I was heartened by the Bush announcement, but in retrospect it's
because I'm irredeemably cynical about the prospects of major
progress coming out of the NASA porkfest.
There are currently two areas where the commercial sector is
developing new products that promise to bring down the cost of
launch services (which is the long pole in the tent for space
exploration and development). On the one hand there are companies
developing new orbital launchers, most notably SpaceX (which looks
set to launch this year), Kistler (which may *finally* launch
something in the not too distant future), and Blue Origin,
(whatever the hell they are doing). On the other there are the
suborbital startups like XCOR, TGV, and various X-Prize competitors
with an eye to eventual commercial vehicles, like Armadillo and
Scaled Composites. The good news is that NASA isn't doing anything
that will hurt either of these two sectors. In fact, there may be
some money trickling down to the orbital startups. The worst
possible outcome would have been development of a new launcher,
which would make fundraising much harder for the orbital startups,
probably kill Kistler, and in the unlikely event that it actually
launched anything, eat into the market for services from SpaceX and
Blue Origin.
This plan is flawed in many ways, but any plan that has to deal
with the flawed beast that is 21st century NASA is going to look
shabby in comparison to the Apollo. The timelines look way too
long, but if we'd implemented this plan instead of the shuttle,
there's be a base (or more) on the moon, and probably a flags and
footprints mission to Mars by now. Slow and steady will make more
progress than grand visionary plans that can't survive a change of
administration. This plan at least has the possibility of lasting
through economic ups and downs, changes in government, and shifts
in international politics.
It's not a truly great plan, but a truly great plan would be
unlikely to survive the political realities of our time. A plan
which does no harm and which may eventually advance us in the right
direction is probably the best we can hope for.
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