NEWS - Bush May Announce Return To Moon At Kitty Hawk - Space Daily

Herb Schaltegger wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Rusty B) wrote:

According to Space Lift Washington, President Bush may
announce at Kitty Hawk a return to manned lunar exploration but
without any specific massive new funding, forcing NASA to get serious
about what it wants to do with it considerable human spaceflight
assets and decades of experience.

Forgive me if I sound cynical but how ****ing stupid is that quote? ".
. . forcing NASA to get serious . . ." PLEASE! NASA is an
administrative agency under the Executive Branch of government. How
about some good, old-fashioned top-down management from, say, the
President? You remember him - the Sean O'Keefe's boss - elected (well,
let's not debate THAT right now) leader of the nation? NASA can't,
itself, "get serious" without being told what the hell it's supposed to
do.

It seems to me that it is the Administration's job to say, "Here's what
you're going to do. [SNIP list of executive mandates which must
specifically include either completing or abandoning ISS, depending on
how that debate settles out]. You can expect $___B per year (or perhaps
a little bit more). Now, how long will it take you to get this
accomplished?"

If the Administration doesn't like the answer, it can either fire
O'Keefe and get the answer it wants (shades of the STS development
process), propose increased budgets to Congress and then sell them on
the Administration's goals (shades of Gemini/Apollo), or accept the
answer and proceed apace. Simply setting some stupid policy goal ("Hey,
let's go to the moon!") and then walking away while NASA twists in the
wind for the duration of another ten year, never-get-done project
(SSF-Alpha-ISS, anyone?) is NOT good leadership.



While I love the idea of Astros returning to the moon, I was on the
Mall in Washington DC on the 20th of July 1989. Bush the Elder then
proclaimed we would go back to the moon and Mars too, thus launching
the Space Exploration Initiative. As we all know, SEI was a dead horse
by the early 1990's generating yet another set of viewgraphs and
Powerpoint presentations and little else.

So Bush the Younger will stand on the sands of Kill Devil Hill on
another anniversary of good ol' American know-how and basically call
on the Nation to do 1/2 of what his father asked. Unless Dubya is a
two term President, his space plans will die in Congress quicker than
SEI and we'll only get half of the viewgraphs and Powerpoint pictures
to boot!

Color me pessimistic,

Gene