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Obama Team Considers Cancellation of Ares, Orion
HanzoSpam sends us this story from Space News, which begins:
"US President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking US space agency officials to quantify how much money could be saved by canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle next year. ... The questionnaire, 'NASA Presidential Transition Team Requests for Information,' asks agency officials to provide the latest information on Ares 1, Orion and the planned Ares 5 heavy-lift cargo launcher, and to calculate the near-term close-out costs and longer-term savings associated with canceling those programs. The questionnaire also contemplates a scenario where Ares 1 would be canceled but development of the Ares 5 would continue. While the questionnaire, a copy of which was obtained by Space News, also asks NASA to provide a cost estimate for accelerating the first operational flight of Ares 1 and Orion from the current target date of March 2015 to as soon as 2013, NASA was not asked to study the cost implications of canceling any of its other programs, including the significantly overbudget 2009 Mars Science Laboratory or the James Webb Space Telescope."
I'd rather see them simply reduce spending and pay off the national debt.
Obama's presidency is going to be very FDRish. Lots of big 'public works' projects to keep the voting masses coming back, but in terms of actual forward thinking, very little. Well, actually, if you are into the government getting bigger, you won't be disappointed.
(Man, I'm gonna get modded into oblivion for this!)
--sig fault--
The Obama team may be exercising due diligence in looking across the board for cost savings. I hope that this is the case, and that they are not focusing on cutting investment in space exploration. That would be egregiously short sighted. I would recommend looking strongly at assessing the real mission needs for high cost "bleeding-edge" defense programs such as the Future Combat System (FCS), F-22, and F-35, in favor of re-capitalizing with incremental improvements to exiting proven systems. Attacking inefficiencies is the a better first approach over cutting back on science as well as basic research investments in our future.
Even if the incoming administration eliminated NASA they wouldn't recover enough to pay for the various giveaways (e.g., bailouts, economic, stimulus checks, etc.). NASA's budget for 2009 was only 17.6 billion (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/feb/HQ_08034_FY2009_budget.html). Certainly Obama and company can find better places to trim in this day of multi-trillion dollar giveaways. Let's start by scrapping the economic stimulus packages ($175-500 billion) which have thus far done next to nothing in stimulating anything except perhaps the re-election chances of those that allowed this mess to develop in the first place (yes Congress, that's you).
This might actually be a good thing. I have a friend working at Cape Canaveral who tells me that most of his managers at NASA consider Project Orion a disgrace to the space program. The design is a kludge... it's less elegant than Apollo of 30 years ago, using multiple Ares rockets to handle what Saturn V did on its own. The design's fundamentally flawed, the rocket's so slender it "wants" to fly backwards... the control system has to fight its natural flight mechanics the entire way up to keep it straight. The launch vibrations were large enough to kill the astronauts, leading them to add shock absorbers, because the project's been so rushed and it's too late in the game to instead eliminate vibrations altogether. The whole capsule design is antiquated and relies on an incredibly tough heat shield for reentry, when reentry speeds themselves should be lowered (using a lifting fuselage, like the X-33 and SS1), vastly reducing reentry heating and eliminating burnup almost entirely as a failure mode (Columbia).
I won't try to just blame Bush, but this hasn't been a methodical, thought-out advance of manned exploration. Mike Griffin's in the wrong here too as the project cheerleader. The project's a mess, with so much modern materials science and computational flight dynamics being thrown at a design that was only good for the 1960s, but completely outclassed today by research since then. If Obama cancels BOTH Ares and Orion, maybe we can have a real successor to the SSTO (PLEASE be the X-33 with composite fuel tanks).
I second this. IMO, the only way to significantly put a dent in the budget would be to cut back on defense spending.
They asked for a cost analysis for various scenarios. Stop assuming the worst case.
Obama is inheriting an UNBELIEVABLE debt/deficit. There will need to be cuts EVERYWHERE. It almost isn't fair to put this article up on /. Of course all of us geeks don't want to see the space program cut.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
What benefit does man space travel provide? The space program has created a number of sparks in scientific results that have lead directly to tax producing products in the consumer market. Not the mention the non-tangible results of spawning hopes and dreams. For those old enough to remember, that was critical in the USA in 68/69. How many of today's scientist and engineers were inspired by the space program? It wasn't all Star Trek doing that. The manned space program more than pays for itself. In fact, cutting social security benefits by $5 dollars a month would pay for the entire space program, and we'd get more benefit back.
If you've been laid off, you've spent your retirement funds, you're car is about to be repossessed, and your house is about to be foreclosed, the *last* thing you want to do is go on that trip to the Bahamas you've been planning to take.
We can not afford to spend all this money exploring space, not right now. We should privatize the whole space program, and let somebody make money off it selling tickets to rich SOB's with more money than sense. Only when it has to make a profit for somebody will it find the efficiency and economy it needs to make real progress. At the moment, it's nothing more than a money pit.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Whoa there... he hasn't done anything yet. He isn't even the president! His people are just gathering information. Calm down... Geesh.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
assessing the real mission needs for high cost "bleeding-edge" defense programs
... one of the few things the damn government is supposed to be doing, as apposed to all the crap they are, and want, to do.
It's called providing for the common defense
The only way to make the army cheaper is to lessen the value of the human soldiers in it. China's army is twice the size of the USA's. FCS and all those high tech devices are designed to allow the military to do more with less overall resources. The F-22 and F-35 are designed to use the same support systems, and similar components to allow faster and ultimately less expensive in field repairs.
While the whole land warrior system has been stripped back, squad leaders are still carrying the communication systems and real time mapping aspects to allow them to better coordinate forces. As it stands the US military is one of the most efficient militaries in the world(an oxymoron if there ever was one). While realistic assessments of the tech, and future upgrades to the systems themselves are required it can be doen more easily as the basics of the design has been completed.
The F-22 was the R&D test bed for the F-35 While the per unit cost of the F-22 is high because of this the per unit cost of the F-35 is far far smaller.
You can't make the army cheaper unless your willing to kill more of your own soldiers to do it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Seems like the US Gov could save $800 billion alone in the financial sector for something that is having no payoff.
Defense? Against what? The US has, BY FAR, the largest military budget in the world. It is larger than the next 46 largest combined. And most of those are strong US allies. So, who poses a threat? Who do you have to defend yourself against that you need such a large military budget?
The US could cut its military budget in half and still be the largest, most powerful military on the planet.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
These are all problems which require solutions. But, a society which only focuses on the challenges closest to home will grow myopic. NASA does produce ideas and solutions which can be applied to problems closer to earth. But, what NASA provides most is an outward focus on spacescapes and ideas larger than all of us combined. This is a healthy and necessary element of our society.
Just like the psychiatrist who only works with disturbed people all day who thinks all people have some sort of mental malady, if our society only focuses on societal issues we will become too self involved. And very probably self destructive.
As someone else posted, for the money spent, NASA is a gem in our national investment portfolio. A good portfolio manager don't divest themselves of the promising ventures to focus their funds on only the largest financial ventures.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
"Space travel is utter bilge" - Richard van der Riet Wolley, Astronomer Royal, 1955.
He was right. Back in 1955, he crunched the numbers, and realized that you couldn't build a rocket that lifted itself into orbit while carrying much of a payload.
Only by excessive weight reduction and throwing away big chunks of the launch vehicle does space travel work at all. Space travel on chemical fuels will never work much better than it does now. It's an inherent limitation of chemical fuels. After fifty years of trying, it's still only possible to just barely get stuff into orbit, using huge rockets to lift dinky payloads. The vehicles are so weight-reduced that they're too fragile to reuse without a major overhaul after each flight. We'll never get to something with the robustness of a commercial airliner, or even a jet fighter.
We should resign ourselves to launching small satellites and planetary probes. Manned spaceflight is just an expensive ego trip for nations. The ISS turned out to be pointless; people go there, but nothing much gets done there. It's not useful for astronomy, earth observation, scientific research, manufacturing, or even for military purposes.
If we ever get a better power source, like fusion or a nuclear rocket that doesn't make a big mess, this could change. But on chemical fuels, space travel is a dud. It's time to admit that and give it up.
Visit the National Constitution Center and search for rainbow and blowjobs - they must be part of the improved government healthcare program, cause it ain't in the document that gives government its authority.
Seems to me that this is the right thing to do 60-days before he actually gets into office -- gather information.
He didn't say he was going to cut anything, he asked for a cost-benefit analysis on various scenarios. If NASA can't deliver that, they don't deserve to keep operating. But I suspect they will give that, and it'll be fuel for the Obama administration to make (hopefully good) decisions.
I hope he's doing the same with every government agency -- identifying their top line-items and looking at whether or not those items are really best done by continuing on the current paths.
Why would you cut back on the one thing that the government is suppose to do? Provide for the common defense is the JOB of government. Not supplying bail-outs to companies that were mis-managed. The estimated cost of just the damm bail outs is over 6 trillion dollars that the US government is on the hook for. What needs to be cut, how about farm subsidies? Read a story that a family bought a house and the realitor said that they would get money from the government, farm subsidiy, because they were in the right area. The house wasn't even in a farming area. That's where the government needs to fix it's self.
You can be replaced by a very small shell script.
"supposed to be doing" according to who?
if the majority of Americans want public research into space exploration, medical research, and fundamental research, then it is the government's duty to carry out these wishes. the only hard rule about what a government ought to be doing is protecting the interests of its constituency. even in a world without military conflict (and thus with no need for "common defense") government will still be a necessity, just not in its present form.
believe it or not, not everyone is paranoid about a Soviet/German/Chinese invasion or terrorist attack. defense is far from the only common interest shared by a society. certain things like road systems, public education, communications networks, power grids, and other vital public infrastructure cannot be built by a lone individual. they require the collective efforts & resources of a community to develop.
likewise, law enforcement, emergency services, courts, etc. are all public services that a modern society needs to function. because most people don't want to live in a dog eat dog world where might makes right, we establish social institutions to ensure law and order and promote social justice. these institutions do far more for public safety on a day to day basis than a ridiculously expensive military.
and because most people have the foresight to see that fundamental research, space exploration, ecological conservation, and the arts all serve the long-term interests of a society, the government also has the responsibility of funding these admittedly loftier endeavors. if you want to live in a country whose government is only interested in military defense, then move to a nation under military dictatorship. you don't need a democratic government that protects free speech, free press, ensures due process, regulates health standards, and ensures their nation is at the forefront of science & technology, etc. to have an armed forces.
Maybe the problem there is that the problem there is *not* a military problem, but a political one---like pretty much everyone was telling the US before *both* invasions...
Your argument is not very different from the one used to decide that the theory of evolution must be wrong because Genesis does not mention any of it.
The fact that you do not seem to consider even the possibility that the guys who wrote that text, in a completely different age, with completely different problems, while holding firmly to ideas that appeared to them self-evident and to which we can now react with little less than disgust and historical perspective---I say, the fact that you do not consider that they were probably not omniscient and perfect while writing that, is simply scary.
Is that 2.5 million income after expenditures? Running a farm is extremely expensive, and you can easily run through 2.5 million in seed, equipment upkeep, fertilizer, etc. If you like food, maybe complaining about farm subsidies isn't the right way to go...
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
From Wikipedia:
"For 2009, the base budget rose to US$515.4 billion, with a total of US$651.2 billion when emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending are included.[1] This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production (~$9.3 billion, which is in the Department of Energy budget), Veterans Affairs (~$33.2 billion) or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are largely funded through extra-budgetary supplements, ~$170 billion in 2007) - the United States government is currently spending at the rate of approximately $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes."
Wars are not included in the defense budget? Nuclear weapons aren't included in the defense budget? I would even count the aid we give to Israel (which is quite a lot) as defense spending, but I'm fairly certain it's not counted that way on the chart. Then you have to remove social security from the chart because you can't count that as a normal expense (it is an investment fund paid for with its own separate tax). Then you have to remove interest from the chart because the goal I mentioned was to pay off the national debt (which you can't do if you don't even pay interest).
So what are we left with? Defense, Medicare, and "non-defense" and "other mandatory" (which includes non-defense items like aid to Israel, the wars we're currently fighting, and nuclear weapons research and maintenance). Do you think the elderly (the most active voters) are going to vote away their health care and simply go off and die quietly to help the rest of us? If not, defense is the only sizable chunk left.
Currency has never had 'intrinsic' value. What would you do with Gold that is valuable? Currency has whatever value we all agree it has. Gold would be no different and it's physical nature would not stop this effect from happening - you'd just see massive inflation of the value of Gold which would make it impossible to use in any technology or science or art.
It's much better to base currency on work units directly rather than some arbitrary physical medium which is scarce until it's not... or abundant until someone decides to hoard it all.
I do some work, I get paid for it. Who cares what the medium used to record the work is... whether it be a printed piece of paper with a unique serial number or a metal coin with a unique serial number... or a digital notation on a computer attached to my unique SSN.
I then take that work unit I was paid with and use it to buy someone else's labor, the same way the company I did the work for paid for my labor.
Personally I don't even have cash.. I rarely use it, except to pay for gas at stations that charge for ATM use (usually the cheapest prices though).
I'd rather keep my work units in a money market account so that they can earn decent interest while I'm not using them (aka I loan them to other people for use in trading on the stock markets). If I've collected enough work units I put them in a CD so others can borrow them more long term - which gives me a better return. Sometimes I loan them out to companies for a very long term - by purchasing stock - with an even better return potential.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Environmental studies are important, and swamps are there for a reason (protect the non-swamp areas against hurricanes, act as habitat for species that we use (directly or indirectly), etc.). The government is now spending even more money to fix swamps that they fucked up 50 years ago because they didn't do the environmental studies in the first place!
Line-item vetos are dumb anyway. If that's what you want, then just encourage the President to veto the whole thing, all the time, until Congress gives him a version without the line items! You don't need a special new power for it; you just need the President to grow a pair!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
That's definitely not the only way. We have a 3 trillion dollar budget, and to say defense is the only place to cut money in a budget that big is laughable.
Personally, I would like to see us first cut spending by stopping all these ridiculous bailouts. It's been one right after another, to the point where our national deficit next year will likely be 1 TRILLION DOLLARS this year. All these companies and individuals weren't socializing their profits a couple years ago when they were raking in money hand over fist, so why should we socialize their losses?
Next we could start cutting social programs. Welfare could be cut back (rather than increased like the Democratic congress just did), Medicare should be reformed and scaled back, and Social Security should be restructured in a way that will phase it out. The ballooning costs of those programs will absolutely destroy our budget within a decade or two, and that's assuming we continue to have good economic growth. We should be working to phase them out now while we still have time to do it gradually, because the alternative is a massive, sudden slashing of benefits.
After those, you could start whacking a lot of the unconstitutional things the feds are involved with, such as the department of education. We already spend more money per capita on our students than anyone else, with not very good results. However, some states have been having success, so lets just turn the entire job back over to the states and let them experiment and try 50 different systems. And may the best one win and be adopted.
Following this, you could start whacking subsidies that we hand out to everything that moves. The farmers have had subsidies for almost 30 years, so it's time for them to find a way to become profitable or get out. And all the "green" subsidies should go away too. Market pressures will force them to become cost efficient, or they will be knocked out in favor of better technologies. Government subsidies don't provide incentives to drive out inefficiencies.
Next, let's start hammering away at pork barrel earmarks. Barack Obama says they "only" amount to 18 billion, but so what? Let's clean that up. When Minnesota's I-35 bridge collapsed last year, they asked the congress for an emergency 255 million for rebuilding, and the congress responded by passing the massive 8+ billion dollar Minnesota bridge repair bill. Minnesota only wanted 255 million, and they packed it with pork for a butterfly garden in North Dakota, a sports stadium somewhere else and all kinds of other junk. And of course you get garbage like the bridge to nowhere coming out of these earmarks.
Follow this up by cuts to foreign aid. Should we really be giving tons of money away when we can't even keep our government in the black at home? That's a recipe for disaster. Plus we keep giving money to failed terrorist states/entities, like the Palestinians, numerous African and Middle Eastern nations and Pakistan.
And for everything else in the budget, cut it by 10% but demand they provide the same level of service. I GUARANTEE you that could be done. In the private sector, companies are always having to drive out costs to remain competitive and profitable, especially in down times like this when their revenues drop. Why do we buy the line all these government workers give us when they say, "We can't have a budget cut! We'll have to close down! Reduce services!" Bull. The private sector goes through revenue reduction all the time. The problem we have is that government NEVER has a recession and NEVER takes a budget cut like all the rest of is. This means waste and inefficiencies aren't forced out of the system. After decades of nothing but budget increases, there has to be at least 10% waste in every single agency, and they will need a good sharp pay cut to have the incentive to get it under control.
That would be
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.