Comments on: Events this week http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/06/12/events-this-week/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=events-this-week Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway... Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:35:41 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 By: Donald F. Robertson http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/06/12/events-this-week/#comment-8172 Thu, 15 Jun 2006 20:13:50 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1007#comment-8172 For what it’s worth, Ray, they’ve put one of the founders and experts of the small-is-beautiful spacecraft school at Ames.

— Donald

]]> By: Ray http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/06/12/events-this-week/#comment-8171 Thu, 15 Jun 2006 03:20:42 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1007#comment-8171 The article isn’t really for Earth-orbiting missions and against exploration missions. Yes, it’s for Earth-orbiting satellites and it’s against the VSE, but it advocates unmanned exploration of the planets and abandoning the ISS. It does make a certain amount of sense to consider something like a climate research satellite with fairly obvious, short-term, and low-risk payoff to be an essential, and the VSE to be a speculative, high-risk/high-payoff type of investment where a small percentage of overall effort is appropriate. Both types of investment are appropriate, but in obvious proportions.

I’m not familiar with the implications of the internal NASA move of the lander from Ames to Marshall, but it does sound like merging the automated and human landers would be a gain for the VSE. However, this gain strikes me as similar to the gain for the Shuttle when various automated missions were forced to the Shuttle. The Shuttle’s gain was at the expense of the automated missions and commercial launch possibilities. When you think of Ames and Worden you think of cheap, effective missions like the Pioneers and Clementine. Hopefully that isn’t what’s being given up.

]]> By: Dennis Ray Wingo http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/06/12/events-this-week/#comment-8170 Wed, 14 Jun 2006 14:58:47 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1007#comment-8170 The stop exploring and spend the money on the Earth is EXACTLY what NASA did do starting in the early 70’s. This abandonment of exploration has done more to HURT the Earth than any policy since the dawn of Apollo.

If we had not abandoned exploration then we would arguably have a presence throughout the inner solar system today and could even now be extracting the resources needed to get us beyond the material shortages and increased pollution brought about by the industrialization of China and India.

Dennis

]]> By: Donald F. Robertson http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/06/12/events-this-week/#comment-8169 Tue, 13 Jun 2006 18:55:03 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1007#comment-8169 Regarding strategy, at first I was appalled at NASA’s apparent moving-chairs-on-a-sinking-ship shift of the lunar robotic effort out of NASA Ames. It seemed pointless political gamesmanship, and I hated to see a major space project moved out of the San Francisco suburbs. However, I have finally read the Space News article on the subject. Combined with Dennis’ intelligence that NASA is attempting a lot of similarity between the automated landers and the human lander, this now makes much more sense to me. Making one lander design for everyone should be a net gain for the VSE.

— Donald

]]> By: Chris Mann http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/06/12/events-this-week/#comment-8168 Mon, 12 Jun 2006 21:08:08 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1007#comment-8168 Does NASA Have the Right Strategy and Policies to Retain and Build the Workforce It Will Need

Ummm… Build?

Maybe i’m out of line here, but isn’t that currently the problem?

]]>