One can certainly argue with much of Griffin’s approach… choosing a specific launch architecture before the mission to the Moon and Mars was really worked out was not a spectacular strategy. But he did at least have the vision to push for such missions… a vision obviously lacking in the current NASA/White House administration. Plus, he’s capable of seeing the obvious:
Griffin said Tuesday that collaboration with other countries, including Muslim nations, is welcome and should be encouraged — but that it would be a mistake to prioritize that over NASA’s “fundamental mission” of space exploration.
“If by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that’s wonderful,” Griffin said. “If you get it in the wrong order … it becomes an empty shell.”
Griffin added: “That is exactly what is in danger of happening.”
He also said that while welcome, Muslim-nation cooperation is not vital for U.S. advancements in space exploration.
“There is no technology they have that we need,” Griffin said.
Got it in one.
And Bolden has uttered his rubbish before:
A Feb. 16 blog in the Orlando Sentinel reported that Bolden discussed the outreach during a lecture to engineering students. As he did in the interview with Al Jazeera last month, Bolden was quoted then saying Obama told him to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries.”
He reportedly talked about the importance of helping countries establish space programs and pointed to the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, as a possible partner.
Indonesia? INDO-FRIKKEN’-NESIA?!?!?! What can they possibly have that we need… or that would make the sending of Americans to Mars substantially easier?
9 Responses to “Oh how I miss Mike Griffin”
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Game over; America loses.
Where else can we take the skills and the information,and produce something workable? Private industry will have to work outside the reach of American government.
Yeah I hated Griffen’s retro Constellation configurations, but Obama’s proposed commercial crew program seems likely to rival it in cost per flight, and move us even farther back in being a space faring nation. And now Bolden’s confirming that by stating the US will never be able to do again what it did in the ‘60’s. or planed to do under Griffin.
Churchill said in a democracy you get the government you deserve.
We must have been very very bad…
Griffin’s biggest failure was not admitting that the money was not/would never be there for his designs and backing off to do something doable.
Two more years with these clowns scewing things up. 2012 can’t get here fast enough.
The News are practically holding a wake for NASA and maned space flight in the US. really, with the mass lay-offs from Shuttle and Constellation shutting down – what will be left of NASA and the contractors to rebuild a spaceprogram from in 2012?
“what will be left of NASA and the contractors to rebuild a spaceprogram from in 2012?”
At this rate? Nothing.
I suspect that’s the goal here.
I really wish I had a solid counter argument to that…..
I was always a griffin fan myself, and loved the retro tech.
I will say this much–if the folks in Dubai ever recover, I would hope they would fund LVs like Sea Dragon to shock the world and start another space race.