Just today the US Senate Science, Technology and Space subcommittee heard from former senator, moon-walker, and geophysicist Harrison Schmitt, big telescope astronomer Roger Angel, physicist and lunar solar power proponent David Criswell, and geophysicist and Moon advocate Paul Spudis. All four testified to the dramatic economic and scientific benefits that a return to the Moon would achieve. Criswell and Schmitt talked about energy (from solar power and lunar He-3 fusion, respectively), Angel eloquently described the amazing astronomical benefits a lunar telescope could bring (100 times better than Hubble successor, the Webb telescope, for some purposes), and Spudis described how we could get a human base started using basically current technology with some tweaks (he likes Shuttle-C for heavy lift). Senator Brownback also briefly mentioned a document from TransOrbital on lunar exploration, which was received as part of the testimony.

Meanwhile, on the same day, presidential candidate Howard Dean in a “chat” sponsored by the Washington Post, expressed clear support for NASA and a new mission to send humans to Mars:

Howard Dean: I am a strong supporter of NASA and every government program that furthers scientific research. I don’t think we should close the shuttle program but I do believe that we should aggressively begin a program to have manned flights to Mars. This of course assumes that we can change Presidents so we can have a balanced budget again.

Last week the full senate commerce commitee, chaired by John McCain, heard from a series of witnesses on the future of NASA, including Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society. And on the same day also heard from a series of witnesses on what to do with the International Space Station.

Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives has also been busy, with hearings on space commercialization and the role of the FAA in regulation of commercial human spaceflight, space weather (for which the Sun helped out a bit this past week), and a call from the science committee for a halt to NASA’s work on the “Orbital Space Plane” until a new “vision” for future spaceflight was on the table. Last week saw a full science committee hearing on organizational and management challenges at NASA, and before that in October and September a series of hearings concerning the Columbia accident and the future of human spaceflight.

The recent spate of interest in Congress may even go back as far as July this year, when the House
and Senate both heard from space tourist Dennis Tito, space entrepreneur Elon Musk, and others on the future of commercial human spaceflight.

Now, these are policy and regulatory committees, not committees that necessarily have any power to affect budgets (that would be the domain of the House and Senate appropriations committees). And of course the White House and the requests NASA makes – in fact over 100 representatives recently wrote a letter to the president urging a request for a healthy increase in NASA’s budget. And speaking of letters to the president, last week some prominent physicists wrote a public letter in defense of the international space station, and some of the interesting science that is starting to be done there. But the most important thing right now is probably not the money, but the sense of vision and purpose in what the US is doing in space. It seems clear NASA has lost its way; much of the blame lies with congress for not giving the agency a higher purpose. Will all this change?

Meanwhile, rumor has it that President Bush will announce a return to the Moon at Kitty Hawk on the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brother’s flight. It’s not clear how much NASA people are behind this idea, but it would be great to see it happen. Of course history has an unfortunate way of repeating itself, but this time around, of course, we hope the reaction will be different. At least a good portion of congress seems to be on board now.