Space Headlines

In the last 24 hours, my random online reading habit produced a number of links hitting on space themes, a topic I haven't spent as much time researching lately as I would like. Schedules being what they are this week, I don't have a great deal to say about these headlines, but here's a short synopsis:

On This Day in History (that little widget down the left hand side of this page), today's featured event was the signing of the Outer Space Treaty (1967). Essentially, this agreement serves as the basis for "international space law," which basically means that space is for the use of all humanity, and therefore no single nation can claim sovereignty over any portion of the heavens, including the moon. Furthermore, it prohibits the weaponization of the region, for testing purposes or otherwise. But like any treaty, it can only be voluntarily self-enforced.

NASA ends effort to free rover from Martian sand
It appears that the folks at JPL-NASA are not going to be able to free the Mars Rover known as Spirit from the sand trap it has been in for months. They are in the process now of positioning it to maximize the solar angle for its panels with the approach of the Martian winter. According to their Twitter feed, Spirit will remain "alive," but their hopes of ever getting out of the sand trap are fading. Their efforts can be followed here.

Obama aims to ax moon mission
According to the Orlando Sentinel, it appears that the President is going to ask Congress to discard any planned return to the moon. It is unclear whether this will get through Congress, and there is definitely a local concern here in North Alabama, as key parts of the Constellation program are located at Marshall Space Flight Center. While I certainly agree that NASA needs a clear-cut vision that maximizes private sector commercialization, I find myself rather disillusioned at the idea that the President wants NASA to focus on researching climate change. Yeah, I'm sure that's every kid's childhood dream to grow up and study climate change, rather than setting foot on the moon or on Mars.

White House Decides to Outsource NASA Work
As I said above, at first glance, I do support the opening up of NASA ventures to private entrepreneurs and companies. This Wall Street Journal article discusses this at length.

Finally, while perusing Transterrestial Musings, a blog by Rand Simberg, I came across a link to an interesting article. In the article, called "Have We Forgotten What Exploration Means?", Paul Spudis provides a deep and thought-provoking look at the idea of Exploration, and the role science should and shouldn't have in influencing the choices and direction of the space program and of space exploration in general. The premise is that the model for space ventures today is dominated by scientific interests alone (or too heavily), without consideration to other interests that are certainly just as valid. A simple case in point is the mid-19th Century western expansion into the American frontier. A key passage (emphasis mine):

Science has been part of the space program from the beginning and has served as both an activity and a rationale. The more scientists got, the more they wanted. They realized that their access to space depended upon the appropriation of enormous amounts of public money and hence, supported the non-scientific aspects of the space program (although not without some resentment). Because science occurs on the cutting edge of human knowledge, its conflation with exploration is understandable. But originally, exploration was a much broader and richer term. Which brings us back to the analogy with the westward movement in American history and the changed meaning of the word “exploration.” A true frontier has explorers and scientists, but it also has miners, transportation builders, settlers and entrepreneurs.

Read the whole thing, as it goes on to provide a thoughtful perspective of how we might best realize this final frontier and actually recover the fruits of decades worth of labor.