by neufer » Tue Jul 21, 2009 4:11 pm
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40 years after Apollo 11: What's our next step?
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
<<Even some strong supporters of space exploration say the best place to send America's astronauts would be nowhere at all.
Opponents of human spaceflight say robots can do the job just as well as astronauts, pose no safety worries and work cheaply. Sending humans into space isn't worth it, they say.
"The cost and risks are just too high," says physicist Robert Park of the University of Maryland, who wants NASA's manned program to be phased out.
Human space exploration also has run into trouble in Congress. In its spending bill for 2008, lawmakers ordered NASA not to spend any money to study sending humans to Mars.
"Manned space travel adds far more cost than is justified in terms of scientific return," says Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. Frank says he doesn't want to end the astronaut program but doesn't want to send humans to Mars or the moon. He'd restrict astronauts to tasks robots can't handle, such as the recent upgrade of the Hubble Space Telescope by a seven-astronaut team.
Opposition to NASA's astronaut program stretches across the political spectrum. Republican Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, wrote in Aviation Week & Space Technology last year that NASA should get out of the business of sending humans to space to make way for private space entrepreneurs.
For NASA, the most opposition may be from the people who pay the bills: the public.
In a 2005 USA TODAY poll, 58% opposed spending money on a human mission to Mars.
Americans may support human spaceflight, but they don't make it a high priority, says historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Nor do political leaders, he says. "That leaves us in low-Earth orbit for the foreseeable future," Launius says.>>
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http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... 9/bob-park[list]--------------------------------------------------
40 years after Apollo 11: What's our next step?
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
<<Even some strong supporters of space exploration say the best place to send America's astronauts would be nowhere at all.
Opponents of human spaceflight say robots can do the job just as well as astronauts, pose no safety worries and work cheaply. Sending humans into space isn't worth it, they say.
"The cost and risks are just too high," says physicist Robert Park of the University of Maryland, who wants NASA's manned program to be phased out.
Human space exploration also has run into trouble in Congress. In its spending bill for 2008, lawmakers ordered NASA not to spend any money to study sending humans to Mars.
"Manned space travel adds far more cost than is justified in terms of scientific return," says Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. Frank says he doesn't want to end the astronaut program but doesn't want to send humans to Mars or the moon. He'd restrict astronauts to tasks robots can't handle, such as the recent upgrade of the Hubble Space Telescope by a seven-astronaut team.
Opposition to NASA's astronaut program stretches across the political spectrum. Republican Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, wrote in Aviation Week & Space Technology last year that NASA should get out of the business of sending humans to space to make way for private space entrepreneurs.
For NASA, the most opposition may be from the people who pay the bills: the public.
In a 2005 USA TODAY poll, 58% opposed spending money on a human mission to Mars.
Americans may support human spaceflight, but they don't make it a high priority, says historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Nor do political leaders, he says. "That leaves us in low-Earth orbit for the foreseeable future," Launius says.>>
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[b] http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/239124/july-20-2009/bob-park[/b]