[FPSPACE] Griffin: 3 More Apollo-type projects could be funded in next 50...

[DSFPortree at aol.com]

Peter:

Very interesting! Of course, this has been written about for a number of 
years, in alternate histories. There's one - author and title escape me - in which 
the characters grouse about how great the Shuttle would have been as they use 
Apollo derivatives to build a moon base, explore Mars, and send humans to 
Jupiter.

Part of the appeal of the CEV is that it tries to restore what Nixon cast 
off. It also apes the Soviet approach. 

But I wonder if that isn't naive. We don't live in the 1960s. 

I think that we should focus on building the CEV and serving NASA's other 
constituencies, not get too wrapped up in the moon and Mars just now. The CEV 
needn't be about the moon and Mars. Associate it too closely with big-ticket 
projects and it's likely to get tossed out with those projects.

The forthcoming second edition of my 2001 publication HUMANS TO MARS gives 
the VSE short shrift - partly because it's hard to reliably work out its history 
in any detail at this time - and emphasizes all the options the CEV gives us.

David

David S. F. Portree
author & educator
dsfportree at aol.com
(928) 226-1427
Flagstaff Arizona USA

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"It's like when you're a kid, the first time they tell you that the world's 
turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's 
standing still. I can feel it - the turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our 
feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, the entire planet is hurtling 
around the Sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're 
falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny little 
world, and if we let go..." - The Ninth Doctor








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