Commercial Space Crew Supporters Posit a Conspiracy Theory Involving Funding Shortages 62
MarkWhittington writes: The Space Access Society, a group that advocates for government funded, commercially operated spacecraft, examined the annual fight between supporters of the heavy lift Space Launch System and supporters of the commercial crew program in a recent communique. In the view of the SAS and other commercial crew supporters, Congress, on the behalf of the big rocket supporters, has been shorting funding for the commercial crew spacecraft in favor of the SLS. On the surface there seems to be no reason for this, as the two undertake different missions. The Space Access Society posits a conspiracy theory so immense that at first glance would seem to be in the same class as the Apollo moonlanding hoax, The SAS accuses Space Launch System supporters of trying to arrange the premature end of the International Space Station to free up funding for the big rocket and related projects.
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Because Whittington is a well known clown that floods inane space related submissions
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Because Whittington is a well known clown that floods inane space related submissions
... and this one is especially inane, because much of the information in the summary is wrong. Some members of SAS may advocate for "government funded, commercially operated spacecraft", but that is not a specific goal of the organization itself. SAS includes big aerospace companies, like Boeing and Lockheed, who benefit from "cost plus" pork. But it also includes smaller companies, and libertarian kooks, who think government is the problem, not the solution. Their main function is to organize conferenc
Congress is irrational!!! (Score:1)
Because they don't do what we want!!! Therefore.... Conspiracy!!!1!!!11!!!!1!!!!!eleven!!!!
Do these people pay attention to literally anything else? I have no idea whether they're right, wrong, or whatever, but if they are right then Occam's razor would suggest lobbyists and stupidity, in that order.
Re:Congress is irrational!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose you could call it a 'conspiracy' since there are people clearly conspiring to get the priorities they feel important funded. Most people would call it 'politics as usual'. And yes, the recipe calls for pork, lots and lots of it. Not very healthy, but very tasty. Humans will typically go for what tastes good, not what is good for you.
Whatever the hell that is.
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The problem is that the government dictates commercial activities. You're not going to put anything in spaaaaace without a government permit - even if you launch it from outside the USA - unless it's 100% designed, built and integrated outside of the reach of UncleSam (even then, you may find it difficult if you have commercial activities within the USA.)
Congressional pork is a given. The USA is openly corrupt in many areas. The best thing the commercial companies can do for their own long-term survival is
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Congress is like a horse and donkey show . . . you trade a bit . . . and then a NASA contract gets awarded to your state . . . which means jobs, that you can brag about. What is best for the country? Who cares?
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Who cares (in the US) is exactly right, the space program or rather what is left of it is in the condition it is for two reasons.
1. The Federal Reserve System. The mob getting taken by better crooks than they were in 1944, the banksters.
2. Loss of the JFK space program in 1964 with CIA SR/OXCART being breached and development being subsequently cancelled over an underground river plug under Virginia City, NV and the theft of around 5 million which was for the prototype SR-71 imaging sensors. Could have ha
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The real truth about the Moon is being hidden from us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Nude on the Moon" . . . how come we can't create original TV programming like that these days . . . ?
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Because ideas can no longer be original anymore, welcome to the advent of mind control. Most folks have between 2% and 4% of their mind to use now days, barely enough to handle their day to day lives. Critical thinking though not on the books is treated as a crime, just take a look at Snowden. So yes, you do not get a space program, instead you get a shiny new short bus, a Brittany Spears sing along on a trip to Chucky Cheese's, smiles drool and giggles all the way, Skylab v2.0 and soon self driving cars
Big Rocket (Score:2)
I'm not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
The SLS exists to give pork to established NASA contractors. SpaceX is trying to get stuff into space cheaply.
SpaceX is centralized in a few districts so it gets relatively little support. On the other hand, the SLS has pork divided up over the whole country. Thus, if you are a politician, and want pork, you want to support the SLS. The fact that the SLS makes no scientific or financial sense whatsoever, does not factor into the decision to vote against SpaceX. To bring pork to your district, SLS is the correct program.
Unfortunately, SLS has went the way of many of the more recent military purchase programs. Yes, the F-35 can be built, but why? Yes the SLS can be built, but is this really the best way? do we really need it? Given SpaceX's development trajectory, will the SLS ever be needed? Really needed?
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Well, apparently . . . the pork will be needed . . .
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I think your pork theory may have a great deal of truth. However, I can also see the merit of having your eggs in two baskets instead of one. Two different kinds of basket.
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They aren't compliant, never will be...
Care to substantiate that?
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Thus, if you are a politician, and want pork [...]
But you repeat yourself. [brainyquote.com]
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I shared this exact same view just a few years ago. But as I've been watching the International Space Station crews and their broadcasts, I took more of an interest in the latest space exploration developments.
As it turns out, many companies have come to believe that it is going to be relatively easy to reach out and grab asteroids and mine them, and to mine resources from other bodies such as moons and planets in our solar system.
There is actually a lot of matter in space. Perhaps not relative to the vast
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So where is the conspiracy? (Score:1)
It's the public republican stance/platform that all science and technology should be defunded in favor of creationism and weapon-capable vehicles like the heavy rockets.
Since the government is ran by the republicans (and democrats that will vote whatever the republicans want to avoid a shutdown) it doesn't surprise me at all.
No conspiracy, just regular business. Wait until we get a republican in office, the first things on the chopping block are affordable health insurance, non-proliferation and other peace
Re:So where is the conspiracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
"It's the public republican stance/platform that all science and technology should be defunded in favor of creationism and weapon-capable vehicles like the heavy rockets"
No, it's the Democrat position that all science and technology should be defunded because man's hubris white privilege respect for the Hawaiian volcano gods.
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Heh heh. Put the pipe down, man.
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Really? Obama's health care joke has done more damage to the affordability of health care than anything else so far.
Conspiracy? Its fact. (Score:5, Interesting)
Its not a conspiracy, its fact. More than a few congress critters don't like ISS and would like to see it die. The whole touchy feely aspect of nations cooperating instead of constantly stabbing each other in the backs is probably point one. There are also more reasonable cost aspects, ISS has been extremely expensive, far more expensive than it had to be to accommodate so may disparate nations designs. Still others probably think SLS is some big, sexy spaceship that will take us to far more interesting places, ignoring the fact that it will probably only do so for a short time because of the massive costs and little if any returns. Only then do you get into the fraud/pork drives from congress members in districts that will see money & prestige from building parts for the "new rocket ship".
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Its not a conspiracy, its fact.
It is a conspiracy, it's just not a secret.
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... Conspiracies, if they exist, are "fact" as you put it -- they're real things, collusions of real people with real goals.
I think you meant to say, "it's not a conspiracy theory, it's a conspiracy fact".
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Shorting? (Score:2)
has been shorting funding for the commercial crew spacecraft
Ugh, is "shorting" a verb now as well? I knew it was some weird thing you can do with share options, but I didn't realise we needed a replacement for "reducing."
Except (Score:2, Interesting)
President Obama is the one who created this fight and has been using it politically.
In every single year since his 2010 NASA budget proposal advocated killing-off the bi-partisan Constellation program with no planned replacement, the President has fought a money game with congress over NASA. Each year he simultaneously claims he has too much money [spacenews.com] for the project congress wants to fund (SLS) and he tries all sorts of bureaucratic slight-of-hand to shift money from SLS/Orion to Commercial Crew. In each year
Nice title (Score:2)
This isn't a secret (Score:2)
The international space station is dead. The point of it was cooperation between the US and Russia.
That's over.
We are paying the Russians. We don't want to do that.
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Why not? The Russians are far less likely than a US corporation to be successful at corrupting our political process with bogus arguments about how giving them money will "create jobs" and "increase tax revenues" and they are cheap. And paying them something may keep them in politically in line and gives them something to feel proud of.
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Unless you want to launch really expensive fireworks, of course... they're good at that.
And NASA has probably launched the most expensive fireworks in history. If I remember correctly, replacing Challenger cost over $2,000,000,000 (and the total cost would have been more than $5,000,000,000 if you include the costs of not launching anything for a year or two afterwards).
What do you think the chances are of a successful launch of a rocket that only flies every couple of years? Would you really want to stick a multi-billion dollar payload on top of it?
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Why not? Why not send the Russians billions of dollars?
Lets try "because".
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Says the stalker troll, Bingo?
*yawn*
What's bad about SLS? (Score:2)
It's just a big rocket, right? Fire comes out of the bottom and it goes up. It is big so it can launch bigger stuff at once. Looks like the Saturn V over again. Boring but practical.
Here's an idea : why not launch single use, single module space stations? with the people inside.
No resupply : astronauts do their space stuff, and when the life support runs out they get out and come back on Earth. Experiments may continue to run unattended. There may be another, small return capsule for whatever products/sampl
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What's bad is that it's so expensive that no-one can afford to launch anything on it.
If it flies once a year, the launch costs are expected to be around $5,000,000,000 a time. That's close to fifty SpaceX launches. If it flies every two years, as seems more likely, the cost will be closer to $10,000,000,000 a time.
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That's actually a really clever idea! A pity it's been done--it was called "The Space Shuttle." Perhaps you heard of it.
The Space Shuttle was, essentially, a launch-able space station. It supported 7 astronauts in a shirt-sleeve environment. Experiments were carried out inside and outside the shuttle.
The issue was that the Shuttle could only stay up about 3 weeks or so. The advantage of the ISS is that it stays up much longer, allowing for longer-term experiments.
cut them both (Score:2)
They both sound like massive crony capitalism to me, so just cut them both.