Augustine Commission’s Final Public Meeting
Various news outlets cover the final public meeting of the NASA Human space flight review. The general theme of the meeting – there’s not enough money to properly do exploration. From CNET:
A presidential panel wrapping up a review of future U.S. manned space flight options delivered a grim assessment Wednesday, showing NASA’s current plan to retire the shuttle, finish the space station and return to the moon by the early 2020s is not remotely feasible without a significant restoration of previously cut funding. In the absence of a major spending increase, “our view is that it will be difficult with the current budget to do anything that’s terribly inspiring in the human spaceflight area,” said Norman Augustine, chairman of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee.
And the NY Times:
Tags: human spaceflight, NASA, Norm AugustineThe United States cannot afford to send humans anywhere beyond the space station — especially Mars — unless it wants to spend more money. “You just can’t get there,” Sally Ride, the former astronaut, said over and over again on Wednesday as she presented calculations of the costs and timetables of various proposed space missions, ranging from establishing a base on the Moon to touring asteroids to landing on Mars.
