A Letter to Lynn Woolsey on the 2008 NASA Authorization Act

Dear Representative Woolsey:

Thank you for seeing me in your Santa Rosa office a couple of weeks ago. As you pointed out during our discussion on space policy, in principle we are not so far apart, rather it is a matter of emphasis and priority. Once again, I urge you to consider that, given wise programmatic decisions, NASA funding returns far more to the American people than the outlay, and it is an investment in our future. It deserves high priority because it augments many other positive goals. In the military, we have the concept of key war-fighting technologies as "force multipliers." I see key space technologies as "future multipliers." They provide us with more and better options as to how we will continue to exist on our own overburdened planet.

In reading the 2008 NASA Authorization Act that was just reported out of the House Science and Technology Committee, I was particularly gratified to see that it provided funding for a Space Shuttle mission to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station. Last December, on the Fox Business Channel, I confidently predicted this during a discussion with Ed Hudgins of the Atlas Society (formerly of the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation), who was decrying the grounding of the spectrometer as another egregious example of government waste. When the government writes off a billion-dollar spectrometer, they call it waste, and when private enterprise writes down ten billion dollars in sub-prime loans, they call it a business decision.

I hope that you will add your name as a cosponsor of the 2008 NASA Authorization Act. I will continue to do my utmost to articulate a progressive vision of human space exploration.

Sincerely,

Thomas Gangale
Executive Director, OPS-Alaska