Slashdot Mirror
International Space Station: Canada to the Rescue?
Apostata writes "The following story from the Globe and Mail outlines a proposal of the head of the Canadian Space Agency to seek renewed funding for the recently stripped-down NASA budget for the ISS. He makes an interesting point that - contrary to the belief that the ISS is a NASA brainchild/braintrust - many countries have poured $billions$ into it's development and should thus have a say in whether there should be any cutbacks.
Read all about it here."
i'll probably get modded down to hell for saying this, but wouldn't the mind boggling amounts of money that get ploughed into the ISS be better spent on more, smaller, saner, more economical projects ones that do new/cool[tm] stuff? And what are the benefits (other than PR) of maintaining continuous presence in orbit anyway?
You at least knew they made the Canadarm, right?
I'm a bomb regardless
I don't see this article as saying that Canada is going to rescue anything. Rather, they are lining up along with Europe to complain (with some justice, since NASA is not upholding the ISS agreements as they currently stand). Now, I suppose if a nation complains enough and is willing to use this as a bargaining chip (e.g. in trade talks or whatever kind of talks matter to the US), then complaining becomes a kind of action. But a much more direct sort of rescue, a more obviously effective one, would be to come up with some funding. Europe once built a half-scale prototype of (some portions of) a crew return vehicle, but in recent years that activity has changed to "well, maybe we could build a few components for the US crew return vehicle, that would be cheaper. Well, is Europe prepared to build their own crew return vehicle? Or pay Russia to supply more Soyuzes?
The other amusing aspect of this whole thing is the number of times that the US has cancelled its part of a project (shuttle, partially; some science satellite in the 80's the name of which is at home; even Spacelab in a sense), and the fact that Europe (and other partners) fail to learn. It is like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown time after time, and Europe seems to always line up for another kick. I guess Canada is now joining them.
No, but Slashdot is an American site, and most of its readers are American. I'm European, but I don't expect Slashdot to put, every time it discusses anything international, every single possible variation on the phrase.
I'm also a little upset with people bitching that the US has limited everyone's access to the ISS. The US has poured far more money into it than any other participant, AND has had to cover for things when other members (Russia, mainly) defaulted on debts. So don't act like it's just the Americans' fault.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Furthermore, as a Canadian taxpayer, I will naturally be asked to help decide who gets to be an astronaut. Moderators, you know what to do.
Carousel is a lie!
It's kinda pathetic that Terrorists blow something up, and governments start tossing money at militaries, and ignore their space programs. Maybe the terrorists are just using the ground stuff as a distraction, to launch their orbiting "laser" of death.
(begin rant)
Funding cuts that make it impossible to do research should not be made, since this is a research platform, after all. If they cut funding to this, just like they did with DS1 (story earlier today), then the entire scientific commmunity is going to be pissed. What is the point of putting up a multi-billion dollar space station if not to do something more than have it just sit there, with no experiments being done? That ticking sound is the time before this thing plunges into the ocean years from now. the only question is "what do we do with it until then?"
(/rant)
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
"At least 2½[and a half] crew members are needed merely to operate the ISS."
Wouldn't it be safe to round that up?
Actually, I meant to say what I did. You infer via paranoia that I'm implying that there's only one currency in the world and that it's all a plot to subjugate your philosophy...which has nothing to do with the subject of the article or outer-space in general.
For the record, I'm Canadian. Get stuffed.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Maybe the Japanese should have opted for a Mobile Suit Gundham instead of an Experiment Module Kibo.
Dear Will, the plums were poisoned. -- Cheese Club
Oh right. Forgetting for a moment that this is an AMERICAN website and that the author of the article was likely implying billions after _conversion_, the article should have read:
"many countries have poured billions of drachmas, kopeks, dong, won, yen, pesetas, rubles, rupees, lira, marks, pounds, franks, krones, shillings, pesos, punts, baht, yuan, taka and polished beads into it's development..."
Give me a break.
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Although I support the efforts of the ISS and orbital research from what I've heard there is in fact not a lot of good research they can do in weightlessness. Personally I think it says something when you're accepting experiments from junior high schools to do in space that probably converts to thousands of dollars of time and resources on the part of the space agency. Does anyone know of useful research being conducted by astronauts (i.e. no Hubble or exploration vehicles) or that has been proposed?
I stole this Sig
Sure, the US can start reneging on agreements and contracts. The rest of the world will just label it a Rogue State, and cease dealing with it.
You aren't as big as you think you are. Losing Canada and China (for two) as trading partners would hurt you a hell of a lot, and the blatant disregard for all agreements that you imply the US should be able to get away with would cause that.
Once we threw our own finks out of office, that is.
Welcome to the new NASA. Dubya is dumping Golden (love him or hate him, he WAS an engineer) to bring in a guy that is 100% bean counter. From a recent newspaper article (I think Houston Chronicle):
""...No one really knows what a finished station would cost. NASA said earlier this year that it faces a $4.8 billion shortfall over the next five years. Sean O'Keefe, nominated by President George W. Bush to become NASA administrator, testified Friday that he had no confidence in that number or any other estimate he had heard so far.
At the close of the hearing Friday, Mr. O'Keefe was asked an open-ended question: "What is your vision?"
.
Mr. O'Keefe spoke for several minutes about "prudent management principles," reinvigorating "the entrepreneurial spirits" of NASA, the importance of collaboration with other elements of the federal government, the need to be mindful of safety and the possibility of taking advantage of this moment when NASA is at a crossroads.
.
He did not mention space."
Exactly. This is a site run by Americans, and Americans know how much a dollar is worth. It's easy for Americans to understand that a billion dollars is a lot of money. However, if it said "billions of pesos", most of us would have been slightly confused, as the value of a peso is not common knowledge.
I'm sure this will lead to someone blaming Americans for being uncultured in not learning the value of every other currency on the planet.
It seems to me that cutting back on astronauts now would be like buying a Porsche, then only driving it a few times in order to save on gas. The US has already committed huge amounts of money to this project, and cutting back now could severely limit the usefulness of the space station, making it a complete waste of money.
But it's true that NASA involvement is now crucial, and on that point the decision of Congress is sovereign. If you are a US voter and you disagree with Congress's decisions on NASA funding, you know what to do.
On the bright side, I don't think space is going to go away any time soon, and not only are there still many delightful things to explore on earth, outer space itself is becoming far more accessible in the form of robot probes and orbiting telescopes.
Whilst curtailment of the ISS would be bad news for manned space flight in the short term, I don't think it would necessarily be bad news for science as a whole. There is just so much else upon which it would be at least as sensible to spend the science budget of any country.
"Mr. O'Keefe is a budget hawk and has said he believes that technical excellence at any cost is not an acceptable approach by NASA.
This seems like a rather odd thing to say to the press... I would think if *I* was relying on NASA to do something in space, I would sure want "technical excellence" at any cost. This is not a walk in the park, it is space exploration, and attention DOES need to be paid to detail.
or am I wrong?
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Bah.
Too many people here are bashing USA, and saying "oh, we're better than USA because of *reason X* or *reason Y*"...
To those of you who are doing this, take a second and think. Are we really that much better? Do we have to take our argument to an international forum and play the patriot?
The USA, despite it's flaws, is not as bad as a lot of people think. If it was such a bad place, they'd have all moved out of there by now! Besides, the USA is where Megatokyo comes from, and it's also where a lot of anime and video games are distributed from.
And Canada HAS flaws. Sure, our Prime Minster, the Right Honourable Jean Chretien was seen choking and throwing a potential assailant... Sure, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Chris Jericho, Alex Trebek, etc. come from Canada...
But to those who believe in the right to bear arms up here - we can't. To those who believe that we have freedom of speech? Freedom of the press? Not in Canada. The government can censor you if they so choose.
The point is: It's the holidays, friends. Break out the egg nog, or beer if you prefer, and let's celebrate life. We're friendly neighbors... why not ACT like it for a change? We should like each other despite our many flaws.
Happy Holidays to one and all.
Do you ever get the feeling that if we just let G. Dubbya hang a few "lasers" off the ISS let him point them at caves where "terrorists" live the space station could have an unlimited budget?
That being said, I'd agreee with the poster who pointed out that the ISS is a huge expenditure compared to what we could do with many smaller projects, but I think it's necessary to have big prjects that are the culimination of the technology that's being devised. Classes that don't have final exams are always considered slacker classes because people don't have a goal to work towards, and the same thing could be said for space projects.
Just a note, as it kind of got lost in the Sept news...
This article dated September 25th, 2001, indicates in part:
"Unanimous House Agrees To Pay U.N. Dues
The House of Representatives yesterday unanimously approved legislation that would provide $582 million to pay back dues to the United Nations, a reflection of how the political landscape has been altered by the terrorist attacks two weeks ago, according to The Washington Post.
For months, conservatives such as House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) had blocked the payment of U.N. arrears, but those lawmakers abandoned their opposition in light of the strikes in New York and Washington"
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
While the...rest of the United States declares that almost all of the low gravity research to be done on the ISS has already been done on the ground.
-US takes the initiative to throw off the chains of an obsolete and oppressive monarchy.
Choosing instead to worship Topm Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow and George Clooney.
That's okay! We'll just print more money to pay for it all! That's what Bush is doing with this stimulus plan, thats what we did to fund the war, hell lets just print more money for NASA too and solve all our problems, then in 2 years we can all sit back and drink our US$25 8oz can of coke and laugh at these times.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
But everything must be perfect, damn the cost... reminds me so much of *my* dot-com days. I watched in wonder as they ordered Sun 250's for each mail server - light duty servers at that. Everything else got 450's.
It was perfect - and we became dot.compost at the end of the year....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
The future of manned spaceflight depends on pan-national co-operation.
Have you seen the results of international cooperation? Everybody teaming up to try and put up a Low Earth Orbit space station, and finally getting hardware in orbit after 2 decades of redesigns, tens of billions of dollars of cost growth, United States delays that threatened European schedules, Russian delays that threatened American schedules... and the result just isn't that impressive, even for a space station.
What human spaceflight depends on, apparantly, is international competition. Russians orbiting the globe, "putting a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before this decade is out", you know, that sort of thing?
We don't need Chinese astronauts on ISS, we need China building it's own space station in half the time... because apparantly there's nothing that motivates the American space program so well as being laughed at.
NASA must feel like a little kid when mommy and daddy are fighting in public.
I'm on Canada's side for sure. More power to them for giving NASA and the U.S. Congress the kick in the ass they deserved. NASA is an (somewhat) unwitting overspender and Congress is right to want to reduce their funds. But a committment was made. Backing down on that committment will have an exponentially dimishing effect on the project which equals a waste of the starting investment.
And it'll make the station less neat.
-DiggsBiggly
There is nothing wrong with a good audit over NASA's budget. That budget is what a Butt Head Astronomer would describe as billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars. The Mars Climate Orbiter was just one obvious sign of NASA waste. Getting someone in the accounting field might just be able to help NASA maximize the funds it has and achieving more with the same.
Since the head of NASA is not going to greet the great beyond, he really need not be a scientist. Just someone who is effective running a massive organization funded by taxpayer dollars. As Dennis Tito has shown, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to make it into space. In fact, being good with money and budgets was what lead him to the stars.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Also, while other countries may have poured billions of dollars (US) into the project, note that even according to the article this is a small percentage. The article states that the Canadian robot arm cost $1.4 billion and gives them 2.3 % of the research space. The European module is quoted as costing the same. That means Canada and Europe, total, have 4.6% of the research space. Assuming Japan's contribution isn't vastly more expensive, or there isn't some other big player the article didn't mention, that means about 90% of the research space, and presumably the budget, came from the US.
If there were treaties to prevent the US from doing this, then the US should be constrained by them. If not, the US should at least be willing to provide use of launching facilities and shuttles at a reasonable cost. But beyond that, pay up. "He who pays the piper calls the tune"--and that includes telling him to go away. Unless otherwise negotiated, the US has no obligation to let other people piggyback their space efforts on its own.
But only after two years while the US sits on the fence. Again.
We screw up about 90% of the money we spend on land, and only about 50% of the money we send to space. Come on it doesn't take a statistics major to realize we might as well blow it on something worth the odds :)
We've grown too lazy to actually directly care where our money goes. It goes to interest groups who we assume will put it where it's needed, which is, granted, mainly attacking small 3rd world countries.
Too late. Apparently Americans only believe in free trade and open markets when it allows them to make Nikes in third world sweatshops. NAFTA is a complete fucking joke.
And I'll say it again: US-Government domination of space needs to end. Since the end of the cold war, NASA and, to a very small extent, its Russian counterpart have more or less ruled space. Sure, there've been a number of "private" or corporate launches, but all of them have come from Cape with a heavy kickback to NASA.
What is needed is for private corporations to take up the slack, building their own launch sites and launching their own whatevers. If this means corporate domination of space, then so be it. I would rather see the Microsoft Starship Gates make warp one than none at all.
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
Comment removed based on user account deletion
He makes an interesting point that - contrary to the belief that the ISS is a NASA brainchild/braintrust . ISS is a NASA goal (to the extreme detriment to what I would argue should be the real focus, probes going out to learn about the solar system. On top of that, not only are we sinking 100+ Billion dollors on this (100x the contribution of any other country... and for good measure we are covering most of the soviet's costs as well), we are cutting programs that would go out and examine the Kuiper belt, the sun, etc.
Think of what kind of knowledge we could gain. Long term space research? bzzt. Soviets already did that. Radation effects on humans? bzzt.
The entire problem is that this space station was created by the state department and congress rather then the scientists. ISS? What ever happened to freedom and liberty the first names of this project.
Screw the space station. Give us a workable re-usable launcher and the NGST.
Take a look at the combined NASA/JPL/NSF budget (just non millitary and non-medical for now). That alone runs us 100+ bln a year. I would challange anyone who would slams us on research to lookup the number of governments that have 100bln a year budget, to say nothing of research.
That is not even counting the vast amount of money going to H&HS, NIH, ARPA, DARPA (remember that little thing called the internet?).
BTW, no, the ANTHRAX was _not_ from American lab's. Watch CNN or even a news network more often.
Maybe I'm just uninformed, but it seems to me that by leaving space exploration to the egg-heads at these govt science agencies, we are not making the kind of progress a more ambitious goal-oriented approach might produce.
In the 60's man went to the moon. The moon! Many times. We haven't been back in decades.
Why is there no base on the moon? Why aren't there more space stations in orbit? I think part of the reason is that the focus is on doing dumb experiments instead of just building these facilities as rapidly as possible.
The shuttle was a big step forward. Mir was a big step forward. The ISS will benefit from both these achievements. What I object to is reading quotes from guys at McGill University who are getting bucks to do research on reflexes in space. This is idiotic when we still need lots of money to put more facilities and equipment up there.
I figure you could spend all your money every year on pure research science. And I think you'd get a lot out of it. But it should be remembered that it was guys like Columbus, Hudson and Cook who made the big discoveries of the last exploratory period. Guys who went and did what they wanted to do to see if they could. They weren't sailing ships filled with lab rats and experiments. They wanted to see what was around the next corner, see if they could get there, and see if they could settle there. I don't understand why this spirit has been lost.
Goals need to be set. ISS completion by 2005. Base on the moon by 2010. Man on Mars by 2015. Base on Mars by 2020. Let's get a move on.
Since it was modded down, I'll repost it, so more can see it...
Coming where it comes from...
Marc Garneau's former wife was found dead, along with her lover in a car whose windows was cracked open and a hose was run from the exhaust to the window...
And another can-adian ass-tronaut, a medical doctor, failed to take care of her wife during her pregnancy. So she skipped important tests, and the offspring is retarded. Nothing unusual here, except that the fucking asshole, upon hearing the bad news, squarely put the blame on her and cancelled the shower party.
Even worse, when the family was posted to Houston so the ass-tronaut could do his training, the canadian space agency refused to pay for the special care the baby needed. Needless to say, their salaries were insufficient to pay for this, so the ass-tronauts had to go on strike until the agency funded the special care for the baby.
And, lastly, the second canadian woman in space, Julie Payette, caused an american astronaut's wife strike: since the hot bitch screwed her way to the top, there was no way the chaste american astronaut's wifes would trust their beloved husbands along with that slut, so they went on strike, too, and NASA then said that the hot bitch wouldn't go in orbit.
But, politics being politics, since she is french and a woman, she had to go and the canadian ambassator to the US (the brother of canadian prime sinister Jean Chrétien [buzz.ca]) personally asked Billy Boy (this was before Dubya?) to override NASA's concern for the chastity of their crews.
So, the hot bitch finally went up...
Ain't canadian space politics fun???? (but the baby's doin' fine, though).
"The role of government in this country and in fact all countries is not to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, or care for the sick. The role of the government is to empower its citizens to do those things."
Wrong. The role of governemnt is to promote the common defense. Everything else is secondary and window dressing. Use of force and preparation for use of force to intimidate a possible adversary is the single overarching function of a government. Nothing else is possible for your people if you stand a real chance of subjugation at any moment.