A Baker Institute event organized by Space Policy fellow George Abbey is discussed in a blog posted on the Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine website.
The blog, “The Once and Future Moon,” provides an overview of some of the speakers’ remarks at the Feb. 15 Baker Institute event, “U.S. Human Spaceflight: Continuity and Stability.”
Noting the budget and technology challenges NASA faces, the blog’s author, Paul D. Spudis, a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, writes that:
“To design and build the supporting infrastructure for human spaceflight in the mid-1960s, we annually spent ten times the fraction of the budget that we do now. Given the reality of the nation’s finances, NASA will be lucky if they can continue to get one-half of one percent of federal spending per year. This does not seem to be a good time to throw away three functioning Shuttle orbiters, thereby discarding a working national space faring capability, one carefully built and paid for over the last 50 years.”
– Read the March 1 blog, “Discarding shuttle: The hidden cost,” on the Smithsonian Air & Space magazine website.
– View video from the Feb. 15 Baker Institute event, “U.S. Human Spaceflight: Continuity and Stability.”