Comments on: Albrecht on exploration and Griffin

By: Harold LaValley

Harold LaValley — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 18:29:53 +0000

The fly off does little or nothing for us since it is not even a complete ship nor a full scale version of what it should be.

By: TORO

TORO — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 03:23:55 +0000

VSE target date 2008? And what is it going to do?

The “target” is NASA in control…living to a budget (with no space station overruns).

NASA was in a mess, Columbia or no Columbia loss. What is amazing is how the (in the spirit of march madness) “hoopla” is exploration, yet the “goal” is return lemon to flight to complete albatross. It is all just politics, and a political mess.

Is that a surprise, considering our deficits, social security off the feeding tube, immigration, no goal to stabilize population, and so on.

I’ve got a solution. Let’s all vote in the next election. Let’s form the “get the same old deadweights out of office” party. But the new lightweights will turn into deadweights. So what then? Well, they are not all deadweights. Weed out the wheat from the weeds, and continue to vote.

By: John Malkin

John Malkin — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:50:30 +0000

I think we have an additional year since the Bush administration would be making the FY09 budget. The next president will not be elected on space policy period.

I think by the end of the year we will know if VSE will survive beyond the Bush presidency. The past is no guarantee for future success or failure; times are very different than 5 years ago. I understand the disbelief by anyone over 30 that something real will not occur. I have been disappointed by America’s progress for years. I’m always hopeful and there are new words being heard amongst all the old rhetoric and it’s those new words that may change the world.

By: Mr Earl

Mr Earl — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:37:51 +0000

Donald has a good point. I can’t believe that NASA has set Dec. 2008 as the target for the CEV “Fly-Off”. This administration may support the vision but for it to continue into the next you need to have some hardware flying. Politicaly speakiing, Dec. 2007 would have been a better pick for the “Fly-off” date.

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 17:53:50 +0000

It won’t surprise anyone on this list that I think Albrecht’s analysis of the political situation is spot on. NASA’s win last year was fantastic, but every year it will get harder, probably a lot harder. We’ve got to achieve real measurable results in the next couple of years with the money and hardware we’ve got. If there is not some kind of infrastructure useful for a human mission sitting on the lunar surface in the next couple of years — even if it is just an experiment to separate oxygen from lunar dust and a tank to store it in — the VSE will go the route of most other initiatives since Apollo.

— Donald