Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
How can we not not retire it? The shuttles are a huge money drain on NASA. If they were out of service NASA would have extra money to spend on more interesting things like developing better propulsion systems and better launch vehicles. Or better yet, let's let some of these budding space companies compete for building launch vehicles.
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?
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.
"We're considering continuing to use a vehicle that has a failure rate of 1-2% per flight?"
Just a reminder, the NASA space shuttle program is one of the most successful long term space programs ever. Remember - this IS rocket science. Seriously, look up some of the other space programs and you'll see some spectacular failures with nowhere near as many successes over the span of decades. The space shuttle program is an enormous success.
Yes, and the management of it has been a classic example of how Not To Do It.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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
The problem is that the U.S. federal government doesn't just do deficit spending during recessions. They do it during recessions, booms, middling periods, and every year in between. Deficit spending during a recession may indeed make sense, but turning it into the *norm* is the sure road to government bankruptcy and debtor nation status. And when the day comes when the U.S. can no longer get credit for the great national credit card and can no longer afford those growing interest payments, the collapse that will follow will make the current crisis look like a financial paradise.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
His first act in terms of the military should be scrapping that stupid-ass missile defense system being built in Poland and the Czech Republic. There, now not only have you saved a ton of money on a pointless system that doesn't work, you also will remove one of the biggest causes of friction in the US-Russia relationship.
Monstar L
I really don't think Iran is going to risk total annihilation to lob a nuke at Europe.
Israel, maybe, but certainly not with a nuke.
I suspect the leadership in Iran, though certainly cruel, is not crazy enough to risk their nice little isolated theocracy being totally annihilated. If they ever get a nuke, it will sit quietly in a bunker somewhere, to be used as collateral for treaties and negotiations, just like how North Korea is doing with theirs.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
"It's hard to imagine for me that there are people out there who are not inspired by NASA's endeavors."
I'm incredibly inspired by NASA's current Mars exploration, discoveries coming out of the Hubble, etc. Can you imagine putting together a system that can fly to Mars, land on the surface, and drive around for years collecting data without ever getting to touch the thing after launch? Anything that works that brilliantly first try is awesome. Definitely inspiring.
The guys sucking up most of the budget while struggling to keep their toilet running in low Earth orbit? Not so much.
...just like their options for performing aggressive actions is subsequently limited knowing that any escalation of things to nuke status will lead to their assured destruction.
It all balances out. Hasn't Pakistan had nukes for years? Yet Kashmir looks pretty much like it always has, right?
Iran getting a nuke is NOT going to be the end of the world.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
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
I disagree. These are the worst times to cut basic research out. I will grant that some priorities need to be made and we need to look for bang for the buck type things, but cutting funding the science research turns it into a musical chairs game where the little bit you still spend on science is all getting spent on scientists writing grant proposals to get more funding rather than actually doing science. We're over halfway there now.
Also, let's not forget that a bunch of highly educated engineers and scientists chronically out of work is a dangerous element to have laying around. :-)
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.
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.