'No Bucks without Buck Rogers'

On 12 April 1961, external pageYuri Gagarincall_made was stuffed into a Vostok space capsule and shot 302 kilometers into the air. After one orbit, he returned to a world that had changed profoundly because of his achievement. In truth, his feat was simply an exponential embellishment on that clichéd circus trick of shooting a man from a cannon. Far more meaningful achievements had already been made in space, but their importance went unrecognized because they did not involve human passengers. Gagarin's feat set a gold standard for what has been deemed important in space exploration: namely, manned flight. This priority is summed up in that old NASA proverb, "no bucks without [comic book astronaut extraordinaire] Buck Rogers". As such, Gagarin's trip effectively managed to distort space priorities to this day.

Space needs a face

Prior to Gagarin, the United States did not have a clearly defined space strategy. President Dwight D Eisenhower saw manned space travel as " external pagea complex and costly adventurecall_made" useful only for scoring cheap political points. On that basis, he canceled the Apollo program to send a man to the Moon and back. His successor, John F Kennedy initially shared Eisenhower's doubts. Kennedy's external pageadvisers warnedcall_made that "a crash program aimed at placing a man into an orbit … may hinder the development of our scientific and technical program". Since Kennedy was satisfied that the US led the Soviet Union in satellite technology, he saw no need to indulge in the machismo of a 'space race'.

For ordinary people, however, space needed a face; it was hard to make a hero of a satellite. The US lead in satellites meant little; what mattered was that Russian in his flying machine. In newspapers everywhere, Gagarin's mission was presented as an American failure, as much as a Soviet success. The Washington Post called Gagarin's feat "a psychological victory of the first magnitude for the Soviet Union". Advisers warned Kennedy that non-aligned nations would conclude that the Soviet Union was on the march and the US standing still. Gagarin, it seemed, had singlehandedly won a huge battle in the Cold War.

The Gagarin embarrassment was followed five days later by the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The US, it seemed, could do nothing right. "I do not regard the first man in space as a sign of the weakening of the … free world", a external pageclearly flustered Kennedycall_made announced. But those remarks rang hollow. In private, the president panicked. "Is there any place we can catch them?", he asked experts gathered at the White House. "If somebody can just external pagetell me how to catch upcall_made. Let's find somebody, anybody, I don't care if it's the janitor over there, if he knows how. There's nothing more important."

In response to Kennedy's plea, NASA's Robert Gilruth advised: "Well, you've got to pick a job that's so difficult, that it's new, that [the Soviets] will have to start from scratch. They just can't take their old rocket and put another gimmick on it and do something we can't do. It's got to be something that requires a external pagegreat big rocketcall_made, like going to the Moon." Persuaded by that advice, Kennedy told Congress on external page25 May 1961call_made: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth." He neglected to explain why the Moon was important other than as a finishing line in a race for prestige.

An ego trip to the Moon

On 9 April 1963, the Washington Post, reported on a conversation with Kennedy when the President was asked why the US was going to the Moon. In a brief moment of candor, he replied: "Don't you think I would rather spend these billions on programs here at home, such as health and education and welfare? But in this matter we have no choice. The Nation's prestige is too heavily involved."

Kennedy's science adviser Jerome Wiesner recalled that "We talked a lot about do we have to do this." Kennedy replied, "Well, it's your fault. If you had a external pagescientific spectacularcall_madeon this earth that would be more useful - say desalting the ocean - or something that is just as dramatic and convincing as space, then we would do it."

NASA administrator external pageJames Webbcall_made always regretted the way the Moon mission was turned into a race with a distinct finish line. As he explained, the public's goal was not NASA's goal: "The lunar project for us was little more than a realistic requirement for space competence." When Webb complained to Kennedy about America's distorted space priorities, the president responded angrily, "Everything that we do should be tied into getting on to the Moon ahead of the Russians … Otherwise we shouldn't be spending this kind of money, because external pageI am not that interested in spacecall_made… we're talking about fantastic expenditures. We've wrecked our budget, and all these other domestic programs, and the only justification for it … is to do it in the time element I am asking."

Competition vs cooperation

Kennedy's reaction to the Gagarin embarrassment set a pattern for space ventures which remains predominant to this day. The main reason the Americans have not returned a man to the Moon since the last of six Apollo missions in 1972 is because they originally went for the wrong reason. Once the race was won, and a point proved, there seemed little sense in going again. By the same token, as the ambitions of China and India now indicate, the fixation with man in space became, thanks to Gagarin, a paradigm - a test of a nation's virility, important not for what could be achieved out there, but for the flimsy prestige it earned back on Earth.

The space industry today suffers from a split personality. The really important achievements have occurred in near space by unexciting satellites. They have revolutionized communications, weather forecasting, intelligence gathering, etc. But there's still that obsession with man in space. Prestige, that old temptation, still proves difficult to resist, meaning scarce funds continue to be channeled toward absurd expressions of vanity.

That split personality was evident in early March when space professionals gathered at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London to mark the 50^th anniversary of Gagarin's flight. The British MP external pagePhillip Leecall_made , Executive Vice Chairman of the Parliamentary Space Committee, gave a rousing speech about manned exploration that had echoes of Star Trek. "My great dream", he said, "is that someday a British person will walk on a celestial body". He didn't explain what concrete value might be derived from that hugely costly adventure.

Meanwhile, pragmatists from the external pageEuropean Space Agencycall_made, bemused by Lee's boyish ambition, busily sold satellites as the most cost-effective space venture. "I think it's interesting", one ESA representative remarked, "that the most important recent discoveries about the Earth have come from unmanned satellites, yet when the topic of exploring Mars comes up, there's this insistence that it must be done by a man".

While it is likely that external pageChinacall_made and perhaps external pageIndiacall_made will continue their shallow quest for prestige with manned missions to the Moon, one hopes that the future belongs to cooperative ventures like the ESA. Practical projects in space are so enormously expensive, yet still so essential, that it makes sense for countries to share the cost and spread the benefit. The other advantage of cooperation, of course, is that prestige no longer fouls the equation. In the future, space will probably look a lot less exciting, but the end product will at least be worth the investment.