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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."
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.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
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!
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.