Charles E. Miller and Jeff Foust have put forth Part II of their plan to save George Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. (If you missed it, here’s the link to Part I.) It’s a little complicated, but their plan basically amounts to pursuing cheap and reliable access to space, whose acronym - CRATS - may well remind you of a domesticated pet, a Broadway musical, or a bodily function.
In the same edition of The Space Review, Greg Zsidisin takes a look at how we can avoid what he calls “another Apollo debacle” - developing massively expensive technology and then tossing it away for something much less useful.
Meanwhile, Rand Simberg analyzes both these posts at his Transterrestrial Musings blog.
Charles Miller thinks so. The Space Frontier Foundation board member gave a presentation on Friday at the Space Access ‘08 conference titled: “The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) and the Retirement of the Baby Boomers: Is this the Beginning of the End? Or The End of the Beginning?”
Miller believes that around 2010, the U.S. government’s Social Security and Medicare commitments to retiring Baby Boomers will begin to swamp the federal budget, making it impossible to support expensive space initiatives such as NASA’s human lunar program.
Miller thinks this problem can be overcome by developing affordable transportation, “economically-driven strategic” reasons for developing space, or addressing urgent national security needs. He calls for the convening of a “National Reusable Space Access Summit” to address the coming change.
Jeff Foust has a full account of Miller’s speech over at Space Politics.