It's Accountability, Stupid

摘要

I rarely quote Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), but I did just that - repeatedly -reading Robert D. Braun's Commentary "The Value of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory" [Dec. 8, page 19]. "Oh, please!" I kept saying to myself. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a mismanaged turkey that should have its head lopped off, preferably along with those of the managers who let the project get so out of hand. Because we're not doing that, a host of other NASA exploration efforts will suffer. Most galling is Braun's assertion that because this is a flagship mission, anything goes. Invoke the word "flagship" and accountability should just go away. This translates plainly to me as, "Just shut up and fork over more of your money." That's some way to instill public confidence in a taxpayer-funded endeavor. The "frontiers" drat Braun says MSL is pushing seem primarily to be about creating make-work for aerospace companies. MSL will have a heat shield similar to Orion's. So what? Let Orion work out its own technology for its own operating conditions. Spirit and Opportunity, our two still-operating Mars rovers, have shown brilliantly that the basic configuration first flown on Mars Pathfinder has been matured into a highly successful design, capable of doing excellent science and rugged enough to last years in the martian environment. So why are we reinventing the wheel -or in this case, the rover? Surely there are many more places on Mars that we would love to have a Spirit or Opportunity exploring, even with their particular limitations. Surely we have yet to exhaust the capabilities and benefits to be gotten from this rover design.