Last evening, April 11, 2010, we watched the NBC Dateline show on Apollo 13 (“Houston, we have a problem”) and was even more convinced that the Obama administration’s attempt to outsource the manned space program to commercial companies is stupid and very damn dangerous.
Knowing the massive efforts that NASA and their contractors put forth in effecting a rescue of the three Astronauts, James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred w. Haise, I feel absolutely certain that should any remotely similar situation arise in a COMMERCIAL MANNED SPACE PROGRAM that these three men would have died. Commercial companies will focus on Stockholder shares, profit margins and other issues before considering the safety of the brave human beings who strap on those rockets and fly into space.
Allowing someone like Elon Musk to bring his grand three or four years of Space flight Expertise to the prospect of manned flight TAXI services is beyond stupid. The Obama Administration and his NASA Administrator Bolden and his Assistant Lori Garver should be informed by the Congress in no uncertain terms that surrendering the leadership of space technology to Russia, China, India and the European agencies simply will not happen.
In point of fact, every congress critter should be required to watch the Dateline show and should have to speak with the remaining members of the Apollo 13 experience. They should have to explain to these heroic individuals just why they are putting politics before human lives.
Will there ever be a place for commercial manned spacecraft? Possible, but I do certainy and with great fervor, hope that it will not happen in the next few decades.
However, unless our Congress people stop dithering, gathering their sound bites and posturing for the “folks back home” and do their damn jobs we will see our country falling behind more and more. They all say they are not going to allow the president to murder the Constellation program, yet they do nothing, absolutely nothing but talke.
Perhaps that’s all they are good for? I have certainly come to believe that this is all Obama is good for. Talk, not walk.
