RE: Royal Society president's anti-astronaut comments sparks UK backlash

Flightglobal:

UK space scientists have criticised Martin Rees, president of the UK's national academy of science, the Royal Society, and the University of Cambridge's professor of cosmology and astrophysics, for his comments that Europe should abandon human spaceflight "to be competitive". While on...

Author: Rob Coppinger

Date: 18 April 2008

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The wheel turns full circle! Just before the launch of Sputnik, one of Rees' predecessors: the then Astronomer Royal, suggested that articles written about spaceflight - manned or otherwise - were "...utter Bilge". That was later taken out of context to mean that Spaceflight itself was "utter bilge": as you might expect, after the launch of Sputnik to make him look foolish. This time however, all the spare money has gone to bail out the Finance Geniuses that brought us 15/9/08 and Financial Meltdown thereafter. The Augustine panel has said we can't afford Manned Spaceflight beyond LEO. Perhaps this time Rees will be borne out. Sad if so; but par for the course these days....