NASA, Rep. Kaptur, should push hard to add runway to Plum Brook Station

on July 25, 2009 at 4:09 AM, updated July 25, 2009 at 4:37 AM

If the U.S. space program really wants to dream big again; if it wants to go back to the moon or on to Mars, as the Apollo 11 astronauts urged this week; if it even wants to press ahead with unmanned exploration of the solar system, it must make judicious use of the resources it already has.

Some of those resources are found in a most unlikely place -- the NASA Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook Station, near Sandusky. There, over the past four decades on 6,400 mostly undeveloped acres, NASA has built some of its most impressive and important test facilities:

A 122-foot-tall vacuum chamber to test satellites and space capsules under extreme temperatures that is, by a factor of four, the world's largest. The nation's largest wind tunnel. The only test facility anywhere large enough to simulate actual space conditions on full-size rocket components.

Replacing or duplicating them would cost NASA billions.

But Plum Brook has a big problem, too: Most of the equipment that NASA -- or the Pentagon or international space agencies, for that matter -- would want to test is hard to get there. It would typically be flown on a cargo plane to an Air National Guard base near Mansfield, then trucked 50 miles, a procedure that often requires taking down utility lines and subjects the equipment to unacceptable jostling.

Officials at Plum Brook and Glenn think that if a runway could be built on site -- and there's certainly plenty of open, flat land -- they could do far more research. Along with Erie County officials, they also think they could attract aerospace contractors to the edges of the huge complex, spurring needed economic development and seeding high-wage jobs.

Given NASA's tight budget, there's little chance of finding the estimated $80 million the project would require.

But Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat and Appropriations Committee member whose district includes Plum Brook, is looking for other sources of cash, including the Defense Department and a stimulus bill set-aside for transportation projects with high potential for economic impact.

Her efforts are important to the region: A more robust Plum Brook would enhance Glenn and also might provide an ideal setting for alternative energy research. But anything that makes space exploration easier -- and wouldn't it be better to detect a problem in Ohio than in orbit? -- would also benefit NASA and speed the way to another giant leap for humankind.