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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."
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.
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.
Iraq is costing almost 2 billion a day... So in 8 days more money is spent than NASA's entire budget! 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. You can't bring democracy to a country that doesn't want it.. It took hundreds of years for it to develop in other countries. But thats another thread.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
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.
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.
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...
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.
We need to elect some conservatives that will actually..gasp...spend less then they take in.
Sorry, there aren't any conservatives in America. Only Reaganites. There's a couple libertarians but they're extremists and laughably marginalized.
Your best bet is going to probably be to elect more centrist-conservatives like Bill Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry. But, unfortunately, this isn't too likely either, since the DLC is likely not going to have nearly as much power within the democratic party after the disaster that was the last election and we're probably going to see the Dean faction gaining significant power within the Democrats; you're probably not going to get another era of balanced budgets, like you did under Clinton, with them in charge. So once the Democrats take power again we'll see deficit spending, though not nearly as much as you would under the Republicans.
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.
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.
Excuse me, a quick check of US deficit history shows that 11 of the last 12 record deficits (1975, 1976, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1991, 1992, 2003, and 2004) occurred under Republican administrations and only 1 under a democrat (1980), so maybe the problem is that we have elected too many "conservatives". It's absolutely astonishing to me how Democrats have become the party of fiscal responsibility.
I think the reason for this is that conservatives dramatically cut government revenue through heavy tax cuts saying "you can spend the money better than the government" but then the government keeps spending the money anyway.
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
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.
Geez, and how many more of [insert pet project here] could we have bought for the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, Spanish/American War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, the Cold War, etc. ?
I suppose your point would be that the Iraq war was somehow an elective war to distinguish it fromt he others, but I would disagree. Indeed, you could look back at any of those conflicts - even the Revolutionary War - as elective, in so far as you are willing to endure the historical ramifications as a result. Hence why from my perspective the Iraqi war is not elective, I'm not willing ot live with the historical ramifications of having done nothing.
Cheers!
A fellow engineer once remarked, at a small dinner assemblage of international engineers and scientists, that we won the space race because we got all the good German scientists after the allies broke up Germany after WWII. Most at the table were in agreement.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
> Excuse me, a quick check of US deficit history
> shows that 11 of the last 12 record deficits
> occurred under Republican administrations
What was the dominant party in Congress at those times? Just because the president is from one party doesn't mean that they set all fiscal policy.
I think Bush is a liberal spended , neo-conservative on social issues. In my view, the worst combination of all of them because he spends tons of money in all the wrong places.
I couldn't agree more.
Not only that, his mis-directed overspending goes unnoticed by the general public, and they end up loving the guy and voting him in for a second term.
Definitely the most dangerous type of politician. He makes costly mistakes that cost lives, vast amounts of money, most of our support in the world, considerable damage to the environment, and the people love him.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Your plan B would so backfire. Somebody like Lance Bass or Ben Affleck would sign up to go to the moon and Mark Burnett would make a show about it. He'd be on Larry King every night for two years, until we all got so sick of it someone sabotaged the mission.
Someday a Slashdot ID of 177180 will mean something.