Hi all -

Once again, Griffin is going for his contempt of Congress.

Astronaut Schweikert headed up Obamanuats, and headed up B612, and he wants to go golfing.
Butr:

All the astronauts think Ares 1 is a dog and a threat to their health.
In the meantime, Griffin has tried to make sure that Ares 1 is the only option.

It's not. Direct is a far better shuttle derived launch vehicle, and then there's Falcon 9, Dragon and
Orion derivatives for the ISS, launched with the EELVs.
But how do we get from here to there?

My guess is that Obama may ask Schweikert, and he may answer a call to duty, given how bad Ares 1 is.
If for no other reason, out of responsibility to his fellow astronauts.

On the unmanned front, from his answer below, Doug still does not get it.
We have engineers capable of building really really robust electronics.
Phoenix cost $80 mil or so to launch. To paraphrase a leader I respect, that's say
2,000 schools, 2,000 medical clinics, 2,000 nursing homes, etc.
my costs may be off, but that's some rough numbers, and that''s just for the launch.

Now the rovers are still going, and that was good science return for the money.

One of the reasons I unjoy unmanned space flight. com is to see just how much amateurs do with data that NASA spent hundreds of millions of dollars to gather and then just allowed to literally rot.

I think Donna Shirley may end up heading space science.

PS - Ed, I don't expect you to map everything in the Oort cloud. Just the parts of it headed our way.