US Manned Space Flight Taking a Budget Hit 182
An anonymous reader points out that Congress has quietly begun dismantling NASA's manned space flight program. "Other recommendations contained in the bill include a $77million reduction in NASA's proposed space operations budget, which includes the space shuttle and international space station; a $6 million reduction in science; and a $332 million shift in funds from the Cross Agency Support account to a new budget line-item included in the subcommittee's mark. Dubbed Construction and Environmental Compliance, the new account would be funded at $441 million. Congressional aides said the new line item and accompanying funds are aimed at consolidating NASA's various construction efforts into a single pot of money."
A shame and ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: A shame and ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: A shame and ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA has produced a helluva lot of useful technology. The drive to miniaturize onboard guidance systems and other computers in the Apollo program pretty much lead to the blossoming of integrated circuits and microprocessors in the 1970s. The value that that has produced over the last forty years for just about every industry in the industrialized world would be hard to calculate. So even though Apollo was an insanely expensive program, the spinoffs were enormous.
I'm not saying NASA doesn't need to live within its means, and I'm not saying that there aren't areas where efficiencies can be gained, but guys like you who just mindlessly go "money shouldn't be wasted on space research" are tragically ignorant of just how important the Unites States' space exploration programs have been to the technological innovations of the last few decades.
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You're right... (Score:2)
...but I have a better plan. [memory-alpha.org].
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Re: A shame and ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
What an odd question. How would I prove that, any more than you could prove directing the money to basic research would have been better? It's a nonsensical question, like someone asking "If Elizabeth I had married a Catholic monarch, would England have still become the major naval power of its time?"
NASA had a requirement, a solution was developed, and that solution also had uses in other industries. In this case, the solution has uses in just about every industry out there. The problem was an engineering problem, for the most part the technologies already existed in one form or another, but the specific applications had not. I can't think of too many other programs at the time that would have driven the miniaturization of ICs as much as Apollo.
Re: A shame and ironic (Score:5, Funny)
Atlas, Titan, Minuteman, Polaris...
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Well, yeah. But if it had been funded by the DOD for missile tech instead of for NASA, then it would probably have been controlled like nuclear weapons info, requiring Top Secret clearance, and would have as much development as would be necessary for running an ICBM. See "controlled" missile tube/isotope centrifuge cascade metal alloys for an example. So "we" might have at best the equivalent of an Intel 8080 or 8086, and still be using large ECL-based mainframes because there would be no mass market to fun
Re: A shame and ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh no, I'm basing it on the proven spinoffs from the Apollo program. You're basing your claim on a demand that I prove a negative.
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Branson's efforts have managed to produce a vehicle of about the same capability as the early Mercury missions. In one respect, it's impressive, in another, well... the US government has significantly greater resources both financially and technically than any private interest.
Re: A shame and ironic (Score:4, Informative)
Branson's efforts have managed to produce a vehicle of about the same capability as the early Mercury missions. In one respect, it's impressive, in another, well... the US government has significantly greater resources both financially and technically than any private interest.
You're kidding, right? The Spaceship One spacecraft is nowhere near the capability of a Mercury capsule. Even if you could get it into orbit, there is no way Spaceship One could make a survivable reentry. The Mercury capsule was intended from the start to be an orbital spacecraft. Spaceship One is a suborbital dead end. Even Spaceship Two is targeting a 120km apogee and about 1 km/s velocity at MECO. The feathered reentry won't do the job if you're going much faster than that.
The first manned Mercury hit 2.3 km/s at MECO, 186 km apogee and 500 km downrange. Apogee mass of it and Spaceship One are about the same, so there's only a factor of 5.3 in the amount of energy Mercury dissipated on reentry. Toss Spaceship One into the air at 2.3 km/s and you'll be picking up charcoal where it comes down.
Spaceship One is a toy for rich people, and is only a spacecraft because someone decided that the arbitrary edge of space is 100 km. The real, non-arbitrary edge of space is 7.8 km/s. When Scaled Composites gets there, then they can say they have spaceship. Since there isn't a way there from Spaceship One, it'll be a bit of a wait.
Re: A shame and ironic (Score:4, Interesting)
No, we know for sure that spending money on direct research will have some benefits. You're saying that focusing on a goal that has no direct benefits will probably have greater knock on benefits than direct research would have done. I think that puts the burden of proof onto you.
If you're claiming that research for research's sake is better for technology, then the burden of proof lies with you. Neccessity is the mother of invention. Money is not. Dumping money into a cloud named "research" is going to get you nowhere, no matter how much money you dump into it. Asking the world to conjure solutions to problems it doesn't even know exist will net you waste. In the 60's (and stretching even much later), everyone was sure that computers were going to get bigger and louder. The limitations of space travel completely reversed the direction of circuit research for this small group of engineers, and that revolutionized the evolution of computers. Were that money directed elsewhere, personal computers could still be a pipedream today.
Re: A shame and ironic (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: A shame and ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not against the space program but I'm one of many who think that the focus should be on things that are obviously useful. A manned mission to Mars /might/ provide some stimulus the overall sense of aspiration amongst people, but robotic missions seem to provide a greater practical return on investment.
I think it depends on exactly what returns you're looking for.
If all you want is scientific knowledge about Mars, then robots are definitely the cheapest way to get that.
But if we had been content with simply sending robots (or remote-control probes, since the Moon is so close this would have been feasible), instead of sending manned spacecraft, we wouldn't have developed all the technologies we did, and we also wouldn't have developed any knowledge or expertise about sending humans into space.
If your goal is to eventually send humans to Mars, then sending robots isn't going to get you to that goal as quickly as starting manned missions as soon as possible.
Of course, with everyone whining about the spending, has anyone looked at how little money in the Federal budget is spent on NASA? It's a tiny, tiny fraction of what is spent on the DOD and for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Exactly what "return" are we getting on our "investment" there?
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But then if we had sent robotic missions then our understanding of AI, remote sensing, minuturisation, etc would have improved (as the rovers on Mars have done).
What actual benefits did we get from sending people to the Moon rather than robots? A few photo ops....
Where is the progression in the US space program? Constellation is a step back to the Apollo days, apparently canning the whole of the Shuttle's last 30 years.
Ok... (Score:2)
Given that I'm more interested in acquiring actual knowledge about Mars than I am with sending humans into space for the sake of doing it, color me onboard with robotic exploration of the planet.
Then again, I'm also totally onboard with the concept that Iraq was a much bigger waste of money than a manned space program, so there you are.
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Be my guest.
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The problem there is that we didn't know we were progressing towards microprocessors at the time, as nobody could even envision them. "Microprocessor" is something you buy in a box now, but it's the culmination of huge advances in many different areas. You don't just "research microprocessors". Especially if you don't know what you're researching.
Advances in techology generally come from trying to solve a problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the advance. In this case, there was an overriding
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But space exploration has never really been separate from weapon development. Whether it was von Braun building V2s while he dreamed about going into space, or funding satellite research when the intent was just as often spying and secure communications as it was looking at the stars or feeding the Tonight Show to East Coast affiliates. The shuttles have done a lot of what are essentially military missions, and guidance systems capable of landing a probe on Titan are quite adaptable to landing a missile o
Re: A shame and ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what the urban legend says. But it's utter bullshit. The Apollo computers and guidance system were based on those of the Polaris A-1/A-2. The USAF and the USN miniaturized the computers and guidance systems, all NASA did was issue spiffy press releases.
You find the same thing almost universally when you run down the list of technologies 'developed' by NASA. They were first developed by someone else, and then like a technological Sylar NASA sucks them up.
The tragically ignorant are people like yourself who endlessly regurgitate NASA press releases. As far as results for dollars expended, the NASA PR department is probably the most efficient in the US government.
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I didn't suggest it, I stated it.
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Right. NASA didn't do much in the semiconductor area. The USAF put tons of money into basic research into transistors and ICs, but not NASA. (I still remember the whining from the Air Force types in the 1980s, when the commercial market finally pulled ahead of the military one.)
NASA sometimes takes credit for Teflon, but that was a spinoff of the Manhattan Project, which needed a sealant resistant to uranium hexafluoride.
NASTRAN, the finite-element analysis program, is considered perhaps the most use
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teflon#History [wikipedia.org]
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But I bet if one was to compare the amount of new tech gained from the defense industry VS the amount gained from NASA the defense industry would win hands down.
DARPA has more money than NASA. Of course they're going to be able to fund more development. Let's try funding NASA. Really funding them. Giving them a piece of the pie that's even close to what we give to defense. Let's see what they can do then.
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NASA is currently designing & developing yet another heavy lift rocket system. Why build Ares when they could use Delta IV. Oh yeah - because NASA is an agency which employs contactors to do all its work (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc) , so they need something new to syphon off all the money.
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Just look at the Internet you are surfing on (ArpaNET) [wikipedia.org]
Actually, the point about Arpanet's involvement in the birth of the Internet is debated. See Ian Peter's excellent research here [nethistory.info].
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Okay, I'm willing to concede that a considerable amount of the development in ICs in the 1960s was due to defense research (although I'm not one of those rose-colored glasses people who thinks that NASA was or is anything other than a thinly veiled extension of the DoD). But my central point stands, the requirements for guidance systems, whether those sat on top of Apollo, or sat on top of a ICBM, drove the major advances that pretty much set the ball rolling in Silicon Valley, and from there the leap to s
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I think they're going to have to add a whole new logical fallacy; argumentum ad Wikipedia.
At any rate, NASA themselves claim some credit for this:
"...In one respect the all-up decision was like the previous decisions discussed: It evolved from earlier decisions and, in turn, presupposed subsequent decisions to implement it. The all-up decision presupposed the July 1962 decision to use lunar orbit rendezvous as the mission mode for Apollo, and it required an ever stricter control of quality and monitoring of
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You want innovation? You fund and use your military. The vast majority of man's innovations have come about through necessity, and the thing that most necessitates innovation is someone trying to kill you.
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What we should be doing will never be what we will be doing as long as we have limited resources.
Competition is a bitch, isn't it?
Please don't blame it on the "bad" economy (Score:3, Interesting)
That is exactly how they would like it portrayed. The real truth is we are lucky to have any budget for NASA currently. Considering the reckless, if not criminal, debt being piled up in just the first year I will be surprised if NASA doesn't get bigger cuts going forward. How long can the funny money last? The real threat to scientific investment by the US government is all the new entitlements and "stimulus of the moment" bills coming down the pike. Eventually reality will bite us hard, we cannot pri
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Yep, gotta cut science, engineering and exploration from the budget so we can use the money to fund science and engineering programs in the schools....
Re: A shame and ironic (Score:4, Interesting)
"In a bad economy, pure science and space exploration seem to be first on the budget chopping block."
Dump the manned program and devote the remaining resources to advancing robotic systems. We can afford to wait centuries to send meat tourists, while learning how to economically exploit space by remote control.
Human explorers were fine when they were cheap and expendable. The loss of a ship and crew was nothing near as damaging to exploration as the loss of a Shuttle is today. Now humans are expensive and robots are cheap, so leave the tourists at home.
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Sadly, I don't think there's any hope for getting the young kids to wake up and see that Obama's plan for Europe 2.0 will actually be bad for them.
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Constellation != all "high-IQ" pursuits. Obama is funding tons of R&D [nowpublic.com], so unless you consider cancer research to be a "low-IQ" pursuit, you're just plain wrong. Knocking $800 million off NASA's budget, while not something I approve of, hardly defines a trend away from research, when there's $16 billion going the other way.
This is why nobody listened to your warnings. Because your warnings were wrong and stupid, and mouthed by an idiot.
Calling Obama a bolshevik just seals the deal. There's no way you
Why is this a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
The shuttle replacement is over-budget, under-spec, and without a realistic mission. We have trouble building and servicing a base going around the Earth, in zero-g... why does NASA think we can do this without busting timelines or budgets on the moon?
I wish Bush had set a more realistic goal... landing on near earth asteroids. Then NASA would have two things going for it - something never done, and a bs fallback line to feed axe wielding politicians (we need these missions to learn how to blow up incoming astroids - you want to tell your constituents why they need to live in a tent camp for the next 5 years when we evacuate all of New Mexico?).
Now all NASA has is a half-assed Apollo clone, no clear goal, and a loud insurgent campaign (DIRECT). I just hope this doesn't blow-back and foul up the fairly successful non-manned space missions.
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I wish Bush had set a more realistic goal... landing on near earth asteroids.
Are you insane? Do you have any idea how hard it is to land on asteroids? Any "near earth" asteroids would be on eccentric orbits. I doubt it would even be possible to land on an asteroid and return to Earth. It certainly would be extremely dangerous (you know, with the risk of being stranded in a 100+ year orbit, ejected from the inner solar system, etc, etc). The Moon and Mars are targets for two reasons: they are close and they are "easy" to land on. The hard part about either is getting there and getti
Re:Why is this a surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm sorry - but thats complete and utter bullshit. Save your apoplexy for subjects that you didn't study at the Armageddon School of Asteroid studies. Mars is not close. Asteroids don't randomly shoot through the solar system. They are not surrounded by asteroid fields, or whatever craziness you think makes landing difficult. In fact, the practically 0g environment makes them the EASIEST objects to take off from.
This idea is so "out there", that its been studied by NASA for the Orion spacecraft. Here's a wi
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So let's do what NASA is incredibly good at: Send Fucking Robots.
As most anyone on Slashdot can tell you, we don't yet know how to build fucking robots. At least not ones that are any good. And if, by some miracle someone did manage to build a decent fucking robot, there would be way too much demand for them here on Earth to be sending them into space.
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Orion is even included in DIRECT's architecture as well...
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Yes, it's called the Saturn V.
Men all the way! (Score:2)
I think the exact opposite is true. While it is true that a robotic mission gives you the best science bang for the buck, in this economy we need inspiration more than data. Landing a team on the Moon, even if it is just a flags and footprints mission, will do far more to inspire people than some electric go cart taking pictures of rocks.
Affect on Armadillo Aerospace? (Score:4, Funny)
I just saw this April 2009 video interview with John Carmack [flightglobal.com] this morning, where he mentions that some of their NASA work is up in the air, pending the budget shakeout. Does this mean no more NASA work for Armadillo Aerospace [armadilloaerospace.com]?
It does emphasize one benefit of private research and development: not subject (as in "we kill you right now") to such political money shuffling.
-Malloc
They have yet to take my suggestion (Score:5, Funny)
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I'd do unimaginable things just to be considered for such a mission.
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Manned exploration would be cost-competitive with robotic exploration if we just sent astronauts on one-way trips! Any volunteers?
ME!
And I'm not even sure I'm joking (ask me again when it's a possibility and we'll see). But really, one of my greatest dreams is to be able to visit see the earth from space some time in my life, even briefly, even at the very end. I'll sign whatever waivers are necessary. To actually be able to visit Mars, to be the first human to touch down on it, and report your discoveri
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Two agencies Bush didn't screw up (Score:3, Insightful)
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(1) NASA. Censored documents on global warming and climate change to meet his views, but at least the funding was relatively fine.
Small observation: ledgers have two sides.
Giving an agency a good sized budget is a metric meaningful only to bureaucratic empire builders. What matters is the size of the budget as compared to the ambition of your goals.
It's even possible for a budget cut to further an agency's mission, although without reading the budget I can't say whether that is true in this case. If I gave your agency a fifty billion dollar annual budget, is that a lot of money? Well, what if I said your agency's mission was to pr
Is sending humans a novalty at this point? (Score:5, Insightful)
With robotics coming such a long way since the 60s, it is more efficient and cheaper to just send robots to do all the exploring and data/sample collection in space. Until the average American thinks the cost of human presence in space is a priority for the tax payer dollar, space flight will have to be unmanned in the meantime. We are just going to have to wait for China or another rising global leader to send humans to Mars until the US population is willing to put in the extra effort and dollar to compete in a second space race and reinflate their ego as the "pioneers of space".
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I think the answer to the question (whether sending humans is worth it) really depends on what you/we think the goals are.
For pure science, I'd argue that sending humans to deep space definitely is not worthwhile. While you may get more science/dollar for it (another debate), the total cost is so high that the current state of politics cannot sustain it. That is, the cost is too high to be able to complete it within 6 or 7 years when an administration change is going to rework everything anyway. For pure
Huston, the Eagle has landed (Score:5, Insightful)
Without our biggest dreams, even our smallest hopes are lost.
And so the Spirit of our country is lost.
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The key is to find real, meaningful, achievable dreams and work towards those. One reason NASA has floundered is their long-term manned space exploration visions haven't made much sense in recent decades, with a lot of technical and logical show stoppers swept under the carpet. People think its unpatriotic to say this, but from my experience parts of the NASA bureaucracy are almost unbelievably corrupt. People lose faith after years of false promise and waste. Better to start fresh maybe, focusing more
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As another idea that might make a lot more sense than going to mars....If you like the technology developed by manned exploration, there's a lot more building and exploring that could be done in relation to the ocean. Not as much like Star Trek, but with the virtue of being more real.
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NASA floundered because their budget was cut, and they were saddled with the stupid, ill-conceived, and overpriced Space Shuttle by the Defense Department because the DoD wanted a way to send military satellites into orbit and then to retrieve them intact too. If they had stuck with the Apollo-style rockets and kept the budget up, we'd already have a moon base by now. It would have been expensive, but the economic rewards in spin-off industries would have been huge, plus we could have paid for a lot of it
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OK, I'm with you on the military and great society stuff. But some of those people sitting at home and popping out babies work at NASA. One colleague had a huge family to deal with and only came in to the office a couple hours a week. And he wasn't working at home.
I'm also not sure the moon base really makes sense. What is it for? The bottom of the ocean under the north pole is a lot closer, and more hospitable in a lot of ways, but not a very good place for people to live. And I don't think its reall
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OK, I'm with you on the military and great society stuff. But some of those people sitting at home and popping out babies work at NASA. One colleague had a huge family to deal with and only came in to the office a couple hours a week. And he wasn't working at home.
What on earth are you talking about. If that colleague was working, and earning money, then that has nothing to do with welfare unless I'm missing something.
I'm talking about the generation of welfare which has been given out to women who sit at
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I don't see much difference between being on welfare and being formally employed by or for the government but sitting around and talking all day or surfing /. without working, or not even bothering to come into work. It rots the soul in either case. The main difference is whether its "us" or "them". In either case, individual people who really want to work have a hard time finding a way to make it happen when everyone around them just wants to pull in a paycheck and protect their turf without rocking the
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I don't see much difference between being on welfare and being formally employed by or for the government but sitting around and talking all day or surfing /. without working, or not even bothering to come into work. It rots the soul in either case. The main difference is whether its "us" or "them". In either case, individual people who really want to work have a hard time finding a way to make it happen when everyone around them just wants to pull in a paycheck and protect their turf without rocking the bo
What the DoD wanted... (Score:2)
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It was probably some combination of these, which never actually reached fruition. But it's saddled us with the overpriced, underperforming, and unsafe Space Shuttle for 30 years now, with two fatal accidents to go along with it, while the Russian Soyuz capsules are far cheaper and have a better safety record.
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Russia, China, India (Score:3, Insightful)
Russia, China, India, the hope for a human future in space.
GO CHINA! GO CHINA! (Score:5, Insightful)
We did the Apollo thing not really to do it, but to rub the Soviet's nose in it. The the NASA manned program feels like it's been coasting on "hey, wasn't that AWESOME?!" for the last thirty years.
Don't get me wrong - I love the space program and think it's money well spent (overall - Ares/Orion is debatable, but look at the science we've gotten from Hubble and compare the cost of the maintenance flights against, say... the F-22 Raptor program). However, there's no competition in the manned arena and there hasn't been since the days of the Saturn V and the N-1 (or space stations, if you want to go there - We've fielded one and a fraction. The russians have done much, much more in that area).
And there won't be competition until China - who's been excluded from the ISS program - starts making some serious strides towards putting a man on the moon. Or mars. Or an asteroid or a comet or whatever.
So despite the setbacks they've faced, I'm all for the Chinese space program - eventually they'll catch up to NASA/Roscosmos and we won't have a choice - we'll have to get off our asses and start giving a shit about the manned program again, or lose the prestige forever.
NASA costs pennies compared to the black hole of the bailouts and massive defense boondoggles such as the recent USAF tanker fiasco or the Army's Future Combat Systems. Pennies - fractions of pennies - on the dollar, with REAL results.
So why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, so what's the national interest in manned space flight? I'd be firmly against cutting NASA's more scientific work, but the manned space program doesn't do nearly as much for science as other NASA programs.
It's cool to get people off the planet, but it costs a whole lot of money to get them into low Earth orbit, let alone somewhere interesting.
Manned space flight seems to have lost the inspirational value it had in the 1960s, it doesn't produce good scientific returns compared to the unmanned probes, it takes money and attention from the really useful space stuff, it's hurt our satellite-launching capability, and if there's commercial value in sending people into LEO some company will take it up. Why should we be doing it?
Re:So why not? (Score:4, Informative)
First of all, as an academic (his name escapes me now) once said:
A trained geologist can do more research in an hour than a robot in a whole year
and as I understand, his opinion stemmed from the huge delay in sending commands and receiving feedback from the rovers on Mars - and he actually contributes to the Mars Science Laboratory, so he's not "just being negative".
And then, a manned mission to mars would galvanize the energy of the nation that would take on such an endevour. Direct monetary benefit: none. Indirect: incalculable.
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Well, for one, efficiency gains and life support would be a main benefit. Manned missions can't really carry nuclear fuels to power electronic devices, they can't burn fossil fuels and so on, so the result is going to at minimum be more efficient technology that pollutes less and less.
I would say that is a great plus seeing how the world is a frightened little schoolgirl over global warming. Gains in these areas when shared with US firms and universities could mean the US is leading the pack at efficiency a
Democrats gutting space program (Score:2, Insightful)
It's always been clear that the Democrats would gut the space program.
Sad, by electing Obama, we've put the last hopes of space progress behind us. We're a smaller nation as a result. Pretty much the plan, I guess.
It's hardly fair to blame the Democrats (Score:2)
This makes sense (Score:2)
Sending humans up into space is colossally expensive, and of little scientific interest in itself. (It has been proven that you can send humans up into space.) Actual experiments in space, be they to do with zero gravity, telescopes, or what have you can generally be conducted much more economically by mechanised probes.
For the past few decades, manned spaceflight was more a PR exercise than anything else. Someone would go up with a few schoolchildren's experiments, make a few transmissions and get some her
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You miss the point. Near-Earth orbit is a stepping stone to further goals. A base on the Moon might is equally but a stepping stone.
The point is acquisition of resources and raw materials from off-planet sources. Whether it is Helium-3 from the surface of the Moon, hydrocarbons from Jupiter, or metals from asteroids the key is that we need stuff. Stuff to make other things with.
There are alternatives. None of them particularly nice. If we force a much smaller population to consume less we will not nee
No one on /. has a basic grip of economics (Score:2)
Geez, it's like talking to a wall. 1) We have absolutely no use for Helium-3, and won't until we get fusion figured out (always 20 years away). 2) It will never, ever be more economical to go to Jupiter to get energy than it will to produce it from solar, etc, ri
Seven hours in Iraq (Score:5, Informative)
Other recommendations contained in the bill include a $77million reduction in NASA's proposed space operations budget
When I read this I decided to see what that is relative to the Iraq war.
I'm using this chart as a reference. [zfacts.com] It says we've been at it for about 7 years, and it's cost about $670 billion in total.
So, 7 years is about 2500 days. Divide that through and you get about $268,000,000 per day. That works out to 11.16 million per hour.
77 million / 11.16 = 6.89 hours.
7 hours.
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The NASA budget is $ 17 billion, so this only represents about a day and a half of the NASA budget. Manned space flight may be reduced in the future, I don't know, but $ 77 million is small change compared to the ISS, Orion or Shuttle budget.
Those inclined to complain about this (Score:3)
...Might ask themselves whether the annual $650 billion military budget [blogspot.com] (fully half of the world's total military expenditure) might be better spent on things other than raining death on other countries.
You know, like schools, [csmonitor.com] hospitals, [svherald.com] roads, [blogspot.com] fire stations, [cbs13.com] police, [heraldnet.com] ... and oh yeah, the manned space programme.
YAY! (Score:2)
With no more manned space program to sap the funds from all the very worthwhile space exploration and science, we could be doing, there will be that many more discoveries made.
Except that the money will just disappear into the general fund. Still, it's better than completely wasting it on manned space missions.
Invertable Factoids (Score:3, Informative)
How come it is that the cancellation of regular increases in the manned spaceflight program during a period when no manned spaceflight is planned is being called the "dismantling of the manned spaceflight program" in the summary? NASA's budget and program planning show an intent to keep the program running at the present level while they decide on what the next program is to be. Per TFA:
"In his opening statement at the markup hearing, Mollohan said the cut should not be viewed as a diminution of the subcommittee's support for NASA's human spaceflight activities. "Rather, it's a deferral taken without prejudice; it is a pause, a time-out, to allow the president to establish his vision for human space exploration and to commit to realistic future funding levels to realize this vision."
A summary so clearly contrary to TFA without the summary calling TFA wrong or a lie indicates no attention being paid to the facts. Could be an agenda with no support looking for an outlet, could be just a wild guess used instead of reading TFA. Either way, it's a good case for /. editors doing at least minimal research comparing the summary and TFA. Not doing so causes them to make the same mistake as the submitter.
It's criticism, in my opinion warranted, plainly presented, posted calmly, and you can like it or not. It is therefore not, per moderator guidelines, flame bait.
Did anyone actually read all of the article? (Score:2)
I mean, really. I quote paragraphs 3 & 4 in the article linked to:
Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the subcommittee's chairman, described the move as a "time-out" in the budget process as the White House awaits the findings of a 10-member panel tasked by the White House to reassess NASA's post-shuttle exploration plans. That panel, led by former Lockheed Martin chief Norm Augustine, is expected to report back with its findings in August.
In his opening statement at the markup hearing, Mollohan said the cut
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No, the money sunk in Wallstreet was a colossal mistake.
Re:Stupid move (Score:4, Informative)
Obama needs to grow a backbone and stand up to the Republicans he is trying to appease by continuing overseas military operations. Instead of diplomatically engaging with the Muslims, keeping a heavy military presence in their countries in order to "stop terrorism" is only pissing away funds that could be better used elsewhere.
Obama is engaging heavily with Muslim leaders, even making overtures to Iran to prevent the next mid-east debacle (which would make Iraq look like Candy Land). So it's not a matter of "instead". As far as the military presence, he's pulling out of Iraq -- not as fast as I'd like by any means, but about as fast as is responsible I must admit. Afghanistan, now that's the conflict that actually made sense, and with an actual enemy and lines and territory won and lost, our military has a prayer in hell of winning. It will still be expensive at a time we don't need it, absolutely, but at the same time we can't let Afghanistan fall to the Taliban again. Hopefully with us focused solely on that, and Pakistan starting to get serious about their Taleban problem now that it's hurting them, we can resolve it soon. Okay, I don't have that much hope, but it will help.
The full budget requested by NASA was 4 billion dollars (As per TFA, Congress reduced it to $3.2 billion). Guess what? We piss away this much amount in Iraq every two weeks!
I hear ya. Really, this pissing around with millions here and there, targeting "earmarks" and such that nobody is going to be able to get rid of anyway, is just a distraction that can ultimately just backfire. You might think the ten million here, half billion there would add up and it does... to a pretty small fraction of the budget. There are bigger issues there. Robbing NASA of $800 million that can be used for doing their special kind of advanced R&D that can benefit us going forward... silly.
So getting back to one of the things that does matter, I wonder how much cheese we will save when at long last we're not more than a token presence in Iraq. I know we're ramping up in Afghanistan, so that offsets any gains. I am willing to bet it'll be enough that scraping that $800 mil off NASA's budget won't seem like it was much use.
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Obama is following the SOFA agreement Bush put into place. The only difference is in the naming of the remaining forces. [indecisionforever.com] The SOFA agreement is the agreement giving the US authority to be on Iraq soil abd was negotiated by Bush before the Obama became president. It appears that it follows McCain's plan [indecisionforever.com] pretty close too.
War spending shouldn't be in conflict with
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Obama is following the SOFA agreement Bush put into place. The only difference is in the naming of the remaining forces. The SOFA agreement is the agreement giving the US authority to be on Iraq soil abd was negotiated by Bush before the Obama became president. It appears that it follows McCain's plan pretty close too.
Yep. One thing I agree on with my very pro-war (and McCain) father is that the outcome was largely already decided and who got elected made little difference.
When they put the war spending on
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I wish that was what everyone expected them to do. However, the manipulation and posturing with this scares me quite a bit.
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Well what on earth do you expect them to do? Relinquish the opportunity to spend money? Haha, fat chance. They've got to press on in the name of bipartisanship. :)
Perhaps things will change after the economy collapses and Congress and the other politicians start getting a first-hand French history lesson in what the guillotine is and what it was used for by a violently-enraged general public.
Strat
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Why? what right do you have to be there?
Actually, you don't have any right to be there...
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Ok, let's hear your theories about why Obama is still wasting so much money over there. As the other poster said, the entire NASA yearly budget is spent in Iraq every two weeks. What return are we getting on our investment?
Re:Time for gubm't to step aside and let others le (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'm an advocate of the commercial space segment, I think you're reaching a bit far here. Most people calling for it (myself included) believe that NASA needs to get out of the business of building launchers and buy them off the shelf, but continue their efforts to explore the frontier.
There are plenty of commercial opportunities for launching to LEO, and new NASA programs like COTS are attempting to foster this development by basically assuring the companies that the government will be a reliable customer. As such, it makes sense that NASA should limit its work on directing the construction of new launch vehicles and help to develop an open market that they and others can purchase from. Things like COTS, as well as efforts to reform ITAR would go a long way for this.
However, there is no reasonable commercial reason to do science and exploration, yet there is very high value for society in exploring and doing this science and development. This is exactly why we formed governments in the first place, to do the things that benefit our society and advance our interests that individuals and private groups are incapable of doing. Defense isn't really commercially beneficial (neglecting war profiteering which just leaches off of the government effort), but I think most people agree its necessary to some extent, thus why we have governments do it. In the 1500s and 1600s, governments paid for the initial exploration of the world, and only later did commercial entities come in to exploit and profit from it. Continued government spending on exploration efforts seems appropriate and proper if we ever want to leave the planet, especially at the low level of funding it has.
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The invisible hand that allowed the financial mess in the first place. Except this hand wasn't invisible, it was Uncle Sam's hand who allowed the credit swaps and actually encouraged it, it was the government who allowed bank mergers creating full service banks which was not technically possible until they relaxed the rules, and it was the government that drew up a pyrimid scheme with Fanny and Freddie in which they sought to artificially increase real estate prices as a way repay bond holders.
You cannot re
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So what you are saying is that by not preventing (regulating) private action (creation of CDSs and full service banks), the government prevented the free market from working?
If I read you correctly: the government doesn't do anything==bad. The government does something==bad.
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No, what I am saying is that the regulation was already there but not enforced and loopholes in the regulation was created to allow practices that were specifically denied by laws and regulations on the books.
It's not a matter of Government regulation being good or bad, it's a matter of improper regulation, improper enforcement of regulation, and the lack of either all tied together being bad. We don't have a free market in the banking sector, we have a quasi-free market and actions by the government or the
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Nice try, but it was mostly Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that fucked of the financial services industry.
Even still, maybe the private sector would do for space flight what it's done for the computer industry?
Also, even comrade Obama disagrees with you here, because as he's cutting NASA's budget he's giving out hundreds of billions of dollars to private companies in an ill conc
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Which economists do you mean? And what reductions are you talking about? In fact, until very recently, government pressure to give out sub-prime loans had been increasing.
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Right? I mean, if we can scrape together $4 billion taxpayer funds for Acorn, surely we can scrape together $100 million for NASA.