Dr. Alan Binder - calls it as he sees it.

--- In ssi_list@... "Charles F. Radley"
> Dr. Alan Binder - calls it as he sees it.
>
> I am pleased to see an authoritative figure such as Dr. Binder
> speaking plainly. He states that NASA by itself is not capable of
> returning to the Moon, there has to be a substantial private
> commercial component, or the whole presidential initiative is
doomed
> to failure.
>
> First, I recommend you listen to this interview with Dr. Alan
Binder
> on The Space Show.
>
> http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q 5
>
> Then read the announcement for his new book coming out in July 2004
> "Lunar Prospector: Against All Odds"
>
> http://www.lunar-research-institute.org/lunar_prospector_book.htm
>
> Congrats to Dr. Binder for calling it precisely as he sees it.
>
> "..the incompetence and self-serving activities of the entrenched
> NASA bureaucracy and the big aerospace companies, which together
> waste a large fraction of the more than $13 billion that NASA
> receives from the federal government every year."
>
> That quote gives a flavor of what you will find on that web page.
> I can't wait until the entire book is published.

I took a look at Alan's web site. He has a chapter-by-chapter
description of the content of the book. He also has all the figures
from the book on the web site. I suppose the most interesting are the
scanned copies of letters to and from NASA, Lockheed, SSI, etc.

I was interested since I participated in one of the workshops on
Lunar Prospector back in 1989. (I found no mention of it in the
summaries.)

What struck me were the endless battles Alan had with just about
every person and organization involved - for 11 years! He not only
tears into NASA and his former employer Lockheed, but he also attacks
SSI, Congress, his teammates, the engineers, other scientists, on and
on.

Much of what he says is well founded, I suppose. But he also comes
across as rather angry and abrasive. He really tears into Gregg
Maryniak, SSI, and Gerry O'Neill. Their main crime? Failing to raise
$10M before his group finished their preliminary design study.
Horrible, horrible. :-)

Anyway, history will have to judge who was right in all this.

My question..

Will we *always* have to put up with these kinds of
problems and conflicts to accomplish anything?

While many of us got interested in space because of a sense of
idealism, what we find are all sorts of organizations (companies,
agencies, etc.) that are full of the worst types of human
motivations - greed, deception, corruption, power-grabs, lies,
arrogance, ..and egos gone mad. We spin our wheels, waste decades and
$ billions, and gradually destroy our spaceships and astronauts.

Sometimes when I talk to people about humanity moving into space, I
have encountered individuals who *really* don't want this to
happen. They say humanity is not ready to spread itself into the
universe. They look at how humanity has behaved, and view humanity as
something close to an infestation of cockroaches. They would rather
keep us confined to one planet.

On the grand scale, could they be right? Shall we all give up now?

- Eric Dahlstrom