cjcampbell wrote:
It is pretty easy to say the Shuttle or the ISS or Hubble or anything
else was a huge mistake; that the money would have been better spent
elsewhere. Of course, then you would have people saying that where the
money went instead was a huge mistake.

If Mr. Park or Mr. Griffin think those were mistakes, it behooves them
to say what would have been better.

I'm not either of those, but I consider myself a behoover.

The shuttle was a boondoggle. NASA couldn't afford to do squat after
the money for Apollo was pulled, so they searched and searched for
_something_ that _somebody_ would pay for. In steps the military.

"We'll pay for it if you design it so that it fits our mission
profile. We want something that can place a spy satellite (or other
stuff to be named later) exactly where we want it and then go back and
get it later."

Bingo. We'll build this huge monstrosity that can carry really big
payloads into low Earth orbit. Unfortunately, it can't really do much
else than that. Can't truly be entirely reusable since it's so darn
big that we need to bolt on this huge explosive tank of gas that's
thrown away every time.

What should they have done? Exactly what the real scientists wanted to
do. Continue the X-15 project to get to the point of developing an
actual reusable manned space plane. If you need to get people into
space, don't strap them down with enormous payloads. That just adds
to the complexities needed and makes for a dangerous vehicle. If you
need to get payload into space to rendevous with the people, you use
unmanned boosters.

Next step? Once you've got that, you're well on you way to being able
to build a truly working space station. One either in geo-synchronous
orbit or at L5. Of course, by this time we might have found that just
skipping the space station part and going straight for a permanent
presence on the Moon would have been better. There are lot's of ideas
for making a Moon base pay for itself. I think though that once we
get there, the real benefit will be something we haven't thought of
yet.

The bad part about the current Moon/Mars boondoggle is... well... Mars.
Ain't gonna happen. Mars is far away. Real far away. With tons of money
and resources we could go there. Once. Why bother? If, after spending
some time on the Moon, we find a good reason to go, then go!

Heck, you could have spent all the money "fighting poverty" (or
ignorance, or injustice, or whatever), and it probably would have been
even less effective in accomplishing those goals.

This sounds like, "Just throwing money at the schools isn't the answer".
I keep wondering where all these shining schools with super paid teachers
and 10 student class sizes with state of the art computers and clean
fancy lab equipment are that are still failing to teach kids...

--
Don Poitras