Today, NASA administrator and former Secretary of the Navy Sean O’Keefe addressed the National Press Club about “NASA’s Strategic Plan.” The following analysts are available for interviews:
ALICE SLATER
Director of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, Slater said today: “NASA’s strategic plan involves the acceleration of militarizing space. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers was head of U.S. Space Command when it published its 1998 ‘Visions for 2020’ report which talked of ‘dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment.’ In January 2001 the space commission chaired by Donald Rumsfeld affirmed the same vision — to dominate the globe from the high ground of space — with the official imprimatur of an incoming Secretary of Defense…. It’s particularly troubling that this strategic plan is being announced only days before the convening of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee meeting in Geneva.” Slater will be going to Geneva for that conference. She added: “The U.S. is sabotaging global disarmament. Hopes for meaningful progress towards nuclear disarmament have been shattered, particularly by the shameless grab to dominate space.” [A PDF file of “Visions for 2020” is at: www.gsinstitute.org/resources/extras/vision_2020.pdf — and the Rumsfeld space commission report is at: www.defenselink.mil/pubs/space20010111.html]
BRUCE GAGNON
Director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Gagnon said today: “Immediately after his appointment by George W. Bush, O’Keefe told the nation that all of NASA’s missions in the future would be ‘dual use.’ This of course means that the distinction between civilian and military technologies will be rubbed out. The military takeover of the space program is near complete.”
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KARL GROSSMAN
Professor at the State University of New York, Grossman is author of The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. He said today: “At all of our peril, O’Keefe is moving to expand NASA’s program of using nuclear power in space — including reviving the decades-old notion of building nuclear-powered spacecraft. What if the Columbia shuttle had been nuclear-powered? Nuclear debris would have spread over Texas and Louisiana. Still, two days after the Columbia tragedy, NASA advanced its new $3 billion space nuclear program, Project Prometheus. It is being pushed despite the development of new safe space energy systems, including solar-electric propulsion and solar sails.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
