Augustine: Objectives Before Architectures – Strategies Before Tactics

Augustine Commission and Space Exploration: Objectives Before Architectures – Strategies Before Tactics, Paul Spudis
“The release of the long-awaited report from the Augustine Commission has generated much discussion in space policy circles. Much of this discussion is congruent with a lot of the debate within the space community in that it focuses primarily on means rather than ends. A more pressing issue is why are we going into space with people and what will we do there. What are we trying to accomplish? We first need to look at our objectives, not the architecture. We need to develop a strategy to achieve our objectives; the tactics are the ways of implementing a strategy. In other words, once again, we are putting the cart before the horse.”