I was going to write about this latest attempt to resurrect the mythical “Apollo spirit” by former CNN science reporter Miles O’Brien. But fortunately, Paul Spudis gives him the history lesson so I don’t have to. Well, not just so I don’t have to — that’s just a nice side effect for me, because I’m busy.

As Paul notes, Mike Griffin and (to a lesser degree, even before Griffin) NASA’s biggest mistake is in assuming that we can just pick up where we left off with the unsustainable and unaffordable Apollo program and somehow sustain and afford it. NASA has to get much more innovative, think about how to use existing infrastructure that has other uses (which is why it should, at least initially, be EELV rather than Shuttle derived), encourage and involve the private sector to a much greater degree, and think marginal cost rather than development cost, or they’ll end up with another Shuttle, and station, regardless of what the mold lines of the vehicles look like.

[Update a few minutes later]

Unsurprisingly, Mark Whittington (who really ought to fix his permalinks so they don’t double the tag) is still guzzling the koolaid by the pitcher.

[Another update a couple minutes later]

Over at The Space Review (which now seems to be allowing comments, though there are none yet at this article), Stokes McMillan hopes that Kennedy’s first 100 days will be repeated by Obama.

Don’t count on it. In fact, don’t even hope for it, if it’s a repeat of Apollo. Apollo was a unique set of circumstances, and unlikely to repeat. In order for history to repeat, using the JFK model, would be for him to have some humiliating foreign policy event comparable to the Bay of Pigs (unfortunately, that one’s not at all unlikely…) and then another exogenous event that spurs us into another space race. The only thing that I could think of that would be comparable to the double blow of first being beaten into space four years later, and then beaten into a man in space in the first hundred days, would be a surprise manned Mars landing by (say) the Chinese. And even then, I wouldn’t bet on a revitalized American space program as a response.

Sorry, but compared to other administration perceived concerns (global warming, lack of health care, the economy, etc.) space simply isn’t important. And it hasn’t been for over forty years.

[Update a while later]

Don’t look to the Europeans to scare us into another space race. Space isn’t important there, either:

Sources close to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)/Advanced Reentry Vehicle (ARV) team are telling Hyperbola that the November 2008 ESA ministerial meeting outcome was seen as catastrophic for the agency’s hopes for ARV operating before the International Space Station (ISS) is de-orbited, even with a 2020 end of life target, and a follow-on manned version of ARV.

But there will be plenty of jobs, so it’s OK.