NASA Watch is reporting a rumor that former congressman Nick Lampson is a candidate for NASA Administrator. He was the congressman from NASA’s Johnson Space Center and chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, so he obviously knows the issues, and knows how to work with congress and the President.
Book Review: A Future Spacefaring Society
We are at the cusp of building an orbital industrial infrastructure and establishing human settlements in space. This book investigates what it takes to do that.
1 thought on “Nick Lampson for NASA Administrator?”
Are we going to get “Change we can believe in”? I think we are. My biggest complaint is that we gave up around nine times the annual NASA Budget to save AIG. Obama’s last bill was what, 800 billion? That is fourty times the NASA Budget. And NASA only gets a billion increase? We have got to replace overseas oil in this country eventually. Right now you have three choices with the breadth to realistically replace oil. Nuclear Power combined with electric vehicles, Algae based biofuels, and over the longterm, Sunsats with electric transport. Earth based solar and wind might account for 40% total in the next thirty years. So our Obama friends have got to ask themselves, do we embrace that evil fission power? (And there are some new fission alternatives like Thorium, depleted Uranium, and the Hyperion battery option.) Or do we take a risk and build a 500 megawatt Sunsat demonstration project? The Obama camp is clearly pro-solar and the Obama Space people are clearly pro Sunsat. Sunsats will only be economical with a breakthrough in cheap access to space however, and the space elevator is one of the only options for that. Materials Science is the key technology for the Space Elevator. Maybe we need a colossal carbon tube expert at the helm of NASA to lead us into the visionary research that will provide us with that “three order of magnitude” price cut for cheap access to space. In that case there is only one choice for the head of NASA, Dr. Y.T. Zhu of North Carolina State University. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_carbon_tube