Hello

I am Bill Housley, Science Fiction author and long time space exploration advocate.

I am not sure I agree with the Constellation program, but I believe that a dated goal to return to the Moon and go to Mars is necessary if we are ever going to get there. I have long been a fan of pivately funded, commercially driven space development initiative, with government serving the role of exploration. Wherever robotic missions work best they should be undertaken, but robots don't do everything well and the "discovery sequence" can be slow when performed exclusively by robots.

Whereever manned missions are possible and necessary I think we should set goals to acheive them with robots paving the way to reach a clearly defined and aggresivelly pursued manned exploration goal.

I also have a broad range of other interests.

Hi Bill!

Seems like a considered, reasonable position. What the space advocacy community needs.

Welcome to the site. Feel free to add commentary to any of the topics, even if they seem a little "stale". On these boards, its common to have arguments that progress at geological time scales.

Shouldn't that be "cosmological time scales"?

Hello Bill, and welcome! I look forward to reading your views on all space related issues.

And I! Good to have you here

It's a pity Bill didn't stick around. I'd like to have heard more about his views on NASA space policy.

This forum unfortunately doesn't have much traffic...

He's a regular on some of LinkedIn's space related discussion groups.