Slashdot Mirror
President Bush To Call For Return To Moon?
Brian Stretch writes " According to the National Review: 'When President Bush delivers a speech recognizing the centenary of heavier-than-air-powered flight December 17, it is expected that he will proffer a bold vision of renewed space flight, with at its center a return to the moon, perhaps even establishment of a permanent presence there. If he does, it will mean that he has decided the United States should once again become a space-faring nation.' Here's hoping. The article also includes talk of nuclear engines and using the moon as a testbed for going to Mars."
Oh jesus. And how about some bread and circuses?
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Bush's government doesn't have the money to pay for his military enterprises.
It lacks the money to provide for basic infrastructure.
At a time when commercial space flight is being touted as the most logical course, Bush is now saying that he wants to send people back to the moon?
I'm all for the new frontier. It would be great if people were inspired about space again. But Bush does not deserve to be the one to get us there. He couldn't even manage the Houston Astros.
...is now really the right time to be doing this? There's a lot going on in the US right now (Iraq war, etc.) in the middle of a recession, and going to the moon just doesn't seem like the greatest idea for us right now.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
Do we have the money to fund this?
We need to do it but I don't know if we can afford it.
While I love the idea and think it'd be a great thing to do, I feel that it'd also be pretty much financially impossible to make happen as things stand right now. Going to the moon would cost billions upon billions of dollars when the government's already running a half-trillion dollars a year in the hole. This time, there isn't the pressing urge for dominance and brass-balls bragging rights that there was during the peak of the cold war, and without such a rivalry, I doubt the motivation exists within government to find funding for a project this massive in scope.
Going to Mars seems to be a popular idea. Before we try establishing a permanent base on Mars, even unmanned, I think we need to prove ourselves by going back to the moon AND staying there. I.e., establish a moon base, even a small one.
Obviously the moon is much closer. More importantly, we don't need to worry about the synchronization of our orbits. The moon is always roughly the same distance away from us no matter what day of the year it is. This makes it a much easier target to hit than Mars no matter what time it is.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
IF Bush makes this statement during his speech, I will be completely in shock. As much as I dislike Bush, I think the United States definetely needs to reestablish a space presense, and on the moon, that would be great. The ISS is turning up to be more hype than anything else, anything more established.
By creating a real, strong, presence on the moon, we would research and develop much more technology, at a more distinguishable rate, and the rewards would be plentiful enough based on the technology that develops from increased space expenditure. Even if the moon is completely dead, and there are no resources, and no valuable information for us to gather on it, I think we would still come out ahead in this situation.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
Bush has done everything he can to give the U.S. a massive $6E12 deficit, and now he calls for this?
He knows there is no way the congress can, or would, appropriate the money for this, given the deficit, so he's just blowin' smoke for PR (read: election) purposes.
Sorry, George. Ain't fooled.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
I think our country getting active in space exploration again is a great idea. HOWEVER -- Is it just my paranoia, or does this seem like one of many diversionary tactics of the current administration, designed solely to pull public attention away from the fact(s) that:
(1) bin Laden ('Old Salami BinBox' to me and some of my friends) is still at large.
(2) No matter how much spin has been put on it, the Iraqi war never had any solid justification that I can see. And Hussein ('Saddened HoseHead') is still at large as well.
(3) Our economy is still a shambles.
(4) The 'YOU-CAN-SPAM' bill is all but signed into law, thus (very possibly) bringing about the end of viable E-mail as we know it.
(5) The RIAA and MPAA continue to run roughshod over fair use rights.
I could go on, but I think we all get the idea. This is an election year coming up. The Shrub will pull out anything he or his advisors can think of to try and get himself reelected, and I really think that this is just one example.
Mod this down if you want. Heck, label it "Flamebait" if you want. I don't pretend to have even a hint of one answer, let alone all of them, but it certainly seems to me like there are other more pressing problems that need dealing with than making another trip to one very dead and airless rock.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Has this guy got a clue about budgets?
v e.com/4239a600.jpg)
Sorry, I'm sure to get modded as a troll for this, and I'm jazzed about our space programs getting money they need, but I'm also more terrified of the condition this country is going to be in under Dubya's rule.
I mean, if you haven't seen this chart, check out:
Bush's Budget Deficit (Google cache, an original is at http://dean-justinspoliticaljournal.cafeprogressi
$87 billion for Iraq, tax cuts aplenty, and now he wants space ships too? Oy.
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
He'll have to do more than say "let's go back" before I call his plan bold. Okay, so he might mention the idea of establishing a permanent Lunar base and of going to Mars. As the article said, his father already did that:
I'd like to see this Lunar base and Martian mission. But I don't have high hopes that it will be any time soon. And I don't believe that Dubya will have anything to do with it.
Hopeuflly, Bush will try to unleash and provide a framework for America's creative genius. The big company / NASA / politics aproach is not working. The consolidate aero companies are currently wracked with scandal, though it's hard to think of ways to provide nuclear propulsion without heavy industry. The Wright Brothers were bicycle makers, but they beat out the whole world with it's huge companies, landed aristocrats and tyrants. We did it 100 years ago and many people are working to do it again today with cheap manned space flight. I don't know how Bush can encourage that kind of effort, but I know that it can and must be done. We shall see what Bush has to offer on the 100th aniversery of heavier than air flight. Simply paying attention to that day is a very good sign.
This is way better talk than the defeatist nonsense heard just a few years ago about ignoring the infinite resources waiting for us in space. Pro nuclear, pro space, great stuff.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He then sliced $300 million out of that sucker, even as people were dying of hypothermia, or, to put it bluntly, freezing to death.
Sometimes he even cuts your program before he comes to praise it. In August 2002, Bush held a photo op with the Quecreek coal miners, the nine men whose rescue had thrilled the country. By then he had already cut the coal-safety budget at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which engineered the rescue, by 6 percent, and had named a coal-industry executive to run the agency.
And I thought congress held the purse.
--fatboy
Just think for a second . . .
.) remain neglected.
.
We have just given a major tax break.
We have gotten into a "perpetual" war, with no end in site (LAST month was the bloodiest for us . . . exactly WHEN did major combat end!?). We have already committed $83 BILLION dollars, and we will have to commit more.
Domestic problems (healthcare, SS, etc . .
Our surplus budget has become a major deficit.
I have always thought space expoloration to be the most nobel activity any nation could invest in, but is this REALITY, folks? Seems to me that this is more about distracting us from the HUGE problems that exist, than anything else.
I thought the idea was to either go commericial or international with space exploration . . . I think our relationships with some MAJOR space fairing nations are still weak as a result of our unilateral military adventures, so I doubt we could do this internationally . .
So we are going to fight an expensive and costly war (this is starting to look more and more like Vietnam, thought I am too young to know that for certain), give MAJOR tax breaks, AND return to the moon.
Come on . . . some ideas are ambitious and some things are just political agendas to get you looking the other way.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Look, the U.S. needs to go to the moon starting tomorrow the way it needed to go pulverize Iraq on March 19. There's no hurry. In fact, a little bit of deliberation will make the U.S. a better space explorer, just as a little bit of patience might have made Bush a hero in Iraq instead of the biggest goof in world politics since Napoleon.
The United States budget will run almost a half trillion dollars in debt this year. Now, some of my fondest memories are of playing sick to watch moon landings in grade school, but I'd much rather spend money on educating kids and college students today who can do space exploration right ten and twenty years from now -- if we've dug out of the financial mess we're wallowing in now.
So no symbolic Republican missions to reproduce 1969 on the moon, thank you. If you're an American and want nonsymbolic space exploration in your lifetime, work to defeat George W. Bush and elect a president who will restore fiscal sanity to the United States. If we're lucky, the president after that, or the president after that, will have a chance to send human beings somewhere useful.
And I thought congress held the purse.
You mean the Republican controled congress ?
"You don't need a weatherman/ To know which way the wind blows" -Bob Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues
Q: Which of the states are most closely associated with the space industry?
A: Texas (Houston, home of NASA) and Florida (site of the Kennedy Space Centre).
Q: Which of the states are most closely associated with the Bush family?
A: Texas (where George W. was Governor) and Florida (where Jeb Bush is Governor).
Wow. What an amazing coincidence!
Now Texas is a republican stronghold and real Bush country. So sending a few billion dollars Texas's way is a great way of saying thank you to the folks back home.
On the other hand, Florida is up for grabs. Remember, when the Supreme Court stopped the recount process after the last Presidential election, Al Gore was slightly ahead, and looked like he would have won the Florida vote. Of course, it wouldn't have been so close if all thousands of black voters (90 percent of whom voted for Gore) hadn't been illegally stripped of their votes by wrongly being labelled convicted felons, if the butterfly ballots hadn't have been used (at Pat Buchanon admitted himself, those Jewish voters weren't voting for him), if those chads hadn't been such an issue and if the Republicans hadn't got away with having hundreds of overseas ballots that were clearly not properly filled in time and/or authenticated count in their favour.
Either way, even if you say that Bush was the legitimate winner (which, as I illustrated is a highly contentious point), you have to concede that the Florida voting process was far from perfect and that the state is a key battleground for next year's election.
So, given that Florida's where the war was won/lost(/stolen) last time around, it's doesn't hurt Bush 2004 if Florida's got a big reason to feel good about the current administration.
It's a bit like the illegal steel import tarriffs. The Bush administration knew that they were illegal, the knew that eventually they would be forced by the WTO to abolish them or face severe consequences, but they did their job. While the tarriffs were in place, US steel manufacturers got a nice boost, despite being inefficient compared to their global counterparts, and lots of people in the steel industry had a good reason to vote Republican rather than Democrat when they last went to the ballot box.
Yep, if you want something in business or politics there's nothing like an old-fashioned bribe to grease the wheels and open the doors.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Tax Cut
You mean your one-time "benefit" of somewhere in the vicinity of $300? Real big help there.. Just in time to help boost Christmas spending so he can claim a "recovery" and a "robust, booming economy". Bzzzt.
Prescription Drugs
You mean the watered-down piece of shit that not even some Republicans wanted to sign because it held no real benefits for the majority and was actually just a step closer to privatization of Medicare? Bzzzzt.
War on Terrorism
Are you even still in the room? We totally forgot about Osama (a real live admitted terrorist) so that Dubya could go spend billions of our dollars destroying Saddam (a bad guy, but no terrorist [and don't even START that bullshit about his hosting Al Queda because the evidence does NOT support that]). So now, instead of making the world safer by taking out a very dangerous terrorist group he has scattered them to the winds (think cancerous metastasizing) and has gone to great (and expensive) lengths to further destabilize the Middle East by creating a desert-style Vietnam situation. Instead of using the political and sympathetic capital showered upon us by the world post-9/11 he has squandered it to the point where we are now feared and reviled like never before in history.
Oh, and did I forget squandering what was a budgetary surplus, creating the fastest-growing budget deficit this country has evern seen?
Bush promised smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and a foreign policy of global cooperation. So far we have double the size of government, destroyed any sense of fiscal responsibility (all the while mired in a preventable recession) and bullied the rest of the world into hating us (even our allies are nervous these days).
Sounds like a great job....
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Besides, NASA is too incompetent to bring this off. They haven't been able to build a new launch vehicle in over thirty years. But they've spent more money trying than they spent on Apollo.
NASA has been described as "the world's largest sheltered workshop". For good reasons.
Am I the only one who thinks that going to the moon at this point in history is not a good investment? For our current state of technology and economy, it is simply an unsustainable endeavor. We're still using chemical rockets for propulsion, and haven't even perfected nuclear fusion yet, forchrysakes.
Yeah, we can get there, but just think for moment how much cost and effort setting up and maintaining a permanent moonbase will cost us. You thought it was expensive to resupply the ISS, well how many bank-breaking rocket trips per year will it take to support a few people living on the moon, much less Mars?
Wouldn't a wiser investment be to put that space exploration money into fusion research, and the superconducting supercollider, and whatever other "high science" research projects are waiting in the wings or are just a glint in a Caltech professor's eye? How about we first devise a more workable propulsion system and more efficient and transportable energy source, things that also have the fringe benefit of being applicable on Earth, before we spend umpty-five-gazillion on going back to the moon?
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
At the dawn of the 15th century, China ruled the seas. An armada of Chinese ships explored Japan, Tiawan, and the islands of the Pacific. Turning west, they reached Arabia and sailed all the way to the east coast of Africa. The ships were much larger than anything that had sailed the seas before. The largest were 400 feet long and 150 wide and carried nine masts. They were larger than anything that would be seen in the west for centuries to come. The Chinese fleets were fabulously successful. They carried loads of Chinese silk and porcelain to western ports and returned with all the riches of Africa and Arabia. Between the turn of the century and 1433, the treasure fleets sailed seven times. These expeditions established a vast trade network for China. They also included military conquests that brought a huge amount of land under Chinese control. At the conclusion of the last expedition, the Chinese Empire reached the Persian Gulf. The next expedition might had rounded the horn of Africa. China might have "discovered" and even colonized Europe. The ships held unmatched technology and were easily capable of reaching the Americas. China stood at the brink of dominating the world. But there was no next expedition. Instead, there was a change in political control. The new Ming emperors pulled back the fleets. The treasure ships were allowed to rot or deliberately burned to prevent their use. China turned inward, became insular, abandoned its distant colonies. It would be the Europeans that went on to discover the New World. And Europeans who would reach, and dominate, much of China for centuries to come. In 1969, Neil Armstrong placed his foot in a slightly gritty powder and left the first human mark on the moon. The United States had conducted a series of expeditions into space, using successively more capable craft. The rocket that delivered men to the moon was 363' long, the largest ever made. They were the most technologically advanced devices of their time. Under Democratic leadership, they had reached another world. Seven times, from 1969 to 1972, craft from the United States reached the moon. They were fabulously successful. They delivered a bounty of knowledge, a peaceful explosion of technology, and a focus for the world. America stood at the brink of endless possibilities. Another push might have established colonies, it might have lead to clean and endless energy, it might have... There was no next time.
I'm not sure what you would really accomplish with a permanent base on the moon. It has very low gravity, no atmosphere and its in doubt if there is water. If you want to do something useful in space put a permenent colony on Mars. Don't waste the time and energy planning another goofy Apollo strategy where astronauts spend huge amounts of time on the round trip to spend very little time there picking up rocks. Send cargo ships followed by a one way trip with colonists who are there to stay. Mars probably has enough resources that a viable, self sustaining colony can be placed there and it will be a nicer place to live than the moon, especially if you start terraforming.
You've accomplished something if you establish a second home for humanity. You also create a real new frontier which is something this world desperately needs for the adventurous spirits.
It would be one big positive for Bush in a sea of negatives if he actually made this happen but there are a bunch of doubts that arise:
- One its become pretty clear he is using the U.S. Treasury's credit card to borrow and spend the U.S. in to an economic boom to insure his reelection. He is spending like a drunk sailor and this may just be more of the same.
- Boeing is heading for fairly deep trouble. It can't compete with Airbus, its was caught cheating on launch contract bids and was suspended by the Air Force. The air force tanker contract was also designed to pump tax dollars in to Boeing but the deal stunk so bad they haven't been able to get it signed. I wouldn't be suprised if Bush wants a program to pump a whole bunch of tax dollars in to Boeing to keep it afloat.
- NASA, like the DOD, is one big pork barrel. Politicians pour money in it to get votes and pump up the economy in the large number of places powerful politicians have managed to put NASA centers and contractors. It really isn't about space exploration any more. Its just a jobs program which is why the manned space program hasn't dont anything new in 20 years. A new space initiative will be doomed if it goes down the same path. It will be just like the ISS where vast sums are scattered around the country and squandered to no good effect.
The only likely way you will be able to have an effective space program in the U.S. again is to gut NASA and start something more closely resembling the Lockheed skunk works in its glory days under Kelly Johnson. You need a lean, mean team of gifted engineers and managers in one place who are devoted to getting a job done and not in building empires and in a contest to see how big and bloated they can make their budgets and staffs. I really think an International Space Agency would be the way to go and pull all the best engineers from the U.S., Canada, China, Russia and Europe together in one place and tell them to get the job done. The down side is the politicians wont support it unless they get a share of the pork and it would be doomed before it started because of politics.
@de_machina
As for the propellant, it would be nice to have space tankers for delivering the fuel and only the fuel to LEO. A good part of the launch price is reliability. If you only have fuel on board, you can cut the expences. If rockets are 50% cheaper but 25% of them fail, it's still OK for the space tankers.
If the moon flew planes into our skyscrapers, we would have people on it inside of a week. :)
If current events are any guide, we'd have troops bogged down in a quagmire, looking for non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, in a Middle Eastern country with no relation to the moon beyond its dominant religion using the crescent moon as a symbol of their faith.
And regardless of whether or not the job was done, we would leave the moon just in time for our President to use the "victory" footage in his re-election campaign.
In the meantime, the Justice Department would use the threat of moon-men to justify warrantless searches of your library borrowing, while granting even more power to the very intelligence agencies that failed to predict the attack in the first place.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Yeah, there's a lot of us "South Park Republicans" who aren't happy with lots of Bush's policies, like huge spending increases, blatant pandering with steel tariffs, and corporate welfare in the energy bill. But as long as all the Democrats have to offer is "Bush is a Nazi", they're going to continue to get their asses kicked.
Ever see that episode of the Sopranos, where the gambling addict owes money to the mob and can't pay? So they take over his business and run it into the ground, borrowing money they have no intention of repaying, so they can recoup the loss and leave him in the hole. That's what this is like. The deficit has reached a record level and they keep charging more and more extravagant purchases. They even started a war as a corporate welfare project. We have the mob answering the phone.
Yeah, there's a lot of us "South Park Republicans" who aren't happy with lots of Bush's policies, like huge spending increases, blatant pandering with steel tariffs, and corporate welfare in the energy bill. But as long as all the Democrats have to offer is "Bush is a Nazi", they're going to continue to get their asses kicked.
I don't even care if Bush is a Nazi. Did the Nazis overspend this much? He is running this country into the hole and nobody cares! We have been in uncharted territory for a long time. The deficit has never been this high. How are we ever going to pay for all this shit? Doesn't anybody care about the future anymore? Do you need some sort of song and dance to convince you that the country can't survive four more years of looting on this scale?
"Actually, Bush inherited a nicely balanced budget (indeed, in the surplus)"
Bush is an idiot, but your very first sentence demonstrates that you have no clue either. The budget was never "balanced" while Clinton was in office: every single year that national debt was at least hundred billion dollars higher at the end of the year than the start. As with pretty much everything else Clinton did, he "balanaced the budget" not by actually, really, spending no more than he took in, but by redefining what "balanced" meant.
"But the fact is that by this time 2001 (2002 at the latest) the economy should have corrected and been back to a more stable state."
ROTFLMAO. You don't correct nearly a decade of economic mismanagement by Clinton in a year or two. Bush's policies have been insane, but the recession was an inevitable result of Clinton's perpetual low-interest-rate policies and the dot bomb speculative bubble they created.
Ya know...
It seems to me that there are certain people that would hate Bush even if he figured a way to eliminate 100% of poverty. Not that he will, but my point is that some of the posts I have been reading have the tone that "it doesn't matter what he does, I hate Bush".
I have the unprovable itch that some of these same people who are bashing his as-yet unanounced plans for moonbase 1 would have rooted and cheered if certain other presidents had made this same decision.
I have also seen numerous comments regarding Bushing fouling up the economy. I won't argue whether or not his plans to help the economy will work--that remains to be seen. Ask me again in 4 years, which is about how long it takes for a president's policies take to be felt (sometimes longer). If, even for a moment, you think that something Bush does today will affect the economy tommorrow, you are sadly mistaken.
Let me make this clear: I DON'T support everything Bush does. I don't like the Patriot act, and I certainly don't care for the way he has handled Iraq (if he wants to go around removing dictators, be up front about it, and be consistent). I do think Saddam needed to be removed. Yes I am aware that the US helped him gain power, but that was not GWB's decision (altough it may have been his dad's, which is NOT the same thing at all, no matter what anyone thinks).
I AM however, willing to let him try somthing different. So, what the hey, let's go to the moon. Just one thing. Before you blast Bush for this, think about whether or not you would have supported this idea if Clinton had been pushing it. If so, then don't rant and rave about how evil Bush is. Not that I expect everyone will be honest about this, but come on, give it a shot.
Now, having defended Bush, even a little bit, I am ready for the flame war. I expect that I have offended a good number of you, and that's okay--I expect to. But let's make one thing clear--I am not trolling, and this is not flame bait. I want to hear honest and considered opinions.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
OK, we get it. You hate George Bush. When I click on "Read More..." I had hoped to see discussion about returning to the moon. However, 90% of the posts are off topic (arguably) and redundant (definitely) about politics. The topic was not about the effect on the national budget of going to the moon, or the job Bush is doing in office. How about a compromise where you post on-topic and just end with something like BTWIRRRHGWBFMOVSR (BTW I really really really hate GWB for my own very specific reasons). Or go start your own Demdot ~Politics for Nerds. Democrats that matter. Have a nice day.
knock, knock.... does anyone in the class remember what this discussion topic was about?
Going back to the Moon.
The first Moon program, begun by JFK, was an absolute boon to the economy, returning about 7 times to the economy what was spent on the program. Most tech jobs today, and their subsidiary jobs, are a direct spin-off of the Moon program... transistors, plastics, ceramics, biology, medicine, miniturization of computers, software technology (and perhaps Slashdot itself)
If a return to the Moon has the same effect this time as it did last time the gains will create employement for a LOT of people and be a boon to the economy.
However, there is one thing we should do first: move our energy base from Carbon to Hydrogen. A Hydrogen Project similar to the "Manhatten Project", sans the secrecy, should be initiated to complete the necessary research, if it needs completion, and begin the transfer of our power generation and transportation industries. Solar Power Tower II is a very good start. Forward thinking communities could divert resources from dead-end Windmill plans to SPT2 sites and get a better return on their investment.
There is less than two decades of Carbon reserves remaining. We've got to get moving...
Running with Linux for over 20 years!