Friday, April 04, 2008
TRAIN WRECK ON THE WAY TO SPACE
The number of posts I've made about the problems with NASA's new "Constellation" program is too great to try to link up to here. But it looks like the storm is gathering force. This article from "Space Coast" newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel, points out that a report from the GAO to Congress is bringing the chickens home to the political roost. More technical is this item that reviews the details. You can't expect the Congress Creatures to understand the sort of thing discussed in the latter, but what they will get is that the Ares I rocket design is a dangerous and expensive mess. Now that this has been brought to their attention, there's no way the politicians are going to avoid their "fight or flight" instinct to keep away from what has to seem to even the most scientifically illiterate politicians as a potential nightmare in a few years when NASA has to come back with their hands out to finish the project, and in a way that barely achieves any kind of flight, much less the ambitious goals of the "Vision for Space Exploration."
If I'm sitting in Congress, especially if I'm a Democrat, I ask this question of the administrator of NASA under an unpopular Republican president: "You mean to tell me that there are two working rockets -- Atlas and Delta -- that with only slight modifications could have done the job you've defined for Ares I, but instead of paying to modify them to do the job, you've wasted billions so that NASA could do the work in-house?" And then I might be tempted to add another question: "And, meanwhile, an internet billionaire has gotten farther along in developing his own rocket than you have, all out of his own pocket?"
What a nightmare.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:05 AM
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