Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Finally!
A Hard Look At NASA's Failures....
Gee, what took everyone so long?! NASA has been swindling us taxpayers for years with promises of reducing the cost of getting people and equipment into space for years, only to accomplish exactly the opposite. An expensive and dangerous shuttle, a useless and expensive space station and now, plans to go back to the future with a new, and very dubious, return to the moon program. So what is NASA's manned flight program all about anyway? Doing R&D to make space travel less expensive and more accessible? or is it about 'pride' projects like getting back on the moon before the Chinese get there? There's been no cohesive vision (Congress gets the blame for that) and as a result, NASA's programs lurch from one useless agenda to anther. But thank goodness we spent those billions so we could have such wonderful 'spin-off' technology like Mylar balloons.
But now NASA's new administrator is telling us the last 30 years of his agencies work has been a mistake. Oops! Sorry about that...$250 billion dollars later, we need to go back to the drawing board and forget about any technologies or lessons we could draw from the space shuttle or the station. A long hard look at the direction, and even necessity, of a publicly funded manned space program should be first on the agenda, before we race off half-cocked into a new and just as dubious direction. But as is the custom in this town, such failures are rewarded with bigger budgets and new and expansive program goals.
Gee, what took everyone so long?! NASA has been swindling us taxpayers for years with promises of reducing the cost of getting people and equipment into space for years, only to accomplish exactly the opposite. An expensive and dangerous shuttle, a useless and expensive space station and now, plans to go back to the future with a new, and very dubious, return to the moon program. So what is NASA's manned flight program all about anyway? Doing R&D to make space travel less expensive and more accessible? or is it about 'pride' projects like getting back on the moon before the Chinese get there? There's been no cohesive vision (Congress gets the blame for that) and as a result, NASA's programs lurch from one useless agenda to anther. But thank goodness we spent those billions so we could have such wonderful 'spin-off' technology like Mylar balloons.
But now NASA's new administrator is telling us the last 30 years of his agencies work has been a mistake. Oops! Sorry about that...$250 billion dollars later, we need to go back to the drawing board and forget about any technologies or lessons we could draw from the space shuttle or the station. A long hard look at the direction, and even necessity, of a publicly funded manned space program should be first on the agenda, before we race off half-cocked into a new and just as dubious direction. But as is the custom in this town, such failures are rewarded with bigger budgets and new and expansive program goals.
