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patgund(Warning, space rant ahead)
I'm all for manned space exploration. And I like the idea of returning to the Moon, and going on to Mars from there.
Bush OKs new moon missions
However, after reading the above UPI article, I have to say that the current administration's plan to return to the Moon has "Mongolian Clusterf**k" written all over it. Not only do you have NASA handling it, but an "unusual presidential commission to review NASA's plans as they unfold" doing oversight. What I see here is two seperate layers of bureaucracy that are going to spend more time interfering with each other than getting anything done. Landings by early next decade?? With this level of bureaucracy, it's going to be five years before they agree on the letterhead design, much less produce any hardware.
It's 2004 right now. The idea with this plan is to resume Lunar landings by 2013, 9 years from now. This would mean an Apollo-level committment. And I don't see the money being there for it. Not in the public sector anyway. And we don't even have the infrastructure right now to duplicate Apollo! I find it interesting the plan calls for the use of Soyuz capsules and ESA Ariane rockets as well, but wonder if this means a plan to help bankroll the Russian space programme, with some kickback to ESA as well??
I'm strongly suspecting this is a lot of election year hot air at best. At worse, a financial black hole, (i.e, for every $1.00 spent, we'll see .10 of spacecraft and .90 of pork). I'd like to see increases in manned spaceflight and both lunar and arean exploration. I'm not sure this is the way to do it.
I'm all for manned space exploration. And I like the idea of returning to the Moon, and going on to Mars from there.
Bush OKs new moon missions
However, after reading the above UPI article, I have to say that the current administration's plan to return to the Moon has "Mongolian Clusterf**k" written all over it. Not only do you have NASA handling it, but an "unusual presidential commission to review NASA's plans as they unfold" doing oversight. What I see here is two seperate layers of bureaucracy that are going to spend more time interfering with each other than getting anything done. Landings by early next decade?? With this level of bureaucracy, it's going to be five years before they agree on the letterhead design, much less produce any hardware.
It's 2004 right now. The idea with this plan is to resume Lunar landings by 2013, 9 years from now. This would mean an Apollo-level committment. And I don't see the money being there for it. Not in the public sector anyway. And we don't even have the infrastructure right now to duplicate Apollo! I find it interesting the plan calls for the use of Soyuz capsules and ESA Ariane rockets as well, but wonder if this means a plan to help bankroll the Russian space programme, with some kickback to ESA as well??
I'm strongly suspecting this is a lot of election year hot air at best. At worse, a financial black hole, (i.e, for every $1.00 spent, we'll see .10 of spacecraft and .90 of pork). I'd like to see increases in manned spaceflight and both lunar and arean exploration. I'm not sure this is the way to do it.
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-10 09:52 pm (UTC)