Chuck Divine has some notes from Norm Augustine’s telecon today with the NASA Advisory Committee.
12 thoughts on “Augustine Speaks”
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Chuck Divine has some notes from Norm Augustine’s telecon today with the NASA Advisory Committee.
Comments are closed.
Augustine agrees that todays NASA is the best ever. Minority reports weaken the main and will only be tolerated.
I’m wrong often enough to ask that someone I respect tell me why these are not disturbing sentiments.
Were propellant depots mentioned?
Hm, well it looks like Augustine mentioned Lagrange points and asteroid missions, so that’s something in the propellant depot ballpark, if not specifically.
The commission will have lots to say about NASA being given challenges without adequate financing.
Nonsense. Ideally, the Commission would have lots to say about NASA spending $34 billion on Ares 1 to duplicate the capabilities of private sector space launch. NASA’s budget is quite adequate to push human spaceflight to the Moon, given the right exploration architecture.
Dan Goldin thought about propellant depots:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/HLR.html
Well, so much for that.
I agree that “best ever” is pretty, apologizing in advance, Hare-raising. Maybe the sarcasm didn’t come through.
But I would say, since Augustine is charged with coming to some sort of consensus and hopefully he takes this job extremely seriously, it’s not out of bounds to insist on a unified report for the President. “Tolerated” means exactly that, I guess, so there might well indeed be dissenting statements made. The other committee members are heavy hitters too, at least each one almost certainly thinks so.
On the other hand, at this point in the four-decade train wreck that is US government space policy, I would not be surprised by any crazy thing the committee comes up with.
“He asked who will get the report and choose among the options. Augustine replied that his gut impression would be that the President must choose”
I feel like such things should be established from the beginning.
“I would not be surprised by any crazy thing the committee comes up with.”
You mean like, gerbil powered lunar tug gravity trains? Or, some such….
Josh, don’t speak of it. The Gerbil Mafia at MSFC is already way too powerful.
Amtrak in Spaaaaaccccceeeee!
If they’re just presenting “options” and not recommendations, I wouldn’t be surprised just to see them repackage the presenations we saw in June and maybe put a little star next to Not-Shuttle C and throw in a wink when discussing EELV.
Otherwise, I get the feeling this will all end with a whimper, rather than a bang.
It’s pretty shocking that in just forty years we lost the ability to put a man on the moon, and put a man in orbit.
“The Gerbil Mafia at MSFC is already way too powerful.”
Fortunately they are easy to spot from the collection of wood chips under their desk.