Obama Backs New Launcher and Bigger NASA Budget 391
The AAAS's ScienceInsider confidently reports that NASA is in line to receive $1 billion more next year. Reader coop0030 sends this quote: "President Barack Obama will ask Congress next year to fund a new heavy-lift launcher to take humans to the Moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars... The president chose the new direction for the US human space flight program Wednesday at a White House meeting with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, according to officials familiar with the discussion. NASA would receive an additional $1 billion in 2011 both to get the new launcher on track and to bolster the agency's fleet of robotic Earth-monitoring spacecraft."
New Heavy Lift Vehicle - From TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
"According to knowledgeable sources, the White House is convinced that scarce NASA funds would be better spent on a simpler heavy-lift vehicle that could be ready to fly as early as 2018."
Nothing in the article says what that HLV would be, or who would build it. The article also talks about the fight in Congress over Constellation districts losing aerospace jobs.
The only thing I am aware of is Elon Musk saying NASA has an option for SpaceX to develop an HLV, and I'm not talking about Falcon 9 or Falcon 9 Heavy. Anything else would be the usual suspects dusting off old blueprints and submitting proposals, or something I'm not aware of, which would be fine too.
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You read this http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hla2i5PLLHuXp5CanUH6ygR6M5zA [google.com] right?
"NASA is ready to cooperate with China in space exploration, the head of the US agency said on Tuesday, as Beijing aims to send a manned mission to the moon by around 2020."
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I doubt the government would give a billion dollars to Elon Musk to fund his private space company. If Musk wants to compete with the public sector, let him use his only money.
The article did open the door wide open for ISS space tourism because it says, and I quote, "And commercial companies would take over the job of getting supplies to the international space station."
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"Big news today was SpaceX winning the NASA CRS contract for an initial $1.6 billion, representing 12 flights to the International Space Station starting in 2010." - http://www.spacex.com/updates.php [spacex.com]
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To me SpaceX seems to be more of an airline that builds it's own planes then a NASA supplier like Boeing and Lockheed.
Ironically, the Air Mail Act of 1934 broke up the original airplane manufacturers from the airlines they built. For example, Boeing Air Transport became United Air Lines. North American Aviation owned what became Eastern Air Lines.
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Re:New Heavy Lift Vehicle - From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
I checked Spaceflightnow, [spaceflightnow.com] SpaceFellowship, [spacefellowship.com] and ParabolicArc [parabolicarc.com] and couldn't find anything but a parent of the original ScienceInsider article. Google doesn't reveal a whole lot at cursory glance either. Hell I don't even see anything on NASA's own website. If anyone digs up some particulars, please post some links, I would be very interested in seeing them.
Also, offtopic, but for those who say Slashdot is behind the news release cycle and doesn't post breaking news, considering it just posted a story that 4 other space news websites haven't picked up yet, I'd say you've just been proven wrong =P
Re:New Heavy Lift Vehicle - From TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
a new heavy lift launch vehicle would be built "to take astronauts to the moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars" but it would not be Ares V: "the White House is convinced that scarce NASA funds would be better spent on a simpler heavy-lift vehicle that could be ready to fly as early as 2018";
So I guess the Ares V is not the new HLV, in case anyone was speculating that was the case.
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Smaller budgets (Score:3)
Has Obama supported anything with a smaller budget?
Re:Smaller budgets (Score:5, Funny)
Has Obama supported anything with a smaller budget?
Yeah. Your budget. It's now smaller.
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That's probably going to be the funniest thing I've read all week.
Re:Smaller budgets (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I think he can have this one, since the entire budget is 1 day's worth of combat in Iraq.
If he tells the US military to go on holiday for a week in Iraq he can fund this 7 times over.
Public Option? (Score:5, Funny)
Article makes no sense (Score:4, Insightful)
So are they saying a new heavy lift vehicle is replacing the Ares I? My understanding is Ares I is the simple, cheap, manned crew vehicle stack and the Ares V is the bigger, heavier, not man-rated launcher meant for heavy lifting. They were supposed to reuse shuttle parts and know-how to make things work better. So far it isn't. I have a feeling that shuttle reuse was a political decision to make this sound more economical rather than a proposal from the engineers guaranteeing it would be frugal.
Re:Article makes no sense (Score:4, Informative)
They were supposed to, but they didn't. They developed a new solid rocket motors for the ARES-I. They're developing new engines, new solids, new tankage, new upper stage engines (as well as needing new crawlers, and nwe launch pads) for the ARES-V. About the only thing that's reused from the shuttle (or so I've read) is the system that ignites the solids.
The plan makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Article makes no sense (Score:4, Interesting)
The Ares I design is not simple, cheap, or even really effective. A good portion of the expense of launching the Shuttle, an Ares I, or anything else is manpower. You have a lot of people that get paid salaries no matter how many launches take place every year. The cost of a launch then becomes (vehicle cost) + (yearly operations and personnel cost/scheduled launches that year). If you launch one rocket a year it's fairly expensive, if you launch six then the price of each launch goes down. You might recognize this cost-production curve an economy of scale which is what it is.
The Ares I was meant to be able to carry a fully decked out Orion capsule capable of carrying four people, long solo flights with an extended service module, a toilet, and the ability to to land on the ground with parachutes and airbags. It turns out the Ares I can't do any of that so the Orion had to be scaled down to only carry three people, no toilet, no air bags for ground landings, and a service module just barely capable of getting astronauts to the ISS or some other vehicle.
The rub with the Ares I is that it is damn near useless without the Ares V follow-on. Because it can't carry much into orbit it is essentially an expensive bus to take three astronauts to the ISS. People bitch about the Shuttle being an expensive tow truck but it can carry seven astronauts in addition to twenty tons of cargo and can survive independently for weeks. Going back to the launch cost problem, the Ares V requires significant changes made to one of the two launch pads at KSC. This leaves only one available for Ares I launches. Only having a single pad available for the Ares I puts a limit on the number of Ares I flights that can be made every year. The low frequency of flights increases the cost of every kilo launched on an Ares I rocket.
The cost per unit of mass problem with the Ares I determines what sort of missions you can afford to use it for. There was an unmanned Orion capsule design that was intended to be used for cargo resupply to the ISS. The low launch frequency put the cost per unit of mass too high for that design to make any sense and the low number of flights even possible for the Ares I meant there were scheduling problems as well. Since the Ares I can't launch a well equipped Orion capsule the only use for it until the Ares V is ready is to ferry people (no meaningful cargo) back and forth to the ISS. Again the low launch frequency means this is really expensive, it would be cheaper to buy assembled Soyuz rockets from Russia and launch them ourselves than it would be to send crews up in Orions via the Ares I.
Re:Article makes no sense (Score:5, Informative)
Don't discount the fact thsat the SRBs were Man Rated
No they're not. There's no man rating for the Shuttle and hence, for its components. As a first stage (renamed the "solid rocket motor" or SRM) of the Ares I, NASA still has to figure out a crew escape system that can escape from a SRM rupture (it's faster and hotter than equivalent liquid stage ruptures, hence requires a better escape system than the current design). That escape option is required to man rate the vehicle (using the current standard which is of course, subject to change at the whim and convenience of the NASA leadership).
By reusing the SRBs from the shuttle they were supposed to be able to rely on the safety record of the SRBs and get a new vehicle put into production far faster than a built from scratch new vehicle.
The irony here is that the SRBs aren't that safe. They have a historical failure rate of 1 in 250 or so. Yet the Ares I's SRM is claimed to have a failure rate of something like 1 in 3700. So how do they get that, when their first stage has a demonstrated failure rate more than ten times worse than the rate they claim for it?
Further, the choice wasn't between Ares I and a built from scratch vehicle. It was between a variety of Shuttle derived vehicles and the EELVs, Delta IV Heavy and Atlas V Heavy. The latter two are much further along in development than anything else and comparable in safety and cost (even using the flawed ESAS as your guide). The Delta IV Heavy even flies now.
DIRECT (Score:5, Interesting)
This [directlauncher.com] makes a lot more sense. Take the basic shuttle launch system, remove the orbiter, stick the engines on the bottom, put the Orion module on the top. There would be no costly engine development, as the rocket uses the same proven engine that has been launching the shuttle into orbit for the past thirty years. The J-130 (as its called) can lift the Orion module into orbit with ease. In fact, it could lift two - and not the stripped down versions, but the full featured Orions. Imagine being able to park one permanently at the ISS, as a lifeboat. The J-130, through the use of a module that mimics the mount points of the shuttle's cargo bay, could lift any payload that the shuttle could lift - including the Canadarm and an airlock for EVAs, something the ARES-I cannot do.
Because it shares so much of the shuttle heritage, the Jupiter system can keep the bulk of the current shuttle workers employed, especially if the current shuttle mission manifest is stretched out, or perhaps a flight or two added. The ARES system would leave a decade-long gap in some areas. Far to long to keep people around "polishing tools".
Re:DIRECT (Score:4, Interesting)
The DIRECT plan revolves around a single rocket, the J-130. Basically, you take the shuttle system, remove the orbiter, stick the engines on the bottom, and the payload on the top. The SRBs are unchanged from the shuttle. The engines (SSMEs) are unchanged from the shuttle. The external tank only requires two changes: first, the pointy end cap is replaced with a blunt end cap, and second there is a manufacturing step that can be skipped. Right now, the walls of the external tank are thinned out to save weight. The centers of the panels are milled down, relative to the edges. This is not necessary, as the J-130 has a lot of margin, and leaving the material there will make the tank that much stronger. (Although prelimiary figures say that it is actually strong enough as is.) The only new pieces that are needed would be the aft thrust structure, the payload fairing, and the avionics ring. The thrust structure and payload fairing are almost trivial. The avionics would be the difficult part, however indications are that it would be ready before the Orion module would be ready. Apparently, there are enough SRBs, external tanks, and shuttle engines already built and in stock to build four or five of these rockets. Because it has so much in common with the shuttle system, both could be made and flown at the same time, preventing a workforce gap.
The J-130 would fill the roll of ferrying cargo and astronauts to the ISS until commercial interests were ready to take over. Aside from that, the spare lift capacity of the J-130 would allow for Hubble service missions, missions to Near Earth Objects, etc. Basically, any payload that a shuttle could lift, a J-130 could lift (not surprising, since they are essentially the same rocket system).
The second phase of the DIRECT plan would be to add an upper stage to the J-130, transforming it into the J-246. The upper stage borrows a lot of the technology from the upper stages used in the current Centaur and Delta lines of rockets. It would use the RL-10 engine, which already has a long history. It is currently not man-rated however, so a significant ammount would have to be spent to bring the engines up to code. (Which apparently would not require much, as these engines are rock solid. They just don't have the sensors on them needed to detect if they are about to fail.) Again, like the J130, the J-246 re-uses a lot of currently functional technology. Develoment costs are kept to a minimum.
The DIRECT plan can do a lot of LEO missions with a J-130, co-existing with an extended shuttle mission manifest to save jobs and eliminate a manned space flight gap. Once the upper stage is developed, the J-130 becomes the J-246, leaving LEO missions to commercial interests. Two J-246 rockets could send 4 people and 80 metric tonnes to the moon (compared to ARES's 4 people and 70 metric tonnes). Either way, it's one rocket system. Parts are interchangeable. They can be launched from the same pad, and you only need one team of expertise.
The Augustine commission report ignored the J-130 altogether (thus trashing any attempt to save jobs through synergy with the current shuttle system). The lunar mission they designed required launching three J-246s, yet the ARES system was fine as is.
Smart move (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably the only smart decision this man has made. I offer into evidence a line from "From the Earth to the Moon" series. "Pumping that much cash into the private sector could be very popular"...of course, ironically, that's tempered by that douchebag Al Franken who is supposed to be the science adviser but who has less than zero ability to dream.
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Franken was portraying JFK's real-life science adviser, Jerome Weisner, who was vehemently opposed to manned spaceflight, going all the way back to Project Mercury.
You may not care for Franken, but the attitude portrayed was accurate.
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Ah...so Franken is a method actor.
Hideous Thread Jacking (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonetheless, in the short time since this story has been posted, the number of comments modded up that were completely and 100% offtopic is absolutely atrocious. This story was, by far, the most interesting headline I saw on slashdot today. Rather than getting an interesting look into a group of Nerd's thoughts and ideas regarding this new development, I have watched this thread turn into an absolutely childish monstrosity of political bullshitting regarding everything from healtcare to the fiscal habits of Republicrats and blah blah blah blah blah. If I wanted to know about all that crap I would have turned on CSPAN.
For shame slashdotters. For. Fucking. Shame.
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Should be plenty of room to fit 'em all. You don't need a lot of payload, they'll provide their own forced-hot-air heating system until the oxygen runs out, and you want to make that mercifully (*) quick.
(*) for us, not them.
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the first payload to the moon in the new launcher will be the entire Congress. One way
Let's make it a little more instructive: The congresscritters who submitted the top 50% of earmark spending amendments. Repeat annually until none are selected.
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What about the president who promised no earmarks in the stimulus bill, then ensured all the health-care companies and insurers got their pre-socialism hush-money?
Should he also be reserved a seat?
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Was this the bill in which Republicans called funding for the 2010 Census, airport security, public transportation and new fire stations "earmarks"?
If the money is directed to specific projects like this stuff is, then yes, by definition the spending is earmarks. I'd go further and call it "pork" since none of those with the possible exception of the Census spending (it is a federal obligation, but depends on who it's spent on) warrant federal money and are just attempts to bring home the bacon.
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I disagree for a vast majority of Airtravel the start and end will be in different states, making it interstate commerce. I don't actually care whose in charge of the security as long as it isn't security theater.
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Your pejorative, and erroneous use of the word "socialism" betrays your bias.
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I would if he presented any facts - where are the citations, where are the figures?
All I can see is a baseless jab at Obama.
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"we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks" - B. Obama, Feb 24. speech to congress.
"new higher standard of accountability, transparency and oversight. We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert projects without review." - B. Obama, Jan 6. statement at transition office.
Being against earmarks and pork is sort of Obama's trademark, and you can find dozens of instances where he mentioned something about ending earmarks.
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"Jaws, Mr. Bond must be cold after his swim. Place him where he can be assured of warmth."
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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The thought of Palin as President turned a lot of people off.
It made me wonder about McCain's decision making abilities.
Re:MORE FUNDS?! (Score:4, Insightful)
It was a good decision Palin was well loved by the Republican a lot more than McCain was; the problem was she couldn't handle the media and was eaten alive.
Re:MORE FUNDS?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I am more scared with Biden being next in line to become President.
He makes Palin look like an Oxford Scholar.
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I'm not sure how "[Biden] makes Palin look like an Oxford Scholar" can be modded insightful. I will agree that Biden makes the odd gaffe but he is unquestionably better informed. He has chaired senate committees on the judiciary and foreign relations which will have exposed him to a whole gamut of issues that Sarah Palin may not even have conceived of. Let's not confuse willful ignorance with an otherwise intelligent person getting caught with their foot in their mouth from time to time!
Disclosure: Note tha
Re:MORE FUNDS?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey man, how ya been? I haven't seen you since we were standing together at the rally protesting the huge deficit spending of the Bush administration.
-1: Strawman (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of folks were uncomfortable with the deficit spending under Bush. Even leaving that aside, and leaving aside the bank bailouts, stimulus, and auto maker bailouts of the past year, the Obama budget deficits will be significantly greater than the largest Bush deficits:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/03/21/GR2009032100104.html [washingtonpost.com]
Note how *none* of Obama's deficits will be less than Bush's deficit of '08, by the White House's own admission, and how the Congressional Budget Office th
-1: Context (Score:3, Insightful)
Is spending money on science, discovery, and development worth the expenditure worth it? I'd say yes.
Is universal healthcare worth it? I'd say yes.
Is protecting ourselves from people who want to harm us worth it? I'd
Re:-1: Strawman (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of folks were uncomfortable with the deficit spending under Bush.
Indeed, including those who generally supported Bush, and I'm not comfortable with this deficit spending either even though I generally support Obama.
However I am comfortable with NASA's meager contribution to that deficit, would very much like for Congress to increase their budget, and am pleased that a Presidential change in NASA's direction might actually come with the funds to accomplish it (my complaint against Bush's "Mars, Bitches!" initiative).
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Would this "cost accounting" thing tell me that I can't apportion blame however I wish?
Because if so, I'm not sure I want to learn it.
Re:MORE FUNDS?! (Score:5, Insightful)
All this funding is going to come from where?!
I don't know, they could stop the Iraq war for a day and a half. [washingtonpost.com] Get your priorities straight. If you're worried about the Federal budget, don't get in the way of progress and science, just stop the senseless war.
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If we put the Iraq war on 4-10's and rotated mandatory furloughs (each unit skips one combat patrol a year), that could help.
Re:MORE FUNDS?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The topic is Obama asking for more money for space exploration, and the GGP asked where the money could come from. I suggest the military; compared to what we're spending on war, what we spend on science is chump change.
If you're a cokehead and about to go bankrupt, you don't fix your budget by skipping that $1 McDonald's biscuit and gravy once a week, you stop snorting coke.
As I said, priorities. You need to eat, you don't need to snort coke. We need research, we don't need the Iraq war. Research is cheap, war is expensive.
Re:MORE FUNDS?! (Score:5, Funny)
The Iraq war is only 1/15th as expensive as everything else the government does. Someone who only spends 1/15th of their budget on an activity has a hobby, not an addiction.
It's not the cause of the bankruptcy.
Anyway, you can relax. We won the war and the combat troops are coming home. We may keep a (relatively inexpensive) forward force there like we have in Korea and Germany, but the combat is essentially over.
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I looked at your news posts. No battles. No combat. No troops wounded.
A perfect utopia is not needed for "combat" to be "essentially" over.
I hear there are still Nazi sympathizers in some places. And we still have troops in Germany. I guess WWII is still going on ... ?
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The actual cost is significantly more than the "1/15th" of the Federal budget you mention. That amount only includes direct expenditure on the war in Iraq.
It doesn't include the healthcare needed for the tens of thousands of soldiers who are coming back injured, nor does it include the losses in taxes due to many of these people never being able to work again, or even just those uninjured citizens who no longer work at their regular jobs because they've being sent on their fifth or six deployment to Iraq.
Do
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I believe he was on topic as he was explaining that it's a matter of priorities to find 1 billion dollars in the federal budget for NASA.
His priorities obviously differ from yours but he clearly identified a big source of spending (6%) and noted that the amount considered was small compared to that big source of spending.
Really, it's like profiling code, if nobody has ever profiled some code you are going to see big misuses of resource (like 70% of time spent recomputing the same value etc.). But after some
Re:MORE FUNDS?! (Score:5, Informative)
1/15th is 6.6%, parent is outright lying.
And as mcgrew says, war is easier to not have than... Old people? Sick people....?
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You've fallen for one of the classic Washington Beltway tricks. This chart is for "Discretionary Spending," in other words, the spending the Congress gets to decide on every year. The military budget is required, under the Constitution, to fall into this category. On the other hand, it represents less than 1/4 of the overall 2009 budget, which includes all the programs that are required, by law, to be automatically funded each year, including all of the social programs in the United States. If we take into
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Though I'd also like to point out that this conversation is mostly about discretionary budget. We are talking about things that can be cut relatively easily. So that refers to the discretionary budget.... of which the military makes over 60%.
Your side of the conversion, but not his side. My view is that if you're not talking about the whole budget which is a lot bigger than discretionary spending, then you aren't serious. Having said that, current military spending is a big piece of the current overall budget and hence contributes to the budget problems.
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Are you kidding? They have more change in the couch cushions over at the Pentagon.
Re:MORE FUNDS?! (Score:5, Informative)
LIKE WE DID ANY BETTER. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, in case you hadn't have noticed, more than 1/2 of the current national debt was from our President Bush and our Republican Party. That any Republican or so-called conservative can complain about a Democratic deficit with a straight face is beyond me, when our party has not produced a single balanced budget in 40 years and ushered in the mega-deficits under Reagan.
Republicans fail when it comes to budget cutting. Here's a hint. If you want to jack up federal spending to support two wars and doubling the defense budget, then taxes have to go up to pay for it. Choke on that with our 500B annual interest payment current administrations have to pay now.
Re:LIKE WE DID ANY BETTER. (Score:4, Informative)
It must be noted, for completeness, that the Republicans have had control of the government for two years of the last 40.
It should also be noted that the Democrats haven't produced a single balanced budget in the last 40 years.
As to Reagan's budgets, one might remember the Democrat mantra during the Reagan years as regards the Federal Budget - "Mr President, your budget was DOA in Congress".
Re:LIKE WE DID ANY BETTER. (Score:4, Informative)
Um, that would be over 30 of the last 40. Remember those first five years of the Bush II Presidency, when the Republicans controlled Congress, too. And Bush didn't issue a single veto... the whole machine was just rubber stamping anything the Repubes wanted. That's were about half the deficit came from. The other largely started with Mr. Reagan. Before that, there was a little bit left over from WWII. A tiny drop in the bucket, by today's standards.
Also, Clinton did produce a balanced budget. It took some years of doing to get there, but he did. It was, of course, immediately trashed by the Bush Administration.
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Umm, no. National Debt increased every year of Clinton's terms. Yes, I'm aware that popular mythology has the last year (or two) of Clinton's Presidency "balanced", but whatever the budget says about "deficit", if "debt" increases, the budget wasn't really balanced.
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Here are the debts to the penny for 31 Aug of the years where budgets signed by Clinton were in effect (1993 is included for debt increase reference):
1993 - $4,403,247,046,170.58
1994 - $4,691,991,360,873.49
1995 - $4,970,755,679,060.21
1996 - $5,208,303,439,417.93
1997 - $5,404,420,294,885.51
1998 - $5,564,553,479,478.04
1999 - $5,672,386,167,530.41
2000 - $5,677,822,307,077.83
2001 - $5,769,875,781,034.48
All numbers were pulled from Debt to the Penny [treasurydirect.gov].
Every year, the debt increased, meaning that borrowing increase
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That any Republican or so-called conservative can complain about a Democratic deficit with a straight face is beyond me, when our party has not produced a single balanced budget in 40 years and ushered in the mega-deficits under Reagan.
Republicans fail when it comes to budget cutting.
You must be forgetting about the GOP Congress in the 90s that had some balanced budgets.
Re:MORE FUNDS?! (Score:4, Insightful)
McCain may have not been my ideal choice, but at least I knew exactly what he was going to do before he got into office.
Bush signed off on the initial Constellation Plan. Bush made space exploration a pro-Republican issue. I don't know McCain's specific position, but the Republican Party line would have been in favor of the $3 Billion plan that the Augustine Commission recommended would be necessary to push human exploration of space ahead at the levels Bush was targeting.
Remember, just because you are arguing your own fiscal conservatism doesn't mean you can pigeon-hole political parties who have historically been associated with that trait.
If anything, Obama is cutting back on the plans presented by the last president. The Democrat is tightening the government purse strings.
You are delusional. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only part of what you said that bears resemblance to reality was "I don't know". Bush provided to NASA what's known as an un-funded mandate, which led NASA to decide to shut down the ISS immediately after its construction was completed. McCain and Obama, like Bush, don't have much understanding of, nor interest in, spaceflight, as far as can be told from examining their public statements and actions.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean the 40% that has vowed to oppose anything Democrat? Why should they bother trying to work with people who won't work with them?
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Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
"They are interested in pushing their own agenda." - if you think that somehow Republicans aren't guilty of that as well, you are very, very deluded.
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Mod parent up to recover his unfair flamebait score, he's not attacking either party, he's attacking both--and he's right. It's true that the Democrats aren't meetinging in the middle, and it's also true that the Republicans aren't either.
'course when they do meet up in the middle good things don't happen there, either...
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Why shouldn't they oppose it?
Oh, I dunno, maybe because this is AN ENTIRE COUNTRY and not some playground fight. They are charged with being reasonable and running this country properly, but instead BOTH SIDES squabble and stick to their own party like it's some kind of moral offense not to.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious?
The Democrats have made concession after concession to the Republicans on every major bill they've tried to get through Congress, and the Republicans just move the goalposts. This is why we ended up with a watered-down, crap stimulus bill. This is why we're ending up with a watered-down, crap health reform bill. The Republicans are taking obstructionist tactics to new extremes, like "accidentally" losing their voting cards [orlandosentinel.com], and filibustering a defense slash war-funding bill [washingtonpost.com] in the hopes that the Senate won't even be able to debate the health insurance reform bill. Meanwhile, the Democrats refuse to use the options at their disposal, like reconciliation, to pass the health care bill without bipartisan support or a supermajority. Senator Baucus worked with Republicans for ages on his version of the health care bill, only for them to oppose it anyway. Republican Senators gleefully announce that they intend to break Obama and make health care his waterloo [politico.com]. Republicans previously for health care reform suddenly oppose it for nebulous reasons.
100% party unity is unrealistic for the Democrats on any issue, and the Democrats have 60 members in their caucus in the Senate, not 60 Democrats. Senator Lieberman lost his Democratic primary and garnered more Republican votes than his Democratic opponent, and also more than his Republican opponent. He opposes pretty much every big-ticket Democratic agenda item. That's hardly a party-line Democrat to begin with. Other Democrats are suggesting they will vote against the bill because of a lack of cost-control options like the public option (removed to appease Republicans, despite it's 60%+ support among the public), or because of compromises made to the Republicans, which have garnered no Republican votes and only weakened the bill.
The Republicans don't want to meet in the middle, and the Democrats are fools for trying to act bipartisan. All they get for it is Republicans shrilly insisting that the Democrats are bullying them around any time they want to pass any of the legislation they were elected to pass. The Republicans don't oppose the health care bill on ideological grounds. Plenty of Republicans have supported health care legislation more liberal than what's in the Senate today, such as, say, Richard Nixon [kaiserhealthnews.org]. Mitt Romney imposed a very similar plan to the one in the Senate now while he was governor. [usatoday.com] And so on and so on and so on. It wasn't until the current cycle that Republicans became opposed to plans such as the one now before the Senate. The ideology behind conservatism didn't suddenly change. No, the Republicans made a political decision that it was in their best interest to do their best to attack and bring down any initiatives Obama came up with.
The Republicans aren't opposed to the health care reform bill for any other reason than they were determined to make the Democrats failures. And they're doing an excellent job of it.
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Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
The other 40% doesn't have any interest in fixing it. If they show any interest they will be shouted down by the likes of Limbaugh and Palin and lynched as heretics.
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Socialist Military is working great! (Score:3, Insightful)
Drug re-importation? Why not have the stones to force the corps to sell us the drugs at a fair price in the first place? You only like socialism once removed?
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Re:Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean the other 40% who are deliberately excluding themselves by vowing to vote it down regardless of the contents?
Those 40%?
The 40% that just so happen to coincidentally be Republicans. Funny that.
Joe Liberman may be a festering, infected boil on Satan's cock, in the vice-like-employment of the insurance industry, but at least he is coming to the table to discuss how to destroy the bill. The Repubs aren't even doing that.
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So why hasn't 60% of the Senate fixed the health care system? Last I checked, 60 senators couldn't be found to support the bill.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't vote for for Obama but your statement is complete bullshit. Period.
That 40% you're talking about has refused to participate leaving Obama no choice but to carry on with the 60% that's interested in doing their job. The 40% you're standing behind has decided they don't want any solution that doesn't allow for massive fraud of the system and forcing people to pay at least 2x-4x as much as they should be paying for a healthy insurance system. And we know for this for a fact because these systems are already working around the world; contrary to the lies by the 40% you're working so hard to defend.
There is absolutely no shortage of things you can bash Obama on but bashing him for Republicans standing in line to abuse and defraud the American people isn't one of them.
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Is this guy [go.com] part of the 60% interested in doing their job or is he part of the 40%?
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However IF the Jobs program does actually create a new Heavy Lift Vehicle, launch costs should go down.
This stretches your Science dollars further on all future space efforts, manned, unmanned, commercial sattellites, etc.
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However IF the Jobs program does actually create a new Heavy Lift Vehicle, launch costs should go down.
Absolutely no way is that a given. Launch frequency is a stronger economy of scale than payload size. If they're launching the same total mass in fewer launches, then they're probably increasing costs. For example, suppose I want 1,000 tons in orbit. Launching it all into orbit at once on a massive 1,000 ton launcher is probably the most expensive choice I could make. Well aside from going to the other extreme. For example launching a million 1 kg payloads doesn't make sense. How could you get people up the
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Sorry to rain on your parade, but 1 billion isn't going to give you sharks. It's not going to give you mutant sea bass.
I'd be pleasantly surprised if you get a goldfish with a laser pointer duct taped to it's head.
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Sorry to rain on your parade, but 1 billion isn't going to give you sharks. It's not going to give you mutant sea bass.
I'd be pleasantly surprised if you get a goldfish with a laser pointer duct taped to it's head.
You have no idea how low my expectations are right now... I'm totally on board with the gold-fish laser pointer. This will rock so hard!
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that last one was from my daughter's Teabagger boyfriend, sry.
Looks like you and your daughter are very open about her sex life.
Re:Saturn V (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of the blue prints no longer exist. Most of the original engineers have died off. There were a lot of issues that arose during design and construction that were largely undocumented. My stepfathers father as one of the designers of the saturn V's first stage.
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There's also the fact that a lot of parts used back then are long-EOL.
As I understand it, Constellation recycled many of the key mechanical aspects of the old Apollo-era designs, because they Just Plain Worked.
However, the avionics have to be pretty much designed from scratch, for two reasons:
1) Nearly all components used in the past are no longer available
2) Modern electronics can achieve far greater performance at a fraction of the power/weight
3) Modern space missions have significantly more requiremen
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Not to mention that we could do much better using modern materials, computers, and manufacturing. If you sifted through the blueprints, updating everything with modern techniques, you'd end up with an entirely new spacecraft that only superficially resembled the original.
Another reason we don't build another cutty sark today is that we can fill the Cutty Sark's intended role with much better replacements.
I don't see the problem with viewing lift vehicles as commodities. We can purchase a range of lift capac
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SpaceX's technology is ITAR controlled, they cannot sell it to the Chinese or anyone else without going through an approval process that they would not be able to navigate given the nature of their technology.
And I love the attitude: congress cuts NASA funding; therefore *Obama* is trying to kill science. Congress (with Obama's backing) increases NASA funding, Obama is handing out money to his cronies. Not saying the same thing didn't happen during the Bush years, I just wish there was some consistency in
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Also keep in mind that while I don't think they've yet slid the schedule back for the Ares V, it's unlikely, with the delays to the Ares I, to fly in 2018.
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OK, true enough. However, the conclusion (it's only 3%, obviously that's not enough to do anything) is not only wrong, it has no scientific basis. Since when is it scientific to just say "oh that's a small number, ca
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There is nothing that can be done with an HLV that can't be done cheaper with multiple smaller (and already/soon existing) rockets. On orbit assembly and refueling are the technologies we should be developing expertise in.
On a brighter note, I've read some more analysis today that says this announcement may in fact be the stake through the heart of the boondoggle that is Ares-1. Hopefully, by the time this hypothetical HLV is designed, the commercial sector will have proven that it isn't even needed.
Necron6