In the wake of the Columbia accident, and with the imminent release of the (from early indications, rather damning of the organizational culture surrounding the Shuttle program) report of the Accident Investigation Board, the future, or lack thereof, of the Shuttle program is likely to rest more on political than technical considerations.

There is little question that with a few hundred million dollars (funds that have already been allocated by congress), a "safety enhancement program" could be conducted that would ensure that whatever the cause of the Columbia accident - it never occurs again.

This, of course, is not going to alter the overall reliability of the Shuttle - a roughly one-in-a-hundred mission failure rate was the original design objective when the program was conceived. But the ranges of choices before the Administration extends much beyond addressing the immediate cause of the accident.

The Shuttle has elicited muted contempt from the scientific, engineering, and military communities for most of its 25 years of existence. In spite of periodic reviews from each newly-elected administration, and for lack of viable alternatives or motivation to expend the political effort to kill it, the Shuttle has continued its meek existence - absorbing roughly half of NASA's annual budget.

With the promises of revolutionary medications and breakthroughs in microelectronics never materializing, NASA was reduced to flying what was essentially high-school level science fair projects.

The assembly of the International Space Station had the potential of a high-profile mission for the Shuttle program, but it was difficult to maintain a level of public (or congressional) excitement for a program that was a decade behind schedule and tens of billions of dollars over budget.

It is telling, for instance, that NASA's biggest public relations coup since the moon landing was a robotic Mars mission with a rover - the Sojourner - costing in total less than $200 million.

Consequently, when the Administration makes its crucial decision in the wake of the Columbia tragedy, it should come as little surprise that among the options at one end of the decision space is the cancellation of the manned space effort altogether for the foreseeable future.

In the context of today's political climate - economic uncertainty, astronomical budget deficits, an imminent war, the omnipresent threat of terrorism - a natural and compelling case can be made that the billions being spent to support the handful of annual Shuttle flights cannot be justified.

The President can make good on his televised promise to persevere in the exploration of space, albeit by the dramatically less costly, fiscally responsible, robotic means thereby putting the White House $7 billion closer to balancing the budget.

Furthermore, a compelling argument can be made that commercial human space flight will one day emerge as an economically viable enterprise without government intervention - an added incentive for a laissez-faire Administration to avoid further distortions of market forces by the overwhelming annual influx of NASA funding.

The opposite extreme bounding the Administration's likely decision is an unequivocal Presidential commitment to a manned space exploration effort, invigorated rather than stifled by the Columbia tragedy. The President could commit the United States to putting a man on Mars before the end of his second term, for a price tag on the order of $50-60 billion.

Annualized, this would not constitute a dramatic increase in the NASA budget (especially if the Shuttle and/or Space Station expenditures are curtailed), and would surely provide priceless political capital - not the least of which might be front-page-headline reprieve should one of the Administration's other agendas not unfold entirely as planned or election time rolls around.

Some creative marketing could sell the effort in part as an education program (as, indeed, the Apollo program, in its time, was closely associated with improvements in mathematics and science education), in part as an economic stimulus, and certainly as an assertion of America's continued technological preeminence worldwide.

A Chinese launch of a human into orbit would provide a compelling additional incentive. As history shows, space exploration has been a subject about which the public is happy to rally around, should compelling leadership be demonstrated by the White House.

Realistically, however, the Administration is not likely to expend the effort to pursue either of these extremes. The White House has shown great aptitude for steering the middle road on politically contentious issues before. In this case, however, the middle road is a return to and affirmation of uninspired mediocrity. Surely space exploration can be more than that.

Paul Eremenko is a Consultant on aerospace and defense technologies. The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.

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