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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.
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~ |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.
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.
...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.
...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.
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
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
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
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 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.
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
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?"
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!
the cost of war is so much higher than anything like this - THAT should always be the first thing you stop.
at the moment it looks like NASA is going to shut down the TRACE satellite that is an invaluable source of data about the Sun. probably due to cost, and yet the cost was only about the same as a single cruise missile. surely letting a few more inncoent Iraqi civilians live wouldn't have undermined the shock and awe campaign?
anyway, the point is you shouldn't bother being careful with how you spend pennies if you're still wiping your arse on $100 bills.
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.
this is just so sad. All of a sudden I have an opinion on eugenics and it is not one that is favorable to you.
You can't handle the truth.
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.
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.]
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!!!
I'd rather my daughter didn't have to hock wrapping paper and candy twice year to keep her school solvent.