, by 
courtesy, of geological and environmental sciences. A planetary 
scientist, Sleep studies the origin of the solar system and the 
conditions on early Earth that led to microbial life. His research has 
been published in Nature and other scientific journals. He was elected 
to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999.

Relevant Web URLs:

* http://pangea.stanford.edu/GP/sleep.html 
* http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/news_stories/news_detail.cfm?ID=153 

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