Draft NASA Funding Bill Cancels Asteroid Mission For Return To the Moon 237
MarkWhittington writes "A draft version of the 2013 NASA Authorization Bill nixes any funding for President Obama's asteroid retrieval mission and instead directs NASA to return astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as possible, funding of course permitted. The NASA bill is currently working its way through the House Science Committee. Thus far the Senate has not taken up NASA authorization. However the cancellation of the asteroid retrieval mission and an insistence on returning to the moon, which both President Obama and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden have opposed, would place Congress on a collision course with the White House should that version of the bill be passed by both houses of Congress."
The important word is "should" (Score:2)
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This will not get through the Senate.
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This will not get through the Senate.
Yeah, this does seem like political games just to make Obama look bad somehow. While I would love for this country to get back to the moon, we won't get there anytime soon. A mission to an asteroid seems like it would be much cheaper and quicker to accomplish. Let's get that done first. Worry about a lunar lander and re-launch vehicle later.
Re:The important word is "should" (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the Obama administration's idea, so it must be wrong. Just like when Obama has picked up old Republican ideas and tried to push them, they become wrong.
Sometimes I wonder it Obama's support of NSA domestic spying is just a clever way to get Republicans to come out in favor of personal privacy. It wasn't that long ago that the Republicans clearly stated that there was no right to privacy enumerated in the Constitution. Now because it's against Obama, they're thumping the privacy tub really hard. (Though I'll bet they still don't think any right to privacy applies to gay conduct, even in one's own home.)
But unfortunately I've lost sufficient faith to think that that's what he's doing, The "mini-me" cartoon seems scarily accurate, and makes today's Republican Congress-critters seem all the more buffoon-ish.
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I think the NSA part of his comment was suppose to be humorous due to the meat of his argument being:
Which couldn't be any more obvious.
Re:The important word is "should" (Score:4, Insightful)
If you've followed Jon Stewart more, you'd know that he's painfully aware of this. On several occasions he has rather angrily taken the mainstream media to task, primarily with the tune, "I'm a comedian, why aren't YOU covering this stuff the way it ought to be!"
Jon Stewart is the Court Jester of our day. (Which is a bit more than one might think, if you look up more of the role of the Court Jester in medieval times.)
Why the moon? (Score:2)
Going back to the moon seems pretty pointless unless we're prepared to actually establish a colony/fuel refinery/etc.(which I believe that would run afoul of an international treaty) Otherwise it's just rehashing old territory for some new photo-ops that could be photoshopped much more cheaply. Capturing an asteroid on the other hand is a step towards harnessing the massive mineral wealth in asteroids and letting us actually start producing cost-effective infrastructure in space.
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Re:The important word is "should" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Doing exactly the same thing again does not get +5 more.
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There's a lot more chance of well, getting his by micro meteorites up to big ones.
Not really. LEO is worse for that due to the higher relative velocity of LEO junk (and the considerable quantity up there). Now, if you blaze by a good sized asteroid at a few km/s, that could be a different story - though our unmanned probes have fared well when they do that.
Re:The important word is "should" (Score:5, Informative)
> A mission to an asteroid seems like it would be much cheaper and quicker to accomplish.
Can you elaborate? It's farther. It's more dangerous (less is measured/known/visible, I believe). There's a lot more chance of well, getting his by micro meteorites up to big ones. Sample collection is going to have to be via new method(s)...I'm just trying to figure out what's the easier part. I agree it would give better return value. But if it was done quicker and cheaper, I'd be very pessimistic about anyone coming back.
OK, energetically, there are asteroids that we could could reach for roughly the same delta-V as going to the Moon, and coming back. (To put it another way, that Apollo could have reached with the Saturn V.) So, energetically, it's a wash, at least for the NEO we would be going to first.
In terms of technology, we are more or less there for an asteroid - we have demonstrated long duration flights on the ISS, and you don't land on a small asteroid, you dock with one, and that we have technology for. We just need a launch vehicle. For the Moon, we HAD the technology (the Lunar Module), but lost it, and estimates to get it back are in the billions of dollars. Advantage, asteroids. Plus, it turns out landing on the Moon and on Mars are rather difficult, so there is no synergy advantage in terms of going to Mars if we develop a Lunar Module first. Again, advantage, asteroids.
(I believe that avoiding that LM cost/development time was the "cheaper and quicker" the OP was referring to.)
Sample collection is well in hand, and not really a problem for either Moon or asteroid. That's a wash.
Now, going to an asteroid for 9 months is indeed more dangerous than going to the Moon for 9 days. No doubt. However
- if we are ever going to get to Mars, we have to develop the capability to do long duration deep space missions. Going to an asteroid is no more dangerous (or not much more dangerous) than just going out there and coming back, with much more return.
- When we do go back to the Moon, we are likely to go to stay. It is by no means clear that going to an asteroid for 9 months is more dangerous than going to the Moon for 9 months.
So, for the danger aspect, I regard as a wash, except that the asteroid mission would have real synergies.
So, IMHO, the advantages for the Moon are week and iffy, while the advantages / synergies for an asteroid are real and solid.
Also, there is a LONG history of commercial development riding the back of initial government investment. NASA going to an asteroid would jump-start commercial asteroid mining.
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First off, Russia is not an enemy. Get over it. We won.
Secondly, Russia space budget is not going up 7x more than NASA's, let alone 17x. Russia said that they would spend X amount, but, in small print, it came out that it was over a very long time. IIRC, Roscomos will spend ~170 billion rubles (about $5.5B). In 2015, they will have raised it to around 200 b rubles (less than $7B).
To be fair, that is a lot of money for Russia. However, it still does not appro
Re:The important word is "should" (Score:5, Interesting)
And it shouldn't. Going back to the moon is sexier and great for the ego, but working on capturing asteroids is more useful. But most Americans prefer things very simple. They think the moon is a planet and full of resources while an asteroid is a ball of sand like you see at the beach. It doesn't matter that that sentence contains many wrong things; it's simple and aligns with an ignorant masses level of common sense. The bottom line is people will say Republicans want to go back to the moon and reap the great benefits while Obama wants to visit a stupid rock. Never mind that "stupid rock" could contains trillions of dollars worth of resources and even some unknown/unavailable/rare materials.
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But most Americans prefer things very simple. They think the moon is a planet and full of resources while an asteroid is a ball of sand like you see at the beach.
I don't think most Americans believe that at all. I think it just boils down to what you said in your second sentence - putting humans on the moon is way sexier. WE want to be the ones doing the exploring, not some computerized device.
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I find going to an asteroid to be far sexier. That's like catching a bird in flight, while going to the moon is just like catching a cow.
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Re: new capability (Score:2)
Yes it does.
We put men on the moon in 1969 and it "almost killed us". Why isn't anyone tapping into Moore's Law for the moon? The MoonBase is the next "leap" in the process. That requires capability - but of a different kind. By now the math should be cake. Materials durability, etc is the next easiest part.
The *really scary* part is how we manage our "Terrorist Meme" when something like a MoonBase has to be protected! And no, don't tell me a MoonBase is "hard" - just haul a big rectangular metal/whatever a
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Why isn't anyone tapping into Moore's Law for the moon?
Maybe because moon bases and rockets mostly aren't made of transistors.
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The moon is a bad idea as well.. why trade one gravity well for another?
Space station technology is what they should be working on, in particular self-sustaining environments.
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Space station technology is what they should be working on, in particular self-sustaining environments.
Where are they going to get the mass for those "space stations" from? Asteroids remain one of the better sources of material for anything we do in space. Might as well figure out how to mine them.
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Indeed. Maybe we could call them Lanthanides [wikipedia.org], instead.
scandium and yttrium are called "rare earths" but they aren't lanthanides.
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If the stupid rock might contain trillions USD of rare earths (or rare whatever), then the private sector will step forward and fund the mission. It looks like some are organizing to do just that. Meanwhile, NASA should spend taxpayer money on broader goals (keeping in mind that the asteroid mining may be a failure), such as reducing the costs of human space travel and determining human capacity for travel to/living on planets w/o atmospheres.
http://www.planetaryresources.com/ [planetaryresources.com] is one of them.
Re:The important word is "should" (Score:4, Insightful)
Asteroid capture and mining is potentially lucrative but completely unknown in terms of economy, safety, proper technique, etc. Generally what governments excel at is exploration of unknowns. You think there would BE private space flights and planned space stations if NASA and the USSR hadn't gone up first to see if, oh, people could even survive in zero-G, let alone get up there and back? Is it inefficient? Sure. But governments can take risks that private agencies, with shareholders that demand risk prevention, can't. Once the maps have been made, so to speak, then you can get the massive influx of private sector enterprise.
In other words, it's an investment.
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The value of the material in the asteroids is only high when compared with the cost of launching the same materials to orbit. Private industry won't go after asteroids unless someone is building big stuff in space. You can't build big stuff in space affordably without materials. Chicken and egg.
Oink oink oink (Score:4, Insightful)
Pork barrel for the 21st century
I'm sure the work will be spread out among every important congress person's districts
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I completely agree that this will turn into a big pork fest. That said, I feel that it's worth it because it will eventually boot-strap the private sector.
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That said, I feel that it's worth it because it will eventually boot-strap the private sector.
It hasn't yet and they've been doing this for more than half a century.
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"Yes, it is a waste of money. But not of domestic politics."
It's no more "a waste of money" than the Cold War was. Granted, the money could have been better spent elsewhere, if it hadn't been absolutely essential to the freedom and safety of our country to spend it.
So it is with the moon. It's strategic importance cannot be overemphasized. Letting other countries dominate it would be a strategic mistake of epic proportions.
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Damn Saturday Morning typographical errors.
NASA's mission (Score:5, Insightful)
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the original space program was political as well
kennedy's made the speech because his poll numbers were dropping after the election. only after he was killed did congress really provide the funding. even then the work was split among so many congressional districts that it was the pork barrel of the decade. the economy was good and the government was spending it all
the last decade was spent on a lot of defense programs, but mostly data mining type software. once the war spending dies down all the people wor
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Yes. Yes, it was. And it achieved its goal of getting us to the moon in such an unsustainable fashion that we haven't been back in *forty years*.
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Don't forget the importent part - it let us show off the capabilties of our ICBM techology without actually starting a shooting war.
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Simply put, they stick around because it's a good-paying job in an economy where there aren't that many available. Your friend bailed 10 years ago, back when jobs for people in these fields were a lot more plentiful. NASA became a giant jobs-and-pork operation years ago, and was one of the original "welfare for whitecoats" agencies (whitecoats as in lab coats). Any engineer or scientist with a NASA job these days hangs on as long as they can. Mortgages gotta be paid, and kids gotta be fed.
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No kidding. I always figure these "why don't they just..." suggestions are from people without families. Seriously, that changes everything.
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I think our only real hope in the practical exploration of space lies with commercial enterprise. Which, truthfully, isn't that bad a deal.
Commercial R&D and exploration serves one purpose: to enrich the stockholders' portfolio. Yes, there's a trickle-down effect in that any technological or intellectual advances will become available to the public eventually, but at a cost whose primary concern is profit. That profit will be a margin applied to the research phase and the manufacture.
Public investment in R&D and exploration is to the direct benefit of the entire nation and its allies. Derivative products will eventually be sold fo
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Public research has the advantage that it can explore areas that may have no obvious short-term economic benefits (and no company will be interested ininvesting in any research with only non-economic benefits), or that are simply too expensive for any single individual or corporation to fund, with many/most of the actual benefits being rather unexpected. There was no driving need for transistors on Earth, vacuum tubes had become pretty reliable, but were far too heavy and fragile to put in a space ship, so
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In other words, commercial R&D has to be useful. And the profit "cost" yields a strong incentive to insure that the R&D has positive return on investment. These are huge advantages over government R&D which neither has to be useful or provide more benefit than cost.
In other words commercial R&D has to be obviously profitable, in a short-to-medium term. It can't be tentative or exploratory, curious or inquisitive. It must be about earning, with no regard for learning.
In other words, tremendous costs, paltry returns, and the real R&D gets disguised as "derivative products".
You made that up. There is ZERO requirement for public-funded R&D to be more expensive than commercial, less productive than commercial or in any way shady.
Of course. The real question is why do you think public research has any advantages at all? For example, when I pay at the store, I pay directly for the R&D and other costs that go into the stuff that I use. If I pay taxes, then they get burned on whatever the elite who controls that spending happens to decide is most useful for themselves with a modest portion used for face-saving stuff like NASA's high profile missions.
The real question is why you trust corporations, which have absolutely no pretense of benevolence. Ask yourself, if drug companies could cu
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In other words commercial R&D has to be obviously profitable, in a short-to-medium term. It can't be tentative or exploratory, curious or inquisitive. It must be about earning, with no regard for learning.
There are two things to note here. First, you clearly don't any experience with commercial R&D. It can be more farsighted and considerably more effective than the publicly funded equivalent (in large part because they have a goal other than burning a certain amount of public funding).
Second, commercial R&D is not the only sort of privately funded R&D. The Keck Telescopes in Hawaii, for example, are privately funded, but they aren't for profit.
In other words, tremendous costs, paltry returns, and the real R&D gets disguised as "derivative products".
You made that up.
Maybe you ought to research NASA's "spinoffs" som
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You should run it more like the EU runs projects like the LHC or ESA.
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Not sure how any serious engineer or scientist works at NASA these days.
I work at a NASA research lab, and find it a rewarding way to spend my time... I've seen exoplanets through the eyes of space telescopes. I've invented AI algorithms and then flown them on smart satellites. My code has run on a rover traversing the surface of Mars. I agree that commercial enterprise has a role to play - but for all its imperfections, NASA is still a pretty remarkable institution at this particular moment in human history.
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Not sure how any serious engineer or scientist works at NASA these days. NASA's mission changes quarterly (or more frequently), subject to political whim.
Because private companies are totally not flip-flopping based on quarterly performance and managers playing musical chairs. Most of this is simply political theater because none of these missions are funded, so nobody really cares how often they change except to make other politicians look bad. NASA's got plenty more mundane missions [nasa.gov] which will continue.
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What can you explore in a mostly empty vacuum anyways? And how many times can you take pictures of desolate rocks that all look the same and still call it "exploration".
If "space" is a mostly empty vacuum, then it doesn't have "desolate rocks" or even pictures of "desolate rocks". You can't keep your troll straight.
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The oceans are mostly water. Nothing of interest there, I'm sure.
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Heck, all matter is mostly empty space. To scale, the vast empty reaches within an atom make the solar system look positively crowded. Cleary nothing of interest exists at all.
If people had their priorities straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
We would do both...
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Given the current funding levels for science, our space programs are devolving into something akin to a bunch of hobos fighting over the last off-ramp.
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I'm not sure we can do either. My feeling is we've been to the Moon. Time to move on.
what should NASA do? (Score:3)
I'd like to see this:
Also, let's cancel the ISS. Not sure about Biosphere 2 style research. We will want to do that eventually, but right now I don't think we really know enough to know where to look. We also know about a lot of problems for which we don't have answers, such as cosmic ra
Meh, SLS marches on (Score:2)
COTS (the progra
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If I lived in the USA (and in the right district), I would specifically vote AGAINST any politician who supported forcing NASA to use ATK systems products.
If ATK systems cant come up with a new product to build and a new use for all those workers, they deserve to go out of business. And yes those workers would then not have a job anymore but hey, that's life, people loose their jobs all the time because the company they work for doesn't need em anymore.
This is not the way (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientific missions should not be determined by political whims.
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As "NewSpace" startups like SpaceX, Masten, Bigelow, etc. continue to bring down launch costs, the range of players in the space science game will continue to expand. We are rapidly approaching the tipping point where space-based enterprise is no longer the sole province of governments. With cube-sats, we're already getting to the place where even some university research budgets can afford the access. This trend is set to continue (and accelerate) over the next few years. This is a GoodThing[TM] no matter
This is awful (Score:3)
Going to the moon is one of the greatest things the United States ever did. The impact in terms of net benefits for science, technology and any number of things is amongst the best in history. However that has all been done decades ago and we have largely reaped the benefits from doing so. I'm not sure what real benefit we could gain by sending manned missions back to the moon at this time. Remember there are good reasons the Apollo program wrapped up.
Taking things to the next step, asteroids, and tackling everything involved, from science to mining needs to be the next great step. Working through the technological challenges involved in doing this would have tremendous benefit to society. The bottom line is there is far more to gain from taking things to the asteroids than the moon.
The moon, we've been there, nice place, time to move on to the next big thing.
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Thos
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They can intend all they like. All they do is manufacture hardware (and externalise a shitload of their R&D costs to NASA and its traditional contractors.) They don't fund missions themselves, and certainly couldn't fund a manned one to the Moon.
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Likewise,
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NASA needs 10 year goals that can't be changed. (Score:3)
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The reason for this, is to have the president appoint, and Senate approve that person. Ideally, they would be pre-approved (say, up to 1 year before, as long as same president is in office), so that we do not have the same sit
let me guess... (Score:2)
This is supported by the same people who are outraged at wasteful government spending, right?
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Yet, we continue to see you and others try to confuse the issues.
BTW, if
you can count on logic being left out (Score:2)
The congress and especially the morons on the science committee don't do anything for sensible reasons.
Other than thinking the moon is the 1st step before mars, I can't see why so many are bent on a moon base - other than some OLD military nuts who think there is a strategic advantage to a moon base.
Doing something old IS a waste of money; it would be better to work on cheaper space access or advancing robots - especially since robots already completely outperform humans in space exploration and by the time
Realistic? (Score:2)
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_cost [wikipedia.org]:
"The final cost of project Apollo was reported to Congress as $25.4 billion in 1973"
According to http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ [westegg.com] that would be $129.47 in 2012. Now obviously we have the benefit of relatively inexpensive technology to help offset that. However we also have the burden of stricter safety standards and more expensive "available" technology as opposed to "required" technology. Hopefully the government would be pragmatic enough
Change is good (Score:2)
It's great that missions that take decades of planning change every few years - keeps those rocket scientists on their toes and ensures that they'll never make any progress! Besides, if anyone knows how to use non-political fair and balanced criteria to set scientific priorities, it's Congress!
Space is Full of Energy (Score:5, Informative)
What hardly anyone understands is that space is full of abundant energy.
The world's fossil fuel (oil, coal, and natural gas) reserves are equal to 7 trillion barrels of oil, and one barrel contains 6 x 10^9 Joules. Thus we have 42 x 10^21 Joules of fossil fuel energy. The area within the Moon's orbit (384,000 km radius) has 38 x 10^21 Joules of sunlight passing through every minute, nearly as much....Every Minute!
Asteroids and the Moon are sources of raw materials, but the energy is what enables you to do something with it, and solar energy in space is easily extracted.
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The area within the Moon's orbit (384,000 km radius) has 38 x 10^21 Joules of sunlight passing through every minute (...) solar energy in space is easily extracted.
But building a pi*(384,000 km)^2 = 463,000,000,000,000,000 m^2 solar panel is not, the effective energy density per m^2 is just that of Earth minus the atmosphere and cloud cover. When it reaches earth sunlight is 1366 watts/m^2 and 75% of that reaches ground level. In the best areas for solar panels you get 25-30% effective sunlight so in total you get about 20% of the effectiveness of a space based 24x7 solar panel. What do you think costs more, setting up 5 m^2 in a desert or sending 1 m^2 into space - o
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Thus we have 42 x 10^21 Joules of fossil fuel energy.
i find this highly skeptical. Plain and simple every few years new "reserves" are found. I am not saying that oil is renewable (in human terms, it is renewable in geological terms) but i find it highly unlikely that we have tapped it all. It is in the oil companies best interest to keep people convinced that is it more valuable than it actually is.
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Logic: (Score:3)
Asteroid retrieval is about $1-2 Billion spread over a decade. Single moon landing is at an order of magnitude higher at $10-20 Billion with unknown duration. This is what happened with Shuttle and Station and appears to be happening with SLS: they eventually sucked cash out of other NASA programs while legislators direct even more resources into those single projects as if 10,000 people working together can't manage more than one task.
We should go back to the Moon but that should not prevent us from also snagging an asteroid. The funny thing is that the returned asteroid was planned to go into Lunar or very eccentric high orbit, either would have been a great shake-down cruise for Orion before going to the Moon.
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well the thing is that going to the moon would be if funding permitted.
so either they would find a way to go there for 1-2 billion.. or they would spend 30 million trying to find that way and not find it and get another goal in few years. that's a lot of savings and not having to do anything.
We need to wipe out CONgress and restart (Score:5, Interesting)
The majority of those shits are looking to keep NASA as a Job's bill. They do not care whether we go to the moon or not. THey want to spending our money on SLS which is mostly situated in neo-con districts( I note that a few dems back this as well, but they are pushing for both SLS and private space; spend, spend, spend).
So, what is insane about this? We will spend 20B for a launch vehicle that is mostly based on 60's/70's technology and design and will give us exactly ONE launch vehicle (though with several different designs). Since this vehicle will launch so infrequently, it will cost us 1.5-3B PER LAUNCH. Yes, it will cost as much or more than the shuttle did ( 1.5B per launch was the final price that we paid to send 7 ppl and 24.5 tonnes into LEO; that included the
So, what is the sane Alternative? The one that Obama, dems, and even the tea-party is pushing: We need PRIVATE SPACE.
If we spend less than 2B over the next 2-3 years, we can have 3 launchers that will carry 7 ppl into leo (dragon rider/f9, atlas V with either cst-100 or dreamchaser). With this, we are guaranteed that we will NEVER lose cargo or human access to space again.
BUT, it gets better. Bigelow Aerospace has a SSA with NASA that both are working on getting private space to the moon BY 2020. It will costs less than the 20B that neo-cons are trying to force on NASA. Most importantly, by allowing NASA to pursue the asteroid AND help private space, we gain:
1) multiple launch vehicles so that we never lose space access again.
2) multiple tugs/fuel depots, that will include electric tugs (suitable for moving equipment/sats) and chemical tugs (suitable for moving ppl, or starting missions to extra solar).
3) multiple space stations at various altitudes in orbit, along with friendly nations helping to fund this.
4) a lunar base by 2020, again, with friendly nations helping to fund this (by paying the private companies money to put ppl on the surface).
5) Man on Mars by 2025.
6) learning on how to move asteroids around, and hopefully, prevent a large impact on earth. In addition, this technology will then allow private space to mine other asteroids.
And if we do this smart, we will then create a COTS-SHLV, in which we hold a contest for 2 launch systems to carry a minimum of 150 tonnes to LEO, for which we give 5B each to develop it. In addition, later one, we offer up 2 competitive contracts in which company will carry a minimum of 150 tonnes to LEO for no more than
You will note that the above spends just about the same as what the neo-cons want to spend on just building a rocket. BUT, if we do the above correctly, we will have NASA focus on just going to an asteroid, but also helping private space get BEO, and hopefully, NASA will be able to R&D new tech, such as nuke engines (we lead the world on this and our tech from the 60s is STILL ahead of what everybody else has).
With above approach, we convert NASA back into what it was before neo-cons turned them into a jobs program for themselves, get private space from being a cost center into a taxable item, and get ourselves BEO.
BUT, these god-for-saken neo-cons need to be stopped.
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No, its the fault of the god damn progressives, who waste all of our tax dollars on entitlements, crony capitalism, Keynesian stimuli, and interest payments, so that there is less and less left for infrastructure and science.
Whereas the progressives a
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Please explain why we should support you neo-cons to blow 20B on the SLS, rather than 2B for 3 launch systems.
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It's not neocons telling NASA that their primary mission is to reach out to Muslims- instead of, say, completing projects related to Air & Space.
But then again, your tribe (that is to say, Leftists) needs to have folks out here on the internet screaming about 'Neocons' to distract from a president who is expanding on Bush-era policies most hated by the left. Your tribe needs to try to divert attention away from the endless stream of scandals that
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think of everything bush did that you dont like... now think of how obama handeled it.... not much different right? the big difference between the 2 is that bush cut taxes while obama raised them. in all other meterics, they have done everything almost exactly the same, or obama built upon the bad programs bush started making them worse.
but you(not personally but on your side)
It's dead Jim (Score:2)
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Hi there NSA! How was your weekend?
Don't know about the NSA, but I'm pretty sure you just lit up the Secret Service's radar screen like a zeppelin though.
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Jag Off Republicans (Score:2)
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Titan (Score:2)
Lets go to Titan. Build a habitat like Skylab. Fit it out with a bunch of fission reactors and a big array of ion drives. Plan for a ten year cruise and aerobrake the cruise stage into orbit around Saturn. Then send down manned landers derived from the Dragon capsule. The difficulty of a Titan mission is roughly the same as the difficulty of a Lunar mission in the 1960s. Nothing will get done unless a hard target is chosen.
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The House Science Committee is currently run by guys who think that evolution, climate science and bike lanes are all commie plots.
You can be quite sure that they either don't actually think that or else they simply have no thoughts on those subjects whatsoever. However, they certainly know what their constituents want to hear and that definitely matters to them. Remember, these are politicians.
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