In an interview with USA Today, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin admits that much of the past 30 years of the space program has been one big mistake.
The space shuttle and International Space Station ? nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades ? were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday.
In a meeting with USA TODAY’s editorial board, Griffin said NASA lost its way in the 1970s, when the agency ended the Apollo moon missions in favor of developing the shuttle and space station, which can only orbit Earth.
“It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path,” Griffin said. “We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can.”
I suppose there is some value in NASA admitting a mistake, but a costly mistake it has been.
The shuttle has cost the lives of 14 astronauts since the first flight in 1982. Roger Pielke Jr., a space policy expert at the University of Colorado, estimates that NASA has spent about $150 billion on the program since its inception in 1971. The total cost of the space station by the time it’s finished ? in 2010 or later ? may exceed $100 billion, though other nations will bear some of that.
And those aren’t the only costs. Thirty years of wasted time and money that could’ve been spent elsewhere. Thirty years that could’ve put us on Mars. Thirty years of taxpayer dollars down the tubes.
Only now is the nation’s space program getting back on track, Griffin said. He announced last week that NASA aims to send astronauts back to the moon in 2018 in a spacecraft that would look like the Apollo capsule.
Given NASA’s record, I don’t think we should have any confidence that things will really change.
Linked with today’s Beltway Traffic Jam, Basil’s Blog, and Mudville Gazette’s Open Post
[...] Pointless Space Shuttle Launch Set For July 1st Where No Man Has Gone Before The Beginning Of The End Shuttle Launch Delayed Again Beginning Of The End A 250 Billion Dollar Mistake Good News….Now Shut It Down [link] [...]