Sunday’s Houston Chronicle has a front-page article about the status of the Vision for Space Exploration. (As of this writing the web version of the article is poorly formatted; perhaps the Chronicle is trying to save money by cutting out white space.) The article is largely a straightforward accounting of the obstacles the plan faces, primarily in Congress. The article tries to compare the plan to the space station program, noting the various uphevals and cost overruns the station program has suffered in the last 20 years. “Is it going to be the space station all over again?” asks Ed Hudgins.
Speaking of the space station, the Los Angeles Times discusses the status and the fate of the ISS in Sunday’s edition. The article claims that the station “has begun to lose its reason for being” and thus support for the effort “has begun to waver again.” The article doesn’t do much to back up this assertion, other than quoting a few experts; most of the article discusses the history of the ISS. If NASA and the Administration are serious about cultivating international support for the exploration plan, it seems unlikely that they will drop support for the station.
FYI article, Advanced Gemini: What NASA Needs on the Constellation site:
http://www.projectconstellation.us/articles/advanced-gemini.html
Alternative capsule design thoughts.
The ISS never lost its “reason for being.” Its “reason for being” is to employ people. Several NASA employees and contractors working on ISS told me as much, and I believe them.
Obviously, such a vision falls well short of what I hope for as a citizen of the United States interested in the exploration and exploitation of space.
Perhaps an effort to link space with Iraq might elevate the space vision to the fore. Iraq seems to be the only thing covered in the nation’s so called global news coverage. Leverage that.
The Chronicle article is essentially the fourth or fifth article on essentially the same thing in the past couple of weeks. There were nearly identical articles in Space News, the Washington Post and UPI.
I was somewhat disappointed by their decision to quote Hudgins. He has little grasp of space policy and essentially the same solution to all of the problems. A knowledgeable space reporter would know this and get a better source.