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Space

Clinton Says NASA's Budget Should Be Increased 137

Posted by Hemos from the time-to-increase dept.
Terov writes "This story at CNN.com says President Clinton has announced that the time has come to increase NASA's budget. All I can say is, "It's about time!""
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Clinton Says NASA's Budget Should Be Increased More

Clinton Says NASA's Budget Should Be Increased

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  • Now let's watch as Bush closes down NASA when he fails to understand what they are trying to do.

    Ad hominen attacks on Bush aside, if Triana is what we get out of a smart administration, then by God we need a stupid one in the White House.


    Bush Sr. gave us DC-X when he was in office; once Clinton got in, they basically screwed up the funding so bad (refusing to allocate funds Congress had passed; Clinton's main use of the Line Item Veto was on the $ 10 million operations budget for DC-X, when there is billions of dollars of unnecessary pork in NASA) that the maintenance team was dispersed to the four winds twice, and eventually during one test flight the craft crashed due to improper maintenance; Clinton et al (including this site's alleged genius darling, Al Gore) to give the contract for the follow-up to LockMart, which has spent 1000 million dollars and not only isn't any closer to testing their vehicle when the program started, but currently isn't showing any signs of wanting the vehicle to succeed: apparently they believe that it's enough to make sure that they got the contract and denied federal funding for someone else to build a cheap launcher.


    Ten times as much money, and they won't even get to the point of launching it to see if it'll crash. Yeah, right.

    Hemos, if you expect us to be impressed by Clinton saying, after he's royally screwed things up, as he goes out of office, that a budget increace is needed, when he spent the last eight cutting NASA's budget and making sure what they did get wasn't spent very well, is the height of hypocricy.

  • I'm pretty sure military spending is the lowest portion of the federal budget it's been since WWII ended. If you want to blame someone for the money spent on the military, blame Clinton. He didn't want to spend the money to keep them up to speed in the maintenance dept, but boy, he sure couldn't resist pissing away a couple billion dollars of cruise missiles to distract people from his affairs, and he sure relied on the military to deploy in support of his cause of the week.

  • Because the Democrats can't even spell vote correctly, much less vote the right way!

    "even though I did FOR FOR Gore.."

    ;->
  • All he really cares about is those big long cylinder shaped things with lots of thrust. He is fairly single minded. Once he has got over this one he will invest in Hoover, a company that really sucks.

  • http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1 084000/1084476.stm

    The threat is real and iminent.
  • > The military, on the other hand, gets crazy with spending.

    that's its job. . the military is in the business of preventing disasters, and that kind of operation is inherently wasteful. . you don't measure the cost of what you're spending against the returns you get, you measure the cost of what you're spending against what you'd lose if there *was* a disaster.

    that's tough, because if you're doing things right, the disasters never actually happen.

    geeks do exactly the same thing when they design networks to handle peak loads, eliminate single points of failure, and all the rest. . all the PHBs see is a pile of expensive and complicated technology that -- in their opinion -- could be replaced by a single computer with a cable modem. . the difference is that one will fall over and emit smoke if it gets Slashdotted, and the other one won't.

    but the PHBs don't care.

    until the network gets Slashdotted. . then they want everything fixed *now*.

    making a profit means using your resources right up to the limits of their capacity. . preventing disasters means making sure you don't run out of anything too soon. . when it comes to fighting wars, the guy who has one bullet left over when everyone else has run out -- wins.

    of course, if he has *two* bullets left over, you can bet that someone will call the second one an "unnecessary surplus".
  • Third party space companies are making innovations for much cheaper than NASA can. While I do agree that we should continue to support NASA, and thats one government agency that I don't mind my taxes going towards, it still suffers from "big government institution pains". I've heard of many ex-NASA employees going off on their own building rockets and such because they couldn't get anything done at NASA, without wasting millions of dollars.

    Something has to be done to streamline NASA, if we want to accomplish the things that we want to do with space...
  • Hell no I will not pay higher taxes so NASA gets more money. What I support is cutting other budgets that are a complete waste of money and getting NASA to stop being so wasteful.
  • ...and we get more bang for the buck out of the military than we've ever gotten out of NASA. I contracted to NASA for a year -- and saw things that made my dumbest military experiences look positively intelligent. Some of the contractors know what they are doing (this is why most of the shuttles don't blow up), but the civil servants are clueless. Remove NASA, and give the mission to the military, NSF, and DARPA -- you might actually have a moon base now if they'd eliminated NASA a decade ago.

    Try working for NASA before you advocate for a better budget for them -- it will open your eyes.
  • Pascal's wager is _fundamentally_ flawed. Why? I doubt any higher being would be very happy with someone that believes in them _purely_ as an "insurance plan."
  • Sometime in the near future, the Earth will not be able to accomodate everybody. This is almost guranteed with the current rate of population increase. So, eventually, some people shall have to settle on places other than Earth. Humanity itself can survive on Earth a lot longer, most likely, but there will come a day too when Earth is completely uninhabitable, I would venture.
  • "The only true Christian I know of is Christ... Everyone else just wants to tell you what to do." -- R. O. Quivers..
  • It's about time??? Fuck that, NASA should be privately funded. Not to mention they aren't very productive with their money, every friggin thing they launch up there blows up and costs half the U.S. budget!
  • That is all well and good, with a collective "Duh!" coming from most, but I am more curious as to what is being done to fund other types of exploration. For example, having watched another fine episode of SeaQuest (the first season, of course), what type of exploration is being done of the sea? I am sure there is an organization for this sort of thing, but I haven't a clue what it is, so I will post the question here. Is there a possiblity to colonize this type of environment, seriously, in the near future? I think it would be fascinating to see the government take a turn in that direction as well. With all that has been done to bring the world closer together as of recent, be it high speed Internet connection people, to business expanding markets, the world is indeed a smaller place. So, maybe it is time for people to get back to their exploration roots. Maybe it is the holiday season and my lack of sleep, but this sounds cool.

    Bryan R.
  • Let's say we managed to get to 10Bn, which is less than double. A lot more of us would be eating a lot more tofu.

    And if we move these people into space, they're going to be eating hamburgers? Just how easy do you think it is to raise cattle in space? For the same cost, you could blanket the Earth with climate controlled greenhouses and feed hundreds of billions of people.

  • Wasn't there an online poll just a few weeks ago asking what visitors thought about such a raise?

    Two comments:

    First, online polls are worthless, as are
    any self-selected polls.

    Second, when competent polling organizations
    ask questions that rank public support for various
    federal spending programs, the space program comes
    in near the bottom, below even farm subsidies.

  • The same argument could be made in 10 years. Why even bother with space at all???

    In 10 years (or 20, or 100), other technologies may have developed that make space more sensible. It's silly to think it's 'now or never'. Your complaint will have weight only when all other technological progress has stagnated.

    IMHO it's an extremely near sighted view. Research in microgravity can possible yeild new medicines, alloys, etc.

    The scientific yield from microgravity research has been meagre and shows no sign of being anything but meagre. If it were forced to compete with other ways to spend science dollars it would not be funded.

    Microgravity research is a rationalization at best, and a fraudulent justification at worst, for building the space station.

  • Sometime in the near future, the Earth will not be able to accomodate everybody. This is almost guranteed with thecurrent rate of population increase.

    Sorry, but this is not the case. Current projections have the world population not reaching even double the current level before leveling off or declining. This is well below the level the planet can support.

    There's no good evidence that an industrial civilization can even maintain its population, let alone grow the population over the long term. The fertility rate is well below replacement in most of the industrialized world.

  • Oh, I see how it is. You don't want to pay taxes for stuff YOU don't like, but you want EVERYONE to play taxes for NASA because YOU think it is a good thing. Well screw you for encouraging the government to force me at gun-point to pay for some wasteful programs that would be better done in the private sector. You think NASA is perfect? Have you seen all the missions they fsck up? All the Mars probes and things?

    Oh, but you're insightful and I'll once again be modded down as flamebait for having a different opinion.
  • Who knows whos pulling Georges strings.

    Dick "Gepetto" Cheney!
  • It should be against international law to complain about your taxes until you've lived in Canada.
    --------
    Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
  • Yeah, they should make everything far cheaper, hire cheap stuff, not those like the crew from Apollo 11, who was easily able to bring the lander "eagle" safe down on the moon by hand, cause the automatic systems didn't brought them to a good area...

    They even should use only cheap crap PC with systems build in Redmond, after all it comes pre-installed with these shiny machines.

    And the cheap stuff they hired would be able to find the start button. During the so called "cold war", when money was not the issue for NASA, I can't remember one mistake like they made in a past mars mission with mixing up metric and the "american way" of units.

    Honestly, NASA == sience and you can't make money from it. If I were an american I had no problem with them taking some of the tax they take from me and donating it to NASA.

    Michael
  • This sounds great to me - I am a huge proponent of the space program, and I truly hope that someday [soon] we have humans living among the stars. However, I think that President Clinton needs to be asked the question "What about private organizations?" I think very highly of NASA, and other government funded space agencies, but in earnest, I feel the private sector would take great strides in space development. After all - they are after profit. What better fuel to feel the money hungry? Fierce competition will instantly sprout up, and soon, costs will be reduced so drastically that people will be able to celebrate Christmas on the moon. The private sector has always done great things for technology/economy in the past and I believe it is time to let that private sector go as far as it wants.
  • Oh, guess I'm wrong- I was always under the impression that only the orbital probe was a success, and that the lander failed really early on. Guess I'm wrong; time to go read up on the subject.
  • Bwahaha... Normally I'd agree with you on a statement like that, but paying taxes in Canada means you recieve the results.

    No matter how many bad publications we got south of the border (thats you Uncle Sam) we're still top notch ;).

    Besides, you want to make 60G's and pay 50% tax or make 45G's and pay 25% tax? Perhaps you'd prefer 30G's with NO Tax. I for one don't really care. (Just examples, not real life figures and nothing to back them up with though if worker tax decreased corporate taxes would need to increase making for lower wages..)
  • Don't forget the fact that it's the results of science that are used to help increase those standards.

    Heck... If science hadn't explored the oceans we still wouldn't know about North / South America.

    Arguably if science hadn't invented the wheel or tried someone took the time to tie a stone to a stick to make knives and arrows we'd still be out in forests hunting down berries. Someone at some point has to put time / money into this stuff.
  • I order you never to use a material that was a direct result of all that NASA spending...

    Ever used teflon? The military does some good things too, but I don't see as many direct results. I suppose Nuclear power -- we CANDU it here -- is a result of the Nuclear bomb research.
  • ...where's he been the past eight years when he had time to do this?

    *scoove*
  • That would be great if they would get us there. I'm more hopeful that some dot.com billionaire is going to take this up as his project and set up a private space company to do it right.

    Maybe Larry Ellison could do it.

    DB
  • Since muslims, christians, and jews all view Abraham as valid and worship the same God he did, any of the big monotheistic three gets you to the same door. The question is how loving, forgiving, vengeful, or wrathful he is. Pascal's wager still stands.

    And to also get back on topic, I agree that we should privatize space exploration. The question is how do we do something about it? The US has legislation that gets us most of the way there (I think) but the money hasn't come in.

    Why is that?
  • Actually, Alan Greenspan is an Objectivist, a political species often allied with but distinctly separate from Republican. Besides, you are twisting what he said.

    He has repeatedly said that the best thing would be to not spend it and just pay down the debt. The second best thing would be a tax cut giving back the surplus. The worst thing in the world would be to spend the surplus on new programs or increased funding on old.

    Now outside of some Concord Coalition, Rudman-Perogt love fest, the realists all know that paying down the debt to $0 isn't going to happen unless the economy gets so big that the debt is an asterisk in the government books. This bad faith misrepresentation of Greenspan makes it pretty hard to take the rest of what you said anything other than a troll. On the off chance you actually believe what you wrote...

    Bucko, *progress* isn't good for the environment. Unless you want to go back to cave dwellings, hunting and gathering, etc. Some environmental degradation is going to happen. The question is whether government funded progress in space is going to be cleaner or dirtier than privately funded progress. Take a look at current govt. environmental practice on military bases as a good example. Or maybe you want to look up the horror stories on the Hanford nuke facility. In short, if it wasn't for government immunity, they couldn't build enough prisons to handle the violations of law that the govt does to the environment.

    The "or even each other" part leads me to believe you are trying to make some straw man that private entities in space means anarchy, the rules against murder, theft, sabotage, etc. will be suspended because... well you don't really say why, you leave it all as a nasty inference. In Microsoft, they make nasty jokes about Linus Torvalds and vice versa here at Slashdot. I think we can all live with that kind of behavior.

    "Competition is no good for a research field" Then why are biotech stocks so well funded? Why are pharmaceutical firms raking in so much cash? This is such obvious bs, it's a wonder the lameness filter didn't trip.

    DB
  • Oh, I'd guess that NASA is authorized under the same section that let Lewis and Clark scout out the Louisiana territory.

    In other words, Thomas Jefferson fretted about this too but he sent them out anyway.

    You can make a good case that they serve a good anciliary military function, doing basic research for the next war up above and thus fit into Art 1 Sect 8 para 12-13. Making the results public can be argued to promote the general welfare (para 1 same article) as well as para 8, promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.

    Frankly, I get nervous about it too but I wouldn't say it's flat out unconstitutional for the reasons cited above.

    DB
  • The question isn't whether NASA does good stuff. They do. The question is whether NASA would do a better or worse job with the same dollars than if private companies did it.

    As for the ATC system, there's a crying need to privatize it. There's big bucks being lost because the FAA can't get their act together and fix it. A consortium of the major airliners (financed like C-SPAN) would ensure quick and safe reforms that would allow people to leave and arrive on time without favoring one company over another.

    DB
  • Please, don't ever run anything important. If you have a corrupt, inefficient organization, you come in with a new administrator and fire PHBs, not engineers. You certainly don't let the corrupt, incompetent PHBs pick their own targets for firing, they are guaranteed to go after the productive geeks to protect their personal boot lickers. This is management 101.

    And before we go there, yeah, private industry does this too. It's just that when private industry does it, the fired often group together, form competitors, and beat the crap out of their former employers. With the government's monopoly power, it doesn't work.

    DB
  • I believe the point trying to be made was that the federal government actually doesn't very specifically have those stated powers. Granting money to private establishments for whatever government purpose is just one of those powers that the Federal (Contractual) Monopoly we call the US Government sort of took for themselves, like many others.

    I'm totally for space exploration. I do however wish the Government would (die) keep their nose out of, er, well, EVERYTHING!

    And as much as I wish that, it's a double edged sword. :-( I don't like to see NASA funds decreasing.

    ...

    I wonder how much money the Monopoly would easily be able to waste if EVERYBODY in favor of space exploration donated money to NASA and then claimed the donation on their taxes?

    -=-
  • The facts: the reason NASA has had many failures is that Clinton axed most of their budget early in his administration, laying off many of the principal engineers (including my uncle, who had worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for years, and was close to retiring; Clinton is an a**hole! But you knew that, right?). With all of the experts gone, NASA's results got really shoddy immediately. Now Clinton's trying to fix it before he leaves, now that the damage is already done. What a loser.
  • None of the alphabet-soup agencies are constitutional. Laws are supposed to be created by Congress, not the EPA, FCC, etc. Thanks to FDR for starting that mess.

    Of course, ever since Abe decided to take on the South, the constitution hasn't meant much to the Feds.
  • I thought Nixon started the war on drugs? Carter sure didn't do anything to stop it, and neither did Clinton, so don't get too off on the Republicans for that bone-headedness. I didn't hear Gore promising to end it either.

  • Yeah, but even if there were somewhere for everyone to go, you couldn't get them there. Millions of people are born every day. You just can't transport that kind of population anywhere that they can't walk to.

    Besides, as others have pointed out, there's lots of room left on Earth and population growth levels off eventually anyhow. Now, not everyone will be able to drive an SUV, but they'll have room to live.
  • NASA budget is determined by the three powerful states California, Texas and Florida. Not by politcal parties but by pure politics. Increase NASA's budget. So we can spend 600 million dollars on each shuttle launch? What a farse! Where's the science? Fruit in space? Geriatrics in space? Give me a break. Manned missions should have ended with the moon.
  • I like Clinton and believe he may have been able to win a third term if the constitution allowed

    Are you serious? I disagree -- I feel that his opponents would have GRILLED him on his moral problems, and even more crap would come out of the closet, making America hate him a lot, once again.

    Mike Roberto
    - GAIM: MicroBerto

  • Actually, I think it keeled over during the Reagan/Bush era.

    Actually, NASA's been floundering since after Apollo ended. In a way, the Shuttle didn't help any because it became so big (in terms of budget) that it overshadowed everything else at NASA. Now with Shuttle and ISS consuming over half of NASA's budget, I wonder how much "mere" science will be done.

    That said, there are pockets of excellence at NASA, mostly engineers and scientists. What is really needed is a way to keep those pockets of excellence and eliminate the middle-management bureaucracy stifling them. Until that happens, I'm afraid any budget increases are being thrown into a black hole.

  • "It's about time?" Seems to me it's just a couple months too late, actually.

    Makes you wonder why NASA was backing Buchanan [208.148.76.231].
  • That might make sense if space exploration was all that NASA ever did, but this is definitely not the case. It is the National _Aeronautics_ and Space Administration, and there's a fair bit more on their plate than just sending probes to Mars. NASA is also currently working on improving our air traffic control systems, and systems which allow aircraft to compensate automatically for unusual conditions such as partial damage. This is but a small part of what is being done, but I see these projects at work on a daily basis. I can certainly attest that our tax dollars aren't being wasted. One has to wonder what they'd be able to accomplish if the budget wasn't so restricted.

    Regardless of your take on this, here are a few links which you might find interesting.

    http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/ic/ne.html

    http://ffc.arc.nasa.gov/ffc/index.shtml

    http://www.aos.nasa.gov/Focus/focus.htm
  • Clinton's saying lots of shit that makes sense. That's because he knows no one will expect him to get it done in the next few days until he's out of the White House. Got to protect the "legacy" there...

    -Legion

  • if only presidents could act the way the do at the end of their terms for their entire terms.

    on the other hand, the onion (america's greatest news source) had this [theonion.com] to say.
    --

  • Well, I'll wager no way and see what happens. If he is a supreme being why be so conceded to make us worship him?

  • Make good use of these money now!

    In your hands you hold the key to the continued survival of mankind, although this is not yet fully realised by everybody today, future generations will thank you.

    Allso Merry Christmas to everybody else who read this commend, I don't care about the religion. but love the message ;)


    - Knut S.
  • Clinton is a lame-duck president, and the budget is already finished. Whatever Clinton says at this point doesnt matter.

  • While the argument of brining money in from the stadium to the community is valid to a degree (in theory, mind you) I think that the facts prove otherwise in reality. Most pro team stadiums do not allow you to bring in food, drink, etc. You gotta buy there. The internal vendors have to pay large sums of money to have the 'privelege' to set up shop there (one, but only one, of the reasons the prices suck so bad). Then there is the traffic problems / pollution that a stadium brings... unless the team sucks.

    So, why is it that you pay taxes for this thing, yet tickets cost from 20 - 75 dollars depending on the teams sucess? Why does the franchise have so many tax exempt statutes, and why is the money to build it not considered a loan... payable by the team, or at least a group of people who lease it in turn to the team? Why do I not see a tax cut later to 'payback' the tax hike for building/supporting the team... actually I meant not just an elimination of the tax increase originally, but added cuts on top. That would be how the rest of the free market world operates, but then again, this is a socialist system. They might as well call the teams the "Comrades" or something.

    If a team wants to come to a town (and the town wants them) then the only vote should be for if the public allows the team to be there, creating all the problems that comes along with them. As for construction and funding, that should come from banks and others, not the tax revenue. Furthermore, if it were some kind of tax funded scheme, than it should be a one time loan, with interest that the team must play.

    Perhaps if they can't afford that, then they could cut a little off the top of the 30+ million average salaries of those overpaid whiney cry-babies. Lets see them work for a fire or police department (or enlisted military), live just above poverty level... risk their lives (especially the fire and police) on a DAILY basis. Then they might understand what a strike is for, what a lower salary really means, and what it really means to not make enough to "Live On"

    Don't get me wrong, I make more money than I thought I ever would... but this is not about me, but rather about the above mentioned.

    Stupid pansy jocks... "Uhh, I play foot... uhhhh, foot.... uhhh, yeah, Football" They do absolutely nothing for society IMHO (and no I am not talking about those who volunteer for United Way which is great, but is not their job) They definitely win the most awards for ego, stupidity, and criminal behavior... but as for helping further humanity, they strike out.

  • [Redundant Rant]

    Summary, Agree!
  • Actually, I think it keeled over during the Reagan/Bush era. NASA has been floundering since then with a death of a thousand beurocRats. NASA has great people and ideas that deserve a good chunk of our tax dollars and we as tax payers deserve for them to be able to do things correctly. Without proper vision at the Governmental levels the funding just won't be there to do things the right way like building two of each project incase the first fails.

  • Wasn't there an online poll just a few weeks ago asking what visitors thought about such a raise? I distinctly remember the visitors of ... whatever web site it was ... being largely in favor of giving NASA their much-deserved raise. Is this connected? Does William Jefferson Clinton use the internet as a guide? Is this some kind of oddball hint that the internet is the future? Probably not, probably not, probably not. Which brings up another point... the word "probably" has absolutely no need for the second "b" - it's like the English language chooses to drag the word out longer than necessary for some odd reason. It doesn't get its deserved amount of attention so they give it an extra syllable to really make it annoying... Sorry, that's unrelated. They probably argue about stuff like this in space, though.
  • Where was he with this idea the last eight years?
    This guy if so full of Shit.
    I thinks he just wanted his name on slashdot.

    If I recall right, didn't former Prez Bush propose this too, while on his way out? Or at least big proposals to put men on Mars?
    Bah, Humbug.
  • 2000 NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
    Total National Aeronautics and Space Administration
    13,602,000,000

    Mind you, this is not as bad as it gets. This 13,602,000,000 is the annual allocation; it costs NASA something like 270,000,000 to launch one STS mission, and that's for a typical mission. Now that ISS (or at least some of it) is in orbit, a lot of that budget is going to go toward keeping it in orbit, maintained, fueled, powered, and populated, and they have to seriously stretch the capabilities of the STS spacecraft for some of these construction flights.

    We are definitely losing out on some missions that should really be looked at seriously at this point, one of which (manned Mars mission) was promised by the elder George Bush in a pale imitation of JFK's "land a man on the moon" speech. We haven't landed humans on Mars yet. We haven't even landed humans on the Moon in the last 28 years, thanks to a major funding cut by Congress in 1971 -- if NASA had a budget of 279,924,000,000, we could do both. Come on, folks, it's time.

  • As a gay voter, I have three choices. A democrat that talks nice and doesn't do anything, a republican that talks trash and doesn't do anything, or a third party that would do stuff for me in office but has no chance winning.

    I lose.

    (I would of voted for nader, but I'm too young! :)

  • in several billion years when the sun runs out of easy to consume fuel and begins to expand. Eventually the earth should be slightly inside of the sun. At that point, earth will become uninhabitable....unless we figure out a way to really screw it up in the mean time.
  • As the biggest supplier of arms to despots (the UK being the second) as well as being the chief supporter of starving Iraqis to death for what Saddam Hussein did, I'd say you are the bad guys.
  • Let's say we managed to get to 10Bn, which is less than double. A lot more of us would be eating a lot more tofu.
    And if we move these people into space, they're going to be eating hamburgers? Just how easy do you think it is to raise cattle in space? For the same cost, you could blanket the Earth with climate controlled greenhouses and feed hundreds of billions of people.

    You quoted the wrong line from my posting, thereby proving either that your reading comprehension skills are lacking, or that you did not read through my entire post.

    You should have quoted this line:

    Maybe we shouldn't plan on getting to the maximum level that the "planet can support."

    In simpler English, I don't think that moving people off of Earth should be our motivation behind the space program, nor do I think it's much of a solution. I think we should concentrate far harder on not overpopulating the mudball we're on, now. Personally, I think we should populate some of the less populous regions on THIS planet, and spread out a little bit more. I know that the areas where people don't currently live pretty much suck, but what do you think space is going to be like?

  • Now if there were provisions that only the scientists and engineers could use that extra money on new equipment and such then I'd be all for it.
    Currently much of the equipment they use is from the 60's and 70's.

    Yes, it is. In fact, when the shuttle first went up with two hardened GRiD laptops with 486s in them, it was the most processing power that had ever been on board and used for shuttle operations. Why? Because the older designs are tested, fully rad-hardened, and do their jobs. Generally speaking we can send telemetry data down to the surface (or record it in orbit) and analyze it later, so we don't need so much processing power on board. That's why we have humans.

  • We need a $60Billion SDI system that not only won't work, but that will break arms control treaties that we signed 30 years ago.

    Actually, we DO need an SDI system, but not for attacking ground targets; We need one because it'll lead to an asteroid point defense system.

  • Because, you know, we weren't being taxed nearly enough before! I sure am glad the government knows where to send my money. Just imagine if we got to choose the destination of our monitary supplies ourselves!

    I don't know why you chose to bring that last point into this, since it has nothing to do with anything anyone said. In any case, we don't need to be taxed more. We need more efficiency in the systems that get our tax money now. Social Security is doing very very well, with an exceptionally low percentage spent on administration. This is a program which is obviously taking care of itself. The military, on the other hand, gets crazy with spending.

    Now, I know that statement will piss a lot of people off, but really, they do have a tendency to spend too much money on things which they do, admittedly, need. They should also be involved in things that make money. I personally would pump the army corps of engineers up, and let them take jobs for cash as well as the basic humanitarian or maintenance-related projects they perform. In fact, rebuilding the levies that run along the San Lorenzo river through Santa Cruz (City of), CA was a Corps project.

    I'm not advocating cutting military funding, per se. We've already done quite a bit of that. I think it's now time for us to step through our entire government and cut costs where possible. I think we could also eliminate a number of unnecessary government jobs by raising government salaries. Yes, you heard me right. See, having worked for County government, I do have some small amount of insight into how this works; It's all political. People work just as hard as they have to to keep their dead end job for as long as possible so they can get a retirement fund to support them. In other words, they do the absolute minimum amount of work possible.

    What this means is that while some people in government jobs work their asses off, mostly because the manager of their department won't kiss the right asses to get more positions opened, other people do less than half the work they could be doing without even risking burnout. So in situations where you have two people doing less than half of their possible and reasonable workload (and these situations are fairly frequent) you could boot one of them, make the other pick up the slack, and pay them half again what they've been making, which would still be cheaper than having two people slacking all day.

    There are lots of other examples, like not buying all IBM systems like a number of departments still do. If you spend another $20,000 a year on your IT staff position which is responsible for MIS, then they can handle using clones, which are frequently easier to support anyway, since you can swap hardware with impunity. IBM hardware is admittedly better at that than it was in the PS/2 days, with those dippy ESDI disks and whatnot.

    We can free up money for the space program. Unfortunately, no one is willing to shake things up and fix our government. They'd rather get buried in politics and become a boil on the arse of the system; Themselves collecting a share of our tax money.

  • Sorry, but this is not the case. Current projections have the world population not reaching even double the current level before leveling off or declining. This is well below the level the planet can support.

    Let's say we managed to get to 10Bn, which is less than double. A lot more of us would be eating a lot more tofu. There's just not going to be room for cattle grazing and whatnot unless you want to destroy the environment, eradicate biodiversity, and end up basically destroying our world. So it can support it, but only through personal privation, and things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

    Maybe we shouldn't plan on getting to the maximum level that the "planet can support."

  • The facts: the reason NASA has had many failures is that Clinton axed most of their budget early in his administration, laying off many of the principal engineers (including my uncle

    Yeah, Clinton came to your uncle's office and handed him a pink slip personally.

    As Clinton pointed out, there was a great deal of corruption and waste inside NASA, which had become somewhat complacent over the years -- Or at least, large parts of it had. They weren't afraid to spend our money. Admittedly, we gave it to them to spend, but they did tend to fritter it away.

    The fact that NASA decided that the best way to conserve money was to fire your uncle means one of two things. Either A> they made a stupid mistake, and instead of improving process, they cut back positions, or B> your uncle deserved the boot. I am not qualified to comment on which it was.

  • According to a recent NY Times op-ed piece, this is so far one of the smoothest presidential transitions on record -- largely because Clinton is being quite gracious. The article writer give evidence too, so do you have any evidence to the contrary?

    -Miles
  • Doubt full,
    All shuttle flights launch from Florida (Can We say brother Jeb.)

    All US manned flights are directed from Houston Texas (Can we say his home state)

    To much pork...

    The only parts of NASA to get axed are Dan Goldin [nasa.gov] and GoreSat [nasawatch.com]
  • Clinton only cut NASA's budget 7 of the last 8 Years...
  • Thanks for the links - Ill have a look at electionmethods.org and do some further reading. Much appreciated.
  • First, you may prefer to use this URL

    http://www.discover.com/nov_00/featbestman.html

    which takes you straight to the article without JavaScript.

    However, the article gives most attention to the Approval and Borda alternatives to plurality, both of which are pretty flawed. Check out electionmethods.org for a very thorough analysis.
    --
  • Bah - Bush was Governor of Texas...where is the Johnson Space Center? Texas. Bush's brother is Governor of Florida...where is the Kennedy Space Center...come on...you know...yep Florida.

    I figured that Bush would increase funding for NASA, kind of like his daddy did from 89-93. Clinton never understood it. I doubt Gore did either, even though I did for for Gore...I had serious doubts about him.
  • Well, you know, the expanding universe thing and all that, everything is getting farther away. If we dont start exploring NOW, things might get out of reach! [Smiley captioned for the humor impaired]
  • Republicans were always known to scrap NASA to the bottom. And Clinton seems to be the greatest Democrat to follow such a trend. During his years NASA saw budget shrinking to miserable levels. They had to cut so much that "Cheap, Faster, Better" became "Crash faster and better". We saw Pluto mission completely scrapped. Cassini almost didn't reach the Pad. And of six Mars missions, only two reached the planet. One of them went so badly that we had to wait two years for its main mission to start. And there are lots of other things like a series of rocket failures, glitches on Galilei mission. Some of this may be heritage from previous presidents. But some have the direct blame on Clinton.

    Interesing that during his Presidency there were lots of bravado. I still remember some harsh words about aliens he said on the eve of Pathfinder landing. Good luck that the guys are quite far Mr. President-to-go. Or else someone got get seriously irritated. On Earth, such words would be unforgivable if he spoke about any nation, even ex-foe Soviet Union.

    On the other side we saw a lot of bashing Russia, while ISS was being built. But no one noted that NASA itself is in trouble of building some critical components for the station. And that they are having HUGE trouble on making the next generation shuttles. That trips to ISS are a fraction of what Russians are doing. The good cover on how bad is the state of Russia and their cosmic Ford-T named Mir silenced many of these aspects.

    Besides, why to talk about rising NASA's budget now? As far as I know nothing will be changed for the year 2001. Most money has already been assigned. So we have to wait for 2002. With the conservative elephant on power... and if they cut a little bit more, then it would be better to call NASA - National Archeologic Space Archivers
  • I don't remember this being an issue he campaigned on, but you have to remember we got our first probe on the surface of Mars under the Clinton administration.

    And what was Viking [nasa.gov], chopped liver?

  • Way to go Bill - promise stuff now that you are irrelevant. Where the hell was the increase in NASA budgets when people cared what the hell you thought?

    Don't color me as a Clinton apologist, but I think you've spun this one a little wrong. He may be evil, but because he cares too much what people think, not because he cares little as you claim.

    Why didn't he increase the budgets? Because the GOP (supported in part by the likes of those in Kansas that voted down evolution) was in charge for the last six years. During Clintons first two years he focused on an unsuccessful attempt to provide health care for everyone.

    Why do I say evil dsepite my apologies? He saw that the nation was divided on the subject of President, but instead of trying to provide for a smooth transition is throwing up every roadblock he can to make the Bush Presidency more difficult.

    --

  • The range of responses on here is indicative of why Clinton's statement is important:

    (1) A lot of people point out Clinton has presided (with a Republican congress most of the way) over huge cuts to NASA the last 8 years. Clinton also presided over an overhaul of the welfare system, but he's not saying welfare needs more money now. Obviously something in the situation with regard to space has changed significantly, recently. The space station may be part of this - the Mars plans are probably another. For whatever reason we now have realistic, inexpensive approaches to permanent space colonization over the next couple of decades, and NASA seems logical to be at least part of this. But it'll take more money than it's getting now.

    (2) A lot of other people claim NASA has failed us, citing ridiculous numbers for how much money it has wasted. As has been pointed out by others here, NASA doesn't get a very large slice of the budget any more. But NASA does have real problems, particular with the "failure is not an option" rigidity that is caused by just such criticism. Look at what the Russians can do with a tenth of the money, and a "fix as we go" approach! At least the "faster, cheaper, better" mantra has made clear that, if you want to do things cost effectively, sometimes you will fail. But you can do much more then, as opposed to when failure is not an option.

    (3) And of course a few people continue to say we should spend our money on more important and urgent matters - saving the poor, or tax relief for the rest of us... But if the guy who won on "it's the economy, stupid" thinks NASA needs more money, what could that mean? As countless analyses have shown (check out John Lewis' recent "Mining the Sky" for some big numbers) taking advantage of space gives us far more resources than we have here on earth; the economic payback will be enormous, once we get over that initial hurdle to permanent space industry. And the size of that initial hurdle, estimated various ways, is surely no more than $100 billion - perfectly doable with only a moderate boost in the NASA budget.

    But private industry has to be a strong partner, much more so than in the standard military aerospace system we have now. There are a lot of smaller companies coming up with some great ideas for launch systems and other space components - even modest NASA funding for those could make a huge difference. Just compare the numbers for capitalizations of SpaceHab ($100 million revenue, $30 million capitalization) or SpaceDev ($40 million cap) with your typical internet company and you can get the picture...
  • Federal Budget 2001 [gpo.gov] (plus numbers from last year and projections) . Not that hard to find :)

    --Asa

  • Do a little research. Look at the records of the Democrat science and technology leaders in the Senate:
    • John Rockefeller IV (D-WV)
    • John Kerry (D-MA)
    • Richard Bryan (D-NV)
    • Byron Dorgan (D-ND)

    Look at the Democratic House members vocal in science, technology and space.
    • Jane Harman (D-CA36)
    • Mike Ward (D-KY3)
    • Ralph Hall (D-TX4)
    • James Traficant (D-OH17)
    • Tim Roemer (D-IN3)
    • Bud Cramer (D-Al5)
    • James Barcia (D-MI5)
    • Alcee Hastings (D-FL23)
    • Shelia Jackson Lee (D-TX18)
    • William Luther (D-MN6)

    Take a look at their voting records. I'm not arguing that you won't find Republicans there and some of them even voting to make NASA stronger but the "friends of NASA" are most definitely Democrats.


    --Asa

  • President's don't make budgets. Take a civics class. The Congress prepairs the budget and it's been the Republican controlled Congress which has slashed and burned NASA over the last half-decade. If we see an increase in spending over the next few years it won't be because of the brothers Bush. It will be because the US Congress is no longer dominated by Republicans more interested in spending money on the Military or Corporate tax breaks than spending on science and exploration.

    The current projected budget spending over the next five years (projected by a Republican dominated Congress) pushes DoD spending up and NASA spending down. Don't expect to see this change unless friends of NASA in the Congress do something to change it.

    --Asa

  • "even tried the Kennedyesque mission to mars push but he never got either one through"

    I don't remember this being an issue he campaigned on, but you have to remember we got our first probe on the surface of Mars under the Clinton administration.

    Not that Clinton could take any more credit for that than Gore can take for the internet, but it's not as if that NASA keeled over and died during the Clinton administration.

  • You mean to tell me that an outgoing president is advocating huge spending in the last months of his term? Incredible! He's setting expectations that his Republican successor may find it hard to follow? Unthinkable!

    The next thing you know, he'll be pardoning every friend of his party in the slammer and pushing through a bunch of legislation, just before he leaves.

    Oh yeah, I forgot, that's what every outbound president does these days. Why be surprised?

    Steve

  • I'm thinking that federal funding for NASA isn't constitutional. The constitution enumerates powers to the federal government, and they aren't supposed to have any powers other than those given to them. I am very excited about space exploration, but am not excited about ignoring the basis for our government.

  • I want my flying cars.

    That was Avery Brooks, right? The guy in the TV ads raving about flying cars?

    Anyway. I completely agree. There's so much we spend on stuff that we don't need that would be better spent getting us to Mars. We could get there. All we need is the money.
    I want to retire to an environment pod in the Asteroid Belt. Get moving, NASA.

    -J

  • Nice of Clinton to leave us a recession while he's at it. NASA's important work of crushing private space ventures will be really critical while we're losing our jobs.

    While we're at it, let's raise taxes, too. My company has too much money anyway, and if they have to fire me to afford the taxes, well, I'm just taking one for the team.

  • more funding for space programs is always good... although, I am curious why NASA is the one getting increased funding. Also I wonder why tax dollars are being spent on it. I know of many people who would fund this kind of research and attempt to further develop the ebryonic space program. Nasa has proven that it cannot do many things right, but instead of admitting that and letting others also do R&D, they hoarde everything and require permits/liscenses/permission/pay-offs for other groups to pursue this.

    Perhaps we should completely privatize them like was originally intended (at least that is what was announced).

    The Big Government argument:

    TAX MAN: "We must increase funding to these government programs!"

    tax payer: "Why must I be forced to fund this, why must we ALL be forced to fund this... shouldn't you let people decide on their own what to fund?"

    TAX MAN: "QUIET YOU!!! *bang* If we didn't force you to fund it, it wouldn't get funded... and that is bad because the people want this, and they yearn for it to be funded"

    tax payer: (bleeding) "Ummm, if the people really want it, then logic suggests they will fund it themselves without the gross innefficency of the government. If you are afraid of giving them CHOICE, then not only does that show the flaw in your argument for what the people want, but you are going against the very foundation of Liberty, Freedom, Sovereignty and dignity of the people..."

    TAX MAN: *BANG, BANG*

  • Ya know I was thinking the same thing. Bill had run with the promise of increasing the budget for his first term and even tried the Kennedyesque mission to mars push but he never got either one through. Sadly for Clinton it doesn't matter in the least what he says or does (and has been that way since the 98 elections) as his voice is muted by the door that is about to close on him the result of being a lame duck president and his party not manageing to hold on to the oval office at the end of his second term. I wasn't a big fan of Clinton when he originally made it into office but as the republican lead witch hunt intensified my feelings about him surely changed: the whole political process becoming unnecesarily hostile, dirty and ugly in the last decade totally reinforced by the 98 elections with the GOP taking over congress/house. My guess is that Clinton really has nothing to lose by saying these things. I only hope someone on Dubya's cabinet manages to listen and agree that this is not a bad idea. If the huge leap we have taken technology wise is the end result of the many innovations our space program has brought about since the manned space program began we really need more investment in the area just to keep the ball rolling.I fear that with the Village Idiot now headed into office we are doomed to see more cuts against NASA than increases. GWB seems totally clueless about the need for innovation in the space field outside of a military scope.

  • Well I hate to tell ya this but the republican party is famous for hating the space program. The have managed to cut the budget of NASA every time they take control of office. Thier 'already massive budget' is considerably less than what the republican party likes to spend on the 'war on drugs'. The first 12 years of the war on drugs (starting with Reagan and ending with Bush the first) saw well over 3 trillion dollars spent. That is rougly 1,000 dollars a year for every man, woman and child inside the US borders during those years. I would rather have seen the money spent on NASA but the war on Drugs (no matter how much of a farce) is much better election/re-election fodder for the sheeples. Look for Dubya to continue the trend.

  • We got to the moon in a decade. The moon.

    Ten years after two scientists guessed that you could put a guy into a high-tech plastic bag, he'd live long enough to go to space, we walked on the moon.
    We owned the moon.

    Forty years later, we're just now shooting toasters at Mars (and missing half the time). Give them the money. I want my flying cars.
  • Sweet! Maybe now they can buy a slide rule that converts feet to meters! Seg

    segfaulteq@home.com [mailto]
  • But they have to obtain a license to sell to scumbags, which various governments are only too delighted to supply. My country, the UK, is just as happy to give Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace the same freedom, despite being in violation of various UN resolutions and international laws that they've signed up to.
  • Honestly, NASA == sience and you can't make money from it. If I were an american I had no problem with them taking some of the tax they take from me and donating it to NASA.

    The only reason NASA can't make money is that they don't (get to?) patent things. Most of their research is open (Except findings from the hardsuit research, which the government is probably exploiting to come up with powered armor in some underground lab somewhere) to pretty much everyone. Thousands of companies have benefitted from NASA research.

    In particular, many of the advances in plastics materials technology have come out of the space program. You know those commercials about plastics making it possible? They're 100% accurate.

  • You'll have interstellar pissing matches. Like the US vs USSR was, but instead a few dozen American companies.

    I doubt it. First: The entry cost is too dramatic. Getting into a space race costs a great deal of money. The only reason we were able to do it was that Americans were so concerned about Russians nuking us, undetectably, from orbit. Or a moonbase. Or something. So there we are, in space.

    Second: Competition is still good, as long as it's not violent. Why do you think it's a bad thing that multiple corporations might be interested in space? That's quite possibly the best thing that could happen to us, especially if we could get companies interested in refining and manufacturing in orbit. Need a satellite? Send your solidworks diagrams to the orbiting facility. They get metals and other materials from refineries also orbiting this silly mudball, run your plans through their CNC machines and hand-build anything they won't cover, slap it together, and send some pusher drone to deposit it into the proper orbit. Now you don't have to pay the US$10,000 per pound launch costs, nor purchase launch insurance.

    The environment is a concern. This is why we have laws to protect it, not that they work very well. We should form tougher environmental laws. And enforce 'em, too. Rigorously.

    Anyway, the Competition of the US vs. USSR space race was wonderful. It cajoled us into becoming the dominant factor in space. Now, Russia can't really afford to kick much ass in space, so we're not especially driven, which is a shame. Space should be a priority, and private companies should be invited to participate much more than they do now.

  • I believe that Scientific American had an article explaining that the space program (net world wide) has been turning a profit since 1996. I do not recall which issue it was in, but I am sure a /. reader will have a copy.

    Lots of valuable meteorological, geological, biological, oceanographic, etc. information is dirived from earth observation satelites, which has great commercial and scientific value. Industries that build space equipment develop cutting edge science and technology. This advancement in the sciences leads to yet more developments in science.

    Granted, some missions are not profitable at the current time. However, it is foolish to let the short term loss allow a project that could lead to future posibilities of profit to society at large. The fact that we are taking the `baby steps' of exploring the solar system today, means that we would be able to take advantage of valuable resources that can be found on planets such as mars. Take the robot mission to mars in 1996, this mission showed the feasability of using robots controlled remotely from earth. Can you imagine the posibility of robot miners of mars in the next 50 years. These missions use advanced propultion systems, communications systems and electronics. This all means that humankind is getting practical experiences in the technology of the future.

    It may be possible to develop some kind of warp drive and explore the galaxy some day. Before one can be a marathon runner, he must first learn to crawl as an infant.


  • You're right on all counts about Bill Clinton not being responsible for the economic good times of the 1990's. Alan Greenspan would seem to deserve more of the credit.

    Likewise, I don't give much credit to the other great communicator of the last 2 decades for the years of apparent prosperity while he was supposedly At The Helm - Ronald Reagan. I knew then, too, that Paul Volker had more to do with what was happening than any other single individual.

    As someone who will retire about 15 years from now, I can tell you what bothers me most:

    1. That no politician is looking to pay down our five trillion dollar debt. It's much more expedient to promise either more spending (Dems) or more tax cuts (Reps). When crisis time hits as our bloating entitlement spending increases, I expect some good old fashioned inflation will help to whittle down the weight of those fiscal burdens. Without COLA, though, I won't be a happy camper.
    2. That teachers get paid crap and most of our kids get educated more by TV's than by people and books combined. So, these kids are going to be the ones paying big social security taxes on what they make working at a McJob?

    Please, look at our policies and programs and decide what people 30, 50 and 100 years from now will decide was good and worthwhile.

    Space exploration, fundamental science and better education are such programs. I hope they do get more money, but I won't hold my breath.

  • As if (Score:3)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Sunday December 24, 2000 @07:48AM (#541278)
    Let's start off with the assumption that Monica Lewinsky never happened, just to give you the benefit of the doubt.

    • Clinton's may have presided over the most succesful economic expansion in history, but he did not cause it. Closer to the truth is that policies set up in the eighties lead to both the recession of the early nineties and the resulting boom. If you disagree, name one action by Clinton that you think directly contributed to a strong economy.
    • Clinton had no foreign policy whatsoever, and it showed. Somalia?? Haiti?? The Gulf?? North Korea?? Has Clinton been able to deal with these situations at all? NO. Lets not even talk about Kosovo - a complete fiasco that Clinton dragged the entire US and EU into, following his botched agenda for creating peace.
    • Health care? Gays in the military? How many campaign promises did Clinton wuss out on? I'm amazed that gay support groups still support the Democrats after being sold down the river by the Clintons.
    • Waco. Elian. Filegate. Three great examples of a government ruled by a husband and wife who dine on power.

    I await your replies.

  • Clinton, knowing he no longer has any real power as President during his last Christmas in the White House, decided to leave Bush a nice piece of holiday coal in the stocking. By saying the budget should be increased (most Americans would agree), he's putting Bush in a tight spot. Now Bush has to either fork it over to Nasa and dissapoint some other group of people, or keep his current plan and get hit upside the head by everyone who owns a telescope. I doubt Clinton cares about space exploration all that much.

    Another point to make is that space is becoming privatized, with or without NASA. I'd say in the near future, space exploration will be a lot like computing - it will advance just fine on its own (until the NSA finds some way to control it). So kick back, relax, and let NASA enjoy its already massive budget.

    Keep in mind that in order to pay for this increase, the money will have to come from somewhere; most likely some other federal program, or more taxes.

    It's all about the Karma Points...
    Moderators: Read from the bottom up!

  • NASA has been starving for funds since the collapse of the USSR, and it's high time they got some. Maybe they'll be able to throw this "faster-better-cheaper" crap out the window and onto the scrap heap where it belongs.

    Now, what does this mean for us?

    -Higher taxes? I'm all for it. If it means NASA gets more money, I for one wil gladly pay higher taxes.

    -Cuts in other programs? I'm all for it. Stop buying the air force bombers they don't want, stop buying the marines VTOL planes that crash more often than they fly, stop letting the FBI read my email. And we all know that's not the end of the list.

  • Original Science Magazine Interview (Score:4)

    by Ånubis ( 126403 ) on Sunday December 24, 2000 @05:19AM (#541281) Homepage
    Here's the original interview Science Magazine did with Clinton:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/290/ 5500/2236 [sciencemag.org]

    The CNN article was basically on a subset of this interview. Also please remember that this doesn't mean that NASA will get more money, just that a president who is about to leave office thinks that they should get more money.

  • Clinton's relevance (Score:4)

    by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Sunday December 24, 2000 @05:33AM (#541282) Journal
    In related news Bill Clinton also promised to do something about curing cancer, giving gifts of gold and murr to orphans, promote real American Democracy, end private campaign funding, recount Florida ballots and rescued a kitten from a Tree.

    Way to go Bill - promise stuff now that you are irrelevant. Where the hell was the increase in NASA budgets when people cared what the hell you thought?

  • You've got to be kidding (Score:5)

    by asa ( 33102 ) <asa@mozilla.com> on Sunday December 24, 2000 @07:33AM (#541283) Homepage
    "So kick back, relax, and let NASA enjoy its already massive budget."

    Are you a total asshole. NASA's budget has been cut every year since the Republicans took over in the Congress. They forced NASA to scrap some of it's most exciting missions that had been in planning for years. "already massive budget"?!?! What the hell are you smoking. NASA gets less than 5% of what the US Military gets! They get less than 1% of the total US Federal spending!

    • 2000 DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE-MILITARY
      Total Department of Defense-Military
      279,924,000,000
    • 2000 NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
      Total National Aeronautics and Space Administration
      13,602,000,000
    • 2000 Federal Government totals
      1,801,079,000,000
    ...And it's worse for 2001. We're losing missions to Mars that cost less than a single US Military vehicle and you're saying relax! Sorry, not gonna happen. You might do yourself some good actually looking at some US Fed Budget figures.

    --Asa

  • Oh Sure... (Score:5)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Sunday December 24, 2000 @05:30AM (#541284) Homepage Journal
    Now that you're leaving office and your competition has announced that he wants this humungus tax cut, you can advocate spending money like it's going out of style. If he cared so much, why didn't he do anything about it when he was in office?

    Don't get me wrong, I believe NASA should get lots more funding than it does, but I really don't trust Clinton's motives for saying so now.

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