I have seen a few words from Mrs. Clinton about NASA and her ideas about generally what she wants to see NASA do, I have seen even fewer words from Mr. Edwards about his plans for NASA and the future of space planning, and so far I have no idea how Mr.Obama will handle the NASA mess that George Bush will leave for the Democrats to fix.
NASA, in my opinion, has gone from bad to worse. Mr. O'Keefe was able to get some of NASA's bookkeeping in order but that only showed what a mess NASA was really in. O'Keefe didn't have the ability to run the rest of NASA because he didn't have the knowledge of what it takes to "Go Fly", and I was not surprised when Mr. Griffin was brought in to get NASA back into the air.
Mr Griffin was given his marching orders and like a good little robot
was able to get NASA back into the air by making everything at NASA controlled by the watch phrase "Moon, MARS and Beyond."
Well, global warming science has been run in the dirt, NIAC is to be closed and if it doesn't meet the idea of the one-off manned Mars goal it just seems that it doesn't get NASA funding.
FerrisValyn of Space Revolution Weekly News spoke the truth when he responded to my last diary by saying, "current(NASA)planning is so f***ed
up.....as to make the idea of cheap space travel a figment of the imagination."
The near future has some real challenges for the USA and I feel Earth, near-Earth orbit, food, health, manned Lunar science, and a permanent Lunar base should be where NASA places its main focus. Yes, the MARS boys at NASA will go ape and say we are retarding the natural curosity of man, but I still think a permanent Lunar base will provide a solution to almost everyone's curosity.
We have no idea what a permanent moon base could do for weather science, medicine, manufacturing, data transmission, even space tourism.
If the Democtatic presidential candidates don't act soon and state what they want the future of NASA to be I fear we all will be losers. The future of NASA and maybe the future of space science rests in what a very few people are planning to do.
Wouldn't you like to know before you vote who plans to do a stupid, deadly, overly expensive, one-off manned Mars mission?