Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Shuttle shutdown savings?: Griffin or Zubrin

The Difference
Mark Eby — (archived)

Zubrin is an engineer who doesn't mind shaking things up and offending people. Griffin is an engineer of similar if not superior technical expertise who is also a successful beurocrat. I'm pretty sure Griffin considers political implications as well scientific and fnancial constraints. This program is already on shaky enough ground that he may deem it risky to loose congresional support by eliminatring jobs in their district. Zubrin looks long term though and may see the long term risk being greater than the short term risk of proceeding as planned. I think he sees high program cost equalling high risk of eventual cancellation. The cancellation of the Apollo program factors strongly in how he evaluates long term policies.

These guys have a lot of respect for each other as far as I can tell and hopefully can respect their difference of opinions without getting into some sort of public flame war. Griffin was on the Mars Society steering committee until recently do to his new position as was Scott Horowitz who recently returned to NASA after a brief "retirement" at Morton Thiokol to help develope the new booster concepts.

From my point of view you have to deal with short term risk as the first priority, but keep long term risk high on your agenda. I think Griffin should work on the issues raised by Zubrin as best he can while staying on top of the current political climate.

Regards,
Mark

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