No sacred cows in NASA spaceflight review, chairman says

Here's a "Different Perspective"

How about a few plain old taxpayers on that advisory board with no axes to grind? It's great that the engineers, astronauts, NASA etc. get their say, but they have a fairly strong vested interest in spending money on all things space-related.

After the (continuing) Shuttle/ISS boondoggle, I'd like someone looking at what the money's being spent on, what we're getting for it, and doing so without a predisposition that large amounts of money spent on something outside our atmosphere equates to progress.

I mean really, what have we gotten from the billions spent on the shuttle and the ISS? (And if you tell me the IT industry wouldn't exist without the space program I'm going to throw up. Not because you'd be wrong, but because that was a space program that ended thirty years ago. Private industry and the military have contributed more tech than anything NASA's done in recent memory. They can't even get the piss distiller working!)

Opportunity and Spirit - now that was money well spent! But not sexy or expensive enough I guess.

A UK perspective?

<Dream?>

Open accountablity

Public accountability

</Dream?>

Here we go

Lets watch all the manned spaceflight announcements of teh laft few years get scrapped. Mind you Ares-I looks like something designed to keep whole legions of administrators and Aerospace companies at the pork tough for decades.

@Justin Smith

I wonder if the review will include a re-evaluation of the cancelled VentureStar project? I can only hope so.

I presume you mean the X33 project. What particular part of the project did you think needed re-evaluating?

Going to the moon is so 20th century

I cant see the US being able to tolerate the Chinese or Russians or even the Indians getting to the moon before they return there - it would be a humiliation that shows they are no longer the pre-eminent power.

But for just a few billion more the Americans could just forget the moon, which they've already ticked off, and head straight for Mars, which no other country can currently contemplate doing - that would really piss on the commies bonfire.

But its an expensive game to play when your economy is in bad shape, and just as the US bankrupted the USSR with the arms race, the Chinese & Russians are forcing them to spend hundreds of billions on manned space landings when there are election-swinging domestic issues they'd rather be spending on.

@The elephant in the room

"But its an expensive game to play"

And while the price to LEO is at *least* $7500 / it always will be.