I know nothing about any of this so take what I say with a grain of salt. That said, let's go over some of the history of Mike Griffin. I went to that article looking for the answer to the question of whether he was much involved with the clusterfuck that was the Shuttle program, which kept killing astronauts through its transparently-lax approach to safety. The answer turned out to be no, which is to his credit. But, what did he do?
[On] NPR News' Morning Edition, Griffin said: "I have no doubt that global—that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings -where and when-are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."
Griffin approved the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery for July 2006 to perform the second return-to-flight mission, overriding the NASA Chief Safety and Mission Assurance Officer, Bryan O'Connor. Although O'Connor said there were still unresolved concerns that foam insulation could break off of external fuel tank and damage the orbiter, Griffin characterized the risk as acceptable, arguing that it would be better to test one change at a time.
Griffin has been criticized by space research organizations such as NASA Ames Research Center life sciences group for shifting portions of NASA's budget from science to human spaceflight. Griffin had stated that he would not shift "one thin dime" of funding from science to human spaceflight, but less than six months later, in February 2006, after NASA Constellation funding did not reach requested levels, NASA revealed a budget that reduced space research funding by about 25%, including indefinite deferrals of planned programs such as the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, the Terrestrial Planet Finder, and the Space Interferometry Mission. The logic was that funding Project Constellation, a presidentially mandated program, was the top priority of the space agency.
Subsequent to the findings of the Augustine Committee in 2009 that the Constellation Program could not be executed without substantial increases in funding, on February 1, 2010, President Barack Obama proposed to cancel the program.
Nope, I'm sure of it... I hate him.
echo64@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Terrible headline.
He (rightly) sees the commercial aspect of space technology to be a deadend, but nasa is spending a huge amount of time and effort working towards enabling it in favour of doing nasa things.
Instead of saying we should go to the moon because it is there, we’re saying go to the moon to try to generate new revenue streams for the private space industry that really can’t survive without our contracts because of there being no real market or industry to build from.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I take issue with commercial being a dead end in space. Not only has it been VERY successful, it has saved huge amounts of money over what Griffen was proposing instead. Griffen was advocating for the Constellation program. Lets take just a piece of that where commercial spaceflight is there instead: flying crew to the ISS which we do two times per year.
The Constellation program would have used the Ares I rocket and the Orion Crew capsule. The estimated flight cost of this configuration was about $1.1 billion together for two flights. source
The commercial option used instead is the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon capsule. The actual flight cost is $176 for the same two flights per year. source
For the cost of ONE year of NASA Constellation flights to the ISS, the commercial solution pays for 6 1/4 years of flights instead.
Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 10 months ago
Commercial spaceflight for NASA reminds me of when the Postal Service contracted out airmail. From 1918 to 1926, all air mail service was flown by US government pilots, in US government planes. Then they contracted it out to a little airplane company named Boeing.
I think NASA should absolutely be focused on deep space exploration, and LEO operations. But even if all they do is contract out their launches it would encourage people to reduce launch costs, which I think should be our number two goal after fighting climate change.
Alto@kbin.social 10 months ago
Because obviously that's what we need, to be encouraging the expansion of capitalism into space.
echo64@lemmy.world 10 months ago
how is the commercial" avenue supposed to make profit if nasa isn’t funding it. and if it can’t, isn’t it just a government program?