Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
If the human race survives the 5 billion years it's going to take for the sun to burn out, I have a feeling that finding a new home will be the least of our species' worries by then.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.).
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.
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.