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Obama's Impending NASA Decisions
eldavojohn writes "From delaying Project Constellation to an additional $2 billion in funding, Space.com looks at some immediate decisions the President Elect will have to make once he takes office in January. The biggest one will be the shuttle plan: do we retire the shuttle fleet or keep it on for more missions? If it is retired, we would have to rely on another country to bring our astronauts into space between 2010 and 2015 as a new fleet is built. Will Obama hold true on his $2 billion pledge to NASA?"
I hope Obama holds up to his $2 billion offer. I know there are other problems facing the USA but space exploration is not something we should ever stop.
Mr President, the rock or the hard place?
we are flat broke. Kill the shuttle already.
...and one which is related to, but transcends, politics, is:
How can any grand initiative that takes longer than eight -- or four -- years to implement ever again be achieved?
NASA decisions are a very small part of the issue. The question should be, will the new president choose to continue deficit spending at a time when tax revenues will be shrinking and the number of national debt dollars exceeds the number of stars in the known universe?
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
How can you retire the shuttle fleet without replacement? Is it that unimportant to certain people? It's hard to imagine for me that there are people out there who are not inspired by NASA's endeavors.
In this economy? No, I don't think he'll keep the funding promise. I think we just kicked the new age of human space exploration back to the curb, and we're going back to "better, faster, cheaper", with all small probes, all the time. As for the Shuttle, we should extend it's life (it'd be kind of stupid to depend on the Russians now), but I don't know if he will. He might very well decrease our commitment to the ISS, and basically punt to the Russians and the Europeans on it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I expect him to be as keep his NASA pledge as much as he kept his stance against telecom immunity and his pledge not to exceed public financing limits.
In other words, not at all.
He's a politician. I've never known a politician to follow through with their campaign promises.
We're considering continuing to use a vehicle that has a failure rate of 1-2% per flight? In the words of Invader Zim -- Have you the brain worms?! No, if the President wants space flight he needs to pony up on a vehicle that does more than act as an ashtray that seats seven. Honestly, given the current economic outlook, the United States needs to start looking at partnerships with other countries and pooling our resources collectively. Our space flight program is a national icon, but I think we proved that we can do it... Now the question is whether we can play well with others too.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Is any of this really up to Obama? Isn't it Congress that decides where money is spent? Pretty sure that I took Civics in 8th grade and the Executive branch doesn't control all the cash. Unless Bush has changed all that in the last 8 years?
I think Obama will give NASA the $2 billion. It's a stimulus to the economy, something it badly needs. Now, I know that 90% of slashdot is libertarian, but Keynesian economics says that you do deficit spending in a recession. You both decrease taxes and increase spending, since the gov't can act as a employer of last resort (when everyone else is firing). There's no question that there's great waste when 10% of the population is unemployed (if that high unemploymentcomes to pass). You'll have millions of people not doing anything for the economy, just sitting at home and draining the government's social spending with nothing to show for it. The only way to quickly reduce that number is by government spending. No other way. He may even reverse Bush's decision to go to the Moon and instead go to Mars first. If he wants Florida in the bag in 2012, he probably will also extend the Shuttle for a couple years.
(Of course, the national debt will eventually overwhelm the tax base unless the flip-side of Keynesian economics is also followed: increase taxes and decrease spending during boom cycles.)
Our whole space program needs a general rethink. We have two big programs, flight to the Moon and Mars, that were started by Bush without a lot of thought, we have the ISS which is ready for experiments that we do not have money to fly - such as Samuel Ting's very interesting cosmic anti-matter detector, and we are canceling ready-to-go missions such as the SIM planet finder to pay for new stuff that is frankly never likely to happen.
We do not have a coherent space program, and so we are wasting much of our money. Fixing this will not be easy, but it is very urgent in my opinion.
I, for one hope that we send as many Dems into space as possible. Sure, the upfront costs will be expensive, but the long term savings will be tremendous.
We're looking to outsource!
Yes, and their Moon mission is costing about 1/10th of what a similar NASA mission would cost. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea, but the lobbyists would hate it.
In the cold war NASA was bankrupting Russia and expressing USA's technical superiority... NASA's goals are much less interesting to many now - exploration, learning, and inspiring interest in understanding science and the unknown.
I love NASA and think it should be funded, but I'm a nerd... The cold war version of NASA was a lot easier for an entire nation to rally around and love.
Overclockers
I wish Space.com would fix the blank advertising page that comes up before every story. I don't mind advertising too much, but to click through an ad page with no ads is annoying.
Stop using AdBlock then :P
US$ 2 billion is a tag, that's LESS than ONE day of war in Iraq and Afghanistan..... An easy choice, I'd say.
Then the money would be going to a US firm
While Obama may view himself as a totalitarian dictator, the Old Republic has not been swept away to the extent that the President can just dump $2 billion in a government agency on a whim.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
The bankruptcy of the country aside, I'll start supporting NASA putting humans in space when NASA provides a path for normal citizens to go to space, such as myself. Right now, space travel in the United States is only for the annointed elite, and that's not the way it should be.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Two billion out of two trillion per year in taxes (at current rates) isn't that big of an issue IMO. It's not just the exploration, but the additional research and innovation to solve complex out of the normal issues with space exploration.
Yes, spending is beyond revenue numbers, but I don't think this two billion would do the job to bring it down. Go look at streamlining health care or tax collection. And if there is a surplus, give me my money back.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Take all that money and put it into robotic missions and space telescopes.
If a telescope needs work that only people can do, put some people on a rocket and have them work on it.
For all the money they want to piss away on a Mars mission, I'd send 100 robots.
for the money on the ISS, I'd put it into space telescopes or even one on the far side of the moon with lunar satellites for data transmission.
People in space has been and always will be a dumb idea. fun and glorious and all that crap, but still, vastly more expensive for less data.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I've been saying this every time that this topic comes up on here on Slashdot. America is broke and has been borrowing tons of money from other countries to give itself the illusion that it is rich. Meanwhile, the people have been pissing away all the money that they have been able to weasel out of the banks on dumbshit, feel-good things like BFTs (built for towing, big f**king trucks), SUVs, trips to Disneyland, and liberal-arts college degrees.
When Americans went to the moon to play golf, they owned the world. Now the world owns them.
I'm not saying that the Spam-In-A-Can manned space program is finished, I'm saying that it will be suspended for about 100 years or so until the problems of over-population, oil-depletion (energy type conversion), and the aftermath of the Bretton Woods financial system collapse have been addressed.
It's dead and buried and serves no useful purpose other than demonstrating the practicality of yet more tests for manned spaceflight. Let's face reality - going back to the moon will never happen because the only practical use of it is to extend the science needed to go to Mars - which itself is not going to happen in this century. It's just not in the cards. And even if we managed to convince the people who think Jesus rode to church on dinosaur that THAT serves some purpose, it would take a hundred years to ramp up anyway. And last but not least - the age of manned spaceflight when hand in the glove with a notion of risk and adventurism. That too is dead. We live in a zero risk low impact let's put warning labels on the helmets we make everyone wear in the bathtub world now. No one's going to support sending people on a high risk mission like that and even if they did it would look like the religious driven babbling portrayed in the movie "Contact" when it was decided that the first person to step off to a new world had to be a Fundamentalist or at least pretend to be.
So let's kill off manned spaceflight once and for all.
At least we will know where the money was spent and what it was spent on unlike the $700 billion bank bailout for the rich few.
Not really on topic, but there is a shuttle launch that is scheduled for tonight at 7:55pm EST, weather permitting. It should be especially neat because it is a night time launch. I live in north Florida and if the sky is clear enough, it's an awesome sight to see! I hate to think of the possibility that my generation could see the end of the space program, while my parents' generation saw the start of it. Make sure to check out some of the amazing picture of the shuttle at night: http://images.google.com/images?sa=N&tab=ni&q=night%20time%20shuttle%20launch
There's nothing we can do that the Russians can't do better. They've been doing it longer, cheaper, and with less crew lost.
Why develop your own sub-par project when you can buy access to someone else's successful project for less than your development costs?
Fly the ISS, Moon and Mars payloads on Delta, Atlas, Falcon, SeaLaunch, Proton, Soyuz. NASA should build/contract the deep-space components and fly on existing rockets.
No proposed Lunar payload is heavier than Delta IV-Heavy can launch, assuming a dry payload fueled in orbit. Heavy lift is only needed if the requirement is to fly a packed, fully-fueled vehicle from the ground and we'll still need to do orbital propellant-transfer and assembly for Mars.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Lets see he is going to give 95% of Americans a tax break.
Keep spending under control.
Try and provide socialized medicine.
Continue to vote to bailout private organizations. Well only those that he feels should be bailed out.
What's 2 Billion dollars for NASA? Given the 1.7 TRILLION in Entitlement programs that the U.S.A currently has. Anyone want to take a bet that Entitlements will go up next year also? How about the debt?
Given the above situation I am sure he shouldn't have any issues getting an extra few Billion for a space program.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Is the United States currently in a position to fund scientific research? Shouldn't we concentrate on putting the country back on its feet now, and leave space flight for another generation?
Bruce Perens.
I believe that we should work to make sure a replacement for the shuttle is developed, however I do think the manned mars and moon missions should be delayed. I do not believe they are worth the money and cannot accomplish much we can do cheaper with an unmanned probe. Manned missions are more for ego, rather than real science and I am not sure the benefit is worth the enormous costs.
We have so many other huge problems here, like global warming, energy, the environment, and education and research funding so we can encourage children to go into science and research to find solutions for this problems. We desperately need to find solutions to these problems or the astronauts might not have a very nice planet to come back to. We are losing our quality of life due to our destruction of this planets ecosystems because of our present broken technological systems, who knows what kind of cures for cancer are being lost in the loss of rainforests, and the damage to human and environmental health incurred from the use of pesticides and geneitically modified organisms. We have the incalculable value of quality of life issues related to clean water, air and land, and scenic beauty which add quality and value that makes life worth living. Our present technology has a difficult time existing in balance with other quality of life issues and priorities.
I think the true leader in science and technology will the country that solves these energy and technology problems, that develops technology and systems that allow us to generate energy and sustainable ways to benefit from technology while we protect the environment, our access to clean, organic foods not laced with pesticides or toxic GMOs, clean water, clean air, biodiversity, and simple basic pleasures like the scenic beauty and wilderness.
Or, they could buy & revive the Buran program. It wouldn't even need a crew for routine missions (including rescue missions), how safer can you go than that?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
The even bigger problem is the state and local governments also live up to the high standards of enron-style bugeting that the feds have established.
will have preferential treatment over all the Peggy Joseph's out there??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI You suckers!!!!
space funding was, is, and always will be about tribal chest thumping. it's a pretty lowbrow motivation, but if it gets our ass into space, one of our most highbrows endeavours, who cares? the ends justify the means
and what do we have in the world today?
india just set down on the moon, today, right now:
http://news.google.com/news?q=india+moon
where is slashdot's covering of this major story, huh?
china is sending men on spacewalks
http://news.google.com/news?q=china+space
russian and american space efforts, while anemic as compared to the glory days of the past, are still very much alive and kicking. japan, the eu, brazil, australia... lots of countries are in the space game nowadays
so i don't understand the panicked tones you often hear when mentioning humanity in space. the golden era is not over, its very much alive and kicking and growing... as a GLOBAL endeavour, not taken cooperatively, but at least undertaken by more than two players
of course, the usa isn't as nearly as potent as it used to be in the space effort, but so what? if that worries you, if that causes you panic, guess what: you seem to be motivated by the low brow rather than the high brow
the idea is to get HUMANITY into space, right? not just americans. as far as getting humanity into space, we're doing fine. with that highbrow goal in mind, you should be happy about mankind's forays into space today. ok, your job prosepects in the us space program might not be as golden anymore, to which i say: who cares? go to india, go to china, or sit back and relax and watch the show on tv
all is going woderfully well in man's efforts in space nowadays. really. relax and enjoy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hope somebody at NASA starts pushing for nuclear powered rockets based on Gaseous Core Nuclear Reactors. In a gaseous core reactor or "nuclear lightbulb" a cloud of gaseous uranium would be confined in the center of a sealed quartz bulb, by a buffer gas swirled around the inside of the bulb. The uranium gas heats up to 25,000C, emitting intense ultraviolet. Pure quartz is 100% permeable to UV, which passes through and heats a stream of liquid hydrogen flowing past the outside of the bulb. The superheated hydrogen expands and exits through a rocket nozzle to provide thrust. Keeping the nuclear fuel from touching anything overcomes the temperature limitation of solid fuel reactors, which can only be taken to about 3,500C without melting. They're also safe; completely destroying a GCNR in the atmosphere would release less than 1% of the nuclides from a single 1950 A-bomb test.
Here's an interesting hypothetical design for a 100% reusable, non-polluting GCNR-powered rocket using the Saturn-V form factor, which could life 1000 tons of payload into Earth orbit and return an equal size cargo to a fully powered landing. This rocket could launch a space hotel in a one shot or carry lavishly equipped missions to the moon or Mars, with dozens of crew and plenty of radiation shielding. True Buck Rogers style spaceships that take off and land vertically again and again.
Sending only robots into space, and within a generation you'll have no space program at all. Without kids being interested in science in general, all science will whither (and not just space science)...
Not to mention of course the whole idea of redundant environments in case the earth has a real issue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why spend billions on something that stirs the pot in the majority of your constituency's belief-system when you can spend the same money killing people in far away countries and look like a hero?
Just layin' it out there...I guess flamebait-mods are incoming...
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Criticize me all you want but I think that most of the NASA budget, and 40-60% of the military budget, would be better spent feeding people, investing in green technology and providing healthcare.
I'll admit that I find NASA's research fascinating, and sometimes they are a big help to the NOAA/NWS, but I think the vast majority of the stuff NASA does would be better spent improving our home planet before taking off to the stars.
That's my two cents...
pretty please
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
As a fiscal conservative, I'd prefer less aggregate government spending because it is an inefficient way to accomplish the ends it is put to. However, given the spending spree the government is on, I find NASA far less objectionable than writing checks to citizens, bailouts, or WPAish "dig a ditch. now fill it in." economic "stimulus" plans. At least spend our money on something that might one day help us.
I agree. Bailing out deadbeats and loan sharks is a poor investment of our great-grandchildren's money (for they're the ones who will actually be paying for all this debt).
On the other hand, space research and development that requires huge capital expenditures is an excellent investment that will someday bring us a much larger economy and more prosperity for all. An active moon mining operation that is sending home tritium and other valuable substances would pay for itself in a few years, as would orbital low-grav biotech and nanotech manufacturing facilities.
Ultimately, over the next 50-100 years, the nations that go into space will be the major superpowers while those that remain on Earth will stagnate, much as the Spanish, British, and French became the dominant nations during the colonial era.
Obama has not demonstrated a keen interest in science so far, except for wanting to rescind Bush's restrictions on stem cell research. That's a good first step, but seeing as how it doesn't cost any money it's merely a symbolic one.
Obama, it should be noted, wanted to cut the space program to pay for his socialized preschool scheme. That plan was removed from his website during the campaign, probably because an advisor told him the space program is important.
I have little faith in the Democrats in general wanting to explore outer space. It seems as if they are so focused on social spending that space is a distant little blip on their radar. Oh, sure, there's a few thousand aerospace jobs out there that it would be nice to keep in this country rather than outsourced to China and India, but I wouldn't bet a lot on job security in the aerospace field right now.
Maybe we could instigate a letter writing campaign to convince our representatives and senators that the space program particularly benefits the poor and needy and people "of color", and they'll up the priorities a bit.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
That is all pie in the sky nonsense. We can't even do what we do here on earth well enough to get a passing grade. Mining on the moon? We can't even build windmills. No, we need to come face to face that there's no longer any will or initiative to do any of this and no one apart from the people in the programs, even cares anymore.
We used to have fire but the inventor died.
Good point.
Moreover many of the problems that NASA is facing with the Constellation program are due to the stupid insistence of the current Administrator, Michael Griffin, with the Ares architecture with two launchers. NASA engineers have developed a cheaper, safer and faster alternative: DIRECT (the site includes hi-res images and videos).
The first thing Obama should do is replace Griffin and then do a real independent review of all the alternatives, including at least Ares, DIRECT and the EELVs.
Isn't SpaceX close to launching astronauts into space with their Falcon 9 and Dragon? This sounds like a big opportunity for private space industry to fill this need.
What we COULD do is dump the manned missions until we, as a society, evolve far beyond our primitive level of technology. Send machines, many machines, which would be both cost effective and expendable. The rush to send meat into space was understandable during the Cold War, but is not wise today.
Actually, the way to bring down the cost of sending humans into space is to simply do it. After the research has been done and the ships have been built, the cost of actually launching humans into space is relatively trivial.
Sitting back and waiting for the technology to magically appear is tantamount to giving up on developing said technology. Ancillary tech such as smaller and faster computers may come along anyway, but putting it all together requires a lot more integrative technology and hands on expertise.
And, take note that if we, the U.S., give up on manned flight as too expensive, there are other nations out there that will definitely continue. Do we want to settle for renting a 3rd class berth on Chinese and Russian ships for the next 50 years, after we pretty much pioneered the way?
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Chelsea Clinton '24. Mark my words you haven't seen the last of the Clinton's :-)
Some ideas off the tip of my fingers...
1) Who make a better corporate CEO? A punk ass 21 year old kid or a seasoned 40 year old?
2) Once you are 35, you are basically too old to serve in the armed forces. Maybe back in the day, this was fairly important.
3) Back in the day, 35 was "old age".
4) ???
5) Profit.
I know the time frame has been on here a lot, but why will it take 6 years to get a new operational version of the shuttle? It took less than 7 years from JFK's challenge to get a man on the moon, so why can't we get Americans in space any faster?
If you've ever worked for the state, and it seems you have, you are probably familiar with the rush to spent your budget before the accounting period ends. If you've got any surplus left, you'll spend it on extra equipment, fancier hardware, whatever. But you better spend it or else next time they'll cut your budget.
I can see both sides of the issue too. Obviously if you aren't spending your budget, they should shrink it. And obviously if you are the one who uses that budget, you better spend it because next time you might really need the cash. I don't necessarily think it is greed either. It is just that as a department head, you know how much of a pain in the ass it will be to try getting your budget raised again--budgets are easy to loose and hard to get.
I dont know how to fix the problem (only worked for them for a summer), but I do know that that style of departmental budgeting always results in end-of-year mad dashes to spend. Perhaps you should be granted a minimum and maximum budget and tie the spending of the maximum to some kind of "if you spend the maximum this year, you better have a good reason to use it next year". I still dont think that will solve the problem though... or actually if it really is a problem at all.
The problem is you gotta define "what is justified". And once you do, people will continue to play the same game, only they'll add "justification" into their equation. I mean, clearly they needed to purchase those aeron chairs for the little tykes or the kids would get back problems!
But our diplomatic relations with pretty much everybody have gotten worse over the last eight years. It would seem the world doesn't really like when hypocritical cowboys run around shooting their guns with no regards to their neighbors.
As one of those nutcases, I see no problem with exposing gametes to the risks of space.
Planning to have children raised by robots, however, is inhumane and impractical. "Whoops, there's a glitch in the software - I guess those kids will starve." "Whoops, it turns out that human society is important for children's development."
And if you really believe that a robot can replace a human as a parent, you're anticipating a type of general AI that, according to the singularity folks, will be better than humans anyway. So why do you need the humans at all?
Personally I'm very skeptical about that kind of AI, and therefore about the Robot Parent Plan.
In short. Who fucking cares?
Seriously, if this election cycle proved anything it is that public financing is welfare for politicians too stupid to raise money from small donors. If you can't raise money from the public whose vote you need, you have no business getting subsidized by the taxpayer.
I might have issues with politicians whose campaign money comes from a small pool of large donors, but I have zero problem with a campaign that managed to raise more then half a billion dollars in small donations from folks like us. To me, that is capitalism *and* democracy combined.
Whining about his "pledge" to not exceed public financing is both pedantic and sour grapes.
But it is copyrighted by Karl Rove. Thankfully, this year has proven that playbook isn't as valuable as it some used to think it was.
No, no private company is going to privately fund manned missions to the moon and beyond. And India touched down a probe not a manned vehicle. And they never will send a manned vehicle. Those nationalistic bragging rights are already over and there's no possible way for China, India, Russia, Japan, the EU or anyone else to pull together what's needed to develop anything close to a semi permanent habitation off earth. Ever.
When the Shuttle goes out of service we will see the end of manned spaceflight with the exception of the occasional Chinese orbit and periodic ISS replenishment flights from Russia until the ISS goes out of service too in a few years. After that, it's over, done for the next century or more if not longer. The fact is that manned spaceflight is really beyond our grasp. We had some fun with some scientific projects to get 12 men on the moon and a few hundred into orbit. But that's the sum total of hundreds of billions of dollars and almost a half century of work. No private company would ever sign up for returns on investment that awful.
The Buran program would cost more to revive than it would cost to build another from scratch since there's basically nothing left of it anymore.
Our own shuttles could very easily be modified to launch, fly, return and land completely unmanned too. The only past of them that really actually needs human manipulation onboard is the deployment of the landing gear, and that was left as a manual step on purpose just to give a pilot something to do. That could easily be connected to a digital control servo as well.
~= 500/1 by inspection. :p
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Why do I keep hearing about things being "Obama's" decision? Isn't the whole point of our system of government to avoid things being the decision of ONE person? Sorry, just a general rant.
Have you seen argentinian TV?
Know argentinian current politics?
Our current president (elected by 30% of the population) is the wife of our former president (elected by 20%-25% of the population), and he is controling most of the gabinet. He's expecting of course, to present in the next election. They are so corrupt it would make yor head spin.
For what I've heard in Obama's speeches, he is nowhere near being that corrupt.
Not making alegations he is not corrupt (power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely), but...
damn I'd wish we had the brains to vote better.
So yeah, it's funny... unless it's true...
Parent is insightful, not a troll.
Oh for some mod points...
BLAM!
Looks like Mossad already owns Obama (he picked Rahm Emanuel, the son of a terrorist). Obama will probably let Mossad slide on their 9/11 involvement and Obama will continue their wars. So who won? Israel did, as always.
How about some good map of the moon?
There are 3 satellites there and no new images...
How is it possible that the Hubble cannot get better images than this guy from his window?
http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnLenardWalson
I think what most people fail to realize is the reason why NASA is given so much money. Space exploration was, but now technology is the main reason for NASA funding. The technology invented within the confines of NASA towards the purpose of space exploration supplies the world with innovations that have profited societies for decades and will continue to do so. If you don't like the idea of wasting money on improbable dreams of Star Trekkin' then focus on the technologies brought forth from this program.
I just thought I'd note the following:
* "Project L.U.C.I.D."
*
* Fort Meade is the hub of an information gathering octopus whose tentacles
* reach out to the four corners of the earth.
*
* The principal means of communicating this information is by the National
* Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) satellite communications
* system, which most people erroneously think exists primarily for the
* space program.
*
* It does not.
*
* The satellites, indeed NASA and the entire American Space Program, exist
* largely to supply the NSA with its telecommunications system. That is why
* the bulk of its operations are officially declared 'secret'.
http://harvey-mars.com/