Obama Lays Out New Vision for Asteroid, Mars Trips | Wired Science | Wired.com

Obama Lays Out New Vision for Asteroid, Mars Trips Wired Science Wired.com:
Posted by: georgejmyersjr 04/18/10 2:43 pm

As I recall, the “Orbiter” that became the “Shuttle” was at first a program that divided a number of LEO spacecraft between NASA in Florida and Vandenberg in California. However, after protest, the program was reduced to a more civilian-oriented program with the focus on NASA, with the military attached for payloads, not launches or landings. Now another orbiter, the X-37 will be in place for the government, which if it succeeds, will continue to research, along with the international cooperation on ISS the frontier of space. Perhaps other “problems” will return, i.e., the power tether, which broke, the NASA “solar sail”, never deployed, and other yet to be designed experiments. Just last week cooperation was agreed to between the Japanese space agency JAXA and NASA for easier and faster access to Earth observations provided by satellites in orbit. As I recall, living among the Grumman employees on Long Island, building the LEM, in various machine shops, so no one had the “big picture” the paranoia of the “space race”, one might argue, along with the undeclared war, was detrimental to the free exchange of ideas, which conceivably has also resulted in “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, a loss in “intel”.