Space Station Zero

Officials at Cape Canaveral said Thursday that three NASA science advisers have handed in their resignations.

The three men served on the NASA Advisory Council's science committee, the Associated Press reported. Charles Kennel went willingly. Wesley Huntress and Eugene Levy were asked to leave.

Professor Levy told the AP they thought it was important that "a strong commitment to science be maintained at NASA."

For that, NASA administrator Michael Griffin kicked them out the door.

NASA spokesman Dean Acosta explained, "The administrator is looking for ... members to advise him based on the priority that the agency has and based on what our parameters are."

What does that mean in English?

Well, last month, a top manager in the space station program let it leak that NASA was considering shutting down all science research on the space station for at least a year in order to close a budget shortfall of $100 million.

What, you might well ask, is NASA doing up there on the space station if it's not doing science research?

"Cutting science programs would suggest that it is merely a joy ride to the moon," said a spokeswoman for Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. "It would mean that we as a nation have wasted billions of taxpayer dollars."

Actually, we have wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Cutting science programs would mean that the taxpayers are finally going to get wise to it.

It's a prospect that frightened Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas into sending out a press release to make sure everyone knew she was on the case. The plan to drop science research was "an unacceptable option," the senator wrote to the NASA administrator.

The senator is concerned. If the taxpayers ever find out that the space station is less useful than the Salad Shooter you got for Christmas last year, they might want to stop paying for all those lucrative government contracts that go to all those aerospace companies. And if there are no contracts to hand out, how is a politician supposed to shake down the companies who compete for those contracts?

By the way, Senator Hutchison is the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science and Space. If you want an aerospace contract, you don't want to miss any of her fund-raisers.

Senator Hutchison is not alone in this racket. NASA's budget records show that since 2001, the agency has been required to spend $3 billion on pet projects for lawmakers' home districts.

No doubt that's what's behind last week's weird announcement that two newcomers to aerospace have just been awarded $500 million to dream up a spaceship that can one day take tourists into space. Rocketplane Kistler just emerged from bankruptcy, and SpaceX had a spectacular failure on the launch pad in March when a rocket exploded, and neither has ever sent a spacecraft of any kind into orbit, but never mind. One's in Oklahoma and the other's in California and those senators have to eat, too.

At least we know the truth. The space station is not an orbiting laboratory where courageous scientists strive to cure diseases in zero gravity. It's not a 21st-century bridge to a thrilling future of space travel.

It's a hundred-billion-dollar pork chop.

For that price, you'd think it would come with a salad. The Salad Shooter people must have missed a fund-raiser.


Copyright 2006

.