Digest Number 481

You are misinformed. NASA has a fairly close relationship with the
military, but NASA is not and has never been part of the military.

Most NASA hardware does not come from the military. The shuttle was
built to some military specs (mostly cross-range on landing) but no DOD
dollars or management. After the first few years of flight, DOD decided
the didn't really like the shuttle and haven't used it since. The ISS
probably has a DOD experment or two, but none of the infrastructure is
DOD funded or managed. NASA Ames used to by on Navy land, but now the
Navy has left and Ames controls the land. None of the NASA centers are
military bases. I could go on ...

Many (although not all) astronaut pilots come from the military because
they have the flying experience. However, the mission specialists are
overwhelmingly scientists, not military.

I have worked as a NASA contractor for over 20 years. In that time, I
would estimate that at most 1-2% of the NASA and contractor people I've
interacted with were military -- and a majority would be insulted if you
called them military. Quite a number are confirmed peaceniks.

There is a lot of talk about DOD/NASA co-operation, but it's mostly talk
not action.

Apparently, you are an air force general.

That said, the current NASA administrator is a military guy and is
appointing a lot of military folk to important positions. Since the
late 80's when military funding wound down a bit NASA has had fewer and
fewer ties with the military. I suspect that trend is now reversed.

On Friday, July 5, 2002, at 02:42 PM, Michael Wilson wrote:

> And, as
> much as the US is militarizing space these days, with
> the USAF and NASA combining their efforts and so on,
> it is hard to call NASA astronauts "civilians" with a
> straight face. After all, where did NASA get their
> hardware and astronauts in the first place? The US
> military. If they are civilians then I am an air
> force general!

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html