Is the OMB Trying To End Planetary Exploration? 236
EccentricAnomaly writes "Lou Friedman (former head of the Planetary Society) has written a provocative article over at Space Policy Review where he accuses the Obama administration of working on plans to gut the robotic Mars program in order to pay for NASA's exciting new rocket. This is after NASA already killed the Europa mission that was to have been the next outer planet mission after Cassini."
PR (Score:5, Insightful)
Like it or not, NASA requires the PR that a rocket provides.
NASA uses a lot of tax money and, with a population whose general impression of resemasearch is that it just giving money to boring nerds in labcoats (ignoring the economy generated by products of past research), they must do regular "America #1, Yihaaaa!" performances in order to keep the population from objecting too much against NASA funding.
Sending robots to a planet that doesn't even have a baseball team is a waste. Launching what looks like a giant bullet shooting large flames from it's back is cool.
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Even on Slashdot, which you'd think would have a more enlighted audience, you have people going on and on about how it's shameful that we don't have an Apollo-style program, and the ISS isn't getting used as much as it should, and robotic probes don't really compare. It's tragic. I had no idea they'd shit-canned the Europa mission, that was potentially world-changing stuff.
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Agreed.
Similarly, there's a libertarian blog that I read occasionally, and once when this came up there was an outpouring of "I loathe all government expenditures, but NASA rocketing men into space is the one exception, that's one thing we should definitely be doing". Pretty funny.
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Even on Slashdot, which you'd think would have a more enlighted audience, you have people going on and on about how it's shameful that we don't have an Apollo-style program
Don't get your hopes up too high for Slashdot readers. A few days ago there was one about an eight-year old math prodigy who builds DNA analyzers out of LEGO and what to do with him. The most common suggestions were to make sure he plays plenty of sports and maybe join the boy scouts.
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I had no idea they'd shit-canned the Europa mission, that was potentially world-changing stuff.
Me neither. I'm seriously blown away that that's even happened. I mean life on Mars once upon a time maybe whatever - but Europa is potentially liquid oceans and volcanic vents - the likely origins of all life on Earth, found somewhere else in the solar system.
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What, "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE." means nothing to you?
There's really no reason to tempt fate you know. ;)
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What are they going to do, ignite Jupiter? Puh-leeze.
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I had no idea they'd shit-canned the Europa mission, that was potentially world-changing stuff.
Same here. Europa and Enceladus probably both have life (and possibly complex life), in terms of finding life in our solar system they're the "low-hanging fruit" so we should be putting all effort into exploring those first, rather than Mars which is mostly a dead dirtball with a few traces of surface ice which might harbor some traces of bacteria if we're really lucky.
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I had a quick look around, it seems that the European JIME mission is still on, Japan and Russia are interested in joining to provide magnetospheric study and a Europa lander, respectively. So it's not a total loss. I'd still rather see the US research community contributing though, saying that as a European myself. There's some serious expertise there.
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You make an important point. I don't want to suggest for a moment that Slashdot has a homogeneous audience. However I really doubt you'll see any of the manned flight proponents people coming forward in this thread and saying "well, this is a good thing on balance". It always seems that there's plenty of people around to argue down the alternative, but never somebody with a strong positive attitude to their own preference.
Re:PR (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA uses a lot of tax money and, with a population whose general impression of resemasearch is that it just giving money to boring nerds in labcoats (ignoring the economy generated by products of past research), they must do regular "America #1, Yihaaaa!" performances in order to keep the population from objecting too much against NASA funding.
Well, what do you expect [in-other-news.com]?
Also, it's pretty clear that Obama's core voters don't see space exploration as a priority or even a necessity.
Sure, Obama told the public that he will start a program for Mars and some gullible voters actually believed it. Of course anybody paying attention and having a memory realized back then that Obama's Mars-landing was even more unrealistic than Bush's Moon-landing.
Think of all the subsidized housing and foodstamps that can be bought with just one rocketlaunch. Americans want subsidized housing and foodstamps and that is exacly what they will get in the future.
Also, NASA lags behind [dailykos.com] in what really counts, so of course they deserve rigid cuts that hurt. Otherwise they will not learn their lesson.
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Starting a program for Mars is an easy job for a President. He didn't make any promise that he'd ensure it was completed, either by himself or his successors. That's the beauty of the political system: science and medicine operate on such timescales that you can pretty much do whatever you like, knowing the practical consequences are distant.
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Stuff the manned space program, no one can afford to do anything useful with it except waste humanity's money - and that includes the Chinese who will shortly 'win' the 'space race'.
Get on with the science and send robots.
America is becoming the laughingstock of the world because of its useless politics driving everything the wrong way. Makes you wonder is democracy is actually a complete failure.
Re:PR (Score:5, Informative)
NASA uses a lot of tax money
NASA budget: $19 billion
US military budget: $685 billion (including $79 billion for R&D alone)
If you do a pie chart of the federal budget, NASA barely even gets a sliver.
That's one of the oddities I've seen among those who generally oppose government spending: They tend to have a wildly distorted view of where most of the federal spending actually goes. The big items that account for almost all of it are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the military, and interest on previously accumulated debt, so if you're really trying to reduce the size of government, you have to do something about those.
On the budget... (Score:3)
NASA uses a lot of tax money
NASA budget: $19 billion
US military budget: $685 billion (including $79 billion for R&D alone)
If you do a pie chart of the federal budget, NASA barely even gets a sliver.
That's one of the oddities I've seen among those who generally oppose government spending: They tend to have a wildly distorted view of where most of the federal spending actually goes. The big items that account for almost all of it are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the military, and interest on previously accumulated debt, so if you're really trying to reduce the size of government, you have to do something about those.
You're absolutely right about NASA not consuming nearly as much as other parts of the budget. But neither is NASA a mandated constitutional duty as defense is. So it's naturally going to get a lower priority as it's considered discretionary spending.
Now, that said, I completely agree with you on the issue of where the budget problems are (entitlements, entitlements, entitlements), but even being of a more hawkish disposition than not, I'll be the first to tell you that there's plenty to cut in DOD's budget
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NASA uses a lot of tax money
NASA budget: $19 billion
US military budget: $685 billion (including $79 billion for R&D alone)
If you do a pie chart of the federal budget, NASA barely even gets a sliver.
That's one of the oddities I've seen among those who generally oppose government spending: They tend to have a wildly distorted view of where most of the federal spending actually goes. The big items that account for almost all of it are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the military, and interest on previously accumulated debt, so if you're really trying to reduce the size of government, you have to do something about those.
They also don't seem to understand the funding models. For example, Social Security is (currently) fully funded - in fact, revenues exceed expenses. Fixing it longer term just requires removing the income cap (Disclaimer: My personal income is over the cap). Medicare and Medicaid have dedicated funding, but are currently underfunded (by a fair amount if my reading of the current numbers is correct). Military spending and interest come out of the general fund.
Leaving SS out of the picture, the Wikipedia
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I love how you liberals denegrate everyone that don't think like you
People normally don't do it when they can back up their beliefs with fact-supported reasoning. Unfortunately, most people arent informed enough to actually be able to back up their beliefs, instead simply parroting the group-think of their peers. The group may be right, but the typical individual is still ignorant so must resort to name calling. This is true on both sides of the liberal-conservative fence, but liberals seem to do it as an opening-move much more frequently than conservatives and I'm not sur
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...This is true on both sides of the liberal-conservative fence, but liberals seem to do it as an opening-move much more frequently than conservatives and I'm not sure why.
You never go to right-wing blogs do you?
Blaming the wrong people (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the administration's fault, it's Congress. NASA HQ and the administration didn't even want to build SLS -- they wanted to bolster the commercial launch market instead -- and were forced to do it by the Congressional committee.
If there's someone Lou Friedman should be complaining about, it's Senators Nelson and Shelby and their fixation on providing pork to large aerospace contractors in return for bribes, I mean campaign donations.
I would have hoped that someone in his position would be better informed, frankly.
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If there's someone Lou Friedman should be complaining about, it's Senators Nelson and Shelby and their fixation on providing pork to large aerospace contractors in return for bribes, I mean campaign donations.
I would have hoped that someone in his position would be better informed, frankly.
Actually, while the summary doesn't mention this, this is pretty much exactly what Friedman says in his piece:
http://thespacereview.com/article/1947/1 [thespacereview.com]
Having caved in to Congressional special interests on the Space Launch System (SLS), the administration is now prepared to sacrifice science and exploration programs in order to prematurely start its development, with requirements that will neither be met nor needed for more than a decade.
Acronym (Score:4, Funny)
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It would have been nice if the summary had stated what OMB stands for somewhere (Office of Management and Budget). I was trying to figure out if it was some wacky new term for Obama or his administration.
Wait, you mean it isn't Obama's Money Bomb?
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OMB, that band from the 80s? (Score:2)
Don't leave now
Please don't take my heart away
[etc]
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It would have been nice if the summary had stated what OMB stands for somewhere (Office of Management and Budget). I was trying to figure out if it was some wacky new term for Obama or his administration.
This has been modded "funny", but seriously, no-one outside the US is going to know this.
A lot of people inside the US don't immediately know what OMB stands for either.
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99% of people in the US would have no idea. The OMB is not a significant or well-known office. The GAO and the CBO are much better known (and more important) and still 99% of people in the US would have no idea what those are (Government Accountability Office and Congressional Budget Office--both responsible for statistical analyses that study the efficiency and effectiveness of current and proposed government spending, respectively).
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Not well known, maybe. OMB is ridiculously significant, especially its subagency, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which has to approve every significant regulation promulgated by an agency within the executive branch hierarchy.
Answer: No, it isn't (Score:4, Interesting)
Look, we're in a debt crisis and cuts must be made, everyone agrees about that. What we don't agree about is what to cut: Some people say "Cut a lot of military spending", others "Cut a lot of social security" and still others "Both of those are more important than planetary exploration". If I were to support significant cuts to social security, it wouldn't be appropriate to ask "Is F69631 trying to end welfare?" as that certainly wouldn't be my motivation. It might be appropriate to ask "Does F69631 consider social security to be less important than our continued presence in [sandy country]" but even that would be questionable as the situation obviously isn't "either-or". It would be appropriate to ask "Does F69631 believe that it's better idea to cut that amount of money from social security than to cut only some of that amount there and cut the rest from [another program]?"...
I'd bet a month's wage that Obama administration has nothing against planetary exploration. It's always easier to create provocative straw-man arguments than it is to actually engage in a civilized discussion in which everyone acknowledges the facts (=the fact that in a democracy we need to make compromises and other people might have different values and opinions than you do). We need some sort of rally to restore sanity or something...
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In politics, people have memory. Deals are made. Losers sit tight. Times change. Deals forgotten. Sharp headlines ensue.
The SFS page is completely useless in not provided the least explanation about why we need all this launch tonnage.
I read this change in budget priority as being driven by technical continuity. With the Shuttle shut down, you have find some way to keep this kind of expertise assembled and moving forward, or you lose a lot. Must be galling for the planetary explorers to be stuck carr
NASA budget is two days expenditure by the US (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA has a budget of under twenty billion dollars. Since the US budget is a deficit busting 3.8 trillion it takes less than two days to cover NASA. Some will actually say that amount is far too much. Which is odd because we are spending so much we don't have, if we consider that we spend over three billion a day we don't have we deficit spend NASA's budget in a week.
We lose an estimated hundred billion dollars a year is medicare/medicade fraud. When you combine all levels of government we spend over six trillion dollars.
We have over TWO THOUSAND SUBSIDY programs. That is methods of getting money into the hands of people based on arbitrary requirements.
Any attempt to cut one item is usually met with an irrational comparison which puts the person suggesting the cut on the level not much higher than mass murderer. Yet the if we are going to fund science like NASA, and note we need to find all the programs the US funds not just including NASA to get an idea of how much is truly spent, we have to get expenditures under control. NASA isn't the only government player in space, the Air Force does a good amount there as well.
I agree with the person I am replying too, Obama and many Democrats and Republicans have nothing against NASA but one simple fact remains, it garnishes very little votes for them. So the money is better spent on other programs which keep them in office.
The three big forces in American politics are are all self supporting, Big Business, Labor Unions, and Politicians. The rest of us are played all the time and only given two choices because they have effectively shut down third party options.
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While I agree with your post I really wonder about that number: that would be $300 per citzen and year. That sounds unbelieveable high.
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Remember that its pretty much impossible to police the incredible number of claims made per year, and claims originate from so many differen
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You could cut down the fraud by only having one medical company, like a National Health Service as we have in the UK, or as we have in most of Europe ...
But that would mean that the aim of your medical system would no longer be making money, but keeping people healthy enough to work....
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We've all read about how they keep people Healthy over there.
Just don't ask for a glass of water.
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Doesn't take much effort [chron.com]
Re:NASA budget is two days expenditure by the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't kid yourself: it's almost entirely pharma, especially since the US government refuses to actually negotiate drug prices. Which in a market system is batshit crazy since it amounts to a massive handout to pharmaceutical companies.
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...who happen to give major "campaign donations" to certain congressweasels.
NASA *is* a vote-buying enterprise (Score:2)
Sure, NASA gets them votes. It gets them votes by passing around large amounts of money to contractors in key Congressional districts. Like the company in Utah that manufactured the segmented solid-rocket boosters for the Shuttle. Funny, how those same boosters are *required* for the new rocket - over the screaming objections of anyone who knows anything about rocket design.
Planetary exploration missions just cannot serve the same vote-buying purpose.
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The complete Apollo programme, which was horrifically expensive compared to today's NASA budget, was the Defence budget for a week ,,,,
The NASA budget is a pittance, it's something we should be spending money on, rather than sending troops to random countries ...
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If I were to support significant cuts to social security, it wouldn't be appropriate to ask "Is F69631 trying to end welfare?"
If you're trying to do X, and X implies Y, then you are trying to do Y. When Y is unpopular you don't get absolved simply because it's an indirect effect X. If Y was forseeable, and you still did X, you intentionally did Y. Take some responsibility for your positions.
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De-fund Congress and we'd all be better off.
Find another way to fund it (Score:2)
The space program made sense in the cold war when there was a lot of competition for access to space and each side was afraid of the other. Even now the US has a strategic need to be able to put hardware (both manned and unmanned) into low earth orbit. But I don't think this requirement extends to the moon and beyond. If we want to send humans to Mars and beyond it will not be funded by the US taxpayers. The money will have to come from elsewhere.
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Well once you start mining asteroids [wikipedia.org] your budget worries are over!
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Sure, ultimately it will be big business, but which established business wants to upset their nice market niche to go after it? The only way it will get started will be for somebody to start from scratch. Buy launches from SpaceX, etc, and ship their product back to the market. Its not the job of the US Government to fund exploration for resources outside the US (okay ignore Iraq). If fossil fuels start to seriously run out I would expect the US to build their own solar power plants in orbit, with materials
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I don't even think asteroid mining could be big business unless the asteroids happen to pass very close by at a convenient (and perhaps dangerous) low speed or some massive Star Trek-level breakthrough in space transportation is made. Otherwise whatever you get there won't be worth the cost of retrieving it.
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I suspect that China maybe the ones who will be building the stuff in orbit using mined asteroid material as unless the US keeps its living knowledge current then it will loose its lead.
Expertise in robot probes is good because over time those probes could be the ones who are doing the missions to asteroids and bringing them back using solar sails etc.
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Currently NASA has no way of getting anything to the ISS ... except via Russian or European rockets ... brilliant
They spent a fortune on a manned space program, that was fairly pointless, and then they scrapped completely
Pork Pork Pork (Score:2, Insightful)
Congress determines the budget, not the Obama administration. NASA can't get anything done unless the project can be porked out to 10 different states.
If China gets their space station started and going, maybe that will trigger Congress to actually back NASA in a meaningful way again. Hoping for Space Race Part 2.
Conspiracy (Score:3)
Maybe They know something, or someone, is coming. Maybe They know that we will need a reliable space shuttle to do something (like go pick up beacons on each planet). Maybe They know.
I sleep better at night know that They know.
Expensive new rocket and nothing to do with it (Score:2)
In other words, we're talking about another white elephant like the Space Shuttle - made for the
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I'm surprised space solar power doesn't get pushed more heavily, though I'll give you 1 guess as to why: no one in coal, oil or gas would want to hear about it.
I mean, a 100 ton launch payload sounds very much like the amounts one might want to launch to put collectors into geostationary (or I guess maybe even Earth-Sun Lagrangian) orbits. The technology to beam power around with microwaves was pretty much ready to go in the 80's, and it's completely safe even at ground level - antennas can be built over fa
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Nothing to do with oil/coal/gas industries, your favorite conspiracy theory aside. The economics just don't work. And won't until we can bring in the major structural components for same from asteroids or the moon.
So what would you rather cut? (Score:2)
In case nobody noticed, there is not much political will in Washington to fund much of anything these days. 19 billion/year is not small change and NASA should be able to work on one or two really cool projects - but not everything at once. Would you rather cancel the cool new rocket and leave sending humans to space entirely to Russians? With Shuttle gone, this should leave you with plenty of robotic missions.
Global economy (Score:2)
Doesn't China have the money to put into a maned space mission? Maybe he should direct his needs towards a country, in the global economy, that is making money instead of one that is trying to thwart an economic implosion. Kicking Obama in the balls while he is trying to keep the country from falling back into the hands of the people that devastated the countries economy is childish at best.
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You've got it backwards. The expensive "exciting new rocket" that the administration likes would be able to take people to Mars ("The Space Launch System, or SLS, will be designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments to Earth's orbit and destinations beyond.") The robotic space probe
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This will only change when deep-space telescopes find a definite extrasolar planet for human resettlement.
We've found a huge number of candidate planetary star systems, with confirmed planets in the habitable zone, using the Kepler telescope. But now we need JWST to look more closely at them. But JWST was underfunded, so it got delayed and went over budget, which caused it to get delayed some more, in a sort of destructive spiral. And now NASA's caught between a rock and hard place. Congress orders NASA to build SLS and JWST and run the ISS and collaborate with other countries and do technology research and do
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We don't. Some people do, but their missions are privately funded.
No, Earth is absurdly more hospitable.
No, even if you wanted to pursue the fantasies of interstellar travel, doing it on Earth is much preferred.
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Because you have to learn to walk before you try and run. What hope would our distant descendants have of surviving on an extrasolar planet lightyears from Earth if we (or more likely our grandchildren/great-grandchildren) don't see what the problems are and try and solve them? One things for sure, if we don't move beyond Earth soon we are going to ha
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Space travel isn't going to solve that. 3rd world mothers can pop out babies out faster than you can put them in rockets, and shoot them across the galaxy.
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He's right in this case. Without some radical breakthrough, as long as we are pushing spacecraft from A to B, we are not leaving this solar system, no way, no how, never. So we better hope some kind of teleportation will be possible some day.
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Sure, create jobs. And pay them with...? The government's running out of money, and reinventing the wheel (and face it, unless you're changing the energy source, that's EXACTLY what this is), is the real waste. To generate more wealth, America should focus on offworld mining. Introducing something of value to the economy, and selling it.
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Agreed. It would be MUCH cheaper to partner with Chinan, Europe or Russia to lift cargo. (or to come up with a joint-program with Europe to design the next generation craft). Even investing or offering engineers to private space agencies (spaceship ONE) would be astromnomically cheaper and much more productive.
The potrayed advancement in technology and advancements are null, even
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Offworld mining? Have you really thought out the cost to do THAT?
I think the administration should just admit that it wants to kill any mission that involves Man leaving the upper atmosphere and be done with it.
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I'm just saying, in a capitalist democracy, money talks, and consequently votes. What is space WORTH to the US Government? What money can they make from it? What exploitable resources does space have? First, the obvious one: space. Offworld residence, tourism, storage. Not much reason to go into low earth orbit right now though. Second, space doesn't have a great deal of gravity. Zero-G manufacturing of larger equipment, for instance, is something that can't be done on Earth. Thirdly, you have mine
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Zero-G manufacturing of larger equipment, for instance, is something that can't be done on Earth.
Suppose you can build some large equipment in space with manufacturing advantages. (Never mind all the effort to set up such a manufacturing base.) How exactly would you get it back to earth where it's needed? It's not like you can just give that fancy gas turbine that you just built a slight retrograde nudge and let it fall back down to earth.
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Cordless drills.
Re:Waste of time and money (Score:4, Insightful)
You think this is about jobs?
Please ponder the following:
* Realistically,m how many jobs can NASA create?
* How much does it cost to create each of those jobs? (NASA doesn't do cheap stuff)
* What's the intersection between "people who are qualified to work for NASA" and "people who are having trouble finding work"?
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You think that the money stops with NASA's direct spending? Some goes on people, some goes on raw resources, some goes into the profits of contractors, etc. but all of that money is then spent or invested by those recipients passing it through to new recipients, who then spend it or invest it, etc.
Make an engineer richer and he'll spend his money on commodity goods made by the people who do fit into your "people who are having trouble finding work" category.
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Conversion efficiency is low (an engineer can only eat so much pizza) and there's some leakage (most of the toys an an engineer is tempted by are made overseas).
Nope, it's mostly a PR circus for the masses - just like those F22 fighters, etc.
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Conversion efficiency is low (an engineer can only eat so much pizza) and there's some leakage (most of the toys an an engineer is tempted by are made overseas).
Nope, it's mostly a PR circus for the masses - just like those F22 fighters, etc.
Word... a good engineer could maybe make a product cost 10% less to manufacture. On the other hand, a good PR/marketing flack could simply get people to pay 2x more for the goods. Which is a better investment for a company? :-P
A good lawyer could.... well, I'd come up with something, but it would be pointless since you'd have to be able to find a good laywer first >;-D
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Considering the fiscal climate we are in I say the government should forget about going to Mars and just pick the project which would create the most high paying jobs. It seems like the new rocket will create the most and will greatly ease launching more satellites for both private and public use. The only thing on Mars is dirt and sending another probe wont change that.
This is exactly what NASA should not be doing. If you want to know why, you should read the 2003 testimony of Zubrin on the future of NASA [spaceref.com].
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Don't worry, if we (the U.S.) don't do it, others will.
Humans will explore the solar system and, perhaps eventually, the stars. It just may not be Americans, anymore.
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The thing is we don't know what technological breakthroughs will be required to get to Mars, especially for it to become routine, nor how those technological advances will impact humanity as a whole. A huge number of everyday items that you currently use are directly traceable to previous human endeavours such as the Apollo program and Concorde.
The advances in medical understanding required to get astronauts to and from Mars could include such wonders as tissue regeneration, stimulation of muscle growth, o
Re:Waste of time and money (Score:5, Interesting)
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Get use to poverty, food shortages, riots and general decay
It's not like you all haven't played Fallout. Now you get to play the Massively Multiplayer version!
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Well - you've got to admit. Aside from dirt and water, there isn't much on Earth, either.
Re:Waste of time and money (Score:5, Informative)
OMB = Office of Management and Budget for us non-Americans.
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+1 informative
thanks
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I thought it was an 80s synth-pop band. This makes more sense.
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Actually, it's the Office of Management and Budget for us Americans. You guys probably have the same thing, but you call it something else. Unless, of course, you don't have the same thing at all, in which case you don't call it anything at all.
If I rambled on long enough, do you you think we could figure out who's on third?
Re:Money, money, money (Score:5, Insightful)
They could learn to go to war less and have a smaller military maybe?
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There are some cultures out there for which live and let live does not exist; and look at the USA's culture as an anathema to be crushed.
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I have an enemy-repelling rock you could replace at least half of your military with. I'll give it to you for free.
Re:Money, money, money (Score:4, Insightful)
Our military is TEN TIMES that of China. We could reduce military spending by a factor of 5 and still have twice the force China does.
There are some cultures out there for which live and let live does not exist
America being foremost among them.
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Oh, also I think you should see this:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19461_6-b.s.-myths-you-probably-believe-about-americas-enemies.html [cracked.com]
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GameboyRMH gets his news from the Daily Show and Foreign Policy insight from Cracked.
This is America's future.
Abandon all hope.
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Sycodon thinks verifiable facts are invalidated if presented by a comedy site and assumes I watch the Daily Show (I'm not even sure which talk show that is - Conan O'Brian's or that really funny guy with the grayish hair? - can't remember his name now).
This is the state of Internet discussion.
Abandon all hope.
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Ah John Stewart! Yeah his show's funny as hell, I catch it a few times per year. I haven't caught him lying so far.
The saddest and most informative thing I saw on his show was a montage of all the US presidents going back to Jimmy Carter calling for energy reform - obviously without success :-(
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You do realize that one of the reasons why more countries don't attack the USA is because our "larger" military and our perchance to whip it out if provoked.
Or, ya know, it could be those really big nukes that would turn most of those countries into a glass pit. If it came down to an actual all-out war, the United states has enough long-range weapons that the number of ground troops would be just about irrelevant.
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Even if you think a large military is necessary, the incestuous relationship between the government and military contractors is *still* a colossal waste of money. It's not going to be broken by regulation (too much money already going around) so some nice hard cuts targeting "useless" things for modern American operations would be a great place to start. If it's bad, then raise the budget later when you need it - but there's enormous merit in keeping the purse-strings tight to promote efficiency.
There's a r
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It's all our fault eh?
Shouldn't you be out defecating on a Police Car or something?
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Maybe you've heard of this thing called NATO where most of those countries are guaranteed US military assistance if attacked? As in, declaring war on them IS declaring war on the US?
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Which countries are you thinking of?
Germany, Japan, Bulgaria, and Italy where US forces stand ready to bravely defend against the USSR and the Axis Powers? Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, where we have troops ready to keep out the forces of Saddam Hussein?
When you look at significant military threats to nearby allied nations, all you have are:
1. North Korea, mostly targeting South Korea but sometimes Japan.
2. Pakistan, who's primary target is the more-or-less equally armed India.
3. Iran, possibly targeting Ira
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Cato, Von Mises, Wattsup, Conservapedia.
Link to any of these in a non-humorous post and you immediately lose points in the mind of the reader. Same goes for Greenpeace or any other nutty leftist sources you can find. That shit doesn't fly around here. If the link contains valid information then link to the same info from a reputable source. If it contains a bunch of soapboxing, slant or bullshit with no facts to back it up then save it.