By Joseph Rodgers (jorodger@linknet.kitsap.lib.wa.us)
Mars Society Puget Sound
[The opinions expressed are those of the author and not the Mars Society.]
After Apollo, (which, let's face it, was really a case of international missile envy) NASA's relevance seemed in question: After a worldwide triumph on the moon, was it destined to launch robot probes for the rest of the century?
Its answer to that was the Space Shuttle, a design compromise that's put Uncle Sam in the shipping business, and kept the astronaut corps employed. Most payloads are more cheaply and more flexibly launched from unmanned rockets.
As a driving problem, as a justification for having a space shuttle program, the Space Station seems barely adequate, but we've seen the science erode to the point where ISS's mission seems mostly political once again.
So the struggle to cut TransHab's funding can be seen as a turf war where the relevance of space exploration is in question. The aerospace industry knows how to make hardshell pop cans, so that is what they want to launch. Any deviation from these designs threatens a known quantity. (Spacesuit designers are caught up in a similar struggle, when trying to fund a hard-shell suit design that doesn't starfish)
Is space going to be a place for humans to live? Or is it to forever to remain a backdrop for the political equivalent of a fireworks display? The NSS response to this shows some promise; let NASA develop TransHab on its own dime, but leave it off ISS for now, in the interest of delivering a finished space station. This is an issue that goes deeper than just TransHab, and I think we'll see it crop up again in other forms.