NASA Is Not Going To Get Many More Chances

Want to honor George H.W. Bush? Send astronauts to Mars, Washington Post

"The new president was offering NASA, which at the time lacked a clear mission for its human spaceflight program, a lifeline, guaranteeing his support for an assertive Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). But the fiscal realities of the late 1980s, when budget deficits had exploded, required the organization to think in a new way. NASA, however, wasn't up to the job. Rather than thinking innovatively and offering new ideas for reaching the moon and Mars, the agency simply recycled concepts that had been dominant within the space program since its earliest days. Its plan included the construction of a substantial in-orbit infrastructure, where massive spacecraft for lunar and Mars exploration would be assembled before departing for their final destinations. Each alternative pathway identified by a study team required enormous capital expenditures. Over a 30-year implementation period, this initiative would have cost more than $500 billion. This would have required more than doubling the agency's budget. The tone-deafness of NASA's plan shocked the National Space Council. NSC Executive Secretary Mark Albrecht called it "the biggest 'F' flunk, you could ever get in government. . . . It was just so fabulously unaffordable, it showed no imagination." The report quickly turned Capitol Hill against the space agency, with one key congressional aide stating that SEI was dead on arrival."

Keith's note: NASA is heading down this path again. Uninspiring plans that rely on budgets that simply will not be there. Two Presidents named Bush pushed NASA to send humans back to the Moon and then on to Mars. 30 years after the first and 15 years after the second Bush proclamations, we still have not gone to either location. As the old saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice ..."

Full SEI report

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