Buck Galaxy said:

>After Columbia the US was faced with the decision to
>continue human spaceflight or not. The decision was
>it would continue. A lot of input was taken from experts
>and members of Congress on what the space program
>needed to do. We now have Mike Griffin doing it. I am
>very impressed with the space architecture NASA has
>designed.

Buck Galaxy is mostly correct. After Columbia augured-in there was an opportunity to terminate manned space exploration altogether. There were many people of the Carl Sagan school clamoring to focus exclusively upon robotic exploration of Space and terminate all manned space exploration. Fortunately the President did not follow such unwise counsel. Many of us wanted the President to adopt a more Mars centric space policy. I wrote the President and suggested a Mars first policy. However I understand the political difficulty of initially proposing a manned Mars program due to the high expense of such a project. Manned Mars exploration is really only a feasible political option if a "camel's nose in the tent" tactic is invoked. This is probably the ultimate plan. MIke Griffin was an excellent choice for NASA Administrator. He maybe the most qualified person on the planet to be running NASA. What a tragedy that Griffin wasn't administrator 10 years ago when Dan Golding was hammering NASA into the ground. It's always 3 steps forward followed by 2 steps backwards.

However despite the correctness of the President's current action and the obvious competence of Mike Griffin there is the peril that Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) could devolve into a Flag and Footprints exercise. It is vital that the hardware currently being developed (in particular the Crew Exploration Vehicle, CEV) be designed towards travel to the asteroids and eventually to Mars. It is equally vital that the Moon arfter the first landing be deemphasized and efforts be redirected towards the exploration of nearby asteroids. If VSE becomes too focused upon the Moon then public apathy will quickly set in and the program will be terminated as happened with Apollo. Flag and Footprints are political poison to the Space Program.

This is probably the United States last shot at getting people premanently off the Earth. If we screw this up then it'll be left to someone else many centuries in the future to try again (it won't happen in our lifetimes).

Gary