NASA announced Tuesday afternoon that administrator Sean O’Keefe will be the luncheon speaker Wednesday at a meeting of the US Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors in Washington. According to the press release:
O’Keefe will present the administration’s Vision for Space Exploration (VSE). The VSE will accelerate advances in robotics, autonomous and fault tolerant systems, human-machine interface, novel applications of nanotechnology and micro-devices that will lead to new products and services.
Two observations:
- The press release offers an interesting justification for the exploration plan: developing new technologies that could have commercial applications. This is understandable given that O’Keefe is speaking before a business-oriented audience outside of the aerospace industry, but relying on spinoffs to garner support for the vision seems like a weak approach.
- This is one of the first NASA press releases to refer to the exploration plan by an acronym, the VSE. I suppose it’s only inevitable, although I wonder how long it will take before we just start calling it the “vise”…
