Thursday, September 09, 2010

Sustainability Base: The Next Giant Leap


What is NASA's next "giant leap" - a return to the Moon to practice and test hardware for Mars? No, Obama killed that. How about an ill-defined and unfunded mission to an asteroid "someday" using rockets which don't exist (Obama's announced goal)? No, not even that. NASA's next giant leap (their words, not mine) is -

A government office building.

To be sure, it's not an ordinary government office building. This one, called "Sustainability Base" uses "NASA innovations originally engineered for space travel and exploration" to create the greenest government building of all time. That's great, but it's done in lieu of using the technology they've developed for space travel to actually, oh, travel in space.

NASA has insulted the legacy of Apollo by calling this building "Sustainability Base" and the "Next Giant Leap". Where is human exploration and expansion of frontiers? Gone. The Obama administration's vision for NASA is as a branch of the EPA.

It makes me sick.

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