Bootstrapping Hawaii

On Monday, September 15, 2003, at 03:08 PM, Brad Walsh wrote:

>>> This is why I think China will establish Lunar and Martian colonies
>>> before
>>> NASA or ESA the Japanese, because they don't suffer these constraints
>>> (short term thinking) on
>>> their investments.
>>>
>>
>> Then how can you explain the undoubted fact that the US has invested
>> orders-of-magnitude more than China in space and kept this investment
>> going for 40 years?
>
> China just started any kind of permanent space program 10 years ago.
> And in
> light of the cancellations and draconian cuts in just about every NASA
> project proposed in the last 30 years, how can you say we've kept the
> investment going since 1969? Just because the doors are still open at
> KSFC,
> JSC, JPL and Marshall doesn't mean NASA is burgeoning; starving would
> be a
> better descriptor.
>

I've worked at NASA Ames since 1979. NASA has received a budget
increase very nearly every year since I've been there. There were some
cuts (in the overall budget) in 90's, but the budget is over $15
billion today -- the highest it has ever been. Would we like more
money? Of course. But the US has poured enormous amounts of money into
the space program and there have been lots, and lots, of successes; far
more than any other country, or combination of countries, except
Russia/USSR.

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~150 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

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.