REM@SU-AI@sri-unix (11/23/82)
From: Robert Maas <REM at SU-AI> After waiting about 3 months I finally received from McCloskey's office a copy of [97th congress, 1st session, H.R.4286] which was proposed by Gingrich, "To establish a national space and aeronautics policy, and for other purposes." I haven't yet received the other bill I ordered. HR4286 has some nice stuff but seems to have a few errors or confusing places. On page 2, line 22, after saying the nation's space program has suffered for its lack of an open-ended series of connected long-range goals, it says "An appropriate first step would be the design, development, and construction of a permanent, manned, multipurpose space operations center in low Earth orbit." The obvious question is "first step towards what?". It really should say "An appropriate first step towards remedying this situation would be ...". On page 4, line 7, it says "The continued exploration and utilization of the solar system, including the Moon and Mars, is important ..." I think asteroids should have been included as more important for utilization than Mars! Maybe Mars is fascinating, but it'll be the asteroids not Mars that we really utilize. On page 5, line 15, it says our solar system exploration capability during the first decade of the 21st century should provide options for "Moon bases, manned missions to Mars, a Moon settlement, manned missions to Venus, and a Mars settlement." First of all, I think a manned to Venus would be very uncomfortable and result in virtually instant death for the astronauts. If a mere orbit of Venus is proposed, that ought to be stated clearly, since the manned mission to Mars is in the same paragraph and likely to be a landing eventually. Furthermore, manned missions to the asteroids, possibly even a permanently-manned mining colony ought to be included here. On page 12, line 20, among technological capabilies that ought to be developed, it says "deep space booster system for manned solar system exploration". I think it also ought to mention that this deep space booster will be used to return raw materials, maybe even complete intact asteroids, to near-Earth for further processing to recover minerals and delivery of the resultant minerals and products to Earth and to near-Earth colonies. Since bringing back materials by robot vehicles is likely to be much more common than manned exploration missions, this use for the deep space booster system really ought to be included. Otherwise the bill (15 pages total) looks like a step forward.