Pardon the BloggEruption

More NASA Blogging

Charles Krauthammer has a wonderful column today, basically echoing my thoughts about NASA's future.

Paul (What, me Enron?) Krugman is much more fatalistic in his approach, largely since he can't see past the end of his nose. As it stands right now (or rather, where it stood on 1/31/03), he's correct in saying, "our current approach — using hugely expensive rockets to launch a handful of people into space, where they have nothing much to do — is a dead end." But, I suppose I've already commented enough about that.

I suppose at this point, seeing how much has been made of the huge difficulty and expense going from ground to LEO and back again (space travel beyond that becomes very easy, propulsion and cost-wise), it would be appropriate to remind folks of another major dream for space junkies such as myself -- the Space Elevator. For those unfamiliar with the concept, may I direct you to this article.

Right now, it's really just a pipe dream. Beyond the hugely critical engineering problem of cable structure and stability (carbon nanotubes sound nice, but seriously large scale manufacture is decades away, there is the problem of finding a suitable anchoring location in the near-equatorial zone. Still, if it ever comes about, space not only becomes immediately, cheaply accessible, but likely quite profitable, as well.

Also, one of the likelier, unfortunate casualties of the Columbia disaster will be the Prometheus initiative, which was supposed to receive a go-ahead budgetary boost with the new NASA budget. Fears over a "Chernobyl in the sky" will likely prevail, at least for the time being. Nuclear propulsion is the best bet we have for interplanetary travel. Perhaps it will take something like the space elevator to assuage Greenpeace fears.