Space Station Merits Support

Let me make this clear from the very beginning: I am a defender of Space Station Freedom. I have supported it ever since the day in 1984 when, as an eight year-old space enthusiast, I watched then-President Ronald Reagan deliver a televised speech announcing the venture. Since then, the station has undergone more transformations of structure and purpose than any other project in NASA's history. Meanwhile, my reasons for supporting the station have also evolved. Nevertheless, I assert that the motives for the station's construction today are no less compelling, and possibly even more so, than the motives of yesterday.

David J. Andorsky's recent editorial ("A Space Station Is Too Costly: The Federal Government Should Spend Its Money at Home," February 7, 1995) contains several persuasive, and familiar, arguments. The accompanying cartoon, a picture of a beggar looking forlornly into the night sky at a constellation that resembles a dollar sign, is a misguided masterpiece that echoes his seemingly reasonable conclusions: Money spent on the space station would be better spent repairing decaying highways, feeding the homeless of Cambridge, saving lives in Bosnia and Rwanda and any number of unspecified "closer to home" projects. I don't mean to quibble with his assertion that these are in fact worthy causes; I contend, however, that the cause of Space Station Freedom is equally worthy.

As Andorsky points out, I could defend the station by any of three venues: jobs, science, or idealism. Though he proceeds to find flaws in each of these arguments, his analysis is far from convincing. Completely sidestepping the issue of high-technology jobs, he asserts that the well-being of 13,000 working men and women will not directly benefit the vague entity he calls "the economy" or, alternatively, the "American people." That leads me naturally to the question: who, then, are the "American people?"

Manned space exploration is often labeled by its opponents as too costly, too dangerous, and lacking in practical purpose. Disregarding the benefits of "space science spin-offs," however, it is clear that the growth of technology is spurred on by the need to create new materials for astronauts. In addition, some types of life sciences research can only be conducted in the weightless environment of space.

While Andorsky admits that the science argument is "compelling," more compelling is the unmentioned fact that many significant scientific discoveries occur as a result of an experiment performed for an entirely different purpose. In the absence of a human scientist with the capability to adjust experimental conditions at moment's notice, experiments might have to be repeated several times to yield results, or worse, abandoned due to their excessive costliness, against which Andorsky rails. To cite a historical example, would Alexander Fleming have isolated penicillin if he had to conduct his research via an unmanned satellite? I stake my final rebuttal on admittedly risky ground: what Andorsky dubs that "nice sentiment" about the space station being an inspiration to humanity and a symbol of "what's right with America" and the world. Andorsky fumbles in his effort to get a grasp on the value of idealism, perhaps because there is no universally accepted definition. Yet it strikes me as significant, and compelling, that the same president who exhorted the American people to "ask what you can do for your country" also declared that "we choose to go to the Moon and do the other things [other space projects] not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Of course in those days, as in Reagan's, the goal of government-directed space research was to outdo the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union by trumping their achievements with more impressive ones of our own. Today I can open my morning newspaper and read a story about the American space shuttle executing a daring rendezvous with the Russian space station, Mir. Imagine that: the East and West working together in space for a change, instead of racing against each other. Contrary to popular belief, the planned international Space Station Freedom is not "NASA's space station;" it belongs to the world, in name if not in government budgets. Space exists outside the domain of private property; it belongs to everyone.

Eliminating Space Station Freedom will not have a significant impact on solving any of the problems Andorsky cites. On the other hand, to "turn our backs on a dream" means, in sharp contrast to his belief, that we shall never "inherit the stars." As the history of science and space technology has demonstrated again and again, dreams and ideals are what successes are made of. Kenneth W. Lin '97