MarsBlog.net

The McKnight essay seems to have stirred up a good discussion over at the Space Policy BBS:

Yes it will take billions to do it right, but billions don’t mean as much as they use to. Most space advocates are still thinking in terms of 1960’s money and spending. Over 600 billion were spent on gambling in the U.S. last year. Kids influence some 500 billion in sales in the U.S. Wal-mart had revenues of 215 billion. The United States has a GDP of over 10 trillion dollars in a world economy of 47 trillion dollars. Energy, transportation and tourism are all multiple trillion dollar global industries.

NASA’s budget, the entire global space industry, is a nickel and dime operation and its a wonder more folks haven’t been killed as a result. It says something about the quality and dedication of the engineers that work in space flight. But the simple message is we have the money to spend to do human spaceflight right, its simply time to carry that basic message to the world.

Right now we must go hat in hand to the Russians to use their 40 year old capsule to keep the ISS flying. That is something that should shame every American and it is why we must spend enough to make sure that never again we are dependent on a single human space launch system. We must spend the money to do it right is the simple theme we must take to the public. Its time to stop thinking like engineers and start thinking like prophets of the future advocates are supposed to be.