Thanks g -

Things are rolling along pretty much as I predicted. To review: the Space Frontier Foundation attacks the Space Station and Shuttle, on the premise that the money "saved" by their cancellation will be used to finance manned flight to Mars.

What we're getting is one quarter of the SFF program: the reduction of ISS and Shuttle. So the first thing we all can do is to stop supporting Tumlinson and his nonsense, and to support real space organizations like NSS, the AAS, the AIAA, the Space Foundation.

(It is interesting to note that at that same time the SFF is attacking Russia's role in ISS, they're trying to divert the Russians from ISS by offering to build their own space station. Putin needs to stop this: it is past time for Yuri Pavlovich to retire.)

At the same time, we've had a disgruntled former employee (ahem) attacking the only person in Washington with a serious plan for getting men to Mars: Dan Goldin.

One new line from these folks is that the overruns are all Goldin's fault, but in the real world, Goldin was an extremely capable manager of one of the most difficult to run organizations around.

Goldin's plan, in brief: bring in EELVs, develop an RLV, convert Shutttle into a heavy lifter for manned Mars. Have sample return done, to clear the back-contamination problem, have the Zubrin fuel cycle or another one in place, and go to Mars by 2012 or so.

Maybe this was overly ambitious, but on the other hand maybe if Goldin had not have been under constant attack he could have pulled it off.

But that was a different time, no the one we're living in now. What O'Keefe needs to do:

1) convert the core crew from 2 Russia, 1 US or 2 US, 1 Russia, over to 1 US, 1 Russia, 1 Japan or ESA

2) work on automating station maintenance tasks, AND THE STOWAGE AND PROBLEM REPORTING COMPUTER SYSTEMS NEED TO WORK - who is responsible for their current state?

3) Work with Spacehab on the full station deployment. If Tumlinson wants to bring business to ISS, that's fine, otherwise he's just pissing in the soup and needs to be stopped.

4) f*cking ignore that deranged idiot Tumlinson and his CATS nonsense, and focus the limited launch development money available on a mini-shuttle for use with Atlas 5, Delta 4, and maybe Arinae 5, H-2, and Angara - then get rid of the Shuttle, and start to work on a commericial size RLV

5) Deal with the impact hazard. Fund the Earth telescopes, and then fund space telescopes, maybe like the ones found at:

http://www.geocities.com/epgrondine

EP