I have some thoughts about the current state of affairs, on the ninth anniversary of the loss of Columbia.

Thoughts and some history from Bob Zubrin. The plan, at least as stated by Bob, has a (as Newt would say) “fundamental” flaw in it:

There would be at least two prizes: a $5 billion prize to develop and demonstrate a heavy-lift booster capable of lifting at least 100 tons to low Earth orbit, and a $10 billion prize for the first human mission to Mars. In addition, the winners of these prizes would be given contracts for the purchase by NASA of an additional five copies of their flight systems at a recurring cost of 20 percent of the respective prize per copy.

Prizes should specify the goal, not the means to achieve it. It presumes without evidence the need for an arbitrarily-sized heavy lifter. Bob, if you want to get to Mars, then put out a prize for Mars, but don’t tell people how to do it.

Jeff Foust has a comprehensive story about the space-policy discussion in the Florida primary over the past week.

What would they want?

One of the candidates for the nation’s highest office offers an imaginative space initiative and the other candidates poke fun at it. I don’t know which is worse: offering a goal with no resources or belittling the idea of having goals at all. Personally I am disgusted with the whole process – and the polls tell me that I am far from alone. I wonder what Gus and Dick and Rick would have thought of that, too.

It is clearly presumptuous on my part to imagine what those heroes who made the supreme sacrifice would want. But they were all on record, before they died, giving voice to what they wanted. That record is one we can listen to, read, study, and evaluate.

Without exception, they were going into space because they thought it was worth the cost, worth the risk. They saw the future out there.

As I said, Romney could have criticized Newt’s plans without sounding like such an empty man.