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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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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?
No, Bush fully expects that he and all his "born again" pals will be taken up to heaven in the Rapture. Why do you think he's trying to cause Armageddon?
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
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?
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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?
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?
NASA works very closely with private industry, and in fact many of the major NASA errors have come from contractors (ie, faulty Hubble mirror, the infamous metric/imperial debacle, etc).
make world, not war
I think the objection is not that the money is being spent, but that it's being spent in a careless manner. Because this manned mars program is so expensive, other programs, scientific programs, will have to be cut. NASA has a long history of doing both extremely useful things, and pointless things. The Space Shuttle and the ISS come to mind as complete wastes of money, whereas Hubble, the current mars rovers, and countless other unmanned missions have been great successes. Which would you rather have?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Sometimes you get a culture evolving at an organisation that precludes them from getting anything done. The Shuttle was, and is a big mistake- they originally sold it on the grounds that it would be able to launch every week (even when they knew it wouldn't- and the record shows that they didn't even bother building the facilities needed to do that, the NASA leadership knew it wouldn't be able to launch once a week, it was just the only way they could sell the program).
A lot of the problems in the manned program is lack of good leadership- Von Braun was very well respected within NASA, whilst he was in the loop everything more or less worked. Once he left the big trouble started.
If Bush can actually stand up to the plate for the plan, that might work. However, Bush isn't exactly my or pretty much anyones idea of a space leader, and his term in office won't see the program completed... Political instability is probably going to kill any chance of success anyway.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
I'll be sure to tell the Poles, Aussies, Brits, South Koreans and Japanese that they don't count as part of the international community.
While you're at it you could tell the British Government that half of their population disagreed with their support of the US led invasion of Iraq... no, hang on. Don't bother, we've already tried.
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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?
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.
In fact it is worse than this -- one astronomer I know tells me that it looks like *all* funding for astronomy in the NASA budget may go away.
Besides missions like Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, Swift, Con-X, LISA, GalEx, FUSE, etc. etc. etc., NASA funds science investigations by astronomers through various programs. If the money from these programs goes into Mars exploration, that will have a major detrimental impact on our nation's astronomy research programs.
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.
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.
So we're faced with this situation: a whole generation of scientists and engineers who cut their teeth on Hubble, Chandra, etc. will all move on to other things. Time passes. Congress finally decides to fund more space-based astronomy, but nobody knows how to make it happen any longer.
This is the exact same situation we are currently facing if we want to again send people to the Moon. We knew how to do it in the 60s/70s, but all the people who made it happen are long gone and we'll have to reinvent the wheel.
That is my point. Right now, the government is still able to afford paying interest (and even this is open to discussion, given the current government debt), but it will be unable to pay the principal when the 30 years are up.
Whether the US government does default on its debt, or whether it prints so enough money to technically avoid bankruptcy that is becomes worthless, it doesn't matter: the dollar will be worthless anyway.
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.
Whatever...
As others have pointed out, that money would be much better spent on other, actual scientific work. Why not just give NASA the cash and allow them to prioritize their own work. Or do you really think George and Co. are more qualified to do so?
Look, this is a simple ploy by Bush to not look like a complete asshole in the eyes of history. I sincerely hope it will not work.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Actually, I agree with most of this. But to be fair:
1. The market for grazing on federal land is going to be poor when federal ag subsidies are removed, as that will open up land currently enrolled in CRP to grazing and production.
2. Charging more for oil, gas, and mineral leases on federal lands will only increase the value of all the privately owned oil under my state.
3. I assume this plan would also turn over management of the missouri river dams (a continual money looser) and finally see to payment for flooded and tribal lands still owing.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
All that debt is not due on the same year and 2/3 of that is owed to Social Security. Last I checked the real debt was only like 1trillion and the rest was people using Social Securty to tax those making under 80k / year pay for the tax breaks given to the upper 1%.
First of all, T-Bonds are--as their name implies-- bonds, not stocks, which means they pay interest. And bonds are very different from stock.
Secondly, unlike the stock market which has inherent risk, US government securities are as low risk as you can get and are considered by most finance people as "no-risk" securities. So that's a fundamental difference, especially in comparison with Enron.
Third, "where are you going to find someone who has a spare $500 billion per year?" The purchase parity GDP of the US is currently $11 trillion a year. That's where. Now I'm not suggesting that we should or will have to use 40% of our GDP to pay back our debt, but if we have to, we can.
Fourth, a falling US dollar is considered by some to occasionally be a good thing. It lowers trade deficits, and it also encourages people to....wait for it...invest in US currency! How? Many (if not all) people believe the US will strengthen again. By getting into US currency when it's low, when the dollar returns to highs, you've made a few extra Euros, Yen, whatever.
That's why you would buy T-Bills. So to answer your parent's question, yes you could keep issuing T-Bonds to pay off the others. Although, seeing as how the US government has stopped selling T-Bonds, they'll probably use T-Bills.
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