A piece in Aviation Week — of all things — gets me on the annoyed soapbox this week.
Lockheed-Martin, a prime stakeholder (i.e. contractor with big bucks on the line) for NASA’s new Orion capsule, got a nice one-page write-up in AvWeek on the potential “problems” surrounding commercial alternatives to its not-to-fly until 2015 manned space craft — oh, like reliability and safety.
Since newcomer SpaceX is currently getting billions in development dollars for its Dragon spacecraft to first deliver cargo to the International Space Station and then evolve it into a manned version capable of delivering people to the space station at about half the cost of the Russians — never mind what Lock-Mart’s price tag is — ya gotta wonder why AvLeak didn’t ask more aggressive questions such as “Gee, so what suggestions do you have to reducing flights to ISS and beyond?”
You have to wonder if the reporter was inexperienced or if the PR person didn’t properly “set the stage.” Meaning, the PR person does know the industry and didn’t prep the spokesperson to address it in the interview.