FIXING THE SHUTTLES

President Bush paid tribute on behalf of the nation and the world Tuesday to seven courageous astronauts and to the aspirations they embodied. Just a few miles from the memorial service at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the grueling and gruesome work of recovering wreckage – human and machine – continued. This terrible juxtaposition exemplifies the vast range of emotions and issues raised in the aftermath of the Columbia catastrophe.

Family, friends and admirers throughout the nation and around the world will, in the end, deal with their emotions in private, in their own ways. The issues are for those in NASA and in the sectors of government with oversight to deal with in public. Were safety concerns overlooked, as a 1997 report on the condition of shuttle heat shields suggests? Is the aging shuttle fleet, now suspect in areas of safety systems and structural integrity, in need of replacement? Have cutbacks in hiring and retirements left NASA and its contractors with a shortage of staff with the high-level skills required for such high-level science and engineering? Can support for the International Space Station, designed to be carried out by four shuttles, be accomplished with three? Is NASA’s mission, from near-space manned flights to deep-space probes, too big, or is its budget, static for 12 years, too small?

Congress already is addressing that issue and the prevailing view seems to be that the primary problem is not the mission but the budget. Fifteen members met privately with NASA officials Monday and came out with a pledge to push spending increases targeted specifically at shuttle safety and upgrades. “You can’t have a space budget that stays flat for the last 12 years,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, who flew aboard the Columbia in 1986. The few “tens of millions” he would add to the shuttle program would be in addition to the $500 million, 3.1 percent increase President Bush has proposed for the overall NASA budget for 2004, with the bulk earmarked for the shuttle program.

The president’s proposal came before the catastrophe. It came with a critical note attached regarding the need for efforts to improve a program that appears to “suffer from inadequate planning and poor cost management.” That budget section’s title – “Setting Priorities and Bringing Costs Under Control” – set a clear mission for NASA, but the inclusion of a substantial funding increase is a clear indication that the White House seeks to give NASA the tools to fix the shuttle program. It is an example Congress would do well to follow.

The great underlying question, of course, is whether manned space flight is too risky – perhaps mankind should play it safe and let robots take the risks. There is a need for both kinds of exploration, for reasons that have to with both science and aspirations. The task before Congress is to work with NASA on striking the right balance and providing it with the means to carry out its mission. The day mankind retreats from space will be a day far sadder than the day Columbia fell to Earth.