Monday, August 13, 2012

Question 9 -- Other Remarks

Are there any additional comments regarding NASA's strategic direction that you would like to make?
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NASA needs a PAC (Political-Action-Committee) championing it's causes in both legislative and public arenas. A PAC will set-the-record-straight in-so-many-ways. A PAC can be a powerful-3-way-interface with the-public, government, and NASA. How do we make-this-happen?

Legislation should be sought to place NASA beyond the political-vagaries of each election-cycle by fixing NASA's funding to a level pegged to the national-budget or the GDP effectively voiding further-use of NASA as a political-football. More importantly, this gives NASA credibility, confidence and the ability to design and execute long-range and even multi-decadal plans which are a necessity in aeronautical-research and space-exploration.

Should NASA set up a system-for-endowments?. Similar to hospitals and institutions-of-higher-learning should NASA actively sought endowments from wealthy-individuals to fund some of it's smaller projects?. Along with benefits to the estate for contributions the concept of this type of legacy will certainly be attractive to many individuals and even organizations. --The law doesn't allow individual contributions to a federal agency and the ethics and practicality of this concept have yet to be fully-thought-through.

NASA's single tallest hurdle is not in the air or in space nor it is even technological. It is here on earth with re-capturing the hearts and minds of the citizenry. As Abe 'The-Man' Lincoln famously puts it "With public sentiment, nothing can fail, without it nothing can succeed."

NASA has brought our nation both glory and wealth. In the forming of your recommendations keep history in perspective, that although the cost for the glory has been very high, monetarily it is only pennies or less of every dollar the wealth has brought in.

As much as possible please keep my comments as a single-document. It was written and meant to be delivered as a single essay.

Finally, thank you for this opportunity to 'place my thoughts on paper'.

Michael Chino Yap
Citizen
Aug 16th 2012
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