McCain On Space

Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of two fellows with the best chance to be the next president of the United States, has built a record in Congress supportive of NASA in general and of manned spaceflight in particular. During his presidential campaign, McCain has also expressed support for the Moon/Mars program intended to lead humanity into the Solar System to stay.

Recently, however, as a way of dealing with the federal budget deficit, the McCain campaign has embraced the idea of freezing discretionary spending in the budget for one year. That would presumably include NASA. If exceptions start being made in such an approach, the risk is that the entire policy would unravel as every program argued it should be exempted.

Freezing NASA's budget, though, would seem to delay development of the new hardware necessary to replace the space shuttle and carry out the Moon/Mars program. It would likely increase the time astronauts would be dependent upon the Russian Soyuz for access to space-- a situation McCain has decried. How President McCain would thread the space needle, therefore, is unclear.