Robert Zubrin, President of the Mars Society, doesn’t appear to be the type to mince words about the future of space, at least as the Trump Administration sees it. NewScientist (8 September 2018, paywall) has the opinion:
While the Trump administration says that it is setting its sights on a return to the moon, its actions do not lend credence to such claims.
If it intended to put people on the moon again, it would fund the development of a lunar lander. Instead it is funding the Lunar Orbit Platform-Gateway, a costly boondoggle that serves no useful purpose. US Vice President Mike Pence talks of it as a done deal.
What he fails to add is that we don’t need a lunar-orbiting base to go to the moon, or to Mars, or to go anywhere. Not only that, crewed trips to anywhere beyond Earth orbit would be designed to use the gateway as a staging post, adding to fuel requirements and decreasing the load they can carry, which is why I call it the Lunar Orbit Tollbooth instead.
As I was reading this, it occurred to me that Zubrin, President of an independent entity, doesn’t have to depend on President Trump for anything, and therefore he doesn’t have to harness his tongue for fear of losing funding for the future.
NASA scientists, engineers, and professional administrators, on the other hand, must be vividly aware that catching the negative attention of President Trump could lead to the demise of the programs they think are best for NASA to pursue in the best interests of the United States. If they were to honestly express their opinions of the leadership, they might find their projects gone, and, worse, their careers finished.
That’s another one of the problems of having an incompetent, narcissistic, amateur President in charge. You daren’t prick his hide if your job, and your country’s future, depends merely on his good humors. Therefore, you have to … avoid the truth. Dance a scary dance. Not say what’s on your mind.
It may not be precisely the same as lying, but the effects can be just as damaging. That’s why we have whistleblower laws, because the deceit which occurs otherwise can easily have side-effects which we don’t expect or even recognize.
Until some avoidable catastrophe occurs.
