A Chance To Tell The President's Sci &Tech Advisors What You Think

When I was a child, I watched John Kennedy say, "We will put a man on the Moon." Then I watched in awe as NASA did it.

I feel that now is the time to build a Moon Base/Colony with humans permanently occupying another celestial body. Humans will never venture far into space until we have taken this first basic step.

Flawless logic Gary...

Whoops. Keith they will webccast. No reg. Past casts are available and Ishall look at them. What did Lori Garver say yesterday? I did not want to reg.

Gary:

I was born in 1947. I can remember putting a tin can
on a tree by the dirt road in front of our tin and tar paper
shack in rural Missouri, with a crayon sign underneath
asking for donations for the space program so we could go
to the moon. I love those memories. I love the hope and
dreams that the space program has come to engender for
people all over the world.

But I have come to understand that the space program
doesn’t belong to me. It belongs even more to my daughter
and the younger people. There vision for space isn't the
same as my vision (for one thing they have a totally
different view of how people relate to their machines).

I am willing to risk my space program so they can have
there’s. We need to dump the sunk coasts of the Industrial/
Space complex and give the space program a chance to
reformulate it'self in the image of the America that is
becoming.

We need to give the countries space efforts a chance
to open the solar system to the human economy in ways that
are at once far more modest and incremental and far more
profound in there ultimate implications than anything our
generations space vision would have supported. That means
a step back to build the technologies that will allow NASA
to build space ships not rockets. To open space for whatever
we as a people want to do with it. In a way I think much of the
food fight is a generational fight and at the bottom of it is the
certainty that following the administrations program will
mean that many of us will not live to see many of the things we
had hoped to see.

I have made my peace with that. I love those early dreams
enough to let them go. I will delight in whatever is to
come and maybe one day my wheelchair robot at some nursing
home will wheal my rotting carcass out into the night and
I will look up to see a small light in the sky as my great
grandkids generation heads out for Mars. That will do.

All of our children will someday light out of the territories for destinations unknown.
In commercial ships named for history's heroes.
K-E-E-P T-H-E F-A-I-T-H!!!

Unfortunately they request written comments to be submitted two weeks ahead of the meeting if you want to be sure that PCAST members get to see it. "Although written comments are accepted until the date of the meeting, written comments should be submitted to PCAST at least two weeks prior to each meeting date so that the comments may be made available to the PCAST members prior to the meeting for their consideration. "

The main agenda is for 2. 5 hours from 2:30 to 5:00. Public (Oral) comments from 2:00 to 2:30. The (no doubt sumptous) lunch is from 12:30 to 2:00 after which the honorable members will probably doze through the public comments period. Then, much refreshed ;-) they'll have the real discussion....

I almost forgot to note: From 11:15 to lunch (12:30) are what appear to be presentations on "Science, Technology and Diplomacy. Three "Science Envoys" are to speak or lead. I note that all of them are "envoys" to Muslim countries: Indonesia, Algeria and Egypt. So have the PCAST members also been charged (NOT) to make Muslim countries feel good about their past? Enquiring minds want to know Mr. Obama!

Editor's note: this was originally posted on 23 June -- well before the deadline.