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The Origins Of VSE?
Dwayne Day and Jeff Foust have an interesting history of recent (i.e., over the past several years, prior to the announcement of the VSE) internal human exploration studies at NASA, with some unanswered questions:
...who initiated the discussions in the White House concerning the need for a new human spaceflight goal and why? Who championed the issue and how much interaction did they have with NASA? Why and how did the White House pick and choose between plans? Why was NASA’s science-driven approach rejected in favor of the more vaguely-defined exploration goal? Was Sean O’Keefe helped by the existence of the DPT’s studies, or did their proposals for a lunar L1 outpost and a human mission to Mars seem uninspiring, unrealistic, or too expensive to the White House?
Yes, this history has yet to be written, though Keith Cowing has a point when he complains about the phrase "...little has been written about President Bush’s 2003 decision to pursue the Vision for Space Exploration." Flawed as it is, he and Frank Sietzen did write a book on that subject, after all, which Jeff reviewed. It might have been more accurate to say that little has been written about human exploration planning prior to the Columbia disaster.
The story reminds me that one of the problems (in my opinion) with the new ESAS is that it has apparently essentially abandoned EML-1, the Lagrange point between earth and the moon, which was a priority destination for NEXT. I wrote about the benefits of this destination (particularly in the context of a dry-launch architecture) in the Boeing CE&R report. I may dig that out and publish it as a separate piece sometime.
Posted by Rand Simberg at December 19, 2005 08:19 AM
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Comments
The importance of EML-1? Thank God! This is something we can agree on. :-)
Posted by Bill White at December 19, 2005 06:16 PM
I liked "NEXT" better than "VSE"- but I suppose it stood even less a chance of funding. I'm a bit weary of ever other administration dreaming up some kind of plan, spending millions on a study- and then abandoning the whole thing. The US needs to adopt ONE plan and STICK to it.
"Pioneering The Space Frontier," written under Reagan, works for me.
Posted by SpaceCat at December 23, 2005 03:53 PM
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