Obama Would Redirect NASA Funding to Education

QuantumG writes "In a recent article on The Space Review, Greg Zsidisin reveals that Barack Obama plans to delay Project Constellation for at least five years, using the redirected funds to nationalize early-education for children under five years old to prepare them for the rigors of kindergarten and beyond, if he is elected president. It is feared that if this happens the Vision for Space Exploration will flounder and that may be the end of human spaceflight altogether."

Comments

Re:Err. Can we mod summaries?

[Anonymous Coward]

However if this is true or not, I think, it's a good idea and should be at least taken in to consideration! Just ask yourself: What would be more useful for the world and U.S. citizens?

1. a) "Quickly pulling out of Iraq" and therefore loosing some major influence in the middle east?
2. b) Elevating the education level, in order not only to develop political awareness, which is necessary to prevent the manipulation and disinformation by political leaders? (Not that they would ever do this.)
3. c) Realizing or -- better -- following the "Vision for Space Exploration", which at the present moment at least, seems only to be in the financial and ideological interest of NASA and its stakeholder?

Note: NASA employees themself are recruited from people with the highest education level! So why not better educate our children, so that they have the chance to dream about space exploration, too?

The US has no monopoly on human spaceflight!

[EWAdams]

America-centric bollocks. If NASA were razed to the ground and all its employees rounded up and shot, it still would not spell the end of human spaceflight... as John F. Kennedy knew perfectly well when he launched the race to the moon.

Nothing could please the Russians more than to have lost the battle for the moon, but to have won the war for space.

Bring on the robots!

[Daniel Rutter]

Humans are, fundamentally, abysmally unsuited to survival in space. Plus, we insist on bringing astronauts BACK, which makes every manned mission FAR more complex and expensive.

Human spaceflight may be romantic and inspiring, and a human may be far more flexible and adaptable than any robot, but humans also have outrageous supply and environmental demands. It's simply impossible for manned missions to do more than a tiny fraction of what far cheaper automated probes can do.

And every time NASA shoots a Shuttle into low orbit to feed the ISS so that it can be dropped into the ocean on schedule, they do almost zero to advance human knowledge, and spend enough money to send a whole new robot-rover mission to Mars and then run it for three months.

People who insist that manned spaceflight is worth the price do not, I think, usually comprehend the magnitude of the difference between that price and the price of unmanned probes. They also seem to have a pretty poor grasp of what space science actually entails, and how little of it even theoretically can be done by people.

Re:Err. Can we mod summaries?

[Megane]

Also, all three are senators. There's something about the US Senate which tends to detach you from reality. The longer you are there, the worse it gets. By now Ted Kennedy must be wondering when he's going to get his sainthood declared.