Friday, October 16, 2009

Open Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden from Robert Bigelow

"When the commercial crew transportation debate is artificially limited to only the two current participants of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, and the Atlas 5 is ignored, as it was during the congressional hearing in the House several weeks ago, this leads to a flawed discussion and problematic conclusions. We don't know if the House authorizers avoided talking about the Atlas due to bias, ignorance or a combination of both..."

"As you are well aware, future U.S. access to space will soon be entirely dependent on Russia. The Russians are excellent capitalists, and you should expect prices to rise above the already stunning $51 million per seat that NASA is currently paying during every subsequent Soyuz contract negotiation. A robust commercial crew program represents this nation's only hope of reversing this deplorable situation and reviving America's human spaceflight capabilities. If you choose this path, it will free NASA both in terms of substance and financing to look beyond LEO, leaving the agency to again become a trailblazer to the stars."

Full Text at SpaceRef.com

No comments: