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What NASA needs is a grandiose plan and a budget to match. Authorizing a couple of shuttle launches a year is not going to cut it. The infrastructure is getting old and the industry is rotting with it. When was the last time anyone used the word rocket scientist other than in a joke?

The program needs a mass infusion of fresh talent, and that we will need to encourage tens of thousands of talented young people to dedicate themselves to the challanges of a new and exiting career. It needs to become a booming business again as it was in the 1960s and early 70s. A focal point for our most creative to work and develop new and previously untested technologies.

If the shuttle program has taught us anything, it is that the conquest of space can never be done on the cheap. But, with new momentum, we can also expect tremendous rewards. Once again we may be able to put our people and our industries on a firm technological footing. We may provide the competitive advantage so needed by our own industrial base.

Frankly, I am amaze by the call for privatization. NASA has always been a program built upon private enterprise. It is a purchasing agent, and a coordinating body for the government, which relies on the talents and creativity of private enterprise for its implementation. What more privatization could we possibly want? Care must also be taken less our tax dollars be used to fund another nation's competitive advantage. Sometimes it is worthwhile to have the ability to classify and regulate the dissemination of technology. At least to hold on to the technology long for long enough to allow our companies enough time to commercialize it. Perhaps by privatization we mean that the outside of our next spaceship should be smeared with a plenora of advertisements to look like an overgrown race car?

Then there is the very real issue of national security. Our private high-tech industries have been hard hit by the recession, and we have precious few US manufactured technologies on the store shelves. We have to wonder where the next generation of smart weapons is going to come from. It is certainly not going to come from our youth if they are limited to working at fast food joints, retail stores, and daytrading.

The original space program was our largest recruiting poster for an entire generation of engineers, operations managers, and other creative people. What we have today is just a vestigal remnant of that program. We can choose to put the excitement and energy back into the program , or we can choose to teach our kids Chinese. But, it is time to decide what our national space program was, is, and should be.

The program needs a mass infusion of fresh talent, and that we will need to encourage tens of thousands of talented young people to dedicate themselves to the challanges of a new and exiting career. It needs to become a booming business again as it was in the 1960s and early 70s. A focal point for our most creative to work and develop new and previously untested technologies.

Something I posted earlier today.......we must be on the same wavelength

President Bush has presented bold proposals for the economy, defense and health care. Now is the time to reinvigorate the space program. At the memorial to the Columbia crew he should dedicate in their memory, a bold mission to Mars for the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. July, 2019. That would inspire a whole generation of young people to compete for the privilege of crewing the mission.

I couldn’t agree more. It is sad to say, but it is true that the fire has gone out of the program and a spark is lacking. Ask the average person on the street about space exploration and you’ll likely get a gee-whiz kind of response, like they think spaceflight is neat and all that but don’t have a clue as to what its really about or what the benefits are. Shuttle flights to the ISS or low earth orbit to go around and around without really going anywhere don't seem to ignite any excitement among the sheeple and only when disaster strikes to people really look up and notice.

Everyone knows that the spur for Apollo was beating the Soviets to the moon. We did that and then what? Its like a runner winning a race and then standing around with his hands at his sides, wondering what happened. Apollo continued for a while and then sputtered out like a carelessly struck match. What did we get then? A space shuttle program born in large part because of bean counters worried about the cost of expendable launch vehicles and politicians who were swayed by the bogus criticism of spending “too much” on space “at the expense” of doing social programs on Earth. Complete claptrap. In fact, I’m tempted to argue it the other way around. Spending too much on social programs that have been nothing but utter, dismal failures has cost us our true destiny, which is to soar above the Earth and among the stars.

During and for a short time after Apollo's heyday people in high places talked about flying to Mars. They were serious. Today you hear chit-chat about it but nothing really being talked about at the levels where something really could happen. Its all just robots, satellite cell phones, GPS and what's-the-bottom-line?

The whole structure of spaceflight and space research is creaking and crumbling. We don't have a realistic plan to get back to the moon, or what to do if we got there, which would be a good thing to do first. Nobody talks seriously about mounting a Mars mission anymore. I'll never live to see it, I'm pretty sure. We don't have even a clue as to how to do extra-solar missions. People talk about exploding nuclear bombs behind blast shields as a way to push spaceships to nearby solar systems. Geez, I mean, get the penicillin. What kind of a drive system is that, blowing things up?

Its going to take someone with a real vision and the drive and commitment to see it through, push it until it gives, to turn this around. Someone with guts and vision and the courage to pound desks and tell the bureaucrats and business-as-usual buttkissers to flip off and if we’re really serious about doing this, its going to take commitment and the political will to see it through. Given the present breed of political leaders (e.g., a bean counter heading up NASA), businessmen, and scientists, I'm not optimistic (I'll include myself in that third group since I opened my big mouth).