O'Keefe Under Fire for Hubble, ISS Decisions

chuckpeters writes "The battle over saving Hubble is just starting to heat up! The House Science Committee Democrats released their views and estimates report. Recommendation number two was that until Congress gets better information on the long term costs of Bush's Moon/Mars initiative, NASA's 2005 funding requests should go to existing programs. The House Science Committee has also decided that they want to hear from outside experts on Bush's space initiative. Just as Hubble isn't going quietly into the night, Bush's Moon/Mars plan isn't going quickly into space!"

Comments

We need Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we need a manned Mars mission badly, and I Am worried the Democrats will kill it just because Bush signed off on the idea. It would be great to keep Hubble but how long can we put off manned space exploration? We have been dragging our collective heels now since the end of the Apollo missions.

Plus, I'd actually like to see it happen in my lifetime.

Re:We need Mars

[jatencio]

I would like to people go to Mars in my lifetime as well. However, I do not think we should go so far as to remove research that is good science for fantasies and risks that just do not need to made at this time. The Hubble telescope and various projects should not be scraped in order to go to Mars. I think Hubble's recent deep space images is enough to show that it is still useful and valuable.

Re:We need Mars

[jridley]

Bush himself will kill it if he's still in office come 2005. It's election year grandstanding, nothing more. Bush is practically anti-science.

Re:We need Mars

[nojomofo]

Except he won't kill it. He just won't fund it.

Re:We need Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not think we should go so far as to remove research that is good science for fantasies

As much as you scientists would hate to admit it:

What makes space exploration go? Money. Where do we get money from? Mostly from the public. How do we inspire the public? With showmanship, fantasies and bold plans - not with dry science.

I think Hubble's recent deep space images is enough to show that it is still useful and valuable.

Yeah. Those images will be really useful when the next (near) extinction level asteroid impacts with the Earth.

Survival comes first - pretty pictures come next.

Re:We need Mars

[Lord Apathy]

Nice way to start an intelligent conversation there, buckweetie but I'll bite. Your a fool if you think robots are adaquate for anything other than scoping out the place. For instance the current 2 robots are telling us that water flowed on Mars. How reliable is that? Not very, untill a geologists gets to mars and looks at the rocks first hand we'll never know for sure.

Robots don't have intutition ether. Some of the greatest discoveries in sience have been done because a scientist right at the moment decited to do something else. Your robot might be looking at the rock in front of him and miss the fossel beside it.

Re:We need Mars

[dharma21]

Bush: Hey we're going to the Moon and Mars!! NASA: Great, we get more money? Bush: No scrap all the programs that you have currently. Don't know you that we plan on teaching the kids that the Great Lakes are only 10,000 years old and the Grand Canyon was created by God not the Colorodo River?? Who needs this Telescope thing seeing into the past. It can't be working right, The universe is only 10-20,000 tyears old. In other words, it's not a democrat vs. republican things. It's Science vs. the religous right. Good going to the Dems to stop the steamrolling shutdown of good science!

Re:We need Mars

[chasm!killer]

Um, how do the Democrats kill it? Take over Congress and the Presidency? That might work, but then if they actually decide NASA should spend money on the space program, they could make everything happen faster.

Don't bet any politician, especially Bush, has signed off on anything until the money actually goes where you think it went....

Re:We need Mars

[thrillseeker]

Except he won't kill it. He just won't fund it.

Bush doesn't fund - Congress does that - and you can answer whether it will get funded or not by surmising whether social programs or science will get funded, asking which one will buy more votes, and which party believes in one over the other.

Re:We need Mars

[jatencio]

Well, I think the current Mars mission is proof that we can do some real science and still get the public involved. I think was NASA has been doing recently with Mars has been fascinating and I would like us to continue our space exploration.

Survival comes first - pretty pictures come next.

I whole heartily agree. And a lot of research can be done about survival right here on Earth. Not only that, by the time we will be ready for Mars, we should know enough about survival to sustain a small population on Mars. Currently, we cannot do so. If Earth was wiped out tomorrow and we had people on Mars. They would be pretty much screwed because they still need to be supported here on Earth.

Re:We need Mars

[Dalroth]

Bullshit. Understanding comes first. Pie in the sky dreams that we would actually survive if we had 5 people on Mars come next.

Bryan

Re:We need Mars

[Jeremiah Blatz]

I agree that we need Mars, but face it, we can't even keep a useful station in LEO, and we can't even live in the Gobi desert. We need to do a lot more small ecosystem research before we can do anythign useful there. Mars is an excellent goal, but Bush is just blowing smoke with his Mars plan. It's not designed to get us a permanent human settlement anywhere, it's designed to make it look like Bush's vision for the future involves something other than permanent war and abrupt climate change.

Re:We need Mars

[SB9876]

We lived in the ignorance of the danger of large extraplanetary impactors until very recently and it hasn't done us in yet. A base on Mars won't be a viable escape plan for at least a century until the Mars base becomes truly self-sufficient. Until then, we're much better off doing cataloging of asteroids and getting a better understanding of the solar system around us - which is information derived from the very sort of science you want to cut with the Mars mission.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a manned Mars mission but not at the cost of gutting a very successful robotic space program which already uses far less money than our rather poor manned space program. If you want to find a place to cut budgets, kill the ISS - it isn'ta valid starting point for going to Mars because of the orbital inclination and is basically useless from a scientific perspective.

Something like %35 of the NASA scientific papers in the last decade have come from Hubble and the repair mission would cost 2% of the estimated cost to finish the ISS. It's just perverse to kill Hubble and then continue to work on the ISS which is a much bigger money hog. If we want to send people to Mars, we need to be decisive and just do it. The only way NASA can be decisive about it is to free up the majority of its budget. The only way it can do that is to remove the Shuttle and ISS funding and direct it towards the focussed devlopment of technology directly related to getting to Mars and the Moon.

Furthermore, if you want to inspire the public, look at the unmanned space missions. A far larger proportion of the public is familiar with the Hubble and the Mars rovers than with the ISS. The former have returned enourmous amounts of valuable scientific information and been the most popular attractions at the NASA website. It sys something that the heavist traffic in the history of NASA came from a pair of robotic rovers.

Re:We need Mars

[gears5665]

I agree with much of what you say. The entire world was fixated on their TVs as America took the first step on Mars. More than anything since all eyes were pointing to one place. This kind of thing has tremendous power. And more importantly it was peaceful and nonviolent. A perfect goal for an enlighted society.

O'Keefe

[Anonymous Coward]

Sean O'Keefe is a bean counter(accountant) Bush sent to NASA to trim its budget. Neither of them have any interest in space exploration or science. I saw O'Keefe's new conference on CNN after the Bush announcement and it was sickening watching someone who had no vision, knowledge of or interest in space, dodging questions and avoiding specifics on this supposedly bold new initiative. You would think they would have prepared for this announcement and presented a bold vision, rather than looking like a deer in the headlights not knowing exactly what all this means or being unwilling to admit it.

Having seen the funding timeline for this at the news conference its pretty clear what the plan is. Kill off the space shuttle and the ISS while you divert all the space enthusiasts attention with the promise of bold missions to Mars and the Moon. Of course none of those start ramping up for years and until you've already started killing off space exploration and when it comes time to bend metal on the new projects, Bush will be long gone, no one will want to pay the tab and the conservatives will have managed to kill off the civilian space program. Conservatives love killing off all parts of government not associated with the military or law enforcement.

This is a perplexing dilemna because killing off the space shuttle and ISS is exactly what the civilian space program needs to be come viable again. But when you do it you actually need to have a viable new program to replace it and this new program simply isn't viable.

You get a definitive clue something is wrong because they are going to continue wasting money to finish the completely useless ISS while they kill off the really valuable Hubble. Get a clue. The Hubble, like all the great observatories, is a priceless resource and they are one thing that should survive out of the current NASA along with JPL's efforts.

To me this smacks of the classic, clueless political manuevering and bureaucractic thinking that has been devestating space exploration for the last 30+ years.

Re:O'Keefe

[Martin Blank]

Conservatives love killing off all parts of government not associated with the military or law enforcement.

Maybe because that's all it should be doing at the levels it does.

Look, I'm all for certain reasonable regulations and maybe a few social safety nets funded by FedGov, and NASA has done some very good things over the years that might have been at best difficult to do otherwise, but look at the budget sizes for the X-Prize stuff. Even the Rutan project isn't in the billions of dollars, though it would be if NASA had funded it. If there's anything where federal regulation needs to be eased, it's in the general area of spaceflight. Certification of craft means coming up with more explanations and filing more paperwork than just about anything short of an environmental review -- and that's when you're a government contractor. I know some of the X-Prize groups have gotten some red tape cut, but that was more to avoid the press hassles of the FAA appearing to slow things for no good reason. It took Sea Launch a few years and a few miracles to get their clearance, and even then their launches don't cross US soil at any relevant altitude.

NASA has become a feeding trough for contractors. Yes, they do some spectacular things, but at often vastly inflated costs. Let's see space opened fully for competition, and then see how fast costs can come down, even within NASA. Someone would be putting people into space quickly and inexpensively using simple booster/capsule technology, because it's simple, cheap, and it works incredibly well. We should be going back to this, not funding a new shuttle.

Re:O'Keefe

[jafac]

WORST OF ALL, is watching NASA channel's little promo video, with Bush giving his "heroic" speech about the US's future in space, complete with patriotic-sounding music, and background video of Apollo footage, and waving flags. It absolutely reminds me of the old Soviet propaganda films about their space program during the race to the moon.

The whole point of this is;
to defund the programs that are doing science, and might give us clues to global warming or ozone depletion. The neocons feel; "why should we pay our tax dollars to learn facts which, ultimately, are going to cut into our profits."

Re:O'Keefe

[jdelisle]

Conservatives love killing off all parts of government not associated with the military or law enforcement Please stop your rant, because it is losing focus. If you think NASA isn't associated with the military, you are sorely mistaken.

This is election-season politics...

[Anonymous Coward]

...by the democrats, but if it saves Hubble, I'm 100% for it. Hubble is the only good thing to come out of the shuttle program. NASA wants to bury that fact is quickly as possible.

HERES THE ANSWER

[stratjakt]

Kick ass telescope on the far side of the moon.

The end.

Re:the repair / maintenance missions are too risky

[turnstyle]

Personally, I think the Mars mission shows the promise of increasingly relying on robotics and AI.

We're better off sending bots unless there's a practical need to send peeps.

DO NOT KILL THE MARS PROGRAM

[DesScorp]

Look, save Hubble, fine, I agree. But I sense glee that this is a setback for the administration, and there almost seems to be smugness in here that the Mars program may be in danger now.

Do NOT try to kill manned Mars exploration just because you hate Bush. That's pretty fuckin' petty.

If you've got real reasons to oppose manned Martian exploration, fine, then say so. But to root for damage to manned planetary exploration to score points against a politician is lame.

Re:DO NOT KILL THE MARS PROGRAM

[HarveyBirdman]

If you've got real reasons to oppose manned Martian exploration, fine, then say so.

OK. It would be a resource draining, PR boondoggle that would follow the same pattern as Apollo. We work hard so a few people can bounce around on the surface of another world, and then the public loses interest, resulting in another 40 year setback, and no serious move into space in my lifetime.

We need to start doing the solid, logical, incremental steps into space that we should have started in the 1950's. Orbital industry, solar power farms, something at L4/L5, then a permanent colony on the Moon and THEN Mars. NASA should bend over backward to encourage the private sector. Get serious radical new launch tech, like space elevators and lasers and mass drivers.

Re:DO NOT KILL THE MARS PROGRAM

[0123456]

"Do NOT try to kill manned Mars exploration just because you hate Bush. That's pretty fuckin' petty."

I don't want to kill it because I hate Bush, I want to kill it because it's a pointless and expensive boondoggle that serves no rational purpose. We've already blown tens of billions of dollars sending government bureaucrats to one barren rock, why spend hundreds of billions sending them to another barren rock?

But then I don't have to worry about that, because as far as I can see, the plan is that once ISS and the shuttle have been killed, the Moon/Mars budget will be cut and NASA's manned space program will die: maybe they'll be allowed to keep the OSP/CRV/CEV capsule or whatever it's called these days and send up an astronaut or two a year, if they're lucky.

There will be a day when it makes sense for people to go to Mars. But those people will be called 'tourists' and they'll be paying their own way on transports far cheaper and more sophisticated than anything NASA is going to come up with in the next few decades.

Re:DO NOT KILL THE MARS PROGRAM

[applemasker]

Maybe THIS Mars program should be killed though. I have yet to understand the reasoning behind W's plan to "return to the Moon" first. If there is any reason why this is a necessary, logical precursor to manned missions to Mars, I haven't heard it.

In fact, I would say that while retiring the Shuttle is a good idea, continuing to marry the ISS to the Shuttle isn't. Why not put the rest of the pieces up on ELVs (if you have to, buy some Arianie 5's from ESA), use fewer shuttle flights for "assembly-only," forget about hauling cargo. Simultaneously, launch a Soyuz a month, rotate crews like that, get the darn ISS staffed the way it was designed to be. Enough of this "caretaker crew" B.S.

Oh, and of course, we are killing the STS (in 2010) and ISS (in 2016) to fund this Moon/Mars project, let's not forget that. If allowed, it will become another black hole which will drain funds away from other NASA programs (like STS/ISS has done for the last 30 years). We'll never get Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) or the next generation of Galileo or Cassini-class missions with this project. Nevermind that Americans spend more money on potato chips than NASA in a given year.

Too bad fixing Hubble is "too dangerous," it's one of the few things manned spaceflight can do (and has done) amazingly well.

Re:DO NOT KILL THE MARS PROGRAM

[0123456]

"It'll cost us the billions we're spending today to come up with those "cheaper and more sophisticated transports."

No, private companies will spend the billions, not taxpayers... and odds are it will be much cheaper and more efficient to do privately, just like the majority of other government programs.

Re:DO NOT KILL THE MARS PROGRAM

[pavon]

Do NOT try to kill manned Mars exploration just because you hate Bush. That's pretty fuckin' petty.

They aren't trying to kill the "Mars Program" because they hate Bush. The Mars program doesn't exist - it is nothing more than empty words to make Bush look good. That is what they are trying to kill - a lie that makes Bush look good.

Whether we should have one, I think the answer is not yet - or atleast not the program Bush has in mind. In my opinion, there are only two valid reasons for a public space program - science and colonization. Sending a man to Mars won't help science in anyway, and could even hurt it by diverting money away from good programs, and contaminating Mars before we are done studying it.

As far a colonizing goes, we obviously will have to work toward that in small steps. But from what I understand, getting there isn't the main obstacle to colonization - The only real problem to solve would be landing. Everything else involved in traveling to Mars just needs time and money.

The real problem that we need to be looking at if we are serious about colonizing is how to create a sustainable living environment on mars. The two biodome projects were failures (from a working standpoint, not a learning one), the ISS is really just a hotel. Not to mention how little we know about the long term effects on the human body in Martian gravity. Until we figure out how to become self supporting on Mars we will not be colonists, but tourists.

Suppose we did follow Bush's Mars program, flew someone to the Mars and back, and every one is happy. At this point we will A) get bored, and kill the program just like we did with the moon, or B) decide to put up a colony. If we put one up as soon as possible (to keep the momentem we have) it will not be anywhere near sustainable, will be massive expensive to maintain (think ISS far, far away), and it will be useless scientifically. If we instead work towards a sustainable station, then by the time we are ready, we will need to entirely redo our transportation system anyway, again like reviving Apollo.

So at this point a manned Mars mission would be pointless. We should keep building probes and telescopes, and begin research on growing food on mars, and wait off on a manned craft until it is actually usefull.

People are taking W's proposal seriously?!?

[burgburgburg]

Oh, come on. W's Moon/Mars proposal is less funded than "No Child Left Behind". He wasn't being serious. He was trying to distract everyone from the fact that the deficit was so severe (and set to get much worse if he gets the tax cuts changed to permanent) that he doesn't have room to do anything real. Hence:

W: Where are we going?
US: Mars!
W: When are we going?
US: Real soon!

Re:Honestly, I think this is what O'Keefe wanted

[swschrad]

you can get a machine to do that, in fact, it only takes a pull-down resistor to lock out options.

o'keefe is just a doorstop. he needs to go.

Re:Do we?

[bad enema]

We don't need Mars.

We don't need the Moon either.

But Bush needs the votes of the geek community.

O'keefe

[USAPatriot]

Listening to O'keefe on a press conference about a month ago, when he addressed the Hubble issue in detail, it all became clear to me: It's pure politics.

After the CAIB, he was blasted, questioned and doubted to no end, so what does a skilled polititian do? cut your losses and move on. Well, he did just that. So now he's gonna follow the CAIB like it's the road to salvation. To the letter.

The CAIB puts forward a number of requirements for shuttle flights, including the ability to service the Shuttle via ISS if something goes wrong...among a host of other "inconvenient" requirements.

O'keefe decided to follow the CAIB to the letter so that means that going to the hubble will "break the laws" of the CAIB (Hubble is in an entirely different, incompatible orbit...still you'd think that being the thing called SHUTTLE it shouldn't be an issue, but it is)

So servicing the Hubble will violate his mandate to play it safest and thus it won't happen because it's "too risky" according to the CAIB mantra.

Re:Do we?

[dingo]

Again...why?
What i like the most about our little "community" is that we tend to be intelligent...so lets ask the question...why do we want this? There are lots of problems at home to fix first that should get votes first.

It's an election year

[fm6]

Bush's Moon/Mars plan isn't going quickly into space!

Which is probably more or less what Dubya wants. He can't actually believe they're going to give him the money for such a huge project. But when they shoot the proposal down, he has great material for his stump speeches. He's the Leader with the Bold Initiative -- unfortunately vetoed by a bunch of unimaginative pork-lovers.

Hopefully the blatant cynicism of this ploy will be apparent to the voters.

Both?

[DarkBlackFox]

Why does it always end up as "This or That" and never "both"? Hubble or Mars? Why can't they spare the extra 2 or 3% of the military budget and funnel it into NASA... after all, Hubble could potentially be used for military purposes, no? It's this sort of tightwadding of money that causes the managerial problems plaguing NASA today, as money gets yanked around to different places, with never enough left over to get jobs done the right way. As long as this sort of crap keeps up, we'll never get much farther than low earth orbit anytime soon. Just a few decades ago, we had a focus- to get to the moon. We got to the moon. What have we now? A leaky space station with pieces falling off, remnants of an aging and grounded shuttle fleet, and not much of a grand vision to get anywhere. While we do have 2 rovers poking and prodding Mars, America needs to find it's sense of adventure again, the spirit of pioneering that founded this country. Lewis and Clark headed west knowing the risks and found the Pacific Ocean. I've had enough of this safety and political correctness crap. Yes, it's risky, yes, it's dangerous. But how far can humanity progress without taking risks?

Bleh, that turned into a rant pretty quick, but I stand by it, so mod accordingly.

What is the big deal?

[B5_geek]

I know people will mod this as troll -99 but this is a serious question that I hope somebody can answer for me.

What tangible benefits has Hubble provided us? Other then advancing our knowledge of and expanding the "pure-sciences" involved how has humanity improved by this telescope?

It's my understanding that _ALL_ telescopes goal is to see as far back in time as possible. We want to prove or disprove the Big-Bang theory. What if we do prove it. Then what?

Please don't misunderstand me. I feel very strongly that all pure science must be pursued, I just don't understand what the big deal about Hubble is. Let's keep using it untill it disintegrates during re-entry, why invest more money into it?

Re:What is the big deal?

[Abcd1234]

Yeah! And while we're at it, we should stop building all other telescopes, including the JWST. Hey, we should also stop development of all supercolliders, too. And we should shut down all those neutrino observatories... what are we learning from them? And what about that gravitational wave observatory? Not to mention all those radio telescopes that are sucking up our tax dollars!

Telescopes, just like all those other instruments, serve as a gateway to understanding the universe. Supercolliders allow us to understand the world of the incredibly small. Telescopes allow us to understand the world of the unimaginablely large. All of them help us to further are knowledge about the world around us. The Hubble is a key instrument in this search for knowledge and one which does not have an adequate replacement (and, no, the JWST is not a Hubble-equivalent instrument). Allowing the Hubble to vaporize in the atmosphere would effectively shut down an incredibly source of information about our universe. Moreover, The Hubble is, and will continue to be, our only servicable orbiting astronomy platform... this is, IMHO, a rather valuable resource which shouldn't just be thrown away (just consider all the upgrades that have been done to Hubble, and which were planned for the next service mission).

Re:What is the big deal?

[mph]

Supercolliders exist so we can understand fission and fusion reactions better, which provides a tangible benefit to mankind in the development of fusion/fission power. Telescopes don't provide a tangible benefit, but they provide us with pretty pictures.

No, that's not really the case. Fission and fusion reactions have been very well understood for decades. (Fusion, in part, due to astronomers. You see that big glowing fusion reactor in the sky?) Producing power by fission or fusion is an engineering, not physics, problem. It's pretty well solved in the fission case, and not well solved in the fusion case.

Modern particle physics, including supercollider experiments, is about as far removed from practical applications as astrophysics and cosmology. In fact, the fields overlap in various ways; big bang nucleosynthesis, cold dark matter, neutrino oscillations, etc.

And knock it off with the "pretty pictures" crap. The "pretty pictures" are a PR and education effort, not the scientific product. If we don't produce the pretty pictures, and popular explanations to go with them, we're attacked for living in an ivory tower, too elitist to share our results with the public. When we do attempt education and public outreach, we get your crap about "just pretty pictures." Can't win. Maybe if you'd read the articles, instead of adopting the Playboy approach, you'd learn something about the science.

Re:What is the big deal?

[mph]

Nope, wrong. Fission and fusion have not been well understood.

Huh. Odd, then, that there are all those commercial fission power plants, and we have fusion bombs, and fusion reactions in the lab, and understand the fusion mechanism of the sun (including to former "solar neutrino problem").

Even all the elemential particles aren't known yet.

All of the particles relevant to commercial energy production by fission or fusion are known and well-understood. If you disagree, please state specifically what problems remain in our understanding, that are relevant to the practical applications you describe.

Sorry, but staring at blobs in the sky and making up theories about how they got there isn't science. The world is no better off with Hubble.

This is the most asinine statement I've seen all day. And on Slashdot, that's saying a lot. Claiming that astronomers "stare at blobs" is like claiming biologists watch bunnies hop around all day. Astrophysics and cosmology are bona fide sciences, and it's absurd that this needs to be explained to you. Conclusions arrived at by multiple, independent methods provide specific information about the universe, and testable predictions. The cosmological parameters, for example, come from cosmic microwave background studies, supernova accelleration experiments, big bang nucleosynthesis (models and measurements), and other methods, and together paint coherent and consistent, testable, picture of the universe. In turn, these parameters affect simulations of structure formation in the universe, which can then be compared to observations from deep galaxy surveys.

To presume that we're a bunch of naval-gazers making guesses about "blobs" is an incredible insult, and arises only from your inability or lack of desire to learn anything about the state of modern astrophysics.

Another way

[fm6]

That way of looking at it assumes that it's more than a boondoggle. By which is meant, that's it's a serious proposal that Bush actually believes in. Frankly, I'm sceptical.

Election year again...

[homerjs42]

I hate election year politics. In an election year the whole political process becomes a zero-sum -- the Democrats want to prevent the Republicans from accomplishing anything that looks good, and the Republicans want to prevent the Democrats from doing anything that could be construed as positive. So who actually is losing in this case? NASA, the taxpayers, and (probably) whoever loses in the election. But all in all it sucks. Lets just divert the government funding for candidates to NASA and maybe we could get some interesting news.

Go ahead, mod me offtopic (It really isn't, though)

What do you want?

[panxerox]

"Just as Hubble isn't going quietly into the night, Bush's Moon/Mars plan isn't going quickly into space!" And thats what we all want .. right? To dump money into a project that is at the end of it's lifespan, granted the project was wildly successfull. And belittle the project that we all wanted to see succed as kids just because you don't like Bush? The space program is more important than any one president or one project or one election. When I see the democrats talk about the president "wasting money" on the space program I want to scream. Don't get me wrong I have some strong misgivings about Bush's policys and the direction that he's taking the country, but this just goes to show where the Democratic party is these days i.e. anywhere the president isent even if where he is is right. The Democratic party used to be all for the space program, where are they now, they have traded the future of the human race in for a few votes. I know I'm gonna get slammed with negs for this but I don't care this pisses me off.

Agreed, except on one point

[MobyDisk]

Conservatives love killing off all parts of government not associated with the military or law enforcement.

That's probably an accurate statement about Conservativism. They believe government exists to keep the peace and enforce the law, little more. But the space program is tied very closely to the military, and less directly, to law enforcement. So that part of things doesn't add-up.

I'm sure Bush would want nothing more than a 5 megawatt laser with a phase conjugate target tracking system that could destroy a human target from space. It's the perfect peacetime weapon.

Also, why does kill off the shuttle and ISS make a civilian space program viable? A better idea might be to have NASA assist other companies in developing space-faring gear, and with things such as the X-prize.

Re:Agreed, except on one point

[MarkusH]

That's probably an accurate statement about Conservativism. They believe government exists to keep the peace and enforce the law, little more. But the space program is tied very closely to the military, and less directly, to law enforcement. So that part of things doesn't add-up.

Every time they look up into the heavens, they show that the world wasn't created 6000 years ago. We can't have any government program that disagrees with what the bible says, now can we?

Re:Agreed, except on one point

[October_30th]

Ok.

That's a fine list but it would be far less impressive if you'd listed the birth and death dates of the individuals. They were almost all creatures of their own time - when it was either fashionable or practically compulsory to believe in God.

Face it. Religion is fighting a losing battle here just as it did with the earth-centric view. That was demolished and now it's time to demolish the idea of the soul. Good riddance.

I guess it's just hard for some of us to accept that the man is just an animal. We live our lives, lacking anything better to do and devise reason later. We're born from oblivion; bear children, hellbound as ourselves; go into oblivion and no-one will miss us when the universe dies.

Re:It make sense, since it all about politics

[fm6]

The full effects of the NASA vision change won't be felt until probably the _next_ election cycle.

You think the local politicians and business leaders in Ohio and Florida are ignorant of how this program would affect them? They now have a huge incentive to get Bush re-elected. A little extra enthusiasm in this area translates to a lot of extra votes.

Of course, it's always possible that Bush is idealistically pushing this program with no thought of benefiting from it politically. And if you believe that, I've got this bank account you can help me get out of Nigeria...

The cost of space exploration in the 21st century

[Anonymous Coward]

With the notable exception of the space program back during JFK's administration, not a whole hell of a lot that is spectacular or innovative has happene in space exploration. For god's sake! We put a man on the moon in 1969. Have we been anywhere else? No. Now we are talking about getting a manned mission to Mars going. Nice. But when all is said and done, we know this isn't going to happen as quickly. Not because of the time it will take to get the project going though. Because of all the rampant corporate fascism and cronyism in the current administration. Huge sums of money will be taken from YOU (the taxpayers) and funnelled into this supposed project to go to Mars. That money will make it into the hands of contractors who will claim growing expenses and line their pockets. Then when the Bush admin is thrown out of office or we get a good Democrat back in office, we'll suddenly be hearing news stories saying... "whatever happened to those plans to go to Mars"? There will be scandals involving the contractors who went bust, but not before the CEO grabbed the money and ran off to the tropics. (Bastards)

This is the wrong approach. If we as humans from the planet Earth (not Americans, not Japanese, not French or German or Europeans or whatever you may be) are serious about exploring space, we need to take this into our own hands as one big world project. Like the egyptians who had the pyramids built as a civic project, this should be the same thing. Add to that a sprinkle of the GNU GPL as applied to propulsion development, software development and mission planning, and you have a recipe for a REAL mission to Mars that might actually mean something. Open is way better closed, especially when the project is about furthering the state of humanity.

If you really care about the HST

[mveloso]

If you care about the HST write your senator, don't vent on slashdot. Words here mean nothing, but a cogent, well-reasoned letter to your senator may make a difference.

The last requirement may be a stretch for some readers, but one can always hope.

Find your senator at: http://www.senate.gov/

No We Don't.

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

"...It would be great to keep Hubble but how long can we put off manned space exploration?

Agreed that Hubble is great to keep. However, how long can we put it off? How about until the technology is ready, reliable and we don't have the administration pounding the economy into the ground with war? Seriously, do you really think that the "working man" is going to say "bravo!" to a manned mission to Mars while the economy is going to hell and his job is being shipped overseas? Damn man, come back to Earth.

Also, correct me if i'm wrong here, but do you have *any* fucking clue how much could be learned from Hubble and others like it with the ****billions**** of dollars it will cost to send men to mars? No, of course you don't or you would not have made such poorly informed statements.

"....Plus, I'd actually like to see it happen in my lifetime...."

Well, that's it folks! We *have* to go to mars just so this guy can *see* it happen (on monitors and tv programs "pruned" for maximum taxpayer enjoyment!!) Horray!

Re:Bush screwing NASA by setting the goal at Mars?

[jedidiah]

The bold new vision is fine: FUND IT.

Meanwhile, we have to keep maintaining our boring old visions. Bold new visions need time to be fully developed and to prove themselves. It simply makes no sense to scrap the well tested for the not yet even designed.

Also remember that the current programs started out as "bold new visions". "bold new visions" aren't always what they're cracked up to be.

IOW, this is yet another unfunded federal mandate.

Re:hahahaha ror

[bezuwork's friend]

Maybe he's Scooby Doo: Raffing out roud (Engrish for "laughing out loud")

Fuckin' a

[Burgundy Advocate]

Bush's Moon/Mars plan isn't going quickly into space!

Wonderful. So the only US program towards a manned spacecraft is facing difficulties while we're trying to save the ISS and Hubble.

Did it ever occur to these politicians that we might need some way to actually deliver people to the ISS and service the Hubble? Furthermore, with Soyuz, there's no guarantees -- the Russians aren't exactly in the best shape in the world. I hate to rely on them... especially considering the lack of capacity/capability.

Honestly I wish they had stuck with the Orbital Space Plane plan of attack, and started a new program towards Mars. It seems like this happens with every new concept at NASA. A program is started, it gets a decent way, and somebody decides it'd be better to do something different. We desperately need to stay the course with at least one program in five or so. How much money have we waisted already with this sort of abortion?

Furthermore, the "it costs too much" really pisses me off. NASA's FY04 budget was $15.5 billion. The increase in the Military budget -- not including the costs of our various wars around the world -- was $16.9 billion from FY03 to FY04. The overall military budget for FY04 was $399.1 billion. With wars included, it's even higher.

Should we turn a blind eye to this rampant military waste while putting NASA under a microscope?

In the long run, what's more important?

Fuckin' a. Sometimes I hate being human.

Re:Fuckin' a

[demachina]

"Did it ever occur to these politicians that we might need some way to actually deliver people to the ISS and service the Hubble? Furthermore, with Soyuz, there's no guarantees -- the Russians aren't exactly in the best shape in the world. I hate to rely on them... especially considering the lack of capacity/capability."

You've GOT TO BE KIDDING (TROLLING). Soyuz and the Russians are infinitely more reliable than NASA technicly and they've always found the funds to keep launching Soyuz. If the U.S. hadn't forced them to deorbit Mir they would probably still be using it.

About the only thing the U.S. has to worry about is the Russian's will tell the American's to take a hike and only fly non American astronauts as retaliation for the fact the U.S. has become an obnoxious dick under the Bush administration.

The Russians have started development of a six man Soyuz replacement which now appears to be the only avenue to fully man the ISS so their is some manpower to do something beside maintain it.

If I were to lay bets I would put all my money on the Russian effort versus NASA developing ANY new manned launch vehicle. NASA and its pork fed contractors have simply lost the ability to bend metal.

Re:Fuckin' a

[demachina]

Russia sits on some of the worlds largest oil reserves. Now that Putin is attempting to regain control of it, partially by throwing the head of the largest oil company in jail, Russia may not be quite as bankrupt as everyone thinks they are. A lot of Russia's economic woes came from the chaos of transitioning to a market economy and the massive corruption that followed in which a few people pocketed vast wealth and everyone else went broke. I think you should also look closely at which country of the two is running the half trillion dollar annual budget deficit and the half trillion dollar annual trade deficit. The U.S. is starting to look like the country in the most economic trouble and its the one that is going to have to start massive cut backs in government programs to pay for George's tax cut and the retirement of the baby boomers, or it will eventually face bankruptcy. The U.S. simply cant continue to borrow money at the current rate unless it uses it military power to erase its debt at some point.

Its is a fact of life the U.S. pressured Russia into deorbiting Mir. It was effectively a condition of their partnernship in ISS. The U.S. didn't feel Russia had the resources to do both and they were, no doubt, deadly afraid Mir would continue to be the little engine that could versus the ISS which is the white elephant that can't. Here is the first reference I see in google. There are plenty of others:

http://www.reston.com/nasa/congress/07.22.98.sen se n.pr.html

As for the merits of Soyuz versus the shuttle, the Soyuz has killed substanitally fewer people and it costs a WHOLE LOT less to launch. It pretty ridiculous to use a half billion dollar shuttle launch to resupply the ISS and change the crew. The Russia estimate is $130 million to launch 3 Progress supply missions and 2 Soyuz missions per year. Obviously Progress can't carry the cargo the shuttle can but it still carries 2500 kilos at a bargain basement price. If the Russian space program had a fraction of what NASA wastes each year they could mount a serious space program.

Re:This is political posturing.

[0123456]

"Service missions to Hubble are crazy given the astronomical launch costs for Shuttle missions."

Launching a shuttle costs about $150,000,000. That's the difference between flying a Hubble mission and not flying a Hubble mission: most of the shuttle costs are fixed costs, so you save very little by cancelling one flight... and, equally, adding another flight doesn't cost that much.

I mean, even with _no_ shuttle launches, I doubt the shuttle budget this year is significantly lower than usual.

Mars

[An-Unnecessarily-Lon]

Going to Mars would undoubtedly bring Tech innovations 10 fold increase. I think the money/manpower and pride are worth more than Zealots who think the money could be better spent elsewhere. Going to Mars would only serve to further improve everything here.

Re:Do we?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

the top five percent of people are getting $2000 back in their pockets this year, thanks to Bush. Kerry has already promised to repeal those cuts.

Do you make over $130k/yr? If not then you're not in the 5%. I figure that voting for Kerry is more than worth the $500 I'm likely not to see, and I wager that the same hold for the people that make $35k and shop at walmart to make ends meet.

Bush didn't say "let's go to Mars"

[corbettw]

You people are all freaking out because you think Bush wants man on Mars by the end of the decade. Go read his speech again (which can be found here), and tell me, where in it did he say such a thing?

The focus of the speech was on expanding our exploration of space, and eventually sending humans to Mars and the other planets. But no time frame was stated. And the immediate goal is to establish a permanent base on the moon.

For me, though, the most important part of the speech was the closing paragraph:

"Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey."

I think he's right. I think we need to explore other planets because it's our nature to do so. And I think we should start as soon as possible, and not let petty politics get in the way of a noble endeavor.

Re:Bush didn't say "let's go to Mars"

[corbettw]

That speech did nothing except sound the death-knell for the STS, ISS and Hubble.

Wrong. It spelled out the important goals for NASA. The most important of which is, build a permanent settlement on the moon. Which was the crux of the whole speech. None of the new goals are acheivable using the shuttle, the ISS, or even Hubble. So, they've got to go to make room for the vehicles and systems which will carry man forward. Or are you one of those people who believes we should keep doing things the same old way, when the same old way won't get us where we need to go? Bet you were real upset for all those buggy whip manufacturers at the turn of the last century.

Too much "Safety"

[Virtucon]

Who ever said getting onto a pile of explosives was inherently safe? Who ever said leaving the atmosphere and hurtling around at 18K MPH was safe? The problem here isn't one of technology or volunteers waiting to go into space; hell I would.

The problem is political will and political correctness. Nobody seems to shed a tear for the soldiers getting KIAed in IRAQ or Afghanistan, it's past news. The families and friends care, but we as citizens don't. However when a $1B shuttle breaks up over Texas, OMG, stop everything, we have to be "safe." This bullcrap about being PC and "safe" is counter to every exploration ever undertaken.

It took Risk to put Hubble into Orbit. It took people like Storey Musgrave to fix it in orbit, in a space suit hurtling at 18K MPH. Those were risks. Now, we have to have "contingencies" "backups" hell, I long for the days when politicians weren't running NASA, when they had a vision and took risks.

If Lindberg hadn't taken a risk, if the guys in St. Louis hadn't taken a risk, if Ryan aircraft hadn't taken a risk, there'd be no Transatlantic crossing.

Routan and the X Prize folks are taking risks and hopefully, with our prayers and support, will wrench the exploration of space out of the hands of the beaurocrats and politicians who want space exploration, without risk, which is never, ever going to happen.

Accidents will happen in the future. Hell, people still fly in 747s after TWA 800 don't they? People fly in Airbus 3XXs don't they, despite it's safety record.

Life is full of risk, as George Carlin says "take a F***ing chance!"

Fix Hubble, fix the foam, put the shuttles back online and get the next manned vehicle system back online. If you bozos at NASA can't figure it out, I'm sure all of that old CapCom equipment stored in the VAB can be turned back on and we can launch Apollos on Saturn 1Bs or Vs again. Hell, the Russians still launch Soyuz capsules that were developed in the 60s, so why can't we reuse what we've already learned?

Ahh, too much risk, I see. Maybe we should all stay in bed with the covers pulled over our heads.

Moon first, not Mars

[GodfatherofSoul]

Committing to going to Mars first is a BAD idea. When we go to Mars, it won't be for just a few days, it'll be for a few months. And, we haven't developed the technologies for those types of habitats (isolated, ground-based, long-term). The moon is the idea test bed for these technologies. It's cheaper to get there and if mistakes occur it will be possible to make fixes or send up repair parts.

We need to spend a good amount of time refining these technologies on the Moon so that we can have a very high degree of confidence that a Mars shot won't fail. Hell, we can't even land unmanned probes on Mars with good reliability.

Mars first is a huge gamble.

Dubbya may be sincere...

[ralphh]

I agree that the Moon/Mars initiative could hobble the entire space program, but I believe that Bush's 3rd-grade appreciation of science, coupled with big new government contracts are not the only driving forces here.

There's the Chinese space program.

The Chinese intend (or intended at one time) to land astronauts and possibly build a base on the Moon after 2005. While I see no real threat from this other than to our national pride, the thought of the Chinese staking a claim to equal if not superior technological prowess in space may be one of the things entering Bush's integer-only calculations.

Knowing how little the Chinese ruling party values individual human life, I'm sure concerns about slightly radiation-toasted taikonauts with mild cases of lunar dust-induced silicosis and low-gravitiy bone loss and muscle atrophy will not slow their program or eat into their budget like they would ours. The Chinese could be tough competitors.

So, just in case they really go ahead with their program and make good progress, the US would have the Moon/Mars initiative in the pipeline.

I'm all for planning Lunar and Martian manned missions, but we just don't have the technology or the necessity yet. Preserving Hubble is far more important.

Re:Dubbya may be sincere...

[PhxBlue]

I don't think "we don't have the technology" is a good argument against Luna or Mars. We "didn't have the technology" at the beginning of the space race, either - yet, less than twenty years later, we had a man on the moon. Why? Because we created the technology as we needed to.

What good is a four-trillion-dollar gross domestic product if we can't direct it toward something visionary once per generation?

Re:The Usefulness of HST

[Uma Thurman]

OK, here's what I think, in a couple bullet points:

-Hubble was made to be repairable because it was a "shuttle thing". A space telescope does not need to be repairable.
-Hubble isn't any more sophisticated than any of a number of optical spy satellites that we operate.
-Hubble isn't really much bigger than an optical spy satellite.
-A major limitation of hubble is that there's only one of them.
-These things suggest some good ideas for Hubble replacements.

-A replacement for Hubble should not be a single telescope, but an array of telescopes, with different capabilites.
-Each telescope should be as much as possible a duplicate of the others, with possible scaling differences.
-Functions should be split up among the telescopes. For example, it would be useful to have 2 or 3 half meter optical telescopes, a 1 meter infrared telescope, a 1 meter ultraviolet telescope, and a single 4 meter infrared telescope, all in orbit.

-Each scope would be as simple and cheap as possible.
-The point of having multiple scopes is to support multiple programs at the same time. And if one scope breaks, it won't bring the entire program to its knees.
-Each scope would be designed to last 7-9 years, and then replaced when it breaks.
-The scopes would be built in a mass production type fashion, thus lowering costs.
-Most importantly, the scopes, at least the smaller ones, would be launchable on just about any available booster from any country. The big scope might need a Titan to launch it, but at least the Russians have a rocket that can lift a similar amount so we're not dependant on one booster.

Hubble was an excellent start to the telescopes in space program. The next step is to put a few more up there, and to continue to work on bringing launch costs down. I fully expect to see amateur space telescopes within the next 10-15 years, just as we see amateur radio relay satellites. We will also see space telescopes operated by individual universities. When this happens, there will still be a need for federal funding, but the design and the operation of the telescopes can take place at a level closer to the astronomers that use the telescopes.

Re:One trick pony

[QSO_Wizard]

For several years now there has been a diminishing of Hubble science.

While the press has been less active in informing the public of the science being done with Hubble, I have seen no let up in the scientific progress being made with Hubble in the academic journals. Just because USA Today isn't putting out NASA's latest Hubble PR image doesn't mean that science isn't being done. Hubble is still one of the most in-demand instruments in astronomy and wonderful science is still being done.

The recent release of the Ultra Deep Field will yield no greater insights than the original. Worse, the release of UDF data was clearly staged to garner political support.

The Ultra Deep Field was proposed more than a year ago. The data were recently taken, and NASA sent out the PR when it was finished. How is this 'clearly staged'? Yes, the release of the UHDF roused political support. It shows that, unlike your ignorant claim that "There is not much more to be got out of it", the general public, along with the astronomy community, considers Hubble to be valuable and should not be needlessly discarded.

The real shame for the astronomical community is the delay and poor planning for the Hubble successor. That can hardly be blamed on O'Keefe or President Bush.

Bad planning? Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, was planned to be launched before Hubble was de-orbited. O'Keefe's decision, based in part on Bush's initiative, prematurely kills Hubble. How is this the astronomer's fault? It takes decades to design and build a space telescope. The instrumentation is one-of-a-kind, as is almost all of the hardware. I don't believe NASA is directing additional money towards shortening the JWST timeline now that Hubble is being prematurely ended.

Get rid of hubble

[heroine]

1) The amount of useful data produced by Hubble is worthless compared to newer infrared space telescopes. Virtually nothing is being learned from these visible light images of the edge of the universe compared to infrared and X-ray images from newer telescopes. Before saving Hubble became a political agenda, even Earth based telescopes had already surpassed it with newer optics and image processing.

2) Too many people have to die to fix it. That may fly in the hyper-layoff, humans-are-liabilities mentality of Silicon Valley but not when those piles of bodies are shutting down the space program for years at a time.

Hubble, origins of the universe, & Religious R

[aquarian]

I saw the head of Nasa on TV yesterday, talking about Hubble's cancellation. The counter argument was that Hubble's best years are ahead of it -- the next planned service mission will increase Hubble's resolution dramatically. We can already look almost into the origin of the Universe. An improved Hubble may let us to do exactly that.

This probably scares the shit out of the Religious Right. The last thing they want is more evidence that Science has the answers. The Bush administration is well known for being shameless idealogues, pandering the the Religious Right, while giving other reasons for policy changes. So one wonders about anti-science forces working behind the scenes on this one. It's Galileo vs. The Church, all over again.

Where have I heard this before?

[kippy]

This has been the thinking at NASA for the past 30 years "we need to find out more about X before we go to Mars".

This got us the shuttle program and ISS. The benefits of both I could count on one hand and the wastefulness of which is depressing to think about. While futzing around in low earth orbit for 30 years, we haven't learned anything that we couldn't have if Apollo had continued.

To steal a page from Robert Zubrin, the shuttle paradigm is like if Queen Isabella had sent Columbus out 100 miles to sea and sit there for a few months to study the effects of being on a boat for a long time.

We understand what it's like to survive in space and how to do it. More research is always needed but what's needed more is bold initiative.