Success has many fathers; so do successful space missions. NASA has been basking in widespread applause over the past week, after its New Horizons probe completed a 4.67 billion–mile, 10-year journey to Pluto, revealing unexpected wonders in stunning detail. But New Horizons — like so many other proposed space missions — almost didn't happen.
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Bush administration tried to defund the Pluto mission twice. Over many decades, Congress and various presidents have cut NASA's funding from 4.3 percent of the federal budget to 0.5 percent today, severely crimping the agency's ambitions and delaying mankind's explorations of the solar system by decades. I find this sad and small-minded. For $720 million, or the cost of about three F-35 fighter jets, NASA just sent a 12-foot spaceship hurtling to the edge of the solar system at 30,000 mph, swooping to within 7,800 miles of Pluto — exactly as planned. Now New Horizons moves on to the Kuiper Belt, the birthplace of comets. What other government program produces such competence, such awe, such bang for the buck?
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