Laura

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• Commented on NASA HLV Development: Hurry Up And Wait

  Marshall Director Robert Lightfoot accompanied Garver to the editorial board meeting and said his center is ready to get to work on a heavy-lift rocket. "We don't need to study it anymore," Lightfoot said. Seriously. Let's go....

• Commented on The Grand Master of Foot-In-Mouth Speaks

  "Perversion" is strong language, but it fits, and suits the level of alarm felt by many of us who feel that NASA's mission of exploration is being diluted. As to the Media Matters headline, Yet again, an Obama official says...

• Commented on White House Press Briefing on Space Policy Announced at Last Minute

  Good heavens. Could it possibly be more vague?...

• Commented on OSTP's Holdren Comments on Space Policy Reaction

  Nothing very surprising in his statement, but it sure looked like there was a goldfish swimming around in the water pitcher....

• Commented on Well, There Seems To Be A Compromise After All

  Just read the OSTP document. What has disturbed so many of us is the lack of time-line in the new plan. I don't know enough to judge the 2015 date to commit to an HLV design and start development, but...

• Commented on Details of Presidential Space Flyby Continue to Emerge

  From the NY Times article linked by AnObamanaut: But Loren B. Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a policy group financed by military contractors, said Boeing is more skeptical in private. “I think people who have been in the...

• Commented on And Now A Word From The Lunatic Fringe

  Fox sure has a lot of facts wrong. But their main point, that we're pulling back from leadership in human space flight, may turn out to be true. If the new plan results in more than just R&D and we...

• Commented on Rep. Green: We're Only Speaking English on The Moon

  First of all, his comment about "English only" on the Moon is just plain silly. Who is he to say who can go to the Moon and what they say when they get there? Secondly, Green is apparently not well...

• Commented on Falcon 9 Moves To The Pad For Checks

  I wish Space-X the best for this first test of the Falcon 9. Just want to remind everyone of the obvious. This is a first test flight. However it goes, it is what it is - and anything less than...

• Commented on Another Ignorant Columnist

  I just want to second (or third, or fourth) the comments that argue that Krauthammer is essentially correct. For the first time since the 1960s, we will have no access to LEO, and no defined program to have it again....

• Commented on Bolden Meets The Press

  I've been holding off commenting to absorb all this and let it sink in. So here's where this space cadette comes out on the plan as we've heard it...so far... 1) Cancellation of Ares I: sad, but the right move...

• Commented on No ESAS-2 Needed

  @sc220 You often make good comments here. A while back you gave an excellent and much appreciated answer to a question I put here about delta-v budgets for inner solar system missions and the number of attractive NEO targets. But...

• Commented on There Is More To All Of This. $5.9 Billion More.

  We (and that includes me) are wasting too much emotional energy, not to mention virtual paper and ink, on incomplete information. Let's take the news as it dribbles out with a few grains of salt and go easy on our...

• Commented on Going In Circles Again: America Will Abandon Human Lunar Exploration - And Much More

  Count me with those who feared this was coming based on Obama's first position on NASA and HSF - redirect the money to education. I guess the inspirational part of the president's education plan is to excite young people to...

• Commented on The Future of NASA - A Congressional Research Service Report

  - Is there a national consensus for human exploration beyond Earth orbit, despite the inherent risks and the substantial cost? If JFK had waited for a national consensus on going to the moon we'd probably still be waiting. With...

• Commented on Obama Backs New Launcher and Bigger NASA Budget

  In the very big picture there were three possible outcomes. Less budget, about the same budget, or increased budget. We can wonder about the details and wish the increase was greater, but we've dodged the two worst outcomes - less...

• Commented on Bolden Meets With Obama

  From the link in a previous post "House speaker questions more NASA funding, Mars trip": “Again, everything is in competition for the dollar, and a judgment will be made as to what it does in terms of job creation,” Pelosi...

• Commented on New NASA Governance Structure Under Development

  pspudis said: Ooooh .... a new management and organizational scheme! I'm all tingly!! Don't tell me these guys don't know how to excite America... Thanks. I needed a laugh this afternoon....

• Commented on America's Other Space Program Is Very Cool

  It's not public outreach. It's not lobbying. It's a recruiting video. Go to the jobs section of the websites of hi-tech companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, etc, and you see the same kind of thing - "Be part of and...

• Commented on Anti-Space Mom with Pro-Space Kids

  The column is pretty appalling, but there's some encouragement in the fact that the comments following it on Slate mostly make the points being made here. In addition to her generally clueless attitude toward space and astronomy, her difficulty in...

• Commented on Today's Video: STS-129 Ascent Highlights

  Complex, expensive, dangerous, amazing. Sure gonna miss them. Am I the only one getting all misty about this?...

• Commented on Will Someone Please Wake Up ARC PAO?

  I think there are two main reasons why this made it to the NY Times as an Op-Ed piece. 1) It's timely, coming on the heels of the controversy about "bombing the Moon", followed by the announcement about water being...