Television Reviews : ABC Documentary Focuses on NASA Fizzle

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that America’s once glorious space program is in a pretty pathetic state.

We’ve been reduced to hitchhiking our satellites on European launch vehicles and we’re talking about teaming up with the Soviets for a manned mission to Mars, not because we’re now such big pals with them but more out of naked necessity: They’ve got the powerful launch vehicles and we don’t anymore.

Sure, we’re ready to resume shuttle flights. But as ABC’s documentary “Beyond the Shuttle” makes plain Sunday night (10 p.m., Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) in its story of the sorry decline of the U.S. space program, long before the Challenger explosion brought intense critical media scrutiny to NASA, it was obvious that our space program had become lost in space.

Hosted by Lynn Sherr, the hourlong “Closeup” briskly documents NASA’s 20-year fizzle into virtual entropy. It explains how America came to make the disastrous mistake of putting all of its space eggs in the (expensive and inefficient) shuttle basket. It points out how depressingly far ahead of us the Soviets are in space-station technology and unmanned space exploration.

“Beyond the Shuttle,” written by Sherr and Pamela Hill, ends with what amounts to a call to the American people to stand up and tell our leaders (especially the next president) that we want to lead the world into space again. All it’ll take is the political will and more money, ABC says.

It’s hard to argue with the patriotic goal of remaking America No. 1 in space. It’s just that Sherr and company are somewhat unimaginative in assuming that bureaucratic, government-owned-and-operated NASA is the best (or most sensible) means to accomplish that end. The documentary would have benefited from at least a brief look at the growth of the private-sector space industry and its future plans.