Obama Choosing NOT To Go To the Moon 920
bonch writes "Obama's budget proposal will contain no funding for the Constellation program, which was to send astronauts to the moon by 2020. Instead, NASA will be focused on terrestrial science, such as monitoring global warming. One anonymous official said: 'We certainly don't need to go back to the moon.'"
Sad news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Funny)
The moon is a backup.
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Insightful)
The Moon is practice for Mars.
Mars is the gateway to the riches of the asteroid belt.
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the substances themselves that are valuable, it's the not-being-in-a-gravity-well that's valuable.
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Interesting)
The moon will not be able to provide a backup to us any time soon, if ever. Survival on the moon requires modern technology, and the dependency chains for modern technology are just *way* too long to recreate on the moon along the order of a century or less. Even several centuries from now, if we started now, the moon would probably still remain reliant on Earth for our most advanced technology, such as computer chips, etc.
Heck, for that matter, the moon itself may *never* be able to be self-sufficient, as it's so utterly poor in so many important minerals. Even in the places where we found evidence of water ice, it was a trace component; hydrogen is very rare on the moon. Carbon and nitrogen, too, are very rare on the moon. Phosphorus isn't too common. Given that the five most fundamental elements to life are CHONP.... Well, at least there's lots of oxygen on the moon! ;)
The moon is also rather depleted in heavy elements.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Funny)
Step 1: Convert ourselves into robots so we can be built out of titanium.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
The moon is also rich in silicon. Perhaps we should convert ourselves to Chenjesu.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Interesting)
Titanium's not tremendously rare on Earth, it's just more expensive because it's a bitch to refine and process. As I understand it, most of the processing steps require either a high vacuum or a completely inert atmosphere to overcome the high reactivity of titanium at high temperatures (around room temp it forms an extremely well-bonded oxide on the surface, which is why it's known to be corrosion resistant.)
As the default state on the lunar surface is hard vacuum, this opens up a lot of interesting possibilities for metals development, if only we were able to get there, and bring along or develop a suitable power source as well.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you fucking kidding me?!?
We need to get our asses going on getting a colony on either the Moon or Mars or both and working out the logistics of making it self sustaining.
It's just not a matter of if, but when we'll have another extinction level event and we need to spread out and be prepared.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless someone can make an as-yet unknown value proposition for going back to the moon, it's a waste of resources.
Had we planned on staying this time... building a small base or research station to leave men on the moon for extended periods of time... then it would have been worth it. But it was clear that we weren't going to do that. We were basically just going back to relive old glories, when it gets right down to it.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
The possible environmentally important spin-off technologies from a moon/mars mission are endless
Advanced hydroponics
Advance carbon dioxide filtering techniques
Learning how to grow food in mineral-less soil
Think of Mars or the Moon as a laboratory.
If we can figure out how to live there, we can possibly figure out what it takes to live in harmony with any environment, even our own.
PLUS when you say waste of resources, what do you mean? Money? NASA budget is minuscule to the amount of money the US government throws away. Scientist? Aerospace engineers don't care about environmental science, it isn't their field, it is not like you will be keeping them from solving terrestrial problems by having them work on spacecraft.
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Insightful)
Advanced hydroponics
Advance carbon dioxide filtering techniques
Learning how to grow food in mineral-less soil
You mean like the sort of experiments they did on the ISS?
Amazing how everyone here on Slashdot thinks that ISS was a wasteful boondoggle but somehow building a base on the moon won't be.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless someone can make an as-yet unknown value proposition for going back to the moon, it's a waste of resources.
To give humans something to look forward to and hope for. To inspire coming generations of scientists and engineers to push the envelope like there's no tomorrow. To instill a sense of purpose and pride in a populaous that is becoming increasingly disenchanted, confused, embittered, pathetic, jaded, and all around broken.
Value shouldn't always be measured in $$.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless someone can make an as-yet unknown value proposition for going back to the moon, it's a waste of resources.
So what exactly would you have several hundred thousand scientists, engineers, manufacturers, technicians all skilled in space flight technology DO?
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. Why not show that every now and then we can rise above petty insignificant squabbles over religion, resources and power and as a
species we can reach higher and achieve almost anything.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Funny)
Yesterday I had a Jimmy Dean Flapstick. That product is a true culinary achievement, and I gladly spend my own money to help support Jimmy Dean R&D. Sending astronauts to the moon, on the other hand, is something that has been done. In fact, it was done before I was born, and I am old.
Besides, what Obama really needs isn't a man (or woman) on the moon. He needs an excuse that will allow him to pass the Carbon Cap and Trade bills so that he can raise billions in new tax revenues. NASA already has plenty of experience inventing climate data, so it is the perfect organization for the job. With enough money, convincing the voting public that CO2 is driving global warming should be pretty straightforward. In fact, the real problem may be knowing when to say when. With the increased funding NASA should be able to convince voters that they are actually ON FIRE.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
If it cost us 6% of the GDP every year from 1958-1972 (the bulk of the moon mission years) , then it cost ~$735billion.
[6% of $875billion/year over 14 years, (~521billionGDP in 1960 and ~$1.23trillionGDP in 1972 avgs to about $875billion/year)]
I'd like to see you convince me that we havent produced $735billion in private funds and taxes in the 38years since 1972 based on the science garnered by NASA in those 14 moonshot years.... To say nothing of the advances that have allowed for cleaner and more efficient technologies that we use each and every day, saving money and reducing polutants.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
For the price of one war in Iraq we could have continued the Apollo program for another 200 years.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
That aside, here are some answers: 1) A collective goal: Mankind rarely succeeds on a scale comparable to when they have a common goal. Build hope and cooperation between nations and you can bring them closer to understanding of one another.
2) Residual Science: Like the military (much to any hardcore liberal's chagrin), the Space Program has produce many quite notable and beneficial advancements as residuals to the space program itself. Examples of advancement can be found in Medicine, Chemistry, Biology, Genetics, Propulsion, Aerodynamics, Physics, Thermal Dynamics, Magnetism,
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Interesting)
yup. wow. last line in the article:
That....is disturbing, if that is their view. Maybe next they need to have a war on science again?
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like he's getting revenge for that Alabama Rep who switched from Democrat to Republican.
I should note, for reference, that if we were to double NASA's budget, we'd increase the current deficit by just over 1%.
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, I don't see what's wrong in telling Congress "Look, NASA doesn't exist as a jobs program for your districts". And it's pretty clear that, like some other defense boondoggles.... the Zumwalt Destroyer, the Littoral Combat Ships, the F-35, the Osprey... programs like Constellation often can't be killed because Congressmen view them as nothing but Federal stimulus for their districts. When Dick Cheney killed the Osprey in the early 90's, Congress funded it anyway and ordered DOD to buy more. I'm not an Obama fan by any stretch, but isn't it a good idea to only buy hardware on its merits, and cancel it otherwise? This is taxpayer money we're talking about, after all.
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Interesting)
The defense contractors already structure their contracts to ensure that a great many representatives have pieces of the pies. It's not as if a Boeing plane will be built in one factory in one state. No, the parts have to be sourced from dozens, if not hundreds of different suppliers, each strategically placed to earn that vote, and each suplier has an equal opportunity to drive those all important cost overruns.
F-35 problems (Score:5, Informative)
"Since when is the F-35 a defense boondoggle?"
Where do I start? There's so much. It's over budget, far behind schedule (only 10 percent of scheduled flight testing completed in 2009, with the prototypes spending most of their time parked on the taxiway or in a hangar). The fire control suite and EOTS are nothing but vaporware, promises, and plastic display models at this point. It's overweight. When anaysts said that it was less maneuverable than an F-16, Lockheed said "That's OK, dogfighting is obsolete anyway". Hmm, where have we heard that before? There are noise problems with the engine (on average twice as loud as an F-15 at takeoff), enough of a problem to current designated noise corridors that a least two cities are actually suing USAF not to bring F-35's to their area. Google "F-35 noise", and prepare for a lot of reading. The F-35 is quickly becoming the new F-111, a plane designed by committee for everyone and pleasing no one.
The cost is what'll probably kill this program, or limit its' sales. There are grumbles in the Navy department that they want to kill it in favor of new (and cheaper) Super Hornets. Lockheed says base F-35 models will be around $70 million apiece (compared to $50 a pop for Super Hornets). But realistic" estimates say the tag is more likely between $111 and $132 million, flyaway. At the top range, it would make them more expensive than the far more capable F-22. Oh, and the Navy just completed a study that found the F-35 would cost 70% more per hour to operate than Super Hornets, and that the F-35B's vertical thrust mode would damage current flight decks.
USAF should simply buy new build F-16's. The Navy should buy new Super Hornets. And if the Marines can't have new-build Harriers, then get the Marines out of the fixed-wing business altogether (a possibility that Bill Sweetman over at Aviation Week has also raised).
"
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Insightful)
It is so sad that the decision of our science and engineering pioneering effort are being decided by bunch of politicians without an eye for long term benefits. What happend to the Jefferson and Poke who would rather risk their next term but make the right decision (major land purchases in history)?
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Debt is the present. If we don't take care of that, we will stagnate and disappear much more quickly. This is good, pay down debt first then invest.
Though, for all the talk of fiscal responsibility I don't see anyone mentioning that the US's military budget is about the same as the rest of the worlds military budgets combined. And 9 times that of China's. It would make sense to cut that first.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How is cutting the defense budget down to the levels other first world nations invest in their militaries "withdrawing from the world"?
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a very large portion of our defense spending is used in providing defense for those other 1st world nations. The reason Europe and Japan don't have huge armies is that the US does it for the, with bases all over the world, populated by US personnel. If the US were to pull out of Europe and Japan (which I wholeheartedly endorse, btw), our budget would shrink - and their budgets would skyrocket. And then the bleating about the US not "living up to it's global responsibilities" would start anew.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, because colonialism *prevents* sectarian violence.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I call bullshit. European countries, Japan et al have perfectly capable REGIONAL armies. They can well defend their own countries (and to assist members of defensive groups). They don't mind extra assistance and assurance, but it is at most a nice-to-have, and at worst a political problem (with domestic leftist parties).
What US has more so than any other country,
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well Japan isn't actually allowed to, and from what I understand they do want to have a larger military.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Informative)
Also, once we finally did start to take part in WWII, our equipment was horribly outdated due to massive military spending cuts that had happened since WWI. Much of the equipment we armed our soldiers with, early on, was the same stuff we had used in WWI (helmets, guns, etc.)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Insightful)
There will never be a "mass migration" from Earth that has any dent on the population. Right now the population is growing at roughly 75 million a year. If you wanted to keep the population steady at the 6.8 billion it is as now, you would need to launch 210,000 people into space EVERY SINGLE DAY. You could ring the world in magic space elevators and still not be able to pull of that feat. If space opens up, it will open up for an extremely small minority of people. It will have no impact on the ground on Earth beyond the resources that space brings to Earth.
Frankly, if you are worried about space to live and resources to consume, the far more reasonable thing to do is the exploit the other 70% of the planet that we basically ignore. Hell, if you include all marginally livable areas on Earth (all of which are a shit ton more friendly than space), than I bet humans cover even a paltry 5%.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Space is the future. If you don't go out there we will stagnate and disappear.
Or, the more realistic view: Space in an uninhabitable wasteland, enormously expensive to get to, and impossible to survive in for long periods without costly, regular support deliveries from Earth.
Let's face it, without some amazing and so-far-unforeseen advances in technology, any off-Earth colonies would die out within a few years of losing support with Earth. Given that, the presence or absence of those colonies isn't really relevant to the survival of mankind, which is 100% tied to the viability of Earth.
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Insightful)
"The Mountain West in an uninhabitable wasteland, enormously expensive to get to, and impossible to survive in for long periods without costly, regular support deliveries from the Industrialized East."
That's always been "true", and always been a lame excuse. Yes, in a colonization effort LOTS of people fail - ask the Roanoake colony. But someone will succeed, and MAKE the "wasteland" into a paradise.
You can choose to stay in the tenement - if someone offers me 50 acres, I'm taking it!
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Major analogy fail. Native Americans were living in the "wasteland" when the Roanoke Colony was founded.
Make an analogy of how we colonized somewhere genuinely inhospitable (e.g. Antarctica, the bottom of the ocean, the molten core of a volcano) and that'll fit. Find an Earth compatible planet that we can get to and that'll fit. Otherwise, space is great but it will kill you dead without Earth. What we need to do is take a long term view of off-planet colonization and start making it happen. We need to send robots to start the hundreds (if not thousands) of years long process of terraforming Mars into something that could independently sustain humans.
Re:Sad news (Score:4, Funny)
One small step for man (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The deficit is getting out of control. While everyone here of course favors cutting things like defense spending over science funding, at least you have to acknowledge that if you're going to cut some science funding, going to the moon is a pretty decent place to start.
Re:One small step for man (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not cancelling 'the return to the moon,' he's cancelling Project Constellation. No return to the moon is just one side effect... Constellation was everything. With the Space Shuttles on the verge of retirement, Constellation was NASA's future manned space flight program. This isn't just the moon. And don't think this will be a small delay either. If this goes ahead, and the knowledge and experience is lost, it will take years to recover from. So unless Congress steps in (which isn't unlikely), Obama will be the President that ended America as a space-faring nation.
Ironic, given how much commentators liked to compare him to JFK back in the campaign. Kennedy had foresight.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ironic, given how much commentators liked to compare him to JFK back in the campaign. Kennedy had foresight.
JFK saw the big picture. There was a big problem. He proposed a big solution.
Four decades later, maybe the picture, problem, and solution have changed a tad?
Re:One small step for man (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they've just been muddled in too much media, corporate, and military asshattery.
The solution to moving humanity forward is to move off our planet. Every year we delay is one more that brings us closer to extinction. We have LOTS of resources now. Wasting them on empire-building to grasp fruitlessly at political gains, at least to me, seems obscene. Spend a fraction of that money on research and we could leap so far ahead of the rest of the world that the economy would boom once again.
The only thing booming now are bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Re:One small step for man (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not cancelling 'the return to the moon,' he's cancelling Project Constellation. No return to the moon is just one side effect... Constellation was everything. With the Space Shuttles on the verge of retirement, Constellation was NASA's future manned space flight program. This isn't just the moon. And don't think this will be a small delay either. If this goes ahead, and the knowledge and experience is lost, it will take years to recover from. So unless Congress steps in (which isn't unlikely), Obama will be the President that ended America as a space-faring nation.
Ironic, given how much commentators liked to compare him to JFK back in the campaign. Kennedy had foresight.
Apparently, giving people money to scrap perfectly good cars is a better use of the taxpayers' money.
Re:One small step for man (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironic, given how much commentators liked to compare him to JFK back in the campaign. Kennedy had foresight.
No, Kennedy had *hindsight*. He saw just how much letting the Soviets beating us in a major space goal made his predecessor look like a chump. He didn't want to repeat that public relations mistake.
Right now, no country is seriously planning to do anything genuinely new with manned spaceflight for the next couple of decades. There's no motivation for a president budget a lot of money to try to beat anybody.
Re:One small step for man (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One small step for man (Score:4, Insightful)
at least you have to acknowledge that if you're going to cut some science funding, going to the moon is a pretty decent place to start
I wouldn't argue that. In fact, even in these times I'd argue against any cuts for NASA. Using a nickle to pay off a $10 debt doesn't work. The only time I'd argue cuts for NASA is if, somehow, they managed to scrape up $9.95. The BIG problems, all those entitlement and defense programs, the ones that would make the bulk of that $9.95, are political poison pills to mention even offhandedly.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The deficit is getting out of control. While everyone here of course favors cutting things like defense spending over science funding, at least you have to acknowledge that if you're going to cut some science funding, going to the moon is a pretty decent place to start.
Cutting Constellation is a good start, only because it did nothing new. It was a jobs program for Lockheed and a trip down memory lane for NASA. But even this is only a drop in the bucket. By far our biggest problems are entitlement programs, and frankly, politicians from Congress right up the President are cowards when it comes to dealing with them. You think the housing bubble was a time bomb? Wait until the entitlements check comes due.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's essentially the end of funding for manned NASA spaceflights, not just to the moon. There won't be a replacement for the space shuttles. I definitely don't believe space missions are a decent place to start cutting back on science funding just because one administration's policies left us with a bigger deficit in the middle of a recession. This has effects that reach past Obama's term (not sure he's getting a second one).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Science funding should NOT be cut. Stop those damned wars, especially the one in Iraq that should never have been started in the first place. Had we not been fighting those wars we may not now have had an unbalanced budget (Bush went into office with a balanced budget, but who knows what that incompetant would have done) and might not now be in a recession; surely it wouldn't be as bad. Those of us old enough to be in the military at the end of the VietNam war know how long it took to get out of the recessi
Re:One small step for man (Score:5, Insightful)
Had we not been fighting those wars we may not now have had an unbalanced budget
Both wars together have totaled about $750B. [wikipedia.org] That's a lot of money, but it's still not as much as even one of the two big "stimulus" packages. Since 2001, the "war" appropriations have been about 4% of our federal budget. 4% is nowhere near enough to bring us into the black.
There's nothing more expensive than war, nor as useless (except for the fat cats who benefit from it financially at taxpayers' expense).
I beg to differ. [wikipedia.org]
Entitlement programs are way more expensive than war, and are teeming with fraud and abuse. Cutting all of the money we spend on those two wars would hardly have made a dent in our budget. For example, we spent about 118% of what we brought in last year. The 4% of that we spent on wars would not make a huge difference. But cutting even half the money we spend on entitlement programs would easily put us within budget.
Now, maybe you like entitlement programs. Maybe you think FDR hung the freakin' moon. Maybe you believe that we would be uncivilized brutes without all those programs. Fine. You're entitled to your opinion. But don't pretend like it's our little romps in the middle east that are squeezing out all the money we could be spending on science.
Re:One small step for man (Score:4, Insightful)
The deficit is getting out of control. While everyone here of course favors cutting things like defense spending over science funding, at least you have to acknowledge that if you're going to cut some science funding, going to the moon is a pretty decent place to start.
You're almost right. The deficit is already out of control. We're spending ourselves into oblivion, and the only place I can see it going is the eventual collapse of the dollar (perhaps soon; perhaps we can hold it off for a while).
But cutting Constellation will hardly amount to a rounding error. If you want to reduce the deficit, the only truly meaningful way to do it is to cut entitlement programs (and to a lesser extend, defense spending, which still accounts for less than half of what we spend on entitlements). Constellation is not the giant lead weight that's drowning us. Entitlements are. And Obama won't cut them, because all those entitlement programs keep Democrats in office. And Republicans won't do it whenever they come back into power, because that's a sure fire way to hand the government back to the Democrats. Once you start giving people stuff, they feel entitled to it, and if you take it away, they will revolt. And it probably would be a little harsh to cut all those people off cold turkey after we've got them dependent on those programs. So we're stuck with the entitlement programs. All this talk of cutting Constellation and a discretionary spending freeze is just hand-waving so Obama can put on a face of fiscal responsibility to a population that is nervous about his spending. Obama knows that the same population demands free stuff from the government. So what's a president to do? He makes a big show of cutting stuff that Joe Public doesn't really care about. Cutting Constellation is a great way to look like he's doing something about the budget without making any hard choices.
Re:One small step for man (Score:5, Insightful)
In the wrong direction. We should have spent the 60's on healthcare reform, increasing national spending, polarizing our government between the political parties, and copyright enforcement.
Guess what? All these things did happen in the 60's. Including healthcare reform (Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965 under LBJ).
Re:One small step for man (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that wasn't so clear in the 1960s.
In 1960, American spent about 5.1% of the GDP on health care. Now it's somewhere around 16% and still rising. That's in relative terms, mind you. Given the growth of GDP, the expenditure increases are simply astounding.
Now total federal spending, after peaking as a percent of GDP in the 1970s, is now roughly where it was in 1962: a bit more than 18%.
So in rough terms, we spend about the same fraction of our generated wealth on all Federal uses as we did in 1960, but more than 3x what we did on health care, so now health care is approximately equal to all Federal expenditures.
If somebody had said in 1962, "We'll take over health care spending, but in fifty years it will double the size of Federal spending relative to the economy," you'd have looked at them like they were nuts. That would clearly hamstring the American economy. But in gross terms it wouldn't have made any difference if we'd gone for that deal, and the strange thing is we seem to accept this state of affairs as normal, even though it continues to get worse. We look around, and wonder why our economy is so sluggish at generating jobs. Now there's lots of reasons of course. In part it's normal for jobs to lag growth in a recovery. But at the same time its worth remembering that the price tag for most of those jobs includes health insurance.
If somebody had said in 1962, "The Federal government will take over health care spending, and it will only increase the share of GDP spent by the government 1.5x," you'd have looked at them like they were nuts. But if you could go back in a time machine and take that deal, it'd look pretty good by today's standards.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There was also a fun side show in Vietnam.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Score:4, Insightful)
Which part of that has anything to do with global warming?
Why is it suddenly NASA's job to monitor global warming? Why not create an agency with that job, instead of re-allocating something that has for many decades been all about space exploration?
Re:National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not create an agency with that job
I'll ask 'eem, but I don' think he'll be very keen... we've already got one, [noaa.gov] you see!
Re:National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Score:4, Informative)
Why is it suddenly NASA's job to monitor global warming? Why not create an agency with that job
I'll ask 'eem, but I don' think he'll be very keen... we've already got one (NOAA), you see!
National Atmospheric and Science Administration (Score:3, Informative)
The National Atmospheric and Science Administration has been a clearing house for all things 'science' since the 70's. Being related to space or aeronautics is not a prerequisite. If you want funding and it can be made to sound vaguely sciency, head to NASA!! Climate 'research', or something, is just the latest piglet with a tit.
Killing manned space flight has been a part of Obama's platform [slashdot.org] since he entered the national scene, regardless of subsequent back-peddling. Grownups know this, which is why tho
Re:National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Score:5, Informative)
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration hasn't ever been all about space exploration -- forward looking terrestrial military and civilian aviation research has been a major part of their brief since the agency was founded (actually, since its predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, was founded.) Space exploration is just the stuff that gets the most press.
Space based weather, climate, geological, ocean, etc., studies have all been part of NASA work since approximately the time of the first satellite with sensors usable for such studies.
And if you wanted to direct all climate work to another agency, there is no need to create a new agency, as there is an existing agency within whose main mission such research clearly falls: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Of course, redirecting that work from NASA to NOAA wouldn't mean NASA goes to the moon, it just means NASA shrinks. Its not like NASA has its own independent revenue stream which is being tapped for climate work.
Re:National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Score:4, Informative)
In 2002, an open process involving scientists and employees modified NASA's mission statement to include [nytimes.com] the phrase "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can."
But then in 2006 the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" was dropped over the objections of many scientists. Considering that climate scientists have long used NASA satellite data to monitor abrupt climate change (including myself [slashdot.org]), I think it's time to re-emphasize this vital role that NASA can perform.
Re:National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Score:5, Insightful)
There already is a world government, it's in the form of multi-mega-corps.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We choose (Score:5, Insightful)
'not to go to the moon in this decade and not do the other things, not because they are hard, but because not doing so is easy'
Or something like that.
Re:We choose (Score:4, Funny)
I always loved the pause in JFK's original speech:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon.. <pause while JFK thinks>
and do the other things.. (?)
Re:We choose (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
'not to go to the moon in this decade and not do the other things, not because they are hard, but because not doing so is easy'
Or something like that.
Or maybe "we resist the jingoist impulse to spend money we don't have to go to someplace we have already been, not because it is easy, but because all the frigging redneck flag-waving mouthbreathers are making it hard".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We choose (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course we have money. The problem is we spend more than we take in -- and our spending priorities are all over the board.
That, and the NASA budget is a drop in the bucket of annual spending.
Why not cut NHE by 1% or 2%? Across the board?
Leeme Get This Straight: So, Under Obama... (Score:5, Insightful)
...the Space Administration will be focused on terrestrial science?
Man, some days the jokes just write themselves.
Space Garage (Score:3, Informative)
Any trip to Mars that would be worthwhile (i.e. more than a quick stroll on the surface before making the second leg of a multi-month round trip) would have to start from the Moon.
Unsurprising (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody should act surprised. He said he was going to kill Constellation during his original campaign.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
O.K., one thing. He promised one thing that he is making happen.
Compared to the whoopers like "hope and change", we got more of the same and worse compared to the previous Administration, spending-wise, by a factor of 4. "No lobbyists" promise, guess Barak must of forgotten he made that promise. "No earmarks", yeah, that was a good one, huh? Oh and "transparency" in the debate on health care reform -- wait, I could have sworn -- uh, nope, not even close on this one either.
Barak is about on on the "worse" side of scale of politicians promising things and not making them happen, or conveniently forgetting their promises.
Barak makes Bill Clinton look like an honest up-standing citizen in comparison.
good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:good (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll probably attract a zillion flames for saying this, but I think this is great. NASA does a great job on uncrewed probes, and that's a mission that can't be carried out by private enterprise. The shuttle and the ISS, however, are pure pork and nationalism; now that the cold war is over, the politicians cover the crewed space program with a thin veneer of scientific research, but the amount of good science that comes out of *crewed* spaceflight is not in reasonable proportion to the cost. We need to get NASA out of the business of doing things that the private sector can do, because otherwise the private sector will never get off the ground in those areas. Suborbital and LEO space tourism are the killer apps for private-sector crewed spaceflight. Let's unleash their energy and creativity to get that going, rather than spending public money on poorly engineered concepts for going back to to the moon.
Explain to me the business case for the internet. Not retroactively. I mean try to explain it to me as a businessman you want to fund it. Why the hell would I want to create an interoperable network that everyone can use? Who pays for it? How do we charge people for it? What do you mean there's not an hourly meter? What are you, some kind of fucking hippie?
Explain to me the business case for the interstate highway system, as a businessman you want to fund it.
Explain to me the business case for running telephone service and electricity out to rural areas where it costs more to service them than I'd ever make back on fees. Explain why I should be using my fat profits from the lucrative city accounts to pay for it. Why the hell should I give a fuck about shitkickers and hillbillies?
The answer to all those things is that there are some things business is good at and there's some things government is good at. Some things you can't get a business to do willingly and you have to make them do it by law or just offer bids and let whoever wants to fill the bid do so.
You never could have convinced private business to setup the internet the way it was. If it was redesigned from scratch, we'd be back to the days of AOL and Compuserve. Because for-profit business isn't about meeting the public good but maximizing revenue.
You can get businesses to handle local utilities by granting a monopoly. The business will agree to a situation that provides a guaranteed profit and no competition by servicing all customers in the area, regardless of how profitable they are. The business agrees to the reduced risk of the monopoly by accepting the reduced profit of serving everybody. And that's usually seen as a win-win.
I'm gratified to see Scaled Composites making progress on the suborbital tourist ship. I'm happy that internet billionaire is having good luck with his unmanned rockets. But the stuff we need to be doing in space, those ideas are too big for mere businesses to wrap their heads around. The stuff we need to be doing, it needs government sponsorship. Now NASA has made a fucking mess of itself and the manned program is pretty embarrassing. But I'm not seeing many good ideas from the defense contractors NASA currently contracts with. I'd be very happy if NASA adopted a DARPA role and started funding start-ups with real potential instead of throwing big bucks down the politically-connected corporate rathole. I want solar power sats. I want a space elevator. I want something with more vision than that stupid Constellation program.
Other priorities (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
We are just a few decades from Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight amidst the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic USA. Conventional rockets are a waste anyway.
Why? Because it's next ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mallory O'Brian: And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?
Sam Seaborn: Yes.
Mallory O'Brian: Why?
Sam Seaborn: 'Cause it's next. 'Cause we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what's next.
- West Wing
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes... and all of this... all of this was for nothing - unless we
we've been to the moon . . . (Score:5, Funny)
If we're doing this for science we can send probes cheaper and safer. If we're doing this for glory then send a giraffe or hippo.
Plenty of Change, Not So Much Hope. (Score:5, Insightful)
With the Shuttle put to bed, and now Constellation, NASA is done. Yeah, maybe a few robot probes will go out, but that's not what people get excited about (and are thus willing to fund). If it's not welfare or war, it's up for cancellation with this government. The global warming crowd will still get some funding since that's still seen as a viable power grab (not enough people can add, apparently) but that can't last. It seems the commercial launchers will handle what the Air Force can't for government satellite needs.
So, does an aspiring American rocket scientist try to find work in China or hope to get one of the few jobs with Space X, Scaled Composites, or Virgin Galactic?
Amazing - the one government program even Penn & Teller can't bring themselves to hate is the first to fall. Ah, well, competitive forces at play.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, the idea of the massive expensive of funding manned missions to the Moon and Mars is to create public interest which will support funding those same missions?
And, really, for quite some time robot probes have, though far less expensive, generated more positive public attention for NASA than the manned space program.
Helium 3 (Score:4, Interesting)
Same old garbage. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is very frustrating. Here we have a program that would provide real long term benefits to not only the United States, but the world in general. Those benefits would not only come in the form of new technologies but in humanity's expansion into space. But unfortunately we're constantly hindered myopic, self-centered politicians. Unfortunately these kinds of programs require long-term commitments and do nothing to garner votes.
At this rate, without question the Chinese will be first to the moon. Despite all the problems I have with the Chinese government I have to give credit where it's do. They generally seem to do what they believe is in the best interests of the country. On the other hand, the US is saddled with a government interested in pushing agendas and pandering to special interests. Even when they get involved with something that could be beneficial it's mired down by garbage and the end result ends up not amounting to much of anything. But the problem doesn't just lie with the government. It lies with the citizens and their increasingly self-centered attitudes.
This sort of thing makes me regret having moved back to the states.
Is this necessarily bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Was Constellation, specifically the Ares booster series, ever going to be practical? Let's assume for a moment that the nay-sayers are right, and Ares would be a huge hole to dump money into that wouldn't yield a usable launch vehicle in a reasonable time frame. If so, canceling the program provides a needed wake-up call for NASA, opens the door for consideration of lower-cost alternatives, and perhaps even gives a boost to the commercial spacecraft industry. In the short term, it helps (if only by a tiny amount) stem the money hemorrhage.
I know it's hard to take, but the question I have to ask is -- do we want to get back to the moon at any cost? Or should we take this opportunity to step back and see if there's a more practical way?
Re:Mars? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Constellation wasn't just the moon. It was the next generation of NASA rockets for human spaceflight. If Constellation is cancelled, this isn't just the end of the moon. It's the end of Mars too. Hell, it's the end of America's manned spaceflight program in general.
Re:Mars? (Score:4, Informative)
Not really. It's been pretty deregulated since '84 and actively encouraged since '90. The only major hurdles are the FAA regs for atmospheric flight, which is pretty simple compared to the complexity of spaceflight.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight [wikipedia.org]
Re:Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)
And just how the hell do you expect to fly men to these near-Earth asteroids? The shuttle ain't gonna do it. We'd need to develop a replacement vehicle. Like Constellation - the one that he just friggen canceled funding on.
It's like a parent promising they'll take their kid to Disney world if they can bring home 8 A's on their report card - when the kid only has 7 classes. Only an idiotic kid would perceive that trip to Disney as still being in the cards.
Re:Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell you what - since according to your philosophy we can pick and choose where our money goes - however much of my taxes is going to the military? Send 75% of that to NASA instead. Welfare? Send 90% of that to NASA instead.
I'm perfectly willing to pay for NASA via my taxes if I also get to stipulate what I'm NOT willing to pay for.
Re:New Heavy Lift Rocket? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they will cancel actually developing a heavy-lift rocket, and instead just 'look at' developing a heavy-lift rocket. It's much cheaper.
Re:And so dies humanity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Individually and as a race, we are all going to die. We don't have any chance as a race, and getting off "this rock" doesn't change that one bit.
OTOH, we do have a choice about where we direct resources and what effect that has on the quality of life.
Re:Sad, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, a trained human geologist could have done everything that these probes have done, within 2 or 3 hours of setting foot on Mars. The robots simply *can't* do things as well as humans can. Think about that... Opportunity and Spirit have been doing fantastic science on Mars for the past 5 or 6 years, and all that work could have done by a trained human within a few hours.
Don't get me wrong, there are situations where they make sense. Putting a human in orbit around Jupiter, to be irradiated by high energy particles for a few years, would be an amazingly stupid thing to do. But don't kid yourself that the robots can explore Mars or the Moon as well as humans could.