Onward and outward

It is irrational to judge the need for manned spaceflights by one tragic accident. Pioneering is always dangerous, and if there are logical reasons why spaceflights should be manned, one tragedy does not refute them; if there are logical reasons that speak against manned space missions, one accident does not confirm them.

Manned space missions have clearly proved their worth in rescuing satellites, space construction, and other activities for which computers and robots are simply not ready yet. More important, manned space flight will pave the way for the colonization of space: in centuries to come, the pioneers of humanity will surely press on to a New World without coercion, brutality or hypocrisy, as did their forefathers half a millenium ago.

When the Apollo astronauts on the moon were made to demonstrate a feather and a hammer falling equally fast in the absence of an atmosphere, they were using no more accuracy, and considerably fewer wits, than Galileo used in the 16^th century; the "experiment" had all the scientific value of Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin.

When Rep. Bill Nelson, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Space Science, went for a ride in the Columbia last December, he got the publicity a politician dreams of, while NASA greased another Washington wheel; his stunt displaced payload specialist Gregory Jarvis together with some experiments designed and paid for by Hughes Aircraft Corp.

There is an acute and genuine need for such experiments: more than 100 of them, requested and paid for by the Department of Defense, industry, and scientific institutions, have been waiting in line, some of them for years. Among a multitude of applications, pharmaceutical companies can process certain drugs in the absence of gravity several times faster than on earth. Whether such experiments take precedence over others, or whether both are canceled in favor of a politician's joy ride, is decided by a bureaucrat. Whatever the outcome, most of the bill is sent to the taxpayer. Tom Brosz, editor of the highly informative and commendable newsletter Commercial Space Report ($15/yr., Box 60547, Sunnyvale, CA 94088), says "Justifying forcible removal from other people's wallets by expounding on the Wonderful Things one will do with it is at the root of the majority of the problems of our government and our nation."

Indeed it is, and nowhere more than in space. It is here that government should be looking after its only legitimate mandate: the discretion to use force for the defense of its citizens' freedom. It is here that it should build a defense that defends. And it is also here that it should get out of the way of the budding private space-companies that are being displaced, and in several cases actively obstructed, by NASA.

Where will these companies get the funds needed for such work? Same place the government gets it: from free enterprise.

Given freedom to proceed, they will be risking their own money, not the taxpayers', and they are unlikely to waste it on publicity stunts. Given freedom to proceed, they will develop nuclear rocketry, which by cold engineering logic is the only method to carry spacecraft beyond the limits set by chemical fuels, and which was abandoned in the early 1970s for political imagery.

If the government builds Star Shield to protect freedom, including free enterprise in space, yet steps aside to let commercial pioneers compete, the heirs of the Wright brothers will forge onward and outward, leaving the Brokaws, Rifkins and the other ninnies whimpering in their armchairs.