The Hubble Space Telescop[e is a modern marvel—and a testament to why manned space missions are necessary

The first 50 years of NASA have been marked by three stellar events—man’s landing on the Moon, the sojourn of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on the planet Mars, and the Hubble Space Tele-scope’s eye on the universe. These stand out because of the unique way each of them has clutched at our emotions and affected our thinking. They have contributed to NASA becoming one of the most success-ful government agencies in history.

The Apollo 11 landing will go down in history as the greatest accomplishment of the 20th Century. Neil Arm-strong’s first steps on the Moon were the culmination of man’s escape from the Earth’s gravitational pull to land on another body in the universe. We turned a truly audacious undertaking into another milestone in the history of our country.

NASA has played a key role in one of the greatest periods of scientific progress in history. It is uniquely positioned to collect the most comprehensive data on our biosphere.

For example, recently generated NASA data enabled scientists to finally understand the Gulf Stream warming mechanism and its effect on European weather. Such data will allow us to improve our models, resulting in better seasonal forecasts.

NASA’s Aqua satellite is showing that water vapor, the dominant greenhouse gas, works to offset the effect of carbon dioxide (CO2). This information, contrary to the assumption used in all the warming models, is ignored by global warming alarmists.

Climate understanding and critical decision making require comprehensive data about our planet’s land, sea, and atmosphere. Without an adequate satellite system to provide such data, policy efforts and monitoring international environmental agreements are doomed to failure. Our satellite monitoring capability is being crippled by interagency wrangling and federal budget issues. As much as a third of our satellites need replacing in the next couple of years.

NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Unfortunately, it is becoming just another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse, politicized science. Advocacy is replacing objective evaluation of data, while scientific data is being ignored in favor of emotions and politics.

“On the plains of hesitation lie the bones of countless millions, who, at the dawn of victory sat down to rest, and resting, died.” —George W. Cecil

Before we know it, 2010 will be here. Hundreds of thousands will be flocking to Florida for a view of the liftoff of the last mission of the space shuttle. On its return to Earth, the orbiter will be grounded—permanently. NASA’s resources will be devoted to the Constellation Program and development of the Ares rocket and the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). An American astronaut will not be going into space on an American spacecraft again until 2015, assuming policy changes, funding, presidential elections, and any number of other unknowns don’t push the date back further.

The road map for the early demise of the Space Shuttle was laid out in a 2004 private report, “Extending Human Presence into the Solar System,” issued by a Planetary Society committee, chaired by Mike Griffin. The committee, which included several astronauts, recommended as few as 10 launches before grounding the shuttle. The following year, now NASA administrator, Mike Griffin, was executing that plan, albeit with a few additional missions.

The self-inflicted hiatus is driven partially by fear of the space shuttle, but mostly by the unwillingness of Congress and the American public to adequately fund manned spaceflight. Timing for terminating the Shuttle and ramping up the Constellation program seems to be driven by the Office of Management and Budget, even though NASA’s share of the Federal Budget is a miniscule one-seventh of its peak in the 60s.

No offense to some very talented teachers, but NASA needs to immediately refocus on the serious business of spaceflight.

Every normal space mission has its usual quota of anomalies and is anything but routine, but the media seems almost bored by it. Let there be a hint of a crisis, or even a near-crisis, with the Shuttle or the ISS, and the media can’t get enough.

The media showed no such ambivalence when NASA accomplished something as irrelevant to their mission of exploration as flying a teacher in space. There was universal acclaim for Barbara Morgan when she flew on STS-118 last August. I have not seen one bit of negative coverage. For Barbara, it had been a long wait. She was backup to the original “Teacher in Space,” Christa McAuliffe. When Christa was killed in the 1986 Challenger disaster, Barbara returned to teaching but maintained her NASA contacts.

The Challenger disaster was a reminder that space travel was still risky and that it might not be appropriate for civilians who weren’t full-fledged astronauts. NASA’s response was to reincarnate “Teacher in Space” as the Educator Astronaut Program in 1998, and to appoint Barbara Morgan as a mission specialist trainee. (The other mission specialists in her astronaut class had to compete against a pool of several thousand qualified applicants.)