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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.
...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?
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.
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.)
To get them down, as in from a crippled Shuttle? Yes, it is.
A Shuttle crew is typically seven astronauts. Soyuz carries three. Launching with only a pilot, that's room for two rescued astronauts. To evacuate a Shuttle would need four Soyuz launches, in quick succession. And that's if and only if the Shuttle is in an orbit that the Russians can reach; Florida is a better launch site than Kazakhstan, receiving more of a boost from the Earth's rotation. And if the Russians can arrange for four rockets and four capsules to be ready to go before the Shuttle's air runs out. That's one hell of a tall order. Given a blank cheque, they might try to do it, but it would be such a rush job you'd likely end up with even more crippled spacecraft in orbit.
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.
This is why the last Hubble repair mission was a worry, and why a second orbiter was readied for launch if rescue were needed. If that Shuttle had taken Columbia-style damage on launch, it wouldn't have been safe to return to Earth, and it wouldn't have been able (from that orbit) to reach the space station either. The astronauts would have been be in deep trouble.
If you mean could the government write a cheque to a private firm to build them a spacecraft, yes, they could. I'm not convinced, however, that a private contractor would be much better than NASA - the same political demands would be placed upon them, and the chief advantage of a free market, competition leading to efficiency gains and low cost, is lost in a market consisting of one customer who makes one colossal order every few decades. NASA contracts out the actual building to private enterprise anyway, firms like Boeing and Lockheed Martin and Morton Thiokol.
And yes, they could buy Soyuz capsules as needed, and even engage the Russians to develop them an entire spaceflight system. That's what they did post-Columbia when the Shuttles were grounded. They'd probably get entirely acceptable results at a very low cost. US governments don't like to buy foreign hardware if they can avoid it, though - taxpayers don't like to see their money leaving the country. They prefer to distribute the pork to firms in crucial swing states.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Don't forget NASA is one industry that puts a lot of money back into the US economy. Due to export controls and ITAR restrictions nearly every man hour is paid to a U.S. Citizen and nearly every part is built here. NASA farms out quite a bit of work to Universities so the next crop of engineers actually gets hands on experience in building equipment.
At a seminar I was at one NASA employee said that it takes over seven years after a student graduates before they are fully beneficial to the NASA program. If the student had hands on experience that number can be reduced to below three years. Many NASA employees are nearing retirement age and there already is a problem finding replacements. If you cut money now NASA won't/can't hire new employees to be trained by experienced personnel, Universities won't be able to fund new space projects so the students will not be fully prepared or trained to take over jobs once funding is returned, and those that are looking for jobs now will most likely go into private industry where their innovations and ideas will become the property of their employer and be lost to public enterprise.
So I'm for our government pouring money into NASA and rewarding a group that has been highly successful (recently). Why should they just be dumping money into failures (mortgage companies, banks, wallstreet, automotive).
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They *hate* that.
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