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Space program funding - too many chiefs and not enough Indians
Book reviews
painting on the jacket. But I fear Steel's actuarial calculations are too subtle to have much impact on the S p a c e g u a r d funding q u e s t i o n : in Clarke's portrayal of his imaginary impact, the most telling line is 'It was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning'. That's where the point lies, not in the average risk spread over decades or centuries, and I felt Steel might raise more interest in Spaceguard with the quoted estimate that 'there is at least a 1% chance that all of the cities around the Pacific rim will be obliterated by an asteroidinduced tsunami within the next century' (p. 184). The aftermath of a big impact would be akin to Nuclear Winter, and I found myself comparing this book with The Cold and the Dark, in which Ehrlich, Sagan et al. used a block of colour paintings to bring that concept to life. Steel's book has only blackand-white photographs, many of them reproduced at too small a scale to make much impression; given the magnitude of the threat under discussion, and the relatively sensational title, a more dramatic approach would be justified. This book perpetuates the growing practice of following colons with capital letters. On a more serious stylistic point, it makes extensive use of footnotes to convey information which could just as well be in the text. As a general rule, footnotes (especially if collected at the end of the book) should be used only for material which can't go into the text without disrupting the flow of thought. A n d having invited Arthur C. Clarke to write the Foreword to the book, it's a great pity to accompany his ideas in the text with an apologetic footnote beginning, 'Although Arthur C. Clarke writes science f i c t i o n . . . ' But these minor reservations aside, Steel's book is easily readable and packed with information. In relation to Clube and Napier's hypothesis of a 'super-comet' break-up around 5000 years ago, there is a particularly interesting section on archaeoastronomy, speculating that increased dust in the inner Solar System might have expanded the Zodiacal Light into a 'celestial river' spanning the night sky,
S P A C E POLICY August 1996
while the outliers at Stonehenge could have m a r k e d the radiants of the Taurid meteors. The break-up of such an o b j e c t could increase E a r t h ' s annual infall of dust from 40,000 tons to six million, with major environmental effects even if no large fragments struck the planet. Given that, the early activity and apparent size of Comet Hale-Bopp should be causing some concern. A n event like that, with a comet entering the inner Solar System on a very long-period orbit, would be difficult to anticipate and prevent. More straightforward hazards could perhaps be countered, altering their orbits either with nuclear weapons or with c o n t r o l l e d s o l a r sails, and Steel squares up to the 'deflection dilemma' - if we acquire the technology to deflect an object away from the Earth, will terrorists or megalomaniacs use it
to turn objects towards us? Given the certainty that, with no precautions, something big will hit us anyway, it's a chance that I for one would be prepared to take.
Duncan Lunan Flat 65, Dalriada House 56 Blythswood Court Glasgow G2 7PE, UK 1'Chain of Impact Craters Suggested by
Spaceborne Radar Images', JPL release 96-55, 20 March 1996. 2Berry, Adrian, New fears of comets on collision course, Daily Telegraph 27 April 1996, p. 6; and NEAT camera spots comet, Earth-crossing asteroids, Space News, 6-12 May 1996, p. 11. 3Steel, Duncan and Snow, Peter, The Tapanui Region of New Zealand: Site of a 'Tunguska' Around 800 Years Ago?, in A. Harris and E. Bowell, eds., Asteroid, Comets, Meteors 1991 Houston, TX: Lunar & Planetary Institution, 1992.
Space program funding - too many chiefs and not enough Indians Can Democracies Fly in Space? The Challenge of Revitalizing the U.S. Space Program by W.D. Kay
Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995. 256 pp, $59.95 Professor Kay's book applies rather basic and easily understandable political science concepts and analytic frameworks to a broadly cast examination of the US space program. It draws its space-related information totally from secondary sources. Nothing is examined in much depth. Even so, the result is a provocative analysis of why the U S A in the years since the Apollo program has found it difficult to develop a stable, productive civilian space effort. K a y begins his b o o k with the observation (p. 3) that 'over the last two decades it has become increasingly obvious that something is horribly wrong with the U.S. space program.'
He suggests (p. 94) that 'the basic problem facing the U.S. space program is the number, variety, and stability of the participants that play a role in its development.' With so many stakeholders, 'rational, long-range planning' is 'effectively impossible' (p. 113). Yet, he suggests, a complex, expensive, large-scale undertaking such as space exploration requires long-term, stable commitments for its success. Kay suggests that only when the normal course of democratic politics is bypassed, as was the case during the Apollo program, 'can a democracy mount an effective space program' (p. 121). What to do, then? Kay examines, and rejects as only palliatives, suggestions that the program would be improved by internationalization and commercialization. H e has a few rather limited suggestions for change, such as a national 'space summit' to develop a consensus on space goals and multi-year budgeting, but ultimately throws up his hands and con-
227
Book reviews
cludes (p. 192) that 'it is entirely possible that no viable solution exists at this time.' Because of the 'vicissitudes of A m e r i c a n democratic politics' (p. 113), his answer to the question posed by the book's title is 'probably not'.
Too harsh This is too harsh a conclusion, in my view. Perhaps the institutions of a pluralist democracy have in fact worked rather well in recent years, at least with respect to space. There has been political and budgetary support for a space program that continues to produce reasonable scientific returns and symbolic satisfaction, despite its wellpublicized failures. But the political system has resisted attempts by NASA
228
and its allies to push an ambitious agenda of outward-bound human expansion and grandiose robotic undertakings like the original Earth Observing System. The political system did not provide a stable, long-term commitment to the space station or EOS in their original conceptions because they were flawed programs, not because a democratic political system cannot make and keep a promise. It took two decades to get NASA to recognize that the Apollo experience was not the normal state of affairs, but over the past few years, there is emerging a program more accurately reflecting the contributions that a government space program can make to the American society. Getting to this point has been messy and inefficient,
but it hardly demonstrates that democratic politics and a high-quality space program (and other high-technology endeavours) are fundamentally incompatible, as Kay suggests. Kay's book alerts us to the deeply political character of the decisions that to date have driven US space activities. It is well worth reading; too few analysts have attempted such a synthetic overview and analysis of the recent history of US space policy and programs. I disagree with many of the author's conclusions - but he certainly made me think!
John M. Logsdon Director, Space Policy Institute George Washington University Washington, DC 20052, USA
SPACE POLICY August 1996
painting on the jacket. But I fear Steel's actuarial calculations are too subtle to have much impact on the S p a c e g u a r d funding q u e s t i o n : in Clarke's portrayal of his imaginary impact, the most telling line is 'It was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning'. That's where the point lies, not in the average risk spread over decades or centuries, and I felt Steel might raise more interest in Spaceguard with the quoted estimate that 'there is at least a 1% chance that all of the cities around the Pacific rim will be obliterated by an asteroidinduced tsunami within the next century' (p. 184). The aftermath of a big impact would be akin to Nuclear Winter, and I found myself comparing this book with The Cold and the Dark, in which Ehrlich, Sagan et al. used a block of colour paintings to bring that concept to life. Steel's book has only blackand-white photographs, many of them reproduced at too small a scale to make much impression; given the magnitude of the threat under discussion, and the relatively sensational title, a more dramatic approach would be justified. This book perpetuates the growing practice of following colons with capital letters. On a more serious stylistic point, it makes extensive use of footnotes to convey information which could just as well be in the text. As a general rule, footnotes (especially if collected at the end of the book) should be used only for material which can't go into the text without disrupting the flow of thought. A n d having invited Arthur C. Clarke to write the Foreword to the book, it's a great pity to accompany his ideas in the text with an apologetic footnote beginning, 'Although Arthur C. Clarke writes science f i c t i o n . . . ' But these minor reservations aside, Steel's book is easily readable and packed with information. In relation to Clube and Napier's hypothesis of a 'super-comet' break-up around 5000 years ago, there is a particularly interesting section on archaeoastronomy, speculating that increased dust in the inner Solar System might have expanded the Zodiacal Light into a 'celestial river' spanning the night sky,
S P A C E POLICY August 1996
while the outliers at Stonehenge could have m a r k e d the radiants of the Taurid meteors. The break-up of such an o b j e c t could increase E a r t h ' s annual infall of dust from 40,000 tons to six million, with major environmental effects even if no large fragments struck the planet. Given that, the early activity and apparent size of Comet Hale-Bopp should be causing some concern. A n event like that, with a comet entering the inner Solar System on a very long-period orbit, would be difficult to anticipate and prevent. More straightforward hazards could perhaps be countered, altering their orbits either with nuclear weapons or with c o n t r o l l e d s o l a r sails, and Steel squares up to the 'deflection dilemma' - if we acquire the technology to deflect an object away from the Earth, will terrorists or megalomaniacs use it
to turn objects towards us? Given the certainty that, with no precautions, something big will hit us anyway, it's a chance that I for one would be prepared to take.
Duncan Lunan Flat 65, Dalriada House 56 Blythswood Court Glasgow G2 7PE, UK 1'Chain of Impact Craters Suggested by
Spaceborne Radar Images', JPL release 96-55, 20 March 1996. 2Berry, Adrian, New fears of comets on collision course, Daily Telegraph 27 April 1996, p. 6; and NEAT camera spots comet, Earth-crossing asteroids, Space News, 6-12 May 1996, p. 11. 3Steel, Duncan and Snow, Peter, The Tapanui Region of New Zealand: Site of a 'Tunguska' Around 800 Years Ago?, in A. Harris and E. Bowell, eds., Asteroid, Comets, Meteors 1991 Houston, TX: Lunar & Planetary Institution, 1992.
Space program funding - too many chiefs and not enough Indians Can Democracies Fly in Space? The Challenge of Revitalizing the U.S. Space Program by W.D. Kay
Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995. 256 pp, $59.95 Professor Kay's book applies rather basic and easily understandable political science concepts and analytic frameworks to a broadly cast examination of the US space program. It draws its space-related information totally from secondary sources. Nothing is examined in much depth. Even so, the result is a provocative analysis of why the U S A in the years since the Apollo program has found it difficult to develop a stable, productive civilian space effort. K a y begins his b o o k with the observation (p. 3) that 'over the last two decades it has become increasingly obvious that something is horribly wrong with the U.S. space program.'
He suggests (p. 94) that 'the basic problem facing the U.S. space program is the number, variety, and stability of the participants that play a role in its development.' With so many stakeholders, 'rational, long-range planning' is 'effectively impossible' (p. 113). Yet, he suggests, a complex, expensive, large-scale undertaking such as space exploration requires long-term, stable commitments for its success. Kay suggests that only when the normal course of democratic politics is bypassed, as was the case during the Apollo program, 'can a democracy mount an effective space program' (p. 121). What to do, then? Kay examines, and rejects as only palliatives, suggestions that the program would be improved by internationalization and commercialization. H e has a few rather limited suggestions for change, such as a national 'space summit' to develop a consensus on space goals and multi-year budgeting, but ultimately throws up his hands and con-
227
Book reviews
cludes (p. 192) that 'it is entirely possible that no viable solution exists at this time.' Because of the 'vicissitudes of A m e r i c a n democratic politics' (p. 113), his answer to the question posed by the book's title is 'probably not'.
Too harsh This is too harsh a conclusion, in my view. Perhaps the institutions of a pluralist democracy have in fact worked rather well in recent years, at least with respect to space. There has been political and budgetary support for a space program that continues to produce reasonable scientific returns and symbolic satisfaction, despite its wellpublicized failures. But the political system has resisted attempts by NASA
228
and its allies to push an ambitious agenda of outward-bound human expansion and grandiose robotic undertakings like the original Earth Observing System. The political system did not provide a stable, long-term commitment to the space station or EOS in their original conceptions because they were flawed programs, not because a democratic political system cannot make and keep a promise. It took two decades to get NASA to recognize that the Apollo experience was not the normal state of affairs, but over the past few years, there is emerging a program more accurately reflecting the contributions that a government space program can make to the American society. Getting to this point has been messy and inefficient,
but it hardly demonstrates that democratic politics and a high-quality space program (and other high-technology endeavours) are fundamentally incompatible, as Kay suggests. Kay's book alerts us to the deeply political character of the decisions that to date have driven US space activities. It is well worth reading; too few analysts have attempted such a synthetic overview and analysis of the recent history of US space policy and programs. I disagree with many of the author's conclusions - but he certainly made me think!
John M. Logsdon Director, Space Policy Institute George Washington University Washington, DC 20052, USA
SPACE POLICY August 1996