[Cincinatus' Wife]

[risk]

misunderestimation ping

[hopespringseternal]

One thing is sure: We are going to spend the money whether we accomplish anything or not. The real challenge will be overcoming business as usual. The very bureaucrats and contractors who are cashing the checks are precisely the ones who will be the biggest obstacles.

I have talked to them, and they like the way things are. The contractors will have to innovate, and they won't do that without a gun to their heads.

The bureaucrats will actually have to commit to a goal where their is a discernible difference between failure and success and they won't do that without a gun to their heads. Heck, pre-Columbia all they had to do to be considered successful was avoid disaster and they couldn't even do that.

[theFIRMbss]

>Space travel is also about the soul, about the aspiration of the human sprit

That stuff sounds good, but
would anyone really say
NASA -- defined by

bureaucracies and
old boy networks, along with
weird academic

hierarchies -- stands
as a manifestation
of the human soul?

[TigerTale]

"It's been a long road, gettin' from there to here..."

[dead]

Cold-War competition can no longer serve as a catalyst for exploration.

If China shows any sign of really going to the moon, that catalyst will be back.

[RightWhale]

Bush's campaign promised that the Admin would look into the idea of private property in outer space. If they have done so in the four intervening years, they have been silent on their thoughts.

The issue is private property.

The gov't has already asserted sovereignty of outer space, so they could set up a mechanism for registering private property claims with no further action besides telling the clerk at the BLM which form to use.

[RightWhale]

By that I mean that the Federal space program is too timid and shortsighted to be effective. Enough is known about outer space, and it is obvious the Feds are not going to set up a space transportation infrastructure. So it is time, past time by 30 years, for the gov't to start recognizing private claims to celestial resources. They can update their mining law at the same time, it's always near the top of the workpile on the Hill anyway.

[SunkenCiv]

Only GWB has had the guts to cancel the Space Shuttle, and the good sense to do it in a reasonable and discernable timeframe. The STS costs too much, and is destroying NASA. Ultimately, the so-called International Space Station is where most of the Shuttle money goes, so the ISS contributes to the destruction of NASA and to the US space program. And the ISS will be ditched in ten years or so, the same way Mir was.

In order to go to Mars, one first must go to the Moon, developing the skills and techniques (and technology) to do the harder job by doing the easier one. Mars was Von Braun's ultimate goal, and each step was carefully chosen to make the next step possible. First, orbiting something. Then, showing humans could survive spaceflight and what they needed to do it. Next, orbiting a human. Then, orbiting a crew. Spacewalk. Rendezvous. Free return lunar trajectory. Practice landing without touchdown, rendezvous, return. Landing.

The abandonment of Apollo was due to LBJ's huge Vietnam debacle, which was extricated by Nixon and Kissinger. The Apollo program was targeted for cuts in 1969. We wound up with the undersupported Skylab, the strictly political Apollo-Soyuz, the kludged-up STS...

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent

[KevinDavis]

At least Bush is going in the right direction.

Space Ping! This is the Space Ping List! Let me know if you want on or off this list!

[tet68]

For your consideration.
""Ping""