Wesley T. Huntress: Author of NASA's New Strategy (IEEE Spectrum interview by Oberg)

[bananas]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/wesley-t-huntress-author-of-nasas-new-strategy

Wesley T. Huntress: Author of NASA's New Strategy
Questions for the originator of the "stepping-stones to Mars" approach

BY James Oberg // April 2010
Photo: The Planetary Society

On 15 April, NASA got its long-awaited marching orders from President Obama. The agency is to send people to Mars using a series of ”stepping-stone” destinations that are themselves of interest: Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids, and Martian moons. The plan is pretty much exactly what Planetary Society president Wesley T. Huntress Jr. proposed in 2004. James Oberg corresponded with Huntress following President Obama’s introduction of the plan.

IEEE Spectrum: How do you feel about the new NASA space plan?

Wesley T. Huntress: I am absolutely delighted with the new direction NASA has received. And the president demonstrated with his visit that he is fully engaged.

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Spectrum: What role did you play in developing this strategy?

WTH: This is an approach to human exploration that my team proposed in a four-year study by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) called ”The Next Steps in Exploring Deep Space,” which was published in early 2004. This same strategy was reemphasized in late 2008 by the Planetary Society’s ”Beyond the Moon: A New Roadmap for Human Space Exploration in the 21st Century.”

Spectrum: And when you heard the policy explained from the White House, how did you feel?

WTH: Those of us who advocated this plan are gratified. We really felt this plan was an affordable, sustainable, commonsense approach to what should come after Apollo and the space station.

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Michio Kaku sounded excited about Obama's space plan on his radio show Explorations this week,
no transcript, audio archive only: http://kpfa.org/archive/id/60979

During the hearings Augustine pointed out that this is basically Option 5B from his commissions report:

http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=20643

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Armstrong's written testimony (pdf) talks about the Obama plan being "contrived by a very small group in secret". Yet Augustine beside him at the witness table explained that the plan matches quite closely with Option 5B in the HSF review panel's report. That report was created by a sizable and diverse group and definitely not in secret.

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I posted links to the hearing video archive and pdfs in a LBN thread a few days ago: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4379502&mesg_id=4379530