'Lunar Prospector: Against All Odds' Book Released

[Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI,

"New Book Reveals That Private Lunar Mission Succeeded Despite NASA Roadblocks"
Lunar Research Institute Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050402/25001.html?.v=1

: "Lunar Prospector: Against All Odds," by Alan Binder, Ph.D. (Ken
: Press, see ken@xxxxxxxxxxxx or call 520-743-3200), is the highly
: personal and engaging story of how the Lunar Prospector orbital
: mapping mission was developed and carried out by the author between
: late 1989 and 2001 (see www.lunar-research-institute.org for an
: outline of the book and a photo essay of the mission).

: While this is partly a technical story, it is much more a human
: interest story about how an individual can, with persistence and a
: belief in the value of what one is doing, overcome all odds and
: obstacles and achieve an impossible goal. Further, like the Lunar
: Prospector Mission itself, this book was written to expose to the
: American taxpayer the basic flaws of an ever increasingly
: incompetent NASA and its major aerospace contractors.

: Though the Lunar Prospector Mission was a small, inexpensive,
: unmanned, orbital mapping mission, the reader will, via the
: author's experiences in conducting his mission, become intimately
: acquainted with the inefficient and self-serving activities of the
: entrenched NASA bureaucracy and the big aerospace companies. As
: such, the reader will come to understand how NASA's increasing
: incompetence led to 1) the destruction of the space shuttles
: Challenger and Columbia and their crews, 2) the loss of the 1992
: Mars Observer, the 1999 Mars Climate Observer, the 1999 Mars Polar
: Lander, 3) the never-to-be-finished International Space Station
: that is already five times over its $8 billion budget and a decade
: over its original schedule, and 4) many similar NASA failures that
: have cost the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and have
: already taken 14 human lives.

: The reader will also find that the goals of the mission, originally
: conceived as a private effort, were to demonstrate that when
: missions are conducted in a commercial mode, outside of NASA rather
: than as a government bureaucracy-driven program, the costs are
: reduced by up to a factor of 10 and the time scale of development
: is cut by a factor of two or more.

: Since the author could not find philanthropic support for such a
: private mission during the first seven years of the effort, he
: proposed the mission to the new NASA Discovery Program that was
: designed to show that missions could be done "Faster, Better,
: Cheaper." Lunar Prospector became the first peer-reviewed and
: competitively selected Discovery Mission in 1995. Four and a half
: years later, the mission ended its completely successful, 19-month
: mapping program of the moon at a total cost of just $65 million, a
: quarter of the cap for Discovery Missions and a fraction of the
: cost of normal NASA missions.

: Lunar Prospector, the most cost-effective lunar mission ever flown,
: was the first and only Discovery Mission to really show how to do
: missions "Faster, Better, Cheaper." And the author is the only
: scientist in the history of the NASA space program to have guided
: and led a mission from its inception through its ultimate success,
: despite NASA's resistance to the author's having total control over
: his mission.

: After having succeeded in demonstrating the "commercial viability"
: of lunar exploration, the author turned to trying
: -- unsuccessfully -- to convince NASA and the federal government to
: initiate a commercially based, lunar exploration program with the
: ultimate goal of utilizing its resources for the benefit of
: humanity and to obtain a return on investment for the American
: taxpayer.

: Though it is questionable that Lunar Prospector's success in
: demonstrating that lunar exploration can be done inexpensively as
: commercial ventures had any influence on the president's January
: 2004 decision to start a new Lunar/Mars initiative, Lunar
: Prospector showed it could done several years before the president
: made his decision. And it is without question that Lunar Prospector
: did influence the provisions of the Commercial Space Act of 1998
: passed by Congress.

: The new book, "Lunar Prospector: Against All Odds" will not only
: show the reader the technical and human sides of an exciting lunar
: exploration mission, it will also demonstrate why it is vital to
: the nation's interests that the exploration of the moon and planets
: must be taken out of the hands of the bungling NASA bureaucracy,
: and transformed into a commercially based program that provides a
: return on investment as initiated.

: The author, Alan Binder, Ph.D., is available for interviews.

: Contact:
: Lunar Research Institute, Tucson
: Alan Binder, 520-663-5870
: abrbprospector@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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