Other - Human Space Flight

1.	Current missions under development should not be cancelled or postponed to support the Vision for Space Exploration (e.g., CEV). In other words, CEV, etc. should ramp up gradually using existing ESMD funding wedges as the shuttle and ISS are phased out, not at the expense of existing SMD programs.
2.	NASA should pay more attention to what the public appreciates as REALLY exciting space news of exploration, as provied by the science missions. It is pictures from the planets and good pictures of Earth and the cosmos.Also the excited scientists talking about their work. Shuttle and Space Station are intensely boring to the public. They only make news in disaster, and the science is paying for it. This is crazy. If jobs in districts are the reason for the Shuttle and Station, surely more productive and long-lasting government projects with benefits to the economy could be awarded instead. I do not believe that the human spaceflight program is really necessary for NASA science, or for the public to be interested in space. It is a myth that has been sold over and over to the science community. It needs frank discussion.
3.	Our best science will be accomplished when we live on a planet/moon/asteroid. We need to make progress in that too.
4.	End the space shuttle program. Zero sex appeal. Minimal scientific value. Double the hubble!
5.	The manned program is a major cost sink. Its only useful science lately was that worms survived the Columbia crash.
6.	All efforts should be integrated within a systematic and sustained program of exploration and colonization of the solar system, with an eventual goal of human-based exploration and colonization at the interstellar level. Goals should be set at least 50-year increments so as to overcome vagaries of sucessive political administrations.
7.	Human space flight missions, particularly to Mars, is a tremendous waste of both opportunities and resources that should be available for the research community.
8.	A similar survey should be done on manned space flight, STS, ISS, etc.
9.	The success - in terms of science and of new discoveries -of NASA's smaller programs is often ignored. All focus seems to be on manned missions to MARS. I ask: why? It doesn't make sense. The radiation hazards to the astronauts involved make the mission not worth the risks as far as I am concerned. We can learn far more by sending rovers, cameras, and other remote sensing instruments to do our exploration. My goal of space exploration is to explore, to learn, and to inspire as much as we can.
10.	Manned space exploration should be a low priority and should not impact research budgets.
11.	The current Moon & Mars initiative is a collossal waste of taxpayer dollars and is doing irreparable harm to this nation's space science program.
12.	There is a lack of understanding from the science community about the current state of affairs at NASA. The Shuttle needs to be retired and a new vehicle needs to be ready as soon as possible. We (USA) should be committed to a vigorous manned and unmanned space program. The manned space program is in trouble now. This survey says nothing about that and the hard time that the NASA officials have to maintain a balanced program.
13.	Without balanced funding, the nation is liable to be left with a new vehicle with no place to go -- another white elephant. Crewed missions are only one aspect of solar system exploration, and they rely on precursor science and exploration to establish mission objectives, strategies, and procedures.
14.	Continued humand space flight and visiting Earth's moon are both expensive ways to learn almost nothing.
15.	R&A funding should be restored, MSL should be delayed 2 years (technology isn't mature enough), CEV should be delayed, finish the space station - do NOT abandon.
16.	Manned Flagship missions funnel substantial funds into a few large corporations, cloaked with the PR flair, yet yield marginal science. Manned missions are also inefficient if you were to calculate a science per weight ratio, and a risk per cost ratio that would ground any SMEX. Here's an idea: use all NASA funding on unmanned science mission and R&A and divert military spending to manned missions, which could be managed by DOD and/or NASA. Who would benefit? -NASA can maintain respect -R&A will be sustained -Science will be guaranteed -Many small groups and Universities will get funding -Many more missions will go up -New ideas are encouraged -Big companies will still profit from the Military -Military can absorb the risk of death (which they are doing a great job of currently) -Military and NASA can keep the PR
17.	This survey does not address the REAL problem with NASA funding at this time, which is the primary priority being given to the manned space effort at the expense of all science (whether missions or R&A). If we finally design and build a new shuttle and finally finish the space station, but have decimated the US scientific community by draining their funds for these manned projects, exploration will be a joke. This is the issue we should be polling the community about.
18.	NASA is aligning to carry out Bush directive : send people back to the Moon, NEOs, Mars and outer solar system in a cost effective and evolutionary manner. It is a good idea to support this with all we got so that when hard data is returned(as samples), we can do good science on these specimens. So science, both Astrobiology and human biology might consider marching in tune with NASA's new directive, without which the agency has been floundering for the past 3 decades ! By now, we should all know that without the awe inspiring human space effort to fire up public interest, space science projects and budgets cannot grow in a healthy manner.
19.	No funding for human flights to Moon or planets until solution to shielding astronauts from radiation is found.
20.	Instead of going back to the moon, which we have already done, we should aim for Mars and beyond. Going to the moon will only drain resources that we could use for landing humans on Mars.
21.	Budgets for Human Space Flight should come from Defense sources, NOT at the expense of science R & A.
22.	The space shuttle should be retired. There is no use in pouring money into it to make it last a few more years. This is valuable money that could be spent 1. developing the shuttle's successor 2. on science. The ISS is at this point also sucking money needlessly. If the other participating countries are not living up to their ends of the bargain, why should we? I support the missions to Mars and the missions to the moon only in that they may lead to human exploration of Mars. Lunar missions should not be advertised as stepping stones to Mars because much of the technology and resources available differ between the two bodies.
23.	The science program should not be decreased to fund an increased spending level in the manned spaceflight program. These programs should be complementary; not in competition with each other.
24.	Expanding our knowledge of the solar system in a fair and balanced way -- without placing undue emphasis on a single planet or line of missions. Also restoring the budgetary 'firewall' between manned exploration and robotic exploration to prevent enormous cost overruns in manned exploration from jeopardizing low-risk or no-risk activities like R&A and robotic exploration.
25.	Astronauts will be tourists without the research and mission programs. There is far too much to learn at this point to shift the focus to manned missions. I think the focus should be on the research and mission programs.
26.	Past experience show that manned missions are not particularly beneficial to expand our knowledge. The ratio of 'new knowledge to $ spent' gathered from robotic missions and satellite observation surpasses that of manned missions. The scientific value of the international space station, a permanent human presence on the moon, or a human visit to Mars a is moderate considering the cost involved.
27.	Science should not be sacrificed for manned space missions. This especially true given the staggering (unbudgeted) costs of failures in the manned mission program.
28.	NASA should not continue to pursue big-ticket manned space programs like those listed here, or Space Shuttle, or Space Station, at the expense of a balanced and vigorous rest of NASA. If these large projects are desired by either NASA, the President, or Congress, then the required additional funds must be provided. We scientists are tired of being taxed for continuing cost overruns in these large programs; it is bad enough to be taxed in our NASA budgets for non-NASA expenditures, like Wars and hurricanes. These can and should be paid for by Congress under the appropriate categories- not buried and hidden from the public by taxing unrelated Federal agencies.
29.	I give manned space exploration much higher priority than unmanned probes. I would fund no probes, no data analysis, and no scientific research that did not contribute to manned exploration, and I would assign priorities to such programs strictly according to the contribution they made to manned exploration.
30.	I think that the focus on manned exploration is severely diminishing the return from science missions that are already operational, to say nothing of those that could fly in the near future. The benefit, to the nation, of putting humans on the Moon or Mars is much less than the benefit that could be reaped by putting the same money into science or robotic exploration, or any number of social or infrastructure programs having nothing to do with science.
31.	We should stand and fight the manned Mars missions. - Tom Gehrels
32.	The 'Vision' for Exploration was created by a blind man and will not survive this administration. We cannot sacrifice science in order to waste money on this.
33.	The real problem is the breaking down of the firewall between manned space flight and science-driven missions. How do we put that firewall back?
34.	It is easily possible for manned programs to consume all of the unmanned budget and not make very much additional progress. However, the record is clear that the unmanned program, including R&A, produces far more long-term benefit for humanity per dollar spent (or even in absolute terms) than the manned program. It is thus a dangerous political game to take from the unmanned program to pay for the manned side. At best the unmanned program whithers. At worst, the unmanned program disappears and the public, now seeing no long-term benefits from NASA, calls for the agency's termination, saying that private industry will do better. Private industry will fly tourists, but it will not do science. Transferring money out of the unmanned program is thus Russian roulette: no benefit combined with big risk.
35.	We are currently being eaten alive by the manned space program, not by planetary missions, large or small. The other hungry tiger in the room is Webb (NGST). It is proving to be un-doable at any reasonable budget -- it may be time to cancel it and start over with something less ambitious. The cost of Webb has reached >$1M per member of the AAS -- that's just plain stupid when there is not enough change left in the till to pay their salaries.
36.	I'm not big on 'human spaceflight' missions at all...
37.	Human exploration of Mars is more important than anything else NASA could do in the near-term future. The present R&A program has been a disaster and greatly retarded the advance of science.
38.	Robotic missions have been highly successful in furthering our understanding of the solar system. Manned missions have only made a minor contribution to such knowledge. Therefore, I would not sacrifice our most successful approach to fund manned missions. For the latter, I would find independent funding and stretch it out if necessary.
39.	Interplanetary spaceflight by humans should not be attempted until the problem of cosmic ray exposure to astronauts is solved, OR a propulsion system with a much higher specific impulse (Isp) is developed to shorten the transit time to Mars to weeks instead of months. Astrobiology has been overemphasized.
40.	There may be significant opportunities to piggyback real planetary science research on the future human missions that are threatening science funding today. The planetary science community might want to start preparing now to maximize those opportunities when they arise.
41.	The reasoning behind the development of manned space missions contains no supportable scientific goals. Costs will ultimately be insupportable. Space Station has been drastically scaled down from the original design because of uncontainable cost. The establishment of Space Station has no scientific justification. The man-in-space program cannot be justified on a scientific or cost argument relative to robotic missions. NASA is a highly politicized agency supporting the pork barrel and public relations needs of our legislators and the executive. The man-in-space activity has virtually nothing to do with scientific research, and I believe is rapidly advancing the destruction of research in the physical sciences that has been going on for the past two decades. Research in basic atomic and molecular physics in the USA was surpassed in quality and volume more than 10 years ago by researchers in Japan and Europe. Recovery from the benign (or ignorant) neglect will take decades, assuming that a recovery will actually be attempted in the near future.
42.	Eliminate funding of manned missions to the Moon and Mars over then next 10-15 years.
43.	I believe the push to put crewed missions on the Moon and Mars is deleterious to all other space science. These missions will be hugely expensive and pose considerable risk to the crews. I think the potential science return from crewed missions does not justify their cost or the damage to other missions and the R&A programs. Orbiter, lander and rover technology already provides superb science return at minimal cost/risk. I therefore think NASA should prioritize the more modest-sized missions and the R&A programs. After all, if there is no R&A, what are we sending missions for? Thanks for the opportunity to get our voices heard.
44.	I actually want to see human exploration of the Moon and Mars (and asteroids, and other bodies in the solar system), so I would be willing to focus more emphasis on the Moon and Mars, and to conduct types of research that are not only of value in their own right, but would support human exploration in some way.
45.	US Solar System exploration should aspire to not be robbed by the ISS, Shuttle, and proposed Lunar Bases.
46.	Scientific research is the fundamental reasons there are missions; we don't go in to space for tourism
47.	Retire the space shuttle sooner than later (now!) and put the money towards developing the new crewed-spacecraft and other dwindling missions.