Journalist: NASA Administrator Has Short Memory on Changing Space Policy (spacenews.com) 87
MarkWhittington writes: Recently, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden stated that NASA would be "doomed" if the next president were to deviate in any way from the current Journey to Mars program. Space journalist and founder of the America Space website Jim Hillhouse took exception to Bolden's assertion in a letter to the aerospace newspaper Space News. In the process, Hillhouse provides a good summary of how space policy has evolved during the past five years under the Obama administration.
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I don't know about that, but the Paris attacks did demonstrate that Obama's point of view that gun control will stop these attacks is so wrong it isn't even funny.
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I don't know about that, but the Paris attacks did demonstrate that Obama's point of view that gun control will stop these attacks is so wrong it isn't even funny.
Oh please. If a group of suicide bombers/gunmen stormed an American restaurant or gig, they'd have killed enough people to make their point before any of the concealed carriers knew what was happening.
There's a huge difference between a lone nutjob with a handgun and a hunting rifle and a squad of trained terrorists with automatic weapons.
And even if you declared martial law and made every US citizen patrol with their own automatic weapon, the terrorists would just resort to suicide bombs anyway. Altho
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You do realize that you didn't actually disagree with anything I said right?
France has strict gun control laws, they have now had three attacks in the past (8?) months with automatic weapons.
Australia has strict gun control laws, and is an island, but still has attacks (Sydney Cafe attack).
But in the US, if we just increase gun control, it will solve all our violence problems (according to Obama and many of the Democratic party). The evidence says that no amount of gun control will stop the attacks, they w
NASA did not get anywhere since Bush (Score:2)
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Apollo as we all know was cancelled it in its 8th year, going massively over budget and producing nothing but non-functioning ICBMs.
Non-functioning in what way? Are you claiming they wouldn't work if used, or that they were unnecessary, or was it something else? If the former, is there any evidence? If the latter, the Cold War begs to differ.
Re:NASA did not get anywhere since Bush (Score:4, Informative)
Apollo as we all know was cancelled it in its 8th year, going massively over budget and producing nothing but non-functioning ICBMs.
What NASA produced was functional but not reusable and expensive but did work, Clinton gave NASA the predecessor to what they should have had in 1997 which they promptly mothballed in 1999 and they probably should have given one to place at the corporate office of Children's Hospital for display because the development of it was made possible through their fund raisers. Everyone is touchy on that subject because the program was cancelled in 1964 over something that happened that was thought to be related to the hit on JFK and it was not. You can thank the banksters for using Mafia on JFK, and I honestly believe there isn't anything Mafia can't fuck up. In short, NASA was doomed in 1964 by Mafia for repeating a crime that originally happened around the turn of last century as all of the development that should have been prompted post 1964 never happened. So you never got the flying cars, alternatively you got a remodeled hotel casino in 1964 to go lose your money in, and aerospace got a shiny new short bus.
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So what you're saying is that the lunar landing didn't actually happen, right?
Not correct, the site and equipment used is still present on the moon and viewable even under missions that are run today.
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Look on wikipedia, there is a long and not even complete list of meanings for WIC.
Besides changing course of NASA is just wasting money, it does not gain money for other projects. And the NASA budget is just 17.5 Billion. It is irrelevant for other state projects. WIC budget is 4.7 Trillion (that's what I just found).
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FY 2016, WIC's budget is $6.623 Billion
FY 2016 NASA budget is $18.010 Billion
But, I am sure that the NASA budget does more for society as a whole than WIC, NASA actually produces technology and provides research money, WIC is just a money pit.
Blaming presidents don't make it better (Score:1)
You can blame Bush all you want, and I can point to the fact that it was Obama who wanted to turn NASA into a moslem appeasing agency
http://www.space.com/8725-nasa... [space.com]
Both arguments wont get us anywhere
I don't care if it is Obama or Bush or Clinton or Reagan or ... they are all politicians and American politicians simply can not understand science
Whether or not NASA survive depends on one thing - the WILL for America to push forward its space program - whatever sitting president wants to dick around it shoul
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Making fun of him is so funny. Except he is correct in his spelling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The word is spelled either Muslim or Moslem. It is a word in a language that doesn't use our alphabet, so it can be spelled either way.
Very different priorities indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
The different presidents have certainly had very different priorities for NASA. Mr. Bolden (the head of NASA), said these are the three things Obama asked him to do with NASA (quoting):
When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Obama] charged me with three things.
One, he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math;
he wanted me to expand our international relationships;
and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good
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....
and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good
Having not heard this previously, I wondered if you were trolling at first. But, it turned up at the top of my google search. I wonder how that's been working for him?
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Yeah. No. [nasawatch.com]
White House made made excuses, didn't deny it (Score:2)
The White House made first tried excuses ("work with the best engineers from around the world") . Then they sent out a spokesman who said only that he, the spokesman, didn't know what Obama had told Bolden. The spokesman said he didn't know, he didn't say that Obama had not directed NASA to make caressing muslim egos their "foremost priority".
Bolden apparently DID know what Obama directed him to do.
"I don't know" is really not "yeah, no".
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That looks a lot like a standard non-denial. I figured it was just a ridiculous joke when the OP posted it, but having read through the entire contents at the link you provided, I actually now find it to be significantly more credible. It sounds like something that was intended to be a private conversation went public and that the administration needed to backpedal. Saying you don't know but don't think something sounds right is an easy way to do just that.
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Bill picked it because it's backwards and is an awkward spot on keyboards. Thus, it is a very important character you have to regularly type in order to use his operating systems.
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From what I remember, there was no concept of directory in the very first version of DOS (no disk but tapes, ...) and / was, and is still, used for passing options to programs. When directories were added they had to choose a separator amongst the available reserved characters. Since / was already used they went for \.
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Re:Any NASA Brains? (Score:5, Funny)
I always thought that option existed because the developer kept losing his node fault library.
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The first version of DOS did indeed have disk support (the letters stand for DIsk Operating System, you know) and in fact required a disk. You could get the original PC in a configuration without disk drives, but in that case you didn't run DOS or the alternatives, CP/M-86 or UCSD p-System; instead you just ran IBM BASIC out of ROM, which the PC would boot to if it couldn't find a disk (that's w
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Bolden is the guy who said that one of his "foremost" tasks is to reach out to the Muslim world.
You might not have noticed. But the world didn't end and NASA is still doing its usual stuff.
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> NASA is still doing its usual stuff.
Usual stuff like NASA now depending on Russia to put Americans in space because Obama gutted NASA?
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Usual stuff like NASA now depending on Russia to put Americans in space because Obama gutted NASA?
Not much different than what they were doing with the Shuttle, except that it's cheaper.
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Bolden is the guy who said that one of his "foremost" tasks is to reach out to the Muslim world.
You might not have noticed. But the world didn't end ....
It sure as hell hasn't improved.
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Hillhouse can't write (Score:1)
Am I the only one who finds the Jim Hillhouse article difficult to read? Each sentence is packed with so many extraneous details that it's easy to forget the point. Take the following sentence, for example. (Note that this is only one sentence.)
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"natural" (Score:4)
Given Boldenâ(TM)s desire to pursue the âoeJourney to Mars,â it would seem only natural that the Orion and SLS programs, the only means currently in development for taking us beyond low Earth orbit, would be doing well since 2010. They are, but not for lack of effort by the Obama administration to underfund them â" proposals that congressional appropriators each year reverse. Since 2012, annual White House proposed budgets for NASA have fallen short of authorized levels by 78 percent and 70 percent respectively for the Orion or SLS programs.
Funny, how, once again, dead end, expensive rocketry projects are hyped as being the "only" way. I'll point to the Falcon Heavy as an obvious alternative platform for NASA to go to Mars. Or if you want competition and can't be bothered to fund other big rocket development, you can fall back to the 20-25 ton range and use more than half a dozen or more different rocket systems throughout the world (Falcon 9, Atlas V Heavy, Delta IV Heavy, Soyuz, Angara, Ariane V, and Chang Zheng 5).
If at the ending of Constellation, Congress had funded deep space projects for NASA rather than the Space Launch System (SLS), NASA could be doing deep space projects now, rather than hypothetical ones some point after 2023.
Commercial space launch still developing (Score:2)
Funny, how, once again, dead end, expensive rocketry projects are hyped as being the "only" way. I'll point to the Falcon Heavy as an obvious alternative platform for NASA to go to Mars.
First, Falcon Heavy [wikipedia.org] doesn't exist as a production product yet. Second, until we have a robust and competitive group of commercial rocket vendors it will remain necessary for NASA to make sure we have at least one option available, even if that option is economically non-optimal. Even if Falcon Heavy becomes a working and reliable products (and we have every reason to believe it will), tying yourself to a single vendor is still not a good idea if you can avoid it.
If at the ending of Constellation, Congress had funded deep space projects for NASA rather than the Space Launch System (SLS), NASA could be doing deep space projects now, rather than hypothetical ones some point after 2023.
If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts the
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First, Falcon Heavy doesn't exist as a production product yet.
It's much further along than SLS. SpaceX claims they'll launch it next year. SLS isn't even to the point of starting to build something that can be launched.
Second, until we have a robust and competitive group of commercial rocket vendors it will remain necessary for NASA to make sure we have at least one option available, even if that option is economically non-optimal.
No, that isn't NASA's job. Once again, we have the ridiculous assertion that NASA is doing something so vital that it needs to secure its own ridiculously expensive launch systems in case something bad happens to an existing launch system.
And we still have the problem of the money. NASA funding has been almost flat for about 40 years. Where's the mo
Don't put your eggs in one basket (Score:1)
It's much further along than SLS. SpaceX claims they'll launch it next year. SLS isn't even to the point of starting to build something that can be launched.
True but not relevant to my point. Furthermore what are the contingency plans if SpaceX drops the ball or goes out of business? Don't let optimism cloud your judgement.
No, that isn't NASA's job
I'm afraid it is NASA's job. Congress made it NASA's job. While I agree with you that at this point it shouldn't be their job any longer we haven't made the transition yet and until we do NASA remains the only civilian government agency with the expertise to facilitate this activity. NASA seems to recognize this and is transitioning away
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Please tell me how NASA is going to use the $3B that is allotted for SLS by Congress (e.g. it's a federal law, and diverting that money to other purposes would be an actual CRIME) for anything else? Do you think that Congress wouldn't find out? Do you think that when they found out they would just say "aww shucks, well I guess my lobbyists get to go tell their clients that they don't get their pork after all, because NASA decided to break federal law / be in contempt of Congress and we're not going to do
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Please tell me how NASA is going to use the $3B that is allotted for SLS by Congress
Have Congress allot the money for something else.
If you're not happy with the direction NASA is going, tell your elected Congressional representative. And do it in writing, because emails are very easy to ignore.
I'll need a few million of my favorite friends to do that too.
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So, literally in one sentence you say to just tell Congress to do something and expect it shall come to pass, and then in the next sentence you say how that doesn't ever happen.
Good luck with that.
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So, literally in one sentence you say to just tell Congress to do something and expect it shall come to pass, and then in the next sentence you say how that doesn't ever happen.
So what? I don't expect anything here, including that NASA actually does the job that it was meant to do.
At this point, advocating any sort of semi-effective space development strategy for NASA is pushing a wet noodle. There aren't enough people interested and there isn't enough utility in space activities (including exploration and science) to justify it. This is a dead end.
If SpaceX delivers on Falcon Heavy, then I'll advocate to protect them from destruction. But I won't bother with what NASA does
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1. Schedule: SLS is only a few months behind schedule (was due to fly by end of 2017 now planned for mid 2018) - and only because the Obama admin keeps choking it for cash and slow-walking the entire effort because the President is thin-skinned and hates that congress (including many democrats) ordered him to build it. Falcon9H on the other hand is several YEARS behind schedule and currently has a less-certain first-launch date.
Odds are good that Falcon Heavy launches in 2016 and can maintain a price point an order of magnitude before that of SLS. I think it's sick how the politicians can massively fund a competitor to the Falcon Heavy (while SpaceX funds development of the Falcon Heavy on its own dime) over the objections of NASA at vastly greater cost to the US and then have people like you gloss over those economic issues.
But if we just completely halt development of SLS, we would have over the next three years enough money
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Nothing new slightly closer to the sun (Score:1)
> NASA would be doomed
Well guess what. Presidents clobber previous ones' big projects all the time, including previous plans to go to Mars and back to the moon. Obama clobbered the giant rocket that would have taken over for the space shuttle, to save money, and let the Russians ferry us around for some years.
Then it turned out they were still Rooskies.
Now the child of that rocket is back on the fast track, golly.
See, clearing out the previous guy's stuff lets you simultaneously save money and deny him
NASA's doomed already (Score:4, Insightful)
Bolden's an ass and a political hack. And, absent a fundamental change, Congress is never going to give NASA enough money to establish a meaningful human presence in space. In the meantime, we flush billions down the toilet with monkeys in a can in LEO, starve real space science nearly to death, and pretend we're going to Mars.
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Mod up. That sort of wraps up the discussion.
I'll add: Congress wouldn't have given the money for Apollo either. Kennedy did that, and he had to do 3 things to get it done.
1. Give a damn good speech.
2. Back the Soviets down in Cuba.
3. Get shot in the head.
Important information omited from article (Score:2)