Augustine's Pathway to Nowhere

摘要

According to the Committee on Human Spaceflight headed by former Lockheed Martin Chief Executive Norman Augustine, it would involve too much risk for NASA to aim to reach Mars by the end of the next decade. Indeed, according to Mr. Augustine and his fellow worthies, it is beyond the capability of the United States to return astronauts to the Moon half a century after they first went there.rnA more responsible option, say the eminences of the committee, would be to continue to fly the space shuttle until 2015, and then initiate a program to deorbit the international space station by 2020.rnIn other words, rather than embracing the risk of attempting Mars, the Augustine Committee believes that it is fully responsible for NASA's human spaceflight program to plan to spend $100 billion of the taxpayers' money over the next 11 years in order to accomplish absolutely nothing.