Posted on 03/29/2006 4:11:29 PM PST by KevinDavis
NASA's investment in enabling technologies for space exploration has been scaled back dramatically in the past year and focused on areas deemed critical to fielding the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and conducting the first human lunar sorties since the Apollo program.
The $1 billion worth of human and robotic technology projects NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate selected in late 2004 would have kept scores of researchers in industry and academia busy for years working on a mix of pressing problems and longer-range considerations facing a space agency daring to venture beyond Earth's orbit.
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, sworn in several months after the selections were made by the previous NASA regime, did not waste much time deciding that the agency could not afford such a robust technology-development portfolio if it wanted to keep its exploration agenda on track.
"The old portfolio included 118 separate projects valued at around $1 billion annually," said Chris Moore, the NASA program executive managing the agency's downsized exploration-technology-development portfolio. "Griffin quickly decided that NASA could not afford that approach and cut the effort back significantly."
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
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