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Would Congress put up the money in an era when the Gramm-Rudman Act dictates severe slashes in many federal spending programs, including the NASA budget? Any request that Congress do so would intensify a debate about the future of the space program. That debate was about to begin anyway in a few weeks, when the National Space Commission is to outline a proposed agenda of space activities for the next 50 years. At week's end White House officials were considering setting up an independent group that would also examine the U.S. role in space. The discussions are bound to become more heated once congressional committees question NASA about its investigation into the cause of the Challenger disaster.
Although the shuttle is generally regarded as a dazzling technological achievement, critics have long complained that NASA let it become an obsession that swallowed too large a share of the scarce space dollars. They also fear that the space agency has made all of its projects too dependent on the shuttle. "NASA has put all our eggs into one basket," complains Ellis Miner, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Without the shuttle, those (space exploration) machines are dead." The Pentagon has been so worried about this dependency that it persuaded Congress to put up $2.1 billion to build an expendable, unmanned rocket capable of launching the satellites that the military needs in orbit. These rockets, however, will not be available until 1988.
Finally, the Challenger tragedy revives the whole question of manned vs. unmanned space flight. Scientists like James Van Allen, discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts that surround the earth, have long contended that there are few scientific or commercial purposes that cannot be served by unmanned, automated spacecraft; these can be launched and operated at a fraction of the cost of putting humans into space. Cornell Astronomer Thomas Gold is more blunt. Manned flight, he says, "is enormously expensive, unmanageable, risky and dangerous." His conclusion: "The shuttle program should be scrapped."
Proponents of manned space flight have cogent rebuttals. Without humans, and given the current state of technology, they ask, how could the space telescope be maintained or repaired in orbit? How could machines build the space station, from which both manned and unmanned probes could be launched at lower cost than from earth? The case for manned space flight also has a political component: right or wrong, it is widely believed that only the drama of humans in space can arouse citizens to support the expenditures necessary for a major space program. Proponents even point to a philosophical justification: no remotely controlled sensor can fulfill the human urge for adventure, the human need to personally explore the new frontiers.
Even so, urgent questions of balance and priorities remain--between manned and unmanned flights, between military, scientific and commercial goals in space. A searching debate on those questions is long overdue. If that debate has finally been precipitated, it is one accomplishment the Challenger Seven purchased with their lives.