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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 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.)
As for private enterprise? No chance. No private enterprise has ever launched a person into orbit. SpaceShip One was a major achievement for them, but didn't even reach Alan Shepard levels of spaceflight; a Gagarin is far beyond them.
Is there a reason you're mentioning SpaceShip One (which was never designed for orbital capability) while ignoring Falcon (which was)? Granted, Falcon didn't carry any people, but a claim that this capability "is far beyond them" is ridiculously false. Dragon should be ready to go by the time the shuttle retires.
If you mean could the government write a cheque to a private firm to build them a spacecraft, yes, they could.
And they already did. You seem to be treating an ongoing program, started years ago, as if it's a hypothetical...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Total NASA budget, FY 2009 - $17.6 billion
US federal budget, FY 2009 - $3.1 trillion
NASA budget as a percentage of federal budget - 0.568%
Even if you completely scrapped NASA, you're not going to make any useful difference.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
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.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
On the surface it sounds like a BS argument, but if you do a little analysis on it theres probably quite a bit of truth to it.
It's much more than a bit of truth: it already happened! NASA tried to pull that stunt after the Apollo program. There was a big gap between Apollo 17 and the first Space Shuttle flights and NASA fired a lot of engineers and workers with valuable skill sets. They tried to hire them back more than 5 years later.
Guess what most of then answered? No, thanks.