NASA To Push Human Spaceflight

b00le wrote to mention a New Scientist article in which NASA chief Mike Griffin says that human spaceflight should be NASA's top priority. From the article: "Griffin countered that the same loss of expertise threatened NASA's human spaceflight programme, which had served to define the US as a world 'superpower'. He said NASA lost a substantial fraction of skilled engineers during a six-year gap between the end of the Apollo programme in 1975 and the first space shuttle flight in 1981. Letting the human spaceflight programme 'atrophy' after Apollo damaged the agency for three decades, he said."

Comments

Support?

[Agent00Wang]

Why I personally am pleased with the idea of a continued push for manned space flight, I feel like the public support just isn't there. There just isn't the widespread public support that there was in the 60s. What we need is an evil competitor.

Re:Support?

[Rhoon]

The Article cites a senator saying that China will be on the moon in 2017... Do you have any bigger "Evil" competitors in mind?

I wasn't a big supporter of the new Administrator at NASA when he was appointed, but after this, I may have to review what I originally thought about him. I'm a big supporter of manned space flight, it should be NASA's #1 priority to get humans permanently into space and living on the moon, then Mars.

I'll even volunteer to be one of the first inhabitants of this brave "New World"

Re:Support?

[discontinuity]

The Article cites a senator saying that China will be on the moon in 2017... Do you have any bigger "Evil" competitors in mind?

I don't think we ever can spin China as our "evil" rival. We're just too tied to them economically. If Washington starts presenting China too strongly in this way, then China just threatens to make it harder for US companies to get to its goods/consumers. As more time passes, they will wield even more such power. The USSR was essentially isolated from us and that made it easy for the US gov't to propagansize against them. Apparently, China's cultural isolationism isn't enough.

I suppose a grassroots type of "evil-China" movement could emerge. But I don't see that happening any more than it already has when our economy is so tied to theirs. Too many people will want to avoid pissing them off.

Any space race we have with China will be "friendly".

Re:Griffin was the right choice.

[meringuoid]

I pray for the day when science packages based on reconfigurable standard designs can be simply and inexpensively launched from a space station. (A la Star Trek probes.) The mass production would allow us to launch more probes for less, and the orbital launch would save tens of millions on each probe.

You're right about mass production, but how do you get 'em to the space station in the first place? Still need the rocket from Earth - unless you have an asteroidal or lunar industrial facility capable of building the things from raw materials.

Mass production of standard probes might well be a good idea, though. The Mariner probes of the 70s were big successes, and ESA has been doing something similar lately - Venus Express (enroute) is the same basic design as the current Mars Express. Just swap out the experiment modules on the same basic spacecraft. Probably not as helpful with landers, which have to handle different gravities, atmospheres etc. dependent on target, but it would be well worth establishing a network of cheap Orbital Observer probes around the solar system.

Heavy editing

[b00le]

Actually what I submitted was something entirely different: I highlighted Griiffin's comment that "NASA's human spaceflight programme ... had served to define the US as a world 'superpower."' (As if that were what NASA is for!) I wished to emphasise that this focus on human spaceflight was at the expense of real science, and quoted Louis Friedman, director of the Planetary Society, who said: "I would almost describe it as 'anti-science NASA' now". My point was that NASA is sacrificing substance for style - or politics for science.

Maybe Zonk works for NASA, or the US Government - certainly he spun the story in a way that would make Scott McLellan proud. It's one thing for /. editors to edit submissions, but if they're going to wholly distort my meaning I'd rather they took my name off the story, thanks all the same.