Here's a little piece of an article I found while surfing the Internet, unfortunately I can't find the link to the source... so here it is minus a link:
Quote:
The whole point of leaving home is to go somewhere, not just to endlessly circle the block,? said Wesley Huntress, who was NASA?s space science chief during the 1990s.
He criticized the space shuttle and space station programs as too costly for what they deliver and encouraged U.S. lawmakers to view them as ?the legacy of a long-past era in which the space program was a weapon in the Cold War? with the Soviet Union.
Alex Roland, a Duke University history professor and frequent critic of NASA?s human space flight program, urged lawmakers to support permanently grounding the space shuttle fleet and mothballing the space station until both systems can be operated with little or no human intervention.
Roland, who called the space shuttle ?the world?s most expensive, least robust and most deadly launch vehicle,? said NASA?s priority ought to be building a new vehicle that can make the trip to orbit much more safely and affordably. ?Before we can fly to Mars, we must first master flight to low Earth orbit,? he said.
Roland was joined in criticizing one of NASA?s main rationales for the shuttle and space station programs ? that it?s about science ? by a college professor who has seen his experiments fly on no fewer than three shuttle missions.
Does anyone else find it a bit
stupid that a
History professor is one of the most vocal critics of
NASA? History is a great thing, and it's important to learn from one's mistakes, but I don't see how he has any professional credibility in making judgements on the space program in front of a congressional committee. As such, why don't they just pull a random person with a doctorate off the street and ask their opinion on what NASA should do in the future?
NASA surely needs to be pulled out of the Cold War era and into the 21
st century, but complaining about it isn't the way to do it. NASA needs more money; if it had even a tenth of the defense budget to work with, NASA would be able to send a manned mission to Mars by 2010 or even 2008. This is why I believe NASA should be a part of the defense budget. It is the best hope for the future of humanity and the best we can do is chide the space program and slash it's budget year after year.
What will NASA be like in 2020?
God only knows...
