Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ames.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!amd!dual!ames!al
From: al@ames.UUCP (Al Globus)
Newsgroups: net.misc,net.politics,net.space
Subject: Re: SPACE Issues in the Election
Message-ID: <631@ames.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Nov-84 16:44:33 EST
Article-I.D.: ames.631
Posted: Fri Nov  9 16:44:33 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Nov-84 19:42:38 EST
References: <882@ihuxp.UUCP> <518@tty3b.UUCP>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 29

> Yeah, I used to support NASA and space exploration.  Now it's just all become
> another wing of the Pentagon.  The Space Shuttle is running an awful lot of
> military missions.  "We Came In Peace for All Mankind" is just a saying on
> a plaque now.

You are badly misinformed.  I work on space station in a very minor capacity
and have a little better information.
DOD opposed space station when Reagan was making up his mind.  They will 
avoid using it because it is to be an international facility with attendant
security problems.  

If you read the space station requirements documents that
have come out over the last two years you will see a gradual
receeding of the Pentagon as a user until, at present, it has practically
disappeared.  In the space station request for proposal (the statement of
work for the next two years of space station effort in the U.S.)
there is, I believe, ONE reference to national security.  The reference
states that there MAY be national security users but none are presently
planned.  Also, the space station will probably provide only commercial
level encription as a service, not DOD levels.

If you go to NASA's space station meetings you will hear little
or no discussion of DOD issues anymore, although they were once moderately
prominent.  This is because DOD is not viewed as a major user of space station,
and just as another research outfit when it does use the station.

As for shuttle flights, there is to be ONE dedicated DOD flight this year, out
of six or eight.  That's not and "awful lot" in my vocabulary.