By Joe Pelton

The recent Columbia disaster, as tragic as it was, has highlighted the danger of the U.S. relying too heavily on the space shuttle for access to space.

The next step for the U.S. space program should be develop a cost effective and safe “space plane” that gives us affordable and reliable access to space. After that, we truly need to expand our vision to develop low-cost space vehicles, space power systems, material processing in space and, in another century, a lightweight carbon-based cable to geosynchronous orbit proposed by Arthur C Clarke to function as a “space elevator.”

Many Benefits of Satellites

Without the development over the last 40 years of more reliable and larger capacity launch vehicles, there would not be some 300 geosynchronous satellites orbiting our globe and supporting some 12,000-television channels and millions of voice channels. Without global positioning and space navigation satellites, scores of important tasks that we now take for granted would be extremely difficult or even impossible. Those global positioning and navigation satellites aid with the take off and landing of aircraft, the steering of ships, tankers and aircraft carriers, the location of downed aircraft, the routing of trains and the operation of 911 rescue activities around the world. Further, when we take into account the direct and indirect economic impacts, we find that the loss of our launch vehicles and these space application businesses would mean that the global economy would shrink by as much as $100 billion a year, resulting in a significant number of job cuts.

The development of meterological satellites, launched by rockets from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and other space and environmental agencies, has saved perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives. These space systems have saved entire towns and cities by warning of hurricanes, monsoons, tropical storms and tornadoes. We now understand the global impact of El Nino and La Nina and other global weather conditions. Farmers and fisherman likewise have avoided many billions of dollars in losses.

Space sensors, rockets and remote sensing satellites developed through the space program now help us make agriculture more productive, geological surveys more precise and forest fires more quickly detected. Perhaps most importantly, radar and optical scanners from space alert us to the dangers of the ozone hole, the loss of wetlands and tropic rain forests, changing albedo patterns in the arctic areas and global warming. Most recently, we have found the need to use satellites to protect against terrorist attack, the poisoning of water supply and the development of weapons of mass destruction.

Some argue that many of the space applications that provide these benefits depend only on machines — the rockets, computers, detection devices, robots and sensors developed by NASA, the aerospace industry and the global space community. These critics suggest that most practical space applications – from “Teflon” to commercial satellites — do not depend on people in space.

This, however, is really not the case. The most demanding technology and the greatest advances from the space program have come from space exploration and research aimed to support “manned flight.” NASA and aerospace research programs that support “people in space” have helped make remarkable breakthroughs in life sciences, laser systems, computer processing and storage, robotics, power generation, and more. The clean, hydrogen-fueled automobiles of tomorrow started with space-based fuel cell research. Space power systems will be critical to our future energy needs. Time after time research designed to support humans in space, because the technical challenges are so great, has produced the biggest payoffs.

The point is that we never know where space research and manned space programs will lead us. But some 45 years of experience has shown us that the challenges of space continually promise a brighter and healthier tomorrow. In no way is this more true that in the arena of space research, exploration and education.

Without the support that NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense (DoD) have provided to U.S. colleges and universities, advances in the space field that have led to thousands of key inventions and discoveries otherwise would never have been made. The same is true of the European Space Agency, the National Space and Development Agency (NASDA) and the Communications Research Lab (CRL) in Japan, and so on around the world.

The satellite industry has not advanced just because of the development of rockets and the shuttle. Space applications have gained from educational and industrial research in diverse areas. Examples include digital signal processing, digital compression technology, computer storage, laser systems, robotic devices, artificial intelligent software, monolithic devices, and hundreds of other technologies that support our modern computers and satellite networks to provide us with advanced radar and surveillance systems.

In short, without NASA, manned space programs and space applications programs, we would lack full capability to pilot our planes accurately or rescue crash victims. We would not have reliable weather forecasts. We would not have a good understanding of the ozone hole or global warming. We would be at a loss about how to confront many of our environmental and national defense challenges. A surprising amount of knowledge and human economic enterprise is now invisibly hidden in one sector of the space industry or another. These benefits range from trillions of dollars in electronic fund transfers to global mining operations, new forms of laser surgery to the latest offerings in tele- education and tele-health.

We are expanding our reliance on space technology for homeland security, Internet connections, the environment, communications and navigation, new forms of power and clean transportation, weather forecasting, and knowledge of the universe. Some believe that human information, fueled by education and research programs, now is doubling every two years.

For the human race to tap its technological potential, we need NASA, the aerospace, telecommunications and computer industries, as well as our international partners dedicated to research for space, computers, avionics and telecommunications.

Next Step Forward

The next step forward is clear. We have to make the shuttle safer for flight for the completion of the International Space Station. But beyond these urgent activities of the next few months and years, we will need vision, political foresight and grit to go boldly where no man or woman has gone before.

At this point in American history, we need to map out a new century of space technology and exploration.

We should honor the Columbia mission heroes with a fitting tribute. From the ashes of the shuttle and our collective grief, we should vow to forge ahead to achieve new advances in space access technologies.

We should see this setback with the shuttle program as wake up call. Our aerospace industry has declined by some 600,000 workers in a decade and roughly one quarter of the aerospace workforce will retire within the decade. We need to strengthen our space research and development (R&D) program, and fortify our educational system as well.

Within the next century we can make space-based global tele-education available to anyone in the world for a few cents a day. We can create environmental space networks that preserve the livability of our biosphere, warn us of natural disasters, and renew our oceans, forests and wetlands. We can even aspire to create a “space elevator” to lift anyone or anything into space at a fraction of the cost of today’s rockets. Over the longer term, we can create a plan to “terraform” Mars to create a new livable planet within our solar system.

Our scientific and technical knowledge emboldens us as thinking people to succeed and grow within our universe. Such vision is essential to our survival and zeal to move forward. Columbia is not the end but the beginning of a new era in space. We just need the will to make it so.

Joe Pelton is executive director of the Arthur Clarke Institute and director of the Space and Advanced Communications Institute (SACRI) of George Washington University. He can be reached by tel at 202/994-5507.