Posted on 02/15/2010 6:06:26 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
The dramatic upheaval in U.S. space exploration plans is having a ripple effect among NASA’s international and commercial partners, offering possibilities that were not there when the administration of then-President George W. Bush insisted on keeping the “critical path” from the surface of the Earth to the surface of the Moon inside the U.S. government.
Beginning with President Barack Obama’s decision to extend U.S. funding for the International Space Station until at least 2020, NASA’s Fiscal 2011 budget request has given new life to old debates in Europe and elsewhere as the station partnership begins to understand what the greater emphasis on low-Earth-orbit research and an opening of the path beyond might mean for them.
“We want to establish partnerships so that we all believe that when one succeeds, we all succeed,” says Administrator Charles Bolden, who is simultaneously trying—with little visible progress so far—to flesh out his agency’s new approach and sell it to worried agency workers and his funders on Capitol Hill.
Bolden has discussed the new approach with workers at Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers , as well. In the run-up to the Feb. 8 launch of the space shuttle Endeavour the also met with some of NASA’s international partners, and spoke with European Space Agency Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain, German Aerospace Center (DLR) Chairman Johann-Dietrich Worner and Italian Space Agency (ASI) President Enrico Saggese and space industry executives around the world.
“The space station will need to be supported, periodically upgraded and operated in a different way,” says Luigi Pasquali, deputy CEO of Thales Alenia Space.
(Excerpt) Read more at aviationweek.com ...
Ping.
Hopefully they will work the bugs out of the recovery parachutes.
Let’s see if we can get the Germans to run it. They ran NASA before and did a good job.
I bet for $5 billion: Burt Rutan and the Germans could do far more than NASA.
I agree.
For less than the cost of ACORN!
Taxi drivers and freight haulers to government facilities under government contract.
If Obama really wanted to do something good he could have renounced our involvement in the outer space treaty and turned private industry loose AND partnered them with NASA.
Of course, Obama has set that situation up in spades already with other acts too numerous and stupid to recount.
It all goes to the creation of a "critical mass," a "social population inversion," that makes it possible for an opponent to come in in 2012 with a promise to sweep it all away and put things back on track. Reagan did it. Maybe, between Palin, Scott Brown, and perhaps someone yet to emerge, we'll see it again.
Sure, but where is the socialised medicine in there?
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