Submission + - Report: NASA Astronauts Oppose Obama Asteroid Mission (yahoo.com)
MarkWhittington writes: The Obama NASA space exploration plan to send astronauts to an asteroid has been the subject of some controversy ever since it was announced almost four year ago. It turns out that the astronauts themselves are more than skeptical of the idea.
Clayton Anderson, a retired NASA astronaut and a veteran of both the space shuttle and the space station programs, relates in a recent Huffington Post piece an exchange that took place between the Astronaut Corps and then NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver.
"While I was still an astronaut, and an astronaut veteran at that, then Associate Administrator for spaceflight Lori Garver came to speak to the Astronaut Corps. A private meeting, just Ms. Garver and an attentive group of type A personalities, I would venture to guess there were about 40-45 of us 'space fliers' seated in the room. A bit of a 'rah, rah' meeting, touting NASA's work in the world of commercial spaceflight (and I think commercial spaceflight is a good thing, but that's another op-ed!), she asked us all a significant question. After some perfunctory remarks, she asked us to raise our hands if 'we thought that Mars should be our next destination?' Three astronauts raised their hands. Next, she offered the question again, but this time replacing the Red Planet with the option of an asteroid as our next destination. No one... that's right, no one, raised a hand. When she finally asked us about our near-neighbor the moon, every astronaut, save the three that voted for Mars, raised their hands.
"I found this interesting. The majority of the astronaut corps, the people that actually do the space flying, agreed with me --that the moon should be our next destination."
Clayton Anderson, a retired NASA astronaut and a veteran of both the space shuttle and the space station programs, relates in a recent Huffington Post piece an exchange that took place between the Astronaut Corps and then NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver.
"While I was still an astronaut, and an astronaut veteran at that, then Associate Administrator for spaceflight Lori Garver came to speak to the Astronaut Corps. A private meeting, just Ms. Garver and an attentive group of type A personalities, I would venture to guess there were about 40-45 of us 'space fliers' seated in the room. A bit of a 'rah, rah' meeting, touting NASA's work in the world of commercial spaceflight (and I think commercial spaceflight is a good thing, but that's another op-ed!), she asked us all a significant question. After some perfunctory remarks, she asked us to raise our hands if 'we thought that Mars should be our next destination?' Three astronauts raised their hands. Next, she offered the question again, but this time replacing the Red Planet with the option of an asteroid as our next destination. No one... that's right, no one, raised a hand. When she finally asked us about our near-neighbor the moon, every astronaut, save the three that voted for Mars, raised their hands.
"I found this interesting. The majority of the astronaut corps, the people that actually do the space flying, agreed with me --that the moon should be our next destination."