Mike Griffin's Letter to the Augustine Panel: "Our goal should be broader than any single option."

Mike Griffin’s July 26, 2009 letter to the Augustine Panel on the future of the human space flight program is available here. One of the points he makes is the following:

“In closing, when we talk about offering programmatic “options”, I think we miss a key point, because such options are always couched in terms of “or” arguments — humans or robots, moon or Mars, NEOs or moon, and so on. Our goal should be broader than any single option.

“Quite simply, the goal of the United States should be to be the leader in creating tomorrow’s spacefaring civilization. To do that, we have to replace “or” with “and”, we have to be prepared to exploit what we find and to take advantage of the options we create. If that is the real goal, then because we cannot do everything at once, it we must discuss the order of progression. But we must recognize that a single-point focus on any one destination, even Mars, is not of great long-term value.”