NASA,John Glen

Article Outline

Exploration

History

Science

Politics

Future

    Space exploration requires more than just science—it requires an enormous amount of money. The amount of money that a country is willing to invest in space exploration depends on the political climate of the time. During the Cold War, a period of tense relations between the United States and the USSR, both countries poured huge amounts of money into their space programs, because many of the political and public opinion battles were being fought over superiority in space. After the Cold War, space exploration budgets in both countries shrank dramatically.

The Space Race and the Cold War
    Space exploration became possible at the height of the Cold War, and superpower competition between the United States and the USSR gave a boost to space programs in both nations. Indeed, the primary impact of Sputnik was political—in the United States Sputnik triggered nationwide concern about Soviet technological prowess. When the USSR succeeded in putting the first human into space, it only added to the disappointment and shame felt by many Americans, and especially by President Kennedy. Against this background, Alan Shepard's Mercury flight on May 5, 1961, was a welcome cause for celebration. Twenty days later Kennedy told Congress, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” This was the genesis of the Apollo program. Although there were other motivations for going to the Moon—scientific exploration among them—Cold War geopolitics was the main push behind the Moon race. Cold War competition also affected the unpiloted space programs of the United States and USSR.

The Moon Race
    During the piloted programs of the Moon race, the pressure of competition caused Soviet leaders to order a number of “space spectaculars,” as much for their propaganda value as for their contributions. Each Voskhod flight entailed significant risks to the cosmonauts—the Voskhod 1 crew flew without space suits, while Voskhod 2's Alexei Leonov was almost unable to reenter his craft following his historic spacewalk. But the space spectacular the Soviets wanted most of all—a piloted mission around the Moon in time for the 50th anniversary of the Russian revolution—never came to pass. By December 1968, when the Apollo 8 astronauts flew around the Moon, it was clear that victory in the Moon race had gone to the United States.

    The achievement of Kennedy's goal, with the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, signaled a new era in space exploration in the United States—but not as NASA had hoped. Instead of accepting NASA's proposals for a suite of ambitious post-Apollo space programs, Congress backed off on space funding, with the space shuttle as the only major space program to gain approval. In time it became clear that the lavish space budgets of the 1960s had been a product of a unique time in history, in which space was the most visible arena for superpower competition.

After the Moon
    Tensions between the superpowers eased somewhat in the early 1970s, and the United States and USSR joined forces for the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. Nevertheless, Cold War suspicions continued to influence space planners in both nations in the 1970s and 1980s. Both sides continued to spend enormous sums on missiles and nuclear warheads. Missiles of the Cold War arms race were designed to fly between continents on a path that took them briefly into space during their journeys. In the United States, a great deal of research went into a space-based antimissile system called the Strategic Defense Initiative (known to the public as Star Wars), which was never built. The stockpiling of missiles was eventually slowed by the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) treaties.

    In the USSR, concerns over possible offensive uses of the U.S. space shuttle helped prompt the development of the heavy-lift launcher Energia and the space shuttle Buran. Economic hardships, however, forced the suspension of both programs. The economy worsened after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, threatening the now-Russian space program with extinction.

After the Cold War
    In 1993 the U.S. government redefined NASA's plans for an international space station to include Russia as a partner, a development that would not have been possible before the end of the Cold War. An era of renewed cooperation in space between Russia and the United States followed, highlighted by flights of cosmonauts on the space shuttle and astronauts on the Mir space station.

    Meanwhile, other nations have staged their own programs of unpiloted and piloted space missions. Many have been conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA), formed in 1975, whose 13 member nations include France, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom. European astronauts visited Mir and have flown on shuttle missions. Since the late 1970s, a series of European rockets called Ariane have launched a significant percentage of commercial satellites. ESA's activities in planetary exploration have included probes such as Huygens, which is scheduled to land on Saturn's moon Titan in 2004 as part of NASA's Cassini mission.

    China, Japan, and India have each developed satellite launchers. None have created rockets powerful enough to put piloted spacecraft into orbit. However, Japan has joined Canada, Russia, and the ESA in contributing hardware and experiments to the International Space Station.

The High Cost of Space Exploration
    One aspect of space exploration that has changed little over time is its cost. To some extent the ability to carry out a vigorous space program is a measure of a nation's economic vitality. For example, Russia has had difficulties staying on schedule with its contributions to the International Space Station—a reflection of the unstable Russian economy.

    Cost has always been a central factor in the political standing of space programs. The enormous expense of the Apollo Moon program (roughly $100 billion in 1990s dollars) prompted critics to say that the program could have been carried out far more cheaply by robotic missions. While that claim is oversimplified—no robot has yet equaled the performance of a skilled observer—it reveals how vulnerable space programs are to budget cuts. The reusable space shuttle failed to significantly lower the cost of placing satellites in low Earth orbit, as compared with throwaway launchers like the Saturn V and the Titan III. Cost, not scientific potential, is usually the most significant factor for a nation in deciding whether to adopt a major space program. In the United States budgetary process, space funding must compete in a very visible way with expenditures for social programs and other concerns. Taking inflation into account, Congress has steadily trimmed NASA's allotments, forcing the agency to reduce its number of employees to pre-Apollo levels by the year 2000.

    In response to the high cost of space access, the late 1990s saw renewed efforts to develop a single-stage, reusable space vehicle. The situation also strengthened arguments that in the future, the most expensive space programs should be carried out by a consortium of nations. Most scientists envision a program for sending humans to Mars as an international one, primarily as a cost-sharing measure. Still, the mix of scientific, political, and other motivations has yet to bring about such a venture, and it may be years or even decades before international piloted interplanetary voyages become reality.