Plans for International Space Station Cut Back

Sajma writes "Reuters is reporting: NASA and its space partners on Friday approved a scaled-down International Space Station with fewer astronauts and less science so the United States can meet a 2010 deadline for ending shuttle flights, a top NASA official said. Space agencies in Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan gave unanimous approval to a NASA plan that means the orbiting platform, now about half completed, will never become the beehive of scientific and commercial research once envisaged."

Comments

NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[LostCluster]

There's a term in Washinton DC that comes straight into play here. "Unfunded mandate". When a government agency is told it has to do something it doesn't presently do, and not given a matching budget increase to cover the cost of that task, it's a big problem.

One of two things has to happen.
A: Existing programs are going to get slashed in order to move the money from existing projects to fund the new one.
B: The mandated project isn't going to go very well due to having not enough funding to get it done right.

While Democrats get accused of being "tax and spend" types at times, the Bush Administration seems to have taken on a "forget to tax but spend anyway" policy. NASA's budget just doesn't match its assignments right now, and that's what's leading to half-baked projects coming out of there.

NASA's got to get the shuttle program that's currently grounded back on its feet, meanwhile the Hubble Telescope is in need of a scheduled service visit and the IIS isn't completed yet. On top of that, Bush wants them working on a people to Mars project they didn't ask for. The Mars request didn't exactly come with a budget attached...

Would you like your taxes low or would you like NASA funded properly? It doesn't seem like you can have both.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[zors]

Would you like your taxes low or would you like NASA funded properly? It doesn't seem like you can have both.

Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance, ( i mean we could get rid of the nukes, not just stop taking care of them.)? Just get rid of ICBMs all together, i mean, is it all that important that we be able to kill someone in 4 hours instead of 8 hours with a nuclear cruise missile?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[lphuberdeau]

At least the station could be used to test the durability of the components, and humans, on orbit. They also learned that there was a great deal of maintenance to be made and that all the experiments that were planned in the first place simply were not realistic. It's closer to a space survival crash course than a scientific facility since 60% of the work time in space has to be spent to make sure everything is in order. It's quite sad they have to reduce the size of the project, but still, not everything is lost. Space science really improved with the project and all that knowledge will remain for others. The engineering work that has been made is simply amazing.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Bloodmoon1]

Wholly agreed. I believe (Not 100%, but pretty sure and don't feel like checking right now.) NASA's budget this year is something like $15.7 Billion, and I know next year it's getting scaled back to $15.1. But it's more or less been mandated they come up with a new shuttle, fix the current fleet to some degree, and keep the ISS and any other projects flying on the little bit of change they have left.

Meanwhile, the DOD gets about $400 Billion a year, to put the above into perspective. And I believe our national budget is something like $3 trillion.

In short, lately, our policy here in the U.S., the nation that put mankind on the moon with the support of basically the whole country only 35 years ago, is, "Fuck Space".

I mean, it's not like we'll ever need to leave Earth or anything. Without question, our star will last forever, and our planet will always been inhabitable.

Right?...

Right?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup - NASA. I love the Space Program. As a kid I had astronauts on my walls and lots of Estes model rocket kits. But one thing we need to realize is that NASA is partially a valid science program and partially an ornamental nod to "science". Now science programs have always been the red-headed stepchild of the administration (though this particular administration takes it to new levels), but NASA is the figurehead for "science".

I.e., other programs may suffer, and suffer greatly. But whenever the administration is accused of failing children by not promoting science, they send a chunk of cash to NASA and the defense, er.. space program and can then claim support of science on their annual glossies.

With hundreds of billions of dollars ($650 billion, most recently) going to Defense it's very to difficult to understand why a few hundred million is cut from the budgets to smaller research programs. And I'm not saying a few hundred million to *one* program, but rather, the *entire* budget for all smaller research programs is in the hundreds of millions. You think Microsoft is evil?

So we again cut science budgets -- not only because it clashes with the President's ideologies -- but because it just doesn't add any value to some defense contractor's stock portfolio. On top of that we make the deficit huge, in the *trillions* of dollars. Our kids are going to love us.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop spending so much on wars and it won't be a problem.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[zors]

Without question, our star will last forever, and our planet will always been inhabitable.

Oh please, you cant honestly think this is a viable thing to hold against the bush administration do you? that in 3 billion years when our star collapses we won't be able to escape? As for the planet thing, arent you overstating the problem some?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Nurgled]

That's true of everything, including things that most consider a lot more important than NASA.

I live in the UK, so there's no NASA to worry about funding. However, it really annoys me when, in the run-up to elections, the political parties start talking about reducing taxes, amongst other things. If the system was running perfectly and there was a funding surplus, I'd say cutting taxes is a good idea, but while hospitals continue to close and downsize, and education funding drops through the floor, we either need to raise taxes or optimise the systems that are in place.

I hear that there are over ten managers per patient in national health service hospitals here. I also see schools wasting money on computers that are five times faster than mine just to run Microsoft Office. The money's going to the wrong places. Either refocus the existing money or increase tax. Those are the only solutions.

This applies to NASA in the US, too. I wish voters would think it through and realise that, until we've got the system working properly, tax decreases are a bad thing, and that they should vote for parties which don't claim they are going to cut tax. That's the problem with allowing everyone to vote, though, I guess!

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[ericspinder]

Would you like your taxes low or would you like NASA funded properly? It doesn't seem like you can have both.

Yes, there is a way to spend more and tax less; Borrow it!, why pay today when your children can pay tomorrow!

The Hubble has been great, but I believe that we need to focus on observations from the l2 point. Execution of Bush's 'plan' to go back to the moon first would push the technology for that mission, but somehow I don't think that he will ever come across with the money; too busy give contracts to Haliburton. Really all we need to do is focus on getting a spending bill through congress , because Bush hasn't vetoed a spending bill his entire time in office.

Sometimes I think that the world forgets what drove the U.S. to the moon, competition. If our European (and Asian) friends want to see progress on space issues, I suggest that you pressure your own government for the funding, not your 'rich' Uncle Sam (he's a little strapped for cash right now). A little competition always get America going.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[ffsnjb]

The idea is this: cut taxes AND cut spending. More often than not, however, the spending doesn't get cut. In many situations, spending is planned to be slashed, but emergencies arise (as has happened now.) Now, a real effective manager would still work within the budget and cut non essentials while spending more on the emergency situation. This is also what's happening right now.

From what I gather on /., many would rather see the ISS dropped into the ocean like Mir because of claimed uselessness. Maybe these people are seeing their wishes come true. Maybe they're now being hypocrites and want the ISS to be funded. Who knows?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance, ( i mean we could get rid of the nukes, not just stop taking care of them.)

The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and here to stay, and there is NO WAY that we should give up our nuclear systems while certain elements of the third world continue to work on theirs. In addition, if Russia happens to fall back into an ultranationalist stance we could be in trouble there.

If you want to cut something, cut the NON-WORKING anti-ballistic missile system that's supposedly going to cost 60 billion dollars. The system testing to date of the aforementioned is so contrived it isn't even funny. I've worked defense contracts just long enough to smell bullshit at 10 miles away.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[USAPatriot]

Umm...the US has been working to bring down its nuclear stockpile for a long time. Here's a chart showing just that.

And there will be even less nukes in the coming years.

And yes, it is fairly important to be able to nuke somebody before they can nuke us. The US has enemies, and defending America is the top priority of the US Government. Space travel isn't the big concern most Americans have today.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[jabberjaw]

Does it really have to be an either/or question?
Yes. If you want cool stuff, you have to pay for it.
Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance, ( i mean we could get rid of the nukes, not just stop taking care of them.)? Just get rid of ICBMs all together, i mean, is it all that important that we be able to kill someone in 4 hours instead of 8 hours with a nuclear cruise missile?
No, we cannot cut funding for nuclear weapons research/maintenance. You are lying to yourself if you believe that anyone in Washington would consider purging nuclear weapons from our arsenal. As for cutting maintenance funding, surely you jest. From what I have gathered (though I could be wrong) we really do not know too much about how nuclear weapons age, thus cutting the funding for those who research this would be most unwise.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to thank France for brining me that post.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I believe the government is being wasteful enough as it is.

Criminalizing civil offences for the MPAA, RIAA and SPA. I bet there are a lot of people drawing from the welfare programs fraudulently, but that doesn't seem to be checked. The military is being given equipment it doesn't want or need, because of pork barrel. The USA does not need to be stockpiling helium. There are too many middlemen and odd certifications required in government purchasing. The government doesn't need to be paying $1000 for a single hammer, among other things.

Just a few examples of waste that can be cleaned up should someone find the will and the way to fund everything properly.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Waffle Iron]

One of the main reasons that we built so many nukes is that they are actually very cheap compared to conventional forces of similar capacity. This especially applies to the defensive posture. We don't need to pay for large expensive standing armies stationed in the U.S. to fend off possible invasions because we could simply nuke an invading country instead. Similarly, Russia has been able to remain a major world power even as it went through a nearly total collapse of its economy because they were able to maintain their nukes with what money they had.

If all nukes magically disappeared one day, world military spending would almost certainly dramatically increase as nations rushed to build up their conventional defensive forces.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Chordonblue]

If you're an ABB fanatic, NOTHING Bush does is worthy, EVERYTHING is his fault.

The truth is closer to the fact that NO administration (Republicrat or Demican) has full control over anything anymore. Congress pushes in bloated bills with a bunch of crap no one wants - except maybe one line item. And yet, if a president doesn't sign for it he'll be accused of killing babies.

What REALLY should happen is the president should explain how much pork went into each bill - what he approves of and what he does not. The problem is BOTH sides play this game and as usual, there is simply no leadership skills involved...

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical American paranoia - you realize you have TENS OF THOUSANDS of warheads? You would be able to obliterate North Korea if you gave up 95% of your arsenal. This is why your country is so screwed up - no amount of killing power is ever enough to settle the raging paranoia and projected violence of your ultranationalists.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Bloodmoon1]

Oh please, you cant honestly think this is a viable thing to hold against the bush administration do you? that in 3 billion years when our star collapses we won't be able to escape?

At what point did I say a damn thing about the Bush admin.? Seriously. Go back, and quote where the fuck I said, "Bush is cutting NASA's budget." Go on, go and find it. Wait, you can't, because you're trying to drag presidential politics into a discussion that has nothing to do with them, you partisan moron.

While I personally think Bush is more or less a puppet to special interests and some trully fucked up individuals, I can't blame him in the slightest for this. I actually think his policy towards space is the best thing he's done in his presidency. He advocates spending MORE money on NASA, boosting their budget by $2 bil./year for the next several years and letting them build things like lunar bases and make trips to Mars. While expensive projects, the guy has his shit together on space. However, things like NASA funding (and, for that matter, basically all other federal funding) are ultimitely decided by Congress. The president can put in his say, but Congress holds the purse strings.

Now, junior, that is how you would refute my statement had I said, "Bush hates space!". Which I didn't. Which is why to me at least you just look retarded. Don't read things that aren't there, you'll save us all a lot of time.

As for the planet thing, arent you overstating the problem some?

No, I'm not. I didn't say it would not be inhabitable tomorrow or in 10 years or anything that soon. Just that someday, possibly though our own actions, possibly though just some act of nature, for whatever reason, our planet will become uninhabitable. Simple as that. Sooner or later, it will happen, and if we fail to be off of this rock by then, we're just some ruins for a more advanced civilization to find. That's it, end of story. Humanity is done. And while $600,000 million to NASA one way or the other won't be the deciding factor, it just serves as a sign to show people don't really grasp the above fact. Space isn't a curiosity, it's a necessity for all of Humanity. Perhaps it's not the most pressing need today, but one day, it will be and we had damn sure better be ready by then, and it's never to soon to get to cracking on it.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[smchris]

Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else,

Not to bring up the elephant standing in the room or anything, but we _are_ occupying a (now) hostile foreign country larger than California and paying for that on future debt. (And half-ass occupying Afghanistan, which is somewhat less than twice the size of California).

Maybe we should cut local government some more? Like fire, police, schools, libraries? "Spare money" was back in the Clinton surplus. The U.S. doesn't have "spare money" now.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the one the colonist's were going to wave to the British if France didn't help them out?
How quickly you Republican morons(who speak out against "Revisionist history" ironically) forget

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

"in 3 billion years when our star collapses we won't be able to escape?"

When do you propose we start thinking about the problem? 2.99 billion years from now? Cause I'll bet that's what happens if we don't embed long term thinking in our brains as hard as we can, as often as we can. I'm quite ready to believe that the human species can say "I'll do it tomorrow" for a couple billion years.

The resources involved with moving our population to another star (where, for starters) are monumental on a scale we don't even dream of now. Consequently it will take a LOT of thought as to how to do it. Space needs to be a part of how we think as a species.

As for the planet, it probably depends on how cynical you are, and how overcrowed we actually get on this rock.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll never stop hating them for spitting in the eye of the boy emperor, will you? He said, "this is MY world", and they said "Fuck You" (with a French accent, of course). Forever after, you'll hate them for that. Funny part is that for the rest of the world, what the French did was quite heroic and inspiring.

Come to think of it, they specifically DIDN'T surrender to your warped and selfish will. Maybe that's the real origin of the surrender meme, what? Mutated and projected as Americans are wont to do, natch.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[thogard]

Most businesses can cut their cost of doing a specifc task by about 5% per year through a number of things studied at business schools everywhere. For some odd reason governments can't seem to do the same thing.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[div_B]

I hear that there are over ten managers per patient in national health service hospitals here. I also see schools wasting money on computers that are five times faster than mine just to run Microsoft Office. The money's going to the wrong places. Either refocus the existing money or increase tax. Those are the only solutions.

If the problem is that money is being wasted in such ways (which it no doubt is in a lot of places), then how can increasing tax be a candidate solution? Surely if there's not enough money because it's being wasted, the solution is to stop wasting it.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[runlvl0]

we are occupying a (now) hostile foreign country larger than California and paying for that on future debt. (And half-ass occupying Afghanistan, which is somewhat less than twice the size of California)

So, when do we get around to actually occupying California? (Almost the size of California.)

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the money is overflowing from the corporate coffers. The people who do the work won't get much, of course, but it is a pretty nice day for the ruling class. All that money flowing from the national treasure vaults into the own pockets. Yummy. Could have funded shcools and space stations, sure, but killing brown people for faux security is much more profitable.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Pierce]

Speaking as someone that is in the military reserve and prior service active duty, we are also lacking critical equipment that we need. Part of the problem is that if you save money your budget is cut by that much next year.

There is no incentive to save since the more you spend the easier it is to keep your budget or get an increase. Once your budget gets cut you have to fight like hell to get it back when the money is really needed.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[timeOday]

I don't know about you, but I don't feel like I'm getting my $15.7 Billion worth in the first place, why pump more into it? The ISS is a massive boondoggle, $100 Billion over time and for what? The best science NASA does seems to be the cheaper stuff.

We can't increase funding for agencies that are doing a good job, and increase agencies that are screwing up and attributing their problems to budgetary shortfalls. At least not forever.

As for the DoD, well the trip to Iraq is a big expensive boondoggle too. But one does not justify the other.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you know that the US needs to maintain the ability to blow the crap out the entire world at a moments notice...

Perhaps they could afford to reduce their military spending if they did not insist on starting unjustified wars.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[BorgDrone]

we really do not know too much about how nuclear weapons age, thus cutting the funding for those who research this would be most unwise.
Maybe you (the US) should have thought of that before you built the damn things.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Nurgled]

Increasing tax would be a pretty bad solution, but it would work unless it also got wasted.

Of course, removing the waste is the ideal solution. Removing the waste and increasing tax (but not going crazy) would allow public services to improve faster, and perhaps tax can be lowered later once the system's working more efficiently and a surplus is discovered.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Goonie]

They also learned that there was a great deal of maintenance to be made and that all the experiments that were planned in the first place simply were not realistic. It's closer to a space survival crash course than a scientific facility since 60% of the work time in space has to be spent to make sure everything is in order.

That's incorrect. As I understood it, the reason why there's never any time for science is that he ISS was intended to have a crew of six people. If there were actually six people up there, the maintenance burden would stay the same, but you'd have three extra people to do science. Why did the ISS never have a six person crew? Because the six-person escape vehicle never got built.

And as for all the wonderful science that was to be done on the ISS - as I understand it there isn't any great clamor from actual scientists for it. How many screams from the scientific community have you heard about the ISS scale-down, compared with the huge outcry about the Hubble?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't want to rain on your parade, but the HST is already EOL SOL no? The hubble is officially space junk now.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Zeinfeld]

Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance,

Or the $250 billion spent so far on the Iraq war with another $250 billion or so that is going to have to be spent if we want to prevent Iraq being essentially annexed by Iran.

If you look at the federal budget most of it is eaten up by so-called entitlements. The government has to pay pensions, social security, medicare, medicaid come what may and there is not much that can be done to reduce that. Those retirees in Florida are not going to allow their pensions to be cut.

The rest of the budget divides into roughly two halves, military spending and the rest, that is education, health, transport, energy, farm subsidies, corporate welfare, state aid etc.

The military budget itself consists of roughly two halves which we can call the defense budget and the political/corporate welfare budget. The defense budget is the stuff that actually has some military purpose. The political/corporate welfare budget is the bases that are only kept open to keep the local senator happy, weapons systems that the army does not want, planes that the airforce has not asked for and so on.

There are still plenty of $700 hammers and $1,200 toilet seats, in Iraq Haliburton took the spare tires off the brand new Mercedes trucks it was using, when they got a flat tire they just abandoned the truck. Cost plus you know... But the 168 billion overcharged on the fuel contract only shows what happens when they know the administration is deliberately turning a blind eye. The same thing goes on in the US on pretty much every cost plus contract, just not quite to the same extent.

Padding out the military budget with pork is a bipartisan consensus. There are a handful of folk willing to stand up to the waste. John McCain being one of the few, ever since Goldwater the folk in Arizona have not been impressed by polticians who bring back pork anyway.

There was a lot of silly speculation about Kerry choosing McCain as his VP candidate. I don't think it was ever seriously considered. McCain knows he has much more influence as a Senator wielding a swing vote than a VP with a competent President. There is only one job that I think would persuade McCain to leave the Senate and that is the only job that only he can do, Secretary of defense.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[lphuberdeau]

Actually, there are/have been crews of 6 people, for 1 week durations. When the crew changes, they spend a few days all together up there for a handover.

Right now, it's impossibe to have so many people up there for long periods since there is not enough room for everyone. The station is incomplete. Node 2 is still missing, and actually, I don't think it's even confirmed if it will ever go up at this time. Since the station is incomplete and there is so much maintenance to do, it can only get worst when it will be completed. Of course the canadian SPDM will come to the rescue for the outdoor tasks and reduce the amount of space walks.

Actually, there are also problems with suppies at the moment. Without shuttles, there are just no way they can bring garbage back on Earth.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[3263827]

If you want to cut something, cut the NON-WORKING social welfare system that's already cost over $1 trillion since the inception of Johnson's Great Society. The system testing to date of the aforementioned is so contrived it isn't even funny.

Me? I'd prefer to keep our robust defense capabilities.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[khallow]

Just get rid of ICBMs all together, i mean, is it all that important that we be able to kill someone in 4 hours instead of 8 hours with a nuclear cruise missile?

Response time is considerably less than 4 hours. Also, aside from the US and Russia, there really isn't anyone with any ability to stop ICBMs. Nuclear cruise missiles are less reliable in that Russia for certain has developed tactics for destroying incoming nuclear weapons near the Earth's surface by detonating nukes in atmosphere in the path of the missile or plane. Also, someone might get a lucky hit in on the cruise missile. It's not traveling that fast.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[djmurdoch]

"in 3 billion years when our star collapses we won't be able to escape?"

When do you propose we start thinking about the problem? 2.99 billion years from now?

No, I figure a thousand years should be long enough to work this out. So let's wait 2.999999 billion years.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition, if Russia happens to fall back into an ultranationalist stance we could be in trouble there. Unlike the USA's ultranationalist stance, right?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[drinkypoo]

While we could get a lot of money by curtailing our military endeavors, we could also get plenty by ending the war on drugs, and we could get even more by legalizing some of them (not the same thing as ending the war on drugs, which would be decriminalization, a dubious term at best, kind of like "war on drugs") and taxing them as tobacco is taxed. Half the price of your pack of smokes or more is taxes. This is true of some other things, like gasoline, as well.

We spend a bit over US$40B (yes, billion) on the unwinnable war on drugs. If I were in charge, right after I gave all the idiots a brand new religion, I'd end the war on drugs and split that money between the space program and drug rehab services.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[DerekLyons]

In short, lately, our policy here in the U.S., the nation that put mankind on the moon with the support of basically the whole country only 35 years ago, is, "Fuck Space".

Unsurprising. Before Nov 22, 1963 the countries attitude was essentially "Fuck Space".

The Apollo program got the national support it did, not because it was a bold leap, but because it created a black eye for the Russians and as a monument to a slain President. Even that support didn't last too long. NASA's peak budget was in 1967, and dropped steadily thereafter. Saturn V production was halted in 1968. Congress was cancelling moon landings in May of 1969 [1], before we had even landed for the first time! . By Apollo 12 (the second landing), people were complaining to TV stations when their favorite programs were pre-empted for mission coverage.

[1] In some ways the cancellations of Apollo's 16 and 18 (the missions were subsequently re-numbered) were good things as the one of the Saturn V's already aquired for them became Skylab, and one of the CSM's flew Apollo-Soyuz. (Yes, you read that right. Congress cancelled missions for which the hardware had already been built and paid for, all to save $20-50 million in operational costs.) Two additional missions were later cancelled, their CSM's flew in Skylab, and their Saturn V's became the infamous lawn ornaments at JSC and KSC.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[drix]

Would you like your taxes low or would you like NASA funded properly? It doesn't seem like you can have both.

That's funny; last I checked there were more lines on this year's budget than one. I can think of lots of ways to achieve that. If we had back the >$100 billion we'll end up wasting on this frivolous war we could double NASA's budget for the next decade. If we stopped wasting $400 billion a year on the Department of Offense we could increase NASA's budget tenfold from here to eternity and still have enough left over to pay down the national debt, eliminate our dependence on oil, and probably cure cancer.

Now that I think about it, pretty fucking amazing all the things we are passing up just so we can maintain our ability to kill two simultaneous people anywhere, anytime. One wonders why the voters put up with it.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[DerekLyons]

So we again cut science budgets -- not only because it clashes with the President's ideologies -- but because it just doesn't add any value to some defense contractor's stock portfolio. On top of that we make the deficit huge, in the *trillions* of dollars. Our kids are going to love us.

It's pretty sad when somewho claims to support the space program allows *his* ideology to get in the way of the facts.

The budget under discussion is the product of *Congress*, not the Administration. The President that you revile as not supporting science has threatened to veto the NASA budget unless science funding is restored.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[MediumWare]

and the IIS isn't completed yet

I knew this smelled like conspiracy.. this is Bush's grand scheme to divert the public money to fund M$ projects

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[mindstormpt]

And yes, it is fairly important to be able to nuke somebody before they can nuke us. The US has enemies, and defending America is the top priority of the US Government.

Nobody would guess. I'd even say the main concern of the US government is making new enemies.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[mindstormpt]

Oh my god not the nukes!!

Next thing you're saying we should stop spending billions attacking innocent countries just so out military can have fun raping and killing guys in prisons...

You must be crazy!

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[mindstormpt]

In addition, if Russia happens to fall back into an ultranationalist stance we could be in trouble there.

Don't worry, the oposite is more likely.. oh, it already happened.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Zeinfeld]

One of the main reasons that we built so many nukes is that they are actually very cheap compared to conventional forces of similar capacity.

The bulk of them date from the Eisenhower administration. They built lots of them because thats what you did during the McCarthy years. Claiming there was a strategy to it is to vastly over-rate the process. Kennedy beat Nixon using the 'missile gap' issue, when they came into office they discovered the gap was real and vastly in favor of the US.

There was a certain amount of re-engineering that went on under Reagan and many warheads were remanufactured for newer missiles. In the process the number of warheads increased. But this was part of a strategy of putting pressure on the USSR to stop its attempts to expand as it had in Afghanistan and as far as the Reaganites were concerned Nicaragua.

Reagan was not building nuclear missiles because he thought they were actually going to be of any military value. If the Soviets were building nukes the money could not be going to build tanks, rifles etc which were the weapons that their proxies were buying. So actually the attraction of building nukes was the exact opposite to the one stated.

In the event the Soviets were much much weaker than Reagan and his advisers realized. If you think through the intended consequence of forcing the Soviets to produce more nukes this makes no sense at all if you think the Soviets are on the brink of collapse. Unless that is you think that they wanted large numbers of nukes to end up in the hands of the splinter states. Equally Star wars was at best a psychological factor since the Soviets never made a significant effort to even develop counter measures. Thatcher was telling Gorbachev at the time not to be worried about it because 'as a chemist I know it won't work'.

The weapon that really brought down the Soviet Union was the stinger missile, a conventional weapon that brought down the Soviet helicopter gunships. The Stingers tipped the balance in favor of the mujahadein.

Incidentally, the blowback theories peddled that Bin Laden was a CIA agent are somewhat off base. Bin Laden was the primary conduit for Saudi funding of the rebels. There was never any reason for the CIA to pay him, or for him to need CIA funds.

There is an example of the blowback theory though. Before the invasion the KGB quickly came to the conclusion that the soviet backed communist revolution was not going to last long. They tried to persuade 'the great teacher' that he had to lay off the religious persecution, be more moderate etc. to no effect. So they organized a coup to replace him with his main rival in the party. After a few months the KGB decided their replacement was showing too many signs of acting independently so they spread a few rumours that he was a CIA agent. About six months later they started to get word from their local spies that the guy was an american agent, which as it happened was completely untrue, the KGB were just hearing the rumors they had planted themselves. The Soviet invasion was ordered on the basis of those reports - proving that its not only clueless Texans who launch disastrous invasions on the basis of bogus inteligence.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anspen]

While the stockpile is down, it's still gigantic. Even the second link seems to be talking about a reduction to some five thousand nuclear warheads.

Also the important part isn't being able to "to nuke somebody before they can nuke us" since that only works if your the first to attack. The theoretical idea behind the massive numbers was the "assured destruction" part of mad. i.e. the ability to nuke the rest of the world not once but several times over, so that some intercepted warheads wouldn't mean survival of the enemy.

In a post cold war area, when even Russia could most likely only launch a small percentage of it's inventory it very much seems like overkill (even more so if you take into account that the most likely attackers, China and North Korea, could at best land half a dozen missiles on the continental USA.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[khallow]

Typical American paranoia - you realize you have TENS OF THOUSANDS of warheads? You would be able to obliterate North Korea if you gave up 95% of your arsenal. This is why your country is so screwed up - no amount of killing power is ever enough to settle the raging paranoia and projected violence of your ultranationalists.

According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the US has a little more than 7,000 warheads. Russia has roughly 6,000 warheads.

The US is also probably a decade or two away from a real arms race with China. I see incentive there for maintaining the level of nuclear weapons. More likely, the US will upgrade its nuclear arsenal to more precise lower-yield weapons since these would be more in line with the tactics of the rest of the military.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to cut something, cut the NON-WORKING social welfare system that's already cost over $1 trillion since the inception of Johnson's Great Society.

Non-working? Ah, you mean that despite being the greatest nation on Earth, there are millions of Americans starving to death?

What, there aren't? Hell, I guess the welfare programs must be working then.

BTW: our defense capabilities are robust now. ABM wouldn't have prevented any of the successful attacks on US military and civilians in the entire history of the nation. The threat of ABM served its purpose at the end of the cold war by forcing the USSR to bankrupt itself trying to counter it; in today's world, there is no credible ballistic missile threat, and the money Would. Be. Better. Spent. Elsewhere.

Even within defense, you might think spending the money on our frontline troops, who are out there right now in Iraq, giving their lives for our country, might make more sense than plowing it into an unproven technology which will do nothing to increase our security.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[NoYes19]

"I also see schools wasting money on computers that are five times faster than mine just to run Microsoft Office."

It simply isn't a waste. That school (if it is like the US schools I have volunteered doing tech support at) has at least a 6 year cycle on their computers. So that computer by Moore's Law will decresse by a factor of 2^6 compared to the comptuer level in 6 years. That computer will still be sitting in classrooms when your computer is ~13x faster than it!

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[NateE]

The IIS isn't an "Unfunded Mandate". Here is a definition, "An Unfunded Mandate is a requirement imposed by Congress on state or local governments with no funding to pay for it."

The IIS is a poorly conceived, international, boondoggle. Boondoggle definition, "Work of little or no value done merely to look busy. v : do useless, wasteful, or trivial work".

LOTS of funding has been thrown at the IIS for poor return on the money spent.

The new goals that have been set for NASA are to re-direct them into making concrete productive steps. Not have half-baked projects like the IIS.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are still plenty of $700 hammers and $1,200 toilet seats

How do you think secret programs get funded?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Luigi30]

In 2004, our school was still using 200MHz Power Macs. They're getting iMacs next year.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[WeblionX]

And leave us open to attack because we couldn't assure any enemies destruction if they decide to attack us? Or what about everyone else with nuclear weapons? Perhaps you should go to them and complain, maybe they'll listen to you better than the non-thinking USA. >:|

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

The current republican controlled congress does nearly everything the president wishes of them. When is the last time you saw Hastert or DeLay (the top 2 ranking republicans in the senate) disagreeing with Bush? Bush has not vetoed a single bill while in office. If I were more cynical, I would conclude that Bush is only refusing to cut Nasa spending because it mostly goes to jobs in Texas and Florida. I'm sure I looked hard enough I could find some way to blame Reverend Sum Yung Moon, Rupert Murdoch, and Lowry Mays into this as well.

At any rate, I hope we're forced to ditch the space shuttle. It was a ridiculous design, and it should have been abandoned when we realized that it was not an improvement in any way over our previous launch vehicles. Russian rockets are cost about 1/4 of the price and are amazingly safe. The only problem is the maximum payload is much smaller.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

3 years ago in our school, we got shiny new pentium3 1ghz computers. this year they upgraded ALL the computers to 2.3ghz pentium4's with geforce4 gfx cards and 512 megs of ram. now... aside from MAYBE the engineering courses (its still a bit of overkill for autodesk inventor), why wernt the 1ghz computers just dandy?

(we also got all new flatscreen tvs to replace the bigger, but 2 years older, tvs... IN EVERY CLASSROOM)

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[pgfault]

tax decreases are a bad thing

I beg to differ. Having personally received a tax decrease last year, nVidia and AMD reaped the benefits of my repatriated money.

The big problem in the US is entitlements, and no politician is willing to step up to the plate to reform (or cut) them before they eat us for lunch.

--
More nukes = less worries

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Zeinfeld]

While we could get a lot of money by curtailing our military endeavors, we could also get plenty by ending the war on drugs, and we could get even more by legalizing some of them

If you don't think that taking drugs can scramble your brains take a look at the idiot in the Whitehouse.

He stopped flying after he failed to 'accomplish' his medical. His medical records end after compulsory drug testing was introduced for pilots. He refuses to state the reasons he could not turn in a satisfactory medical, he also refuses to deny taking drugs but denied having taken them in the past 14 years which pretty much amounts to an admission he took them.

Speculation that W took cocaine is probably false, its too early. Cocaine did not become a mainstream drug until later. It is not likely that he had a heroin habbit, bit hard to hide that. He could have stayed off pot long enough to pass the medical. That would leave LSD as the most likely drug.

Bush's speech patterns certainly suggest LSD. Can you imagine anyone managing to get a degree from Yale in that state? He is barely able to string a sentence together when he has a script. A recent example was that speech he gave when he starts out saying the american people are going to vote for me "because" and then there is a looooong gap where it is pretty clear that he has completely forgotten the reason. In fact it is not clear that he ever knew where he was going.

I think W scrambled his brains on acid when he was in the guard, got kicked out of his unit because his commanders thought him a menace, the AWOL period was tollerated because the army really didn't want him and definitely did not want to send him over to Vietnam, but they could not get rid of him because of the same strings that were pulled to get him in in the first place. I don't know how he got through Havard Business School, but the damage from LSD is cumulative. The chronic alcholoism can hardly have helped.

So oh yes, NASA. I think you are all missing the real story. Bush announced that the shuttle will fly no more missions after 2010. I think the real situation is that it will never fly again. The planned launch in 2005 will slip back further and further. If there has been no launch by 2006 I can't see it being restarted to only run for a few years.

Saying hubble etc will be cancelled are just part of preparing folk for the big one, cancelling the space station.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Daetrin]

You are lying to yourself if you believe that anyone in Washington would consider purging nuclear weapons from our arsenal.

I don't really want to get into a debate about the basic issue right now, but you're completly misinterpreting what the grandparent poster originally said. They suggested we should get rid of _ICBMs_ NOT all nuclear weapons. This was followed up by a question about whether we really needed ICBMs when we've got nuclear cruise missiles.

That may or may not be a good idea, but if you're going to debate the issue, at least address the points made instead of changing the topic.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Zeinfeld]

How do you think secret programs get funded?

Through the classified appropriations process. Most of this goes on through the Senate intelligence committee, but there are some hardware programs in that category (the original B2 bomber program for example).

The $700 hammers were pure padding by the contractors. They were buying them from a 'supplier' that they owned themselves. So they bought a $1.50 hammer then sold it to their subcontracting arm for $700 and then claimed an additional $70 profit under 'cost plus'.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Guppy06]

"Maybe we should cut local government some more?"

National government != local government.

Here in what we pretend is a federal system state and local governments are supposed to be responsible for their own revenues. For example, most local governments get their money from property taxes, water bills and the like. Congress has little to no say in things like that.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[drinkypoo]

Bush's speech patterns certainly suggest LSD.

If this is not a troll, you do not know what you are talking about. Bush's speech patterns suggest that he's either an idiot, or dyslexic - or a dyslexic idiot. I am from Santa Cruz, I grew up there and lived most of my life to date there, and so I know many many people who have consumed assorted quantities of LSD on a fairly regular basis. None of them speak anything like dubya.

As for the shuttle and the ISS; Losing the shuttle is a good thing. It's long past time to stop using the thing. It was an interesting technology platform but we should have developed a replacement immediately after we got the shuttle in the air the first time.

Losing the ISS would be a good thing too, if we just replaced it with something that didn't suck. The ISS is too small and too dependent on external vehicles for maintenance. Of course putting something larger in orbit isn't really feasible but frankly I see the ISS as a sort of test platform, just as the shuttle should have been. It is simply not large enough to do anything that we really need a space station for.

My personal opinion is that we ought to put our effort into alternative launch technologies, and in the meantime use heavy launch vehicles or third parties to get our payloads where they need to be. Primarily we should be working towards the space elevator, which is what's going to enable us to finally lift great quantities of mass into orbit.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Kiryat Malachi]

Node 2 will go up, afaik (my knowledge is based on working with the ISS team at NASA, in the summer of 2002, so changes in the last two years might have affected it... or not). It's certainly been delayed, and with this latest round of cuts might be in jeopardy, but it was confirmed to go up prior to Columbia.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[gnuman99]

According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the US has a little more than 7,000 warheads. Russia has roughly 6,000 warheads.

And you need like 100 to blow up the world. (ie. nuclear winter) So what are the rest for?

The US is also probably a decade or two away from a real arms race with China. I see incentive there for maintaining the level of nuclear weapons. More likely, the US will upgrade its nuclear arsenal to more precise lower-yield weapons since these would be more in line with the tactics of the rest of the military.

OMG!! You people are fucking crazy. Instead of saying "there will be an arms race with China", why not prevent it from happening in the first place? This is not the stone age. We can, for the first time, communicate in a *global* fashion. There is no need for 7000 warheads, or even 1000 warheads to be a deterrant.

But, the Republicans will just bitch how wasteful NASA is with 1 or 2 billion, and put another 100 billion into their own destruction (hmmm, "defence"!).

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Quantum Jim]

There's a term in Washinton DC that comes straight into play here. "Unfunded mandate". When a government agency is told it has to do something it doesn't presently do, and not given a matching budget increase to cover the cost of that task, it's a big problem.

A guest engineer speaking at a seminar imparted this bit of advice on us undergraduates. The number rule of departmental funding: NEVER GO UNDER BUDGET. This applies equally well to companies as it does with government programs.

You see, it the engineers in develop a product or solution under the time allotted with a surplus of cash, then the upper management will decrease the budget for the following year while increasing the workload. When a large project actually needs the extra time/cash, it would never get approved or the engineering team would get the blame.

So departmental manager end up using extra money buying everyone a new computer rather than save that money. This unwritten law of "adequate efficiency" seems quite strange to newbies, but makes sense for those in the workforce. Of course there are many exceptions, but it helps explain why large corporations and government agencies generate so much waste.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Volmarias]

Detonating nukes in the path of the missile? Why do I get the feeling that you got your technical briefing from "Missile Command"?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[OoSync]

The budget under discussion is the product of *Congress*, not the Administration. The President that you revile as not supporting science has threatened to veto the NASA budget unless science funding is restored.

I just want to point out that that's a pretty tame threat on the part of the President. So far, he's not vetoed a single bill that passes his desk. I don't think he's really planning on starting any time soon.

And just to mention it, he's also threatening to veto the Highway and Transportation bill if he doesn't get his way with it. I might actually support such a veto as it sounds as if that bill is a bit of Highway and a lot of pork.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the US has announced that it will significantly reduce it's arsenal (URL:http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/ 11/20011113-3.html):

President Bush: The current levels of our nuclear forces do not reflect today's strategic realities. I have informed President Putin that the United States will reduce our operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade.....

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[alextase]

Nurgled, you seem to trust the government bureaucrats to do a better job than yourself when it comes to spending your own money. Sorry, but that's typical of the intellectual deficit affecting voters today.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Rei]

1) The numbers on BAS's page add up to 8558, not 7000. The 10,000 number is probably a bit outdated; however, at the peak of the Cold War, we had over 32,000. We decreased a lot, most notably during the Clinton era, but Bush has ordered preparations for new production of nuclear warheads.

2) An arms race with China? Are you off your rocker? China's been nuclear since 1964, and they only have a total of around 80 warheads. Of those, only about a dozen are on long range Dongfengs (their ICBM series). China's nuclear weapons program is about as clear of an example of a deterrent program as physically possible. Even Israel's stockpile dwarf's China's (estimates usually range from 100 to 400, most of them being on long range missiles)

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Rei]

First off, current federal welfare costs (TANF) are 1-2% of our federal budget. Now, if you're adding in medicare, medicaid, and social security, that's another story.

BTW, the US's social welfare system is a fraction of that found in western Europe. And wouldn't you know it, but their economies have been gaining on the US's notably since the 1970s. Go fig...

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[NanoGator]

"Just get rid of ICBMs all together, i mean, is it all that important that we be able to kill someone in 4 hours instead of 8 hours with a nuclear cruise missile?"

I dunno... after little incidents like with Iraq, I feel a bit more comfortable knowing that other countries will have to think long and hard before we get what's coming to us. :P

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Rei]

Apart from the fact that comparing conventional and nuclear forces are like comparing apples and oranges due to usage constraints, that's not an accurage portrayal. It only takes 421 nuclear weapons to destroy every metro area (not just individual cities) in the world with a population over 1,000,000 (and that includes our own) (note that this would take fairly large thermonuclear weapons). 1000 nuclear weapons would get you every urban area over about 320,000 people. *Every One On Earth* - not just every one in, say, Russia or China. We have 8-10k nuclear warheads. It's just crazy.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[michael_cain]

Not to bring up the elephant standing in the room or anything, but we _are_ occupying a (now) hostile foreign country

Indeed. NASA's budget is on the order of $18B per year. In calendar 2003 and 2004, the US will spend on the near order of $180B on operations in Iraq. In all liklihood, at least another $100B will be spent there before the troops leave. Roughly 15 years of NASA budget spent on a project that will, in all liklihood, fail in all of its goals except removing a particular despot from power. I will cheerfully bet a beer that ten years from now Iraq is once again being run by a despot, or a small group of them.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[lphuberdeau]

For working with ISS/MSS Ops team at CSA, nothing seem certain anymore...

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[sabernet]

The USA's extreme stockpile is only HELPING the arms race. You think Russia's gonna lower their nuke count while the US does nothing to theirs?

If you freaking pro-war imperialists want enough nukes to kill everyone else, reduce your nuke count to 25 and ask Russia to do the same(don't you think they'd agree to a deal likethat?!?)

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[sabernet]

I believe we're(Canada) spending as much/more on Afghanistan now

Mind you, that didn't stop Bush from indirectly insulting our contribution for the following few months after he declared war on Oil and we didn't.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

You ever consider that maybe Bush has a speech or stress impediment versus drug taking, due to idiocy, or anything else?

Folks always try to find some evil in someone, it's amazing.

A lot of people stall in the middle of speech. I do. I've talked with friends and just, bam, forget what I'm talking about completely and utterly. Takes about 3 minutes before I recall.

And no, no drug use, recreational or otherwise, at least not with me. Won't touch the stuff or go near it (that I know of).

My "stalling" started about 5 years ago, after a high stress time in my life followed by depression. Interestingly, 2 other friends of mine went through similiar periods (stress) and now both also have similar speaking issues. One I've known for years and know he didn't have this issue before. The other left pursuing a medical practice because of it (still in medicine, just not practicing; imagine being in an ER or operating room and just lose the ability to focus on what you were telling a nurse or colleague).

You also forget that many people have problems speaking in front of audiences. Even confident lecturers slip up mid-sentence. This is not uncommon.

Bush is likely an idiot, but pointing to speech as evidence of that is stupid. You just have to look at his policies and those he surrounds himself with, not his issues with public speaking. A lot of folks in high school used to make fun of me that I smoked weed, because I always thought about my responses; the "pause" or delay in a quick response was their "proof".

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[3263827]

Excluding Social Security and Medic* isn't fair. Plus you need to revisit your opinion of Western European economies. I'm glad the US doesn't have as extensive a social welfare system as Western Europe. We won't be bankrupt like they will as they're populations get older.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[ktakki]

We spend a bit over US$40B (yes, billion) on the unwinnable war on drugs.

While I agree that the so-called war on drugs is a waste of time, money, and effort, for a politician, any politician, regardless of ideology or party affiliation, to suggest a cut in funding for drug interdiction (much less de-criminalization or legalization) would be political suicide.

If a politician speaks out against this "war" on drugs, the opposition is only to happy to label him as "soft on crime". "Soft on crime" is today's equivalent of the Fifties' "Communist sympathizer".

Even beyond the political considerations, consider that $40 billion budget as a 1/10th scale model of the military budget: a fair chunk of this ends up in the hands of private corporations. They're grabbing on that money tit with both hands and never letting go, and there's an army of lobbyists to make sure the money keeps flowing.

k.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are more Canadian troops in Afghanistan than American troops. I believe there are also more German troops than American troops.

Incidentally, when our JTF-2 special forces were wandering around doing who knows what, they managed to shatter the old world record distance for a sniper kill, set back in the Korean War. The new record set was on the order of 2 kilometres, if I remember correctly, and the target was in a moving vehicle.

Anyone else find that distance really alarming? Yikes. Not sure I would want to meet one of those folks...

But yeah Afghanistan has been fairly quiet, I believe our largest casualties were from when the Americans bombed us. Apart from when that Iltis jeep was hit with a mine placed in await of its passing, I dont think there have been any other casualties.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Kiryat Malachi]

Good point. Remember, I worked there (KSC) in '02, when (although it was still fucking ISS and NASA) there was at least a general belief we would complete ISS and nothing would go wrong.

Columbia changed a lot of things.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[khallow]

1) Sorry, I thought the "non-strategic" meant non-nuclear. But with a yield of up to 150 kilotons, that's definitely not conventional.

2) No, I'm not off my rocker. I'm not even sure why you should think so. Looking at history, this period of relative peace looks highly unusual. You ignore how rapidly the US and the USSR entered the previous arms race. China has considerably more economic power and technology now than the USSR at its peak. It probably could already support a super-power sized assortment of nuclear weapons.

Looking at purchasing power parity of GDP's as the CIA does, China's economy is effectively 60% of the size of the US economy. I think it's irrational to assume that these two powers won't be in conflict in the not so distant future.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[khallow]

And you need like 100 to blow up the world. (ie. nuclear winter) So what are the rest for?

To make sure. Doesn't make sense to me either.

OMG!! You people are fucking crazy. Instead of saying "there will be an arms race with China", why not prevent it from happening in the first place? This is not the stone age. We can, for the first time, communicate in a *global* fashion. There is no need for 7000 warheads, or even 1000 warheads to be a deterrant.

Well hasn't happened yet. So we have a window of opportunity I suppose. Having said that, I just don't see anyone taking the kind of action that will keep future arms races from occuring. For example, China has yet to switch over to a democratic form of government and there's some people in the US trying to play empire games.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[khallow]

Yes. The USSR had that sort of plan to kill off incoming bombers. Should work on cruise missiles too. Why does it surprise you? It's not crazy, relatively speaking for the Cold War.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[beakburke]

Where did you get the information that western europe has been gaining on the US since the 70s. I'd be curious to see it.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[khallow]

The USA's extreme stockpile is only HELPING the arms race. You think Russia's gonna lower their nuke count while the US does nothing to theirs?

Both the US and the USSR have dramatically reduced their stockpiles over the past twenty years. The megaton count has dropped even more rapidly than the warhead count. This doesn't happen overnight.

If you freaking pro-war imperialists want enough nukes to kill everyone else, reduce your nuke count to 25 and ask Russia to do the same(don't you think they'd agree to a deal likethat?!?)

Well, there's the problem of China isn't there? They will have to be included in such a deal.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[beakburke]

Yeah, except the US has been reducing it's nuclear warheads stockpile for years. It's all been trending that direction. Any "new" weapons are pretty much ment to replace the aging ones. And I doubt you'll see the total number climb much, unless someone decides to get into an arms race.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Nurgled]

Clearly I don't trust the government to spend money wisely. Much of my post was about how badly they are spending money already.

My post was intended to present two slightly-related points. Firstly, voters are taking the lowering of taxes as a good thing without questioning why the system is unable to operate efficiently with the current taxes. Secondly, the reason why the system is unable to operate efficiently is because the money is being spent inefficiently.

My "two choices" to solve the problem were intended to represent the thought process I want the average voter to adopt: If the system sucks now, then either they need to raise taxes or allocate the money better. Lowering taxes clearly isn't the solution. If they care enough to keep thinking, they'll look and find that the NHS and the education system in the UK are wasting money left, right and centre, but even if they don't bother to do any research they can at least see that "raising taxes is a possible solution" doesn't match "Vote for us and we'll lower taxes!"

The obvious argument here is to vote for someone who can spend the money more effectively. If one of the candidates presented a sensible budget allocation plan, and also saved the lowering of taxes thing until after the plan has succeeded, I'd vote for him. Using lower taxes as a marketing gimmick is what I have an issue with, along with the fact that people fall for it.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[3263827]

He's using the new definition of Western Europe that now includes Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states, and Slovakia. Otherwise he's blowing smoke. What's really going to be interesting is seeing how "Old Europe's" nanny state is going to cope with the demographic changes that are approaching it like a tidal wave.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

meanwhile the Hubble Telescope is in need of a scheduled service visit and the IIS isn't completed yet.

Tell me about it, that's why I switched to Apache.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[div_B]

Increasing tax would be a pretty bad solution, but it would work unless it also got wasted.

Yes, but given that the money is already being wasted, what are the odds that more tax money won't result in more waste? Pretty slim I'd wager.

Of course, removing the waste is the ideal solution. Removing the waste and increasing tax (but not going crazy) would allow public services to improve faster, and perhaps tax can be lowered later once the system's working more efficiently and a surplus is discovered.

But where is the IMPETUS for the governments to improve public services? I live in NZ, and bloating in the public sector is pretty rife. Given that governments choose to appoint more managers, and further complicate the organisational structure of healthcare, rather than actually improving service (ie cutting waiting lists etc), I expect this is how they would tackle the problem of inefficiency:

1)Argh, the public sector is woefully inefficient, what to do?
2)We'll form a new Department of Efficiency, appoint a committee for blah and blah, appoint people to liase between this department and all services, add a watchdog to monitor the DoE, and create alot more headaches for all the administrators that are already in place.
3)Result: 120m (GBP,USD,NZD, whatever) spent on fixing up the public sector (which is what gets publicised), and sweet FA achieved.

Don't get me wrong, I voted for the tax-and-spends here last elections, and I'll likely do the same next time, but after their last budget there's been so much taxing and so much spending (on child support and such), that there are people in the position that they would be better off if they took a pay cut. It leaves them wide open for the conservatives to ask "Why tax so much?", and when they get back in again they'll just slash everything, and those public services will be just as inefficient, and will have less funding to spend in their inefficient manner. The problem with left-wing parties is that they can never seem to agree on exactly how left-wing they should be (or indeed, anything at all), and it just leads to infighting and fracturing of the party (which has been the theme of left-wing politics in NZ for about 20 years now).

I'm loathe to grind the old Iraq axe, and this is largely a seperate issue, but I'm thinking that if Blair had told Dubya he was nuts and to forget about it, it would have saved alot of cash for the UK, US, and half the other nations in the world, and I know you had several resignations over there and that Blair's party wasn't on the whole pleased with the situation, and thats the problem. NATO is now putting a naval blockade in the mediterranian (sp?) for the Athens games, thats obviously a) not going to come cheap, and b) not necessary, or at least wouldn't have been, before all this crusader shit started happening. I mean to say, do you think labour voters in the UK got what they wanted when they voted in Blair? (If I'm talking crap regarding British politics then please correct me, I probably don't spend as much time following it as you do :) )

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[dont_think_twice]

The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and here to stay, and there is NO WAY that we should give up our nuclear systems while certain elements of the third world continue to work on theirs

How does having a nuclear arsenal help protect us from third world dictators? If Kim Jong Il nuked us, do you think we would use nuclear weapons to destroy North Korea? Of course not. We would go to war and demolish the country, but it would happen with conventional weapons. (It would probably look like Iraq II, where the military basically made a beeline for Bagdad and figured that once they took out the government, the people would fall in line.)

What keeps Kim Jong Il (or Saddam or Kadaffi or anyone else for that matter) from nuking us is that they know that using nuclear weapons against the US would mean the end of their rule. The idea of mutually assured destruction assumes that the leaders will do what is in the best interests of they people they are leading. The their world dictators could care less about their people. Instead of mutually assured desctuction, we now have a system which basically says "attack the US as a leader of a country, and you will lose your leadership." This system can be maintained without nuclear weapons.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[drinkypoo]

Without shuttles, there are just no way they can bring garbage back on Earth.

Out of curiosity, what makes this even an issue? Why aren't they keeping all their trash, compressing it (a trash compactor or similar would do the job sufficiently well) and adding it as shielding for micrometeorites and/or radiation?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Zeinfeld]

If this is not a troll, you do not know what you are talking about. Bush's speech patterns suggest that he's either an idiot, or dyslexic - or a dyslexic idiot. I am from Santa Cruz, I grew up there and lived most of my life to date there, and so I know many many people who have consumed assorted quantities of LSD on a fairly regular basis. None of them speak anything like dubya.

I have the same type of dyslexia. Only I got better over time. Bush is dyslexic, he insists on everything being read etc. But the speech think is something additional he clearly has great difficulty forming thoughts. Sure a lot of high performing people have the same trait, but thats because there is so much going on inside. I don't think anyone thinks there is much going on inside Bush.

Public speaking is often prescribed as therapy, it trains you to keep a focused train of thought while you speak. Nobody outside the family ever knew my cousin once had a speech disorder but he was one of the most successful politicians in his generation.

I think Bush is getting worse. His recent speeches have been dreadfull from a purely technical point of view. Think about it you are giving a keynote speech on 'values' and you forget what the punchline is in mid sentence.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Rei]

I'd assume that you can look up statistics yourself. What do you need, a graph? :)

BTW, I should have mentioned the 1960s, too. They gained then as well.

One thing you'll notice if you look at the graph: the more that European companies have abandoned their social welfare policies (something that began mainly in the 1990s), the worse (on average) their economies have done. And, while it's not shown on this graph, wealth inequality really increased notably as well.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Zeinfeld]

You also forget that many people have problems speaking in front of audiences. Even confident lecturers slip up mid-sentence. This is not uncommon.

Yes and many people can't putt in less than 3 to save their lives but these people do not become professional golfers.

Sure this sort of thing happens, even to professional speakers. But Bush is a politician, he is a professional speaker and this happens in practically every single speech again and again.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[crbowman]

No we would most definitly go nuclear, do you think for a minute that the America public would stand for wasting American lives trying to take a country half way around the world that had *ALREADY* nuked us? Hell no, we would nuke them back. Now if they start out conventionall that is a different story.

NOTE: I am making no claim as to if this would be a morally just course of action, only stating what *would* happen

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Rei]

1) The person mentioned welfare. TANF is welfare. Medicare and Social Security are not what people traditionally call "welfare".

2) As for western european economies, read my response to the post after yours.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Rei]

That's exactly the point, though. China can support a lot more nuclear weapons. A *LOT* more. It's had plenty of time to make them. It's long had the economic might to be able to make them.

And it hasn't.

Consequently, China is lacking the *motive* to make more nuclear weapons. Consequently, they are intended only as a deterrent.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[3263827]

You seriously believe public estimates of nuclear weapons in a communist country? Get real. And I suppose you believed that North Korea was being truthful to the Clinton Administration about the nuclear framework agreement.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Rei]

Um, ~80 nuclear weapons is the American estimate of China's nuclear weapons. Need references?

Furthermore, China is an authoritarian state, but is hardly communist anymore in little more than name.

The 1950s just called; they want the use of the word "communist" as a generic boogyman term back.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[DerekLyons]

I just want to point out that that's a pretty tame threat on the part of the President. So far, he's not vetoed a single bill that passes his desk. I don't think he's really planning on starting any time soon.

A fair point, (few Presidents do use the veto), but only half the story. He also hasn't (IIRC)threatened to use the veto except over NASA funding and the Highway bill. This is also significant.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[lphuberdeau]

Probably simply because the process would require studies and a lot of engineering, and that requires some budget, which is the source of the original problem.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[isorox]

I saw a political broadcast the other day. It said that "the tories will cut taxes" to hundereds of inefficent programs, I thought it was a broadcast by the tories, turns out it was labour

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

One of two things has to happen.
A: Existing programs are going to get slashed in order to move the money from existing projects to fund the new one.
B: The mandated project isn't going to go very well due to having not enough funding to get it done right.

No, what actually happens is ...
A: Existing programs are going to get slashed in order to move the insufficient money from existing underfunded projects to fund the new one.
B: The mandated project isn't going to go very well due to having not enough funding to get it done right, nor are the other projects that got their budgets slashed.
C: NASA will be blamed
D: (Optional) NASA's budget will be slashed again

Dynoroddy

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[khallow]

Consequently, China is lacking the *motive* to make more nuclear weapons. Consequently, they are intended only as a deterrent.

But my point is that this situation will change. For example, China's long term security depends on having the ability to project power into the Pacific Ocean. That's not going to happen as long as a US-supported government exists in Taiwan.

The US with its extensive navy probably could keep China from capturing Taiwan without needing to use nuclear forces, but the ability to turn 1.2 billion people into a few million survivors is a powerful deterent.

China will need to be able to counter that tremendous force somehow. I think they'll find a way. Perhaps it will be with their own massive nuclear pile, but I suspect instead they'll find a way to make those nuclear weapons obselete.

That's one of the reasons I think the US is so aggressively researching new weapons systems (lasers, missile interceptors, etc) is to counter the emergence of China as a superpower.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, no shit our kids are gonna love us... without even counting increased defense spending, current entitlement programs (which politically, can't be substantially cut) will most assuredly fuck the economy at some point in the not-too-distant future:

http://www.aei.org/docLib/200307161_smetters.pdf

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[drinkypoo]

This is what's wrong with bureaucracies. My place of employment wants to dispose of a bunch of old 14" monitors but they have to get approval from the board to do so. They can't make money from selling them, because they're a school. Hooray bureaucracy!

I would solve the problem with a scissors-lift style press made out of aluminum or carbon fiber (a cakewalk for any carbon fiber bicycle frame shop to make something like this) and some mylar bags with velcro on them or something, rather than trying to solve it by having a bunch of meetings.

I guess you reap what you sow in organizational strategy...

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[3263827]

I don't know where you get your figures for, but here's a reputable source. (at least as reputable as un-classified material can be) http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/china/nuke .htm/

Here's the meat of the matter:

There is considerable uncertainly in published estimates of the size of the Chinese nunclear weapons stockpile. In the late 1980s it was generally held that China was the world's third-largest nuclear power, possessing a small but credible nuclear deterrent force of 225 to 300 nuclear weapons. Other estimates of the country's production capacities suggested that by the end of 1970 China had fabricated around 200 nuclear weapons, a number which could have increased to 875 by 1980. With an average annual production of 75 nuclear weapons during the 1980s, some estimates suggest that by the mid-1990s the Chinese nuclear industry had produced around 2,000 nuclear weapons for ballistic missiles, bombers, artillery projectiles and landmines.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[smithmc]

The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and here to stay, and there is NO WAY that we should give up our nuclear systems while certain elements of the third world continue to work on theirs.

True enough, but do we really need 10,700 warheads?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Rei]

You're under the notion that China buys into the notion that you need a large number of nuclear weapons for force projection. It is something that the US and USSR bought into, but that doesn't make it true. China has not evidenced that it buys into this viewpoint, and yet clearly has always been concerned about force projection in southeast Asia, especially concerning Taiwan. A dozen thermonuclear dongfengs is enough to scare the US away from war with China; what more then they need?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[khallow]

You're under the notion that China buys into the notion that you need a large number of nuclear weapons for force projection. It is something that the US and USSR bought into, but that doesn't make it true. China has not evidenced that it buys into this viewpoint, and yet clearly has always been concerned about force projection in southeast Asia, especially concerning Taiwan. A dozen thermonuclear dongfengs is enough to scare the US away from war with China; what more then they need?

Hmmm, the CIA claims that China spends on it military as a fraction of GDP (3.5%-5% 2003 estimate) an amount comparable to the US (3.9% in 2001) prior to the wars following 9/11. If true, that's a fairly high level for a peaceful, developed country. The US is enforcing a global hegemony. What's China's excuse?

If China continues its economic growth rate (of 8%) and ratio of expenditures on military force versus GDP, then that will mean a doubling of military expenditures in ten years and two doublings in 20 years.

I grant that traditional huge piles of nuclear weapons don't seem to appeal to China now and perhaps won't have great value in the future to China or anyone else. Currently, however they are the highest end weaponry and the only sure advantage the US (or for that matter Russia) has over China.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[bareshiyth]

Unfortunately, of course, there's more politics than science being talked about on this one. So think about the politics, a bit, before just trashing Bush.

Some complain Bush won't adequately fund NASA, ignoring the fact the Dems crucified his proposal for the "cost", so that they scaled back the budget just to get a chance to get it to go. And of course they did it by claiming it would cost a trillion or more. Cooler heads and honest calculations showed it really could be done generally with modest increases in budget and serious increases in focus and project designs by NASA.

Some complain this means the ISS is dead - well, if you look at the history of that pathetic (almost scientifically pointless) project, it's been almost dead most of its ill-fated life. It was never more than a welfare project, and weak-kneed political effort (to kiss up to the Russians and Europe), and spent most of its life as a Clinton deal. And if you want to bitch about the US not funding it, consider the fact hardly any of the ISS "partners" ever met their commitments, and the US usually got blackmailed into picking up their shares, too. When the shuttles went down, its last real chance at serious life went, too (does that tell you anything about the real strength of the idea, that it relied so on the US and the totally decrepit and over-the-hill shuttle program?).

Some complain that this was "dumped" on NASA. Have you noticed the immediate leap-for-joy at NASA, the fact that almost universally NASA and the cadre of folks who support NASA rejoiced that NASA once again had a vision and program mission that woke up all the tired bureaucrats and sleepy scientists and infused it with a youthful zeal, again? And did you see how Japan and the EU both did a "Me Too!" within months, and said they could mimic the program in their own space agencies for similar (rather low) price tags?

And some complain there's no need, that we can do all the science with robots and the old program. Now, I'm a great fan and supporter of the current missions to Mars, but in case you haven't noticed, the rovers take months to go where a man (or woman) could go in a day, and struggle for weeks to examine something like a "blueberry" that a human scientist coulda done in a day, and that the number of things the rovers can do are a couple of percents what a human team could do on site? The science will never get done in your lifetime if we rely on robots. And the hopes and aspirations and dreams of a new generation, for a new world beyond the mayhem of terrorism (that is only going to multiply, I'm afraid) and war and the endless grumbling about everything humans, or the US, or the Republicans, or the Christians, or the taggers in LA, do.

Oh yes. One last point: I'm a VERY STRONG supporter of Hubble. Go to my website, read my articles and see the link to the support petition, etc., if you want the proof. But This is in no way a competitor or alternative. Hubble is dying (or in danger of it) because of the Shuttle program being underfunded and falling apart for lack of care. NASA has been forced to run a limo-style space project in about the same fashion Cuba would, using 1955 chevy's instead of a fleet of new limos! I recommend you keep the two issues separate (NASA is not going to compromise this chance at a reincarnation for Hubble), and just keep the pressure on. Maybe the robot servicing is a feasible alternative - and one that can fit into the rest of the program. But I would rather, if only one more shuttle flew, it went to the Hubble instead of the ISS!

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Volmarias]

Oh I know, I was just being a jerk hoping for a +591231 funny rating :)

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[khallow]

No prob. Slashdot is the kind of place where one can win the occasional argument with the "Missile Command" technical briefing. :-)

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... perhaps we SHOULDN'T HAVE INVADED IT? And now that we're stuck, perhaps we should STOP BEING CONTROL FREAKS AND GIVE OTHER NATIONS INCENTIVE TO HELP PAY FOR IT?

Weird how the Republicans have completely abandoned the mantra of fiscal responsibility (and state rights too). If only someone else would pick up that platform...

Never ?

[MosesJones]

Never say never. Sure the current budget and time makes this too expensive. But with things like the X-Prize going on and the on-going march of technology there is no way to say that in 2010 there won't be a different decision for different economic and social reasons.

It isn't never... its just not planned right now.

Re:Never ?

[zors]

Sure, we might have the funds for a space station someday, but probably not this one. Who knows what technology will change in ten years to make whats up there difficult to modify, or what sort of international problems there will be with getting support for updating it, after it is supposed to be internation al remember.

About Time

[Anonymous Coward]

They should really just can it immediatly deorbiting it at the next available oppertunity.

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather see private enterprise take over the space program.

Simpsons reference

[foidulus]

"Now we will never know if ants can sort screws in space!"

Re:Simpsons reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, i first read that as "Now we will never know if ants can screw in space!"

Re:Simpsons reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Come to think about it, we don't even know if humans can screw in space properly yet!

Re:Simpsons reference

[foidulus]

Come to think about it, we don't even know if humans can screw in space properly yet!
Yes, but I'm sure women already have, "He was faster than the speed of light" jokes lined up and ready to go.

that is sad

[the_2nd_coming]

when I was a kid I had the privilege to be able to walk through the mockup that NASA had built of the ISS down in Huntsville Alabama. I can remember how exciting it was and all the cool things we were told would be possible when it was actually built.

oh well.

Well...

[Jasa]

They're going to have to change the openning credits of Star Trek Enterprise now!

Re:Well...

[istewart]

They won't have to, it's probably going to go the same way as the ISS. Not that getting rid of that horrible theme song would be a bad idea...

ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation

[reallocate]

>> ... beehive of scientific and commercial research ..."

I'm sure the word "beehive" never appeared in any ISS prospectus. It was, and is, a facility that lacks any single compelling reason to exist.

Except for monitoring long-duration human spaceflight (mimicing the Mir experience), little, if any, of the research conducted on ISS will make human space travel easier, safer, or cheaper. Certainly, nothing will contribute to that objective in a way commensurate with the station's outrageous cost. The station itself is only marginally engaged in space travel, since it does not go anywhere.

The ISS is the product of the ill-informed and, simply, bad space policy that began with Nixon's decision to build the compromised and targetless Space Shuttle in lieu of continuing humam space exploration.

...In Japan!!!

[Zorilla]

Space agencies in Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan gave unanimous approval to a NASA plan that means the orbiting platform, now about half completed, will never become the beehive of scientific and commercial research once envisaged...

Of course, we all realize that Japan knew about this for twenty years and forgot to tell anybody. I wonder what they know about Bush's trip to Mars.

35 Goddamn years....

[gaijin99]

Its been 35 freekin years since we walked on the moon, and look at where we are now. Its as if Colombus had come back to Spain and been told "hey, nice that you found a new continent and everything, but we'd rather sit here with our thumbs up our asses than spend the money to go there".

This is just plain pathetic. There's $135 million for the (proven to be ineffective) "abstenence education" programs, but we can't seem to find the money to maintain NASA at even minimal levels. $200 billion (and rising) for a pointless war in Iraq, but a program that could give the USA a serious strategic and scientific boost gets budget raped. $9.6 billion in tobacco subsidies over the next five years, but screw NASA?

We don't need any furthur evidence that they're smoking crack in Washington people.

35 years ago a human being walked on the moon. Today the furthest we get is Low Earth Orbit. That's bullshit, total bullshit.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[Jasa]

I heard someone say the other day that the reason they (NASA) got to the moon 35 years ago was just because of the push from JFK. What it really amounted to was an unsustainable development (at that time) and it couldn't keep going.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[pjt33]

Its as if Colombus had come back to Spain and been told "hey, nice that you found a new continent and everything, but we'd rather sit here with our thumbs up our asses than spend the money to go there"

Columbus was looking for a trade route; the Spanish founded colonies and traded things like gold and food; what do you think the U.S. should be mining from or growing on the moon? Or is it simply a case of colonial expansion for its own sake, now that it's not politically correct to colonise other countries on Earth?

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[Waffle Iron]

Its as if Colombus had come back to Spain and been told "hey, nice that you found a new continent and everything, but we'd rather sit here with our thumbs up our asses than spend the money to go there".

That actually might have been a better choice for Spain. As it was, in the first couple of decades they focused on hauling back as much of the New World's plentiful gold as possible. Instead of making Spain fantastically wealthy, the new glut of gold caused a crash in its value in the Old World, which was a major hit on Spain's economy.

It took many decades, even centuries, before the European contries derived truly profitable proceeds from colonization and trade in the New World.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[marc_moore]

You're absolutely right!

Budget priorities are totally screwed up but the story you're getting is that the shuttle is too dangerous. Welcome to America, the land of the half-truth. In a little place I like to call reality, two things are true:

it's much easier to fail to invest in the future than to trim a potential voter's piece of pork today

the space shuttle is too dangerous to fly, but it is still in operation only because the geniuses in Washington have sat on their asses for the last three decades instead of developing a suitable replacement

That said, I'd bet my next paycheck that the guys and gals would would be riding in that ceramic-tile-dropping, 1970s-built tin can would rather take their chances and keep working on the ISS than sit around picking their noses waiting for our so-called representatives to remember what makes this country greate.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[Blastrogath]

Or is it simply a case of colonial expansion for its own sake, now that it's not politically correct to colonise other countries on Earth?

Won't someone think of the inocent moon men before we destroy their fragile and beutifull culture??

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[gaijin99]

True, and there's no doubt that the glut of gold from the Americas ruined the economy of Spain and Portugal. However, rather than taking money from space, we'd be taking wealth. Money is just a symbol (like gold was), wealth is the real thing: materials, energy, food, etc. It'd take quite a budget to develop any space based industry, but the payoff will make MS look like a mom and pop store.

I'm not saying that its a quick buck, but it is a terriffic long term investment. From a military standpoint, how can you get any higher ground than orbit? I'm astonished that the military hasn't been pushing for even more use of orbital capibilities.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[foidulus]

Heh, off-topic, but you also forgot another interesting point(which may have parellels to today, depends on how you look at it) Spain diverted a lot of naval resources from fighting to hauling stuff back from the New World. That helped the British defeat the Spanish Armada and allow Britian to eventually become the world's super power till the Americans and Russians took over that role after WWII.
Here is the wikipedia article if interested. Though the conclusions drawn by the wikipedia article could be under contention. My history text in high school(which was a great text) pointed to this same event as one of the most defining moments in American history.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[thomastheo1]

I just wouldn't call the war in Iraq pointless. Saddam is gone, after all. Whether the administration could have gone after doing that more productively and intelligently is another matter, but I don't think i'd call it pointless..

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[khallow]

That actually might have been a better choice for Spain. As it was, in the first couple of decades they focused on hauling back as much of the New World's plentiful gold as possible. Instead of making Spain fantastically wealthy, the new glut of gold caused a crash in its value in the Old World, which was a major hit on Spain's economy.

I think that's incorrect. If one thinks of it, Spain shouldn't have had that much difficulty with gold since gold was a desired product in the rest of Europe. It was widely used in jewelry and had value anywhere on three different continents. Second, according to these figures inflation in Spain was on the order of a factor of four over 150 years. That's around 1% inflation per year, if true.

Instead, the likely culprits seem the military adventurism of the Spanish kings (including such debacles as the Spanish Armada, the routine piracy of Spanish treasure fleets, and the struggle over Holland, southern Italy and other scattered possessions), the drain of the bureaucratic structures of the empire, the risk adverse nature of religion in Spain at that time, and probably considerable bad economic policy of Spain.

Spain actually received an immediate payoff from its conquests. That's how it could fund such things as the Armada invasion against England. Rather than investing in the future, Spain squandered this vast windfall.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[cruachan]

One thing worth remembering though is that although Columbus discovered the new world in 1492, it was still a major challenge for countries such as Britain to establish colonies there two hundred years later (Virginia for example was touch and go for some time). The analogy may be worse than that - the Vikings got to the new world four hundred years before Columbus but failed to establish any sort of colony. Much like 1969, the technology they had, while capable of getting to the new world on a once-off basis, wasn't capable of a sustained effort.

My guess is real space colonization is on hold until we do get a cheap, reliable method of getting to orbit, be that the space elevator or some other technology - and it could well be a couple of hundred years from 1969 before it's available

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[0x0d0a]

Saddam is gone, after all.

Is that a good thing?

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[gaijin99]

Sure it is, Saddam was a vile dictator. It just isn't worth 900+ American lives, $200+ billion, and shitcaning all the goodwill that 9/11 brought the USA. On the scale of evil dictators, Saddam ranked somewhat below Al Bashir (current dictator of Sudan), but above Samuel Doe (former dictator of Lybia) [1]. The Bush government's fixation on Saddam is purely political, nastier dictators exist, as do greater threats to the US (N. Korea, for example).

I was opposed to the war in Iraq (still am, actually, but right now I don't see how the US can ethically withdraw), not out of any love for Saddam, but on the grounds that it was distracting resources from more important threats.

[1] That is, on a scale of vileness, Al Bashir is more vile, while Doe was less vile.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[0x0d0a]

My point is more that I'm not sure that I consider it a good thing to depose world leaders that we consider nasty.

The point of nations existing is that they are basically autonomous. Remember the Cold War, when the same philosophy led the USSR and the US to both "help" nations, one by deposing "evil leaderships" and "spreading democracy" and the other by deposing "corrupt capitalist" leaderships and "spreading communism"?

If a form of government is so much better, or a leader is so unpopular, isn't it better to let the people of the country deal with the problem?

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[r00tdenied]

The moon has an abundance of hydrogen isotopes on the surface, mostly because it scoops up all of the hydrogen 'ash' from the solar wind. It would be perfect for jump starting our 'Hydrogen economy'

Plus I'm sure there is an abundance of other materials that could be mined from the moon that would benefit humanity.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[beakburke]

You may or may not be right about N Korea, but of course the situation there is slightly different than that in Iraq. (Espcially given the vested interest the S Korea, China, and Japan have there.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[gaijin99]

I can definately see that argument. On the gripping hand, I can see arguments from the other side as well. Generally speaking I'll definately agree that preemptive attacks are a bad policy. Bush's statement that he wants to employ "preemptive attacks" (the old "I hit him back first" line) makes me very nervous.

However, despite my general agreement with you that the US shouldn't really be in the business of toppling governments, I do see the elemination of a dictator as a good thing. I also tend to think its pretty transient, because I can quite easily see the current (unelected) "President" of Iraq becoming its new dictator. "Here's the new boss, same as the old boss..." I hope I'm wrong, but I do strongly suspect that democracy in Iraq is going to be a hollow sham.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[gaijin99]

Of course the situation in the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" [1] is different. And I'm certainly not saying that the US should have waged war against N. Korea. I am saying that the war in Iraq has tied down a large percentage of our infantry, taken (so far) more than $200 billion, etc. Given the unsettled situation that the world is in right now, I think we'd be better off if we didn't have such a large percentage of our forces tied down in Iraq [2].

[1] Its been said before, but I'll repeat it: any government that puts the word "people's" in its name does not have the interests of its poeple in mind.

[2] I am speaking here mostly of infantry. I do realize that very few naval forces are involved. But the navy, while useful, can only bomb and fire missiles. Actual occupation, military police work, etc requires infantry.

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[drinkypoo]

You can't bring that hydrogen back to earth right now. It isn't useful to anyone on earth until we build the space elevator. Unless we have a use for it in space (like going to mars) it's not going to do anything for us. On the other hand, isn't the moon supposed to be the source for a useful helium isotope?

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[bill_mcgonigle]

The Bush government's fixation on Saddam is purely political, nastier dictators exist, as do greater threats to the US (N. Korea, for example).

So you don't consider Saddam planning attacks in the US a threat?

Additionally we know he had a relationship with our #1 enemy and directly funding terrorist attacks against our ally, Israel.

You can argue at what point it is judicious to go to war, but I fail to see how you can justify the action as "purely political".

Re:35 Goddamn years....

[evilviper]

So you don't consider Saddam planning attacks in the US [cnn.com] a threat?

Not if it's:

A) Not true
&
B) Beyond his capabilities

Saddam could only do the equivalent of hitting us with pointy sticks. Weapons inspections were taking place in Iraq as well. It was completely moronic to go to war when inspectors were finally back in, rather than letting them continue.

Also, 100% of all of the evidence used to justify the war was bullshit, and everyone, everywhere, knew it was bullshit before we invaided. ABC news even had a nice little 10 minute line-up of all the evidence (just after Bush issused his 48 hour ultimatum, several days before the war) and one-by-on listed all the evidence, and listed all the discrediting evidence from impartial, reliable sources as well (mainly the UN).

It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Station is just too compromised. The decision to bring the Russians in was a nice geopolitical gesture, but their hardware requires too much maintenance (to say nothing of the fact that they stole at least half the money we sent them), and NASA had to shift the station's orbit to be able to recieve rockets from Kazakhstan, making it useless for future interplanetary injections.

Done well, it could have been an incredible asset. But it wasn't done well.

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

How hard would it be for them to boost it into a much more suitable orbit or to one of the lagrange points?

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus you couldn't afford to do it well. All the money went into corporate welfare for the military contractors.

Got to kill lots of brown people, though. That must be some comfort to you.

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very.

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[Cid Highwind]

We don't have a manned vehicle that can reach the lagrange points anymore. The shuttle was never made to leave LEO, and we threw away the blueprits for Apollo. Soyuz could make it, but relying on the Russian government would be politically unacceptable. Even if the ISS somehow survived the trip, there would be no way to re-crew.

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Working with the Russians was the biggest mistake of all. Not only did they steal our money, but also our technology. They still have all those missiles, and we just let them into space with us? Unbelievable.

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[mindstormpt]

Oh of course it is the russian's fault, how could I forget that...

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[OneOver137]

Please explain why it's in a useless orbit. Are you talking about inclination?

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[sunspot42]

>The decision to bring the Russians in was a nice
>geopolitical gesture, but their hardware requires
>too much maintenance

As opposed to the American hardware - the Space Shuttle. No maintenance required there . . .

If we hadn't brought the Russians onboard, we'd be royally and truly f***** right now, with no way to get supplies to the ISS or get replacement crews up to the station. She'd be unmanned and probably tumbling out of control.

Not that I'd consider that much of a loss, since the ISS is a totally useless white elephant, a $100 billion welfare project for defense contractors. But still, blaming the Russians for the trouble with the ISS - in light of the latest Shuttle disaster - seems kind of ridiculous.

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

True dat - as usual the Americans forget or rewrite history to suit the national mythology.

Without the Russians the station would be in deep deep trouble indeed.

America has *no ability* to conduct manned space flight right now. The Russians do.

Come 2010 America will once again have *no ability* to conduct manned spaceflight. The Russians and the Chinese will. Possibly the Europeans as well. The vector of history is changing.

What's the fucking point, then?

[phillymjs]

If they're going to hobble the project so severely, why even keep it at all? Just deorbit the damn thing and maybe we can all get a free taco out of it-- I think that'd be a better return than what we're currently getting for all our tax money that was poured into the ISS.

~Philly

Obviously

[mm0mm]

Obviously our Government doesn't have enough budget set up for the program to go on. Don't worry, earth is our home.

Is this *really* a surprise?

[Pierce]

What has NASA really done and stuck with? Hubble was an accidental blessing. Heck, if they had known how good it would be the telescope probably would have been killed earlier.

They should disolve NASA and start over with a clean slate.

Re:Is this *really* a surprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me?

Hubble is one of the 4 Great Observatories NASA has/had planned for years and years now.
Ever heard of Chandra, Compton, or the recently launched Spitzer Space Telescope?

Probably not cause you're not apparently interested in astronomy outside the range of near-IR to low UV.
In their lifetimes these other observatories together have and will reveal perhaps as many or more details about the universe than just Hubble alone...too bad the pictures aren't as pretty or you would have heard of them.
Guess you missed the article(s) about how they were still tracking and getting signals from Voyager (2 i think?) up until what, last year? They tracked that damn probe for longer than i've been on the planet.
And yes, everyone knew how powerful/useful an instrument Hubble was and is. That's why they kept on going up to maintain it throughout the 90's. Accidental blessing my ass. NASA's shortcomings hardly negate the worth of the things they've accomplished and still do.
-aAnon cause I can't remember my password.

It's obvious

[Moderation abuser]

They don't know what to do with the space station?

It's obvious they should turn it into a hotel.

Re:It's obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late,
I think the russians bet the US to it!

Re:STUPID AMERICANS!! FAHRENHEIT 9/11!!!

[east coast]

The rest of the world is laughing so bad!!!

You mean the rest of the world that cries for American help at the drop of the hat?

It's finally come to this...

[east coast]

Thank God for Scaled Composites. Laugh if you want by this type of Washington dickering may very well setup the type of environment we need to bring more private industry into the picture.

It's just a shame that some of NASA's problems are probably nothing more than politics over practicality.

Re:It's finally come to this...

[jabberjaw]

However, is private industry insterested in science? As I have said before, private industry in space is good, however there is a place for NASA. I am having great difficulty thinking of a corporation which would greenlight the Kepler Mission or LISA.

Re:It's finally come to this...

[east coast]

However, is private industry insterested in science?

Obviously the general public isn't or there would be outrage. We take what we can get.

What a waste...

[FridayBob]

What an incredible waste. Not that working on the ISS sounds as exciting as setting up bases on the Moon and Mars, but think of all the money and effort that's already been invested in the ISS. It hasn't really even begun to pay off and it's already being dumped! What's worse is that I don't see the Moon/Mars mission happening anyway -- it's going to cost too much. After all, from a political point of view, there's really no point (except in the short term for George Bush). So, if ultimately Congress does not cough up the money for this project, then what will we be left with? Not much: no mission, no shuttle and no ISS. Great. One step forward, two steps back.

Re:What a waste...

[Eric Smith]

It hasn't really even begun to pay off and it's already being dumped!

Good riddance to bad rubbish! They should have done it much sooner, as it wasn't ever going to "pay off". In fact, they really should pull the plug on it right now. Long before they launched the first component, the plan for the station had been scaled down so much as to be esentially useless.

Orbiting Space Barge of Death?

[Migraineman]

Mir had been called that at one point, but I think Mir had much more value (and economy) than the ISS. Perhaps we could call the ISS the "Orbiting Space Boondoggle of Death." Barges have a use, after all. The ISS could have been useful, but the reality is that it doesn't *do* anything. I take that back ... it does one thing - it provides a function for the Space Shuttles. So the Shuttles and the ISS are locked in a perpetual self-sustenance loop, one supporting the other, for the sole purpose of maintaining the other's existence. Not a good thing.

While folks may note like ELVs, they're the most economical method for putting payloads into orbit. You aren't carrying around all the Shuttle mass just for the purpose of being able to fly it back.

If we expect to maintain any kind of space presence, our launch structure needs to split the hyu-mohn function apart from the cargo function. Haul the ugly bags of mostly water up in a vehicle designed specifically for that purpose, and only on missions requiring the hyu-mohn presence. Everything else goes up in unmanned vehicles. Screw the "reusable" cargo transport. It's less expensive to build the base vehicle for each launch. The crew transport could be reusable, maybe, but should be optimized for crew functions.

Unfortunately, there's a huge industry that's built up around supporting the Shuttle infrastructure. They're not going to let go of the cash cow without a fight.

Re:Orbiting Space Barge of Death?

[Anonymous Coward]

... So the Shuttles and the ISS are locked in a perpetual self-sustenance loop, one supporting the other, for the sole purpose of maintaining the other's existence. Not a good thing.

Sounds like the relationship between our Congresspoodles and congressional lobbyists. Or maybe I'm just being overly cynical .... nyaaaa. It's impossible to be too cynical when it comes to politics & politicians.

Re:STUPID AMERICANS!! FAHRENHEIT 9/11!!!

[pjt33]

I seem to recall that it was the other way round a bit over a year ago - Bush (and Blair, on his behalf) going round begging other countries for help.

BREAKDOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Over 90% of the government budget and 20% of the total U.S. GDP goes toward:

500 billion Social Security
500 billion Medicare
400 billion Military
350 billion Interest Payments
80 billion Farm Subsidies
40 billion IRS

Lets see. We all know of the SS abuses.

Healthcare costs are out of control.

You would think the Military was planning for an invasion from Mars!

Interest payments on the 7 trillion dollar debt go mostly to wealthy fat cats (many of whom belong to China's communist party!).

Soy, Peanut, Dairy, etc. farmers destroy "excess" inventories (who cares about starving people).

And finally the wonderful IRS army who makes sure that money keeps flowing, or it's your metaphorical knee caps!

Sorry NASA, 15.7 bil is too much 'cause the U.S. is too busy raping its body; to hell with its spirit!

Re:BREAKDOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there any sentient being with mod points? The parent post is informative and relevant ... and has a score of 0.

Re:BREAKDOWN

[Eric Smith]

Over 90% of the government budget and 20% of the total U.S. GDP goes toward:
[...]
40 billion IRS

Geez, if the IRS makes a net loss of $40 billion, we should eliminate it!

Re:BREAKDOWN

[mrchaotica]

Yes, we should! See http://www.fairtax.org/

Not accurate

[ncaHammer]

This article states that

Bill Gerstenmeier, space station director at NASA, said that if the shuttle started flying again in the spring, as planned, construction would resume in earnest on the half-built station, with the Japanese and European modules going up as early as 2007. Crews could expand from three to six members as early as 2009, he said, depending on construction at the station and positioning a second, three-person Soyuz rescue craft there.

NASA may retire but that will make

some room in the United States' Destiny science module for experiments would be used for a support system to regenerate water and air. Mr. Gerstenmeier said some displaced capacity would move to room in partners' modules where the United States has rights.

We used to have fire but the inventor died

[gelfling]

Why even get out of bed in the morning - what's the point? Oh wait I forgot - these are the people who won't do stem cell research that could cure Parkinson's, diabetes and a host of other horrible diseases because some psychochristians think it's a sin.

Re:We used to have fire but the inventor died

[Anonymous Coward]

Why even get out of bed in the morning - what's the point? Oh wait I forgot - these are the people who won't do stem cell research that could cure Parkinson's, diabetes and a host of other horrible diseases because some psychochristians think it's a sin.

Yeah! Morals, bah! I need nobodies morals but what I decide is right. Screw democracy and public consensus, let me write the laws! I'm smarter than all those idiots that don't share my worldview anyway... /sarcasm

Re:We used to have fire but the inventor died

[evilviper]

won't do stem cell research that could cure Parkinson's, diabetes and a host of other horrible diseases because some psychochristians think it's a sin.

Okay, someone desperately needs to play devils advocate here...

What if slaughtering thousands of 25-year-olds could help find the cure to cancer. Would you say that it's only not being done because some Christians think it's a sin?

Let's make it simpler. What if killing only a dozen people (who've said they don't want to die) could cure cancer? Would you then advocate killing them, and call anyone who disagrees a "psychochristian"?

Re:We used to have fire but the inventor died

[Hatta]

What if excising an unwanted mass of cells from your body could help cure cancer?

Re:STUPID AMERICANS!! FAHRENHEIT 9/11!!!

[laserbeak]

plz, copy this down to a note pad so you remember for future reference:

"note-to-self: don't send help to iraq. stop. don't impose imperialistic culture on rest of world. stop. Don't vote stupid president. stop. Actually be skepticle about power. stop. Don't allow patriotism to cloud judgment. stop.

we ALL love america.

staying alive

[bcrowell]

The crew of the ISS basically spends almost all their time doing the work they need to do in order to stay alive. In terms of science, the ISS is a complete waste.

a scaled-down International Space Station with fewer astronauts and less science
Less than zero?

The huge successes are the uncrewed probes, like Cassini and the Mars rovers. Budget cuts to the ISS are good news for space science, because that means more might be left over for projects that actually do science.

Re:staying alive

[DerekLyons]

The crew of the ISS basically spends almost all their time doing the work they need to do in order to stay alive. In terms of science, the ISS is a complete waste.

So far a being a reliable and creditable reference, Popular Mechanics is only slightly better than this.

That being said; It's more correct to say that the *current* ISS crew spends all of their time doing said work. Adding 2 scientists on top of the 2 engineers already there would not double the work, in fact they add little to the total work. In fact, that's how the ISS is (was) supposed to be eventually crewed, just like a research vessel. (That is to say a science crew who does nothing but science, and support crew who does the day-to-day grunt work.)

Re:staying alive

[mindstormpt]

Hey what do I know, but maybe working with a full crew would change that? Just maybe?

socialist think

[HBI]

Think about dollars, pounds, euros, whatever you want.

What happens to that dollar when it is spent by the average consumer at a retail establishment?

- First, government gets its cut as a sales tax, or VAT. God bless Oregon and other places where this doesn't exist.

The remainder of that dollar is earnings for the business owner. Of course, that owner has to pay a few things.

-Employee salaries
-Merchandise
-Utilities
-Rent or Mortgage and Property taxes

Please note that in all cases what is being spent directly supports people in their subsistence. Moreover, capitalism assures us that not a cent more than the reasonable market value is going to be spent on those things. Last point, capitalism also assures us that the owner is going to look to grow his business. That's how he makes more money. Therefore, more employees will be hired, greater amounts of merchandise will pass through his facility - and he might even get another if business is good. Truck drivers delivering the goods, utility workers maintaining his sewage/electric/phone/whatever are kept employed, manufacturing people who make the goods - the list goes on.

Envision the same dollar falling into a governmental till. What will happen to it? Well, if the drunken and drug addicted guys living in the nearby welfare motel are any indication, not much that is good. I suppose financing the nearby drug dealers is an economic cycle of sorts, but providing a roll of flash cash for them and paying for hookers probably wasn't what you were thinking about either when you were talking about tax dollars. Was it?

Government wastes your money. Why? Because it isn't theirs. Why should they give two shits what happens to it? This is why we get wasteful, unsafe space shuttles instead of cost-efficient non-reusable vehicles.

So why would you want to give them even a cent more than absolutely needed? Cut the nuts off of every budget. Say "You can take 5% off the top of ANYTHING" and cut it. Make them justify every expenditure. Demand results.

Last point, if NASA engineers a program without sufficient budget, the officials in charge should be arrested and convicted of manslaughter at the very least. If they knew they were under budget, they should just not do it, or fire some of the deadwood in their offices for increased funds. There's a lot of that i'm sure, like in every federal agency. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to fire a government worker, sadly. So if you wonder why NASA looks incompetent, maybe it's because it is.

Increase in tax != Increase in revenue

[shadow_slicer]

If you study economics, you will hear about the Laffer Curve.
Basically it works like this:
If taxes are too low, the government is only getting a really small percentage of the money in the economy, so they don't get that much revenue.
If taxes are too high, the taxes start to smother the economy. More and more people decide that holding a second job, or getting a higher paying job that requires more work isn't really worth it. So at this point the government is getting a large percent of a small number, and so they don't get that much revenue.
Somewhere in the middle, the government revenue peaks.

So you can't really say that lowering taxes during a shortage is a bad idea (especially if the economy is in recession). Maybe the people who want to lower taxes are using this model to try to increase revenue.

Re:Increase in tax != Increase in revenue

[Jim Starx]

Or maybe they're just pandering to the voters. Have you ever heard a politician say that taxes are too low?? Do you thinks that's because that statement has never been true?

You make a good point. Raising taxes isn't a blanket solution and we should be careful when we raise them. But I think, at the moment, it's warrented.

Re:Increase in tax != Increase in revenue

[beakburke]

The problem with raising taxes is that tax increases exhibit diminishing revenue increases. Thus a 10% increase in the tax rate does not give a 10% increase in revenue. Besides that, there is no way to guarantee that congress won't spend the money instead of reducing our deficit. The real solution is for all government programs to sunset after a certain period of time. And the only way to get them back is to rewrite them from scratch.

Bigelow Aerospace inflatable habitats

[FleaPlus]

Thankfully Bigelow Aerospace is working on inflatable space habitats (using former TransHab technology). They'll start in-space tests next year, on the maiden flight of SpaceX's (ultra-cheap) Falcon V rocket. With any luck we'll have a privately funded ISS-equivalent in a few years anyways, for a fraction of the cost.

Re:STUPID AMERICANS!! FAHRENHEIT 9/11!!!

[east coast]

"note-to-self: don't send help to iraq. stop. don't impose imperialistic culture on rest of world. stop. Don't vote stupid president. stop. Actually be skepticle about power. stop. Don't allow patriotism to cloud judgment. stop.

support genocide. stop. support terrorism. stop. support facism. stop.

We ALL love Nazis.

Re:STUPID AMERICANS!! FAHRENHEIT 9/11!!!

[east coast]

I seem to recall that it was the other way round a bit over a year ago - Bush (and Blair, on his behalf) going round begging other countries for help.

Please, as if 50 troops from third world countries made a difference. Atleast we know who to trust now.

Scientifically useless from day 1

[senahj]

There was never any real scientific rationale for the ISS.
It was always a political project in search of justification.

Cassini is significant science. NEAR Shoemaker was significant.
The Mars rovers are significant. Galileo was significant.
Hubble is significant. Stardust is significant.

The ISS is a waste of money.
Bush's "Man on Mars" directive is more of the same, in spades.

Re:Scientifically useless from day 1

[jabberjaw]

Couldn't the ISS be used to study the long term effects of microgravity on humans? That is, if NASA would allow its astronauts to pull longer terms. I do not mean to come across as snide, however, there are some things that the ISS could have proved vital too, however in its current state I would have to agree that the ISS is a white elephant.

Re:Scientifically useless from day 1

[roalt]

The ISS is a waste of money.

Correction: Building a space station for 7-9 persons where 2 of them are required to operate the station itself, and the other assigned to do research, and then cutting the persons on board down to 2 is a waste of money...

Re:Scientifically useless from day 1

[senahj]

Even with a full crew, the ISS is scientifically useless.
Too much vibration, orbit too low (so the shuttle can reach it).
Not a good enough vacuum.

NASA had to browbeat scientists into making up some sort of
experiments that could be done there. No important science
was _ever_even_proposed_.

---
He's no fun -- he fell right over.

Aliens will think it's an undeveloped trailer park

[IronChefMorimoto]

My god -- cutting funding and crew to the International Space Station. What will aliens think?

"Org -- we are approaching the human planet, Earth."

"Excellent, Zal -- after years of secretly abducting and probing countless asses of this species, we will finally properly introduce ourselves. I really wish we had a fruit basket to give their leader."

"Interesting, Org. It appears that the humans have replicated what they refer to as 'bad real estate' and a 'trailer park' in orbit around the planet."

"What? I thought that sorry piece of -- how did they say -- Russkie crog fell out of orbit years ago."

"No, Org -- it appears to be their 'space station' -- and it looks like crog."

"Let me see that, Zal."

[A few moments pass.]

"Damn, Zal -- they have really malurked their first peaceful space indeavor to Miktar. They should, as they say, just put the piece of crog on blocks and set a -- um -- hound dog -- under the solar panels. What a piece of crog."

"Yes, Org -- our estimations of their potential have been severely overstated. I am frankly glad that we did not bring the fruit basket."

"You are right, Zal -- this species has no potential. Deploy the Teragian genetic bio reversal weapon. We'll reset the species back several million lurgs and wait to see if they do any better. Damn -- that means I have to pull out the non-opposable thumb version of the anal probe."

IronChefMorimoto

Re:ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation

[Jim Starx]

The ISS in of itself qualifies as a worthwhile experiment as far as I'm concerned. We've probably learned just as much from building it as we would have if all the experiments planned had been completed. That's certainly worth something.

NASA's budget is HUGE!

[MG]

Comparing NASA's $15.7 billion to the DOD $400 billion is the wrong comparison. Everything looks small compared to defence.

The budget for the National Institutes of Health is about 30 billion. They fund most of the basic biomedical research. Every university biology department in the US runs off this money.

The budget for the National Science Foundataion is about 6 billion. They fund most of the physical science and mathematical research in the US. They also pay for telescopes and most of the real space research.

In contrast NASA's budget gets us a pointless space station, a broken space shuttle and a few (very expensive) inter-planetary probes. (For example, Cassini cost 3 billion dollars!)

Re:NASA's budget is HUGE!

[Bloodmoon1]

I agree with what I think you're saying here, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying, where we had a defense budget of somewhere just over $200 billion about 4-5 years ago, we now have one of about $400 billion. Meanwhile, it seems like NASA, as well as everyone else's budget, has been hacked down in the process.

I'd be all for cutting the DOD budget back down to the $200 billion area and distributing the funds around to our other programs that could make better use of it. The DOD would still have more than enough to operate (Check the CIA World Factbook for defense budgets of other countries around the world. We'd still be basically outspending the top 10 and some change.), and we could get some money into more useful areas. And just for the record, I'm all for a strong military, but it seems like our current structure seems to blow a lot of money, but that's another topic.

...NASA's budget gets us a pointless space station, a broken space shuttle and a few (very expensive) inter-planetary probes. (For example, Cassini cost 3 billion dollars!)

I think the only reason the ISS is pointless (I have to agree, it's Skylab 2 as far I'm concerned.) is that it got planned with great enthusiasm, but then got horribly neglected. Had it actually been fully realized, it would have been quite useful. In it's current state though, it's a waste of money. The shuttles have been very good to us, but they're just to damn old and do need to be replaced, no argument there. While expensive, Cassini is a perfect example of what happens when projects are properly funded. It's functioning perfectly and we're already learning new things from it, and it's actual work component of its mission has basically just begun. It's just like with Galileo that went to Jupiter a few years ago. When projects are actually well funded, they succeed with great results.

Re:NASA's budget is HUGE!

[Araxen]

Cassini was funded by 3 different space agencies. The United States didn't fund the whole project.

Re:NASA's budget is HUGE!

[beakburke]

The Defense budget was not 200B only a few years ago, maybe 250-300B, but thats not reall much different from now. Iraq is worth about 100B/year.

Re:NASA's budget is HUGE!

[drinkypoo]

The NIH funded seven studies to try to prove that eating fat made you fat. The seventh one showed a link between taking drugs to reduce cholesterol and a reduction in heart disease - on the strength of this study they decided that fat was harmful and gave us a food pyramid that suggests we should eat more carbohydrates than anything else. Result? Americans got fatter and the rate of youth diabetes skyrocketed, and that pyramid dominates our nutritional education to this day in spite of it being wrong because the NIH doesn't want to admit that it fucked up.

Giving the NIH more money amounts to nothing more than rewarding bad behavior.

I don't feel bad about spending three billion dollars on cassini which has produced some useful data. I don't feel bad about spending money on the ISS which has taught us some valuable lessons (like don't count on anyone else to produce modules...)

Maybe if we didn't keep asking NASA to produce these projects on a shoestring budget we'd see some more "useful" results. As if learning something useful weren't valuable enough...

Re:NASA's budget is HUGE!

[Zen Punk]

Actually, IIRC, The U.S. funded/developed Cassini itself(the main probe), while the ESA(European Space Agency) was responsible for Huygens, the piggy-back probe destined for Titan. The ISA(Italian Space Agency) did....what did they do again?(serious) Some scientific instruments, I think....

Re:NASA's budget is HUGE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bear in mind, the NIH's role in the current food pyramid was minimal. It was produced by the Department of Agriculture. It's goal is to support the various food-producing industries.

As new nutritional information was becoming public, growing numbers realized the "four food groups" was flawed. But various agriculture industries were worried that they'd get labeled as unhealthy, so as a preemptive strike they announced they'd revised the food guide to incorporate the new findings, while what they released was well-balanced to represent most every industry and keep them happy. Voila -- insurance against stray "X is bad for you" news headlines, with all the appearance of scientificity but little of the boring concrete support that's rarely, if ever, competently investigated in the general press.

Having seen the proverbial NIH sausage being made, my opinion is that it's largest failing is external political pressures to prohibit research into certain techniques or increase funding for certain diseases. Political winds shift more quickly than typically-slow research can handle, and good projects often die premature deaths.

Re:NASA's budget is HUGE!

[CaptainAvatar]

In contrast NASA's budget gets us a pointless space station, a broken space shuttle and a few (very expensive) inter-planetary probes. (For example, Cassini cost 3 billion dollars!)

I agree with the first two points but Cassini was actually the last such expensive probe. For some time the philosophy at NASA has been "smaller, faster, cheaper" - send several cheap probes which do only a small numbers of tasks instead of one big probe that does everything - and they have been succeeding brilliantly, as the current Martian rovers show.

NASA does robotic exploration very well. The manned spaceflight program is sick - it needs a radical makeover or somebody else should take over the job.

The Real Problem is

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1961, when shit wasn't invented yet and people fought bears for vital food, President Kennedy had the balls to give NASA less than nine years to get to the moon.
In this day and age, when there's metric shitloads of technology all over the place and the internet makes valuable porn as free as air, President Bush gives a trip to mars seventeen years. What a tool.

See, Kennedy had the balls to lay a firm deadline down. "You bitches will put a man on the moon before January 1, 1970 or I will come back from the grave and kick your ass," he said. He knew he was going to get shot. That's how hardcore he was. He also got crazy laid by Marilyn Monroe.

President Bush says, "You ought to think about just possibly putting a man on the moon sometime during this five year period."

President Kennedy showed us that you have to slap NASA around a little bit to get them to do anything worthwhile with manned space exploration. You can't be all lovey-dovey and set long gradual timetables.

And Bush mentions "the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods." So we'll have another Skylab ISS, but on the moon. The only differences will be that it won't crash into Australia like Skylab (it will crash into the Moon instead - that might sound hard to acheive since it would already be on the surface of the moon, but they will find a way to do that), it will leak more than ISS, and since it won't even be international we won't be able to bum rides from the Russians.

If Kennedy was alive in this day and age he would have said, "Fucking NASA, I am still alive in this day and age so you assholes better have a self-sufficient Mars base by the year 2013. Also make me a space elevator. And resurrect Marilyn Monroe." Then NASA would complain that it is not their job to resurrect people and Kennedy would punch NASA in the eye.

I bet the "Crew Exploration Vehicle" thart they are working on is going to blow the fuck up about twenty times too. You can probably trace the suckiness of manned space exploration to the decision to switch from cool names like "Mercury" and "Apollo" to crappy names like "Skylab" and "STS." When the Apollo blew up they fucking fixed it and came home, but when the Space Shuttle gets fucked up they make Powerpoints about it and ignore the problem.

Re:The Real Problem is

[korbin_dallas]

"You can probably trace the suckiness of manned space exploration to the decision to switch from cool names like "Mercury" and "Apollo" to crappy names like "Skylab" and "STS." When the Apollo blew up they fucking fixed it and came home, but when the Space Shuttle gets fucked up they make Powerpoints about it and ignore the problem."

I think thats the best d4mn3d summary of NASA I've ever heard. You are right, after Apollo, the 'cool' engineers who wanted to DO something fun and useful were basically replaced with BEAUROCRATS. Really, you should see the geniuses that 'work' at NASA. Once I saw a NASA person put a "Government Property-If found drop in nearest mailbox" sticker on a piece of hardware fscking 8 feet long and 4 feet in diameter and weighing fscking 3000 pounds! My observation is that most NASA employees cannot get a job anywhere else, they are government quota fillers.

I am also surprised yall here don't know that ISS has been suking money since around 1957. Just dig around a good aerospace library such as at Auburn University, and you will see multitudes of reports and 'studies' about stations.

If we have a space elevator...

[CaroKann]

If we have a space elevator, then why do we need a space station? Wouldn't the top of the space elevator also serve as a space station?

I think the worlds limited resources are best spent on the space elevator, since that effort might give us an economical way of getting to space.

Re:If we have a space elevator...

[drinkypoo]

Yes, the top of the space elevator would be a space station. That doesn't mean we don't need another, separate space station, however. Actually, we should probably have at least two space elevators.

Remember, the hard part about dealing with a space station is getting there. Put up a space elevator and that certainly becomes a lot easier.

NASA Cowards & Excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another critical disappointment in a long line of many due to the cowards and holier than thou fancy paper toting idiots at NASA. The ISS was a novel idea that might have had a unifying property and scientific potential, however having their arrogant culture exposed which murdered the Columbia astronauts they fly any excuse they can to not work. This of course equates to grounded shuttles, which the world depended on carry up the modules given the Russian obsession of strappping people in a cramped compartment of a giant missle.

Granted the shuttles are outdated and were so when One Hit Wonders ruled the airwaves in the 80s, but it's all we have at the time since it's more important to wage unjustified wars based purely on lies that financially benefitted the illiterate finatic in office and his decrepit senile crony and his crony's buddy's pockets with the no bid awards. Swept under the carpet NASA claims that the shuttles are not safe. No shit assholes, and that risk is ACCEPTED and UNDERSTOOD by every brave human that has flown on a shuttle. The Challenger and the Columbia were sad disasters, but NOTHING is without risk especially space travel and exploration. By crippling our space program we are crippling our future and our ability to try to understand the immense universe we live in. Would I pay higher taxes for NASA funding, fuck yeah I would as long as it was clearly written that crooked liars could *never* touch that money and re-pipe it into bullshit programs like hundreds of thousands of dollars for fucking deer farms in Alaska. We need to clean house and send those lazy cowardly excuse making paper toting morons to go job hunting while they wash winshields with their fancy papers. What's next to get scrapped? They have sentenced the Hubble to death despite it STILL making new discoveries, all but destroyed our space program grounding the shuttles with L A M E excuses, and how they seek the same route with the ISS. Since they think space travel can be 100% safe maybe they should take a proposed mission to Sesame Street to live with Peter Pan and the Easter Bunny.

Re:ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation

[reallocate]

What have we learned other than how to assemble a small space station?

I believe the only serious purpose for any space station is as the assembly and fueling point for space missions. In other words, a glorified train station. In the case of the ISS, we've got a station but we still have no railroad.

How hard would it be to change the orbit?

[antispam_ben]

Very.

All you need is money.

Re:How hard would it be to change the orbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

well the US should get the fuck out of iraq and afganistan and spend it then!

Re:ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. Try talking to some NASA engineers and scientists, and the universal feeling is that we've learned absolutely nothing new from building the thing that we didn't already know or could have found out much more cheaply. Meanwhile, many scientifically valuable programs were cut because of the idiotic space station. It doesn't even serve a valuable defense function, given that we have Russians spying around there. Let's decommission it immediately.

OH FUCKING GREAT

[ShadowRage]

Thanks NASA, now you've thrown us 20 years behind again! not to mention you're now ending shuttle flights, of course the other Nations are happy with this decision, it means less US involvement in a space program they can evolve and take credit for.

Why dont we also stop sending probes out as well, since those are *SUCH* a waste of money as well NASA?

at this rate we might as well just go back to staring at stars through little $600 ground based telescopes. The only good telescope we have is going to be scrapped, even though it's still highly useful. when the James Webb gets launched, I'm gonna laugh when it fails.

correction/insertion

[drinkypoo]

That's 40 billion dollars a year. I kind of forgot to say that part in my fury.

Spanish Armada

[ion]

Actualy i just saw a Discovery show about the Spanish Armada, and the conclussion was that it was not the British that defeated the Spanish Armada, it was the weather.

Upon arriving south of England, the Spanish did not attack the British fleet, but waited. The British waited too, not because Drake wanted to play bowls? but because the tide was wrong.

When the tide turned, the British attacked, but the Spanish made their halfcircle, which is good for defence. Even though the British had superior guns, that shot faster and longer, they shot about one shot pr. hour pr. gun. (could be those days standard). Further more the British didnt hit anything, but only used their supplies of gunpower and bullets.

The ships traveled from south of the far west south england, into the channel, infront of Holland, where the Spanish Armada was close to run on ground, so they moved north into the North sea.

There they choose to return home to Spain, but the wind direction made it impossible to turn south, so they had to turn west, far far west, so they could avoid the Irish and Scotish coastline.

Unfortunately because of the gulfstream, they were not as far west as they thought, so when they turned southwest towards Spain, they hit the Irish and Scotish coastline...

Half of the ships that left Spain did not return, and most went down on the Irish coast.

Why Explore when you can KILL

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never understood the need to invest trillions in killing, yet a few billion for exploring is so hard. There are those that like technology that do not feel the need to kill with it.

ISS is a technological dead end

[code_rage]

If the goal of the human spaceflight program is to go to the Moon and Mars, why should we continue work on ISS at all? The two physiological problems of space exploration (bone demineralization and radiation) are poorly addressed by ISS.

We already know that microgravity is bad for bones. What about 1/6 G (the level of Lunar surface gravity)? If that is also unhealthy then we will definitely need more physiological research, but if 1/6 G is sustainable than it seems that the right answer is to use tethers to spin up that level of gravity.

Radiation is the other big problem. But unless I'm way off base here, the level and character (energy spectrum) of radiation in Low Earth Orbit is very different from that outside the Earth's magnetosphere. If you want to study deep space radiation, go to deep space (initially with petri dishes full of bio-goo, then small animals, etc).

The objection I have is spending another 6 years and $50B to complete ISS, when the only scientific rationales are poorly addressed by ISS. The only rationale that makes "sense" is that we're doing it to avoid angering the international partners on ISS, who have invested big bucks in equipment that is nearly ready for launch.

But this is a poor rationale. I think our partners would be just as pleased to work on the Moon-Mars program as on a technological dead end. So what we really wind up with is that this is nothing more than a jobs program and pork barrel for big aerospace firms.

Space efforts scaled back?

[stealth.c]

Sounds to me like that time those guys on Easter Island decided boats were a waste of time.

Re:Space efforts scaled back?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they spent all their trees fixing local problems first, before wasting any on those off-island distractions.

Re:ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

If ISS was designed for long term habitation--complete with simulated gravity by rotation--then perhaps it could be taken somewhat seriously as an experiment. But as it is now, it's just an orbital camping trip that teaches us absolutely nothing the Russians didn't know when they built Mir.

poor America

[Doc Ruby]

When we had a $5T surplus we weren't scaling back science - we were keeping America's scientific leadership ahead, and briging the rest of the world along. Now that we're staring at a $10T debt, we're discarding science, embracing unprovable "faith" instead, and leading the world into a Dark Age of ignorance. The destruction of our knowledge-based economy is a free side effect.

Re:poor America

[bmf033069]

Agreed...I hope to never see the day when we can mod to "heretical"...

Re:poor America

[Doc Ruby]

Mods can't stop people talking about blowing the $5T federal surplus into a $10T debt. Or the change in tone from cool rationality to shrieking fearmongering, just by calling it a "Troll". If you disagree, say something meaningful. Or confirm my criticism.

About time....

[cbdavis]

ISS was a bad journey in space exploration. We actually got to the moon. Then we backed off. We spent 20 years flying an edsel oh I mean space shuttle and then decided to waste more time and $$$ in building ISS. How about going back to the frecking moon!! Theres your base for the Mars mission.

The last moon mission was early 70s. We have blown over 30years screwing around. Now, to go back to moon will costs a HUGE amount of cash. And Mars? Well, the money for Mars was sent to Iraq. Sorry!!!

Just like I always though

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA can't finish building ISS - what's the chance that we will abandon the moon construction half way?

Re:Just like I always though

[Anonymous Coward]

Zero - absolutely freaking zero.

Reality check, I think - this is just the first step to abandoning manned space flight for all buy military purposes. The moon/mars nonsense is just that; nobody seriously believes it is going to happen.

And I say this with regret, as a lifelong fan of NASA.

The sign of a senile system is when it cannot detect or refuses to acknowledge the difference between reality and fantasy.

Seriously

[Julian Morrison]

What is the actual pragmatic purpose of that flying tin can?

This is Bush's fault, not NASA's

[0x0d0a]

Why dont we also stop sending probes out as well, since those are *SUCH* a waste of money as well NASA?

Not NASA's fault. IIRC, Bush had existing NASA funding reallocated towards Mars work. It is not new news. Take a look at this article from 2001: Bush's budget was to:

(CNN) -- While giving a boost to Mars exploration, the proposed 2002 budget for NASA would scrap a mission to Pluto, tighten the reins on the international space station and cut programs that monitor world climate changes.

Private industry and space

[0x0d0a]

Now what, exactly, would privatizing the space industry do? It sure as hell wouldn't make us push the limits. You'd get lots of companies shoving people up to LEO for kicks or launching satellites. You'd have reduced profit margins, and less incentive to be extremely careful about waste being released in orbit. You certainly wouldn't go to Mars or the Moon -- doing so is expensive and unlikely to produce a return.

Really, the only economically viable approaches I can see that private industry would provide would be space tourism (sounds good, only scales to a certain degree), and satellite launches.

Re:A-FUCKING-Men Brothah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Course I also think Kennedy might ask Clinton if Lewinski really could suck chrome off a bumper since she is fat enough to vacuum a table clean at ten paces. Might work to polish his knob and hold him over till he finds a fine piece of ass that can actually sing again and not be a STD factory.

Bastard ass NASA and their lame excuses.

Re:ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation

[Jim Starx]

What have we learned other than how to assemble a small space station?

That's not exactly an easy task. I think that in of itself is good.

Re:True dat

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe those obsessed with primitive superstitions should try reading some more recent books that are accurate and filled with provable facts.

Relegion: Single greatest sign of pure ignorance.

HEADLINE 2010: energy shortage and 4th oil war

[cdn-programmer]

By 2010 the world may well be gripped in a huge energy crisis. It will be man made of course, predicated on our refusal to heed the warnings of experts. You can read about it here: www.hubbertpeak.com and here: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Here is another really good artical on the subject, published July 17, 2004: http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/040717/forweekendedgeenerg y_oil_imports_1.html

I'll quote from the artical:

"Reuters
U.S. Addiction to Foreign Oil Deepens
Saturday July 17, 7:58 am ET
By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. domestic oil production has dropped five percent since this year's peak in February and near-record oil prices are unlikely to inspire drillers to slow the country's deepening dependence on foreign oil, experts say.

From the artical: the US pumps 5.43 Million barrels per day (early July down from 5.70 in Feb). The USA burns about 20 million barrels per day. (this is a short fall of 14.57 million barrels per day which must come from imports and oil in storage). The next paragraph states: " As domestic output dropped this summer, crude imports averaged more than 10 million bpd for a record two months, the EIA said this week."

Well - the numbers may be wrong I suppose. But the USA has drawn down its oil in storage to a 17 year low.

-------

later in the story we have: "... rising U.S. demand, and a fall in domestic drilling since 2001 won't cut reliance on record imports, experts said."

-------

One reason to go into space is to harvest the vast energy stores. There are many ways to do this including building mirrors to light our cities at night and to provide heat through reflected radiant energy. Of course, while system such as this have been proposed, they have not to the best of my knowledge been proven to be workable much less practical.

Nevertheless, it is clear that UNLESS an alternative to fossil fuels is found - and quickly - we will have no alternatives IMHO other than to build nuclear plants and to do so at breakneck speed.

Our energy buffer is ebbing away - rather quickly I think. With the North Sea production dropping since 1999 (at a horendous rate in fact) there is no suprise to me that Britain and the USA was interested IMHO in liberating Iraq oil.

-------------

Roll the film forward to 2010. What sort of world do we expect to be living in? Line ups at the gas station and fuel shortages for the last 3-5 years? Tree huggers and pro-nukes chasing each other with tire irons and baseball bats? Crazy pollies lying to the public proclaiming that if we vote for them the we will be once again self sufficient in energy?

Science missions in space and energy research on space based energy capture systems proclaimed as a reckless waste of our dwindling resources?

Looming food shortages as the urban population demands access to fuel at the expense of the rural community and justifies this "for economic reasons"... and outvotes those who use the fuel to supply food?

Fertilizer shortages caused by a total shutdown of the North American fertilizer industry and an inability of the industry to ramp up African / Middle East and Russian production fast enough.

Permenant rotating power blackouts both is the hot summer months and the coldest winter months due to further declines in North American gas production (which peaked in 2000) and an inability to ramp up LNG imports (or even build ships fast enough). This compounded by an inability to do fuel switching to other than coal... and not enough coal fired power generating capcity because nobody built the plants.

Well, I guess I could suggest that we might have the USA taking over the administration of ALBERTA and the Tar Sands, proclaiming that we are shirking our responsibilities to increase production, when the truth of the matter is that the total Canadian Natural Gas supply is insufficient for even 10% of the Recoverable Bitumin in the Tar Sands

Doubts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why this voice inside my head tells me that there's nothing out there?

NASA cutback

[kemolledog]

Human exploration of space does not have a long future.

We are in a race for the succession of mankind from biological beings into virtual beings, and we should spend our public resources in making sure that this process unfolds in as secure and stable manner as is possible, that respects and secures the existing Humans.

Hurling 175 pound hunks of flesh into far reaches of outer space to observe certain phenomena and watch over various gauges, seems to be a phenomenal waste of resources compared to the real challenges facing our future existance

Space travel for Humans in the near future should be a private venture, such as the X-prise model suggests. Space tourism has a place in the near future, but, most of future space science will come from remote/virtual searches.

Re:ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation

[reallocate]

No, it isn't an easy task. But, as built, the station is essentially purposeless.

Space travel is about travel: going from here to somewhere else. Science, research, exploration, etc., are all secondary tasks that depend on our ability to actually travel in space. ISS does not travel in space and it does not facilitate space travel by any other vehicle.

The situation is rather akin to what might have been faced by early Arctic explorer if they hadlacked the means to travel that far north. They might have chosen to live for months on end in a deep freezer, testing human ability to withstand Arctic conditions, while others squabbled about whether it was necessary to go at all. When they emerged, they still would lack the means to travel to the north and all they would have accomplished was learning how to live in a freezer.

I would enthusiastically support a station purpose-built to a return to the Moon and exploration of the near Solar System.

Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[fmaxwell]

If you want to cut something, cut the NON-WORKING social welfare system that's already cost over $1 trillion since the inception of Johnson's Great Society.

In what way is it not working? Many elderly people get the medical care they need through Medicare. Middle class people collect unemployment and keep from slipping into bankruptcy, losing their homes, cars, etc. People who find themselves without marketable job skills are able to get federally funded training. Children in low-income families are able to get subsidized college loans and need-based scholarships. Older Americans who may have lacked the education, skills, or foresight to save for their retirement are able to count on Social Security checks.

I find it interesting that you qualify welfare with "social." I gather that you don't mind corporate welfare, which costs the American taxpayer two to three times as much as social welfare. You don't mind giving Haliburton no-bid contracts for millions of dollars. You don't mind $5 billion per year subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. You don't mind public lands being handed over to corporate farms for livestock grazing. You don't mind that federal farm price support programs cost U.S. consumers and taxpayers some $370 billion between 1985 and 2002 -- enough money to purchase all the farmland in 41 states. Nope. You're too upset about poor people getting money.

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[3263827]

Look up non-sequitur

We've been "fighting" poverty and all sorts of social ills for decades and all we've done is create a dependant class of citizenry who aren't ashamed to suck at the government's teat. That's my definition of "not working." Our forefathers would be embarrassed at how we've come to rely on our government instead of ourselves.

As to corporate welfare, I'm opposed to that as well. But since you're so smart you already knew that when you set up your straw-man argument.

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[fmaxwell]

We've been "fighting" poverty and all sorts of social ills for decades and all we've done is create a dependant class of citizenry who aren't ashamed to suck at the government's teat.

So that's your opinion of a middle-income American who is temporarily accepting unemployment to keep from losing his house? That's what you think of a poor kid from an inner-city neighborhood who accepts a need-based scholarship or a subsidized college loan? That's how you view an elderly widow who accepts a Social Security check?

Our forefathers would be embarrassed at how we've come to rely on our government instead of ourselves.

No. What they would be embarassed by is the selfish 'not-with-my-taxes' types who put attainment of personal wealth above the good of society.

As to corporate welfare, I'm opposed to that as well.

Then why did you focus on "social welfare" when corporate welfare costs 2-3 times as much? If you are looking for money for NASA, why would you first take it away from the poor while letting huge, multi-national corporations continue to "suck at the government's teat"? If you are so opposed to corporate welfare, too, then why didn't you just say "welfare" in your initial post?

But since you're so smart you already knew that when you set up your straw-man argument.

You're the one who made the distinction between welfare in general and social welfare, not me.

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[3263827]

So that's your opinion of a middle-income American who is temporarily accepting unemployment to keep from losing his house? That's what you think of a poor kid from an inner-city neighborhood who accepts a need-based scholarship or a subsidized college loan? That's how you view an elderly widow who accepts a Social Security check? Unemployment taxes are paid solely by the employer, not by the government. Nice try. Social Security just encourages people to rely (mistakenly) on the government instead of themselves and family. As to the scholarship example, "need-based" is a relative term. All this avoids my point about fighting "poverty." Poverty will always exist in the US, by definition. I also never said that I'd take money away from the poor before shutting down corporate welfare. Nice try at putting words in my mouth.

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[fmaxwell]

Unemployment taxes are paid solely by the employer, not by the government. Nice try.

Just what "taxes" are paid by "the government"? Do you think that employers just pluck the money out of the air to pay for unemployment? No, it is reflected in higher costs for goods and services, so how is that different, in an end-result, than taxes levied against you directly? "Social welfare" mean the collection of taxes by the government and the disbursement of those taxes out to help the needy. Don't try to redefine the word.

Social Security just encourages people to rely (mistakenly) on the government instead of themselves and family.

Who gives a damn whether they rely on the government? I don't want some widow starving to death just because she doesn't have a family to rely on. I don't want someone who lost their retirement at Enron to have to beg for food. I don't think that someone whose family can't afford to support them should suffer.

As to the scholarship example, "need-based" is a relative term.

So what's your point? If someone can't afford to go to college without such a scholarship, your arguing about semantics is pointless.

All this avoids my point about fighting "poverty."

Why do you right wingers have to paint everything as "fighting" something? We aren't fighting poverty. We're trying to help individuals who need it -- because we are, with some obvious exceptions, a caring society that doesn't want to see it's members suffer. I've never seen anyone so naive as to believe that the purpose of social welfare is to stamp out poverty.

I also never said that I'd take money away from the poor before shutting down corporate welfare. Nice try at putting words in my mouth.

Yes you did when you wrote:

If you want to cut something, cut the NON-WORKING social welfare system that's already cost over $1 trillion since the inception of Johnson's Great Society.

That was your A-number-1 program to cut. You didn't say "right after shutting down corporate welfare." You said, "if you want to cut something", implying that your offering was the best place to make a cut. Don't try to weasel out of it now.

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[3263827]

"Who gives a damn whether they rely on the government? I don't want some widow starving to death just because she doesn't have a family to rely on. I don't want someone who lost their retirement at Enron to have to beg for food. I don't think that someone whose family can't afford to support them should suffer.
"

Great. Then contribute to charity. It's not the place of government to compensate people for a lack of planning.

"So what's your point? If someone can't afford to go to college without such a scholarship, your arguing about semantics is pointless."

It's great that your ready to spend MY taxes dollars for a new "entitlement" for others. Why don't you start your own scholarship fund for some needy student with your own money. Remember, it's my fscking money, NOT yours.

"Why do you right wingers have to paint everything as "fighting" something? We aren't fighting poverty. We're trying to help individuals who need it -- because we are, with some obvious exceptions, a caring society that doesn't want to see it's members suffer. I've never seen anyone so naive as to believe that the purpose of social welfare is to stamp out poverty."

Why do you assume that "right wingers" don't want to a "caring society?" I just don't think it's government's job to babysit people. You seem to want a nanny-state. Fine. Go to Canada. I donate 10% of my income annually to several charities, so I back up my words with actions. How about you?

"I also never said that I'd take money away from the poor before shutting down corporate welfare. Nice try at putting words in my mouth.

Yes you did when you wrote:
If you want to cut something, cut the NON-WORKING social welfare system that's already cost over $1 trillion since the inception of Johnson's Great Society.
That was your A-number-1 program to cut. You didn't say "right after shutting down corporate welfare." You said, "if you want to cut something", implying that your offering was the best place to make a cut. Don't try to weasel out of it now."

Not trying to weasel out of anything. You inferred that I think cutting social welfare is the first program I'd aim at, even though I never specifically said that. I wasn't about to list each and every government program deserving of the axe, but that's obviously the type of clarity you wanted. Too bad. Life's not exact.

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[fmaxwell]

Great. Then contribute to charity.

I want everyone to pay their fair share, not just those with a conscience or sense of decency. Someone who is greedy and self-centered should not be able to just opt-out of their societal obligations.

It's not the place of government to compensate people for a lack of planning.

Who the f*ck "plans" to have their life's savings wiped out with medical bills over and above what the insurance will pay? Who plans to have the family breadwinner be killed in an auto accident at age 37? Who plans to give birth to a severely handicapped child that needs 24/7 care?

It's great that your ready to spend MY taxes dollars for a new "entitlement" for others. Why don't you start your own scholarship fund for some needy student with your own money.

Because I should not have a lower standard of living just so that others can greedily decide to keep all of their money rather than helping the needy.

Remember, it's my fscking money, NOT yours.

It's not "your money" once the government imposes a tax. It's their money and they can do with it as they please, whether it's buying a new bomber for the Pentagon, giving McDonalds money to advertise overseas, or helping to pay for diabetes medication for a destitute person.

Why do you assume that "right wingers" don't want to a "caring society?"

Because I judge people by their actions. I watch them cut funding for valuable programs like Head Start while giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the U.S. I see them try to ban gay marriage just to score some cheap political points, never being concerned about the financial and social impact that it would have on gay couples. Bush was "compassionate conservative" until the day he took office. Haven't heard much of that phrase lately, have we?

I just don't think it's government's job to babysit people. You seem to want a nanny-state. Fine. Go to Canada.

You're the one saying that we should abolish programs that our elected representatives put into place and funded. It seems to me that you're the one who doesn't like the United States, so why don't you move?

I donate 10% of my income annually to several charities, so I back up my words with actions.

And how much doesn't go to some religious group?

I wasn't about to list each and every government program deserving of the axe, but that's obviously the type of clarity you wanted.

Quit weaseling. You wroteIf you want to cut something, cut the NON-WORKING social welfare system that's already cost over $1 trillion since the inception of Johnson's Great Society."Something" is singular. Therefore, you were stating that if someone wanted to cut one thing, it should be the "social welfare system."

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[smithmc]

I want everyone to pay their fair share, not just those with a conscience or sense of decency.

And I'm sure you can settle once and for all the issue of what constitutes a "fair share"...?

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[fmaxwell]

And I'm sure you can settle once and for all the issue of what constitutes a "fair share"...?

We have elected members of Congress who decide what is a fair share on behalf of their constituents. If the constituents feel that the amount is wrong, they can register their dissatisfaction in the voting booth. Do you mean can I come up with a number that everyone will agree on? Of course not, but that's really not necessary since we are a democracy and all that we have to do is come up with a compromise that is supported by the majority.

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[smithmc]

Of course not, but that's really not necessary since we are a democracy and all that we have to do is come up with a compromise that is supported by the majority.

I take it, then, that you are satisfied with the present tax structure, given that it was legislated by the majority (or the majority of elected representatives, at least)?

Re:Social Welfare is Working Fine...

[fmaxwell]

I take it, then, that you are satisfied with the present tax structure, given that it was legislated by the majority (or the majority of elected representatives, at least)?

I don't have to be "satisfied" with it. I just accept it as the law of the land and the results of a democratic process. I'm not "satisfied" with the President, but I don't claim that my dissatisfaction means that he has no legal or ethical right to hold the office after being elected (more or less) to it.

If you want my personal opinion, here it is: I do believe that my individual tax burden is reasonable and I make an above-average salary. I feel that too little is spent on social welfare and too much is spent on corporate welfare. Although I believe that the social welfare system is in need of reforms on many of its programs, I do not subscribe to the "throw out the baby with the bath water" approach of many conservatives. Nor do I think that the existence of people who have figured out how to scam the social welfare system is a valid reason to deny benefits to others who have done nothing wrong. I do not label any program which doesn't directly benefit me as "wasteful government spending." I think that there are too many deductions for wealthy individuals and big businesses.

I hope that answers your questions.

Hrm... lots of FUD going around...

[Simkin1]

I've heard a lot of nonsense on all sides while reading this board. Some folks have made good points, others just a lot of hooey. The reality for NASA is that the bureaucracy of the Space Agency is like a noose around real research getting done. Countless billions wasted on management that does very little. NASA kills projects just as they show real potential, or after they've had a success with what appears to be no thought towards the amount of research and tax dollars that went into getting a project to where it is. The space station is a floating debris field waiting to happen, but the purpose is still correct -- a foot-hold off this rock. The reality for humanity is that in the near future (depending on who you listen too either sooner or later) we will exhaust our natural resources -- this is INEVITABLE. I'm not personally a tree-hugger, but I do recognize that there are finite resources available, and they are being consumed very very quickly. I doubt that we'll be beaming back any heat waves, or energy if we were in space, but at the very least, while we have the time to do the research and try and get beyond our own solar system, we should be trying. With that said, we should also be trying to get the most out of what we have, product better energy systems, and look even more deeply into what's "in our own backyard".
NASA has a real problem to face though. For NASA, the United States has to "either sit on the pot and shit or get off" -- meaning either space exploration should be a real, present, top priority or it needs to be dropped. We've dangled our toes in the heavens up till now, and with a real monetary push, a constant driving effort, and a vision for NASA that doesn't change with the passing of political administrations we could be, should be, and will be able to reach beyond our solar system. While I don't expect to reach the stars in my lifetime, I know with absolute certainty, that we'll never make it at all if we don't first lay the foundation to try.

This gets funnier every time I read it.

[drinkypoo]

Sounds like something maddox would write. Anyone know where it came from?

Re:This gets funnier every time I read it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears to be here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92889&c id=7980 169

Spins: Associated Press positive, Reuters negative

[colonist]

There's an interesting difference between Associated Press and Reuters on the International Space Station's planning.

Associated Press: Space Station Could Hold More Crew Members

The international space station could be expanded beyond its current three crew-member capacity by the end of the decade under an agreement reached Friday by the station's 16 partners.

Reuters: Plans for International Space Station Cut Back

NASA and its space partners on Friday approved a scaled-down International Space Station with fewer astronauts and less science so the United States can meet a 2010 deadline for ending shuttle flights, a top NASA official said.

Space agencies in Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan gave unanimous approval to a NASA plan that means the orbiting platform, now about half completed, will never become the beehive of scientific and commercial research once envisaged.

AP is positive, focusing on the increase in crew, while Reuters is negative, focusing on the decrease in planned crew.

It's interesting to see how two supposedly neutral factual articles can treat the same news so differently.

Pondering possible uses...

[michaelmalak]

Written shortly before the Columbia disaster, so the timeline has shifted, but...

In 15 months, space station will have 1/4 MW of power, but hold just 3 people

How about...

[syukton]

Ok, how about this: end the war on drugs. We spend billions ($40B) every year and get nowhere in that department; I know this, I participate in this war regularly. All drugs, whether they're illicit or they're for headaches or erectile enhancement, should be inspected by the FDA and given a class or ranking based upon the hazard to life involved in consuming that item. There would be a class set aside for drugs which modify your behaviors such that their ingestion would make you hazardous to others, ie: it would inhibit driving a vehicle or operating a forklift, but could still be enjoyed in the right circumstances (comfort of your own home, etc)

The DEA would be dissolved and their records and files all absorbed by the FDA, and all of the DEA's knowledge would go towards helping the FDA to understand all foods and drugs in a fashion suitable for making health recommendations to the public. All criminals in prison on adult drug charges (possession, distribution, cultivation) would be released from prison. When it comes down to it, we should be able to put whatever we want in any one of our respective holes as often as we wish as long as we're not impinging on somebody else's way of life.

So with the DEA gone and the drug tsar no longer pulling down a fat check every year, we divert the money to NASA. But you take it one step further... you take all the information from the DEA and the FDA and channel it to biologists at NASA. I dare you to tell me with a straight face that you wouldn't jump on a chance to smoke some weed from space. MOONWEED for christ's sake! "Moonweed, made by scientists at NASA. On store shelves now! note: FDA Class XYZ substance." Sales of moonweed would more than support NASA for the forseeable future. Even if the markets were open and everyone could grow their own, I'm pretty sure NASA could still make bank in the moonweed department.