[Editors] MIT: Human spaceflight report

[Teresa Herbert]

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A new vision for people in space
--MIT report outlines goals for future of human space program
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For Immediate Release
MONDAY, DEC. 15, 2008

Contact: Teresa Herbert, MIT News Office
E: therbert at mit.edu, T: 617-258-5403


PDF report available at http://web.mit.edu/mitsps

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A team led by MIT researchers releases today the  
most comprehensive independent review of the future of the nation’s  
human spaceflight program undertaken in many years. The report  
recommends setting loftier goals for humans in space, focusing  
research more clearly toward those goals, and increasing cooperation  
with other nations and private industry.

After conducting preliminary briefings with various stakeholders in  
Washington, team members say it has been enthusiastically received by  
political leaders, a National Research Council panel, and the Obama  
transition team, among others.

“We need to rethink the rationales for human spaceflight,” says the  
report’s lead author David Mindell, professor of engineering systems  
and director of the program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT.  
He says that after the Washington briefings, “we sensed a great deal  
of uncertainty in DC about how to proceed with the Bush vision and  
human spaceflight in general. Our paper speaks to those problems in a  
clear way and offers some new ideas.”

Key recommendations from the MIT report include:

1.	Congress and the White House should reduce the “too much with too  
little” pressure on NASA by ensuring that resources match  
expectations. They should begin a public conver sation on the ethics  
and acceptable risk of human spaceflight at current levels of support  
and ambition.

2.	NASA should continue to support commercial and European development  
of crew and cargo alternatives, particularly for cargo return.

3.	The United States should develop a broad, funded plan to utilize  
the ISS through 2020 for research, including development of  
technologies to support exploration for both moon missions and long  
duration Mars flights.

4.	A new human spaceflight policy should clarify the balance between  
the moon, Mars, and other destinations. It should be more, not less  
ambitious. A new policy should also review the Constellation (shuttle  
replacement) architecture to ensure compatibility with long-range  
exploration missions.

5.	NASA should re-establish a fundamental research program focused on  
science and technology for human spaceflight and exploration.

6.	The United States should begin engagement with China on human  
spaceflight in a series of small steps, gradually building up trust  
and cooperation, until a solid foundation for a comprehen sive  
agreement could be built.

The report offers “primary objectives” for sending human beings into  
space as those that can only be accomplished through the physical  
presence of human beings and are worthy of significant risk to human  
life.  Says Mindell, “we argue for including notions of risk, human  
experience, and remote presence into the fundamental rationales for  
sending people into space. The results show that the United States  
might want a rather different human spaceflight program from the one  
now planned.”

And it is essential that whatever goals are set for human spaceflight,  
the funding should be adequate to meet those goals. “Trying to do too  
much with too little is exactly what caused the last two shuttle  
accidents,” he says.

Among the report’s major conclusions are that the United States should  
be cooperating more on human spaceflight, both with other nations —  
including China and India — and with commercial ventures such as  
private rocket companies. The nation should also set ambitious goals  
for long-term exploration, and make sure that near-term work is geared  
toward those ends. In addition, a comprehensive strategy of basic  
research is needed to lay the groundwork for these longer-range goals.

The report, called “The Future of Human Spaceflight,” was prepared by  
the Space, Policy and Society Research Group at MIT, which Mindell  
directs. The group includes MIT aeronautics and astronautics professor  
and former space shuttle astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman; Apollo Program  
Professor of Astronautics Laurence Young; Aeronautics and Astronautics  
Professor Dava Newman; Jerome C. Hunsacker Assistant Professor of  
Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems Annalisa Weigel;  
lecturer in science, technology and society Slava Gerovitch;  
postdoctoral associate Scott Uebelhart; graduate students Eph  
Langford, Teasel Muir-Harmony, Sherrica Newsome, Zakiya Tomlinson and  
Rebecca Perry; Lawrence McGlynn, president of Insurance Services of  
New England; Asif Saddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham  
University; John Tylko, vice president at Aurora Flight Sciences; and  
John Logsdon of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

Reporters can obtain a PDF version of the full report by contacting  
the MIT News Office or at http://web.mit.edu/mitsps

# # #

Written by David Chandler, MIT News Office
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