Funding Promised for Trips to Moon, Mars

image77 writes "NASA's new administrator, Michael Griffin, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Tuesday the space agency will have the necessary funding to send astronauts back to the moon and to Mars. Delay states "We will provide the funding necessary to get us where we want to go.""

Re:So how many babies HAS he eaten this week?

[TripMaster Monkey]

...exactly how Tom DeLay warrants the label 'evil'...
Here you go. [mikehersh.com]

Just remember...you asked for it.

But for how long?

[dfn5]

"We will provide the funding necessary to get us where we want to go."

At least for the next 3 years. Reagan said back in '84 that the ISS would be a reality in 10 years. 20 years later it's only partially completed.

Re:Just Set Up The Apollo Prize

[robindmorris]

Just set up a big prize for the first team to land a man on the moon and safely return him to the earth.

And how big would this prize have to be in order to make someone interested in competing for it? Remember that they have to factor in the chance that they might fail, or that someone else might do it first. Remember that Burt Rutan said that going in to orbit (which is still a long way from the moon) is at least an order of magnitude more difficult than what space ship one did. Looks to me like the prize you would have to offer is on the order of what NASA would spend to do the job themselves.

Remeber also, that with current costs for access to space, any ideas of commercializing space (other than communications satellites/remote sensing satellites) are non-starters. The cost to get into space, to keep workers alive out there, and to bring back whatever it is you have mined, mean that the economics are just not there.

The only way this will change is if someone comes up with a whole new way of getting mass into orbit. If they can do that, they won't need any incentive in terms of a prize, because their development expenditure will pay for itself very quickly.

Face facts. Putting people in space is expensive. It's also a one-off proposition; there will never be lots of companies competing on price to take people into space. Free market economics don't apply here. It's just as economical for the government to do it itself (via NASA) than for a company to do it, and send the bill to the government.

Go get a real job and stop destroying the US's pioneering heritage, and don't you dare lobby my Congressman with your time and travel paid for by my taxes

For your information, NASA employees are forbidden by law from lobbying congress, so that's one use of your taxes that you don't have to worry about.

(Disclaimer: I work for a NASA contractor on-site at a NASA location.)

Re:Thanks, Tom!

[Lucractius]

There indeed are millions, billions, even Trillions and extillions ( ;) ) of dollars to be made up there . But there are significant problems

Not the least of which is the UN.

(dont get me wrong i like the UN )

The UN space and seafloor treaties. are while good in some ways both a major obstacle for any kind of commercial "exploitation" (to use the correct terminoligy) The sea treaties are all well and good. i dont want the seaflood being used as a comercial landfill at least while im alive. I like clean water :P

There is a lot of very shaky ground on this but there are full copies available here http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/SpaceLaw/treaties.htm l [unvienna.org]
for anyone interested in the laws regarding space in general :)

and IANAL but to me it seems that the ability to personaly proffit off a celestial body is quite limited under those treaties. Feel free to correct me cause ill be damn happy to find out .. this topic has always been a passion of mine :)

Re:So how many babies HAS he eaten this week?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Nice try, but no.

The petition is a demand that Tom be removed from office, period. In fact, the word 'allegations' (of which you neo-cons seem to be inordinately fond) is only used once in the entire petition, to refer to only one reason cited for the demand for removal. Also, there's no mention at all of the word 'investigated'. Nice revisionism, though.

Here's the text of the petition itself, just to keep you honest.

To: U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay [R-Texas] has been a disgrace to the United States and the world since he entered Congress in 1984. His latest partisan power grab is to lead the effort to gain more Republican seats in Congress by redistricting Texas - eight years before the state is scheduled to do so again. Texas has been forced to spend millions this year just to satisfy DeLay's lust for more power, while healthcare, education and other needs go unmet.
DeLay, a former bug exterminator, is known for extortion, illegal fundraising and blackmail. DeLay has obstructed justice for low-paid sweatshop workers on the island of Saipan by taking large campaign contributions from Saipan's chief lobbyist and blocking any Congressional investigation of the appalling conditions there. DeLay has obstructed justice by lying to the FBI when he charged that the reporter who broke the Henry Hyde adultery story in the 1990s had been working with the White House to expose Hyde. DeLay led the campaign in the House to impeach Bill Clinton, while rumors of extramarital affairs of his own continue to circulate.
DeLay's far-right extreme agenda includes to repeal environmental protection laws by dismantling the EPA and gutting the Clean Air Act, allow big polluting companies to continue to pollute our air, water and other resources, teach creationism in public schools, abolish separation of church and state, and outlaw abortion in all cases. DeLay also opposes campaign finance reform and has taken more money from tobacco interests than any other Texas legislator.
During a deposition for a lawsuit filed by a former business partner in the pest company in 1994, DeLay lied that he had not been an officer of the company for two or three years. On congressional financial disclosure forms filed in 1995, he listed himself as chairman of the company's board of directors. Allegations included that DeLay illegally used company money to pay political campaign debts. The lawsuit was ultimately settled with an undisclosed amount paid to the business partner.
In 1997, DeLay actually shoved Rep. David Obey [D-Wisconsin] and called him a "chickenshit" on the House floor. That same year, DeLay tried to impeach federal judges he didn't like.
In 1998, he said that people with "foreign-sounding names" probably aren't Americans.
Finally, a story goes that DeLay lit up a stogie in a restaurant, and a waiter told him it was a government building, where smoking was not permitted. DeLay reportedly retorted, "I am the government."
We need to send a message to DeLay that he is NOT the government and he does NOT represent most Americans as a leader of Congress. We need to remove DeLay from office, without delay.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

"forgetting"

[Bearpaw]

What I am saying is that people are forgetting that the main "accuser" of DeLay, that joker down in Texas is a partisan Democrat and hasn't been able to pin anything on DeLay.

How could we forget when DeLay or his spokesdroids take pains to remind us of it every other day?

Funny though, they always forget to mention that the "partisan Democrat" has a long, solid record of going after corrupt Repubs and Dems. Perhaps it's just hard for them to believe that some people do their jobs without checking party affiliation (or bank accounts).

Re: "evil" because you don't like them?

[Doc Ruby]

Texas just convicted [washingtonpost.com] his political organizaion's fundraiser for illegal fundraising for corporations, and covering up the evidence (as well as all kinds of legal mumbo jumbo to escape justice). That proves that either Delay worked for illegal fundraising, or that he runs and promotes a major fundraising organization, central to his career, without supervising it. Though the latter is obviously just a lie he'll tell in a last resort to escape justice, both are evil.

How about when Delay coerced a fellow Republican [washingtonpost.com] to vote for the Medicare drug bill? The bill itself was a tissue of lies, deliberately underestimating the cost by hundreds of $billions, to miss a maximum Republicans set as a condition for backing it. This serious charge by the Republican leader was proven when even Delay's rigged ethics panel came down on him, a rarity in Congress.

You want evil? He protected Marianas Islands sweatshops (and sex slavers) at the request of a briber^Wlobbyist, telling his corporate backers there to "Stand firm. Resist evil.". That's evil.

He diverted funds from a children's charity to fund his parties at the Republican National Convention. Pretty evil.

And he packed the ethics committee with dependents, to avoid charges that finally were too much for even his majority to suppress. Then purged members who wouldn't stand for the whitewash. Then tried to change the rules so they would no longer "require leaders to step aside temporarily if indicted" - once he was facing indictment. Evil.

Why are you clinging to this bad guy? Does he bring home the bacon to you, from the pork he carves out of our taxes in Congress? Do you own a pharmaceutical company? Are you a congressmember on his payroll [pcactionfund.org]? Or are you just so "partisan" that when the Republican Majority Leader is proven guilty, all you care about is whether "Democrats are just as bad", though of course you have no proof of your codependent jealousy?

Scientific Bang for the Buck

[srobert]

Though I would like to see humans on the Moon or Mars, it seems to me that money spent for scientific investigation would uncover more knowledge per dollar spent by sending unmanned missions or using the funds closer to home.
What they are doing is creating the appearance of supporting "science", rather than real science. The difference being that "science" is the action/adventure that the American public raised on science fiction imagines and science is the real pursuit of new knowledge.
Still, perhaps if the "Buck Rogers" fans are satisfied with the expenditures, more money will become available to NASA for real research.