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6 New Mars Missions
JM_the_Great writes "Seems NASA is planning 6 new Mars Missions. They'll try to answer questions about Mars' past and the possibility of life there."
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Budget items FY2000
Agriculture: $17 billion
Education: $34 billion
Health and Human Services: $43 billion
House and Urban Development: $34 billion
Veterans Affairs: $20 billion
Environmental Protection Agency: $7 billion
Federal Emergency Management Agency: $3 billion
Internation Assistance Programs: $12 billion
National Science Foundation: $3 billion
When it comes down to it, general science, space and technology spending is $19 billion. Revenue from all sources was $1.9 trillion in 2000. For you non-math majors, that's only about 1% of the total revenue being spent on space, general science, and technology.
Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid account for over 42% of that $1.9 trillion. So before you continue to spout off biased liberal feel-good views, we ARE feeding the hungry, housing and homeless and protecting the environment.
SOURCE: http://w3.access.g po. gov/usbudget/fy2001/pdf/guide.pdf
AFAIK, you're wrong. Quick google search yielded this.
It was introduced before Napoleon, BTW.
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I know that for many people this will sound like nuke flame. But I know what I'm talking...
It's women one of the factors that stopped Space Exploration. More correctly to say, wifes did it.
Because US values could not pick with the risks of Space Exploration. For a country that highly values the "family values" the picture of widows and orphans in such a media boost was a big cost. Specially if their husbands die of being fried on capsules. Or nearly freeze on them in front of millions.
Not only the high politics but also this simple factor was determinant to stop Space Exploration. Sending excellent officers, good fathers and exemplary husbands to Space and get them back in a fridge or a pan was too much. Specially if we consider the conservative character of most women. For them this was coming from nonsense up to a irrational suicide commitement from the part of their partners. So sooner or later we would see shattered families, divorced astronauts or family conflicts. On that epoch, such situation was absolutely unnacceptable to Washington politicians.
If anyone gets offended with this let me tell you that I work in a critical field and I perfectly know the relations of women in relation to such kamikadzes like me or some of my colleagues. Things go up to the surrealistic/paranoid behaviour of "hunting other hidden skirt" beyond tons of cables and computer hardware. I'm "divorced" for the third time. And I'm already five days in my workplace 'round the clock.
"With whom you have been? - WITH HER! You know how beautiful she is? Shinning white, her corners are smooth and her head SHINES! And I've been making love with my head and her the whole night! How I love her!" - real citation
It's a pitty that you, as a person of African origin does not know very well the fate of your "historical motherland". As you would probably be a lot more interested in such things. Even if we sent penguins as astronauts.
Let me note you a things: Africa possesses one of the largest meteoritic crater systems on dry land in the world. A system that covers nearly 1200km of Sahara. The biggest craters has a diameter of 600km. If that thing hit today then Africa, and a good piece of the World would turn into Microwave Shaker in a matter of seconds. Even you, in America, would not survive.
The craters have a few millions of years. That's a lot? Well Africa - Part II: Ancient Egypt. Have you heard of a story called Atlantis that some Egyptian preachers told to one greek. A tragedy so big that almost all culture was wiped out from Earth. I don't wanna discuss here what this Atlantis was. However let me note that there are several facts confirming that Egyptians were not just talking tales.
Good that's 2500 years ago. So what? Africa - Part III: Cool let's go to our century and search for a weird metallic meteorite called, if I'm not mistaken, Goba. The thing managed to "land" on Earth because it has a funny table-like form. However if that thing went full force into Earth, it would make a beautiful hole of a few hundreds of meters or more in South Africa.
What this thing has to do with Mars? Well, there, recently, something hit it badly. Too badly. People at NASA say it was milliards ago, but now even they are in doubt. Some other experts say something of millions or hundreds of thousands. Some others mention a few interesting features and say its could be just a few thousands.
Cool and what this has to do with me, you may ask. Well Do you wanna Tunguska hardcore party to happen right over your head? In Russia it was just 92 years ago. Sikhote-Alin was just 53 years ago. A few years ago there was one in Greenland. Last year another one nearly happened in New Zealand. You may think that barely can happen to you and you are a lucky guy. Pompei citizens were also very sure of themselves when Vesuvio started roaming. Btw. Africans lived there...
First stop a little bit on your words. Caucasian for me is the same as nigger for you. I am no Caucasian fuss, ok? If you have a problem with your race it's your problem not mine. Here we cut these problems short. Here, you either keep being a nigger and die straight on the frost, or you hold up and become a russian. And it's no matter what skin you are. Alexander Pushkin's grand-grand-father was from Africa (yeah a blackman like you). And he was not a slave in chains but a general of the Russian Army who fought against the Swedes. And Mr. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was the founder of modern Russian language if you wanna know.
If you are not going to learn anything with this damn Mars is also your problem. I am interested in Mars and there are lot of people also interested on it. Including blacks. And what concerns they will "write some nice reports". Who reads them? We read the original info...
Perhaps they could hire some folks away from Firestone and Microsoft. Yup, corporations are just naturally better at hiring competent people, aren't they? Say, maybe the ex-captain of the Exxon Valdez might be interested in running the project ...
Hey, more parking spaces available for the rest of us. I'm all for it!
;-)
I swear, the next time I see a Pathfinder or some other obnoxious subdivision-sized SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle? Don't make me laugh!) parked across two spaces, or crammed into a 'small car' space, I'm going to, oh, get really angry and swear a bit (OK, bit of an anti-climax at the end there).
Just to keep us on-topic here...
I was interested to see that they're not considering air-bag landings for the robot landers, as they apparently add too much weight to the package. Guess they're going to have to work a lot harder on those thruster-assisted landings then!
I wonder if they've considered sending some purely lander prototypes (i.e. just stick a minimal science package on it) to the moon to test? I know that the moon's gravitational field is significantly less than Mars', but they could have at least diagnosed problems like landing strut deployment causing premature engine shut-down. Not only that, but it takes far less time to find out that your lander has a fundamental flaw
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The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
...is whether they'll be able to get Congressional support for the funding of these missions.
It doesn't matter how forward thinking NASA's current mission plans and objectives are, without the financial backing necessary to realise them they're going nowhere.
Here's hoping that the next administration gives NASA the backing and support that this type of 'big science' needs and deserves.
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The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
As the great man once said, let's mine the sucker and strip it dry.
Seriously though, we're never going to get anywhere until serious business dollars are thrown behind the effort of getting us off this rock. Let's privatize all this and get going.
EOM
Click here to see.
I don't think there have been any images of the feature published since that one.
Seastead this.
Now, the interesting thing is how long until NASA will send the first human to another planet; or again to the moon.
Another good use of sending more stuff to the moon would be to check out the fisibility of setting up a station there that is mostly self-supporting.
The thing about "faster, better, cheaper" funding is that there's a threshold beneath which you can't reliably do the job -- as they found out with the Polar Lander and Orbiter last year.
Pathfinder by itself -- the one lander -- cost as much as the Polar Lander and Orbiter together. That's part of why it worked... (another other part was luck, 'cause the airbags are a little marginal).
The rest of why they can do it with so little funding is that they don't even try to do the science that the two Viking landers did -- the experiments are fewer and less sophisticated (in terms of todays technology, anyway) -- and operational budgets are small, because the landers are solar powered and therefore don't last more than a few months. Remember how citizens chipped in money to keep Viking operating, after NASA's ops funding ran dry many years into the mission?
But Viking used RTGs, not solar... and I'm not gonna go there -- at least in this thread. ;)
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
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I have heard talk of mars missions for the last 5 years. THey have graced the cover of Time magazine, popular science, popular mechanics, and all sorts of websites. I have heard all sorts of people say that we will be on Mars in just a couple years now. I have yet to see ANY action towards it. Every new news story about mars gives vague promises about life on mars and people going. I don't think it is gonna happen in my lifetime. I am not at all optimistic about it. I would love to be proven wrong, but all these new developments with mars projects have never gone through. There isn't enough money in NASA's budget, and there is no way they will get more after the last couple mishaps. Someone wake me up when they actually go. But for now, I don't care to see a new news story about it every other day.
The anti-salmon
The supposition is that exploration and yearning for advancement that isn't explicitely financially rewarding in the immediate vicinity creates the advancements of technology that expand the depth of the growth of financial markets and gives us something to look up to beyond just next week's paycheck. I'm all for spending my tax dollars on things like this but I don't think it is generating enough interest in the public sector and should be privatized (with strict rules on ownership et al enforced strongly, which is a fear we should have). If we didn't yearn to explore, many things in history would have changed. Columbus wouldn't likely make more money using his new route to India which he was exploring, but it would have been worth it in the long run if it was discovered. When it was discovered to not be any route to india, explorations continued and eventually people came to live here (and not for financial reasons either, technically). I thank them for that because now we have this continent which we occupy (and stole from other peoples, unfortunately).
Go to mars? why not...for oil? uh duh, course not...thats not economically feasible in even the most abstract thinking. For the advancement of technology, the technological market, and for the advancement of human understanding in general? Yes.
"This is where god would go if he wanted to get off blow!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Never mind all the rover/probe missions to Mars. If we are not commited to sending Man to Mars - forget it. I believe were fairly confident that there are no martians, and only an idiot would feel that there is no life outside of Earth - so finding microbe sized fossils is really a little ho-hum. If we dont find them no Mars we'll say "oh well - they are probably on some other planet" and if we do it will be "we were right, there is life on other planets". One way or the other Im sure scientists are confident of life outside of Earth - somewhere.
The future for humanity is life off this planet - if not on Mars, lets goto the moon. And AND STAY THERE lets NOT go looking for rocks and whatnot on Mars, instead lets put a base on the moon, and use the IIS (another waste of energy) to construct the crafts and supply. I recognize that the shuttle cannot be the freight system for such a project so we will not be able until the next-gen reusable launch vehicle is in use.
Humans living off the planet is obviously the ultimate goal of the space program, so why bother toying around with the idea?
LETS GO DAMMIT!
Picked this up from 0Karma oblivion... pretty wise for an AC
how hard to find 20 billions for sending humans? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27,@06:29PM EDT (#133)
I don't see the interest in sending a sample-return robot to mars in 2014 when humans will have walked on mars allready in 2008, and brang back tons of rocks at that time. We just need a president that dares to make a kennedy-speach about going there fast, for the sake of our children who have nothing to dream about anymore.
Let's convince the SoccerMoms(TM) that we need to do it for the chillldreeen!!
You can get anything if its for the chillldreen!
He said missions in this decade will concentrate on finding the best spot on Mars to pick up rock samples.
Man, that must be one seriously satisfying job. Imagine going to meetings...
Manager: So, what have you accomplished this decade, John?
John: I have identified a selection of potential candidate sites for landing a robot on Mars to pick up bits of rock!
Manager: Good work!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
And if you want some past history:
/mars/mars1205.htm
http://www.n-jcenter.com/repr ise
Interesting on how the number of missions that have succeded happens to be exactly how many they're planning.
Look for life on one of these new moons around Saturn (Note the cool photo-flip animation! =)
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They have been streamlining for years, "adjusting expectations." And still, if it weren't for the Russians making the US space program look good, there may not be a US space program.
I agree. It's time to end the monopoly that NASA has on the ionosphere and get on with it.
full coverage of the Playstation2 debalce
... is spark the interest of 1000 kids in science, it will be worth the money. If it gets 100 Americans to think outside their own little world for 10 minutes or so, again, money well spent.
Anybody remember where we got fuelcells? Tang? Personal computers, advanced medical equipment [CAT Scanners and MRI technology (Computer-Aided Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging) used in hospitals worldwide, came from technology developed to computer-enhance pictures of the moon for the Apollo program], communications satellites, cordless power tools....
Personally, I think Tang is worth a few billion right there.
So let's go to Mars. Fuck it, best reason to do it is that we can. Doesn't mean we won't try to help the needy, but as long ago as Jesus people said "the poor will be with us always." Let's go. And don't forget the Tang.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
But the space program is a veritable island in a sea of pork.
Shouldn't that be "vegetable"?
Think of it, after 100 years with minor differences between each unit, you'd have evolved Furbies. Furbies that might even, by this stage, have developed conciousness, a sense of self. Who knows? After a million years or so, their super-evolved children might very well be creating stuff from carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen - using these basic materials, to create their own automotan pets. And perhaps some will venture fourth to ask the question - "what if we create a bunch of these, and send them to that blue green planet nearby? What if we come back in a hundred years, and see if they evolve..."
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Finally we're going back to the red rock. and maybe after this mission Hollywood can stop making horror movies about strange aliens and heroic missions to the damned planet. We don't even know whats there, and maybe after these missions we'll have a better idea of what kind of rocks dust and other stuff is there. Also we can find out if those aliens we insist on making movies about actually existed at one time, or if they still exist maybe we'll lose contact with our robots...again. I just hope that this time we can get things right and not make complete fools of ourselves and get some things done.
"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." John F. Kennedy
What are these missions going to do for me, and African-Americans in general. That's the question you gotta ask yourself. Even if these missions lead to the eventual habitization of mars, you think they're going to be taking any African-Americans? I don't.
If America doesn't even think it's got enough money to pay reparations to those of African ascent for the harms done by slavery, why do we have enough money to go to mars? Answer me that. On top of that, there are even more ways we could use this money.
For starters, we could expand the war on poverty. And there are many social programs that are underfunded. And if it turns out that we can fully fund all these programs and have money left, why not put it to a GOOD use, one that will benefit us here on earth. Like, funding fro the arts and education.
I am,
I am,
Fine
You can also take a look at:
/ap/001027/02/exploring-mars .co m/news/r/001026/16/science-space-mars-dc
http://news.excite.com/n ews
-and-
http://news.excite
--- And there it is. ---
What you express here is mostly what stops Space Exploration. "Dispatch a nuke". Do you have some knowledge of rocketry? Nukes are suborbital engines! They are mostly designed for parabolic orbits and surely not for interplantary travel. Even SATAN, the scariest of Russian nukes had to be redesigned to carry orbital loads.
In this way, probably think 90% of your representatives and senators. Don't worry. Our Duma thinks the same way...
Your concern about billions of dollars is understandable. However I should note you that not going to Mars is a mistake. I have seen in detail nearly 40% of the surface of that rock and I tell you that we need to get there. No matter the cost. That is not a planet. No it is not what we may think of a planet, its evolution and nature. As an example: there is a place near Acidalia Planitia that shows a small valley with a depth nearly one kilometer. There are several things that tell that this valley was formed in a matter of minutes and I'm sure it was water that did it. I also tell you that this thing is really small. There are bigger and deeper valleys around. In fact that region is a mess of gigantic canyons crossing each other. In Mars there are several of them.
No knowledge we have today is able to explain such thing. It seems that something hit Mars and hit it badly. And hit it very recently. No it is not aliens or the forces of Pandora's Box. But it is something that ripped of a good chunk out of the planet, left it vibrating like mad, wiped its water and atmosphere. The most critical is that this thing is not so old as NASA tries to show.
And it is scary that it seems that this could be more than one blow in the History of this planet.
and it is even more scary that we Russians and you Americans can't manage to reach that planet in most cases. We send to every corner of the Solar System several probes. Only a few failed. But on Mars 80% of probes went into limbo in the most strange ways. It seems we are missing something but I wouldn't risk to say aliens. In their good minds they would avoid that place. Because there are things much more weird than Fussy Faces and Hoagland's mirages...
Like craters laying around an nearly oval mound. Like if something carefully choose to hit its base and sides. Only... All around the mound...
How about an even cheaper way to find out if a lander works: Land it on EARTH!!!
The primary reasons that I was thinking of the Moon rather than Earth was the fact that conditions here are radically different from Mars. Firstly, you're dealing with a soupy-thick atmosphere (well, compared to Mars and the Moon you are, anyway). Secondly, you're dealing with a relatively stable and narrow temperature range (again, compared to the temperatures that are experienced on Mars and the Moon). Thirdly, gravity is way higher here.
I was just thinking that the Moon would provide greater validity for the test than here.
As an aside, NASA already test their technologies on Earth before blasting them into the depths.
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The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
NASA has some great ideas, and these robots will pave the way for more exploration, but when are we going to put a man on mars?
I see these missions as more of the 'ground work' necessary before putting a human on Mars rather than as an alternative to doing so. I am confident that mankind will one day walk on the surface of Mars. However, we must remember that a journey to Mars is radically more difficult than the journey to the moon. A journey time of months rather than days introduces hoards of new technical problems to solve (exposure to solar radiation, how to minimise bone-density loss, the enlargement of certain vital organs due to micro/zero gravity environment.) The International Space Station, coupled with the Russian experiences with Mir will hopefully help us to find solutions to these issues.
Of course, there is also the technical challenge of building a craft/lander large enough to sustain the human crew for the duration of the flight there and back, plus their stay on the Red Planet itself. We've experimented with sealed-system ecologies already, and those experiments have show us just how difficult it would be to balance such a closed system. I believe that considerably more research into technologies such as hydroponics are needed before we can think of providing the long-term support systems that a mission to Mars would require.
Heck when are we going to put a man back on the moon?
Personally I don't see any world government putting another person on the moon again. The first gargantuan effort was undertaken primarily for political reasons, and I don't believe that there is enough scientific justification for funding more manned moon missions. That doesn't mean that I don't believe that people wont once again walk on the surface of the moon though. I just don't think it'll happen until some corporation works out how to cost-effectively access the moon's mineral wealth.
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The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Well, at some point, we should think about establishing a second colony. Right now, Earth is a single point of failure... and we can't rectify the situation without space research, including acceptance of risk.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
NASA has some great ideas, and these robots will pave the way for more exploration, but when are we going to put a man on mars? Heck when are we going to put a man back on the moon?
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
We could have a colony on Mars right now. Not a massive metropolis, but something similar to SkyLab. It would have taken 30 years back in the 60s, but it was possible. It's over 30 years later an no station on Mars. Now we're considering missions to Mars at phenomenal costs.
;)) to the commercial market. Can you imagine buying night vision goggles 15 years ago?
The system was essentially a flower with the Earth at the center and Mars at the end of the "petals." You'd have under 10 petals, each representing the path a space craft would take to meet Mars in it's orbit. The shuttles would provide supplies and transport people to the Mars station, keeping them resupplied every 6 months (or 3 months, depending on the number of shuttles, etc).
Why didn't we do it in the 60s? We'd been to the moon, and that had satisfied the public's lust for space exploration. The space race was essentially over and political tides were turning. The "hippie generation" was speaking it's mind, and wanted to cut the space program. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, the voters pay for the programs, so they should decide where the money gets spent. The problem is that it's always more expensive the longer you wait... sure it cost a lot then, but it costs far more today (adjusted for inflation!).
Sadly, many fantastic advances have come from defense spending (and the space program). Things like the semiconductor. These technologies eventually trickle down (oh no, here it comes
This is my opinion and I may be completely wrong, but if they want money, they have to use capitalism. They should not keep all this stuff secret, but let companies like lockheed martin, boeing (damn that name...too hard to spell, should be "BOING!") and others try to get there first. The most logical means to do so I would think would be to set up a moon base, as that would be the best way to do testing and eventual takeoff to leave the Earth completely. Even though going to Mars may not provide us with anything useful, but it would beat the hell out of the billions of dollars we spend on the entertainment industry now just so we can see some fake movies. I think a lot of people all over the world would be interested to see the first people to step foot on another planet...who knows...I bet others would get involved too...take the little pepsi girl up and let her sing "bah buh bah bap bah" before launching her towards the Sun...anyways, it is just my fantasy...I think a moon base would be a good place to start...it would be pretty neat to be able to look up at the moon and see lights on the dark parts at night...sorta like the death star. :oD Oh well.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
It's actually just three more missions than already planned. The old ones were two more "surface rover" missions, plus an orbiter.
The new ones are:
- The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - which will take pictures of 20-30cm resolution, much higher than done before.
- A mobile laboratory, which will also test the viability of more complicated surface landings than done before
- And most excitingly, a "scout mission" that could involve flying some form of plane or glider through the martian atmosphere, though the precise details have yet to be decided upon.
There's only one real question though that Slashdotters are interested in: Are we going to send up a bunch of furbys to explore the Martian surface? And if so, could NASA make them act as a Beowulf cluster?(*ducks*)
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What I find kinda of humourous is that we're whizzing all these satellites around and have hundreds of telescopes, thousands of astronomers staring at stuff 24/7/365.25 and yet we just found 4 more moons around Saturn and a possible planet between Neptune and Pluto. Does anyone else get the feeling that the more we know the more we know how little we know?
6 missions, the best of which will get us some rocks. If we are lucky?
I have learned a few things by watching late night movies. Obviously more than those pencil-heads at NASA.
* The best way to get to Mars is on a V2 rocket. The kind with fins developed by the Germans during WWII and used extensively during our 1950's, RKO pictures-sponsored manned space program.
* Why only get rocks? What about one of those beautiful Martian women? You know, the kind that lives in that city where there are no men, kissing or Coca-Cola?
* Why all the science? You can tell that Mars is habitable because of those canals that line its surface. Mars looks like a big version of Venice, Italy!
* Is the air breathable? You don't need a bunch of gizmos to find out. Have the mission's captain take off his fish bowl helmet and take a deep breath after he tests the oxygen content with his cigarrette lighter.
We'd better quit this probin' pussyfootin' around business. Anyday now one of them Martian saucers will land in New Jersey and start deathraying us!
I see the link talks about sending pathfinders to Mars.
Great, they'll be full of overweight soccer moms drinking Starbucks and running econoboxes off the road.
Unless the Firestones blow halfway to Mars.
What makes them think the Martian Defense Force won't shoot them down again like they did the polar lander
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
IMHO, the first REAL Mars missions will come when Ozrock or one of the other major national hobbyist groups manages to get to (and past) orbit. These guys are doing more R&D these days than the US, Europe and Chinese combined on rocket technology. No great surprise, there. When was the last time you saw a politician encourage people to branch out and create something novel?
My revised timetable for space science is as follows:
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
2000 - We plan to send 6 missions to Mars
2001 - We are planning to send 6 missions to Mars
2002 - Due to economy plans and cuts, missions will be 5.
2003 - Send one mission. Ooops...
2004 - Well someone forgot the scredriver in the engine. That will not happen again. So now we will send three missions.
2005 - We said three? Well two. The Senate was too furious to cut only one...
2006 - We are reading the new missions. Yeah we had to loose one year due to all these studies, controls and checks.
2007 - Launched another one. Ohhhh Daaaamnnn...
2008 - Well either the thing touched a meteorite or it fell in a canyon. No of course we don't believe in "alien conspirations"...
2009 - We are planning one mission.
2010 - We are still planning it.
2011 - Planning.
2012 - I ALREADY TOLD YOU! THERE ARE NO GREYS THERE!
2013 - Well... Hmmm... Launched another one. We made everything we could... Even choosed a lsower path just in case... Cross fingers...
2014 - Hurrah!!!!! ?????????!!!!
2015 - Well... it seems we got something anyway. Now we are planning six more missions...
...
9999 - Ladies and Gentlemen. I am proud to announce... Man made his first step on Mars. A small step for a man a LONG step for Mankind... OH DAMN!
This isn't the right direction for NASA. I think that they are doing this "Astro-biology" thing just so that they can get publicity. IMHO, adding six new Mars missions and then canceling (uh, I mean postponing) the Pluto-Kuiper misson is a big mistake. The reason is that Pluto has an athmosphere right now, which is expected to freeze over for 200 years in around 2015. If we don't get a probe there before that date, then we will lose lots of scientific data about Pluto.
...but I do it would be cool to send a person to Mars, though!
The important fact to remember is that we can launch to Mars every 2 years, but we only get 1 opportunity to reach Pluto. For more information, check out Pluto Mission.
Doh!
The US government spends billions upon billions of dollars studying things such as cow farts (this is true) and how mice react to having their nads shocked. The military budget this year included billions of dollars for a couple of naval vessels that the Pentagon didn't even want -- simply because a key Congressman on the Armed Services Committee happens to reside in a state that has a large defense contractor who needs the money (corporate welfare, anyone?) The amount of government waste is incredible.
And yet when you "don't-waste-my-taxes" buffoons come blubbering along, it's the space program you complain about. You're going to have to forgive us if we don't take you seriously. You're much more fun to laugh at.
Space exploration is not cheap. Nobody is saying that it is. But the space program is a veritable island in a sea of pork. The fact that you single it out suggests that you are not against government waste, but against the space program itself -- which would seem to suggest that you're some kind of bumpkin or religious extremist. In either case, your opinion is noted, but completely and utterly devoid of worth.
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The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.