USA Today: NASA is tied up in knots and maybe it’s that word “exploration” that’s tangled it.
Kudos to USA Today‘s Dan Vergano and his dive into the mission architecture of NASA and the enshrinement there of the word Exploration. The story ran two days ago. It digs into the space agency’s essential culture.
Many reporters have written about the divide there between its two primary functions: to put people in space, and to put machines up there to see what is happening far beyond the ability of people to see for themselves. But few have examined it in terms other than as a competition for dollars.
His lede sets it up by asking what, if any, different cultural or intellectual roles were performed by the likes of Lewis and Clark west of the Mississippi, and of Spirit and Opportunity along the equator of Mars. Are both, neither, or which one of these sets the real explorers? The nub of the issue is that NASA calls its spacesuit cadre and its support staff its Exploration program, and the rest of the robotic nosing around the universe its Science Mission Directorate. Why is that? His piece’s catalyst is a journal article in Space Policy. It offers no solution to what may be an artificial division of labor and of celebrity. But that it raises the topic at all gives readers of space news more to chew on than most mere regurgitations of the latest events on the space station, or on a probe headed for Pluto.
- Charlie Petit
