Mo Moon Talk

I wrote my friend again:

First, this is a proposal, not the final word.  But supposing the constellation program is cut.  This means that the manned missions to the moon and Mars will not happen.  Houston is all about manned missions.  We will have to either change or be knocked out.  Kennedy is all about the shuttle. The shuttle is retiring so they are in trouble. JPL is into robotic missions... this seems to be the direction we are headed in.

All along, there has been a concern with "a gap".  See, in order to do the manned missions to the moon and Mars, it was going to take a shuttle retirement in a fairly quick drop of the space station... and all that was in progress... BUT... if you are dropping all that in order to take the new direction to the moon/mars... and then the moon and Mars gets cut... what are you left with???

But for today, think about a friend of mine, Brian Hoelscher.  He is in charge of "re-entry".  Another friend of mine, today, is working on a lunar lander.  What do these guys do?  I think most people probably figure we are worried about our jobs or something... I don't think that is true, we really had (have) a mission.I don't want a job just to have a job.  I'm glad to have a job, I don't want to dismiss that, but we really had (have) a chance to something incredible.

Again, I think Obama is being realistic/pragmatic.  If it is true, like his study said, this whole endeavor was going to be a sinkhole of funds.  If we cannot do it, we cannot do it. And who knows in another three years, it might all change again.  Fortunately, for me, kind of, my work is rather generic.  My skills will transfer... but again that's so baseline blah.