Does Bob have a point? In 2008 I also blogged about candidate Obama's position on NASA.The result, I think, will be exactly what Obama said he wanted during in the 2008 campaign, the end of funding for manned space exploration by the government.
Whether the private space industry can pick up the slack is the big question. I have faith that it can, as I also believe that freedom and competition always works better than centralized government-controlled operations. Unfortunately, even if I am completely right we are still faced with at least three to five years where the United States as a nation will be unable to launch anyone into space.
Do you think the latest discussions on cutting the budget will lead to NASA handing over manned spaceflight to commercial companies?
1 comment:
I like Bob, he's an interesting character with some straight shooting opinions.
What I find funny, though, is that for an author he has a terrible grasp of the use of words to convey meaning. He used to say Obama wanted to "end human spaceflight" .. which I thought was ludicrous and an obvious partisan slur. I confronted Bob about this and got a no, no, no, you misunderstand me speech.
Since then he's stopped saying that and started saying Obama wants to "end government human spaceflight".. which I suppose got some howls from others.. so now it's "end government human space exploration". To which I actually don't disagree with but have to ask: what exploration were we doing that he wants to end?
Even if you consider flying humans to the ISS to be "exploration", the current administration is clearly more supportive of that than the previous.
If you mean shutting down the behemoth Constellation program that was going nowhere, especially not during Obama's term, then sure.. no-one would debate this administration wants to do that.. they announced such, clearly and unambiguously.
Perhaps what Bob means to say is that Obama doesn't want to *start* a human beyond-LEO exploration program any time soon. Well, duh.
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