WASHINGTON — As a Navy fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, Sen. John McCain learned what it was like to fall from the sky when a surface-to-air missile shot down his A-4 Skyhawk bomber over Hanoi in 1967.
With both arms and his right knee broken, he slowly healed through 5 1/2 years of torture in a North Vietnamese prison camp.
More than three decades later, as chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, the Arizona Republican is being called on to heal America’s space program.
As he leads the Senate into its most extended dialogue on the future of NASA since the shuttle Challenger exploded on liftoff in 1986, he said his goal is one “that I think most Americans share — and that is the continuation of space exploration.”
It is an issue to which McCain, one of Capitol Hill’s most familiar and outspoken characters, has given little focus during two decades in office. Suddenly, the conservative maverick — who has shown a willingness to buck the party line, criticize the president and speak his mind despite the consequences — must give space his full attention.
His loss in the 2000 Republican presidential primary made his life story nationally known: son and grandson of Navy admirals, decorated Navy fighter pilot, prisoner of war who refused special treatment based on his family name, elected to the U.S. House in 1982 and to the Senate in 1986.
He traveled the country in a campaign bus dubbed “The Straight Talk Express,” presenting himself as an outsider alternative to George W. Bush, a candidate handpicked by the GOP establishment. On the trail, he famously said of Bush: “If he’s a reformer; I’m an astronaut.”
He never was but, as a Navy fighter pilot, would have had a better chance than most of getting to space. But the wounds suffered from the crash — compounded by his years in POW camps — ended his flying career by the end of the 1970s. He left the Navy in 1981.
McCain was caught up in the so-called Keating Five scandal in the late 1980s, in which five senators worked on behalf of major campaign donor Charles Keating, later jailed during the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s.
That scandal drove McCain to oppose the wishes of Republican leaders and become a national crusader for reforming what he saw as a corrupt campaign-finance system.
In 1996, McCain took over the chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee, which, among many other things, sets space policy. In an interview, McCain said he spent much of the time worrying about cost overruns at the international space station instead of the bigger picture of space exploration.
“The Commerce Committee — maybe we were derelict in our duties,” McCain said. “We have not had an overall policy review.”
The focus on money was in keeping with McCain’s reputation as a fiscal conservative.
Brian Chase, executive director of the National Space Society, a Washington-based space-advocacy group, said McCain has been generally supportive of the space program, with one major qualifier. “He is always asking, ‘Is the money being spent wisely?’ “
Wasteful spending has always rankled McCain, the Senate’s self-appointed “pork watcher,” whose office releases an annual report exposing the hidden pet projects of fellow lawmakers.
Space-industry watchers suggest that McCain’s reputation as a budget hawk could clash with his vision for space exploration. As a presidential candidate, he said his highest priority for NASA was one that would prove costly: sending a man to Mars.
