Retiring Sen. Tom Coburn has claimed that NASA is "lost in space" and has urged the agency to dump its two main programs, the International Space Station and the Space Launch System.
In a commentary for
The Wall Street Journal, Coburn said that nearly half a century after an American first set foot on the moon, the U.S. government is having to pay Russia as much as $70 million a seat to hitch a ride to the space station.
"While other countries have set objectives for their exploration programs — China plans to get people to the moon in the 2020s — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is lost in space," said the Oklahoma Republican, who made his tearful
farewell speech in the Senate this month attacking pork barrel politics.
He also said that "NASA is painting over old equipment used in the Shuttle-era of the 1980s to create a new space-launch system," although the agency has not made it clear "what the technology will be used for."
Coburn continued, "NASA has an important role to play in advancing our nation’s interests in space, but it needs reform. The place to start is by ending U.S. support for the international space station, which at $100 billion holds the Guinness World Record for most expensive man-made object. Instead, Congress should direct the agency’s funding toward something more productive."
While noting that the space station (ISS) is expected to have cost U.S. taxpayers $95 billion by 2020, Coburn wrote, "There is very little to show for the investment, and no space innovation comes close to recouping the cost."
"To put the cost in context, the entire Apollo program — all 17 missions and six lunar landings — cost about $108 billion in today’s dollars. Back on Earth, $100 billion could fund the National Cancer Institute for 20 years," said Coburn, who retired from Congress two years early while battling
prostate cancer.
He said that some supporters would suggest that sending the space station to "a watery grave" would cut short valuable research.
But he wrote, "American astronauts have performed roughly 7,800 hours of research, meaning taxpayers have paid about $10 million for each hour of research. Much of it focuses on how the human body responds to long-term spaceflight — an important topic, but perhaps not the pioneering work most Americans had in mind."
Coburn said that the research projects "can hardly justify" the space station’s enormous costs.
"That funding would be better used to achieve a singular long-term objective, as in the days of the Apollo program," he said. "Congress has a record of pushing unimaginative and shortsighted space policy."
The 66-year-old obstetrician also slammed lawmakers for having "foisted" the space launch system (SLS) on NASA in 2010, saying that it "continued Shuttle-era contracts and designs, arguably to benefit contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
"The 'new' rocket’s core engines are the same ones that fired up the first Shuttle in 1981. As former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver put it earlier this year: 'Would you really go to Mars with technology that is 50 years old?'"
Coburn concluded by saying, "Funding for the ISS and SLS alone already totals more than $7 billion annually, similar to what the Apollo program spent every year on average.
"That money would be better used by working on clear, stated goals. Such steps are the only way to re-establish the American space program that was once the wonder of the world."
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