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Former NASA Chief On US Space Policy: "No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: During a congressional hearing Thursday, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had harsh words for the space agency and the space policy crafted by President Obama's administration. Under the Obama administration's guidance, NASA has established Mars as a goal for human spaceflight and said that astronauts will visit the red planet by the 2030s. However, a growing number of critics say the agency's approach is neither affordable nor sustainable.
On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics. The United States has not had a serious discussion about space policy, he testified, and as a result, the space agency is making little discernible progress. NASA simply cannot justify its claims of being on a credible path toward Mars, he added.
On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics. The United States has not had a serious discussion about space policy, he testified, and as a result, the space agency is making little discernible progress. NASA simply cannot justify its claims of being on a credible path toward Mars, he added.
"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?
You know, that third one might be the cause of the first two...
I am not a sig.
We are no longer interested in such atavistic goals. President Obama's moonshot is to disenfranchise white people, while doing everything to usher in an era where the USA is irrelevant while providing as much comfort and support to those who do not like nor respect the USA as possible. I think he is doing a dam good job. Kennedy never did get to see a man on the moon. However, I feel that president Obama will indeed see the USA destroyed in his own lifetime.
It amazes me that liberal wackos will spend soo much fucking time worrying about CO2 and white privilege while poo pooing any kind of space travel. In is a certainty that if wee do not get off the planet the human race will die. That is everyone, even the underprivileged black and latino people you spend soo much time worrying about. After we have colonized several planets, then you can start worrying about the evils of white people and saving the desert tortoise. We need nuclear power rockets yesterday to get us off this prison planet. A killer asteroid could be waiting around the corner. I understand you are cool with killing off the white race, but you will be killing off non whites too. We should all realize by now that Black Lives Matter.
Now that we've discovered how (1) incredibly harsh that outer space is, and (2) stunningly expensive it is to supply everything that we take for granted here on Earth -- from the downward force needed to keep our bones from cracking and our eyes from exploding, to the UV shielding that prevents us from (a) toasting and (b) going blind, and radiation shielding so that our sperm still works, and we don't die of cancer before having the chance to use it -- to the air, water and food all around us to the fuel and minerals that we quite easily dig out of the ground, it should be patently obvious that we're stuck on Earth, and nothing's gonna change that until Zefram Cochrane invents the warp drive (which won't happen until there's a Eugenics War).
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, the Apollo program was already winding down. NASA had purchased the final Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets and Apollo spacecraft. As much as President Johnson supported NASA, he valued his Vietnam war and his "Great Society" programs, including his "War on poverty" even more.
When Nixon walked into the oval office, he inherited the space program of JFK, the man he believed had cheated him out of the White House in the 1960 election. Every success of the program that landed a man on the moon in Nixon's time was attributed to JFK and LBJ, and this probably made the deeply flawed man even more insecure. The Apollo13 incident occurred on his watch and his administration was certain that it would be blamed for any fatalities, so they wanted NASA to stop the missions that went to places where rescue was not possible. The number of moon landings was cut on top of the Johnson cuts and hardware was re-purposed for safer Earth-orbit uses like Skylab and Nixon's Apollo-Soyuz. Nixon approved the space shuttle program but selected the least-expensive-to-develop option (reusable orbiter on the side of the stack, boosted by 2 SRBs). There were designs that would have been cheaper and safer to OPERATE, but cost more to develop including one that flew inline atop a Saturn V 1st stage, one that flew mated to the side of a manned fully-reusable flyback booster, and others - but as a typical politician he picked the one that would look best on the books during his time in office.
Ford ignored NASA. He was focused on the post Watergate mess. With NASA in an R&D and building phase, there was nothing there to provide him with the photo-ops that all politicians crave, and as a congressman from michigan with barely enough IQ points to play football and who'd been appointed VP (rather than being elected) and then elevated to President (again, without an election) he lacked any sort of mandate to do anything.
Carter ignored NASA. He inherited a program with no available spacecraft, and poor non-human-rated Launch Vehicles and with no desire to do anything with NASA he just neglected it. NASA just used the Carter years to quietly push ahead with the money congress provided to do the development of the shuttles.
Reagan loved NASA, embraced the Shuttle program including showing up at Edwards to welcome one of the early missions home. He called for a winged single-stage-to-orbit "national aerospace plane" to be developed to eventually replace the shuttles, called for a permanent American space station (which he named "Freedom") and ordered NASA to plan to eventually transition shuttles to commercial service like an airline with private sector operators. When Challenger exploded, he made sure the congress provided the funds to build a replacement orbiter. Unfortunately, with political problems in his last two years, his attention was elsewhere and he lacked the political power to get his higher priority items funded and still have the clout for the NASA items. The Space station and NASP were both funded, but not to the levels needed. Both survived his administration, but not with much inertia.
Bush41 had been involved with NASA during the Reagan years (it's customary for the VP to be involved with NASA) but seemed tepid. He is famous for saying that he just did not get "the vision thing". On the 20th anniversary of the moon landing he announced a "Space Exploration Initiative" to return to the moon, then move on to Mars, but rather than doing it on a pile of new money like Apollo, he proposed a pay-as-you-go pace .... then he never funded it, and he was booted out of office after only one term. in the middle of his one term, Bush appointed Norm Augustine to run a committee, which recommended ending human exploration beyond Earth orbit.
Clinton seems to have taken no real interest in NASA (presumably it did not help anyone but Astronauts "get the chicks", so it was of little use (yes, I'm joking here)) but his VP Gore did appear genuinely interest
Other environments require technological modifications to allow successful human habitation. Perhaps you've heard of them: Clothing. Buildings. Et cetera.
We, as a species, modify the local environment to suit habitation. We can already sustain life deep underwater, and in extreme Arctic conditions. Space and other planets ability to sustain life are technological and political problems, but are eminently doable if and when the decision is made to proceed. . .