Re: Griffin on Loss of U.S. Space Leadership


Rand Simberg wrote:
On 17 Feb 2006 12:13:21 -0800, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
<edkyle99@xxxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

In my opinion, the only "leadership" that the U.S. currently
provides in space is in the unmanned science and exploration
efforts that Griffin is proposing to gut. The U.S. long ago lost
its leadership position in manned spaceflight to Russia, which
for the past several years has provided the only seat-rides to
orbit. The International Space Station itself is built around a
Russian core.

Well, that may be your opinion, but it's obviously not the opinion of
Griffin's audience on the Hill. Most people in Washington apparently
consider a fancy hangar queen to be superior to less-capable vehicles
that are actually being flown, and that having such hangar queens
demonstrates "leadership."

It doesn't make any sense, does it? This hasn't been
a "status quo" government in other areas, what with all
of the world-wide cage-rattling, at a cost of hundreds of
billions of dollars, that it has authorized.

Shutting down shuttle now would be an real example
of leadership.

What I don't understand is why we aren't rushing an unmanned mission
to the lunar poles to resolve the water issue ASAP. It seems to me
that exploration architecture plans would be strongly driven by the
answer to that question.

Maybe Griffin knows that NASA isn't really going to send
people to the Moon.

I suspect that when all is said and done, NASA will be
left with a program based only on a CEV, a CEV launcher
(either stick or EELV based), part of a decaying space
station, and bits and pieces of unmanned exploration that
JPL and other centers manage to protect.

- Ed Kyle

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