A better plan for NASA

New budget puts priority on new science and encouraging private investment

It was a nice turn of phrase by White House science adviser John Holdren: “We’re putting the science back in rocket science.”

He meant it literally. There will be no trip back to the moon for NASA, a program based on old technology and rockets based on space shuttle boosters.

The $4 billion that NASA spends yearly on human space exploration has been redirected in the Obama administration’s proposed budget. The money now will be used for what NASA and White House officials call dramatic changes in rocketry, including in-orbit refueling.

Eventually, the new technologies could be used to send astronauts to an asteroid or the moons orbiting Mars. It’s a far more compelling plan than the $100 billion program to return astronauts to the pockmarked surface of the moon, a trip we’ve taken already.

The new approach to space travel is innovative in other ways as well. The proposed budget contains billions of dollars to encourage private companies to build, launch and operate spacecraft for NASA and others.

That means the best way to get to the orbiting space station in the future might be by private space taxi. Launching new satellites can be done by the private low-earth orbit equivalent of UPS.

Proponents of this plan note that it is the next logical step in the evolution of space travel, following the same trajectory as air travel. In the beginning, the Army flew most planes. But private companies eventually took over the business, especially when they got a guaranteed customer in the U.S. government to deliver air mail.

If competitive private enterprise can fill the niche of providing transportation for people and material in orbit around the Earth, that frees NASA to engage in what it is best suited for: exploration of deep space, both by man and by machine.

This is not likely to happen overnight. We still are a long way from a functioning, private rocket that can replace NASA’s space shuttle — which, itself, might be too hazardous for everyday commercial use.

But partnering private space enterprise with government-led scientific exploration of space is a more sensible but ultimately grander goal that a trip back to the moon. For the first time in a long time, NASA seems to have its priorities straight.