I admire NASA Administrator Charles Bolden for fighting for efficient, innovative, spirited American spaceflight and against federal government waste and inefficiency [“Bolden, Lawmakers Point Fingers over State of U.S. Human Spaceflight,” March 31, page 5].
While NASA was blowing $20 billion on its failed/canceled Constellation program, private enterprise SpaceX was producing vastly superior boosters/capsules for less than $500 million.
Yet rather than leverage those vehicles to reach Mars soon, U.S. lawmakers want NASA to waste more than $60 billion and a decade on the unsustainable, unneeded, unaffordable Space Launch System and Orion boondoggles.
SpaceX launches its rockets with about 100 people; NASA took more than 13,000 “workers” to launch a shuttle and still has over 8,000 employees at Kennedy Space Center despite no NASA launches from 2011 to at least 2018.
The U.S. space program is too important to be further entrusted to our bloated, pork-driven federal government.
Warren White
Leesburg, Fla.
