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.""

Comments

who's not reading between the lines here?

[professorhojo]

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."

Re:who's not reading between the lines here?

[natrius]

Actually, in this case he's arguably doing what representatives are supposed to do. He represents the suburbs of Houston, the residents of which benefit when there's funding for new jobs in town. Sure, it's pork, but at least it doesn't involve a feeding tube or threatening judges.

Re:who's not reading between the lines here?

[Skjellifetti]

DeLay represents the TX 22nd Congressional District. The district is largely in the Houston suburbs. NASA has a large presence in Houston. His press release is really just the standard Congressional release:

We will provide whatever funding is required to support $PROGRAM of $AGENCY in order to bring Federal Government cash and jobs to my district.

Thanks, Tom!

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

"We will provide the funding necessary to get us where we want to go," the House majority leader said.

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.

Re:Thanks, Tom!

[MirrororriM]

Griffin said he believes a majority of people "want to make sure that as humankind expands into space the United States is there in the forefront."

"That is why this is important," he said. "It's about where human beings go and what they do when they get there and what that means to the future of the human race."

B.S. - I agree with the above poster when they say "There's ridiculous amounts of money to be made in space...we just need to get up there...and stay up there this time."

The government is not doing this for "the greater good", but rather to fill their own pockets...and the government wants to be the first to get there to claim all that they can. They'll find one way or another to tax everything in space once they can claim it is theirs.

I would think that we'll need space exploration beyond all the glitz and glamour for our own survival. I'm not a tree-hugger or anything, but I live in a town completely polluted by a large chemical company. You can't even swim in the surrounding rivers because of dioxin warnings. Not to mention that "coincidentally" that the soft tissue cancer rate is one of the highest in the nation and much much higher than other areas in Michigan.

So yeah, I see space exploration as a necessity (colonization or the like) and not a money-maker or politician pocket-liner. Unfortunately, it is treated more like the latter.

Re:Thanks, Tom!

[Lucractius]

There indeed are millions, billions, even Trillions and extillions ( ;) ) of dollars to be made up there . But there are significant problems

Not the least of which is the UN.

(dont get me wrong i like the UN )

The UN space and seafloor treaties. are while good in some ways both a major obstacle for any kind of commercial "exploitation" (to use the correct terminoligy) The sea treaties are all well and good. i dont want the seaflood being used as a comercial landfill at least while im alive. I like clean water :P

There is a lot of very shaky ground on this but there are full copies available here http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/SpaceLaw/treaties.htm l
for anyone interested in the laws regarding space in general :)

and IANAL but to me it seems that the ability to personaly proffit off a celestial body is quite limited under those treaties. Feel free to correct me cause ill be damn happy to find out .. this topic has always been a passion of mine :)

Since this is slashdot...

[daveschroeder]

...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.

Re:Since this is slashdot...

[weopenlatest]

...recognize that the audience of the article understands that science cannot be properly directed by hacks that use spending promises from beyond their terms in office to promote programs that are easily exploitable for political gain.

Note:The cost of a manned trip to Mars would dwarf scientific NASA programs, not to mention most if not all other basic research, especially the kind that offends the Christian Right, so it's not like NASA can just painlessly start shifting all it's money over to the manned program.

Further, we aren't quick to be scared into military justifications and scare tactics. We remember the (continued) folly of missile defense, and realize that politicians can be easily fooled into throwing money at non existent threats, potential threats, and threats that don't have technical solutions, while sending soldiers in Iraq out in unarmored Humvees. With our forces and checkbooks spread thin at the moment, I'll be blunt and say we couldn't be steward of free access to space regardless of the amount of political hot air that floats around.

Re:Since this is slashdot...

[sugar and acid]

Except that the scandals do have a direct impact on the viability of his plan. If DeLay is brought down out of office by the scandals, then it doesn't matter what he says, he won't have any power or influence to make anything happen. It is that simple.

Re:Since this is slashdot...

[Waffle Iron]

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.

I acknowledge that Tom DeLay wouldn't give a rat's ass about NASA if the Johnson Space Center weren't in his home district. This just is a typical effort to ladel out pork barrel funds to his constituents, no more, no less.

Re:Since this is slashdot...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Uh, right now, America's most ardent enemies are small fries. Frankly, al Queda is a small fry. They need to be chased down and prosecuted for their deeds, yes, but they simply don't have sufficient resources to be a threat to the U.S.'s space assets. If we do continue too far, then we'll get bigger enemies.

I'd rather it be an alliance, somewhat like NATO, that protects access to space than a unilateral effort. The "go it alone" attitude doesn't get far, eventually the others will band to try to balance this power, wasting money all around.

Re:Since this is slashdot...

[DerekLyons]

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.

Actually, this is an extremely misleading claim - as during the Apollo era (1962-1972) NASA funding swung over quite a wide range. Funding rose sharply from 1962 to it's peak in 1965, as infrastructure was built and completed. It dropped from 1966 to 1969 (even as Apollo 11 was in flight, Congress was trimming NASA's budget), then dropped at a slower rate. By 1972 funding was about 1/3 of what it had been during the peak (1964-1965) years.

So exactly *which* years are you comparing today to?

Re:Since this is slashdot...

[colanut]

To continue from this parent:

I acknowledge that Tom DeLay wouldn't give a rat's ass about NASA if the Johnson Space Center weren't in his home district. This just is a typical effort to ladel out pork barrel funds to his constituents, no more, no less.

JSC is only recently in DeLay's district after some fancy, mid-decade district recarving. Mostly I suspect that DeLay wants the lobbying money more than space exploration. Kick backs from contractors is the name of them game. Add this to his "talk to the opposition and you don't get access" style of leadership and you have a nice, little money making district.

There was a piece on this in The Nation not to long ago. Sounded like the most likely scenario to me. (I'd link, but its subscriber only.)

What a stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine the number (and size) of the public toilets you could build for all this money.

Way to stay on topic!

[daveschroeder]

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.

This is a Good Thing...

[igotmybfg]

...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.

But Where Is The Money...

[Deinhard]

...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.

Just Set Up The Apollo Prize

[Baldrson]

Just set up a big prize for the first team to land a man on the moon and safely return him to the earth.

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.

Re:Just Set Up The Apollo Prize

[robindmorris]

Just set up a big prize for the first team to land a man on the moon and safely return him to the earth.

And how big would this prize have to be in order to make someone interested in competing for it? Remember that they have to factor in the chance that they might fail, or that someone else might do it first. Remember that Burt Rutan said that going in to orbit (which is still a long way from the moon) is at least an order of magnitude more difficult than what space ship one did. Looks to me like the prize you would have to offer is on the order of what NASA would spend to do the job themselves.

Remeber also, that with current costs for access to space, any ideas of commercializing space (other than communications satellites/remote sensing satellites) are non-starters. The cost to get into space, to keep workers alive out there, and to bring back whatever it is you have mined, mean that the economics are just not there.

The only way this will change is if someone comes up with a whole new way of getting mass into orbit. If they can do that, they won't need any incentive in terms of a prize, because their development expenditure will pay for itself very quickly.

Face facts. Putting people in space is expensive. It's also a one-off proposition; there will never be lots of companies competing on price to take people into space. Free market economics don't apply here. It's just as economical for the government to do it itself (via NASA) than for a company to do it, and send the bill to the government.

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

For your information, NASA employees are forbidden by law from lobbying congress, so that's one use of your taxes that you don't have to worry about.

(Disclaimer: I work for a NASA contractor on-site at a NASA location.)

Re:Just Set Up The Apollo Prize

[harks]

We sure can't let the terrorists beat us to the Moon!

Re:Just Set Up The Apollo Prize

[Vitriol Angst]

I don't think a prize will work. Getting anything into outer space is expensive and complicated. The fact that some individual entrepreneurs can get a rocket out of the atmosphere doesn't mean they can do anything useful. They would have to have a few Billion and be positive they could do it first. So the prize would have to be more than what it would cost the government to do it. Which would be the same as just picking the one or two corporations that could do it. Actually, you'd have to either coordinate a dozen companies or build a new company from scratch just to make it to the moon--one that had no product it could sell our current revenue. Sounds a lot like a government to me.

I see a lot of problems with NASA--but it will also take a government funded entity like NASA to do it. Government is the exact RIGHT entity to take on projects that don't have a pay-off in the near future but that benefit society.

Businesses are really great. But they are designed to make a profit and not to benefit the most people with the least money. There is a lot of necessary overhead is businesses to manage and procure money.

Again, NASA is bloated and not as efficient as they could be. But parts of NASA have managed the impossible. You just need to get the political hacks and bureaucrats out of the organization. Many of the greatest engineers and scientists have not been driven by money. An organization like NASA is a haven for them to just work on the thought problems and not be concerned with pushing a resume. Maybe NASA can't be fixed, but you aren't going to get to Mars without the government paying someone to do it. If you make it an external company, then you are picking one company to receive benefits that other companies and taxpayers won't. At this scale, you don't necessarily get any efficiency with a corporation.

I don't like the Mars mission because it isn't driven by science--and the money could be better spent creating an infrastructure in space first. Also, it's something that Bush wanted, so you know all the money will be missing and it will be somehow, a minor clerks fault who endagered lives by pointing out that the hydrogen tanks are leaking. But don't gripe about the money unless you first speak out about the collosal amounts of funds spent on military and corporate welfare.

I want to save taxpayer money too. But let's not get all huffy about a Billion $ Mars Rover when we have 25 stealth bombers that are pretty much useless.

Re:So how many babies HAS he eaten this week?

[TripMaster Monkey]

...exactly how Tom DeLay warrants the label 'evil'...
Here you go.

Just remember...you asked for it.

It would be better to be led from space

[SimianOverlord]

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.

Re:It would be better to be led from space

[roman_mir]

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.

But for how long?

[dfn5]

"We will provide the funding necessary to get us where we want to go."

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.

Another Space Race

[wooferhound]

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

Re:Another Space Race

[tbuckner]

Unfortunately, what with Republican malfeasance draining the treasury, we are not the rabbit any more. The Chinese are going to have a lot more spare yuan to spend in the long run than we will have dollars. There's a real likelihood they'll go a lot of places first now. Why did we cancel the last few Apollo missions? Because Nixon needed the money to spend on bombing Vietnam.

The geek block of votes

[afstanton]

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.

"Cede the Moon"?

[Metasquares]

"If you ask anyone in this country, 'Do you believe that the United States should cede the moon to say the Chinese, Europeans, Russians, whoever?' I bet you the answer would be, 'No,'" he said.

Interesting choice of words. It sounds like the speaker is implying that the United States owns the Moon because we got there first.

Slightly worried...

[Toby The Economist]

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

Not so fast...

[gowen]

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.

We need space robots!

[Paul the Bold]

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.

bitch

[pr0nbot]

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?

But we'll we ever be able to go back again?

[rben]

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.

Run it through:

[Guano_Jim]

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!

Brain Drain?

[cosmic-shadow]

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?"

"forgetting"

[Bearpaw]

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.

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).

Re:"forgetting"

[Golias]

This whole conversation reminds me a lot of when Ken Starr was accused of being part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" in spite of the fact that he was the investigator who brought down Republican Senator Bob Packwood just a few years earlier.

Attacking the accuser is an old game, and both sides love to play it.

Regarding the current investigation into DeLay. I don't think there's much there. Certainly less damning than the campaign contributions which Al Gore was alledged to have raised from donors in Communist China back in the 1990s. This will ammount to a tempest in a teapot.

DeLay will stay in office, Howard Dean will manage to raise a few extra bucks for future campaigns by beating the drum over DeLay's alleged "corruption", and life will go on. Can we get back to talking about NASA?

Flawed logic?

[isotope23]

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.

Re:Funding by Threat of Violence

[ArsonSmith]

Extortion - The taking of money or goods by threat of force.

Kinda like taxes.

Re: "evil" because you don't like them?

[stlhawkeye]

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.

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.

Re:Better uses for my tax dollars

[rokzy]

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.

Re:Way to stay on topic! - Slashdot politics

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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. You should know by now that negative mods are only done for censorship purposes, not because of the actual content of the post.

Anything anti-Bush, anti-Fox, and anti-Republican is immediately greeted with cheers by the intolerant /. 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.

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 /. grain!!)

A Better Program

[$criptah]

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.

Re:15 billion dollars is just chump change

[TripMaster Monkey]

Indeed...just tack it onto the Iraq spending bill...we can even come up with a good reason it should be included in the bill:

• Space exploration will lead to new technological breakthroughs, just as the Space Race did before.
  
• Humans have always shown a remarkable ability to pervert any new technological advance into a weapon.
  
• We need better weapons to more effectively fight the War on Terror.
  

Nothing to it.
^_^

The heck with NASA...

[Edward Faulkner]

... 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.

Re: "evil" because you don't like them?

[Doc Ruby]

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?

Not a question of "volume" ...

[willtsmith]

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.

Scientific Bang for the Buck

[srobert]

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.

Who is the "beast" ...

[willtsmith]

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.

So what?

[house15]

I'd rather my daughter didn't have to hock wrapping paper and candy twice year to keep her school solvent.

Relative costs ...

[willtsmith]

The earth has the machining and labor, and sustinence capacity to produce the advanced machinery necessary to make spacecraft.

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 ... WHY??? So we can live in boxes on a lifeless rock???

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 ... EARTH!!!!