Hold Off on Shuttle During Elections, Lest Politics Obscure Science

Scenario No. 1 --After months and months of delay, the space shuttle Discovery is finally given the go-ahead for launch on, say, Oct. 1. There is another tragic accident. Or else the mission is aborted shortly after takeoff because of some mechanical failure and we all suffer a nerve-wracking return to base.

Scenario No. 2 --The shuttle makes a faultless takeoff, enjoys a successful mission and lands a few days before the presidential election.

Whatever the scenario, whether tragedy or triumph, there would be an unfortunate political dimension to the event. A successful launch would redound undeservedly to the credit of the Reagan Administration, with Vice President George Bush greeting the returning astronauts and basking in glory after years of space setbacks. Or a disaster would be a Schadenfreude trump for Michael S. Dukakis’ campaign, just another example of the Republican Administration’s pitiful incompetence to cite to the electorate.

As much as possible, space should be free of politics. I am not talking about the Strategic Defense Initiative, which quite properly is a political--even an ideological--issue. Space exploration, however, should be regarded as a scientific question, to be treated no differently from the pure research that engages a physics laboratory. There should be no Democratic or Republican way of conducting space-science experiments. And launching space vehicles is still experimental, still demands courage, a sense of adventure and intellectual curiosity. While the application of space-science discoveries could very well be political, the success or failure rate of space launches must not become a political issue.

Yet each day, it seems, there is a new announcement from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration about something gone wrong with this framis or that gizmo. There’s either a leak in the left doohickey or a break in the undershaft of the widget. Enough is enough. Let’s drop, at least between now and Election Day, the intense media pressure to report every small slip on or off the launch pad. Let’s keep away from that go/no-go news formula that has become so familiar: “The latest mishap to the thrusters means that the next test will be delayed four days and perhaps will postpone final preparations by a week, though NASA now hopes for a late-August launch.�

By now there ought to be an agreement by both political parties or a unilateral decision by either NASA or the White House that a Discovery launch will not occur until after the election. It is a tribute to the moral discipline of American political culture that the Challenger tragedy did not become a political football. Were anything to happen or not happen during a Discovery launch before Election Day, it would inevitably become an electoral campaign diversion.

Let’s keep space out of politics and politics out of space. We need a launch delay, which at most would be no more than three months. The postponement may occur anyway because of the seemingly unending technical problems. But at least let there not be an exploitation of space by any party for presidential-campaign reasons. The brave Challenger crew flew off into space as scientists and technicians seeking to expand our temporal and geographic frontiers. The courageous Discovery complement should be sent aloft after the election at the moment when it is deemed to be scientifically appropriate, not politically propitious.