Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Florida 19 months ago, U.S. space policy also went up in smoke. A series of unsuccessful launchings, including the loss of an Atlas-Centaur rocket fired into a lightning storm last March, has further devastated the space program and left it floundering. In a 63-page report prepared for NASA and released last week, Astronaut Sally Ride attempts to set the agency back on track. She argues for an "evolutionary" policy with diverse objectives, rather than a splashy, one-goal venture. Writes Ride, who was the first American woman in space: "It would not be good strategy, good science...
...manned mission to Mars by 2005, a project being pushed by many enthusiasts as a great adventure that could capture the public's imagination. "Settling Mars should be our eventual goal," she writes, "but it should not be our next goal." A commitment to Mars, she warns, could imperil NASA's plans to put a shuttle fleet back in operation and build a space station. It would also require a tripling of the agency's budget during the mid-1990s -- an unrealistic prospect...
Official reaction has been reserved. Agency Head James Fletcher, who assigned Ride to the study, issued a commendatory letter but did not endorse the findings. Ride, who leaves NASA next month for a post at Stanford University, was unavailable for press briefings...
Many space experts fear the report will be ignored, as was an earlier study by a presidential commission led by onetime NASA Administrator Thomas Paine. The neglect, they say, is symptomatic of the nation's current rudderless approach to space exploration, which is ceding leadership to the Soviet Union. Declares Democratic Congressman George Brown Jr., of California, who serves on a House subcommittee on space science: "The fact is that the Administration is not ready to determine the future of the space program...
...NASA will study the bids for months before winners are announced, probably in November. The space station, which will require some 30 shuttle flights to haul its pieces into orbit, is scheduled to be completed in the mid-1990s...