WORLD NEWS NOW (02:00 AM ET) - ABC February 4, 2003
SPACE PROGRAM INQUIRY
BARBARA PINTO, ABC NEWS
(Off Camera) We've heard it over and over since Saturday from astronauts, from the Columbia crew's relatives, and even from the President. The space program must go on. But that assertion is not going unchallenged. The Columbia tragedy has many people asking once again if manned space flight is really worth the risk to human life. It's a question ABC's Jim Wooten was asking in this report for "Nightline" last night.
JIM WOOTEN, ABC NEWS
(Voice Over) Why? Why do we do this? An American President once tried to answer that question. PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, UNITED STATES
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.
JIM WOOTEN
(Voice Over) Is that it? Because it's hard? Because it's hard to do? It is that, of course, so hard, in fact, that in the 41 years since the first one, this country's manned space missions have cost 17 lives. And tonight, as the latest casualties are mourned and memorialized, that question, that very same question, is being asked yet again. Why? Why do we do this?
SENATOR BILL NELSON, DEMOCRAT, FLORIDA
The American people want a space program. They want to dream. They want to soar. They wanted to be inspired.
JIM WOOTEN
(Voice Over) The senator is a politician, of course. But he once soared into orbit, on the shuttle.
JOHN LOGSDON, DIRECTOR, SPACE POLICY INSTITUTE
After the flag, after the bald eagle, it's usually an astronaut on the moon or the shuttle at launch that, that we use to symbolize what we do as a nation.
ROBERT PARK, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Why are we still doing it? It's a very good question. And the reason is basically that NASA has been convinced from the beginning, and have convinced many members of Congress, that the public simply would not support the space program if there were not human beings involved. I think they're wrong.
JIM WOOTEN
(Voice Over) Still, although NASA has been putting human beings up there with some regularity, the public, or at least the Congress, hasn't seemed all that excited. The budget for space is now about $15 billion a year, less than one percent of the Federal government's total expenditures. But even at that, it's been flat for the last decade or so. Last year, President Bush asked for an $800 million cut. And some NASA advocates say its budget has been reduced in real terms by 40 percent since 1990. Meanwhile, since every manned shuttle mission costs nearly half a billion dollars, there's been a growing clamor for the increased use of robots in space. They're cheaper, the argument goes, better, faster. You don't have to bring them down. And if something does go wrong, the only cost is money.
SENATOR BILL NELSON
You need to the human in the loop, using human judgment, in order for us to accomplish a lot of things.
MICHAEL WISKERCHEN, CALIFORNIA SPACE INSTITUTE
We couldn't have fixed the Hubble space telescope without the, the astronaut crew that went up with the corrective optics. Sure, there are lots of exciting scientific things that can be done by robots, but there are also lots of exciting scientific things that require human presence.
JIM WOOTEN
(Voice Over) On the other hand, Dr. Park compares, unfavorably, the unmanned Pathfinder mission to Mars, 300 million miles away, with the space station, which is about the distance from New York to Washington DC above the earth.
ROBERT PARK
And yet, that mission, with all the information that it sent us, sent back about Mars, cost about a fourth as much as a single shuttle launch. So it's, when it comes to cost, there's a factor of at least two orders of magnitude, maybe three, to get the same information robotically as opposed to with a human being.
JIM WOOTEN
(Voice Over) And there's plenty of evidence that the media are no longer has hypnotized by the space program as they once were. The story of Columbia's departure, for example, was on page three of the Washington Post, page 14 of the New York Times. And the last time this network broadcast a launch live was more than five years ago. Nevertheless, when disaster struck on Saturday, no story was more important, perhaps because when something does go wrong, the old myth of Americans as adventurers comes to the fore, the vision of a country that does things because they're hard, no matter what.
JOHN PIKE, ABC NEWS CONSULTANT
Space flight is the modern embodiment of the American dream. America is about pioneering frontiers. It's about taking risks. It's about boldly going where no one has gone before.
JOHN LOGSDON
I mean, Americans don't go to the air and space museum to get a history of Tang and Velcro, okay? They go there to be inspired.
JIM WOOTEN
(Off Camera) So that's why we do it, to inspire ourselves and others with what courageous adventurers we are as individuals, with how mighty we are as a nation. And not really, or at least not mainly, for the science and technology NASA says has so improved and enhanced our lives on Earth. Maybe so, but what is the maximum acceptable cost, in terms of lives, of that inspiration? The answer to that may lie in the story of the first circumnavigation of the globe back in the 16th century. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan left Spain with 270 men on five ships. Three years later, one ship returned with only 18 men, not including Magellan. The age of exploration had begun with an enormous cost. It still continues. I'm Jim Wooten, for "Nightline" in Washington.
BARBARA PINTO
(Off Camera) That was some of last night's "Nightline."
LIZ CHO, ABC NEWS
(Off Camera) And you're watching "World News Now." There's more news coming up.
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