10-Year Plan

On Wednesday, October 23, 2002, at 11:26 AM, Ed Minchau wrote:

> Micro-gee manufacturing will be
> very useful for pharmaceutical companies and nanotech.

Some things have been done in this area, but it always been possible to
get most of the same benefits on the ground at a tiny fraction of the
cost. There may be a killer app out there but we haven't found it yet.

The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr. Tito
going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

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