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Funding Promised for Trips to Moon, Mars
image77 writes "NASA's new administrator, Michael Griffin, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Tuesday the space agency will have the necessary funding to send astronauts back to the moon and to Mars. Delay states "We will provide the funding necessary to get us where we want to go.""
ASA's new administrator, Michael Griffin, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Tuesday the space agency will have the necessary funding to send astronauts back to the moon and to Mars. Delay states "We will provide whatever funding is necessary to get the spotlight off my ethics investigation and possible upcoming criminal proceedings."
From TFA:
Awfully nice of you to provide the funding for our space initiative, Tom...are you sure you and the other members of Congress can afford it?
Oh, wait...he's talking about our money...not his...damn.
Seriously, though, after reading through TFA, and also reading some related articles on President Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration", one finds that below the glitz and the sexiness, there's just not much content. Specifically, there's very little mention of turning space exploration into a paying venture, which will be very necessary as soon as the glamour wears off, and the taxpayers get tired of funding such a pricey program.
There's ridiculous amounts of money to be made in space...we just need to get up there...and stay up there this time.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
...insert completely offtopic and irrelevant DeLay comments here, instead of acknowledging that the current House of Representatives Majority Leader, a legislator with significant power, has publicly pledged the necessary funding for NASA's Mars and Moon missions.
Note: the funding NASA has received over the last couple of decades is equivalent to the funding it received during the Apollo program in adjusted dollars, so it's not like NASA is the equivalent of the hapless panhandler many slashdotters make it out to be.
Further, for those who support NASA's fundamental mission of space exploration, we must also acknowledge the US Air Force Space Command's renewed role to protect free access to space, including planning for contingencies that may require us to protect our assets in space from other nations. You had better believe, regardless of any perceived sensibilities, that other nations may lay claim to, e.g., areas of the moon, areas in close proximity to earth, etc. If anyone is forced to be a steward of free access, I'll be blunt and say I'd rather it be us.
Just imagine the number (and size) of the public toilets you could build for all this money.
I heard they were having a contest to send worthy pop-drinkers in space.
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
As if the Majority Leader in the House of Representatives of the US Congress has no job, or indeed, any other tasks at all, other than to continually engineer ways to remove the spotlight from alleged ethics violations. Because, of course, once someone is accused of something, their job stops, and they're naturally only trying to erect artificial shields to deflect the allegations.
Is Osama hidding there??
To get us to where we want to go
Where do you want to go today?
Wait a minute. I remember back when the NASA budget had some proposed budget cuts floated, Slashdot went apeshit.
It's like every other thing they do with the budget. People scream when they increase budgets. People scream when they reduce budgets.Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
They must have found oil on the moon, and the Martians must be suspected of possessing weapons of mass destruction.
;)
After all, Marvin the Martian was determined to blow up the earth in all those old Looney Toons flix...
How about back home safely once the mission's done?!?
...because it just might bring us into another golden age of American science. Think about how many young people were inspired to be engineers and scientists when they saw the Appollo missions as youngsters.
Hmm?
Come on, lets hear some more ranting and raving and frothing at the mouth about exactly how Tom DeLay warrants the label 'evil'. Should be entertaining.
WTF is wrong with you people?
...for science and math education?
We have suffered significant brain drain over the last two decades and I'm not convinced that the future crop of "rocket scientists" will be able to launch an Estes rocket much less get us to the Moon (let alone Mars).
Maybe I'm showing my age bias here, but I just don't see the fire and drive in Middle and High School students to do anything of this magnitude. Most of the students I know would rather visit Mars by playing Doom than actually going there.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
And what about the funding for telescopes, or for keeping irreplaceable projects like Voyager going?
I seem to remember the last time the republicans proposed a Mars plan (one which they seem to have forgotten about as soon as the election came) the Mars plan was mostly funded by diverting funding away from NASA's science initiatives.
I, for one, would welcome this comment from almost anyone (including Bush!) except DeLay. Considering the ethics problems he's currently facing, it seems the old adage "with friends like this, who needs enemies?" sounds fitting. Not only that, this is such an easy target for ridicule, as we will no doubt witness.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Cut out all this funding-cycle political crap for crissakes. Yes, yes, I know there are lots of people employed by NASA and its contractors who want the return of the glory days.
Go get a real job and stop destroying the US's pioneering heritage, and don't you dare lobby my Congressman with your time and travel paid for by my taxes.
Seastead this.
cause such projects can never happen without federal funding! like the wright brothers for example, without that huge government grant they never would have succeeded.
or that guy that singlehandedly built the rocket and went to the moon, what was his name... Apollo Creed?
We will provide the funding necessary to get us where we want to go. ... by forcing other people to give us money on the threat of sending armed men to take them to jail them if they don't 'pay their tax' to fund our fun.
And they call ours a civilized country.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
What are they going to, hire Ralph Kramden?
Does anyone know if the mission plan is similar to this....
Build a spaceship and accessories that will get us to Mars safely and quickly, but then to test it on trips to and from the moon?
It seems that developing hardware and software for a Moon trip. Then developing more hardware and software for a Mars trip might be a little cumbersome and expensive.
IMHO, it would be more beneficial for us to build the Mars equipment, and fly it around space for a few months (simulate a trip to Mars in time duration), but always be within a (relatively) short & safe distance from Earth.
can we not have any comments from republicans raving over it just because he is republican, or democrats hatin' on it just because he is a republican. Just for once can we look at an idea and judge it on it's own merit? Having said all of that, this is probably a big waste of money :-).
I am truly glad that we went to the moon. I believe that the space race of the 1960's brought numerous advantages to our society and helped on the propaganda front of the Cold War. I will be the first to admit that this was the right course of action for our country at the time.
However, we are not racing with anyone right now. The billion$ that this will cost could be much better used in other things such as developing alternative energy sources & their required infrastructures, helping to fix Social Security, developing alternative energy sources & their required infrastructures, funding better education efforts, developing alternative energy sources & their required infrastructures, and so forth. I just can't see why it would be better to go to Mars and pick up certain ancillary benefits when we could use the money to help produce major benefits.
I fully appreciate Tom DeLays comments, space exploitation has been on the back burner for too long. In these uncertain times, we would sleep a lot better in our beds if we knew there was a second chance out there somewhere, a genuine, self supporting colony that could reseed the earth in case of unavoidable disaster.
Who better to found this colony than our own elected leaders? As events on september the eleventh showed, no-one is immune to terrorism on our domestic soil, and it would be far better to place our venerated leaders beyond the range of any conventional retaliation. We could always then be sure of leadership from orbit, no matter what happens. By protecting them, we protect ourselves.
And should, despite their best efforts, some cataclysm overtake us all down below, what gentle knights are better suited to repopulate our world than our saintly leaders? Congress, the judiciary, the President are all exceptional individuals who have risen to the top to command a nation of untold millions through sheer talent and moral determination. Repopulation by such giants could only in fact improve the lot of humanities descendents.
Yes, invest in NASA. Yes, load them all on a rocket. Yes, by all means let them lead from above, unseen and unvisited. Let noone say we were too afraid to take the sensible step.
We shall miss them, our leaders, available as they currently are to any stranger in need of a chat or shoulder to cry on, discussion of current policy or challenger of their POV. All that will be lost. No more will I saunter into Cheney's office, will he welcome me with a smile, and gladly spend hours discussing Middle Eastern politics. By this sacrifice, we insure our future.
I look forward with tears in my eyes to the day when they leave this planet. The correct funding of NASA will bring this day closer yet than we can dream.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
At least for the next 3 years. Reagan said back in '84 that the ISS would be a reality in 10 years. 20 years later it's only partially completed.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Why? Because partisan Democrats in Texas are accusing him of things that haven't been proven? Or that he acts as partisan as any Democrat in the Senate or House?
Labeling someone "evil" just because you disagree with their politics is childish. If DeLay's actions are "evil" so are plenty of Democrats, but I'm sure you won't say the same thing of them.
President Bush is not really interested in putting people on the moon or Mars, But recently 3 other countries have announced thier intentions of landing there: China, Russia and India. Well you can be darn sure that president Bush is not going to let another country go to the Moon without the USA going first.
It's another Space Race to the moon
but the USA is the Rabbit waiting for
one of the turtles to get started
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
instead of acknowledging that the current House of Representatives Majority Leader, a legislator with significant power, has publicly pledged the necessary funding for NASA's Mars and Moon missions.
... If anyone is forced to be a steward of free access, I'll be blunt and say I'd rather it be us.
Well, that's the interesting thing though. This is terribly relevant. Because if DeLay has proven himself willing to lie to the ethics committee, this neatly demonstrates he is also willing to lie to us. Like, potentially, lie to us about things like, "I will secure funding for trips to the moon and mars".
Further, for those who support NASA's fundamental mission of space exploration, we must also acknowledge the US Air Force Space Command's renewed role to protect free access to space,
If you're expecting our fears that the space talk is a Republican political thing to be dissuaded by hyperbolic, blog-buzzword laden implications that we should start to turn our public space program over to the military... then you're horribly wrong.
is now apparently large enough that they want to buy it with promises of space travel. At last, all the geeks ignored in highschool now have a little influence. How sad they'll be when that money gets shifted to space based military programs, after they've voted. Yeah, they'll put people on the moon and Mars. Soldiers.
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
I'm just glad that as soon as we read an article with the words "Tom Delay" that instead of actually talking about the article, the first post (with a rating of 5, no less) goes on and on with a bunch of political horseshit that has nothing to do with the topic.
Come on, guys. I expect better of you than this. Sure your college professor says all republicans are evil corporate monsters. Now can we talk about the space program?
I can't tell if you're a supporter trying to be sarcastic, or a detractor trying to be sarcastic.
Try reading Johnathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.
Spending other people's money is a significant issue, not be lightly undertaken.
Space exploration and colonization is absolutely vital and must be undertaken.
However, there are many ways to achieve this.
It concerns me that there seems to be such gung-ho enthusisam for pushing what will be vast amounts of tax-raised money into NASA. NASA I'm sure has an unlimited capacity to absorb funds; but I'm not sure it has an equal capacity to produce results in equal measure.
Why not just use the same money to place contracts with the major private space companies? why have a State run organisation at all?
--
Toby
"We will provide the funding necessary to get us where we want to go."
Maybe the terrorists are planning to put anthrax in the polar ice caps on mars...
We must beat them there!
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
Guess what! That's called discussion and usually aims to find a solution.
Ban guns, you have people screaming, allow guns, you have people screaming. Raise speed limits, you have people screaming, lower speed limits, you have people screaming.
Oversimplify enough and your comment always applies.
This is a tired argument that is always used but means nothing. "Im all for X, but now is not a good time" When is a good time? When have things ever been so good that we can spend money on Big Ideas(tm) without taking that money away from Important Things(tm). If we actually lived by this concept nobody would have invented the wheel, because it took time away from clubbing small animals on the head with big sticks.
Remember the Golgafrinchams C Ark... If we don't have our politicians to protect us, we may all be buried alive in a massive landslide of unspent lobbying money and political slushfunds.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I'm not a very big fan of GWB, and I voted for the other guy last election, but Bush's push for human exploration and colonization of the Moon and Mars seriously made me think twice.
A manmade bioweapon -- like a plague specifically designed to target human beings -- could wipe out all human life on this planet nearly any time. We're all very lucky the Unabomber was a math genius and not a disaffected biotech researcher with a loathing for humanity. But who knows? That disaffected biotech researcher could be out there right now, doing his work. As could any number of bad people.
The point is, until we create a sustainable existence off this planet, the long term survival of our species is highly volatile. And Bush seems to be the only one in power actively promoting a future in which we actually do begin moving into space.
Will the resurgence of interest in private space flight save us? It's possible, but I wouldn't bet the future of our species on it.
I think DeLay is exactly what the country really needs right now! We've been divided for so long and Tom can really bring us all together. As a registered republican, I like seeing how most of my republican and democrate friends can come togehter and agree DeLay is a disgrace. Between his actions and spewing about judges, I really feel this is a moment where we can begin the heal as a country and feel like one again over our discust with him.
It really give me hope for the future! Thanks Tom!
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Hey, everyone knows Delay for all of his faults has a lot of pull in the US House. If Delay is on board with funding a lot of space, why not let him do it? If NASA does get us back to the moon and mars, and I think they can (they did get us to the moon before, after all), then sure, go for it.
The fifteen or sixteen billion a year that NASA needs is chump change. Toss it onto the deficit, as space is an investment that will pay for itself.
This is my sig.
We'll he's got my vote.
Not.
Currently bidding on sig
The space program and its various branches have made enourmous contributions and benefits to our society, and to the entire world, and has continued to do so.
We don't need to be in a race to continue reaping those benefits.
Using that logic, we should just dump everyone in the Senate and House. It's not like one side or the other has a perfect record. ....You know, that probably wouldn't be a bad idea.
And where the neocons want to go is to kill NASA. They'll distract NASA into bleeding itself to death chasing massive unfunded mandates while ignoring real science. It's starve the beast all over again. And they're being dishonest about how they're doing it. What else are they being dishonest about?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
When I was reading to my son last night (about Space) I was amazed when he ran over to the window and looked up trying to see the stars. I like the idea of space exploration, but I think doing it with robots is the preferred method for a while. I hope that one day my 4 year old will have the option to go into space. Maybe, just maybe, this move by Bush will begin a renewed interest in younger generations.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
I agree with you. Why is there debate about Hubble Space Telescope maintenance? Even crippled and gimpy, the HST is providing useful data to scientists. Why is funding being cut to the Voyager program just when it is approaching the heliopause, the boundary to our solar system? It's the farthest reaching manmade object in the universe, and we are still getting data. It costs $4 million per year, but it is being cut to make room for a manned mission to the moon or Mars.
Why do we need manned anything? What can we learn with people that we cannot learn with remote controlled robots? The Mars Rover project has outperformed the designers' wildest dreams. It is the scientific equivalent of a bargain. If that were a manned mission, we would have spent all of the budget trying to keep the people alive. When the Mars Rovers finally stop returning data, we will just turn them off and leave them. That is not a convenience we would have with a manned mission.
Manned space filght is a novelty, not a scientific research subject. How many scientific papers have come out of the International Space Station? When was the last time actual scientific research was carried out on the space shuttle? When was the last time a manned space mission provided a new answer to a scientific question? Go to the library. Do a web search.
There is a guy who likes to rant about this sort of thing. Go here and click on the "What's New" link. Search for things like "manned space flight" or "space station" or "missile defense sheild". It's some good reading.
He's the Senate leader of a political party. He'd damn well better be partisan.
Microsoft today changed thier tagline from:
"Where do you want to go today?"
to:
"How much money do you have to spend?"
They Live, We Sleep
I was going to bitch about how spending money on going to Mars was a waste when it could be spent on, say, a strategy for dealing with climate change...
...until I thought, maybe going to Mars is Bush's strategy for dealing with climate change?
One of the problems with our space programs, one of the problems it's had since the beginning, is that we haven't been building an infrastructure that would give us ongoing access to space at a reasonable price. We haven't been building our capabilities so that we'll be able to do important things like exploit the resources of the solar system. We just do stunts, usually to distract people from some political problem
I believe we need to go back to the Moon and then on to Mars, but not as one-shot deals. We need a moon base so we can get resources from the moon. There is plenty of oxygen, Silicon and aluminum which could be used to help supply our expansion into space. The oxygen is needed for air. The aluminum can be used to build structures. The silicon can be used to create solar cells.
It also seems likely that the Moon has water trapped in deep dark craters and crevices at the poles. A base on the moon dedicated to extracting that water would be able to provide that vital resource to space settlements. The water could be decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen to supply fuel for space operations and missions to Mars.
If you really want to impress me, then develop the technologies to mine asteroids. A single average nickle-iron asteroid could supply the world's need for iron for up to five years. It could also supply plenty of material for building space stations and factories.
The resources in space could help solve many of the problems we have on our tiny planet. It's time we stopped grandstanding and started focusing on a well thought out plan for securing those resources and exploiting them.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
No, I'm not saying that he can't do any wrong. What I am saying is that people are forgetting that the main "accuser" of DeLay, that joker down in Texas is a partisan Democrat and hasn't been able to pin anything on DeLay.
If they actually prove anything on DeLay, I say get rid of him. I wouldn't want him in Congress any more than I would an ex-KKK member (Byrd) or someone that got someone killed and tried to cover it up (Kennedy).
I just ran the quote through my Dave Chapelle translator:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Tuesday the space agency will have the necessary funding to send astronauts back to the moon and to Mars.
Comes out:
We're going to Mars, bitches!
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Why bother with an investigation? You've already convicted him based on allegations and circumstantial evidence. All that's left is the execution..
Git the rope and some torches, yeehaw! Let's have us a HANGIN'!
"We came in peace for all mankind."
I knew it was only a matter of minutes until someone posted a comment like this about why we don't need to waste money to go to the moon when we have other things that could use the money.
Here are a couple facts for you. The NASA budget is approximatly $16 billion dollars a year. The great big huge increase that Bush and others are talking about will be less than $1 billion dollars a year. Sounds like a lot of money right? A couple years ago the Space Station had a budget overrun of a couple billion dollars and asked Bush for more money. He told them no, and appointed a bean counter as the head of NASA to get them in shape. You see, the government just doesn't have enough money for an unexpected couple billion dollar overrun.
For the second consecutive year, however, Bush has asked congress for some additional money for the war in Iraq. This is not budgeted DoD money, this is in addition to what the DoD is already getting, which was supposed to be enough. Both times he asked for around $85 billion. Both times congress gave Bush all he asked for, and a little more.
For the money overrun being spent in Iraq, we could have 5 more NASAs.
As for the other ways you want to spend that money, well guess what happens to the money that goes to NASA. It gets used to develop technology in various areas, including your alternative energy. The money goes to support high school and college kids trying to get and education in engineering. It also provides a number of good jobs to help people pay into Social Security.
Putting money into NASA benefits the US economy. Putting money into Iraq benefits other countries economy, while being a big drain on the US economy.
I know that this is probably feeding a troll, but the ALLEGATION (i.e., they are unproven) is that DeLay allowed lobbyists to pay for his travel expenses, which is against House Ethics GUIDELINES. Your Micheal Moore inspired attempts at propaganda have failed once again.
Sorry, I'm on board the Tom Delay bandwagon again. Anybody that powerful that wants to fully fund NASA is a great guy, in my book.
Here's to the re-election of Tom DeLay.
This is my sig.
Agreed. In the past few decades we have suffered a large loss in the ability to think, especially considering our technological gain over that time. For example, it took the processing power of two C-64's to take us to the moon on an Apollo capsule. Now we have computer systems with multiple GHz processors, and we are using them now for gaming.
"What happen?"
House leader. Frist is the Senate Leader.... and I wish HE were at least as partisan has Reed is proving to be.
The billion$ that this will cost could be much better used in other things such as developing alternative energy sources & their required infrastructures,
Read up on satellite solar power and lunar solar power. In the long term, our planet's energy needs are going to have to be based significantly on space based solar. There's simply no other source of that much energy.
Seriously, read up on it. A world that runs without burning coal or oil or massive amounts of radioactive waste or dangerously weaponizable plutonium *will not happen* without investment in the space program.
This provides a more advantageous position from a military/army/navy standpoint. Many advances in medicine are possible from space based research as well. I can see why Bush administration wants to be the first. When other countries finally arrive on the moon, the US can dictate the rules for staying on the moon. This can be advantageous on many fronts. i.e terrorists, medicine, armed forces and so on.
Economically and to prevent contamination, the trip to Mars should be one way. The astronauts should be given all they need to find out if Mars is a safe place to live as well as to conduct experiments. Another trip would be schedule to bring them back after two or three years, if they survive and if they can produce their own fuel for the trip up from the Martian surface (quite an incentive).
"We will provide the funding necessary to get us where we want to go."
So we'll approve the funding to send astronauts to the moon. The retrun trip is on them.
How could we forget when DeLay or his spokesdroids take pains to remind us of it every other day?
Funny though, they always forget to mention that the "partisan Democrat" has a long, solid record of going after corrupt Repubs and Dems. Perhaps it's just hard for them to believe that some people do their jobs without checking party affiliation (or bank accounts).
"...President Bush's vision..." BAHHAHAHAHAH-HA!...HA!
Need I say more?
--The slashdot anti-script text confirmation is getting ridiculously hard.
Do people forget that it was JFK, a democrat, who sent us to the moon in the first place? I don't see, and I never have seen, going to outer space having anything to do with political views. It's a shame it has to be that way. I myself am liberal, and I believe extremely strongly that we should go to space (and as much as possible), no matter what the risk is.
Which wouldn't be so bad if they cancelled the hasn't-worked-yet ballistic missile "defense" system. Or if there was a cap on CEO pay so that most of the money actually went to the workers instead of the CEO shmoozing it up with Hot Tub Tom.
I'm all for space exploration, but not at the cost of deficit spending. Why not cut the fat from the Pentagon's "no audits because it's too big" budget before we go spending more money that I and my children will have to pay back.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
FWIW, I am a Libertarian, so both dems and reps disgust me. That said, I have to reply to this:
"You gotta love how liberals believe that if you write enough stuff, people will think it is true. They build bad cases upon flawed logic based on opinions. It's all third grade logic."
The Reps are not any better. Going into Iraq they lied their asses off....
"Iraq-911-Al-queda", Iraq may have nukes, they have chemical weapons, we don't care what the UN says. They lied so much that a majority of americans thought Iraq attacked us on 911....
If ever there was a bad case built upon flawed logic and sold with lies that was it. Funny how the administration stopped talking about finding the weapons eh? They even had the balls to say oh well NOW its about FREEDOM. Forget about all the false claims we made to justify invading.
Bush even said that if he knew Iraq had no weapons he would have invaded anyway.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Spend my tax dollars getting our soldiers OUT of Iraq. Spend my tax dollars educating our children. Spend my tax dollars to make basic health care affordable. Spend my tax dollars protecting the environment. Spend my tax dollars on anything that would improve the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans.
Going to Mars would be cool. Just don't use my money to get there.
If the charges are baseless, then why were his business associates indicted? Surely you're not suggesting that the grand jury was rigged by the dems.
There are also charges beyond those brought by a vengeful dem in Texas. Where there's smoke, there's fire. The fact is that DeLay has long history of ethics problems and the problem is not limited to Delay. Even the repugs on the house ethics committee were caught in ethics violations and forced to resign their seat.
The house ethics committee has 10 members. 5 dems, 5 repubs. 3 of the 5 repugs were forced to resign their position when it was discovered that they were secretly funding DeLay's ethics legal defense fund. They saw no conflict of interest in providing money to the person they were supposed to be investigating. This sort of 'good old boy' network that has infested the repubs should not be tolerated.
Putting money into NASA benefits the US economy. Putting money into Iraq benefits other countries economy, while being a big drain on the US economy. Good point, for the short term. If re-structuring Iraq into a friend proves to be beneficial to the US in the Long Run (tm), it might be better to think of this drain as an investment.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
Hey, it's been a while since we've done any manned missions beyond the earth's orbit, so this is great! Returning to the moon and maybe even going to Mars on a manned mission will be amazing opportunities!
Oh, wait, Republicans suggested it. Nevermind. It just means that Tom Delay wants to golf on the moon (hey, it's been done before) and Bush wants to drill for oil on Mars. There simply can't be any other reason for their actions...
I keep having this thought that I should get voice tapes of Dave Chapelle and splice together
"You've got Mail! Bitch!"
Then get it on AOL users computers.
And in my book, neocon == talks trash about accountability for everybody else while dodging responsibilty for their own actions at every turn. == DeLay.
I love space exploration and I think it is a worthy expenditure, but I do not think that now is the right time. With our economy still rocky and our national budget deficit at record levels, it seems like the US needs to do our homework before we go outside to play.
The problem with politics is that you have to be at least as unethical as your opponent to defeat him. And once you are in office you have to stay unethical to get re-elected.
I don't doubt that DeLay has a sketchville past and has done some shady things. But if any of you people blasting him and calling for his resignation think that he is uniquely unethical ... wow. Talk about naivete. I wonder sometimes at the "gee whiz..." attitude people have about Washington, and the very earnest belief held by an alarming number of voters that the people in their party aren't unethical, it's only the people on the other side who pull stunts like this.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
"what makes the return trip potentially profitable"
Standing there with a musket and telling everyone else to f*ck off because you're going to be the one to exploit this particular natural resource is what will make space profitable. Yes it's ugly but guess what, the good old USA is the result of exactly this attitude.
The "Space is owned by all the people of earth" stuff in the UN treaty has left us with 40 years of no progress. Add to this the national space monopolies like NASA, ESA keeping the costs high.
Deleted
When your country imprisons enemies indefinitely without trial, exports suspects for torture by third parties, and supports many puppet regimes, I think crowing about Freedom is a little premature isn't it? Or perhaps you meant your freedom at the expense of that of a lot of other people?
As to your 'they'll get us first' argument (substitute bogey-man of the moment, apparently China, for they), the extension of this to its logical conclusion is of course that to ensure US hegomony you must take over every other nation on Earth. Perhaps you think that would be a good idea if you had the resources; fortunately for the rest of us, you don't and never will.
Why can't you see through this kind of cheap nationalism? It's only meant to distract you from real economic and political problems at home.
This will set manned space exploration back, not forward.
The money would be better spent on developing better ways to get into space and more effective propulsion technologies once there.
We need intelligently thought out plans that will furher a sustained manned space presence. A Mars mission, at this point in time, is another horse and pony show, much like the ISS and the shuttle.
Unfortunately I think a Mars manned mission will be the next step. The power of powerful congressmen looking for pork projects for thier districts and the short-sightedness of space enthusasists (such as the ones here on slashdot) will be in full support of a Mars mission, support that comes at the expense of real research and progress on manned space exploration.
It isn't to get the spotlight off the ethics investigation - it is to get money into Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
You have to remember DeLay is from Texas where all the aerospace companies are.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Government space programs are merely weapons programs disguised as happy fun things. NASA should be eliminated.
If re-structuring Iraq into a friend proves to be beneficial to the US in the Long Run (tm), it might be better to think of this drain as an investment.
hhahahhahah.
Say that again in ten years, the US is not making friends in Iraq. Those big bases the US is building there won't last long in the current climate.
You obviously don't understand Slashdot. You see, Delay is a Republican. Any post that criticizes Republicans is automatically modded to be insightful. The child post to which you also refer was ambiguous but might be construed as being mildly defensive of Delay, in which case there is no chance in hell that it would possibly be given a positive mod.
/. can't bear to have a differing opinion from their own. You should know by now that negative mods are only done for censorship purposes, not because of the actual content of the post.
/. mods. Anything pro-Bush, pro-Fox, or pro-Republican is immediately shot down with negative mods, even if it's in reality 100% informative or 100% insighful.
/. grain!!)
Even pro-Republican posts that are 100% on the mark are given "troll" or "offtopic" because the left-leaning majority on
Anything anti-Bush, anti-Fox, and anti-Republican is immediately greeted with cheers by the intolerant
Welcome to Slashdot - the geek arm of the Democratic National Committee.
(Wait until you see how quickly this gets modded as "troll" or "flamebait" because I spoke the truth, thus proving my point! Mercy me that Ipost against the
Bullshit. His "space exploration" platform is simply another distraction from all of his failures of foreign and domestic policy.
You are accurate of course, but sometimes it still amazes me how blatantly obvious it is.
NASA has cut funding to a number of space science programs this year, despite a budget increase, because of the Moon/Mars initiative. I hope there really will be sufficient funding in the future, because right now this space adventure (which I'm not against on its own) is being funding at the expense of fundamental science research.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Politicians are typically corrupt, whether they are Democrat, Republican, or other. However, it seems that DeLay has taken corrupt to new levels. (Obviously, this is a biased source, however, they do provide detailed information that can easily be contradicted. I do take it with a grain of salt, but what they mention meshes up with bits I've heard from mainstream media recently.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Delay is just getting Congress to finance his getaway car.
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make install -not war
America wants to prevent other countries from having WMDs when America has more WMDs than any other country.
Err.. hate to burst your buble bud. Russia still has more nukes than the USA. BBC LINK Grand total, Russia has more active nukes than we do and nearly double the total number of nukes we have when including stockpiles.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
You can't be naieve enough to actually believe that he intends to come through with the promised money, do you? This is just an empty promise to buy some goodwill and head NASA in the wrong direction so they can turn around and justify killing it completely.
NASA hasn't designed a new launch vehicle that works in forty years. And who are they going to get to design one? There aren't that many aircraft designers left. All the key people on the Apollo and Saturn V programs, and most of the top thousand people, had serious experience in experimental aircraft and rocket design. There's no pool of people like that any more.
About 10-15 years from now, the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China will present the President of the United States with the flag that the Apollo 11 crew planted on the moon in 1969.
At least in the near future. Probably not for a hundred years. When we can travel to moon and ECONOMICALLY mine it for its resources, until then space travel will be only for exploration. That is good in its own right. But it will not be routine or profitable. I will not live to see the day when space travel (real space travel) by humans is routine. My son, maybe, when he is an old man.
I got a better program: let's spend billions of dollars in order to provider affordable education, clean up the environment and make sure that nobody is *really* left behind. Maybe then the rest of the world will look up to us again.
Let's just go ahead and build the prison there. We can put the criminals on the moon, and build a resort on Mars. That way, when the rich folks go to Mars, they can pass the moon, and "moon" the convicts.
So they can pony up countless billions for new contracts, but can't come up with $5 million per year to continue monitoring Voyager?
Oh wait, we can't.
Finally, a story goes that DeLay lit up a stogie in a restaurant, and a waiter told him it was a government building, where smoking was not permitted. DeLay reportedly retorted, "I am the government."
Unfortunately, if you want to actually do something, go to Texas and start collecting signatures. Door-to-door, if necessary.
Mo monies for da womens'
Women and minorities means women occupy over 80% of the *privileged* population.
1976 - 1996 there were 51,571 murders by their (ex)lovers
20,311 were male
31,260 were female
A preliminary investigation of a soon to be released survey suggests things are not what they seem. It's base is 50,000 sexually active men and women in the US
89% of men admit to being victims of domestic violence from women when the question was asked "Have you ever been struck out of anger by your domestic partner.
60% of men say they've been on the receiving end of unwanted sexual stimulation (50% of that number has said that that stimulation has led to unprotected intercourse).
See you all in a month or so.
Women still kill more children at 4 to 1
Women still make up the majority of sex crimes against children
Come on boys, open your eyes. If a liberal government gets in before the party is willing to address it's *mistakes* we can expect a lot more of the same.
Maybe someone should mention to Bush that we actually have been there before!
While I would dearly love to send Tom DeLay on a one way, all expenses paid trip to Mars, the 'man on Mars' program is 100% pure pork. Let's face it, there are 27 electoral votes to be had in Florida, 34 in Texas, and 55 in CA, and 116 electoral votes gets you better than 1/3 of the way to being President and represents a significant chunk of the votes in the House as well. Anybody interested in science that compared the cost/benefit ratio of unmanned to manned space flight would figure out pretty quickly that the robots deliver much better bang for the buck than human astronauts, and it isn't even close. The robots don't need to eat, they don't need air, they can survive much greater ranges of temperature, and most importantly, you don't need to bring them back.
Seriously. I'm not convinced we've ever been there. And I don't mean because of that goofy video thing a year or two ago. I mean things like camera crosshairs partially *behind* things in moon photos. Things like different missions to different parts of the moon producing photographs with visually identifiable geographical features from other missions' photos.
It'll be interesting if we ever get "back to the moon" and find there aint no footprints or american flags. Maybe that's why nasa wants to get "back" there first...
I have a headache from all these screaming people. Life would be so much simpler if it was a dictatorship and I was the dictator.
You can't handle the truth.
... they make nothing but promises. Typical bureaucracy.
Opening up real space exploration would be simple: make it legal for private companies to build nuclear thermal rockets.
We're talking real space ships here. With that much power, you can afford to make them big, redundant, safe, and reusable. No more wimpy foam and composites - build it out of steel and have more engines than you need.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." - Lord Acton
Bush senior promised this, then Bush junior and now DeLay. It's one of the best political promises to make - makes the politicians look good and then when the whole thing gets cancelled in a few years they don't care. Meanwhile space progress stalls and the planet gets poorer and poorer.
Remember that the people who eventually won the X-Prize spent much more than the sum of the prize on creating their vehicles. They were lead by commercial possibilities of the technology, the prize was just a nice icing.
Will they return.... one way tickets to mars. http://www.dangertheater.com/la.html/ The Lonely Astronauts
Texas just convicted his political organizaion's fundraiser for illegal fundraising for corporations, and covering up the evidence (as well as all kinds of legal mumbo jumbo to escape justice). That proves that either Delay worked for illegal fundraising, or that he runs and promotes a major fundraising organization, central to his career, without supervising it. Though the latter is obviously just a lie he'll tell in a last resort to escape justice, both are evil.
How about when Delay coerced a fellow Republican to vote for the Medicare drug bill? The bill itself was a tissue of lies, deliberately underestimating the cost by hundreds of $billions, to miss a maximum Republicans set as a condition for backing it. This serious charge by the Republican leader was proven when even Delay's rigged ethics panel came down on him, a rarity in Congress.
You want evil? He protected Marianas Islands sweatshops (and sex slavers) at the request of a briber^Wlobbyist, telling his corporate backers there to "Stand firm. Resist evil.". That's evil.
He diverted funds from a children's charity to fund his parties at the Republican National Convention. Pretty evil.
And he packed the ethics committee with dependents, to avoid charges that finally were too much for even his majority to suppress. Then purged members who wouldn't stand for the whitewash. Then tried to change the rules so they would no longer "require leaders to step aside temporarily if indicted" - once he was facing indictment. Evil.
Why are you clinging to this bad guy? Does he bring home the bacon to you, from the pork he carves out of our taxes in Congress? Do you own a pharmaceutical company? Are you a congressmember on his payroll? Or are you just so "partisan" that when the Republican Majority Leader is proven guilty, all you care about is whether "Democrats are just as bad", though of course you have no proof of your codependent jealousy?
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make install -not war
Updated Link http://www.dangertheater.com/la.html The Lonely Astronaut from Twisted Mojo
If there was a ridiculous amount of money to be made in space, private corporations would have done it already.
... ROBOTS!!!!
See, this is the "new" business model. Make your costs public (on the taxpayers) and privatize the profits (investors).
I don't want to hear red-herring arguments for fuel for reactors that haven't been invented yet. Nor any nonsense about colonizing a sterile dead world when humans could survive pretty much any catastrophe just by digging deep well-stocked bunkers in the earth at fractions of the cost of Mars colonization.
If you're concerned about pollution, support the refunding of superfund, not space exploration. Support mandatory mercury scrubbers in ALL coal fired power plants within the next 5 years (as the companies SHOULD have already implemented).
Space exploration should be left to career professionals
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
We should just build a Death Star, and if anyone attacks us, we'll blow up the earth.
This is my sig.
However, even looking for the most partisan sites (against Pelosi), I fail to find anything that measures up to Tom DeLay's exceedingly long list of ethics violations. Granted, most politicians are corrupt. However, the reason that we hear so much about DeLay is that there is so much to hear. Additionally, of course, there is the idea of reinforcing a set of beliefs. Just like with Quayle/stupidity and Clinton/womanizing, once a famous person gets branded a certain way, the news media will be biased towards publishing stories that reinforce those biases.
Speaking of Clinton, I am certain that DeLay is as innocent of these ethics charges as I was certain that Clinton was innocent of perjury.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Partisan fool. It is a matter of comical phrasing for an assumed intent, as assumed of Clinton when the second Kosovo War was entered into by the US with similar assumptions of intent at blocking personal investigations. In both cases it is tenuous at best as in each the political situations reached the point at which those decisions would be and have been made. The insightful moderation is the defacto karma beneficial funny moderation since karma stopped being accrued by funny moderations. You are a troll as Slashdot is not the subject of this thread and has no relation to its actual subject. Damned partisans act like foolish kids at every opportunity! China looks damned Utopian in comparison to the US partisan bickering and 9 terms of incompetent leaders. At least Mao accomplished the removal of the imperials. Damned bickering partisn fools.
Congress funds some fuzzy minded, expensive boondoggle (like Iraq). Than the administrations chronies come in to sweep up pork barrel contracts.
This is what "Social Security Reform" is all about as well.
If the space investment will pay for itself, I suggest we start floating "Mars Bonds" and let the free market decide whether the money is there or not. That is, they're not backed by the full faith and credit of the US Treasury. But rather backed by the credit of the Mars Exploration Company.
Don't give me all the BS about "What if Columbus had turned around and went home" BS. You want to finance exploration and colonization. Do it the SAME way as those exploring the new world. They formed companies and got private investors!!!! All original 13 colonies were COMPANIES!!! They were there to MAKE A PROFIT!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
A lot of people feel that Bush's space exploration platform is just a smokescreen, but I'm less interested in discussing his motives than I am in results. It may be that, for all the wrong reasons, Bush still enables humanity to get a foothold on the Moon and Mars. That's good enough for me, and good enough for humanity.
Whether or not Bush's motives are pure won't really matter if that bioplague occurs. Or runaway global warming, or any number of civilization crashing scenarios with various degrees of likelihood. In the end, the only question that matters will be, did we make it off Earth in time or not?
I'd prefer it if more liberal politicians had a similar attitude towards the necessity of establishing a self-sustaining human presence off this planet, but I don't know any that do. Do you?
"Fair enough. However, since it's widely accepted that investments in the Apollo program gave ridiculously high returns, then we'll need to also find a way to keep the money I willingly paid to our space program from coming back to you."
Besides citing Tang, prove this statement.
There was a LOT of money invested on the space program. What have we really gotten out of it?
If the charges are baseless, then why were his business associates indicted?
I bet Web Hubble is wondering the same thing.
If that's the case where is your post verbatim as a response to the original response that criticized Delay in the first place? If you hate partisanship that much, I expect to see the same kind of slamming of the original anti-Delay post immediately. Somehow I doubt that I'll see it.
But I do see plenty of Funny mods all over. Anyone who posts funny posts as insightful just because funny no longer gives karma should not have moderation privileges in the first place as it is clear that (s)he cannot responsibly dole out moderation.
It's not a question of "volume". It's a question of "value".
Does harvesting raw materials on the moon (and or manufacturing) make economic sense. Just look how much it costs to get there and back, and you'll understand why this isn't feasible. All the materials we need are right here on earth.
If the space elevator concept comes to fruition (doubtless from advaned in long stranded carbon nano-tubes) than orbital enterprises will become a lot cheaper. And even venturing outward to the moon would become cheaper. But I doubt you'll ever see any advantage from harvesting materials from the moon and carting them back to Earth.
As far as Mars goes. Antarctica is a far more hospitable climate for colonization. Besides a few outposts (supported completely from the outside) no one has colonized Antarctica.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Funding? Sure, why not? It's all funny-money anyway. As along as the Republican Party wants to do it, they can just do it, since the Democrats can be ignored in the now tyrannical winner-take-all system -- America's one-party state.
This is the best part of being a dying civilization (as a Republic turned Empire that is now falling apart): you can pay for ANYTHING. All you have to do is whip out the "full faith and credit of the United States", and you can get billions for any stupid fucking thing you want. Why not? You'll never be able to actually honor your debt committments anyway, so flash the plastic and enjoy the good life.
Why China's buyers of US bonds don't understand this, is just exasperating. It's not like they can invade the United States when the USA defaults on the mega-billions in bonds. Of course, what they CAN do is what Saudi Arabia did (which no one wants to talk about -- shh!): buy up the US enough to be considered an absentee landlord. The question is, for all this unsustainable high-living in America, will the elite tolerate being owned by the Chinese to the same extent that the Saudis own them?
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
... because WE are paying for Chinese space exploration every time we shop at Wal-Mart.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
There is no need for the exact post. The comment of hatred of partisan fools only applies as the original poster made the joke that otherwise the content of the post made was in explanation of.
I mean, if it's for finding humans a place to live after we destroy earth
Though I would like to see humans on the Moon or Mars, it seems to me that money spent for scientific investigation would uncover more knowledge per dollar spent by sending unmanned missions or using the funds closer to home.
What they are doing is creating the appearance of supporting "science", rather than real science. The difference being that "science" is the action/adventure that the American public raised on science fiction imagines and science is the real pursuit of new knowledge.
Still, perhaps if the "Buck Rogers" fans are satisfied with the expenditures, more money will become available to NASA for real research.
"Anybody that powerful that wants to fully fund NASA is a great guy, in my book."
Anybody that powerful that wants to fully fund NASA and actually does it is a great guy in my book.
IANALOOA
There are many people in the U.S. who say they are pro-Republican when they are actually just pro-anger or are "religious" in an extremist obsessive-thinking manner.
And you can't tell me that Kerry got as many votes as he did because of people believing in him. The Kerry vote was not a vote for Kerry. It was a vote against Bush. Don't you try to make it seem one sided! There is plenty of hate in the American voters to go around.
For what it's worth, this evil Republican disagrees with the current Flamebait mod on your post.
Material fabs cost money. The push towards smaller computational devices was ECONOMIC!!!! Smaller means FASTER.
It's also as simple as making digital calculators that could sit on your desk. That was already in the IBM business plan. They made business machines.
No doubt the NASA money quickened the pace. But don't think that ANY commercial consumer product would be available without NASA. That's a load of BUNK!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
C'mon. Everyone knows space travel's main purpose is to find a suitable new place to live after humans turn Earth into a desolate wasteland with an unsustainable atmosphere.
But, how would Earth be any different then than the moon or Mars? Tell me
I propose we spend the money on learning how to survive on our planet after those idiots destroy it with fossil fuels. Biosphere, desert survival trips. They can be high-tech without a fourth of the expense!
Between nuclear powers, all bets are off.
Both countries could annihalate the other. The precludes preventing access.
If it DID come down to that (which it wouldn't because both governments are run by FASCISTS!!!!) we could simply explode a couple hundred "flack bombs" in orbit that would chew EVERY satellite to smithereens rendering orbit unusable.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The triumph of liberalism is conveyed in it's purity when conservatives hide all their ugly hate filled philosiphies in liberal rhetoric.
The neo-cons are about as interested in Iraqi Democracy as they were Vietnamese Democracy. Iraq is NOT a Democracy. You cannot have a Democratic election when the candidates are all SECRET!!!
The Bush administation was not interested in Haitian Democracy when they kidnapped Jean-Betrand Aristede. They weren't interested in Democracy when they attempted a coup against Hugo Chavez. They certainly aren't interested in Democracy in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. They most certainly aren't interested in Democratic reforms in the slave state of China where US executives are cleaning up by outsourcing the jobs of free laborers with rights to exploit Chinese troglodites.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Granted physical education is important, but schools are spending WAY too much money on athletics vs funding teachers and getting classroom sizes down.
But then again, the local communities LIKE football. And they like cool athletic facilities. So does the school board serve the community or the kids???
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
"We will provide the funding necessary to get us where we want to go."
Pull this leg, it plays jingle bells...
Maybe you have a point
So it's:
Air America
Democratic Underground
The Nation
vs
Pretty much every tv outlet that is mostly owned by 5 giant media conglomerates run by Republicans.
I suppose that you're a Christian being oppressed in a Christian run society as well
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Well, we do know this for sure: The right, having total control of the federal government, still likes to whine and whine and whine about anyone who would dare criticize them about their policies, as if they are still not in power. Yes, the right is so maligned, but perhaps it's because they deserve this, especially after all the documented corruption, especially of Mr. DeLay?
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
And try to stay focused.
It's pathetic to see grown people so panicked about losing an argument that they have to bring in something else totally unrelated to change the subject.
"Oh yeah?! Well.. well.. IRAQ!!"
Feh
Too bad human have never breached very far past the Earths Van Allen belts. It's quite humorous to read NASA re-telling the lies and saying things like "We can't go as fast as we did in the Apollo missions". I want the Russian landers data which lies on microfiche in a vault somewhere... The massive ammounts of data from our (unmanned) OWN MOON LANDER would be nice too. But I'm not holding my breath on that or NASA to start telling the truth.
The right-wing supporters of these efforts know full well what they're doing. Just like how they support high public debt and deficits for the sake of destroying social programs, they want us to throw all the NASA funding at projects that will deflect and drain the funds from any efforts at finding terrestrial planets and extraterrestrial life. This is because they know what will happen once we discovered such life: their power base will go into utter disarray.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Starve the "beast" was supposed to be about SHRINKING the federal government. It was a battle cry of Republicans wanting to paint themselves with a Libertarian stripe.
As we see, Republicans LIKE deficits, they LIKE out of control spending. They like pointless wars, and they like spending money without ANY accountability.
So WHO is the BEAST??? Well, upper class taxes were cut. Therefore, the bulk of all these unfunded liabilities will be schewed toward the lower classes. The BEAST is the middle class. Like ALL fascists the beast are an empowered class of citizens with rights that could actually thwart their plans to own and control EVERYTHING!!!!
The Republicans are at war with the US middle class. They have co-opted liberal rhetoric to lead people down their path of fascism and a 30s economy.
They have the media in their hip pocket and their own propaganda channel that runs on every satellite and cable plug (Fox News). They are lying about EVERYTHING!!!!
This space boondoggle is just another way to appropriate TONS of resources that will be gobbled up by administration chronies. The middle class will get stuck with the bill via the deficit. The super-rich will simply export their profits the the Cayman Islands and pay no taxes on it.
Meanwhile, the IRS will continue their war against poor people inappropriately taking the Earned Income Tax Deduction while ignoring people with lawyers.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
No, it's not discussion. The OP wasn't worried about finding a solution, he just wanted to slam the shit out of DeLay and NASA.
There *is* a groupthink here, and it can't make up its fucking mind. It would rather bash Republicans than remain logically consistent.
As long as they don't forget about the Voyagers, I was in Jr High when they were launched so naturally, there is a special place in my heart for those things and their cargo of peace and love.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Once again, moderators have used mod points to suppress discussion.
How can a statement that is supported by 35 books from reputable publishers be "Flamebait".
On the one hand, Mr. Griffin announces that, due to budget constraints, a number of very important scientific missions are being delayed or, worse, possibly outright abandoned (including the supposed Hubble successor, the JWST).
On the other hand, he announces funding for trips to the Moon and Mars, which, frankly, have dubious scientific value, will cost billions upon billions of dollars, will likely never get off the ground (due to ever-looming safety concerns), but will generate all kinds of lovely PR.
Well, I guess we know where NASA's priorities now lie...
The great expense of human space exploration is itself the goal, not the exploration. The object of the game is to continue to channel billions of dollars to the same old defense industries that prospered during the Cold War. They are a big lobby. They became used to a roiling river of government money that lasted two generations. They have not gone away, and they are not planning on giving up and joining the ranks of the Average Joe. They want that money, and they want it now.
If exploiting the magical-religious inclinations of the general public is an efficient way to get their hands in the Federal till, then come to Papa. The astute reader will notice an underlying pattern being applied.
Our subjects in Japan and Germany have never recovered from WW2. And those poor Afghanis. Like was so much better under the Taliban when there wasn't rampant kite flying, radio listening, and female school attendance.
As to your 'they'll get us first' argument (substitute bogey-man of the moment, apparently China, for they), the extension of this to its logical conclusion is of course that to ensure US hegomony [sic] you must take over every other nation on Earth. Perhaps you think that would be a good idea if you had the resources; fortunately for the rest of us, you don't and never will.
You're a bit confused about the strategy. We don't need to take over other nations. All we need to do is ensure that we have the capability to obliterate any potential threat. We've done an excellent job at this over the last 25 years, and looking forward it appears the current administration is committed maintaining this ability.
You may not like it, but it's a dog eat dog world. Force, for the foreseeable future, is the ultimate trump card. That your nation is too weak to ensure its survival sucks for you. I just thank Buddha and L. Ron Hubbard that America was given to tools to defend itself and its allies.
The parent is right on target.
... when Saddam was gassing the Kurds.
That was when Saddam was on the payroll. Saddam's (and Noriega's) fatal mistake was getting independent minded.
The Bush Admin could give a rip less about Democracy in the Middle East. They probably care just about as much as they cared about Democracy in Vietnam or all the Socialist Democracies they overthrew and destabalized in Central and South America.
They didn't care about Democracy in Haiti when they kidnapped the rightfully elected president and forced him into exile. They didn't care about Democracy when they backed a coup attempt against Hugo Chavez in return for him publicly blasting CAFTA and the World Bank.
The only thing those creeps care about is getting their way. When it comes to foreign relations, it's all about setting up a puppet strongman that they can pay off and carting the resources off in boatloads without compensating the country. The new angle is to take over the water systems and public utilties than jack up all the rates so that they are barely useable.
In America, we have fascists in our midst. And they have influenced policy for quite some time. Shrub himself is descended from a man who helped finance Hitler's war machine and Moussilini's rise to power (Prescott Bush). The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.
Till now, the American fascists have contained their activities to the brown people of the world. Now they're going after America itself. They are exporting our jobs overseas to strip the middle class of it's economic (ergo political) independence. They WANT us dependent on the new fascist China ruled by an authoritarian government.
They WANT to destabilize the US dollar and our full faith and credit. They WANT the US Treasury to go broke so they can pull the same scheme on the US that they've played on countless countries across the world. We are "restructured" and the international corporations take over.
THAT is what Bush and his Neo-cons care about. You are just a sheeple in his plan. You are a liberal, but you don't know it. You buy their liberal rhetoric hiding their evil, yet you've been systematically conditioned to hate the very mention of the word. To LIKE Bush you either have to be a cunning rat bastard, or a liberal. REAL conservatives don't like Bush. They're honest.
Oh yeah, I KNOW Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. And I don't like him either. Vietnam was WRONG!!!
Bush I set up Saddam Hussein by giving tacit endorsement to his plans to re-acquire Kuwait.
The Grenada "incident" was complete BS cooked up by the Reagan administration.
Korea was a REAL conflict and a true multi-national effort to stop China from taking over the Korean peninsula.
WWII was not started on a lie. We were attacked.
In WWI Germany DID sink the Lusitania.
Civil War hostilities WERE started with an assault by confederate forces on Federal Army installations.
The Maine WAS sunk in a harbor by an explosion that was (at the time) indistinguishable from a mine. Modern investigations have shown that the powder magazine went up.
The British DID start the war of 1812.
So, not ALL presidents behave the same way.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I'm torn about the future of Space exploration. On the one hand, I've always been a strong proponent of it because it's always been that great symbol of American "can do attitude" that Kennedy so eloquently spoke of. On the other hand, Space exploration is very, very expensive with the results usually being less than stellar (no pun intended). But then again, I see Space in the same light as the first sea explorers: sure, it would be easy to just stay at home and tell everyone that there's a cliff at the edge of the horizon, but look how wrong we were. And we only found out what was beyond the horizon when we sank some money into it, made a few educated guesses, and just went for it.
So, even though this may be a diversion away from Tom DeLay as some have suggested, I can over look it for now in the grander scope of getting a viable space program off the ground. Mars could hold much knowledge for us. And yes, if the Chinese and other countries are trying to get to the moon first, shouldn't we be the leaders in that arena? We should be leading the world (by example) not following it.
Health Insurance Quotes
We never sent anyone to the moon. Michael Griffin has all but admitted the Apollo missions were a big hoax. Here's the science.
I usually write-off the "moon landing was a hoax" crowd as nuts and crackpots. But lately I've realized, those nuts do not have to prove we did not go to the moon. The scientific method is never about proving something hasn't or can't be done. Quite the opposite, it's the other party that has the burden of proof to back up and assertions.
Say you've got a cold fusion reactor giving off 10 times as much energy as it takes in? I don't have to prove you don't; it's your burden to prove it works--repeat your experiments, publish in a peer review journal so others can test your claims, etc. Say you've concocted a serum that cures any cancer with no side affects? I don't have to prove you haven't; it's your burden to run the clinical trials, document the treatment, etc.
Say you've not only sent people to the moon but gotten them back alive? I don't have to prove you didn't; it's your burden of proof.
Now think about it, when developing our new moon mission, not only do we have all the advances in technology in the last 30 years--huge advances in computers, sensors, materials, physics, all the biological data on how people react to extended time in space--but we have all the practical experience of the Apollo missions.
If we've done nothing, if we've had no advancement in technology, worse case scenario would be it takes just as long to get to the moon now as it took to get to the moon then. Add in just the barest advantage of having done it before, and with the most meager goal of just repeating what has already been done, you'd at least have the blueprint of what worked last time.
Then consider all the incredible developments in all those different areas of science and technology, and there is no farking way it takes longer to get to the moon in the 2000s than it did in the 1960s.
If the head of Sony came out and said they can repeat the glory of the Atari 2600, but it would cost more and take longer, you'd rightly say, "bullshit." If the head of Ford came out and said they're coming out with a new Pinto, but it will cost more and take longer to design a car that good, you'd rightly say, "bullshit."
Well, the head of NASA just came out and said they are going to try to reproduce technology they supposedly had 40 years ago, but it will cost more and take longer to develop. I say, "bullshit."
... or as I like to call them "Barabans".
They worship a false image of Christ that is cast out of war, conflict and dominance. They cannot reach salvation by their own definition because they have no faith in CHRIST. They only have faith in a false image that they project from their own id.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
i am shocked that alot of the posts here are saying "why do we need manned space flight? just send robots we just want the data." look data is great, but the whole reason the we are attempting to leave earth(as a ppl) is to find a way to put humans on mars/moon/alpha centari we are looking for a place to send the overflow of our planet. earth can only hold so many people. so yes robots can do some of the work but there are a lot of things that robots simply not do right now
I'd rather my daughter didn't have to hock wrapping paper and candy twice year to keep her school solvent.
The most pragmatic thing would have been to KEEP the sanctions going and keep Saddam in his box. Less Americans would have died (1500 and counting) and less IRAQIS would have died (100,000) and counting.
Oh, I have no doubt that one has multiple motivations for ones actions. Especially when it comes to national policy. There are the motives you state, and your REAL motives.
The REAL motives of the Iraq war was to acquire the Iraqi oil resources (it was the ONLY asset protected after the invasion), and to create permanent bases with which to frighten and intimidate Iraq's Arab neighbors.
Hey, I was FOR the war when it started. I parted from my liberal colleagues because I believe that Saddam was a threat. I didn't believe ANYTHING Bush said. I believed COLIN POWELL. Jeesh, he sure spoiled his credibility with me.
The only acceptable reason for risking American lives is SAVING American lives. You seem to think this little Iraq excursion is protecting Americans. I think you've been watching too much Fox News.
There is NOTHING about the occupation of Iraq that will deter terrorist action. To the contrary. The Iraq invasion is only heightening anti-American sentiment in the Arab world. We have effectively EMPOWERED Osama Bin Laden by assuming the role of arch villian that he FALSELY painted the US as.
The Bush administration is systematically undermining pro-American, pro-Democracy dissdidents in the Arab world. Iran was a country on the verge of liberal Democratic transformation from within UNTIL we invaded Iraq.
This is not the idiot-savant underming his own efforts. This is PLANNED CHAOS!!! The plan is to stoke terrorist hatred and stoke US fear at home so that Republicans can keep claiming that they are "protecting" Americans from the menacing terrorist threat. The reality is that Republicans have little or nothing to strengthen domestic security. All they have done is spend money on boondoggle projects to enrich their chronies.
Iraq is NOT on the verge of Democratic transformation. They are on the verge of CIVIL WAR!!! Like it or not, the Kurds, Sunnies and Shiites dislike each other. The Sunnis and Kurds want to rule the entire country. The Kurds just want their own country (and to expel Sunnis from Kirkuk). Until the US leaves, they will kill us instead of each other. Than once WE leave, they will commence to killing each other.
If space aliens came down from the skies tommorow to impose a benevolent society based on peace, freedom and advanced technology the alleviated all disease and hunger, both you and I would probably be setting off roadside bombs to kick their asses off our planet. One identifies with their own group. And the leader and policy makers of that group (even bad ones) are preferable to leadership under foreign influence.
As bad as it sounds, I would choose Bush over a benevolent, liberal, enlightened alien. And that's probably the same reason why Iraqis would choose Saddam over US occupation. And it's ESPECIALLY why they would choose civil war over US occupation. How many fighting couples really want the cops to knock on the door????
The right is as deluded about Iraq as they were Vietnam. We're stuck in the same quagmire of policy. We cannot leave because we will lose face. We cannot win because the people don't want us there. So we will keep sending American GIs to suffer and die there with idealistic notions of "helping Iraqis" and the grim realization that most of the Iraqis resent the "help" so much that they want to kill Americans.
They will come home angry bitter and confused. Some will blame the war planners. Others will echo the absurd rhetoric of conservatives that somehow a "liberal media" unduly affected and rallied a population without access to mass-media (limited access in Iraq's case).
You believe your own delusions. In the end we will have another "Nixon Plan". We will forcefully withdraw military aid and let the domestic government collapse.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Just glad the politicians are supporting space developement.
There are many things I don't like about Bush but I think this administration has the right space policy.
I'm all for moon, mars and robotic exploration missions in conjunction with human exploration. Replacing shuttle is the correct decision and I like the pressure being put on advancing that replacement schedule.
There is no doubt in my mind there is going to be a huge space race in the next decade. It would be a better peaceful expresion of national pride.
The earth has the machining and labor, and sustinence capacity to produce the advanced machinery necessary to make spacecraft.
... WHY??? So we can live in boxes on a lifeless rock???
... EARTH!!!!
You would have to duplicate all those mechanisms on the Moon to get things going. Good luck funding that bill of goods when all those materials are available on Mother Earth.
Every colonization model to date has been based on getting to raw materials. But it also has a component of sustainability. You could bring people off ships to work in the new world. They could farm the land or fish for sustinence.
It could very well be feasible after spending multiple TRILLIONS of dollars to eventually get something self-sustaining. But
I think the moonies will have to finance this one. I suggest the formation of extra-terrestrial exploration companies financed by private bonds (independent of the US Treasury). The Terrans would rather concentrate on upkeep and maintenance of the spaceship we already have
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Even pro-Republican posts that are 100% on the mark are given "troll" or "offtopic" because the left-leaning majority on /. can't bear to have a differing opinion from their own.
/. then you would know that while there is in fact an obvious liberal bias that does show up in the mods, it is quite common for a factually, intelligent post that goes against the /. "groupthink" to be modded up. That's not how the /. bias works.
/. "groupthink" that get modded up despite not being factual or intelligent. Hell, I think a lot of not-so-intelligent dissenting posts get modded up because there are mods who seek to actively counterbalance the perceived "groupthink" effect.
/. has a lot of users and claiming that all of them share a single perspective is pointless. Look at your post, and the GP post in question for that matter.
/. mods. I'm just saying your portrayal of the situation is wrong.
Please. If you actually read
The way the bias shows up is in the posts that agree with
I put "groupthink" in quotes because
None of which is meant to disprove the severe craptacularity of
The enemies of Democracy are
"...robots deliver much better bang for the buck than human astronauts,..."
I disagree.
All the science that needs to be developed to keep humans alive will have secondary(or "spin off") sciences and business tied with them. The long term economic impacts will be pretty damn good.
Robotic technology will be driven by market, space exploration can not be because of it's high cost and little or no, immediate profit.
Also, in order to eventually get people off this rock, we will need to figure out and develop the technolgy to sustain them.
The explorers should definatly have robots, and use them for gathering some data.
I also think supplies shoud be sent a head of time and dropped onto the planet, as well as more com. sats.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Well you can be darn sure that president Bush is not going to let another country go to the Moon without the USA going first. "
plesae tell me you ment to say:
Well you can be darn sure that president Bush is not going to let another country go to the Moon without the USA going again.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the moon landing drove interest in engineering and math.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But we threw it away. We stopped building Saturn Vs and we let Skylab burn up.
The reason why the government and NASA have to be involved is because as far as anyone can see there is no profit in space. None. I've posted on this sort of crazy idea that the cures to space travel is privitatazation.
All of the merials on the Moon or Mars can be harvested here. If the Moon was made of precious material I'd have no doubt that any number of the aerospace companies would be pushing cargo and passenger vehicles to faciliate exploitation of the raw materials. However, the Moon maybe an exotic location but for the most part made of unremarkable stuff. You can get there, pour a foundation, and then...what?
I'm not against any private company going into space but I'm also a realist: there is no profit in space so therefore governments need to lead the way for now. If the Far East wasn't full of goods Europeans wanted there would have been no reason to sail westwards and find this place. Until we find the our "northwest passage of space" there is no reason for any private company on Earth to go to space.
NASA? What's the point? It's launched a few interesting science missions, but what has putting men in space / on the moon actually accomplished, apart from a lot of expensive dick-waving?
- the white house is harbouring and protecting a traitor
- Has a gag order on a whistleblower
- North Korea and Iran are about to (or have ) aquire Nukes due to this admin being interested in oil rather than national interest.
- Trying to silence the whistle blower about the halliburton deal.
- In light of the recent UK memo, I am surprised that few are pointing out that
GWB awarded Tenet with the medal of freedom. If Tenet was what GWB claimed (and the CIA says was not the case), then he should be in prison.
. And these are just a few of the issues.What amazes me is how silent our press is, or willing to move on to the next story.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I am trying to find some discussion of NASA and not Delay on this page- Anyhow- This seems to coincide with the announcement that the AF wants to put more weapons in space. Note that NASA is chartered under the Dept. of Defense, not as a civilian science fair.
Not to sound cynical again, but I won't be excited until we are on our way to Mars or the Moon. The gov't promised something? WooHooo! When the promise comes true (if) I will be excited.
What I am excited about is the possibility of a moonbase, mostly for study of the galaxy/universe from an astronomy perspective- A lot of observation needs to be done from above the Earth's atmosphere (hence the Hubble) so this could be really cool to have manned observation posts on the moon.
(As long as there is a treaty to make sure that no one puts a giant billboard on the moon.... but thats another story.
If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
On the other hand, if we know we have a 'backup' on the moon or Mars, we might feel we can be more careless with planet Earth. Be careful what you wish for.
the name TOTALly.
Maybe I could hire somebody who can 'REMEMBER IT FOR ME WHOLESALE.'
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Rock on, Doc. Well said.
"Peter Diamandis, originator of the Ansari X-Prize is now claiming private companies may beat NASA back to the Moon: "In the next five to eight years we will have the first private orbital flights occurring. When you're in orbit you are two-thirds of the way to anywhere. I predict that within about three years of private human orbital flights...you'll have the first private teams of people stockpiling fuel on orbit and making a bee-line for the Moon." If Diamandis's math is correct and Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize is sufficient for orbit, NASA could set up an "Apollo Prize" for a lot less money than they'd spend themselves to return to the moon. Indeed, someone like Paul Allen could afford to endow such a prize if NASA gets too bogged down with funding cycle politics again."
Seastead this.
For the last several decades the paradigm has been "Have government pick winners and hope for the best." The result has been no progress.
Seastead this.
There's no labour (except for an occasional bunch of totally dependent astronauts,) and there's absolutely no markets (except for an occasional bunch of totally dependent astronauts.)
There are also no advantage of resources. There is nothing up there that we can't find here.
Why the heck do we want to go?
Because it there...
But don't try to justify it. (Accountants of the soul need not apply.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
No one, no president, no congresscritter, can make a promise to fund anything beyond their term in office, if that long.
The U.S. has a government that is structurally incapable of long term planning. We have scheduled revolutions every 2, 4, and 6 years.
We are also so bloody broke and in hock thanks to the tax cuts that discretionary spending for the next twenty years is pretty much cleaned out - and that not unintentionally. Some neocon thinker said it best when he said he wanted a government so small you could drown it in a bathtub. Spending and borrowing a few trillion, and scheduling future tax cuts to phase in for the rest of the decade, is going to put us on a military-only diet unless we want to reinstate the proper taxation levels, plus a bit more to pay off the hangover from the 2000's.
NASA can fund all the research it wants. It's just large sums of money being transfered to major corporate interests. But the will, the money, the vision necessary to figure out a plan and stick to it will not materialize in the next decades.
When the Hatch Act was passed in response to rampant New Deal corruption, the kind of government contracting that exists now did not exist -- or they would have been included. But then if they had existed then the US would have lost WW II.
Seastead this.
Go go gadget guilt-by-association
It's not and never was about either. It's about reforming the Middle East by eliminating fundamentalist Islam as a viable worldview
1. If that is in fact the goal then it wouldn't follow that overthrowing a secular government and a non-fundamentalist leader would be a step towards the goal.
2. The rise in militancy is good evidence that the strategy for meeting this alleged goal is not working and in fact moving things in the wrong direction.
3. If there really are people who hold this view, then I hope they also want to reform the West by eliminating fundamentalist Christicanity as a viable worldview, because if they don't, then they are hypocrites. No, wait, seeing how successful thier current "reform" has been, I don't want them to try the same to us here. But I can't accept their viewpoint if it is inconsistent.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
That way, we can cancel the whole space program in 5 years or so, and get back to spending taxpayer money on the really important pork barrel projects.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
politicians are from Uranus
I think corruption tends to increase proportional to the level of government. For example, I'm sure you will find many honest politicians at the local level. Obviously there are also several dishonest politicians at the local level, and perhaps the worst kind of corruption can happen at the local level, but I think you will find mostly honest politicians at the local level. I am mainly extrapolating from my own experiences, as well as using "common sense", so I could be totally wrong.
At the state level, corruption gets worse. And I suspect the worst corruption happens at the federal level. The one anomalous point in my (imaginary) data is Jimmy Carter. The cynic in me thinks he is more corrupt than he seems, merely because he managed to become president, but the optimist in me thinks that he genuinely is an exception. I hesitate to mention which part of me is stronger.
However, I don't believe this is at all a new phenomenom. In fact, I think that the information age might eventually lead us to a point where we hold our leaders more accountable. There's that optimist again. Hopefully, he will be right and the cynic will be wrong.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Only here on /. /. if your offtopic post is left leaning then it get modded "Informative".
If the senator in question was a corrupt democrat then I am sure your post would have been modded "offtopic", but alas here on
What does your post have to do with the topic?
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
We can't let the capitalists beat us to the Moon!
Seastead this.
What _you_ are forgetting is that /. is not 100% US based. I would be interested to see what percentage of /. are in the US.
/. of being Democratic-centric while at the same time being totally blinded by your America-centrism.
Some of us mod up anti-Bush, anti-Republican posts not because we're democrats (not having any of those down here in New Zealand) but rather becasue Bush scares the hell out of the rest of the world.
You don't have to be Democrat to hate Bush
You're accusing the community of
Anybody that powerful that wants to fully fund NASA is a great guy, in my book.
I missed the part where he said he wanted to fully fund NASA. I only see that he wants to fund the President's two pet projects, while continuing to gut many the programs we have been investing in for years/decades.
Anonymous apologist Coward, are you claiming that Delay is merely associated with his guilty Treasurer? Fundraising in exchange for actual published promises to represent their specific corporate interests in Congress, which he then did? Are you also going to claim Delay is merely associated> with the Republican majority that he also directs? What kind of a joke are you? A Delay staffer, scared you'll lose your job when your boss gets the perpwalk?
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How do you know this would happen with a Democrat? Why even bring it up? Is your sense of ethics partisan? That's not "ethics", it's "moral relativism" - supposedly the bane of Republicans. Where's your outrage at Delay "giving Republicans a bad name", or "hijacking the Republican Party for his personal benefit"? Of course such outrage is a joke, because politics for you consists of trying to find a way to attack Democrats any possible way, even making up desperate examples completely from your selfserving fantasies. Give me the example, or face yourself in the mirror as a hypocrite.
I mean, breaking the law, ripping of kids' charity, championing sex slavery and sweatshops (which compete with American companies) - none of that gets you mad at Delay. Instead you're outraged that there isn't a Democrat being outed as such a corrupt, evil bastard. That's not "left leaning", it's leaning against Delay, the corrupt, evil Majority Leader. If you want to own corruption and evil as essentially Republican, I can only congratulate you on your sense of proportion. Then I'd have to remind you that corruption isn't partisan, but does attach more to those with more power. And wait for Democrats to get some, and an actual example to come around. Until then, you'll have to be satisfied with just the real thing: Tom Delay.
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IANAScientist but I think that money could be better spent by funding pure science research programs, like particle physics (supercollider), materials science & nano-tech, nuclear fusion and other energy research, etc. Our real problem with space is that it's just too darn big, and anything beyond near earth orbit is too far away to make it economically feasible for our current means of transport. We need to shrink the universe a bit first by developing more powerful and efficient propulsion, and more advanced manufacturing techniques and materials. If we want sustainable expansion into space and development of it, straining to send a primitive bucket of bolts and a couple of astronauts to Mars isn't going to do as much for us as more funding of advanced research will.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
No, really.
A country with a $500 billion dollar federal budget deficit and a $700 billion dollar trade deficit has no damn business pulling stunts like a trip to Mars. That should be left to solvent countries like China. What has been promised is inflation. Thanks a lot.
Slashdot seems to be closer to some Libertarian flavors than any of the Democrat varieties. The anti-Bush and anti-Fox I will grant you. (I personally object more to the phonetic than the political tone of FOX-N, myself; they're too loud.) I'd also say the overall Slashdot bias is more theocratiphobic, with a mix of opposition to big business (although in favor of small to mid-sized) and fiscal conservatism added for flavor. There is nowhere near enough Union support and way too much fondness for Big Frigging Guns among Slashdot readers to fully suck up to the Democrats.
Wait until you see how quickly this gets modded as "troll" or "flamebait" because I spoke the truth, thus proving my point!
It's about six hours later. 60% interesting, 20% Troll, 20% Insightful. I'd say it looks like your persecution complex, while not completely unfounded, is an overreaction... like many accusations of liberal media bias.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"We're gonna smoke 'em out. Smoke 'em outta their caves."
I'd disagree. The latter is merely criminal stupidity, and evidence of unfitness for public office.
Mind you, most of the other charges seem to qualify as evil. But let's be precise while whipping up our lynch mobs, shall we? =)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
We can meet the Mooninites this time and rescue Carl.
Notice he didn't mention anything about funding to get our people off the moon...
I think that dereliction of duty in top leadership is evil, when the ignored acts are evil. And I think that illegally raising money from coroprations, then accepting their agendas - which is what TRMPAC did - is evil.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke
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Ah, but we were originally stipulating his claim might be that he ran a fundraising group without proper supervision. Continuing the error after it has been pointed out would indeed be evil in my book, too. Now, I'm not familiar with the details of the case, but if he didn't at least make heads roll for this when the problems were pointed out, then not only is he evil, but even Machiavelli would give him the boot for stupidity.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"Even pro-Republican posts that are 100% on the mark"
i think you got an oxymoron there as such a thing cannot exsist
I think we feel the same way about this clown Delay. I'm not sure we disagree about the "Reagan defense". I think that running an organization, and ignoring (thereby having no knowledge of) its evil acts, is evil. Because powerful organizations with power vacuums can be expected to do evil. Of course, once he knew they'd done evil (illegal corporate campaign bribery for corporate Congressional agenda), Delay was evil for defending them. But I think he was evil for ignoring them. TRMPAC isn't a gardening club; it set Delay's legislative agenda, and funded his political cohorts. That's like swinging a firing machine gun around downtown, with your eyes shut. Not as evil as training it onto the courthouse offices, but still evil.
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Actually, if you start dropping chunks of the asteroid on the market from orbit, I think that you will have bigger problems than just lost profits :-)
OK. Read carefuly. The guy you replied to, did not say that the Russians were incapable. He did not say that they were worse in space tech. He said that the US had a lot more resources to win the cold war. BTW, communists destroyed Russia moraly and WW2 brought a lot of physical destruction. The US expirienced none of that. The odds were heavily in US favour. With the communism fading away and with capable people like Putin, I exepect Russia to find a new life and place in the world. God help them do it, and do it fast!
Okay, so you basically just confessed the exact point that was made! "We fear Bush, so we make sure to mod down (read: censor) any post that is in favor of him."
Oh, yeah. That's a really effective way of using mod points for sure. I believe that a similar individual in history tried to do the same thing by throwing books into a fire. </SARCASM>
The reason why Antarctica hasn't been colonized has little to do with the climate: it has everything to do with economics and politics. Antarctica is politically disputed; several nations claim a chunk of it (or, in the case of the US and Russia, reserve the right to claim a chunk of it), and these claims overlap a lot. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 deferred those claims, and the Protocol on Environmental Protection banned the only for-profit activity (other than tourism) you might conceivably conduct in Antarctica - mining. There is also the problem that most of Antarctica is covered with several kilometres of a material with low economic value - water (well, sort of; fresh water is valuable in large quantities but it would cost far more to ship it to where it's needed than it would be to simply desalinate seawater).
If something of sufficient economic value is found, people will go to some pretty inhospitable places to get it, from Alaska (for oil, or earlier gold) to the jungles of Papua New Guinea for copper.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Just because Frist can't get 7 of 55 Republican senators to change the rules, lowering passage requirements to 50% rather than 60%, doesn't make him nonpartisan. Of course it makes him completely partisan, changing the rules to endrun the opposing party, so his party can control legislation unopposed. Like the Supreme Court nominations. Or even these Republican activist judges he's just forced through, unsatisfied with the 95% bipartisan approval rating for hundreds of others.
I expect Frist to be partisan - he's the majority party leader in the Senate. I don't expect his partisanship to cheat, though maybe I should. Because I sure expect his supporters to pretend that he's not partisan, while claiming that the opposing party is.
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damn you know your shit.. wish i could word my words like that everytime some dumbass was mouthing off about how great the republicans have been lately..
I gotta love the NASA admin's comment,
I guess they don't mind outsourcing all the work to the "Chinese, Europeans, Russians, whomever", as the way technical employment is going in this country, there will be no US science grads to do the work!
Or maybe this is the plan to provide boomer techies retirement jobs to keep them going when Social Security is sucked dry...
Why even bring it up? You missed my point. I would like to know why your clearly offtopic post was modded "Informative". But I suppose you are too close to the problem to be able to see it. Slashdot has become so biased that people like you cannot even see it. Your way or modded "Troll" it what it comes down to.
Then I'd have to remind you that corruption isn't partisan
I need no reminder of that, both sides of the isle have their corruption, and I like to think I am unbiased enough to realise it. Are you?
Remember for every Tom Delay(R) there is a Ted Kennedy(D).
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
I've been watching these Republicans a long time. I remember watching Iran/Contra on TV, then watching them get Poindexter's conviction on "lying to Congress" overturned by one of their pocket judges. And now they're all back, after spending 8 years figuring out how they could have lost control. I spent a lot of time reading and quoting other people's insights into their vast rightwing conspiracy, until it's become totally obvious what they're up to. I had to do that, because most people never see how organized they are, how much they hate democracy, or anything else that gets in the way of their rich patrons - in the modern age, enshrined in corporations. And I never wanted to be as confused as those people to whom I could explain it. I felt bad for them, and couldn't be one of them.
I'm a tech geek, and I'm also a politics geek. If you're not, just do with the politics what we do with tech here on Slashdot: remember how it works, and some keywords (people's names, usually) and search, bookmark, cut/paste & email people. After a little bit, it gets easy. And at least you don't feel like these sick bastards are getting away with *fooling* you, adding insult to the injuries of stealing your country and your money.
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Close to the problem? I didn't mod it. But it did include lots of information - that's why someone modded it "Informative". While "the topic" is more subjective - isn't "Tom Delay" the topic? Didn't I refer directly to the topic of the post to which I replied?
Now, "people like me". Who's that? People who don't think that a complete picture comes from merely setting two opposites against one another? People who don't need to find another such person to excuse the bad actions of one, because two bad people just make it twice as bad? No, it's "people like you" who are really interesting. Your weasel words, your fake indulgence in the styles of "debate", all the lies that exploit the fairness of people you oppose, who have found your heroes to be criminals after giving them a fair review. You're so twisted that you think fairness is weakness, openmindedness is gullibility. You can't even recognize fair consideration, where the facts lead to the conclusions, because all you know is how to game the system, how to start with a foregone conclusion, supplied by someone else, and repeat the talking points or, at most, come up with plausible rationalizations. You know nothing of actually coming to an independent conclusion, so you think your opponents must be just as screwed up as you. You're "unbiased"? Where's your acknowledgement that Delay is a dishonest scumbag, who leads your party in the House of Representatives? Drop the con game, and admit you'll say anything to let your boy off the hook. Even if it doesn't con me, you'll say it to keep conning yourself.
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You're assuming the party in charge cares about the world, or the country even.
Fact is most of the string pullers in the GOP are foreign lobbyists, or working for foreign agents:
* Saudi money to blame Iraq for 9-11.
* India and China lobby money for moving-the-factory-to-Asia tax breaks (something that will occur NATURALLY without US taxpayers FUNDING IT)
* Fresh tax breaks for US Corporations who "base" out of the Bahamas
In a few years time, the GOP's "base" of flag waving, blue jean workers will be footing the interest bill, while the brokers of this massive borrowing will be living in the Bahamas (with some cushy title job from the very same banks that are financing Bush's spending spree). The people who are robbing the US are not going to sit here waiting to have it taxes back. Say goodbye to first world nation status.
Remember, the far-right radical mindset that drives the current GOP were the same people who resent and want to DESTROY Washinton. If they can't do that themselves, they CAN create conditions where the voters INSIST on radical national change. America is a colony again, just in a different way.
I was going to mod some of your posts in this thread as flamebait, but finally decided that that would be the way of the AC.
I'll be quick and sum up my gripe against you in three sentences:
1. I fully agree that Tom deLay is a candidate for biggest asshole in the world, and he makes my blood curl.
2. Your ad hominem attacks and unilateralist argumentation makes you a candidate too.
3. Don't be an asshole.
But keep up the good fight.
It would only be censorship if the posts were removed as a result of modding. As it stands it only shows the opinion of the slashdot community of the post made
/. community is liberal, libertarian or non-conservative then of _course_ conservative posts are going to be modded down.
/. don't like Bush or conservative thought then it's going to get less airtime (without being physically removed i.e censored) than more liberal views.
If the majority of the
If the majority on
You are trying to say that conservative views should get the same ratings as liberal views in a majority liberal forum. Have you the brain worms? This is the equivilent of insisting that the republicans give equal airtime to democratic policies at their convenstions. Ain't going to happen
Welcome to democracy... we hope you enjoy your stay.
Liberalism prevails because you mask all your imperialism inside of liberal rhetoric. You are a liberal without even knowing it.
The tragedy is that you don't have the courage to be a REAL liberal.
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Meet the new boss
dah, dah, dah, dah,
Same as the old boss
dah, dah, dah, dah,
The SAME people who are running THIS administration are the SAME people who were peddling power during the first Bush administration.
The people criticizing deep throat in the media were the ones committing crimes in the 70s on behalf of the Nixon administration. Pat Buchanan gets unlimited airtime to spew his fascisism and somehow the media is "biased" against conservatives.
Jeesh, if only they gave Hitler admiring fascist ex-FBI felons nationally syndicated radio shows. THAN, there would be fairness. If only defense contracters controlled 1/5 of the nations mass media, than the media would lose it's O so obvious 24 hours of bias against warfare. If only the animated corpse of a popular cartoonist's frankenstein media empire was beholden to the president's brother for tax breaks for a theme park, THAN the media would be fair. If only the "Clinton News Network" would put on countless conservative journalists and shun dissident liberal voices like Randi Rhodes or Mike Malloy than the media would be fair. If only a man more conservative than Newt Gingrich who killed his secretary could get his own program on MSNBC, than the media would be fair.
Oh lord oh mercy, some day their time will come when conservatives will have their own station dedicated to 24 hours of propoganda run by a political hack with no media experience. Oh lord how we pray. Oh lord, if only it would loose 130 million in it's first two years of operation. Oh lord, if only we had the risen christ who ran a right wing conservative paper in the nations capital that has lost 1 BILLION in it's printing lifetime. If only this man would commune with the spirit of Hitler and by a News wire service and then prompty oust Helen Thomas. Oh lordy, lordy, some day we'll have a "Fair and Balanced" media.
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You obviously don't understand Slashdot. You see, Delay is a Republican. Any post that criticizes Republicans is automatically modded to be insightful. The child post to which you also refer was ambiguous but might be construed as being mildly defensive of Delay, in which case there is no chance in hell that it would possibly be given a positive mod. and so forth ...
Well well I've had a lot of mod points but never knew the rules!
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Sounds like you need to register Anonymous Coward.
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If gold or diamonds were found in Antarctica, people would be down their digging it (for 2 months per year).
The problem is that the place is so INCREDIBLY inhospitable that prospecting is almost impossible. Life in Antarctica is tenuous at best. Getting in and out of the place in winter is near impossible.
But as outrageously inhospitable and hard to reach as Antarctica is, it's WAY more hospitable and easy to reach than either Mars or the Moon.
I'm trying to give you some scale and scope of the problem. You people seem to want to justify space travel with space travel.
SPACIE: We need to go to the moon.
TERRAN: Why go to the moon ????
SPACIE: So we can go to Mars!!!
TERRAN: Why go to Mars ???
SPACIE: Because that will justify the cost of building a $200,000,000,000 moon base. Oh and some day the earth will die.
TERRAN: Yeah, but that's like in 40 million years.
SPACIE: But we have to be prepared. Best to start early. Besides, what if we get hit by an asteroid. We can survive the impact by living in closed terrariums on mars.
TERRAN: Couldn't we just dig those terrariums deep underground here on earth to survive a meteor impact???
SPACIE: UHHH, But we want the space technology to DESTROY the asteroid.
TERRAN: Well fine, but that's basically just robotics. We can develop that right here on earth. We don't NEED a moonbase to develop an asteroid deflection system.
SPACIE: What about mining. There is plenty of Helium-3 on the moon that could fuel fusion reactors.
TERRAN: Well, first of all those reactors don't exist yet. And even if they DO exist, we have plenty of Helium-3 right here on earth.
SPACIE: Well don't you want to go to the stars.
TERRAN: Physics tells us that it's currently impracticle to travel between stars due to relavitistic concerns.
SPACIE: Well, you don't know that. There could be a way.
TERRAN: Than find the physics first.
SPACIE: Well we could freeze people.
TERRAN: That doesn't require a space program, plenty of cryo-biologists are working on this problem for earth-bound applications. And they're failing miserably.
SPACIE: You're just a luddite.
TERRAN: No we favor earth bound scientific exploration. We also support space exploration through remote observance and robotic probes.
SPACIE: Just think of how much we learned about the moon by sending men. Robots aren't nearly as fast.
TERRAN: How much do you NEED to know about Mars?? Is discovering the geology of Mars somehow going to enhance the standard of living here on Earth. Will it cure disease???
SPACIE: Yeah, just think of all the derived technologies!!!
TERRAN: Directed research is far more effective and CHEAPER than "trickle down" research. If we need an application, the scientific and inventing community is usually pretty good at working it out. You act like nothing was ever invented before the Apollo program.
SPACIE: Well we have to beat the Chinese to the moon.
TERRAN: Why, what are the Chinese going to do there???
SPACIE: They're going to build mass drivers and that would give them a military strategic advantage.
TERRAN: Can their mass drivers knock ICBMs out of the sky??? If not, nothing has changed in the "mutually assured destruction" equation. If they bombard us from space, we destroy their country with nukes. Personally I'm far more worried about Chinese in the Sea of Japan and the Taiwan straights than Chinese in orbit. I'm far more concerned about all that Chinese crap we're shipping into the country every day. If you're worried about the Chinese taking over stop shopping at Wal-Mart.
SPACIE: Well, space travel inspires Americas youth.
TERRAN: It must sure inspire Indian and Chinese youth too. And I know their countries weren't launching space shuttles. Perhaps we could put more teachers into classrooms rather than astronauts in space. That might help with the education situation. That or start beating kids with bamboo sticks for poor grades and misbehavior like they do in Asia.
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