from the Orlando Sentinel:
Obama aims to ax moon mission
NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way.
When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.
There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all.
In their place, according to White House insiders, agency officials, industry executives and congressional sources familiar with Obama's long-awaited plans for the space agency, NASA will look at developing a new "heavy-lift" rocket that one day will take humans and robots to explore beyond low Earth orbit. But that day will be years — possibly even a decade or more — away.
In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change — and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible.
While I agree that the loss of the moon and Mars missions are tragic, I have to argue that they are not due to an "amateur hour" of this administration. Rather, the loss is due to the gross mismanagement and uncontrolled and disgusting corporate orgies of the previous.
ReplyDeleteLike current (and cut) military programs, NASA is the sad victim of years of corporate deference--to the Bush's publically proclaimed yet half-hearted and unchecked lofty goals--combined with the sickness of Republican unaccountablility. In other words, we had a President and a Congress who loved inspiring rhetoric (victory in Iraq, defeat of Al Queda, littoral destroyers, indefeatable jet fighters, moon and Mars landings), but who somehow never committed to anything but unlimited--and unchecked--budgets.
In the Navy, the result of this mismanagemant is all too aparent, and Gates is working to correct it. Instead of mourning the loss of a program that was failed from its beginning by gross incompetence, no oversight, defense industry largess, and an executive that only promoted it to appease his donors, let's advocate a sensible space program that:
1. replaces the space shuttle with something reasonable
2. provides the US with a heavy-lifting launcher
3. uses the lessons learned from 1 and 2 to get us off this rock faster than a half-hearted dream promoted by an ignoramus
If you want to be mad at anything, be mad at science. We have failed to convince a majority of the population that exploring space is worth the money and risk. We must do better...
I'm not happy with eliminating a focus on space exploration and focusing on terrestrial concerns that this indicates. There are plenty of people to do that. NASA needs to keep looking outward.
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