As I said, here’s a guy who is stressed, and for very good reason.

I’d be delighted to hear from Griffin why this happened and, in doing so, would even be willing to listen to him express consternation about leaked memos! But perhaps he understands that the armchair political analysts have it exactly right.

Sure we have, but we have also quantified his space launch architecture and his specific engineering solutions to specific infrastructure problems, and there is no doubt in my mind that these are his solutions to the problems at hand, and it doesn’t add up. Griffin is a technological failure, before he even gets started. The money simply is not there, and his architecture is shoddy and his engineering is faulty. We simply cannot afford the waste on the scale he is proposing. A program or proposal lives or dies on its merits, and ESAS in its present form is a lame duck. There are those that want to kill the duck, and those that want to try and save the duck, others want to switch to breeding swans. I just want to get the quackery out of our prestigious national scientific institutions. You know the story : quack. It’s not just Griffin, it’s an endemic problem in our scientific institutions at the highest levels created by our administration, just calling this administration an administration is being very generous.

If I’m not mistaken, we’re talking about a leaked internal memo which was never intended to be plastered all over the internet and picked apart by armchair political analysts. I’m tempted to wonder what nice things these wonderful and supportive NAC members had to say to Dr. Griffin which could have evoked such a strongly worded response.

Come on folks. It’s not as if Dr. Griffin is prone to these little outbursts. Have any of you paused long enough to consider giving him the benefit of the doubt?

In fact, that seems to be precisely what this dispute is all about: Griffin basically telling the scientists it’s this way or the highway.

If I’m wrong about that, then I’d be interested in hearing why.

Huh?

Do you have any comprehension of how the federal budgeting process works?

This is an administration that allowed Kenny Lay to decide who would head up Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that oversaw Enron. It effectively turned our energy policy over the Exxon-Mobil and their ilk. Its environmental policies have been dictated by the same crowd and have been marked by obfuscation, delays, and outright falsehoods.

The Bush Administration had an unqualified former energy lobbyist with no science background rewriting reports on global warming. It hired a college student who tried to dictate to NASA scientists what to say.

In order to fund its lunar program, the administration is busy cutting the supposely vigorous research programs that it promised in lieue of serious action on carbon emissions. They’re also going to finish the space station but want to zero out the science funding to actually use it. This after spending 20 plus years and almost $100 billion.

And for what? A lunar program that – at least from what’s leaking out – has an unstable launch vehicle, is getting incredibly expensive, and may not be financially sustainable. But, it is based on existing hardware, thus keeping large defense contractors and their armies of employees happy and busy making campaign contributions.

Griffin’s remarks and actions are par for the course for this government. It has no trouble standing up to scientists. They’re easy targets.

We end up with an Earth Program (NOAA) with Earth Science as its focus, and a Space Program (NASA) with Space Science as its focus.

In particular a manned space program designed to last beyond the next administration, with dual rotating launches of six people at a time at SLC-37A/B, and dual rotating heavy lift launches at SLC-39A/B, with a vibrant and active life sciences program on the ISS, demonstrating 2 year duration missions, a vibrant propulsion program on the Planet Earth which will make missions to the Planet Earth routine, and which will propel US into the space colonization era practically overnight, and eventually make manned space flights to Phobos, Deimos and that remarkable new fifth planet Ceres practical.

Going back to the moon is stupid when we haven’t even had a proper Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter yet. Let me try to explain it to you – we can’t frickin afford it anymore. The money is fricken gone. Do I have to use this kind of language to get through your thick skull? Earth is the mission here. Everything else is tangential, we aren’t going to the moon and mars anytime soon, it just isn’t affordable. We’re going to Phobos and Deimos and Ceres and the asteroids, anyone can see that.

The moon is a horrible and costly diversion.

If you aren’t confronting the Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Space Sciences and the Natural Sciences head on, then you are in denial here. We’ve got some serious problems on the planet Earth here, and the moon and Mars aren’t going to solve them.

Three words : propulsion, launch and life support. As far as science missions go, we need to get twin Phobos and Deimos orbiter, lander and hopper missions into the queue, and a Ceres orbiter and lander, as well as a far more aggressive mission to planet Earth, and equatorial and GEO manned stations, using private enterprise.

— Donald

VSE should be an umbrella for all the different kinds of space exploration that NASA does so well. Yeah, that’s marketing, but marketing works. Congress and the taxpayer need a strategic underpinning for the agency as a whole. That the emphasis is now on human space flight is mainly because that is what so desperately needs direction and goals. But going out of his way to slap science advisors into getting on board with what he sees as the plan is remarkably naive.

So, short of radical upheaval in the government — which probably is not in the near-term books — I don’t expect a lot of change. Things will be stretched out, but the goals will not significantly differ from what they are now.

That is the genious of the VSE — and why I support it. It set goals with which many or most people will not disagree to the extent of expending political capital, and tried to achieve them without politically expensive changes in the budget. Dr. Griffin has hurt that strategy by being unnecessarily ham-fisted politically, but probably (hopefully) he has not yet destroyed it.

— Donald