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President Bush's Money For Space Cometh
citanon writes " The Washington Post reports that
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has delivered, via the omnibus spending bill passed
Nov. 20, the President's full budgetary request of $16.2 billion dollars for NASA as a part of his
Vision for Space Exploration. Despite earlier reports that NASA's
budget will be cut, DeLay, whose congressional district now includes the Johnson Space
Center, was able to deliver the full budgetary request without any debate. NASA now has "enough money to forge ahead on a plan that would reshape U.S. space policy for decades to come."
Despite this early victory, questions regarding the full cost of the program remain unresolved. It is also unclear whether the NASA
bureaucracy will be able to rise to the challenges posed in the initiative and which current projects will suffer as a consequence."
To continue beating a dead horse, how exactly are we going to go about paying our debts? Are we just assuming we're going to have another decade like the nineties any day now? Are we just assuming that the rest of the world will happily keep throwing money at us for as long as we want them to? Hell, does anybody even care that we're flinging ourselves into insolvency? Does anybody even bother trying to comprehend what the consequences will be when China decides to quit investing in us? Does it strike anybody that China might, y'know, have ulterior motives?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
(no text).
Wow, it actually happened.
"Yeah, a shrink ray! Just like that time on Muppet Babies!"
IIRC, Bush's plan looked good for jump starting missions to Mars, but hurt NASA in a lot of other areas, such as deep space probe missions. I would love to see a man on Mars in my lifetime, but NASA does have a lot of other programs going on that should not be forgotten for one high profile project.
It would be nice if they'd find a way to repair or replace the Hubble Space Telescope, though.
Have you read my blog lately?
compared to what we are talking about here-and the commercial implications appear to be far more substantial-and the organzation of the expenditure is such there was minimal risk. Republicans are supposed to believe in free markets and competition. What are they scared of here?
I think the US needs a good, innovative commericial space program it it wants to be viable economically. There is lots of money to be made in space-and the US will need lots of money to keep up with its interest payments. That isn't the drive I see behind the latest Bush proposal.
RTFA. This $16.2 billion is for praying our way to Mars.
To those people saying that we shouldn't have fully funded NASA so that we could instead lower the national debt, I respond there are a thousand things we should take money away from before NASA.
Senator McCain clearly labeled many pork-barrel projects in several speeches. Pork Projects
Failing to fund NASA is failing to fund the future of our civilization and our economy. We exercise such short-term thinking at our own peril.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I don't get it!!!
Stop with all your political-economical psycho babble!!
Are you building Enterprise or not?
the President's full budgetary request of $16.2 billion dollars for NASA as a part of his Vision for Space Exploration.
And if you like this idea, just think that the cost of the iraq war could have paid for 15 of these. *sigh*
G-Force music visualization
Mark my words, five years from now, over half the things that this budget sets forth as worthy goals will have somehow gone aglimmering. Sigh.
Is it fascism yet?
Bush needs somewhere to run to after he causese Armageddon... why not Mars?
"Yeah, a shrink ray! Just like that time on Muppet Babies!"
If you put several billion dollars in a garbage can and set it on fire, at least you'd get some heat. This makes your plan a little more useful.
The Bush-controlled Republican Party is [i]going[/i] to piss away money no matter what they do. I figure as long as they're going to spend billions and billions of dollars on killing Iraqis and U.S. troops for no good reason, and spend billions and billions of dollars on welfare for the rich, spending a paltry 16 billion dollars on something with a potential benefit for mankind isn't going to be something I'm going to bitch about. I'm going to complain about the biggest, most unnecessary expenditures first, and apply the idea of fiscal responsibility to small fry like this once we've got a political administration who there's some chance they can be talked into not spending money they don't have.
Meanwhile, really this is for the best. After all once they've committed to fiscal irresponsibility, really they should try to spend this money as quickly as possible before the deficit spending starts having a noticeable effect on Inflation.
What I would worry about however is whether this 16 billion will be spent well. In the 90s NASA pissed away the bulk of its money on administrative incompetence and huge payouts to military contractors for moneysinks like the X33 project while people like the Mars Pathfinder project were doing great work on a shoestring. Once we start giving NASA money again, I'm afraid it will be pissed away to military contractors again while the projects (like the Pathfinder) doing good important science work will continue to get shoestring budgets.
I have mixed feelings about this sort of funding. Personally, I think if the governement wants to help spur space exploration it should spend some of that money in funding incentives to coperations to engage in space related industries. Something similar to the X Prize for various accomplishments. NASA has done some amazing things and they should be applauded but I think it is time for them to take a more sheperding role.
More money for NASA?!?! Wow, that's great. We've been pushing this for years. We need to look towards the future.
Oh... wait..., Bush is backing this? What a terrible idea.
Burning the money could help keep inflation down, by decreasing the number of dollars in circulation. And we could probably heat a few city blocks for the winter with the fire.
Have you read my blog lately?
The Truth.
That all the monkeys we sent up into space came back SUPER INTELLIGENT!
There are MANY reasons that we should colonize outer space.. From asteroids, diseases, war, terrorism, etc, etc. Its like the old eggs in the same basket saying.. Although the Earth is a rather big basket.....
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
"Figure out a way to spin this against the Bush administration"
Easy;
There's oil in that thar Mars.....
We know Marvin has WMD's (P-38 Space Modulator)
Mars must be attacked before Mars Attacks us.
Mars is a "Red" planet....
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
For 16 Billon I want a space elevator! I know we don't currently have the tech. to build one, but we have the vision and money. All it needs is some good old fashioned R&D, which would mainly be stronger materials, energy transfer, and elevator research.
I don't care spit about sending a single person anywhere else in our solar system. I want us to be sending dozens or hundreds of people out there into space and not really just to another plant. Before we can do that though, we need a cheap space delivery system.
It's ok, the Republicans have always stood for smaller government, balanced budgets and less spending...right?
Sorry, I must've been dreaming.
Seriously, just wait until interest rates go up and they try to borrow more $ to pay off the current massive debt.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
...will end up in his pocket? Unethical DeLay
There is not a single scientific fact that contradicts that the sun one day will burn out and die. This will have extremely bad consequences for us. The first step is obviously to get of this planet, but this only gives human kind a few extra thousand years. We must as soon as possible spread out beyond this galaxy to ensure the survival of humans and perhaps life in general. We must leave. Now. Immediately. The clock is ticking, and NASA has far from the needed funds for this project. In fact, human long-term survival would be best served by all members of humanity gathering around the single goal of Getting us the hell Off This Planet ASAP.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
With China, India, and other countries now making overtures to get to the moon and possibly start extracting the natural resources contained on it, wouldn't it be a good idea to get back there?
With the previous article here on Helium 3, it would seem that the moon should be our next destination, and probably the best launching pad for a Mars mission.
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
The biggest problem I see is that %80 percent or more of the money will go to pay Career CYA type desk jockeys, NASA camp followers, and other parasites that have infested the space program since the end of the Apollo landings. There really needs to be a major house cleaning at NASA and the major NASA contractors before any money can be wisely spent. The recently mentioned NASA X prize would be a good start but the the parasites' paid representitives in Congress are probably going to nix that.
Why do you feel this way?
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
This is a great PR move for Bush. He is trying to appeal to the heartland by ushering in the "good ole days" of Nasa funded space exploration.
Anyone thinking back to the 'freedom' space station, woudlnt 16 billion be enough money for NASA to *alomst* make it to last stage planing to solve its problems 2, maybe 3 tiems over??
Dose anyone out there have the shirt, or rembere the cost to get nothing done?? was it 2Billion way back then or something outragiouse??
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
This station is now the ultimate power in the solar system, I suggest we use it.
No debate on the vote... I wonder exactly how much of the new budget will go to actual space exploration, and how much will go towards the Bush administrations version of the Death Star/anti-missle 'defense'.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Maybe mister Bush should explore that huge empty space in the state treasury first!
Troll. He's saving millions of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. This includes children.
You know, it's funny because when I spend a truckload of money on credit, and then decide to spend $XYZ more on some other venture, the repo man eventually comes and nick my stuff.
On the scale of Uncle Sam though, I could just keep running the debt forever and then print more money as I go, looking worryingly at the exchange rate of the dollar on TV from time to time until the whole scam blows in my face like some giant economy-wide internet bubble.
In short, with the US deficit the way it is, there is no way this super huge NASA budget will stay intact after Bush moves out of the White House, and it may in fact be quietly cut before he goes. NASA knows it, and this is why they will do nothing as spectacular as the moon mission effort in the sixties, and they will instead pay for feasability studies after expensive feasability studies until their budget melts away or gets cut.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Wouldn't matter. Thanks to the fundamental restructuring of the tax code over the past four years, even another 1990s-style boom wouldn't even things up. No, we're waiting for the economic boom to end all booms, the one that's gonna make everything just fine again.
Either that, or the economic crash and interest rate spike that will finally put the pinch on the middle class and make them see sense.
the Constellation-X x-ray telescope, successor to Chandra: postponed indefinitely
the LISA gravitational wave antenna: postponed indefinitely
the Explorer program, which launches small, often university-designed missions like WMAP (cosmic microwave background), HETE (gamma-ray bursts), and SWIFT (just launched!). Funding for future missions is on hold.
Not to mention that the National Science Foundation just got a few-percent funding cut.
Governments must invest money in risky projects, R&D, which may or may not be profitable in the long term. On the other hand, commercial space program wants to be profitable in short term.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
So was the interstate highway system before it became a crux of today's economy.
So was air travel before it became a crux of today's economy.
So was the internet before it became a crux of today's economy.
So lets just *try* and look a little farther into the future than *your* vision, k?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Agreed. This money could be far better spent on *useful* NASA activites. Researching future propulsion systems, scramjets, space elevators... There is no need for a feel-good mission. On a related note, why do we live in a world where the stupid and greedy control everything, and nobody else gets a say?
The americans should review it's priorities, to explore the space is a long and expensive move. It should first worry about public health, or even to get a job for those who don't have it. Sending their young people to fight in other countries for execrable reasons instead of getting them a job isn't really smart... I mean, to explore the space is great and important as well, but forget other priorities to explore it just to say "Look, we(I) did it" is not great.
Some questions never asked, due to totalitarian "no debate" from Tom "The Exterminator" Delay:
What will it really cost?
What NASA programs will be cut to fund it?
How will other science agencies be affected?
Welcome to the United States of Mexico.
--
make install -not war
IMHO, solving the energy problem is much more important than space exploration now. The energy consumption at the moment is rather dire and having a Manhattan Project or Apollo Mission directed at solving it is much more important. Many new innovations or revolutions in technology means we'll need more energy in the future. Thus, not only it solves the current money spend on oil, it helps
1. reducing money paid to terrorist supporting countries such as Saudi Arabia.
2. paving the way for future inventions
3. preserving mother nature and reducing pollution.
4. saving money to be used on more basic things like food and homes, improving people's lives immediately.
Sure, it is less glamourous than space exploration, but it could be something that has a much more practical impact in the US dominance (economically, politically, militarily -- those tanks and jets consume lots of energy -- etc.) on Earth. I still can't believe that with the number of brainiacs the US attracted over the years, there is no concerted effort to solve this problem.
First, most of them won't be around by the time those debts need to be collected, which means both in office and some of them may pass on.
Secondly, you would be surprised at how many of them believe that we are in the 'End Times' and they expect the 'Rapture' at any moment. I have read an article recently, , in fact, that details more then a few politicians and their strong religious beliefs and how those beliefs are used to set public policy.
Many of these 'leaders' are doing what they can to make 'Bible Prophecy' true. Quite frankly, I hope that do succeed quite quickly, in bringing about their most 'compelling' prohpecies so that we, as the human race, can move beyond such doomsday beliefs.
Anyway, they don't care about longterm effects of their actions because many of them believe that their 'Rapture' could happen at any moment.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Who's up for some revolutionary antics? I know I am...
I'm sorry, but you can't have your cake and eat it. If you spend money on wasteful things, then you can't expect to have money for all necessary or desirable things.
Nope, the US can't continue to act as if vast globs of money aren't spend on the war machine, haven't disappeared through tax cuts for the rich, etc. Domestic spending will ultimately suffer - borrowing is merely heaping burdens on the country in the future.
But hey, as long as extreme capitalism is allowed to continue to run rampant in the US (not to mention the whole world!), rest assured all your money will go to corporations and wealthy CEOs. And no, this isn't socialist commie nonsense - the figures lay it bare - the top dogs in the world have more money than entire sections of the worlds population - not to mention even the average Western worker's pay diminishing in comparison! The recent Oxfam statistics are an eye-opener, in only a few decades, we've seen CEOs salaries go through the roof (to 600 times the salary of ordinary workers)!
But the point of the above, which diverges from the topic slightly, is to point out that not just workers, but the government, will have less and less spending power. Both are borrowing insanely to try and ignore the fact - but the banks will eventually demand their pound of flesh from the public - both individually and from governments.
There will be no funding of NASA in the future unless other problems are taken care of.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
It pains me to see a front page Slashdot story paying compliments to Tom DeLay.
Sure, he used his political clout to deliver this enormous amount of money to NASA, fine. But there is no greater enemy of progressive causes in D.C. than Tom DeLay.
He's a vindictive, partisan, mean-spirited politician (not to mention a likely felon -- stay tuned) who will stop at nothing to defeat the opposition. Giving him positive PR for helping to fund NASA might leave the impression that he supports progressive causes, which could not be further from the truth.
NASA's long-term health will be much improved when Tom DeLay and his cronies in Congress are voted out.
I'm an advocate of long term planning, but worrying about an event several BILLION years in the future is taking things to a ridiculous extreme. The sun has billions of years left, not thousands. And it won't just burnout. It will swell up probably past Earth's orbit for a bit, and then shrink to a white dwarf and stay that way for quite a long time- presumably until much of material is fused into iron.
If we can move planets by then, the Earth could be backed away during the giant stage, and then moved in to huddle close to the dwarf. Assuming platetary mobility, the Earth could even be moved to a more agreeable star. Given the proper engineering and tools, the Earth could *outlast* the Sun.
We must as soon as possible spread out beyond this galaxy to ensure the survival of humans and perhaps life in general.
I think you mean solar system, and not galaxy. Using galaxy when one really means star systems is a common mistake made by those who don't have a clue what the fuck they are talking about.
We must leave. Now. Immediately. The clock is ticking, and NASA has far from the needed funds for this project. In fact, human long-term survival would be best served by all members of humanity gathering around the single goal of Getting us the hell Off This Planet ASAP.
Have you tried hitchhiking?
--- Ban humanity.
We have several billion years before our sun burns out. The more immediate threat is obviously an asteroid, a comet, or mutual annihilation.
Your post does illustrate the fact that we can always be said to have our eggs in one basket, but that if the basket is big enough, that's OK.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Ill have a job for another 4 years! I made the right choice in Nov....
I love NASA, but if you compare the success and cost of its programs to the X-Prize you on can only hope that they offer up their new budget as prizes to private ventures as talked about the other day in the news. It seems much more cost effective as in, if the program fails you don't win the prize and NASA still keeps the money. It cost just 10 million to get Scaled Composites to compete on a low orbit altitude reaching trajectory flight. How much for a moon landing 100 million? Thats peas compared to what NASA would spend if they did it themselves. So fund NASA by all means, but lets find a smarter way to spend the money than another bunch of blown up shuttles and failed probes.
"Research" is useless if the stuff NEVER GETS USED.
$20 billion spent on the X-30, $12 on the X-33, a couple on the X-34, and a couple on the X-38, and out of all those programs thats were "R&D" on new vehicle deisgns, none has ever flown.
I'd rather see my money spent on a clear goal then randomly researching things and hoping they fit together someday.
At least in part it is coming from a $100 million cut in the National Science Foundation research money. This is just typical congressional pork coming from the majority, not a new interest in pursuing real science.
See Joe.
See Joe read an article on Slashdot.
See Joe get excited about NASA funding.
See Joe say bad things about Republicans.
See Joe's ambivalence -- good NASA, bad Republicans.
See Joe's head explode.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
I am losing buying power each year as my taxes, fuel/heating costs and health care expenses explode at a pace far greater than my 4-5% cost of living increases. My property taxes are going up roughly 27-33% a year for the past four years, my health care coverage has dimished while going up 16% a year and my heating bill is looking more like a mortgage payment these days. And Nasa will fix things by doing what? I am all for going to the moon and mars but lets get a new shuttle in action first. Lets get alternative power sources and nuclear fusion going.....there are far better ways to spend this money than going to war and mars at the same time while ignoring the problems at home. It appears as if the sweep the problems under the rug tactic is backfiring on their abstinence policy these days.
Take a look at this graph (taken from figures on the White House website)
US Debt
US Debt as a percentage of GDP was falling when the US first went to the moon. So the USA really isn't in the same situation as it was then. Add to that a very weak dollar which might encourage less lending, and things aren't looking that great. Debt isn't just bad in the short term, it's expensive to maintain and difficult to get rid of.
The US is doing this at a time when other countries like the UK are cutting back their debt as much as possible to limit interest payments. Here's a similar graph for the UK
UK Debt
Now I'm no economist, and this obviously isn't the only economic indicator which is important, but it looks kind of scary given the expensive war that the neo-cons have taken on all alone, and the others they still appear to be planning (Iran springs to mind). Perhaps this is the dawn of a new era of faith-based budgets.
Bush is a little kid who needs to play some video games. He can use all his childish energy destory a city in simcity, and he can kill saddam-looking models in quake3.
Why is he still president..?
irc.enterthegame.com #linux
I love space, and space exploration but I think the truth is that the govt throwing our money at social security, hasn't given us social security (and for christsake - please don't call it a compact between the generations or a paid for retirement plan), the government throwing our money at education hasn't produced good education, the government throwing money at poor people hasn't alievated poverty, the government throwing money at 3rd world countries hasn't really helped them become rich.
IMHO, this really has to do with making sure that we're one steap ahead of the Chineese in the space race. While I'm all for that too, I'm not too enthuiastic about the governments ability to produce real space based results for the US public, I'm more worried about them drowning out the private sector.
- Astronomers will be able to better explain why the Earth is plain.
- New space probes will help determine the Sun's trajectory around Earth.
- Surveying Earth from space will give us new insight about the origin of our planet, some 10,000 years ago.
- Maybe we will finally be able to learn what, exactly, is beyond those mountains at the four corners of the planet.
Again, president Bush, thank you for this generous contribution to humankind! I can't expect to see similar advances in the realm of Biology and other controversial areas of knowledge.This is kind of like going to the electronics store and eyeing up that nice 60 inch plasma. As much as you would like to see it in your living room, you can't ignore that multi trillion dollar credit card bill you have been putting off.
"With Great Power, There Comes Great Responsibility."
(I wish our leaders would wake up and realize this)
Hopefully, there is money in there for a moon based space elevator.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think I speak for all for all physics grads when I say: "where can I sign up?".
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
If you wish, discount my opinion. I guess I'm still somewhat sore from when someone in HR came in to work and commented on the cheapness of hiring new graduates versus training old ones. The key point was that the company doesn't have to pay for the education of these new college graduates, whereas sending their current employees to college would cost the company money.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Not that I like the high debt, but the old chestnut of comparing your personal debt management to the federal government's is something you are supposed to leave behind in middle school.
--- Ban humanity.
Too bad he is not counting the civil causalties his army causes. Bah, t'was 10 years old terrorists, case cleared...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
What I find interesting is that there are suddenly a lot of comments saying how this is silly, and a waste of money. If the comments were primarily focusing on the destructive or impractical requirements that come along with the funding, I could understand, but a surprising number seem to be complaining about the funding itself.
That's interesting to me, because if memory serves, slashdotters on average tend to bemoan the lack of funding for space-related ventures, rather than the amount of money that is being wasted on them. I don't like Bush much, and he's certainly screwed up the budget in a lot of areas, but it confuses me when people criticize him for increasing funding to NASA, or the NSF, or NIH, when similar increases would probably be praised in a candidate that people liked a little bit more -- and I'm quite certain that if Bush actually cut funding for NASA, slashdot would be in an uproar over it.
Criticize him for an unjust war, or for counterproductive goals in space research, but the funding itself is a good thing as far as I'm concerned...
I am the man with no sig!
BITCHES!
(this is for all those who are using this to complain directly or indirectly about the current administration)
This is something GREAT for our country and ultimately our economy. Other countries will be begging to jump on board with us and help explore the universe around us. The new systems and soultions required to do next generation space experimentation will drive further advances in other areas.
And all you can do is bash the president, say we can't afford it, that it is a bad decision, etc. All because you dislike his other policies. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
This is what really makes me sick about people. They get a diamond ring from someone they don't like and they throw it in the outhouse. Morons.
I can't remember the number of times that I have read a discussion about NASA that was not replete with +5 insightful rants about how underfunded NASA is. Now that the government is increasing funding everyone is getting +5 insightfuls for naysaying the increase in funding. WHAT?!?!
For those who are politically motivated to attack the current administration under all circumstances, good or bad, just remember that NASA funding under the Clinton administration fell:
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/bowyer/030204. (I put in a Google search for "NASA funding clinton administration" and hit "I'm feeling lucky" to get the stats)
Please, have the maturity to take the good with the bad, be grateful for the things that happen that you like, and bide your time until the next chance to change things comes along. You never know who may be listening to what you say. If you use this as an opportunity to vent your dissatisfaction against the current administration when your preferred representatives get elected they might just look back and think that this is just not that important to you. (You in the collective sense)
As for myself, I agree that this is massively important to us. It is, IMHO, one of the areas that the USA can demonstrate that we can work with other nations in a harmonious way. Maybe I am a bit utopian, but I think that the questions that space exploration ultimately confronts (not the technical of how to get there, but what is there and why is it like it is) are universal with mankind. Because of this I think that they provide a chance for people to set aside things that can divide them and concentrate on a common goal. Sounds kinda sappy, but I believe that it is true. Whether I like the government or not, I see this increase in funding and dedication to this cause by the administration as a Good Thing.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
And while I do support the Iraq war I don't believe the US should have put up the bulk of the resources to do it.
If you go to war with out the support of the international community you can't expect them to pick up the bill. Its as simple as that.
I am taking that into account. We have saved many more than accidentally killed. They aren't 10 year olds either, though there are probably 10 year olds being trained.
Usted es un pequeño muchacho pathetic.
--- Ban humanity.
All these things had enabled connections betwen people. Space travel connects you with rocks.
Also announced today were the plans to construct a new NASA engineering and research center in Bangalore, India. NASA is expected to be able to meet its budget constraints within the next three years.
Several side benefits are going to be realized as well. For example, the new space food will consist mostly of Hummus, which after processing by the astronauts will provide additional fuel for space travel, resulting in the ability to sustain longer orbits and/or travel longer distances.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Part of the "Wolfowitz doctrine" is to pre-emptively strike other countries in the name of defense. This has already come to pass. Another part is to militarize space, breaking existing treaties.
It will be easier to sell the militarization of space if it can be explained as "defense". Once the U.S. establishes a base on the moon, then it obviously has to be defended. And, of course, defense means space-based first-strike weapons.
I doubt that Bush cares about Mars at all. But, getting funding for Mars exploration is easier than getting funding for establishing a military moon base. The $16B of exploration funding will be followed by $300B of "space defense funding".
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
I mean seriously. What is it with these guys that they just go out and spend money on any old thing that catches their fancy? Wars, space programs, tobacco subsidies... Are they all old, rich farts that never had to learn to live within their means?
We must as soon as possible spread out beyond this galaxy to ensure the survival of humans and perhaps life in general. We must leave. Now. Immediately. The clock is ticking
Parent should have been modded funny instead of insightful: given that the human race really needs to be rescued (personally I am not convinced, but anyway), we have plenty of time before the sun explodes, some 5 billion years or so.
Numerous things can happen in that time: mankind may mutate in another life form... However the most likely event to occur is that we kill ourselves. Either in an accident of whatever kind (nuclear plant, disease,...), or in a stupid war.
Imho, the sun exploding will NEVER be in the critical path of the existence of mankind.
Z
I'm a citizen of North Dakota. My state is in the black. 90% of the government services I enjoy come from the state. Federal money for state programs is more of a burden than a benefit, because of all the strings attached. Why should I be all that worried about whether folks in far-away Washington D.C. go bankrupt?
1. If they raise taxes beyond what most people are willing to pay, the system will collapes.
2. If they don't and they go bankrupt, 90% of my services are intact.
3. I really don't mind driving on gravel roads.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
No, but the nation intends to inflate it's way out of the debt by letting the relative value of the dollar drop vs. other currencies. It was bound to happen eventually. This effect is great for those who have the fixed interest rate debt (the government), and awful for those who are being repaid. Unfortunately, it has the side effect of reducing the standard of living in the USA, since it makes imported products more expensive.
For decades, I've been eager for more a more ambitious commitment to space exploration. But I'm convinced that the Bush program is a Trojan horse--a veiled attempt to eliminate NASA.
It shuts down current working programs in exchange for promises of distant future projects. Those future projects would require enormous levels of funding for decades to come, in spite of ruinous deficits, through good economic times and bad, through many presidential and congressional elections. I don't think any honest observer believes that that long-term financing will be delivered. Certainly the Bush Administration has done little so far to drum up public or political support for such a long-haul effort.
It's beyond Bush's power to deliver on his long-term promises, but it's within his power to destroy much of the useful work NASA is doing today. That's just what he's doing.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
Is this the money that hes getting from the newly developed and public oil wells in iraq. Maybe the binladens are supporting the NASA mission and that will provide them with easy access to space next time there is an issue.
Got a question about UNIX ask it here : Unix/xBSD Forum
> See Joe's head explode.
Please see The Oxford English Dictionary for correct spelling.
You fail to understand the purpose of research. The goal is to further your understanding. There have been numerous thing invested in that never turned out anything other than an increase in knowledge. Particle accelerators are a fine example. When was the last time a particle that existed for one thousandth of a second ever did you or the nation any good? Yet they are important to helping us understand things such as quantum mechanics (and eventually, quantum computing and cryptography), string theory, and other important scientific theories.
And how can you think that going to the moon was pointless? We didn't go there simply so Neil Armstrong could give a speech. We learned an immense amount from those trips.
But ya' know what? Let's forget about all that stuff. I mean, we woudn't see any useful returns on it for 50 years or so. SO why are we investing in it now?!
And so it is with Mars and space exploration. There will come a time when Mars will be vital to humanity. Whetehr as an giant liferaft 'cause Earth wasdestroyed or as another civilization because our population here has grown too large to support. Perhaps it will be warmed up and we'll put a bunch of farmers there to grow immense amounts of food. There are ENDLESS possibilities for Mars and we SHOULD be working on getting ourselves there.
What NASA needs to do is hire Zubrin, the head of the Mars Society. I'd bet my balls that he'd get us there on the cheap. Perhaps bring along Burt Rutan and other visionaries. Scientists are great, but sometimes you need guys with vision and drive.
What is your penile percentile?
Are you advocating an end to Pig Latin?
Say it aint so! How wil. they communicate?
My property taxes are going up roughly 27-33% a year for the past four years,
Damn, where do you live?
I'm in Central Florida (which is booming, property-wise) and my property taxes have been relatively constant (3-4% increase). IIRC, my accountant told me that the government can only adjust your property value by a certian percentage per year. This is to prevent people from being taxed out of their homes. However if you receive an equity loan or refinance, the government is free to use that value as the assessed value. This is one of the negatives of equity loans/refinancing.
As far as medical bills go, I have true insurance that kicks in for the big stuff (like being hit by a bus). I take care of all the little stuff, and I pay less than if I payed an HMO. A family plan would have cost me something like $700 per month, but I only spent about $2000 (insurance premiums + doctors and medicine) this year. Of course this only works for healthy people without chronic issues. About the only time that HMOs pay for themselves is if you plan on having children, because the cost to get a child to 2 years, when their costs go down significantly, is probably around $20,000.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
YOU FORGOT UZBEKISTAN!
Is we'd first need a sane libertarian party.
Don't get me wrong, I voted for Badnarik anyway, but really, the man is a little bit nuts. If the libertarians could get someone who'd talk more about fiscal responsibility and less about abolishing the Federal Reserve Bank, they might get more support.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You're new here, aren't you?
(Hopefully new enough that I can reuse this joke, too.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Who really cares if we cannot afford the cost of this program? Space exploration is something that has far reaching aspects as many slashdot readers know. The future for the entire human race is space,if we keep treating earth like we do, and to be the first country to truly reap those benefits is something that has my full support regardless of the cost. Corruption will of course happen with the billions going into these programs and the amount of private companies that contract for NASA but I am _positive_ that the overall cost will be far less than the overall benefit the discoveries found will have on the human race.
I do not like one bit that President Bush was re-elected but I am very happy that President Bush gave us a jumpstart to explore ( and conquer in Bush's mind) space in this century. Or at least before I get too old to go.
It would be nice if they'd find a way to repair or replace the Hubble Space Telescope, though.
Funny you should mention that. NPR's "Morning Edition" program reported this morning that NASA hired a company called The Aerospace Corporation to conduct a confidential study to determine the best way to deal with Hubble, including two completed instruments that were originally supposed to fly to Hubble aboard the Space Shuttle.
The conclusion? Well, the report itself is confidential and won't ever see the light of day. The executive summary, however, has been obtained through a FOIA request. In short, they don't think a robotic servicing mission could be completed before Hubble dies. They recommend flying a new bare-bones replacement for Hubble with the two new instruments onboard. In their opinion, it'll be cheaper and it's more likely to work.
Of course, there are those who dispute the study's findings. They say that there already exists a robot of sufficient dexterity for performing the mission. It was designed to fly on the ISS and last ten years. A Hubble service mission would last at most a few months.
The current distribution of national debt is a bit worrying for the US, because a lot of it is held by east asian countries. With China quickly becoming a regional powerhouse and investment opportunity, demand for US debt is decreasing, and even demand for the US dollar is decreasing, which is part of why it's at an all-time low. At the moment these trends are actually being artificially slowed, because a weak dollar hurts other countries' exports to the US, so they've been buying up dollars to prop up the currency. On the whole, not a good situation.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
McCain has also whole-heartedly supported the biggest liars in the history of the United States. The same ones who he's even been slandered by himself.
He's lost most, if not all, credibility with anyone who actually thinks - you know, like scientists?
Please Mod parent up.
My property taxes are going up roughly 27-33% a year for the past four years,
And the politicians in Sacramento can't understand why the general population refuses to accept any change in Prop. 13.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You forget that it costs more to ship things from the US to the middle east than bases in the US and transport it across desert in hostile conditions where it has to be done by military personel and not by local truckers.
Secondly ammunition is being spent at a high rate... Much higher than target practice. What is the kill ration per bullet these days? 1,000? or was it 10,000 bullets spent to kill one enemey. It's up there compared to live target practice. The fuel costs extra since you have to ship fuel as well and not have predesignated depots and if you do have depots you often have to build them.
Not to mention everytime a ground support aircraft drops a bomb to support the ground pounders they've just blew over a million dollars if it's laser guided.
Not to say that isn't a bad thing and in fact it's way better to have big spending budgets than thousands of casualties per week of US forces.
Oh yeah... And cost of water. Totally forgot about that. That is a major logistical problem for US troops in the desert regions even near water sources as far as filtration goes.
$0.02,
ptd
I'm an animal lover -- they're delicious!
For those who are politically motivated to attack the current administration under all circumstances, good or bad, just remember that NASA funding under the Clinton administration fell:
Yeah, and Clinton balanced the budget, too. If I have to give up some NASA missions to get fiscal sanity I'll take it.
The worst thing about Bush "winning" is that now the Clinton economic team won't get the chance to pay off Bush's bar tab and fix the economy, just like they did for his dad.
Tom Delay has taken the initiative in creating the space program.
Ahh...to feed the troll or to not feed the troll...
When the technology of cheap space travel provides us with access energy sources that save us from the effects of burning fossil fuels...you can just live in your dark little mud hut.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
didn't you get the memo? red is good now.
So NASA has its full funding.
Hmm.
But isn't there a VAST deficit?
There is.
So...NASA has full funding, by dint of the nation taking out a loan.
I'm not sure this is the way to go.
--
Toby
You people won't be happy until there is no war. Funny thing though.. it's human nature to fight! Even you, you silly tree hugging, idealist dumbass! Humans will always go to war. It's what humans do. Get over it. Just accept the fact that we are seriously trying to limit casualties. That's the idea behind smart weapons. Fuck.. I swear, man...
What is your penile percentile?
It is amazing to read all of the arguments against increasing the NASA budget soley because GWB has his name attached to it. I did not realize that so many people placed funding social programs ahead of space exploration. News for Nerds or the Advocates of the Downtrodden?
I welcome any increase in the NASA budget ultimately knowing that any increase is going to come at someones expense. However, I believe that we can achieve greater returns on our investement with robotic missions ie. the Mars Rovers in the quest to further our understanding of the universe. How about a rover (or maybe amphib) mission to Titan first?
... and furthermore
If you read the small print you would see that all the money is going to a special single-task probe to search for images of Jesus on Mars.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Let's also not forget the millions of men women AND CHILDREN Hussein was killing and isn't now. Who were they saved by? Oh yeah.. GWB and his army.
Grow up, son. It's tie to stop benig an idealist and move on to being a realist.
What is your penile percentile?
Carl Rove: Where's the President now?
Aide #1: Umm, I think he just went to make a press statement about the increase in NASA's budget...?
Carl Rove spots unused, filled syringe lying on table
CR: Oh God! You forgot to give him the injection!
Scene: White House Press Conference
President GWB: Thank you Americans and members of the Press. The exploration of the Outer Spaces is an important initiative in these dangerous and uncertain times. We have enemies abroad and ih our homes. We have enemies visible and indivisible. Enemies that wish to do us harm, and enemies that don't.
Pauses, blinks.
That is why I am giving my authorization to increase funding to the Nationalized Air and Space Association, because we need to bring the fight to the enemy. Right now, we don't have a man on the Mars. This is embarrassing! We've been to Mars and by God we ought to stay there! In the days since my father ended the Cold War, we've relaxed our posture on the Space Chase, but now a new enemy is on our doorstep. He's in our backyard, too because he climbed over the fence without asking.
dramatic pause. squints at audience.
My friends, now isn't the time to fall behind and ignore these things--we must act. We must bring the fight to the enemy whenever and wherever he appears, be it in Omaha, Wisconsin or on the Mars. We cannot wait until he has the advantage and saps our precious vital fluids while we sleep.
(Carl Rove is seen edging towards the President)
Now, you may think that with our current deploymentization in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ko-Rea we can't sustain a fight for Mars. But I'm telling you, it's not about the numbers--we have smart weapons, smart troops, and smart ideas on how to Win the Peace on Mars, by winning their hearts and minds. You see, they envy our freedom and our way of life. They envy our precious vital fluids and we...
Carl Rove moves behind the President and plunges a syringe into his buttocks.
Thank you, that's all I have to say...
[pink beam of light]
oh please. Wake up and stop talking about 'The terrorists' (about whom you probably know as much as me, ie very little). Presumably you're talking about Al Qaeda? Replace terrorists with communists in your rhetoric and we could rewind 50 years.
There are many terrorist groups in the world, funded by many different individuals and governements. Some are (gasp) less evil than others. Some you might call a secret service and other people might call terrorists (Sept 11th, 1973 springs to mind). If our respective governments (I'm living in France right now) wanted to get rid of regimes like Saddam's they could have done so in the 80s, instead of supporting him throughought that decade (both the US and France and many others) while he slaughtered his own people in a pointless, dirty war with Iran. Rumsfeld was even there in the 80's shaking hands with his sworn enemy over trade deals. Nothing so bitter like a friendship betrayed eh.
All this because our politicians and civil servants thought they were playing the 'Great Game' with consumate skill. Instead they were arming a dictator who outlived his usefulness, and messed up all our ambitions for a tidy, oppressed and obedient middle east, by taking a step out of line and invading Kuwait. Same mess in Iran; same interference. If you want to see where Iraq will be in 20 years, look to Iran.
I wonder when the dictatorship in Pakistan will no longer be flavour of the month, and will stop receiving massive amounts of funds? The US is not with the rest of the western world on Iraq, in fact most of the western world has lost patience with America and its people after the election results last month.
So stop talking about the 'free world' or the 'civilised world' when you mean yourself and the USA.
People show a limitless capacity for believing only facts that support what they want to believe.
Whether it's, "I can quit anytime I want", "He wouldn't hit me again, I shouldn't have talked back that time" or "I better vote for GW Bush or the Democrats will let the terrorists win and he believes in GAWD ALMIGHTY".
I'm an Aerospace Engineer and have formerly worked for NASA.
What's wrong with this is not the amount of funding or anything of that nature -- it's the grandly stupid and misguided "Moon/Mars Initiative" that Bush is pushing and that the idiots on the manned space side of NASA are leeching on to.
1. Without very clearly articulated and well thought-out plans for how we're going to tackle a serious challenge like Mars, it won't happen. Current contractors like LockMart, Boeing, Orbital, etc., are chock-full of incompetent people. NASA's manned space side is perhaps even more full of them. They are incapable, and I mean this in all seriousness as someone who has worked in this industry, of developing soundly engineered ideas and solutions to the problems of this kind of space travel.
There are certainly people who have thought very hard about the best ways to tackle these problems, but they will be roundly ignored. This includes people like Robert Zubrin, Buzz Aldrin himself (Ph.D. in Astronautics), and so on. The contractors will be listened to when they say "we can't do that," the umpteen layers of poorly run and managed NASA manned space folks will believe them because most of them long ago stopped being able to solve hard technical problems, and people will die trying to make some of this happen (literally: don't expect Columbia to be the last disaster of its kind).
2. While many manned space people are having wet dreams about gaining some more money and a new space "vision" (no matter how poorly thought-out or articulated), *real* programs that have *demonstrated success* have been cut. Remember reading here a few weeks ago about the Mach 10 Hyper-X program? You know, the one that after 40+ years of scientists and engineers trying to get a free-flight hypersonic scramjet experiment properly funded and run, came up with roaring success? Guess what? Once Bush broached the Moon/Mars "initiative", the X-43 follow-on programs were cut. Those groups have already disbanded. There is anger on the Air Force side since I think X-43C (maybe B, I don't remember which of the two) was supposed to be a joint project.
A poster above pointed out existing NASA space programs that will suffer or are currently suffering. I'm not sure which is worse -- stopping *real* progress and frustrating the very people who have demonstrated success, or deluding the American people that we are on track to recreating Apollo-level achievements on a large scale and setting us up for a larger, even more wasteful, and incompetent manned space side of NASA.
Don't get me wrong -- this is not an anti-space exploration rant. Going to space is one of ventures that had grand and wonderful repercussions for society. This is an anti-stupidity-in-aerospace rant.
That those Americans seriously interested in our heritage and progress in the aerospace realm are not aware of just how incapable the U.S. aerospace industry (as a whole) has become is a great national tragedy. (E.g., do you *really* believe Boeing when they say the 7E7 is "20% more efficient?" Hint -- without *serious* changes in engine architecture, burning "20% less fuel" is, as Ralph would say, unpossible.).
That is actually the official name of what you call 'Mexico' .... ignorant asswipe.
CIA World
NO SIG
Anyone ever thought that perhaps it is not mankinds fate to survive forever. I'm gonn a list a few things that just based on darwins theory suggest that or time will soon come.
a.) thining of the human geanome(sp) by surviving longer and allowin the sickly to procreate the resistance of our heritage is weakened. In every other species only the strong survive, however with human beings the weak survive.
b.) Inability to survive in equilibrium with other species. Our use of resources per human. Not to mention over population.
c.) abuse of natrual resources ie green house effect, ozone layer etc.
With all due respect until we have learned to live in harmony with nature then our time will come.
Great. We have 2 billion people living on less than $2 a day and we spend $16 billion on space exploration. (And $500 billion on a useless military...)
--Nick
NASA will help by:
Providing the possiblity of more places to live.
Increasing medical research to keep people alive in space. All advances will go to the medical industry.
Research into insulation matierials. Of witch some currently would be able to insulat a house to the point that you would not need to provide a heat source other than the human body.
The problems you mention are all very specificly being worked on by NASA. In fact it is sometimes difficult to come up with something that doesn't get worked on by NASA.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Hi. Please produce this mythical "Joe Slashdot"'s UID, or I am going to declare you full of shit.
I am so fucking sick of people ascribing elaborate contradictory opinions to some imaginary "typical slashdot user" and then basking in their own imagined superiority. Guess what? MORE THAN ONE PERSON READS SLASHDOT. If you are trying to expect some kind of consistency out of a site with hundreds of thousands of readers, you are expecting something stupid.
If someone is being inconsistent over time, or within their own argument, fine, call them on it. But don't try to construct massive generalizations and then respond with shock and derision when the generalizations you've constructed don't make sense.
Usually the 'l' is capitalized, but I understand the gesture. Good show, submitter.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
It is amazing to read all of the arguments against increasing the NASA budget soley because GWB has his name attached to it.
Funny. I haven't seen any posts saying increasing this NASA budget is bad because GWB's name is attached to it. Can you give me a link?
You are right...."hard problems are not cheap to solve". And that's the problem right now. We do not have the money to solve our problems -- and they seem to be mounting.
Is this what you call circular logic?
The extra money is already being used for ozone studies, studies into space telescopes which are never going to be built, environmental science, and more bone loss studies. There's no mention of any mission to Mars, or any new space vehicle in any of the projects announced since 2003.
this president spends money like a teenager with a credit card. where did all the grown-ups go in the republican party?
Where are you going to send your trash in the future!
Well, Energiya have a bi-conic lifting body replacement for the Soyuz that will hold six people, and would make a fine CEV, for far less than LockMart or Boeing could.
The US consumer lives at the whims of Asian Central Bankers who buy dollars to keep their own preferred export market alive. This is why you see people freaking out about the dollar dropping - they are afraid the US's "bankers" will cash out.
This is great news! Lots of money for NASA and science!
But, who is going to do this research if our schools aren't funded because No Child Left Behind was gutted, and there is a growing, unchecked movement to replace science with pseudo science (ESP, Paranormal, Creationism)?
Seems like the money would be better spent improving the quality of the future. I'd rather see $10b of that 16b be spent patching up the $10b shortfall from NCLB.
Wow, I'm way offtopic...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
no really,
space pirates, given the "letter of authority" from their respective govt's is the only way to get enough inovation to make any money in space. give them seed money for ships, let them loot, rape and pillage(definatly gotta rape the female of any new species we encounter--you know you would want it) and after the pirates (of privateers) wipe out resistance then we send in the homesteaders. gov't sucks at this type of butchery let private(pirate) enterprise lead the way.
Dude, what are you talking about? If we really wanted to, we could strike any location on the planet with nuclear weapons within a couple hours and there's really no defense against it. Weaponizing space by actually placing the weapons there doesn't really buy anyone anything.
This is just paranoia. ICBMs are decades old and for all intents and purposes, we (and the Russians) have already maxed out the concept of space-based weapons. Remember that a big leg of thier journey goes through space.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Look at page 8: IMF Report
The US is basically an Argentina on steroids. We're headed straight to a worldwide recession that we will make the 1930's pale in comparison., and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush are to blame for this.
The US deficit is mostly financed with short-terms T-bills, and 30 year-T-bonds. In other words, it was wayyy too soon to claim that Reagan proved deficits don't matter, as Dick Cheney once said.
The sad truth is that unless the federal government financial politics turn around in a spectacular way, it will be unable to pay the debt of the Reagan years.
Now, remember, the US started getting voluntarily into huge deficits under Reagan. The key to understanding the coming Great Recession is that debt only has to be paid back 30 years later.
1981 + 30 = 2011.
The US will default on its debt in 5 to 10 years.
Judgement Day cannot be stopped. Merely postponed.
The US economy has built (or at least played a major role in building) the tech industries of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, China, etc. We are the world's largest market in terms of money. We are the third largest country in the world population-wise. Why would foreign banks stop lending us money? It would cost them a gigantic market and in the cases of several countries, possibly destroy their national economy.
And finally, as a matter of fact, the US has forgiven more foreign debt (forget the outstanding!) than all countries combined have ever loaned the US. So I would think twice before getting into a tinkle-tinkle contest with the US about international loans.
And as to lower salaries, high taxes, and an economy that is in ruins, I would suggest you look at a graph of trade deficits, GDP, and mean salaries before saying some of those things.
Bush did something I agree with. My jaw just hit the floor.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
Well, using your three examples, it's not all that hard to conceptualize the benefits of developing: (1) interstate transportation of goods and persons (highways); (2) interstate and international transportation of goods and persons (air travel); and (3) interstate and international communication (internet). The programs you mentioned all have an obvious and substantial impact on the citizens that fund their development. If you're accusing others of a lack of *vision*, maybe you could share yours with us. What is the benefit of attempting to send a bunch of guys to Mars, such that it warrants not only cutting existing space programs but an additional appropriation of funds?
I've mentioned this company before, but I'm really hoping that t/Space will get a contract for the Vision for Space Exploration. t/Space is an exciting company which includes people like Burt Rutan (of Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne), Elon Musk (of SpaceX), Red Whittaker (of the Red Team, which constructed an autonomous vehicle which competed in DARPA's Grand Challenge), and several of the new companies in the budding space industry.
According to their page: Our core mission requirement is to enable prompt, affordable, safe and sustainable lunar exploration and development by the largest possible number of Americans, both in person and via telepresence.
Under our approach, government incentives focus exclusively on top-level goals, with technology and operational choices left to the private sector. The government incentives will be matched to specific top-level needs, but the "invisible hand" of market forces will shape choices as they flow down multiple supplier chains. Incentives will be structured so that several companies in each major area have an opportunity to win this support. With this competitive industrial base, two major processes become possible:
* Market forces will continually launch new products that replace established goods and services (the "creative destruction" that Joseph Schumpeter [Austrian economist 1883-1950] identified as the key element of capitalism). Poorly performing systems will be killed off quickly via competition rather than via burdensome NASA reviews or Congressional intervention.
* Capability gap analyses will be performed by dozens and ultimately hundreds of companies on a continuous basis. As happens now in all competitive industries, the successful companies will be those who listen closely to their customers and accurately predict their future needs - in other words, capability gap analysis by multiple independent profit-seekers.
Commercial firms will create and own infrastructure that offers services that overlap in many cases. The overlaps found in a competitive private space economy will provide the resiliency now lacking in single-string solutions such as the Space Shuttle and Space Station, for which there are no ready alternatives. While functional overlaps are viewed as inefficiencies in centrally-planned systems, in a market-based system they drive costs lower (by reducing monopoly power and spurring innovation) and accelerate schedules (by eliminating single-point bottlenecks among suppliers and spurring competition).
If I understand correctly, tSpace's plan is to design an overall space architecture, and have companies compete for different components, whether they be launch vehicles, space station life support modules, or lunar landers. Many of these components will also be available commercially, keeping the price down and the reliability high.
I highly recommend reading through their presentation. The things they show in their are incredible. Here's a few of their points:
Safety results from design choices, not oversight
* Attempting to produce safety by inspection, quality control, documentation, meetings, etc., is ineffective and costly
* The right choices include a robust and resilient concept, vehicles with ample margins and reserves, and high flight rates using smaller vehicles
Flight history determines if a vehicle is "human rated"
* Requires hundreds of flights for statistical validity
* "Determination-by-analysis" is just an estimate
Cost is an object
* Expensive systems have too few units built to give resiliency to the architecture, and/or high operating costs lead to unsafe low flight rates.
I'm not sure I really want "liberal values." I want "I'm hurting nobody, short or long term, what I do is NONE of your business!"
I tend to differ with Libertarians as Trepidity says, but I have another difference. From what I've heard from Libertarians, they don't think much of environmentalism - it's your property and you can decide what to do with it. I believe in the long term you pass on that property, and if you've just turned it into a gaping hole in the ground or a toxic swill, you've just decreased its long-term value. Mineral rights are an issue, but with this I'm talking more about suitability for general use. (like residence or business)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
While I agree it has made flying planes and docking ships easier , I don't see how it has saved anyone any money. Planes were navigating and boats were docking just fine long before GPS came along. It's made their jobs easier, and probably safer, but has it saved any money?
By making people's jobs safer, it is saving money. Take a 70ft commercial fishing vessel with 6 crew aboard. Assume the ship's lost when it strikes a reef. Four of the men are picked up by the Coast Guard before they drown. The two that died have reasonable life insurance policies, and the ship is a total loss. It's valued at well over a million dollars, all told. Also consider that today, with all the modern safety equipment aboard, about 250 such boats are lost every year in the US alone. A hundred years ago, when there was about 1/5 the number of people fishing, there was still about 200 a year lost. So without GPS systems, the EPIRB satelite network, and a variety of other "cool" systems, we'd probably be looking at over a billions dollars a year, and a thousand-odd lives, lost.
Then again, I may not be an entirely impartial observer, seeing as how my job would be a lot harder if GPS didn't exsist.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
IMHO, the particular dominant party isn't what's important - it's that the dominant party be different than that of the President.
Gridlock can be good.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Almost all the US Federal Government debt is in the form of bonds. Who holds these bonds? Your grandmother. Your company. Me.
Most, in fact close to all of the US Federal Governments loans come from Treasury Bonds.
How this works: Every time I get a pay check some of it goes into my 401k, some goes into my IRA. However, I also buy a Treasury Bond. There is an fact a Bureau of the Public Debt.
It goes like this. I have $25 burning a hole in my pocket. Uncle same needs $25 to put a man on the moon but won't have the extra cash coming in from taxes that he needs. I buy a bond, in this case a Series EE from TreasuryDirect, that is deducted from my checking and mailed to me. Now, the General Accounting Office has $25 more dollars. They do not write $25 in the black. The face value of this bond is not $25 but in fact $50. The loan period would be 17 years. So they would actually write -$25. (This is a tecnicallity as they would actually put the mature value, the bond reaches face after 17 years but I can hold it and acrue intrest for up to 30 years). Point is that for the next 17 years they will be showing a debt to me.
There are many differnt types of bonds, War Bonds, Public Works Bonds, Treasury Bonds, etc etc.
Almost all public debt is bonds held by companies and citizens. The Insurance Industry loves bonds. They hold more than half of public bonds, because public bonds are long term, safe, guaranteed money makers.
It may not be the best thing for the government to spend uncontrollably, but that is not to say that it hurts the American people. You want some of your taxes back? Charge Uncle Sam interest.
This is a greatly simplified explination of public debt. The important thing to remember is that the government typically borrows the extra money it needs from the citizens who MAKE MONEY off this arrangment.
Open your own account with the Treasury. Loaning Uncle Sam money is a great way to save for the future.
... why NASA needs more money for this. After all, President Bush said that God talks to him. One presumes that he, in turn, talks to God - so while they're having heart-to-hearts about Terrorism, etc., why not have President Bush just ask the Big Guy to teleport us there, or create a gate, or something similar?
It'd be a LOT less expensive, I think.
It must be NUCULAR !
From what I've seen of NASA they never pass up a chance to drop spending on any new propulsion system in order to preserve the bureaucracy, and thus the pork for DeLay, et al, to brag about.
The only way we'll ever get anywhere in our solar system is if some crazy genius finally figures out how to get the equivalent of the Star Trek "Impulse Drive" to work. Until we can lift large amount of mass with very little effort you can kiss off Mars.
In a system where shifts of 2-5% have enormous rippling effects, that's pretty big.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Man, you are *way* to easy. :-)
--- Ban humanity.
My wife has subbed, I know full-time teachers. Good education requires good support in the home. If the kids come to school preconditioned with a bad attitude, there's only so much even an excellent teacher can do to change that.
Personally, I believe a large part of this is that we have adopted Day Care as "the standard model" for the family in this country, and there's a larger-than-ever number of single-parent households. I won't say that single-parents can't do a good job raising kids. Nor will I say that you can't raise good kids where both parents work. And finally, I won't say that a full-time stay-at-home Mom (or Dad) is a guarantee of raising good kids.
But IMHO, it's a matter of statistics. Being a parent is HARDER if there's just one of you. Imbuing kids with proper values is HARDER if you have surrendered control of your child to the low-cost day care provider for the work day. (Actually, that "low-cost" may be part of the problem.) Not that these things can't be done, but they're HARDER.
As long as you have more capable people taking on these extra challenges, things work. But once it becomes the general model for society, things start breaking down. Schools are the canaries for this class of problem.
BTW, I won't disagree that "more money != better public education," but I disagree with the corollary that many like to make, that better public education doesn't need more money. More money might be part of the solution, but only part. IMHO the more important part is better parenting.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
didn't they just discover massive hydrocarbon lakes on titan?
;-)
all that precious, precious oil!
(for those who would flame me, i am joking... please
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not to through a wrench in your Bush bashing good times but you were attacking Delay. I know Republicans all look the same to you.
As for your alarmist use of the current war casualty figures (Though my heart goes out to those troops still over seas.) U.S. Troops rid the world of a dictator who killed 7,000 of his own people using chemical weapons in March of 1988 and thousands more in crushed uprisings all over the all over the country. Freeing Iraq was right regardless of stated intentions. The question you should be asking yourself is what happened to those chemical weapons since 1988. Did they use all the weapons they had and then just quit producing them? Did he just destroy those left over? Yaw, right and monkey?s might fly out of my butt. I for one sleep better with one less crazy dictator with the means to produce these things. (He might not of stockpiled them but he sure as hell could have made them or sold the technology to make them, which is just as dangerous to the US populous.)
To keep this rant on topic, Risk adversity (like that you display by using casualty figures) and human space travel are two things that do not sit well together. You might want to reevelaute your priorities.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
Won't even finish the quote.
This isn't another "Black or White" issue where you accept it and be happy or don't accept it and shut-up like you Bush fanatics expect.
As others have stated, this is a democracy. A government representative of its peoples. Anything Bush gives me is a coal and to you is a diamond. It doesn't mean "I'm wrong in your right". It means i perceive things differently and that i consider this a joke - Especially coming from Tom DeLay of all people.
It is completely disrespectful and ignorant to expect people to fall in line - and this budget is no different. 1 billion extra in funding won't get us 1 inch closer to mars. We need changes to NASA, Changes to US politics and changes to our vision for America to get to Mars and YOUR beloved Bush has proven over and over and over again that he isn't the man for that job.
The Bush agenda doesn't have a future for manned missions to other planets, space exploration or any of those programs that involve dedication and risk for the ultimate award.
Science and Bush are like Fire and Water. You can't have both without killing the other.
NASA has made every single decision wrong.
All government programs and bureaucracies produce the opposite of what is intended at the outset.
Abolition is the only meaningful reform.
Look at what Burt Rutan and the other private companies have done at a small fraction of the $ put into NASA.
Lew
Name a few?
And don't get me started on Helium 3, at best it's a convenience and in no way essential for building fusion reactors. All the fuel you need you have it in the ocean.
Am I the only one who misread the headline and thought Bush was funding some sort of Space Comet?
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
The interstate highway system wiped out the railroads, a much cheaper method of moving goods.
The Feds have frustrated all private air travel to the benefit of the large carriers.
The Feds had little to do with the Internet beyond the initial R&D. This was all straightforward outgrowths of X.25, and there were a LOT of people developing technologies that would have lead to some variety of the Internet. IBM and many other companies had entire divisions that were destroyed by Internet Protocol.
So, don't tell me the Feds only do good.
I don't even believe they can ever do net good: The money and talent are taken from a finite pool, and gov is insanely wasteful of both.
Lew
that govern the evolution of bureaucracies. Political competency eventually trumps any other kind of competence, and so idiots always rise to the top in systems that have no effective external disciplines.
Giving money to the government or any other bureaucracy (most IT departments come to mind) is a bad thing, per se, because it increases the power of idiots while crippling competents.
An Aerospace Engineer should understand more about real-world systems.
Lew
Re-read that. You think it was our responsibility to help those people Hussein was killing, to the tune of billions of dollars, and you're calling *him* an idealist?
Since when does any bureacracy have enough???
I understand, and agree with, your comment. But, this is a brilliant idea to achieve conservative goals through deception and force. In the mean time, conservative presidents look so generous and everybody loves them. No one is thinking of the future. The problem is that this plan requires a near complete collapse of our economy (worse than the Great Depression) to achieve its intended results. The people concocting this plan (read: wealthy) won't be the people who suffer though.
Oh, and one of those federal programs that will be eventually eliminated along with Social Security and Medicare, is NASA. This is a setup.
"There will come a time when Mars will be vital to humanity. Whetehr as an giant liferaft 'cause Earth wasdestroyed or as another civilization because our population here has grown too large to support. Perhaps it will be warmed up and we'll put a bunch of farmers there to grow immense amounts of food. There are ENDLESS possibilities for Mars and we SHOULD be working on getting ourselves there. "
There will never be a time that Mars is useful to us. The lack of water pretty much insures that it won't be habitable, and "stripmining" Mars would be horrendously expensive when you think of the cost of moving that much mass into orbit and then designing a re-entry system.
In the foreseeable future (my grandkids lifetimes) I doubt there will be a single raw material so rare that it be worth paying the energy freight to get it back to earth.
I understand an effort for space propulsion technologies, because all of our current technologies are absurd for interstellar travel, but a mission to Mars is just a colossal circle jerk.
One of the immediate consequences of Prez. Bush's "vision" is the extinction of space science by phasing out or transferring to the new effort funding previously set aside for existing launch programs. One of the victims of that "vision" is the "Beyond Einstein" project, a major project to solve questions about the origin of the universe, dark matter and black holes. Once again, the white house prefers to ride a horse (through the solar system) going "YEE-HAAA" than to fund fundamental science.
There's plenty of other things that can go on the chopping block before NASA.
This is my sig.
The world is black and white. Grey areas are areas that lack sufficient analysis.
This is my sig.
Meanwhile they cut 8 BILLION dollars from JPL's budget. Does that make sense to anyone else??
Seriosuly, I'm so sick of these hippies and their dreamy, drug induced visions of happy rainbows solving all of life's problems. Killing other people is in our genes, why can they not except that? And the ones that complain we're just doing it for oil....well fuck, we want oil, we take it from people who aren't even using it. It's evolution, survival of the fittest, and it's not like we can behave any different than what our genes tell us. All this anti-murder, anti-theft, anti-oppression talk is pointless.
Hmm launch a weapon from a submarine at the enemies coastline or....
Watch a missle take a week to arrive at it's target?
Yea that's a really good plan. Except at our last tinfoil hat meeting they explained to us that the moon people who control Bush are apposed to us building on that side of the moon.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
That's what Perot did. He got like 18% or 26% (depending on who ya ask) of the vote. All of the fiscal conservatives decided he was the best choice. This left the moral conservs voting for Bush and the liberals voting for Clinton. That's one of the reasons Clinton won (among a few others).
It was interesting though to compare the debates of Perot/Bush(H)/Clinton with the debates of Kerry/Gore/Bush(W). Perot actually forced these guys to discuss and address economic policy which neither party likes to do.
I think that there is an exceptionally tight oligolopy on political parties in this country and it needs to be changed. The two major parties do nothing more than personality marketing on feel-good issues. This is why I now vote Libertarian www.lp.org every chance I get.
Libertas in infinitum
Bush's money??? Is he really paying for this out of his own pocket? COOL!
Sig not available, please try again later. If the problem persists, then the submitter is an idiot.
I THINK ARABS know nothing outside their own narrow little world. I think they speculate wildly on the motivations and aspirations of Americans without the humility which is requisite when you know nothing of a subject or a people. I think they conflate Americans with Christians with Crusaders with George Bush. I think THEY have a thing about sex, and find it difficult to accept any kind of sexual reference on telivision, even though there is a thriving underground sex trade and many of their young are promiscious. I think they hate other people to be free so they insist on attacking other countries. I think they're so insecure they see hegemony as the only option in this world, and can't understand why anyone else might not think that way.
I think Americans are like this and I will treat them as if they are until they become what I want them to be.
Stop talking like Bin Laden and think.
Not to mention the Jews and others that fled Germany and the surrounding regions. Einstein, Erdos, von Neumann, and Szilard, to pick a random selection. The difference was that the United States picked these people up prior to the war.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
...is that NASA stops setting up duplicate, triplicate, and worse teams of people to all go out and work on the same tasks. I have been with NASA since the 80's and I can not tell you how many times I have seen three or four sections all working on the same exact thing. Years after these committees/groups/whatever have been set up someone finally notices that they've been spending money hand over foot and all of the groups are shut down at one time.
:-/ The same kinds of things keep happening over and over and over again because each group wants to keep its turf. So everything breaks down into finger pointing and squabbles over how to do something. Those who don't like how someone else is doing something simply apply for their own money and go off and do the exact same thing - only with slight differences.
My worst experience was when I first came to NASA. NASA wanted to upgrade their method of creating the 3D landing strips. Sounded fair enough. Here was the original process:
Original: 1)Digitize landing strip with digitizing tablet, 2)Make Tape, 3)Take tape to simulator, 4)Read in tape, 5)Try landing. If it looked ok - you keep it. If it doesn't - go back to #1 and start over.
New Method: 1)Use new Digitizing table, 2)Convert information to new computer system, 3)Create tape, 4)Take tape to old computer system, 5)Read tape, 6)Convert information to old format, 7)Create another tape, 8)Take new tape to simulator, 9)Read it in and try it. Again, if it works - great. If not - you go back to #1 and try again.
I went "This is a nightmare. You are adding even more chances for everything to muck up and the three computer systems (Graphics Tablet, First computer, and Second computer) are each backwards to the other (ie: Big Endian, Little Endian, Big Endian again) so you have to switch the floating point numbers around each time and each system's precision isn't even the same. Could we give everything back and start from scratch on this?" The answer was no.
Original cost was supposed to be around $300,000.00 plus the computer equipment. The project (when it was finally shut down) had cost NASA over $3,000,000.00.
This wasn't just wasteful it was down right criminal. And ya know what? It hasn't gotten any better.
To say something good though - even with all of this back biting and people going off in all directions; those responsible for getting things done still manage to pull it all together. The truth is - we need fewer chiefs and more indians. As the saying goes.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
You say that with
Not that any of it really matters but I just wanted to challenge your flawed logic.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Our nation's Veterans have been shortchanged by the current administration. They should put some of that back into the VA budget.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
CNN is reporting that NASA is still without repair kits for the shuttles.
Maybe they can go over to Homeland Security and borrow duct tape and some plastic.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Constellation-X was not postponed indefinitely, just 2 years. Explorer mission funding is not on hold, but reduced (significantly this year, slightly in future years) which is expected to result in a 1-year delay in launches. The reason for these "cuts" is not entirely clear - if you look at the actual NASA budget numbers for the past few years, there has been a huge increase in the "science" portion of the NASA budget between 2000 and now, and the 2005 budget request just dialed that back a bit. In part this was to pay for "Moon-Mars", in part to pay the enormous costs for the shuttle return to flight and Hubble repair.
All the NASA budget graphs show strong continued support for science programs, so as far as I can tell all this doom and gloom from astronomers is a bunch of typical FUD... But I could be wrong.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Richard Smalley (Nobel prize winner for buckyballs) was here a few weeks ago to talk about the energy problem. I definitely agree it's the most serious problem we face in the world today; replacing our fossil-fueled energy supply as sson as possible with something renewable or at least long-term sustainable (fusion) is absolutely critical.
Fusion has proved hard on Earth - but we already have an enormous working fusion reactor operating in our solar system, and all we really have to do is tap into that and we'll have more than enough energy, essentially indefinitely (or at least until we start trying to zip large objects around the galaxy at close to the speed of light - and by then we should have a bunch of other fusion reactors to tap into too).
Solar on Earth is hard because the sun moves around in the sky, and you have to deal with a variable supply and sunk capital costs that are only in use 25-30% of the time. An orbiting satellite in a high enough orbit can be in sunlight continuously for most of the year (geosynchronous orbit has sunlight something like 99.9% of the time).
Smalley's table of potential long-term sustainable sources is pretty short: Earth-side fusion, possible geo-thermal, solar on the ground, and solar in space (including lunar solar). Space solar power deserves a serious look - not of course that the new NASA program is actually doing anything about this right now (the Bush administration cut NASA SSP funding in 2001).
Energy: time to change the picture.
Slashdot, don't say Bush never did anything for you. Before long, we'll have starships!
The money flow is pretty much a closed system. We spend money, our own contractors (and their millions of employees/families) get money.
From your comments it sounds like you think that's a good, healthy process. But it's not the full circle. Your government borrows money from it's own trusts and private investors, then spends it on weapons and supplies. So that money goes into your local economy after a corporation takes their own massive profit margin. So you build weapons, get paid as an employee and work in a shiny building.
But you're looking at the money in your hand and not thinking about the massive debt your country has right? Out of sight, out of mind? All the interest involved in the loan system, and the fact that most of the money spent goes into the hands of the owners of the corporation who sit on the money as an investment. The future is it will be paid back, by you and the generations that follow. Only your economy will be screwed by then, and the weapons industry isn't going to save it by getting your government to borrow more money and bomb other countries - though they might yet try.
It's all far more complicated than that, this is a very simple view. Unfortunately that works in your favour, and the real picture is much, much worse.
I don't live in America, and I grew up watching an amazing economy and system that was modelled and followed by others. But many things that made your country great, a long time ago, have been manipulated and squeezed by greed. The people doing this will do fine when your economy slumps though, and if they don't mind bombing other countries, do you really think they'll care about your hardship in the future?
Don't take me as an expert on libertarians, but I believe they tackle the environment three different ways.
First and foremost, as you said, they believe in ownership. If it can be owned, a libertarian would likely see that as the preferable method of conservation. Namely, a libertarian would be more inclined to let Sierra club take care the forests and not the government. Like any solution, ownership isn't a perfect solution, but it does have its perks. If an environmentalist organization (or coalition of them) owned Yellow Stone, talk about letting a few companies sneak in to log wouldn't be an issue. That said, the obvious counter point is that a company could simply buy the land it wants and log it bare... which leads to the second method.
Second, libertarians advocate more liability. So, if you log an area flat and a mud slide muddies a river or flattens a road, libertarians would advocate using the courts. Now, you might argue that you can already do this to a certain extent. Libertarians advocate taking it a step further though. Right now, if a company is sued to the ground, the worst you can do is bankrupt the company and force it to sell off its assets. Libertarians would remove the protection and personhood that a corporation enjoys. In a libertarian world, if a company was sued, anyone who owned a part of the company would be held liable. So, if you own half of the shares of a company doing something bad, in the libertarian world, you are half liable. The result they believe would be to make investors much more demanding when it comes to following the rules and not bringing down lawsuits. If you buy stock in a company, the last thing in the world you want is to have to help settle their litigation fees.
Third, libertarians advocate using market mechanisms for public property, namely air and water. So, when a libertarian set out to make it so that only X amount of a green house gas is put into the air, instead of telling each factor how much they are allowed to put out and regulating what type of systems they must use in order to clean their waste, they would be more inclined to let the market work on the problem. Namely, they would dictate that only X amount of a waste gas is allowed to be released. They would then sell off the rights to pollute and allow those polluting rights to be bought, sold, and traded.
So, let's say we have two polluting factories, a widget factory, and a dohicky factory. The dohicky factory thinks they can cheaply reduce their pollution levels by installing some new cheap factory. The widget factory on the other hand simply can't produce widgets without polluting. In system that regulates each individual factory, the dohicky factory wouldn't bother to install the cheap pollution reduction equipment because they are under their pollution quota anyways. The widget factory on the other hand would go out of business because no matter how hard they try, they simply can make widgets without polluting. In the libertarian system, the dohicky factory would invest the money to reduce its pollution levels so that it could sell its pollution rights to the widget factory. The dohicky factory is cleaner, and the widget factory is still in business.
Otherwise, it is, at best, simply a poor attempt at humor.
Your words are relevant, and would be usable to those people that are agreeable to subsistence living; It should also be noted that there no known subsistence living culture that has survived successful expansion. The Universe is carelessly ambivalent of your views.
The national budget is available for personal viewing, just "goggle" for it. Give yourself about 15 minutes, and you will know that around 4% of the budget goes to NASA. The products you use today have origins from NASA oriented work, NOT Welfare. We do need to help others, it is our culture; But, we MUST research new ways of providing goods, and services today, for the needs of tomorrow.
Your understanding of even simple business operations is foundationless. I would strongly suggest that you review the elementry business concept of paying for a finished good or service. Then a simple reading of Venture Capitol Investing. If you look at the Government as a Venture Capitalist, then things begin to make sense.
There is an old saying, "It is good to be good, It is better to be Wise."
I've often wondered how people would feel about a virus that could not kill, but instead sterilize approximately 50-70% of the population randomly.
They have already, it's called liberalism and western culture. Or to even be more accurate, it's women's rights, birth control and abortion.
Don't believe me? Look at the reproduction rates in white european countries and the US for "whites". They are all lower than two, with some as low as 1.2 babies per couple. If you aren't having 2.1 babies per couple, you aren't maintaining birthrate.
This is why America must continue it's open borders policy. America's birthrate is only at 2.0, and it's slipping (it's only held up by latin/mexican Americans). Most other nationalities are having an average of 2.1 or less children now. If people ever stop coming to America, it will be a double whammy when the bulk of baby boomers retire.
I don't say any of these things because I'm against womens rights, or birth control. I think they are great things. But one can not ignore the fact that they are causing less children to be born.
I expect us to be altering if not rewriting our entire DNA sequence from the ground up through computing.
Yeah, well I expected flying cars to be available commercially by y2k that would run on my piss and all I see are fucking hummers on the road. Good luck with your DNA sequencing Captain Optimism.
I sure hope you're right. If you are it means Western culture will eventually spread everywhere and lower the birth rate throughout the world.
We don't need any more babies being born at the moment.
+++ATH0
What are you talking about?
This would still mean that there would not be a limit to the reproductive abilities of those who could still reproduce.
How does this result in long-term death?
+++ATH0
Just as a side note to your The body which had the authority to block contracts with kickbacks was the security council (ahem, Bush!) comment. Most of the kickbacks and exploitation of the Oil for Food Program occured during a period from 1996 - Jan 2001. 5 years of Clinton run administration. Only 2 years of the Bush administration. (Surprisingly this is the same period of time Enron, Arther Anderson, and the e-commerce bubble built the US economy into the mess it is today). The Bush administration has confronted not buried corruption issues.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
You can't seriously pretend to be wanting to limit casualties when you don't even _count_ them. Saddam was a bastard, he killed many people. He was never elected democratically, he used brute force to obtain power, to oppress people. He and his government will now have to assume the responsability for this in a trial.
GWB was (hopefully) democratically elected by the people of USA. They may kill a lot less, but the responsability is shared among every american (that probably won't ever have to assume this responsability).
This is for the ethical ground. I don't think it is worthwhile to describe the practical reasons to keep count of causalties and trying to lower them in a four days old thread that has 'troll' in the original post.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.