by Marcel F. Williams
The Augustine Commission testified before the Senate and the House of Representatives last week and were greeted with both praise and criticism by some of the legislators. Ironically, the commission was not criticized for reaching the conclusion that NASA would require a $3 billion increase in its annual budget since the legislators already knew that since our civilian space program has been underfunded for years-- if not decades. But they were rather critical about was the rather nebulous elevations of the alternatives to the Ares 1/Ares V architecture to return the US to the Moon-- especially since the commission appeared to conclude that all of the alternatives were almost equally as expensive as the Ares 1/Ares V architecture.