Anon4,

You are either missing or ignoring the point. It does not matter though.

This kind of thinking is going to run into a real brick wall in the form of the retirement of the baby boomers and an explosion in non-discretionary spending in the form of Medicare and Social Security. When this happens, anything that does not clearly contribute to the “welfare” of the American people is going to be in big trouble.

The entire reason that “space” is susceptible to attack is because advocates for the current approach, including Griffin, have not made a coherent and persuasive argument on why investing $100B+ in ESAS is good for the national WELFARE.

The White House specifically stated three types of “national WELFARE” benefits that a national space strategy should be judged by:

1) National Security benefits

2) Science benefits, and

3) Economic benefits

For the last 3 years Mike Griffin has totally ignored this policy statement by the White House.

QUESTION 1: Did Mike Griffin evaluate and compare the “NATIONAL SECURITY” benefits of the Ares 1/Ares V approach against the other alternatives, when making his ESAS decision?

ANSWER: No, he did not.

QUESTION 2: Did Mike Griffin evaluate and compare the “SCIENCE” benefits of the Ares 1/Ares V approach against the other alternatives, when making his ESAS decision?

ANSWER: No, he did not.

QUESTION 3: Did Mike Griffin evaluate and compare the “ECONOMIC” benefits of the Ares 1/Ares V approach against the other alternatives, when making his ESAS decision?

ANSWER: No, he did not.

These are facts.

Griffin was explicitly warned on this issue. The Aldridge Commission was quite clear on the criticality of taking an economically affordable & politically sustainable approach.

CONCLUSION: If anybody is responsible for the coming train wreck, it is Mike Griffin.

Griffin adopted an engineer’s mind set to what is clearly a strategic POLITICAL problem. The engineer’s solution (ESAS) will be decimated because Griffin ignored a clear mandate that NASA’s approach needed to deliver specific benefits to the national WELFARE.

– Al

“Politics is not rocket science, which is why rocket scientists do not understand politics.”

Good you are reading my posts

The evidence is there, you are just closing your eyes to it.

Has Al even talked to you in this thread? Im not certain whether you were trying to respond to me, or something I missed. Regardless, if your going to argue a point, then give us some evidence, other than vague statements.

Dream on. There is nothing in Obama’s background to show he would see space as anything but a waste, money that should go to welfare. The fact that money will be tight is all the more reason to go with someone has supported NASA in the past.

On the other hand, if we can show that space can be relevent and important to the average person, and can help us deal with our problems, then I suspect the transformation that we would see would be on par with that of computers and the Internet during the Clinton Presidency.

Ugh… That is all we need, another ISS with the U.S. paying the bill and the rest of the world freeloading on it. No wonder you support Obama.

I believe Andrew was right about the strategic re-direction of NASA towards systemic climate change, for a large share of the civil space portfolio, as the next, new opportunity for the agency to revitalize itself, and rise to the decadal challenge of global warming. NASA is well positioned to undertake a mission to both observe and mitigate climate change. First, it has as an anchor an enormous piece of the earth observation tool kit. Secondly, pursuing lunar habitation will require new sustainable energy technologies-NASA can help develop new concepts, or spin-in the new stuff that is rolling out at a rapid rate from the private sector and university labs and take them into applications, and spin out again as intentional commercial innovation from that process. Thirdly, NASA has the ISSNL, and a possible lunar platform from which assist with.

Meanwhile, maybe we should all rethink our hopes for a top-down POTUS savior in the White House for NASA’s strategic direction. I think we need to pursue the creation of a broad based, grassroots-up national dialog about what NASA can and should do.

Putting this question forward with the new web 2.0 capabilities that Andrew Hoppin and other innovators of every age demographic are creating and/or supporting, and then maintaining that adhocracy in some kind of organizational structure is the inclusive, politically sustainable way to chart and maintain a path forward- not for just for space objectives, but for space/earth systems connections in an era of ecological peril.

Thus, whomever wins-and I really have no idea who that will be at this particular moment- the strategy and course for NASA will be impacted by the voice from the participatory commons. In fact, it already is.