Mike Griffin tried to defend (pathetically) the status quo before the Augustine panel. Vision Restoration shreds the attempt, fisking it beyond recognition:
Did Dr. Griffin give advice that attempts to expedite a new U.S. capability to support use of the ISS? No, he chose to defend the current Constellation situation. By definition, the current situation cannot deliver a capability faster than itself. In fact, he attacked an approach that might achieve this HSF objective. Did he give advice on fitting within the current budget profile for NASA exploration? No, he actually asked for more money. Did he suggest ways to stimulate commercial spaceflight? In fact he launched an attach on one promising area of commercial spaceflight. Did he suggest ways to make human spaceflight activities more productive through robotic activities or research and development? No. Did he give insight into how to extend ISS support beyond 2016? No. Did he describe a role for a mutually beneficial sort of international participation in exploration? No. Did he have a plan that is more safe, innovative, sustainable, and affordable than the current one? No.
In fact, the only HSF objective that Dr. Griffin addressed is “missions to the Moon and beyond”. Recent suggestions that the Constellation approach will cost incredible amounts of money to develop, incredible amounts of money per mission to operate, and perhaps will not be ready for lunar missions until 2028 or 2035 do not make the Constellation approach without modifications seem attractive even for that particular objective.
Having described some of what Dr. Griffin did not write, it seems fair to evaluate some of what he did write…
There’s a lot more. I think that most on the panel are too smart to fall for Dr. Griffin’s nonsense.
Do you think anyone on the panel is *not* smart enough to see through it?
No names needed. I am just curious about yes or no.
Yes. But I won’t name names.
The last (and often first) resort of those wearing Old Space blinders is to ‘demand’ more money, after 40 years of demonstrations that the politicos and the public don’t want to shovel extra money into their system and hardly care about it to start with.
The blindered, as in the case of Griffin, will never figure out that it’s the fundamentals of _their_ system that need to adjust to reality (both in terms of the federal budget and what creates a sustainable, expandable set of space systems) not the other way around.