Obama Moves To Link Pentagon With NASA 491
Amiga Trombone sends this quote from the beginning of a story at Bloomberg:
"President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the US's civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China. Obama's transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency's planned launch vehicle, which isn't slated to fly until 2015, according to people who've discussed the idea with the Obama team."
Imagine the BDS had Bush done this.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Isn't it funny how "tolerant progressives" get all whacked and spew real hate when discussing "HalliBusHitler"???
Kinda like that "tolerant" neighborhood near San Francisco that's all up in arms because the "Negroes" are moving in....
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:3, Insightful)
With the equity markets down over 32% last year and the economy still deeply intrenched in a deflationary correction, buying any "stock" right now without a large and reliable dividend is not wise
Well, I'm a big fan of buying dividend stocks, so I won't argue with you on that one, but I think your wrong about it being unwise to buy non-dividend stocks. You want to buy stocks when the prices are low. I'm actually loving this period -- I'm not gonna retire for 30+ years and this is a great time to be buying shares at dirt cheap prices.
Sucks for the people who were going to retire soon but if they were going to retire next year why the hell did they have so many investments in equities? If I was close to retirement I'd have most of my nest egg invested in cash......
Re:Imagine the BDS had Bush done this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda like that "tolerant" neighborhood near San Francisco
If you think San Franciscans are tolerant try applying for a carry permit within the city......
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean...we all KNOW that the DoD is the bastion of frugality, efficiency, and foresight!!
I mean, they do get the job done when it comes to blowing people up, but, their record for budgets and timeliness isn't the best. You get some generals or admirals or whatever with egos in there....and well, I can't think it would be all that good, nor have the most scientific reasoning for decision making for NASA.
I"m not against the military...they do some fantastic work...but, I don't think they are the best agency for oversight of the space program...especially when it concerns missions that aren't of military importance.
Science v. Defense (Score:5, Insightful)
The military and Nasa have always had a relationships; choosing astronauts from the ranks of the Air Force, for one. Obviously, the technology developed through the space program has military applications such as spy satellites and obviously a rocket that can put a man in orbit can just as easily deliver a multi-ton warhead to the other side of the planet. What worries me in this plan is shifting the focus from science to defense objectives.
While NASA has a long relationship with the military and shares plenty of technology, they are a civilian organization. I know that up until recently, NASA's mission was, "To understand and protect our home planet...", but the main focus has been to send interplanetary probes [nasa.gov] into the solar system, bust up comets [nasa.gov] and generally produce outstanding backgrounds for our desktops [nasaimages.org]. Would this shift in leadership take more energy away from studying the nature of the universe, lofting the next generation of space telescopes and studying our planet from above? Under the military it seems more likely that NASA's goals would shift away from "understanding" and more to "protecting". I imagine this wold involve developing the next generation of anti-satellite and anti-anti-satellite weapons (despite the fact that earth orbit is supposed to be a weapons free zone [wikipedia.org]).
What insight does the slashdot community have on this? Will shifting NASA to military control result in a more nimble and focused organization able to achieve the goal of putting a man on mars in the next 20 years, or will military research take precedence over science?
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:3, Insightful)
Buy low?
Re:yay.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The design of the space shuttle was influenced enormously by the military, just FYI.
He's not a moron and this is not unprecedented.
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine the amounts of mouth-foam, if Bush administration did this... Both internally (with corruption charges like yours) and abroad — viz. militarization of space.
Undertones of another Cold War (Score:4, Insightful)
Altruistic as the space race may seem, China will soon be a much larger influence in the world than today. Currently, their middle class is larger than the entire population of the USA, and the rest of the population is catching up fast.
If they have a well developed space program, it's all the more leverage if they start to flex their muscles. You can bet their bureaucracy knows of the military benefits of space. Everyone and their mother already has surveillance satellites up. The US government wants a powerful presence up there as well.
The race for power is underpinning this race for space, just as it did in the time of Sputnik. Only this time, bankrupting China (like the US bankrupt the USSR) doesn't seem to be an option.
It's about time... (Score:1, Insightful)
I've been thinking for years that NASA should be "dismantled"...reduce its mission scope to military-related matters and take all the civilian stuff that NASA does now and take that commercial instead.
If the government bought its civilian space needs exclusively from commercial suppliers "off the shelf" that would be a huge boost for commercial space industry and would accelerate development of low-cost-to-orbit technologies.
It's not that a governmental entity like NASA *couldn't* accomplish the same thing, but they've spent the last 35 years proving that they *won't*. It's almost impossible to change the DNA of a government agency. The only alternative is to scale them back so far that they essentially have to re-invent themselves, and use the funds saved to nurture industry alternatives.
Eliminate redundancy?... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty ignorant on this subject, and not a US national, but wouldn't this be a rather good way to eliminate redundancy in similar projects across both agencies at a time when the US needs to rationalise expenditure?
Too Much is being read into this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that's the point of the factionalisation and faux-rivalry of US politics, isn't it? To get people so divided into their allegiance to a party name that you can then pull the same shit with either party and only 50% of the people will complain whilst the rest are obliged to rationalise it somehow.
Re:Want to go back to the Moon? Build Saturn Vs! (Score:3, Insightful)
Those stacks would be even more useful for unmanned payloads, and unlike NASA the military is getting very good at understanding machines should go on dangerous places instead of people.
We only need to send people to the moon to explore and exploit it. We can explore and exploit it remotely and get more missions up. Getting meat in space isn't urgently required to learn what is out there.
The longevity of the Mars Rovers is yet more proof of this.
RTFA. (Score:4, Insightful)
from TFA: "Obamas transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agencys planned launch vehicle,"
The idea is to SAVE MONEY. Whether that works out or not, we'll see. And as for "trading bullets for rockets", first that seems an excellent idea to me, but also Iraq is costing upwards of 300 billion last I heard; whatever NASA gets is pocket change compared to that.
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:3, Insightful)
Another way to look at it: buy as much as you can. Either this cycle will will end and you'll come out a wealthy person in a few decades - or the economy will completely collapse, and we're all screwed anyway.
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
He wasn't "partisan whining" (as far as I can tell). He was just observing the lack of complaints and guessing that there would be a lot greater suspicion and condemnation if Bush had done this. And I think it's fair to say he's right. That doesn't mean that it would be better or worse if the Republicans had done this.
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Although the DoD is not just military. The NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency are both in the DoD, and they are civilian (to be fair, the DIA also employs military and the NSA is headed up by a military officer). Not to mention the head of the DoD is a civilian.
There is also the National Security Council (10 out of 11 in the Council are non-military). Also, the President (a civilian) is the head of the military.
I understand your concern, but we tore down the wall between civilian and military a long time ago.
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:3, Insightful)
finally... a good idea from the Obama camp, I was praying for at least one
Yes, FINALLY a good idea. It's been so long since he took the oh-so powerful office of "president elect," it's about time he started using that office to govern rather than setting up the transition. It's high time he started using his constitutional powers as almost-president to do some good.
Re:Want to go back to the Moon? Build Saturn Vs! (Score:5, Insightful)
All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.
I share your admiration for the Saturn V. But re-creating it is not the best idea.
According to Henry Spencer, the blueprints for the Saturn V still exist, but much of the undocumented extra knowledge was in fact lost. The skilled machinists who knew how to turn those designs into working parts are long retired or dead; the special heat treatments needed to make some of the alloys are forgotten; etc.
And, as another poster noted in this thread, if you did build a Saturn V it would have 1960's electronics.
If you say "but we will just update the alloys and electronics" then it isn't really a Saturn V anymore, and it will need to be re-tested and re-engineered. In which case, you might as well have started from a clean sheet of paper.
Also, the Saturn V was our answer to the problem of getting boots on the moon as fast as possible. I'd prefer to see the problem of moon travel solved correctly, which IMHO means making it easier and faster to mount expeditions, and making it possible to send larger payloads. This means I want to see a cheap, really reusable orbital vehicle; a space station suitable for staging moon missions; an Earth-moon spacecraft, assembled in space, that was never designed to land on Earth or the moon; and reusable moon landing vehicles.
Every time you use a Saturn V to go to the moon, you destroy one Saturn V. That's expensive, and it doesn't scale well. If we have a reliable "pickup truck" that can carry a small payload to orbit, then do it again in less than a week, we can send up the crew and supplies for a moon mission.
With the Saturn V, our astronauts lived inside a little tin can for a few days, then returned. I'd like to see an actual moon base sent over in pieces, and see people living on the moon for months at a time (and doing science the whole time).
Cheap, reliable, routine flights to orbit change the whole game. Instead of repeating the space race, let's build an infrastructure and go to space to stay.
(far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth)
Yes, yes, yes!! And make that prize tax-free while you are at it. And put a smaller prize for second place. These prizes would be cheap if someone succeeds, and if no one succeeds we would pay nothing. It's better than paying cost plus contracts to aerospace contractors.
steveha
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as you are the one buying low and selling high.
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:2, Insightful)
Prices are low now (relative to a year ago) because risk is high, revenues will almost certainly be very low and the market mood is pessimistic. Only time will tell if prices were undervalued (cheap).
Risk is always high with equities. They are the riskiest investment that most people will typically make. They also have the highest potential for reward.
My 403(b) is filled with mutual and index funds. Some of them are down >45%. I don't care. I look at it as an opportunity because I'm picking up a lot more shares than I otherwise would. I'm 27 -- if a mutual fund containing thousands of American companies in every conceivable sector hasn't rebounded in the next 30 years I'd say we have bigger problems than our nest eggs to worry about. At that point we'd probably be burning greenbacks to keep warm.
I've also started buying individual stocks. My philosophy with them is to look for companies that I think are undervalued, preferably ones that have a long history of paying dividends. The dividends go into reinvestment (i.e: more shares) and give me a better rate of return than I'd get with most cash investments.
I'm actually breaking even right now -- a few of my picks are down and a few of them are up. I'm not putting any money into it that I can't afford to lose (lesson #1 about investing in stocks) and it's actually kind of fun. Considering that the average American gets to find new and creative ways to manage their debt (who has a 0% balance transfer offer this month?) I think I'm already ahead of the game. It's a lot more fun managing your investments than managing your debt.
Speaking of, that's another thing that Americans need to learn some sanity about. When I buy a house it'll be with a 15 year mortgage -- the payments don't double but you pay off the loan in half the time -- what's not to like? I have zero credit card debt and will have my car paid off a year ahead of schedule. I'll probably buy my next car with cash -- only way I'd finance a car again is if I qualified for a 0% APR loan.
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Your parent did not say that:
Well that's the point of the factionalisation and faux-rivalry of US politics, isn't it? To get people so divided into their allegiance to a party name that you can then pull the same shit with either party and only 50% of the people will complain whilst the rest are obliged to rationalise it somehow.
That's all your parent said. Your parent's parent said:
Imagine if ... Bush administration did this ... viz. militarization of space
You are really off base, here, and I'm not going to be nice about it.
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:3, Insightful)
You want a bit of inflation though, exactly because it encourages people to invest instead of sit on their money. If money is constantly being sucked out of the system for savings so does economic activity. Whereas if you take somebodies savings and put it into something with a known return, like building a port or a power station, then you've achieved economic growth at the same time as providing savings.
The problem is that it became too hard to figure out what really had a "known return" and what didn't, because the ratings agencies went on a collosal bender and decided that with enough magic paperwork they could make lead into gold. But the underlying theory makes sense.
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the trade-off I see:
$150,000 borrowed at 6% for 30 years = $173,757 in interest expense and a monthly payment of $899.33
$150,000 borrowed at 6% for 15 years = $77,841 in interest expense and a monthly payment of $1,265.79
You increase your payment by 40.7% percent in exchange for paying the loan off in half the time and only paying 44.7% as much interest.
In reality it would actually be a bit better than that because a 15 year typically has a lower interest rate. As far as not being able to afford "as big" of a house, I'm not into the whole McMansion craze. I just want a roof over my head. If I can't afford it with a 15 year mortgage then my attitude is that I can't afford it period.
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that there would be greater suspicion if Bush had tried to do this does in no way interfere with the fact that there would have been good reason to be more suspicious if Bush had attempted it.
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, if you get the thirty year nothing prevents you from still paying it off early, you just a slightly worse rate.
The difference then is that if you get a worse job (or in our case, your wife plans on staying home after you have kids) you revert back to the lower monthly payment as a requirement.
Re:Undertones of another Cold War (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is nothing like what we have here in the U.S.
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No need to bankrupt China (Score:2, Insightful)
Today the economic systems of China and the U.S. are incredibly intertwined. It is in China's best interest to keep the United States healthy as we are a major trading partner--and vice versa.
Well, it depends on how you view things. China gets to lend the US money so that the US can afford all their manufactured goods... But what does the US actually trade back to China? How long are they going to accept worthless paper (or digits) and keep providing goods in exchange for it?
Right now they're being nice, but it's not entirely clear why they *have* to.
Re:Want to go back to the Moon? Build Saturn Vs! (Score:3, Insightful)
If NASA want to go back to the Moon (far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth), all they have to do is to start building modernized Saturn Vs, Apollo CMs, SMs, & LMs.
Just about anything would be better than continuing with the Ares program using bastardized space shuttle technology which was itself highly specialized for the peculiarities of the Space Shuttle which in turn is probably the most unusual launch configuration ever flown with people aboard. It seems that NASA always tries to save money by stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. They made that mistake with the Space Shuttle program and they are all set to make it again with the Ares program. The SpaceX guys (who owe at least some debt to Boeing with their modular Delta rocket system) have the right idea, but for some reason(s), perhaps political, NASA doesn't want to be seen taking them too seriously. The SpaceX Falcon program demonstrates what can be achieved when the politicians are kept out of the loop and actual engineers make the vehicle design decisions instead of Senators with jobs to protect.
Re:Imagine the BDS had Bush done this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being tolerant doesn't mean being stupid.
The only thing that's stupid is disarming the law-abiding portion of the population and marking them as easy pray for the armed predators of the world.
Re:Too Much is being read into this (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:yay.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Buy Orbital Sciences stock (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily, but, buying on "the dips," as amateurs and people like yourself have been conditioned to do (by institutions who stand to gain, whether you win or lose) in what turns out to be a long downward movement, is like catching razor blades falling out of the sky. It might not hurt much at first, or even later, but sooner or later you bleed to death.
Anyone with half a grasp of what's been going on will already know that the response to the short-sightedness of the big banks and rating agencies has been to give away hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the very same banks that got us into this mess. With no additional oversight, no regulatory guidance as to what is done with the cash, at all, and of course, no actual systemic changes.
Meanwhile, lenders who didn't go off the deep end on shaky investments and remained essentially "healthy" are losing business to those same banks who can keep on making shitty loans that are insured by us, the taxpayers, through the funds that were dished out to them. So the healthy get punished and the sick get rewarded. That sound like an indicator of a healthy investment environment and an imminent near-term correction to the upside to you?
If it does, get some professional advice before you piss away whatever you've managed to hang on to.
The safest way to make money, long term, is to let the others "find the bottom" and when a correction to the upside gets back 10% (minimum) of the previous losses, get in. And when P/E's become screwy compared to long term averages, get out, and let the same "others" find the market top (hint: the "top "finders" generally stay invested when the market turns, in a vain effort to chase those "paper" percentages that are usually gone for good as the market "corrects" to longer term averages ... just as stupid as imagining you know where the bottom is before it has actually identified itself, by turning north). Result: you skip the long, volatile slides, and take 80% of the potential profits, cycle after cycle after cycle. Have fun catching razor blades, cowboy.
Re:Imagine the BDS had Bush done this.... (Score:3, Insightful)
You give a bunch of people a bunch of cars, you're going to get a lot of car trips. You give a bunch of people a bunch of TVs, you've going to get a lot of consumption of entertainment. You give a bunch of people a bunch of guns, you're going to get a lot of shootings. It really is that simple.
Actually more people are killed in automobile accidents than accidental shootings but I'm guessing you really don't care about facts and are only interested in pushing your gun-control agenda. Hell the TV is probably more deadly than the firearms when you account for the fact that 1/3'rd of this country is morbidly obese. Your "lot's of shootings" argument has been dispelled by every single state that has passed shall-issue [wikipedia.org] legislation. 38 states in the Union allow it -- funny how we haven't managed to morph into the Balkens yet isn't it?
And the final bit of stupid bullshit is your argument, oft repeated, that the best way to prevent crime is for everyone to be capable of killing one another with ease.
No, the stupid bullshit is you putting words in my mouth and claiming that I was advocating for killing people "with ease". The vast majority of cases where firearms are used defensively end without a single shot being fired. The mere sight of a gun is enough to deter most aggressors. As for the rest, yes, I think a law-abiding citizen should have the ability to defend him or herself if it comes down to it.
You'll note I said "defend", not "kill", although I suspect the difference is lost on someone like you. The law says you can only use deadly force if you have a reasonable belief that your own life or the life of another is in danger. What's the problem?
Re:hallelujah ! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm afraid Kagura has it right. I am the parent poster and you've read into my post something that isn't quite there. I simply observed that getting the people of the US factionalised into two groups allows you to pull the same shit with either party and you don't get more than 50% resistance to it because people feel obliged to defend their side. Every time a Democrat or Republican politician does something bad, they get vigorously attacked by the supporters of the other faction. But the attacks usually encompass not just that politician and his action, but the entire party and its supporters. The supporters respond naturally to defend themselves regardless of whether they are right or wrong. This happens in both directions. Thus even when an action is bad for the majority of the electorate, you have 50% of the population under pressure to defend it. That is why the factionalisation of America is bad for all. That and the problem that when a third party tries to emerge, something that would break up the power blocks allowing more flexibility in political positions, it is viewed as a threat by whichever party currently has most to lose.
What you have taken from my post is relevant, but not exactly what I meant. On Slashdot, which I think has more of a bias against Bush than for, then it may be correct to say that Obama gets off lighter for doing wrong than Bush. The reverse will be true in some other circles. But I would not equate the this with the Invasion of Iraq. And I like to think that, scary though it is, Slashdot as a whole has less bias in either direction than a lot of other places. I, like many posters here, have no allegiance, only principles. It's that attitude that the USA needs, imo.
Regards,
H.