Measuring Space Choices by Our Real Purpose

摘要

A quarter-century ago, a small group of space activists created the Space Frontier Foundation. Now a new generation has picked up the torch, because despite a lot of progress, humanity still doesn't have a free and open space frontier. This failure reflects many problems, but central is a continuing failure of U.S. government space policy. Civil space certainly struggles with many of the same circumstances that aggravate most public policy issues, but those only mask our core challenge: an endless debate about proper goals. President Barack Obama has embraced the idea of visiting a near-Earth asteroid before pursuing Mars. Many Republican congressmen believe that returning to the Moon should be our focus. Still other leaders, including many scientists, say that Mars itself is the only proper objective. The problem with these claims that one favored destination is "the goal" for our civil space enterprise is not that the choice is wrong, but that the entire question is at least premature, if not misguided. We shouldn't be asking why (or why not) go to A instead of B, or before B. We should be asking why we should go anywhere. Why send humans into space at all?