(Allen Thomson) wrote:

(Derek Lyons) wrote

Yep, charging ahead on a feel good program, but this time *without* a
hard date, and *with* multiple extremely soft goals.

Good indeed.

Not.

What's wrong with a feel good and/or national prestige program?

It re-enforces the impression that space is only the domain of
steely-eyed missilemen who work for the government, and the impression
that 'exploration' is only worth doing when it generates headlines.
In other words, the same situation we've been in for over a
generation.

That's the only reason to have any manned spaceflight for the
foreseeable future, and I have no problem with that for a motive.

If stunts are the only reason to have a manned space program, then
frankly I see it as a tacit admission that was don't need a manned
space program. Imagine if the USAF were re-aligned to do nothing but
support the Thunderbirds?

Even ISS, objectively pointless though it is, would probably be
justifiable on that basis if it weren't joined at the hip to
the Shuttle.

It seems objectively pointless to many because it does not generate
headlines unless something is wrong. By that same standard, we should
stand down the dozens of oceanography vessels the US Government
operates, the Antarctic stations, the geological and geopyhsical
observatories, funding for astronomical observatories, and every other
science program that isn't designed to pander to the public thirst for
spectacle.

Anyway, I was speaking of the Boeing hardware ideas in the context
of returning to the moon by 2015 on a constrained budget.

Please share the figures on costs with the rest of us, as they
certainly were not on the page referenced, nor anywhere else for that
matter.

But what would you have preferred to see, both in terms of goals
and programmatics and initial hardware concepts?

I'd rather see NASA *out* of the operations business entirely. Earth
science should be turned over to NOAA, planetary science (JPL) spun
off into an independent center (a la the CDC). NASA should be reduced
to a technology and support organization like the NACA. If it must be
in the operations business, it should be able to buy spacecraft the
same way NOAA buys ships... From established builders who are also in
the business of building and maintaining civilian ships.

D.
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