Is Griffin’s moon plan a jobs program for NASA engineers

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askold

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During his Monday press conference, more than half of the questions he answered were about maintaining jobs at NASA. But his answers didn’t make sense. He claimed that:<br /><br />- The manned mission budget will stay the same and will not take money from the science programs.<br />- The CEV will fly 2 years after the shuttle is retired.<br />- There will be no growth or decrease of the head-count at NASA<br />- The new manned program must be less expensive than the shuttle program.<br /><br />It sounds like he wants to run the shuttle program in parallel with the CEV program, using the same number of people, do it cheaper, and simultaneously transition shuttle people to the CEV so that there are no layoffs.<br /><br />It just doesn’t add up.<br /><br />I think it's all about protecting jobs - not doing good science. The concrete goal for the program is to put 4 people on the moon for about a week - twice as many people as Apollo for twice as long. Big deal - after 50 years of progress!!<br /><br />Everything else is speculative: the 4-guy moon landing will have the "capability" to lead to moon bases, which will have the "capability" to lead to Mars voyages. But all he's planning is to put 4 guys on the moon.<br />
 
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