Summary: The Space Studies Board in collaboration with the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board will soon begin a major study of the goals and technical requirements of human exploration beyond low earth orbit after 2020. The study, which was commissioned by the Senate, will look at least 25 years ahead. In preparation for this responsibility, I have endeavored to gather my own thoughts about what human space exploration has and has not achieved in the past 50-odd years, and the evolution in philosophical and management thinking needed to make the leap from the Apollo era to the middle of the 21st century. The principal question is, can human space exploration be sustained over the long periods of time required, and if so, what will it take? The possible answers have technological, social, economic, and political dimensions. Charles F. Kennel studied astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard and Princeton, where he received a Ph.D. After a post-doctoral appointment to the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, he joined the UCLA Department of Physics and its Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, chaired the Physics Department, and eventually became the UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor, UCLA’s chief academic officer. From 1994-1996, Kennel was Associate Administrator at NASA and Director of Mission to Planet Earth, the world’s largest Earth science research program. Kennel was the Director and Dean of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor of Marine Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, from 1998-2006. Kennel was the founding director of the UCSD Environment and Sustainability Initiative. He presently is a distinguished professor, emeritus, of atmospheric sciences at Scripps, senior strategist for the UCSD Sustainability Solutions Institute, and co-leads the University of Cambridge/UCSD Global Water Initiative. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. Kennel served on national and international boards, including the Pew Oceans Commission. He was a co-founder of the Partnership for the Observation of the Global Ocean, a world-wide consortium of ocean research institutions. He has been a member of the NASA Advisory Council for a total of 11 years; and he served as Chair for 5 years. He was the 2007 C.P. Snow lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and a member of the Presidential Commission on human space flight in 2009. Kennel chaired the California Council on Science and Technology from 2006-2010 and presently chairs the Space Studies Board of the US National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Kennel serves on the advisory boards of various prominent research organizartions and has received numerous awards and honors.
