NASA Chief's E-Mail

An e-mail from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is quoted in the Washington Post today:

"They will tell us to extend shuttle," he wrote of a new administration. "There is no other politically tenable course. It will appear irrational -- heck, it will be irrational -- to say we've built a space station we cannot use, that we're throwing away a $100 billion investment, when the cost of saving it is merely to continue flying shuttle."

Comment: The article implies that Griffin is angry at the Office of Management and the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House because they are not giving NASA an extra billion dollars a year so that he can develop rockets more quickly, and that they are not leaving the U.S. participation in the international space station for some years to the good will of the Russians to transport Americans there with their rockets. On the one hand, the email exposes the sham in the Bush administration's proposal for manned space exploration. The Bush administration has spent many fortunes on unnecessary wars, tax cuts to benefit the rich, an energy policy that is transferring our wealth (what is left of it) to the oil exporting countries, and a failure to regulate financial institutions which has lead to crisis. As a result, we will probably not only have to cut the manned space program, but even the space science program as well as other science and technology programs. The article also suggests that Griffin has been telling the public one thing while believing another. JAD