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NASA's Bolden Claims NASA Is 'Doomed' Unless It Stays the Course To Mars (spacenews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: According to a story in Space News, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden made a speech at the Center for American Progress in which he declared that if the next president deviated from the Journey to Mars program, the space agency would be "doomed." The point he was making, that programs of that nature, have to have consistent support over several presidencies and congresses, was a valid one. The point was equally valid in 2010 when President Obama abruptly and without warning canceled the Constellation space exploration program. Bolden, however, had a ready answer for that, which may not be convincing on close examination.
In Canada we just had nine years of anti-science, anti-environment, racist, and slash taxes for well off families. No other party is like them and the last few years they were showing their true colours. It's going to take a long time for us to recover from them. For example in our census we had a short form and a long form. Both were mandatory. The short form was sent out to the majority of households while the long form went out to the rest. The Conservatives eliminated the long form and added an optional extra bit. We had some of the best census data in the world and even if we go back to using a long form in the next census that data won't be as useful as it could have been because we're missing that year's data.
I think it seems amplified in the US because the space program is such a high profile item. In Canada our high profile issue is how to equip the military but that wouldn't make headlines in any other country.
Calling Mars "well-mapped and explored" is a bit of an overreach. The bottom of our oceans isn't even well-mapped and explored, much less another planet that no one has stepped on and has only a handful of decent rovers. At 300 feet per hour, Curiosity is in no danger of running out of places to explore.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The point was equally valid in 2010 when President Obama abruptly and without warning canceled the Constellation space exploration program.
"Without warning"? You mean that the Augustine commission was secret? Nobody saw it coming that a lousy program that had delivered too little by that time for too much money got scrapped?
Ezekiel 23:20