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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.
I blame most of the destination argument on the creation of the Mars underground in the 1980's. Prior to that NASA was focused on using the Shuttle for industrialization in LEO with projects like demonstrating the repair and return of satellites, building structural items in orbit, tethers, etc., all logical starting points for building a Cislunar industrial capability that would have given us the Solar System. NASA didn't even have plans to send robots to Mars. By advocating that we needed to skip the Moon and go rushing off to Mars they started this entire useless destination debate that has paralyzed space policy ever since.
Although their arguments made no rational or economic sense, falling back on outdated ideas like "manifest destiny" and painting Mars like a second Earth, they struck some cord among a very vocal hard core group that has shouted down any rational space strategy ever since. We see it now with Senators force feeding the SLS with money it doesn't need while starving commercial crew because the SLS would, in theory, be able to take astronauts to Mars. As a result the ISS is only one Soyuz failure away from being abandoned.
We need to give Mars a rest and once again spend the limited budget on building capabilities in space, space tugs, orbital refueling, lunar LOX, that would serve for going to all the interesting destinations beyond Earth, not keep wasting money on plans to go to a single one that is already well mapped and explored.
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mfwright@batnet.com
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.
In Canada our high profile issue is how to equip the military but that wouldn't make headlines in any other country.
Depends on how many F35s you buy from us.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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