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H.R. 3057: To the Asteroids, Moon and Mars
apsmith writes "Democrats have just introduced the Space Exploration Act of 2003 to the U.S. House of Representatives; the author is Nick Lampson of Texas, with 26 co-sponsors. The bill sets a vision and goals for the future of NASA, beyond the Low Earth Orbit of the Space Station and Shuttle, outlining a series of incremental steps for human spaceflight. These include development of reusable spacecraft for carrying people around in the Earth-Moon vicinity, including to the nearby Lagrange points; sending people to an Earth-crossing asteroid; establishing a lunar base, and sending people to Mars with a base on a Martian moon by 2024."
..The bill sets a vision and goals for the future of NASA..
You are aware, Congress, that you can't legislate the advace of technology right?
Right?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
...unless it includes appropriations for NASA sufficient to actually fund said exploration. Mandatory appropriations congress can't later cut, which is highly unlikely with Baby Bush spending the country into bankrupcy with his family's little war in Iraq and his tax cuts for his wealthy buddies.
It is a nice vision, but without adequate funding it is only so much posturing from congress, and frankly, I'm quite sick of windbags who have no intention of following through on their flowery rhetoric with concrete action.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Right. We'll be funding all this manned space exploration then. No problem.
You know, all those goals that the NASA administrator has to set will probably go unfufilled if nothing is done to the deficit now.
The deficit is already 455 billion. At the current rate, this deficit will probably reach 8-900 billion even with a relatively decent recovery of the economy.
10-15 years later when the deficit is so big that it hangs like Damocles sword over Capitol hill, NASA's budget will be put on the chopping block.
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
Actually I believe it was 87 billion.
I mean, come on. We need a base on our own moon! It can be mined for fuel and we can launch stuff from there. Saves so much on fuel and metal...
It won't be you, so it might as well be a machine. Machines can send back immersive multimedia, so it can be as if we all went up there. Machines can survive better, even if the spacecraft takes some damage or gets bathed in radiation. Machines can do more work more consistently. We won't care if many of them get the shit beat out of them during their missions. The list goes on and on.
Manned space flight is not practical, it only gets in the way. It prevents rather than promotes space exploration.
Is there some point to doing this? If we are in it just for the new technology, then there are much better ways to spend science research dollars. Is this "exploration" going to bring any tangible benefits? Is there any economic justification to this?
And the first things my coworkers and I did when we found this out was laugh our asses off.
Habitation on the moon in 15 years? Mars in 20?
Maybe if we devoted the sum output of the entire GDP to doing so! As of now, there's no hope of that happening. We need an infrastructure in orbit around Earth before we can start sending things to the moon. Larger space stations, orbital manufacturing, and perhaps craft designed solely for use in space, to ship people and material to the moon.
That costs money. More money than anyone involved is willing to spend, I bet, especially for the timetable they're legislating.
My bet is that this bunch of politicians has no idea what they're talking about, has discussed the feasability of this with no one, and is looking for some attention from the press in light of the Indian and Chinese space programs.
skye
I'm floored that a Congressional bill would even mention Lagrange points.
However, they call for travelling to L1 and L2 to build "large-scale space structures such as would be required for scientific observatories". Aren't L1 and L2 already occupied by the SOHO and MAP observatories, respectively? I haven't checked the decommission dates for those observatories, but does this imply they would be building something nearby, risking those existing observatories?
Also, this bill makes lots of noise about doings things from LEO to elsewhere, but is strangely quiet about getting stuff from the surface to LEO. Is this a deliberate omission?
"We go to the moon, and we do these other things ... not because they are easy, but because they are hard." --John F. Kennedy
It's only when people have visions of things bigger than themselves and their immediate needs that great things happen. The visionaries provide the drive, while the pragmatists make it happen. As cynical as many of you are about Congress and its motivations, having a compelling vision for exploration and research is welcome. I'd rather have excitement and drive than ennui and cynicism.
I see goals for vehicles for Earth orbit-Moon orbit-Lagrange point trips, vehicles for Earth orbit-NEO trips, vehicles for Earth orbit-Mars orbit trips, and vehicles for Lunar and Martian landings...
But you know, it's not like we've got a whole city of astronauts in Earth orbit waiting to go places yet. At the moment if we actually wanted passengers on any of those manned vehicles, we'd need to send them up on the space shuttle for around $100M a person. That's just not going to cut it.
Rather than having NASA aim at a half dozen targets and design a half dozen vehicles we could barely use, I'd like to see them (and private contractors) designing a half dozen vehicles for just one target: getting people to orbit and back cheaply. Let one company prototype a lifting body and let another one stick reusable capsules on top of "big dumb boosters"; let one laboratory try to make the DC-X scale up to orbit, and let another try a VTHL with a flyback booster. And this time, instead of picking the X-33 proposal with the most neat-sounding untested technology, let's let every serious proposal be funded to the prototype stage; that way we can also make it clear this time that the response to "It's not working yet, can we have more money sooner?" will be "No, but we can give those excess funds to those of your competitors who could put something in the air."
Any particular reason you place so much blind faith in the private sector?
I am concerned about any program, any piece of hardware, any treaty, any law that treats me as a consumer, not a citizen
then Privatize the space industry. the government has squandered its monopoly.
allow more corporate partnership and sponsorship. share patents with cooperating corporations with shorter timelimits (say 5-10 years, no extensions). there'd be plenty of financial incentive, and a net gain for the public domain.
yes, nasa science is currently all patented and free to everyone - but there just isn't anything new coming through the pipe these days. what has nasa given the public domain in the last 10 years? more than 0 stuff 5-10 years down the line is a huge improvement.
don't we all feel the burning -need- to get off this rock? to ensure that civilization will survive the next giant asteroid? to get off this rock and swing on a star?
why did it take 30 years from the moon landing until the ISS -started-? why did we waste so much time and money (and lives) on the shuttle program? why was congress -lied- to about the goals of the shuttle program and the low-earth-orbit focus?
why do we continue to trust the beauracracy who have admitted to lies, collusion and deliberate mistruths in their plundering and misguiding of the space initiative over the last 4 decades?
doesn't it bother us all that our most primal function (exploring,adapting,surviving) has been hoodwinked into jogging in place for nearly half a century? that we haven't been back to the moon a single time?
and don't start that the moon is pointless, or mars is pointless.
of course it is.
but if you never aim for the stars - you'll never get off the ground. we picked the moon as our focus in the space race - a completely pointless exercise - but look at the technology that came of it. imagine what we'd learn on our way to mars-capability. imagine what we'd learn by actually -trying- to build an outpost on a rock with no atmosphere and low gravity.
our future is up there, i say we go get it.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
View A: Rep. Lampson is looking out for the economic interests of his district, in part by supporting the manned space program, which employs thousands in that district.
View B: Rep. Lampson represents the views of thousands in his district who believe in the manned space program, who were inspired by it when choosing their fields of study, and who have dedicated their careers to it.
Both are true views, but like any single view, neither tells the whole story by itself.
I'm guessing that the actual purpose of this bill is for it to go down in flames, and get Every Single Republican on the record as voting "no". This will provide a talking point for the election, showing that the Republicans are a bunch of reactionaries who can find the money to hand to Halliburton, but not to actually advance technology.
Not entirely.
NASA is mostly about maintaining their bunch of people and astronauts. Most of their projects are currently things that nobody else has the money to throw at. Most of the waste of late is companies like Boeing and LockMart, where they all go overbudget, because it's more profitable that way.
Really, the large problem right now is that nobody *can* compete with NASA because it's too expensive. National Geographic would love to send a photographer to the Moon, but there's no way that they'd be able to pay for it on their own. I'm of the belief that they really need to find some way of having reasonable launch costs (i.e. a reasonable multiple of fuel costs, not some multi-million dollar craft) and most of the rest of it will take care of itself.
The military has found that, for a high performance aircraft, you do need to build 2 different prototypes. There's only one military, but there's 2 contractors and 2 prototypes.
I'm also following Ben Rich (Second boss of the famed Skunk works) in thinking that it's also best for a program to take a mere few years. This way, nobody tries to build a career out of middle managing it.
Gentoo Sucks
Even though I wince occasionally at government spending in the midst of a deficit, I think that a revitalized space program will help stimulate the economy, with NASA subcontracting out a lot of the work for space programs, I hope this will be a step in the right direction for our economy.
follows the directions of the Republican President. The President's budget sent to Congress underfunds things like Homeland Security and Americorps. Also, Bush expended political energy to make sure he got the tax cuts he wanted. For things like No Child Left Behind and AIDS help for Africa, he gives a "What can I do?" shrug and nothing else.
Don't sweat the deficit too much. The absolute numbers mean nothing. If I told you that ten years ago, I held debt of $10,000, and now I hold a debt of $30,000, am I better off? Well, ten years ago, I made a fifth of what I make now, so I'm actually better off in terms of debt. Here are the actual numbers.
This is not to say that there's nothing to worry about; for all the conservative fulmination of President Bush, domestically he's turned out to be as free-spending as Clinton or any other Democrat. Apparently, "the era of Big Government is over" is over.
Having said that, if NASA's budget cut it would have to be politics over science (super-collider, anyone?). It constitutes such a small percentage of the federal budget that cutting it would achieve nothing. I'm a libertarian, but when it comes to the space program, I've always said that if my tax dollars are going to be forcibly extracted from me, at least a few of them are going towards advancing man into space.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
You know what happens when one country conquers space? and I mean, truly conquer?
Well, deterrance is over.
Let me illustrate: What happens if the crazy (bold? daring?) chinese start creating space colonies? What happens when they get, say, 500 million people in space and move their center of power there?
In that scenario, what's it to them if they nuke Taiwan? or the US for that matter?
What would have happend if Stalin, Franco, Hitler, Castro, Napoleon or even Mr. Churchill had gotten the bomb first?
It will probably take another Einstein signed letter to FDR to get the US to "do what it takes" again. And a completely different political reality.
Economics have nothing to do with it.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
I am a senior exec in the space program. China definitely has enormous attention, as does India. The betting is not whether China will go to the Moon, but whether it will be three years or five years. When they go, they also plan to stay. When they begin this year to seriously launch their own manned orbital missions it will be interesting to see the US response.
The scientists get back from the first manned trip by getting on the return vehicle that was sent 6 months ahead of them and had spent all the intervening time creating rocket fuel, air, and water from the Mars atmosphere. Chemically, the atmosphere on Mars contains everything necessary to create what would be needed, and Zubrin and his team demonstrated a device which would do the conversions. That's how they get home.
Zubrin recommended for funding that NASA (or the government in general) put up a $20 billion reward for the first company/person to do it, thus avoiding bureacratic waste and protecting themselves from cost overruns. I don't know if I like that idea, but it would probably work.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I would imagine, were China to make leaps and bounds into space, that the US would respond by pouring money into our own space program in order to compete.
So I for one say, "Go China!", even living in the USA, becuase that may be the only way we can finally start our steps towards getting off this rock.
As for popular opinion? I'd say China landing on the moon would piss a lot of people here off. Nobody owns the moon, but I think if you asked a random sampling of people in the US, you'd find that most of them consider it in a way "our territory" simply because we're the only ones who've landed actual people there. Especially if you phrased it like "would you consider China putting a manned base on the moon to be an aggressive act towards the United States?"
Thats why I think leaps and bounds by other nations in manned space exploration might lead the US to crank manned space exploration back up, perhaps even putting a base on the moon.
In my opinion, the ISS should be nothing more than a gas station anyway - send fuel up there on unmanned rockets, and fill up ships there and head out somewhere interesting. So maybe I'm biased and people really don't care about whether other countries go into space without us. But I'm still hoping they do.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
The establishment of a Refuel/Construction station at L1 or (and knowing the government) L2, seems to be a major goal. It is not however mentioned wiether this station would be best as an automated station or a manned station. With good communication and a manned space station being maintained in LEO (Which should be pushed into higher orbit when we abandon the Space shuttle if you ask me) does this new station need to be manned? Is thier any scientific advantage to manning the station or can we operate it from earth just as well?
I must say it almost seems like a feasible plan if well funded and supported. But the proccess is going to be slowed down if this first station must be inhabited.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
Not necessarily. Science projects are often an investment in the future, with great payoffs.
If we were to develop a good replacement for the shuttle that did wonders for launch costs ($100/lb or so), even if the craft is owned by Boeing or LockMart, you can bet that people are going to be lined up to use that instead of Ariane, Soyuz, or Proton rockets. This would result in a lot of folks employed in America in support of this, because you know that they'll find reasons to turn down any other suggestions for launching elsewhere.
Plus, the companies are probaly going to be traditional American aerospace contractors. Which then means that the employees of said contractors will end up with money that will go back into circulation when they buy stuff, invest, etc.
Wellfare... Now that's throwing money down the drain.
Gentoo Sucks
View C: Rep. Lampson is looking out for the interests of the country, something which is legitimately within his charter.
domestically he's turned out to be as free-spending as Clinton or any other Democrat
I would argue far more so. I think the Clinton administration busted the myth of the 'tax and spend liberal Democrat' pretty well, what with the restraint shown in the growth of government spending, and the ultimate surplus that was used to start paying down the debt.
And I think Bush is busting the myth of the 'fiscally responsible Republican' pretty well. He has squandered the surplus and driven us to the largest deficits in history in just two years, and the government -- in size and power -- has grown enormously in that time. It's all borrow and spend, borrow and spend, while his corporate buddies are stuffing fistfuls of money into their pockets, while the average American gets laid off, has their property taxes jacked up to cover local and state short-falls, and is basically getting bupkiss back from the cuts.
Over the next ten years, the deficits the Bush Administration are racking up will come to over $33,000 for each and every tax-payer. That's scary.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
While I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this bill, one thing jumps out at me:
The 60's space program did wonders for the private sector. The lofty goals of sending people to the moon made computers smaller and more powerful (ushering in the PC revolution of the late 70s and early 80s), did wonders for materials science, and introduced a myriad of other technologies we take for granted today. (To be more specific, it made these technologies affordable to the masses.)
To be blunt, the U.S. is slipping technologically in the world. While we probably won't be overtaken by China or India in the next decade, it could happen in 20 or more years. Planting these seeds now could spawn another technological revolution 10-20 years from now. While a program like this probably won't accomplish a lot of "pure science", the economic impact could do wonderful things for industry, the economy, and our standard of living (they're all intertwined) down the road.
Being a McDonald's employee does not qualify you to speak intelligently about anything except proper McDonald's hamburger flipping technique. Please shut-up and return to mopping the floor. Thanks.
Being a patent clerk does not qualify you to speak intelligently about anything except proper patent clerking technique.
However...
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
Simple. We've been there how long? And we've found how many?
The way I see it, one of three things is possible. Either the government sincerely believed the weapons were there and was wrong; the government never believed they were there and lied to us; or, and this one's my favorite, Iraq is full of WMDs and our troops are just too damn inept to find them.
No matter which one you choose, it makes our government look bad. Question is, how bad do you want them to look?
The point is, I don't jump to conclusions unless I have empirical evidence to justify that leap. In this case, none has been provided. The fact that Saddam is an evil prick notwithstanding, we had no good reason to attack Iraq. You give me absolute proof that WMDs still exist in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling them up until our goverment invaded his country, and I'll issue a formal apology without malice, and without regret. Until then, shut the hell up.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA