Interesting short opinion article in Wired
Gregg Easterbrook provides a sensible short list of what NASA priorities ought to be and contrast them with the reality.
Interesting reading, and some good points.
I don't know if Mike Griffin's thoughts on climate change will endear him to Easterbrook, but Griffin does rather clumsily raise an interesting point that we should return to.
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I pretty much agree about the priorities of NASA; apart from the inspiration it provides, manned space flight does not seem an efficient way to do science. Still, one could, I suppose, argue that if we don't learn to move off of the earth we doom the species to eventual extinction.
One other thing that strikes me about this little piece is the comparison of space exploration to aviation.
When, exactly, was aviation "a ponderous government run project"?
When, exactly, was aviation "a ponderous government run project"?
US Army contract with Wright Brothers. Federally subsidized Air Mail.
NPR had Griffin on this morning.
I, for one, do not think that lack of funding for climate study missions is accidental. Ithink it is the purpose of the manned Mars mission.
I'm not sure why everyone insists that NASA be the one doing doing science. We already have the NSF to promote science and there's no reason they couldn't take over NASA's scientific duties and work with NASA closely in order to launch whatever space probes it needs. NASA should work on advancing the technology of getting people and cargo into space. Manned space exploration is not science but science can benefit from it and it is something that has a value of it own for many people. But many scientists seem to see manned space exploration in competition with space science and money wasted that could go to their research.