"......NASA plays a critical role in both our national and economic security. Our space program has been a critical driver of innovations in such key technologies as computers and composite materials, and plays an important role in emerging industries such as wind energy and sensors to detect biological threats.....
....While our military services rely on private contractors to design and build most of their equipment, the military owns the planes, ships, armored vehicles, weapons, information systems, and other key technologies. The armed services also own their domestic bases and operate their own foreign bases. The military, like NASA, uses private contractors, but the military exercises control of its operations and the technology. NASA has owned its manned space vehicles and its launch facilities. Laws and regulations govern NASA and military procurement so that sourcing, security, technology transfers, and a wide range of key decisions promote U.S. security and economic interests.....
...The push to privatize space travel is similar to efforts to privatize other critical government services. These efforts are based on anti-government ideology and are promoted by companies that want to profit from government outsourcing. It defies common sense to believe that the way to save NASA money is to outsource even more when these same contractors are already frequently over budget and often involved in over-billing and even fraud.....
......I respectfully urge you to reconsider the proposal for NASA to become completely dependent on private contractors for space travel. Thousands of high wage, high skill jobs critical to our long-term economic future are at state. In the meantime, instead of relying on the Russians to launch our astronauts, we need to extend the space shuttle program and accelerate and modify the Ares and Orion program to meet NASA’s mission needs. Only then can we be assured that America will continue to be the world leader in new and innovative space technologies vital to future economic and national security."
R. Thomas Buffenbarger, International President
For a complete copy of the of the letter, go to the following URL:
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/files/2010/02/2_2_4_10_letter.pdf
4 comments:
He seems to be pushing the technology stance, I wonder if really most people just want love and haven't worked out how to acheive that yet, it is perhaps a opportunity to consider that it could perhaps be just a handful of people driving the entire world community towards something they don't really want...
www.spacetravel21stcentury.blogspot.com/
There's plenty of love:-) That's why the human population is rapidly approaching 7 billion people and gradually pushing all other species into extinction while a significant portion of our own species is going hungry.
Oh Marcel, you know the main reason for the global population spike is because the poorer nations of the world breed like mosquitoes.
Studied fact: Economically distressed regions have more kids than wealthy regions. Wealthy regions are too busy and want to occupy their time with other things than kids, plus they have better health care and don't have to worry about the care of their children, so they don't need to have 10 of them.
Now, since the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, which is an obvious truth since over the past 50 years all the aid we've ever sent anywhere hasn't fundamentally changed a damn thing for those regions, it's an easy correlation to notice the population growth differences between poor and rich countries.
It's actually quite amazing, but also quite disheartening that so many lives are being created in such squalor. :(
All of the aid really hasn't solved the-- fundamental problem-- of poor nations and poor communities around the world. And that is the lack of a quality education for everyone!
An educated individual is the most valuable asset on our planet. But an uneducated one is a huge social and economic burden. Even in America, undereducated individuals probably cost our economy at least a trillion dollars annually in crime, welfare, poor health practices, and creating dangerous communities where businesses do not want to invest.
I think it would be very affordable for wealthy nations to fund quality k-12 educations for every child on Earth and very lucrative for private businesses to take advantage of this future cheaper educated labor-- just as they do in China.
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