Re: O.T. Lost Moon?


Message posted by Peter Merlin on April 15, 2010 at 17:30:18 PST:

You have to remember that George W. Bush killed his own Moon/Mars exploration initiative by failing to provide sufficient funding. Obama is increasing NASA's budget by $6 billion. More important, the "flexible path" approach will offer a number of achievable milestones

Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin praised the president for deciding "to redirect our nation's space policy away from the foolish and underfunded Moon race that has consumed NASA for more than six years, aiming instead at boosting the agency's budget by more than $1 billion more per year over the next five years, topping off at $100 billion for NASA between now and 2015."

Aldrin backs the "flexible path" plan because it would "redirect NASA towards developing the capability of voyaging to more distant locations in space, such as rendezvous with possibly threatening asteroids, or comets, or even flying by Mars to land on its moons."

Obama said his plan will add approximately 2,500 more jobs to the Cape Canaveral region over the next two years than the old plan would have and that there is potential for the creation of even more jobs as companies compete to be part of a new space transportation industry, perhaps more than 10,000 jobs nationwide over the next few years.

White House science adviser John Holdren summed up Obama's program as "a faster pace in space, more missions to more destinations sooner at lower cost."

I know it's painful to have to rely on the Russians for space taxi service. We wouldn't be in this fix if past programs to replace the shuttle ("I'm looking at you, VenturesStar!") hadn't been so badly mismanaged that they got cancelled before even reaching the flight-test phase. Perhaps private industry will supply a new space transportation system. Under the new plan, NASA will purchase services instead of vehicles.


In Reply to: Re: O.T. Lost Moon? posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on April 15, 2010 at 16:36:47 PST:

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