The case for a British astronaut

Aaaaand we're back. What no-one teaches you at blogging school is that it's tough work maintaining an interesting blog and working for a living. Fortunately, I've managed to combine the two in this latest post.

The more I think about the decline in science at schools and university, the more I wonder why all attempts to deal with it are so conservative. To some people, the solution is very simple: the apathy is caused by bad teachers. Pay them more and watch the students flock back. But that's like saying that we know carbon dioxide causes global warming so why don't we all just stop producing it? No doubt it's a problem and it needs addressing but why don't we get a bit more creative? After all, there's more than one way to crack a nut. Here's an idea I'd like to to throw into the mix, published in today's Guardian.

It's a quandary: Britain's supply of scientists and engineers is dwindling. Hi-tech companies are bemoaning the shortage of good graduates, the Treasury is getting twitchy about the economic implications, and government education advisers are left scratching their heads.

If only there were something inspirational that could turn children on to physics or engineering. Something that could demonstrate the excitement, adventure and sense of discovery that is at the core of science.

Here's a radical idea: send a Briton into space. Not on some half-hearted tourist trip to watch the Earth for a few days from the International Space Station, but a research-based programme with a specific mandate to inspire budding scientists. The dividend is clear. A generation of children jumped into science thanks to the American moon landings in the 1960s. In the US, the number of PhDs awarded in technical fields rose steadily during the Mercury and Apollo programmes from 1961 to 1972.

Britain's less-than-progressive attitude to sending people into space was neatly summed up by the science minister Lord Sainsbury in a 2003 speech. "There is no doubt that manned space exploration has a special excitement for people, and a particular attraction for young people," he said. "It does not, however, make a great deal of sense either commercially or in terms of doing world-class science."

In claiming there is no world-class science to be done with humans in space, he ignores the fact that almost all of the world's major economies think enough of the scientific return to invest heavily. Europe and the US have announced bold human space programmes spanning the next few decades; Russia, China, India and Japan plan to follow suit.

And commercial opportunities? Perhaps Richard Branson could have saved himself the trip across the Atlantic to buy his hardware for Virgin Galactic if Britain's space industry had come up with the goods.

Britain's decades-long rejection of the idea of human space flight was supported by a major review commissioned by the Science and Engineering Research Council in 1989. In looking at how research could benefit from sending people into space, it concluded that, because microgravity research was in its infancy, there was little point in spending the money. It cemented the view in government circles that sending people into space cost too much and had no scientific benefit.

Times change, and science marches on. A year ago, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) published a report that confounded the sceptics. Its nine-month investigation into the scientific case for human space flight concluded that the profound scientific questions relating to the history of the solar system and the existence of life beyond Earth could best, and perhaps only, be achieved by human exploration on the moon or Mars. It was all the more remarkable because the scientists leading the investigation started off being sceptical about the value of human space flight.

The report finished with a passionate plea: "It is hard to conceive that the UK, one of the world's leading economies, would stand aside from such a global scientific and technological endeavour. We therefore regard it as timely for Her Majesty's government to re-evaluate its long-standing opposition to British involvement in human space exploration."

A year on, Her Majesty's government has paid no attention to this golden opportunity to revitalise British science. Its head remains buried the sand.

Cost is obviously the sticking point. Getting into space is expensive, sending humans there doubly so. The RAS report suggested full membership of the European Space Agency's (Esa) Aurora programme, an ambitious initiative to send humans to Mars by 2030. For Britain, Aurora comes with a price tag of £150m a year for at least the next two decades, and membership doesn't guarantee a British astronaut. It's not a proposal that is likely to fly with the Treasury.

The answer lies in a more limited plan. A couple of flights with a set of experiments and an extensive programme of education would be enough to give Britain's emerging human space flight science community a chance to prove its value. Schools could be involved and science undergraduates could take part in competitions to design experiments. It's already done across Europe.

Initial calculations suggest such a programme could cost as little as £50m over 10 years. By investing less than a tenth of the amount spent on the Millennium Dome, Britain could cut its teeth on the next stage of human exploration and get a return - scientific, industrial, educational and cultural - worth several times the money put in.

There is little time left to decide: Esa and Nasa will both finalise their plans for the moon and Mars in the next few years. If we want to get involved, we need urgent action. By continuing to opt out, Britain will lose its best chance to show children how exciting science can be. We will also lose to the more ambitious nations those scientists who see space as the future. In the next decade, the question may no longer be whether we can afford to send people into space, but rather, can we afford not to?

The people leading this resurgence of interest in human space flight include Kevin Fong at University College London and Ian Crawford at Birkbeck College. They've put together a summary of the scientific case for a British astronaut here. What this needs is a consistent campaign or a more regularly-maintained web site or blog to keep people up to date and to suggest ways to lobby government. Any ideas welcome.