Tuesday, September 20, 2005
"Think of it as Apollo on steroids"
Think of it as a Colossal Waste of Money...
I can't remember a time when bragging about a government program as being like another government program, only on steroids as a good thing. But NASA seems content on scrapping the wasteful shuttle for another ill-conceived program that will cost over a $100 billion dollars. Returning men (and maybe a woman or two) to the moon.
For me it begs the question why? Did we forget something more than 30 years ago when we last visited? Is there a larger scientific goal, with potential for civil spin off technology that is more useful than say - Mylar balloons? What about the useless space station, what becomes of that?
Leave it to NASA to spend $100 billion (existing money) on developing technology that is a retread of current shuttle technology combined with 35 year old Apollo technology. As we've seen in the last year, the private sector is stepping up to take on NASA's spaceflight monopoly and in a way that is much more efficient.
NASA's resources would be better spent on robotic exploration craft and incentivizing private sector development of spacecraft as was done with the Ansari-X prize. What we have in the current proposal is just an elaborate back to the future project. What a waste.
