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NASA Chief Tells the Critics of Exploration Plan: "Get Over It"
mknewman (557587) writes "For years, critics have been taking shots at NASA's plans to corral a near-Earth asteroid before moving on to Mars — and now NASA's chief has a message for those critics: 'Get over it, to be blunt.' NASA Administrator Charles Bolden defended the space agency's 20-year timeline for sending astronauts to the Red Planet on Tuesday, during the opening session of this year's Humans 2 Mars Summit at George Washington University in the nation's capital."
Not to overly criticrise your analogy, but I prefer nonfiction to fiction in my decision-making process.
This is a good analysis of NASA. It's a good oldie, but people should read it more often.
I would note that it was valid then, when it was written, it was valid when Columbia fell apart, and it is valid now.
And it is an EXCELLENT reason why Nasa shouldn't be messing with asteroid capture. Fortunately, it is more likely that our country will be glowing embers, than that NASA will see this accomplished. And I view that glowing embers bit as a negative, brought about by similar egos by similar wackos in OTHER government offices (including Putin's Russia).
But yes, I am very glad that other problems are likely to make this problem a moot point.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Of the multitude of reasons SpaceX can operate more cheaply I can think of, the biggies are: -NASA is a Government agency, beholden to the congress and the congress loves its pork, so only certain big-name contractors get NASA contracts. -SpaceX is not a federal agency and doesn't have to play by the same onerous, costly sets of rules as a federal agency (i.e purchasing requirements, safety requirements, etc.) -SpaceX has negotiated some sweet deals to use existing government facilities already paid for by NASA (taxpayers). -SpaceX has received a lot of seed money from NASA. There's more, but you get the idea. I'm not here to take away from what SpaceX are trying to accomplish, but they certainly have an advantage over a bloated government bureaucracy.