Issue date: 6/29/04 Section: Opinion

Graphic Rylie Deyoe

"It is error alone which needs the support of government," Thomas Jefferson once said. "Truth can stand by itself." On the morning of June 21, Americans witnessed two truths. The first was that the creative mind of an engineer could fly into space at almost three times the speed of sound.

The other truth is space travel is possible without needing government support-it was financed by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen.

"Our success proves without question that manned space flight does not require mammoth government expenditures," said Burt Rutan, the aerospace designer behind Spaceshipone and its mother ship. "It can be done by a small company operating with limited resources and a few dozen dedicated employees."

Rutan is absolutely right-no one can argue with the facts shown as clearly as his rocket's contrails stood against the blue sky over the Mojave that morning. While NASA sucks up billions of dollars trying to do a job hampered by its status as a government agency, the journey of Spaceshipone demands that private individuals should be handed the keys to the American space program.

"By placing the space program under governmental funding, we necessarily place it at the mercy of governmental whim," say Robert Garmong, a philosophy professor at Texas A&M. "The results are written all over the past 20 years of NASA's history: the Space program is a political animal, marked by shifting, inconsistent and ill-defined goals."

As a government program, NASA is forced to accomodate to, initiate and scrap projects by the will of politicians. Take for example the X-38, a project started in 1995, designed to serve as a "lifeboat" in space.

Despite the need for a support system sadly demonstrated by the Columbia tragedy, it was scrapped in 2002, only two years short of completing its flight test phase and showing a great deal of promise.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, around 200 people were employed on this project. While one can only guess at the cost of building and testing prototypes and employing that many people for that long, the bottom line is that their work was all wasted.

Corporations would never spend that kind of time and effort on a project and then dissolve it, because they are motivated by making a profit.

Without that motivation, NASA has no incentive not to spend money irresponsibly. Though a lot of good has come out of NASA, men like Rutan prove that the space program can be handled by civilians who can do the same things, and more cheaply.

Continued...

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