Michael D. Griffin: New NASA Admin

[wvbraun]

"no human-rated spacecraft has been developed in the past 20 years." <br /><br />Well, obviously that statement is incorrect: Shenzou is a human-rated spacecraft. So he wasn't just ignoring advancements in the private sector. I still think what he meant to say was "...in the past 20 years in the US."<br /><br /><br />"Anyway, wvbraun said that he is a strong proponent on private sector involvement, is there any evidence of that?"<br /><br />Yes, try google.<br /><br />

 

[crix]

Wow, if anybody wants a really exciting read I suggest printing out the above mentioned report. The building block steps of establishing an L2 staging point and near-earth asteroid missions as precursors to Mars orbit and eventually Mars landing missions really get me excited for the future.<br /><br />A great point, " Whether humans [as opposed to robots] should travel and explore is very much a societal rather than a scientific question..."<br />

 

[kdavis007]

I'm sure the Hubble crowd will probaly hate him...

 

[lunatic133]

Leaving out Shenzou was a mistake, however, I don't really count the x-prize as developing a man rated launch vehicle YET because it can't reach orbit.

 

[orzek]

Good luck to him, he seems to understand the best way of moving manned missions from LEO to beyond. Hopefully he will be able to acheive some meaningful results dispite NASA's bureaucracy.

 

[no_way]

"I don't really count the x-prize as developing a man rated launch vehicle YET because it can't reach orbit. "<br /><br />Nobody was speaking about launch vehicles, a quote in question, from the report is : "no human-rated spacecraft has been developed in the past 20 years"<br /><br />Thats clearly wrong.

 

[toymaker]

Well if you read the report they do mention the Chinese.<br />