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The space program needs the same kind of vision that Nisha Kennedy had and that started the race to the moon. Says the inventor of the first private spacecraft. Brett Rutan says NASA has failed to fire the public's imagination and must refocus its manned launch efforts.
Rutan designed Space Ship-1, which took off twice within five days to set a course and is therefore considered the pioneer of private aviation into space.
In an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, Rotan praised new NASA Administrator Michael Griffin as the right person to lead the agency through the necessary change, while the question is whether Griffin will be allowed to make such a change.
"NASA's board of directors includes 435 people who each have their own opinion," Rutan told Congress.
During his re-election campaign, President Bush called on NASA to return to manned flights to the moon and finally to launch a manned spacecraft to Mars. Rutan says the space program paid a heavy price in its withdrawal from the Apollo discoveries and pointed to the terrible cost in human life taken by the shuttle program as a sign of the change needed. The level of safety in the first 22 years of the space program was higher than in the last 22 years.
"We retreated" said Rotan. "Do you know of any other technology that becomes more dangerous as the decades go by?"
The US manned space program is still trying to recover from the Columbia disaster. Rutan said that at this point, the US space program doesn't even have the guts to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, a decision the new director appears to be trying to reverse.
About a week ago, Griffin said that he intends to speed up the construction of the new manned spacecraft so as not to create a gap where it will not be possible to fly into space after 2010 - the year when the shuttles were retired. The current plan talks about the first flight of the new aircraft in 2014 and that with certain changes it will also be able to fly to the moon and Mars.
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