Just before the New Year, lunar scientist Paul Spudis wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post enumerating the reasons why this country is aiming to return humans to the Moon in the next fifteen years. I already examined his reasons and found them wanting. Alas, Spudis' argument was typical of the rhetoric used by a small, but vocal, group of proponents of manned spaceflight and was, as far as I could tell, well-received by that community.
But now, none other than the NASA Administrator himself is shooting down one of their highlighted excuses for setting up a hugely-expensive base on our sole satellite.
The first of Spudis' three stated reasons for NASA's new lunar goal was "science." He claimed, "The moon is a stable platform to observe the universe," and suggested that using the Moon as an astronomical base was very desirable, for radio astronomy in particular.
But in front of the largest annual conference of this nation's astronomers, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin yesterday proclaimed, as quoted at the blog Space Politics:
I want to be very clear: I will not with the scientific community do another space station, meaning I will not say, 'Hey, we're doing this for you, and here's all the great things that can occur.' I well recognize that no one would go to the Moon to site astronomical platforms. No one would do that.
Indeed, astronomy at the Moon does not justify the trip. We can do anything we'd want a lot more efficiently from space or, in many cases, right here on Earth.
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