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Obama Moves To Link Pentagon With NASA
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Jan 04, 2009 09:25 AM
from the thought-they-wanted-to-save-money dept.
from the thought-they-wanted-to-save-money dept.
Amiga Trombone sends this quote from the beginning of a story at Bloomberg:
"President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the US's civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China. Obama's transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency's planned launch vehicle, which isn't slated to fly until 2015, according to people who've discussed the idea with the Obama team."
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Project Orion to Bring U.S. Back to the Moon 399 comments
ganjadude writes "Thirty-seven years ago yesterday, Project Apollo put the first humans on the surface of the Moon. The next time the U.S. launches its astronauts to Earth's natural satellite, they will do so as part of Project Orion." From the article: "Under Project Orion, NASA would launch crews of four astronauts aboard Orion capsules, first to Earth orbit and the International Space Station and then later to the Moon. Two teams, one led by Lockheed Martin and the other a joint effort by Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Co., are currently competing to build the CEV. NASA is expected to select the winner in September."
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I can hear it now.. (Score:5, Funny)
"Houston, we have a problem.."
"Roger that, missiles launched"
hallelujah ! (Score:5, Funny)
finally... a good idea from the Obama camp, I was praying for at least one - now they will be able to use the cover of black military programs to protect their funding streams. Time to to get back in the space business
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine the amounts of mouth-foam, if Bush administration did this... Both internally (with corruption charges like yours) and abroad — viz. militarization of space.
Parent
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that's the point of the factionalisation and faux-rivalry of US politics, isn't it? To get people so divided into their allegiance to a party name that you can then pull the same shit with either party and only 50% of the people will complain whilst the rest are obliged to rationalise it somehow.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
truth be known - NASA and the DoD have had a pretty close relation ship over the years - in fact virtually all the planetary exploration missions have been launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station - the only pads operating from Kennedy Space Center proper are the shuttle pads. There have also been DoD specific missions on the space shuttle and on past Skylab missions. I think the move to put the space program under DoD auspices would serve more to share engineering, management, etc. as well as put t
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Your parent did not say that:
Well that's the point of the factionalisation and faux-rivalry of US politics, isn't it? To get people so divided into their allegiance to a party name that you can then pull the same shit with either party and only 50% of the people will complain whilst the rest are obliged to rationalise it somehow.
That's all your parent said. Your parent's parent said:
Imagine if ... Bush administration did this ... viz. militarization of space
You are really off base, here, and I'm not going to be nice about it.
Parent
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
He wasn't "partisan whining" (as far as I can tell). He was just observing the lack of complaints and guessing that there would be a lot greater suspicion and condemnation if Bush had done this. And I think it's fair to say he's right. That doesn't mean that it would be better or worse if the Republicans had done this.
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Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that there would be greater suspicion if Bush had tried to do this does in no way interfere with the fact that there would have been good reason to be more suspicious if Bush had attempted it.
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Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Interesting)
And who gives a shit, anyhow? Military weapons are the 'killer app' of space. We're going to get absolutely nowhere by attempting to convince people to "throw away" money on boring ass research "for the good of mankind." But just convince some generals that the next big thing is building huge space weapons platforms and spacecraft to counter the Chinese threat, and suddenly you'll have billions of dollars being poured into aerospace propulsion, ship design, etc. Sure, war is bad. But here we sit on this big rock, with a rapidly growing population and diminishing resources. What happens when the population gets too big and the resources are too few? What happens when someone accidently launches an ICBM and every nation on Earth follows suit? What if a huge meteor strikes? Humans are always going to be competitive and war-like. Let's bring the war out into space, develop new technologies in the process, start getting people off this rock, and deflate tensions here on Earth.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In all honesty, I'm for it. We don't have the phat loots right now to be going to the moon, or to mars, or any crazy shenanigans like that.
Much like my retired grandmother, we have just about enough money to make a weekly run to the grocery store and church, provided our means of transportation doesn't break down.
Unfortunately, that isn't the case right now. The shuttles are a bust, as unfortunate as that is.
So our choice now is either scrap it entirely or piggyback on some military technology, provided i
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Informative)
What I found odd in this story is that the DoD's space budget is $22B. NASA requested a $17.6B budget for FY2009 [nasa.gov]. WTF? Does the DoD even do anything past LEO/polar orbits?
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Re:hallelujah ! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Funny)
The American Way!
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Re:hallelujah ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Although the DoD is not just military. The NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency are both in the DoD, and they are civilian (to be fair, the DIA also employs military and the NSA is headed up by a military officer). Not to mention the head of the DoD is a civilian.
There is also the National Security Council (10 out of 11 in the Council are non-military). Also, the President (a civilian) is the head of the military.
I understand your concern, but we tore down the wall between civilian and military a long time ago.
Parent
New name (Score:5, Funny)
NASA will become a fourth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, known as 'Starfleet'.
Re:New name (Score:5, Funny)
NASA will become a fourth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, known as 'Starfleet'.
Will the uniforms ride up every single time you sit down? ;)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Will the uniforms ride up every single time you sit down?
Yes, but I hear they are developing a manoeuvre to fix it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fourth Branch? (Score:4, Informative)
USCG is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and not currently part of the DoD since we are actually at "war".
The USCG was also transfered from the Department of Transportation and not Commerce on the creation of the DHS.
It is also considered one of the five (5) armed services under the US Code with the Marines as well (even though the Marines are administrated under the Department of the Navy due to historical reasons).
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Science v. Defense (Score:5, Insightful)
The military and Nasa have always had a relationships; choosing astronauts from the ranks of the Air Force, for one. Obviously, the technology developed through the space program has military applications such as spy satellites and obviously a rocket that can put a man in orbit can just as easily deliver a multi-ton warhead to the other side of the planet. What worries me in this plan is shifting the focus from science to defense objectives.
While NASA has a long relationship with the military and shares plenty of technology, they are a civilian organization. I know that up until recently, NASA's mission was, "To understand and protect our home planet...", but the main focus has been to send interplanetary probes [nasa.gov] into the solar system, bust up comets [nasa.gov] and generally produce outstanding backgrounds for our desktops [nasaimages.org]. Would this shift in leadership take more energy away from studying the nature of the universe, lofting the next generation of space telescopes and studying our planet from above? Under the military it seems more likely that NASA's goals would shift away from "understanding" and more to "protecting". I imagine this wold involve developing the next generation of anti-satellite and anti-anti-satellite weapons (despite the fact that earth orbit is supposed to be a weapons free zone [wikipedia.org]).
What insight does the slashdot community have on this? Will shifting NASA to military control result in a more nimble and focused organization able to achieve the goal of putting a man on mars in the next 20 years, or will military research take precedence over science?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I like the story of gamma rays first being detected because we were looking for evidence of the Soviets using Nukes on the Moon [spacedaily.com]. DoD projects that help develop tech for NASA projects could be a good thing.
As long as they don't start developing plans for bringing liberty to the hydrocarbon rich [universetoday.com] populace of Titan.
Story Inaccuracies (Score:5, Informative)
Check NASAWatch [nasawatch.com] to see some inacuracies in this Bloomberg story.
Undertones of another Cold War (Score:4, Insightful)
Altruistic as the space race may seem, China will soon be a much larger influence in the world than today. Currently, their middle class is larger than the entire population of the USA, and the rest of the population is catching up fast.
If they have a well developed space program, it's all the more leverage if they start to flex their muscles. You can bet their bureaucracy knows of the military benefits of space. Everyone and their mother already has surveillance satellites up. The US government wants a powerful presence up there as well.
The race for power is underpinning this race for space, just as it did in the time of Sputnik. Only this time, bankrupting China (like the US bankrupt the USSR) doesn't seem to be an option.
Eliminate redundancy?... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty ignorant on this subject, and not a US national, but wouldn't this be a rather good way to eliminate redundancy in similar projects across both agencies at a time when the US needs to rationalise expenditure?
Want to go back to the Moon? Build Saturn Vs! (Score:5, Informative)
What's maddening is that nobody involved in this debate seems to realize that:
1. We solved resonance and pogoing issues in the 1960s vis-a-vis the Saturn V stack.
2. We can simply dust off the Apollo 18-20 J-series mission plans and the Apollo X/ALSS/AES/LESA studies, and execute them.
3. All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.
4. SRBs are insanely dangerous due to their non-throttalability, and should not be man-rated beyond the poorly-designed Shuttle stack.
We knew all this *more than 40 years ago* (we ignored the SRB issue back then, which led directly to Challenger); how can these people be so ignorant?!
Here's a link [si.edu] to just a few of the studies which were done of follow-on missions. Here are links to Apollo X [astronautix.com], ALSS [astronautix.com], AES [astronautix.com], and LESA [astronautix.com].
Stephen Baxter's Voyage [amazon.com] is an interesting alternate history based upon some of these mission plans (although he's way too hard on the Germans, IMHO).
The bottom line - if NASA want to go back to the Moon (far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth), all they have to do is to start building modernized Saturn Vs, Apollo CMs, SMs, & LMs.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Those stacks would be even more useful for unmanned payloads, and unlike NASA the military is getting very good at understanding machines should go on dangerous places instead of people.
We only need to send people to the moon to explore and exploit it. We can explore and exploit it remotely and get more missions up. Getting meat in space isn't urgently required to learn what is out there.
The longevity of the Mars Rovers is yet more proof of this.
Re:Want to go back to the Moon? Build Saturn Vs! (Score:5, Insightful)
All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.
I share your admiration for the Saturn V. But re-creating it is not the best idea.
According to Henry Spencer, the blueprints for the Saturn V still exist, but much of the undocumented extra knowledge was in fact lost. The skilled machinists who knew how to turn those designs into working parts are long retired or dead; the special heat treatments needed to make some of the alloys are forgotten; etc.
And, as another poster noted in this thread, if you did build a Saturn V it would have 1960's electronics.
If you say "but we will just update the alloys and electronics" then it isn't really a Saturn V anymore, and it will need to be re-tested and re-engineered. In which case, you might as well have started from a clean sheet of paper.
Also, the Saturn V was our answer to the problem of getting boots on the moon as fast as possible. I'd prefer to see the problem of moon travel solved correctly, which IMHO means making it easier and faster to mount expeditions, and making it possible to send larger payloads. This means I want to see a cheap, really reusable orbital vehicle; a space station suitable for staging moon missions; an Earth-moon spacecraft, assembled in space, that was never designed to land on Earth or the moon; and reusable moon landing vehicles.
Every time you use a Saturn V to go to the moon, you destroy one Saturn V. That's expensive, and it doesn't scale well. If we have a reliable "pickup truck" that can carry a small payload to orbit, then do it again in less than a week, we can send up the crew and supplies for a moon mission.
With the Saturn V, our astronauts lived inside a little tin can for a few days, then returned. I'd like to see an actual moon base sent over in pieces, and see people living on the moon for months at a time (and doing science the whole time).
Cheap, reliable, routine flights to orbit change the whole game. Instead of repeating the space race, let's build an infrastructure and go to space to stay.
(far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth)
Yes, yes, yes!! And make that prize tax-free while you are at it. And put a smaller prize for second place. These prizes would be cheap if someone succeeds, and if no one succeeds we would pay nothing. It's better than paying cost plus contracts to aerospace contractors.
steveha
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but the thing is, *we know how to do all that*, we've done it before. Far better and easier and cheaper, IMHO, than this Ares nonsense with SRBs ready to kill the crew during launch.
Hell, we could take the Saturn Vs lying on the ground (3-4) of them, the unflown CMs and LMs lying around, and refurbish them, for starters!
Too Much is being read into this (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and we know for a fact... (Score:5, Interesting)
...that the military hasn't been running a black budget man in space program right along all this time. Their budget is huge compared to nasa, and right in the article, they have heavy lift rockets perfectly good for the task. And who's to say they don't have a two stage to orbit rocket plane or hybrid scramjet/rocket whatever dropped from a mothership already? Like they are going to brag about this, or we take it as gospel that they just stopped developing black budget advanced flying craft 40-50 years ago? The last one they finally fessed up to is the B2, we are now being made to believe they just gave that sort of research and deployment up? Really? They just stopped? And look at the near hysterical fit they went into when that dude in england hacked into some servers and he claims he found evidence of *just that*, a running black budget military manned space program. They want that guy shut up, locked away for the rest of his life in the US. Why? He didn't do anything but look, no damages, seems like a two year sentence or something like that is his native country would be sufficient, but nope, they went into serious overdrive to get him extradited.
Don't dismiss the thought out of hand. My guess is, because I have yet to see any evidence that they have given up black budget advanced aeronautical research, is that we had the technology for man in space a long time ago now, and the military just kept doing it, with the nasa efforts beng the public misdirection effort to keep focus elsewhere for deniability purposes, They just got better at burying stuff inside the black budgets.
Space is the high ground, no way in hell would they NOT want that advantage, including having humans up there and a way to quickly get them up and back. There's another guy out there who has been imaging rather large and pretty secret orbital craft, I don't have the url handy but I have seen his pics, those are some really large spacecraft, some of they completely large enough to hold a small crew.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It is entirely possible that they have given this stuff up. Keep in mind that the B2 was fairly close to being done by the time that Clinton came in. Clinton cut the military's budget by a fair amount, and black budget stuff is the easiest to cut (by definition, not very many people needs to know about it)It is somewhat doubtful that Bush can afford to keep funding these things, considering the wars that he is fighting, and the high tech planes he is funding. In any case, the military is hardly in desperate
Re:Yes, and we know for a fact... (Score:4, Funny)
I would wager since 1961. ;)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
With the equity markets down over 32% last year and the economy still deeply intrenched in a deflationary correction, buying any "stock" right now without a large and reliable dividend is not wise
Well, I'm a big fan of buying dividend stocks, so I won't argue with you on that one, but I think your wrong about it being unwise to buy non-dividend stocks. You want to buy stocks when the prices are low. I'm actually loving this period -- I'm not gonna retire for 30+ years and this is a great time to be buying shares at dirt cheap prices.
Sucks for the people who were going to retire soon but if they were going to retire next year why the hell did they have so many investments in equities? If I was cl
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:5, Informative)
Sucks for the people who were going to retire soon but if they were going to retire next year why the hell did they have so many investments in equities?
That's a good question. The general answer is that most retired investors need their portfolio to generate a return at least equal to inflation, over time. Historically cash has a negative return after inflation and bonds are maybe break-even at best. But last year all that went out the window. Stocks have had a 1-year negative return that's almost unprecedented and even high-grade bonds have taken a hit. Plus markets over the world are down, not just the U.S. So, while generally cash is a bad place to be, long-term, last year nothing else was any good. That still doesn't mean, though, that you should keep your nest egg under the mattress: over the long term you'll see no net growth and your retirement income will shrink, net inflation.
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Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, if you get the thirty year nothing prevents you from still paying it off early, you just a slightly worse rate.
The difference then is that if you get a worse job (or in our case, your wife plans on staying home after you have kids) you revert back to the lower monthly payment as a requirement.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Buy low?
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:4, Funny)
What exactly does America have going for her here? And what do you think Obama can do? Do you think his voodoo reaganomics will spend us out of trouble?
The voodoo economics refer to trickle down economics... which is the exact opposite of what Obama said he would do... Ironic considering reaganomics are much to blame for the current crisis!
Also the American national debt is even more of a concern to the RoW than for the US... so if the US really got into trouble, we (the RoW) would probably bail you out!
Oh and the situation was even grimmer in the 30s... So reform can turn things around (New Deal 2.0?)
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Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:4, Interesting)
-The American manufacturing base is declining.
Source? Everything I've seen shows record industrial output [economagic.com] prior to the recent economic downturn. What indication do you have of a reversal in this long-term trend?
-High school graduations and the overall literacy is down the tubes.
Once again, the data that I could find [childtrendsdatabank.org] contradicts your claim. Why do you think any recent spike in dropouts is anything other than a temporary aberration in the larger trend?
-The Baby Boomers are about to retire.
That was certainly the case a few months ago, but the stock market crash took care of that problem. The evaporation of so much wealth has pushed out retirement [cnn.com] for a lot of boomers.
-The 50+ trillion National Debt (by 2020) needs to be paid, or at least serviced, which means much higher taxes (and much more job loss)
First of all, remember that even with low inflation $50 billion in 2020 is likely to be worth about $38 billion in today's dollars. Second, I find it hard to believe that people will continue to loan the US that much cheap money. If we run up that much debt, it will almost certainly cause high inflation. Cash would be a very bad position to be in with high inflation, as would bonds. If you have the stomach for commodities, they would probably weather inflation pretty well. So where would you suggest putting money in a high-inflation situation? Personally, I'm going for real estate pretty soon. But like I said, equities seem fairly well-priced right now, too.
And what do you think Obama can do?
Not much - the fed has pretty much blown its wad. The best I can hope for is that he spends all of this debt money on infrastructure, so that we at least get something lasting out of the political stunt called "stimulus".
Do you think his voodoo reaganomics will spend us out of trouble?
Reaganomics was usually applied to "trickle-down" theory, which isn't really what Obama is proposing. Nevertheless, any stimulus isn't going to change the broad direction of the economy, but it might take the edge off. The government is a lot bigger than it was during the depression, so don't try to compare government action then and now.
If I were you, I'd convert your stocks into gold and get the hell out of here.
Gold is way too erratic for me. If I had been a really smart guy and seen the stock crash coming in late september, I might have transferred to gold. Unfortunately, the price of gold crashed along with the stock market (after an initial spike). Now, it has since recovered - so if I held on to it I'd be fine, but no better off than if I'd stayed in cash. And who knows what it will do tomorrow? It's varied by roughly 15-20% in just the last month or so.
Starving dudes with loose nukes, that's what it's coming to.
Now you've lost me.
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Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:5, Funny)
What, you'd prefer to buy when stocks are up? While it is true that a lot of investors do buy high and sell low, it's really not the best way to make money.
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Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as you are the one buying low and selling high.
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Hopefully it's reuse of existing military tech (Score:5, Interesting)
My interpretation of the article is not that Obama will want DoD staff to help manage NASA projects, but rather he wants NASA to be able to use already developed DoD rocket technology (which is now too classified for NASA to use). Since it's already developed, the over-budget and over-time has already been paid for....
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Another way to look at it: buy as much as you can. Either this cycle will will end and you'll come out a wealthy person in a few decades - or the economy will completely collapse, and we're all screwed anyway.
Re:Imagine the BDS had Bush done this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda like that "tolerant" neighborhood near San Francisco
If you think San Franciscans are tolerant try applying for a carry permit within the city......
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Re:Imagine the BDS had Bush done this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being tolerant doesn't mean being stupid.
The only thing that's stupid is disarming the law-abiding portion of the population and marking them as easy pray for the armed predators of the world.
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Re:yay.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The design of the space shuttle was influenced enormously by the military, just FYI.
He's not a moron and this is not unprecedented.
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Re:yay.... (Score:5, Informative)
The whole reason the Space Transportation System (STS, or just "space shuttle") looks the way it does is entirely due to now-defunct military requirements. When they were designing the shuttle, the DoD had a requirement to be able to place a payload in polar orbit and return to Earth in one orbit, in order to "secretly" deploy spy satellites. This is hard. No, really, this is very hard. The earth is spinning "sideways" and it takes a tremendous amount of impulse (read: fuel) to change your orbit from sideways to vertical. Then you have to land again.
NASA, dutiful organization that it was, came up with the idea of "tacking" the orbiter on the side. And they gave it wings. This was the only way they could get the crew-carrying module to safely glide back to its original destination.
About 5 years into the design, the DoD said, "No, thanks, we don't want that system anymore," and left NASA holding the bag. So, we're stuck with this design where the re-entry surface is exposed to the outside during launch (nobody else does that). The engines on the orbiter remain the highest energy-dense engines ever developed.
For more trivia, see here [wikipedia.org].
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Re:yay.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:First steps towards the Militarization of NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
I was already concerned about his wanting to send more troupes to Afghanistan, but now this????
Umm, Afghanistan != Iraq. You do remember why we are over there, right?
The government always needs a boogeyman to keep us off-balance. The cold war with Russia carried it for a while.
I don't think the populations of the countries that were effectively annexed by the Soviet Union thought of them as a mere bogeyman. The Cold War came about when the Soviet Union refused to honor her wartime agreements and decided to annex Eastern Europe. It didn't come about because our Government needed a bogeyman to distract the population.
but this demonization will only hurt relations
So we should turn the other check when they oppress human rights and just keep doing business with them as usual?
Also, keep in mind that China already has the US by its financial balls in a very assymetrical fashion, and I'm not sure what that would portend. But it does give China a lot of leverage over the US.
How do they have us by the 'financial balls'? They could dump their holdings of US Treasuries and pull the rug out from under that market -- but that would hurt them (and the rest of the World for that matter) at least as badly as it would hurt us. They have 400,000,000 people they need to pull out of poverty. That isn't gonna happen if they undermine their biggest trading relationship.
I had always told everyone to keep eyes on China, for they would become the next rival of the US in the 21st century
They may well become our rival. We'll see. We aren't without our own strengths and they aren't without weakness though. We might see a different World in the 21st century but we'll still be around.
keep an eye on the relationship between Russia and China, as I suspect they will become strong allies in the years and decades to come
It's just as likely they'll become rivals as it is they will become allies. Either way, it's part of the geopolitical game. We're laying the foundation for a future relationship with India. Think India might be a useful counterweight to China?
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Step one of agitation: Know your audience.
RTFA. (Score:4, Insightful)
from TFA: "Obamas transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agencys planned launch vehicle,"
The idea is to SAVE MONEY. Whether that works out or not, we'll see. And as for "trading bullets for rockets", first that seems an excellent idea to me, but also Iraq is costing upwards of 300 billion last I heard; whatever NASA gets is pocket change compared to that.
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