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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."
Let's cut taxes and reduce spending elsewhere, too!
Smaller government FTW.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
Nasa has actually given results for it's money. What kind of return on the investment do other agencies produce? Perhaps a comparison vs. a kneejerk reactionary policy may be a better way to handle things... yes?
These programs are the SDI of Nasa, although SDI turned out to be useful strategically. Basically the money for these programs would be pork. Why not give it to the NIH and the NSF ?
And repeat the whole shuttle fiasco, the US will be left with inefficient space systems for another 30 years...
The last thing NASA needs is a funding cut in the middle of development!
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--
Cut funding for the atlas and delta. Why do we need two rockets from the same company?
There aren't enough challenges facing us already? Personally, fixing the economy, changing the entire world energy landscape, averting a global climate disaster, and avoiding WWIII will be quite enough to occupy and challenge us for the next decade.
Initial reaction: Nooo! Don't take those away, I want to ride them! (never quite outgrew 'I want to be an astronaut when I grow up!')
Replacing Ares I with the Saturn or Delta rocket doesn't seem unreasonable though, since they have similar payload capacities. I do wonder how a rocket gets "human-rated" though. Failure rate?
This is light compared to what is ahead. No one should be surprised substantial cuts will likely be made to NASA's funding. The budget for at least the next 4-8 years will be targeted at improving the economy, education, energy, and health care- not anything that might have been saved if Washington were more interested in funding the military and NASA. Contact your senators and house representatives in Washington and let them know how you feel if there is a NASA program you love that you don't want cut.
.... Lockheed and Boeing
ULA is just a shell company created to please some stupid congressman.
Just like USA (United Space Alliance), it is a group of companies that fight between each other and never gets the job done because one is always trying to sabotage the other.
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).
They asked for a cost analysis for various scenarios. Stop assuming the worst case.
I cannot possibly see how delaying Aries would save any money over the long term. NASA has tons of people whose entire job is to support the maintenance and launch operations of the shuttle system. If we delay the Aries these folks will have nothing to do. If we fire them then they will move on and find other jobs and we will loose decades of experience which we can't expect to hire back if we decide to restart the manned space program again.
We have already wasted a bunch of money by grounding the shuttle longer than needed, and will be wasting more between the time when the shuttle is retired and Aries begins to fly. Furthermore the manned space program we have has has little to no value compared to our unmanned programs, and if our only goal is to continue limping along as we have been then it continue to be nothing but a money sink, regardless of how good of a job the Aries engineers are.
We have delayed advancing our manned space program for too long and we are paying for it. The only cost effective option at this point is to not only continue with the shuttle replacement as soon as possible, but to ramp up our manned space program and start doing something usefull (like precursors to colonization). If we aren't willing to do something meaningful with our manned space program then we should admit its current failure and cancel it altogether.
and by SSTO, I meant STS
I realize that we can't have it all. That's part of the reason we're in the mess we are now, we're overspending pretty much across the board. I'd be a hypocrite if I said we need to cut spending on ABC but don't touch my XYZ. Here's hoping he has a sensible, balanced plan.
I'd like to know how he plans to combat pork though. I get the impression that's the biggest budget bleeder.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
This is the best thing that can happen to a space program. NASA should not duplicate already existing capabilities, in this case earth to LEO launch. LEO launch is a commercially available service, there is no need for government-operated launch business. NASA lunar architecture should be built around existing launch capabilities, its perfectly feasible to mount big lunar, martian and other exploration efforts with our currently existing 20MT class launchers, and it will work out cheaper, more robust and future proof Government sponsored R&D should happen on frontiers, not recreating exising services.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
you may be too young to realize it but most of the really useful technology we use today has come out of Space and Military research - a vast amount of spin-offs from going to the moon have probably done more for energy efficiency than any research by independent companies and doing the research and the task provides jobs and stimulates the economy, as we ll as generating national pride - I would much rather my tax dollars go towards this than paying of someones mortgage who shouldn't have been given one in the first place...
Think perhaps Obama listened to that one a few times?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The return of scientific information from the boondoogle that is NASA is trivial.
This money could find much better application in a numeber of scientific or nonscientific applications.
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.
JFK did not start the space program and he didnt give a jack about space per se, to him it was beating the commies and extension of arms race.
Plus, all things considered Apollo was probably the worst thing that ever happened wrt to our prospects of conquering the solar system. Because it created the widespread perception of space being inherently expensive, government uberproject domain.
This is only now beginning to wane with the new generation of space enterpreneurs stepping up.
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And you are old enough to belive that myth.
(well, at lest the "space" part. Seriously, that brought very very little. not even the teflon pan.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
he promised another Moon shot and increase NASA spending to mine the Moon for materials and maybe put a base there.
Next I supposed he won't keep his promise to close the doughnut hole in Medicare? He'll instead cut Medicare so it costs people like me on it more money?
You used me, Obama, dammit, you used me!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
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)
Developing whole new sets of technology seemed to be a very good thing for the U.S. economy before. The Apollo program produced a lot of new technology (including Tang! yum!). The only reason we are 'first world' is that we had things to sell that the rest of the world didn't, and we were the only ones that had them. Of course now, we would likely lose that advantage immediately when those running things outsource all the work overseas once the technology is established. Then the overseas companies will sell our technology back to us as finished goods. BTW, didn't something like that happen in the 18th century? The U.S. shipped raw materials to Britain and they shipped finished goods back at significant mark up? That even figured into some war that was fought back then wasn't it (among some other things)? Sorry no, things aren't the same... at least back then the U.S. made some money on raw materials first. Now even that is lost. (And just kidding on the Tang thing btw... yech!)
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Further proof that he is no JFK - how about instead he challenge us to get to Mars before the decade is out !!!
Well, NASA would certainly have to hussle to achieve that (~ one year to go?).
(well, at lest the "space" part. Seriously, that brought very very little. not even the teflon pan.)
You've heard of satellites, right?
Because it's a design that's about 50 years old now.
So, let's bring back the DC-7 and let airlines start flying those.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
http://www.military.com/news/article/iraq-has-its-own-battle-of-the-bulge.html
No sig today...
Yes...it's an old debate. But if you have a tight situation, like what we're in, you should definitely cancel the pointless space station "shuttle" before James Webb which will do real science. There's always the "exciting the public" argument in favor of manned flight - but I'd venture to say hubble and the rovers have excited the public more than the space station anyhow.
Oh, many of the top secret features can be "dumbed down" with software. Just letting those of you who think that our best defense tech would be exported as well.
Direct 2.0 seems to be a safer path, perhaps Obama is actually on top of this...
This is a post from Frank in my Pirate's mailing list group:
I think the human race needs to start thinking of space exploration as necessity.
Obama wants to create 2.5 million jobs for 2k+9. But the prob is that we need
1) work that needs to be done
2) negotiate a price that the workers are willing to work for, and the employer is willing to
pay.
Without those two things, it's like trying to use an electric motor to charge its own battery.
The truth is, the earth isn't big enough for everyone. We want to increase wealth for
everyone. To do so we have two options:
1) take it from someone else
2) go where there is unclaimed wealth
The great thing about space is that there is a lot of it. You see, if I have a candy bar, and
the teacher sees me with it says, "are you going to share with everyone?" I have no choice
but to put it away because by the time I divide it up, my piece will be too small.
But if I can go to where there's a truckload of candy, I can truly share with everyone. So it
is with outer space.
So when we think of space exploration as a necessity, we will have:
jobs in space
homes in space
nightclubs in space
shopping malls in space
restaurants in space
In other words, a sustainable economy!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
This is an incredibly pro-space piece of news out of the Obama team, but what gets the focus is the potential termination of the boondoggle Ares program.
This article is far more interesting due to the last paragraph:
"Obama's NASA transition team also appears to be interested in a number of specific projects that have more or less languished in recent years. Among those projects are: the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a mothballed Earth-observing satellite formerly known as Triana; agency efforts to catalog asteroids and comets that could threaten Earth; and the harnessing of space-based solar power for use on Earth."
The article also alludes to a potential expansion of the COTS commercial space program, potential uses for EELV launchers, etc.
If the Obama team is serious about these projects (especially space solar power) it would mean a revolution in space funding and a committment to space development that would make Ares pale in comparison. SSP would mean a real orbital infrastructure that would enable a huge number of possibilities, such as real lunar bases and mars missions, not plant a flag crap which is where Ares is headed.
Seems like the US Gov could save $800 billion alone in the financial sector for something that is having no payoff.
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.
The parent poster and editor did a poor job describing the article. The obvious thing was the questions about cutting Ares 1. As mentioned, they also asked about Ares 5. What's missing, Obama's office also asked about:
What it sounds like to me is they're doing due diligence with the intention of possibly increasing NASA's budget; but, they want to spend the money as wisely as possible.
For once, I with people would read the damn article before jumping to conclusions, even here, on /.
What gives you the right to tell the rest of us what government is "supposed" to do?
Libertarians and their totalitarian fantasies can fuck right off. If people want the government to give everyone rainbows and blowjobs, you have no business telling them it shouldn't.
"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.
...and heat pipes.
And you are uneducated enough not to know the difference.
Have you seen the heat shield they started putting on/in houses in southern climates? Where do you think that was developed originally? This heat shield keeps heat out in summer; and retains heat in the winter. This is one of the most obvious applications of NASA developed technology towards greater energy conservation.
Microwaves -- are these a myth? Think these were developed by a commercial entity just so they could sell you a different type of oven?
Integrated circuits -- of course lighter weight, cheaper to manufacture electronics were not created by the space industry. When lifting loads into orbit, you don't need lighter weight electronics.
Here is a better list you can ignore
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
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.
To pull the economy out of this recession / nascent depression, and to leave us with something worthwhile when all is said and done, government spending in the next few years should be focused on capital improvements - specifically infrastructure. Transportation, communication, energy, access to raw materials.
Note that space offers opportunities for 3 out of those four (all but transportation - I don't think anybody is still seriously dreaming of ballistic business travel). However, it is unclear to me whether NASA in general and Ares / Orion does anything at all toward improving commercial access to space for those purposes.
Our current high-tech economy is heavily dependent on exotic elements (vanadium, iridium, etc.) whose supplies on Earth are dwindling. A space initiative which focuses on in-situ concentration of those exotics on either near-Earth or asteroid belt bodies, followed by return of only the concentrated elements to Earth, could be the basis for a sustatinable 21st-century economy for the USA.
Or we could sit on our butts and watch someone else (China? India?) do it. Empires don't last forever.
I'm waiting on the Bad Astronomer's (Phil Plait) take on this before forming an opinion. Too bad he hasn't written anything about it yet. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/
Switching to Linux can be an adventure!
Boy.. I hope they don't cut funding for the stargate program... who would stop all the alien attacks?
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Let's cut spending and taxes, yes, but NOT on this!
We NEED a frontier. And we have a good one. Not only that, but research related to space exploration has paid for itself here at home.
This is a good investment. Actually, it is an essential investment. There is no way we should let it idle.
Microwaves -- are these a myth? Think these were developed by a commercial entity just so they could sell you a different type of oven?
You mean the microwave technology developed during World War II for radar and communication? Just how was developed as part of the space program? I mean I know that there were refinements to the technology but I'm pretty sure those refinements would have happened even without the space program.
Sapere aude!
How about first take a few % back on firearm (defense) and on barbed wire (Dept. Homeland security) and other REALLY superfluous expense ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The F-22, aside from the F-111B is the only fighter on the planet that offers the range necessary to enable our long-term ally to defend herself.
Of course. The reason why Australia is under constant attack nowadays and has been for the last decaded, from all sort of evil countries from all over the world, is precisely that they do not have F-22s.
Your grasp on reality is quite weak...
Read the whole thread that you're replying to. It started with: "you may be too young to realize it but most of the really useful technology we use today has come out of Space and Military research."
So yes, microwave ovens count.
As one poster has said that people at NASA feels the Orion project to be a clumsy mess of a project, then I'm not too upset over this.
However it's frustrating from a general standpoint that Obama has no problem with spending what we are on the bank bailout and (likely) bailing out the auto industry, private industries that put themselves into their situations, and in the end we end up losing. That doesn't seem like forward thinking but more of the same government-corporate welfare.
IMHO the billions in bailout dollars should translate into checks sent to citizens. Afterall it's our money, why shouldn't we get it? That way people would be able to pay their mortgage, keep the lights/gas on, put up a down payment on a new car, or spend spend spend this upcoming Christmas.
No sig for you!!
Pork barrel spending costs the federal government about $30 billion a year. That's actually a very high estimate. On the scale of the trillions the government normally spends, it's almost nothing. Not saying it shouldn't be eliminated, pork barrel spending isn't right, but eliminating it wont cure all our financial woes.
[M]ost of the really useful technology we use today has come out of Space and Military research
Lets assume for a second that this is true. So fucking what. How much money and effort was spent since WW2 on space and military research? Defies imagination! Obviously some of that science and technology will be applied for civil purposes. I'm sure that if you put a huge amount of money into advanced ways of digging a ditch, you'd get out some useful technology, too (as well as lots of not so useful insights into digging ditches).
Or maybe you could invest it into a project that at the same time tackles one of the real, actual problems looking for a technological solution -- plenty come to mind. It's a reasonable assumption that this will still generate lots of positive side-benefits like technology, keeping us scientists and engineers off the street, enhancing "national pride" since that seems to be important to you. Plus it'd have the added benefit of not coming up with more ways to kill people in a more efficient fashion! Win-win.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Pork isn't even close to the top budgetary problem. Here's some numbers to check out from the federal budget.
I'd argue that JFK had a much better idea of what "avoiding WWIII" meant than any president since.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
That reminds me of a certain book, with the Department of Defense being in charge of waging war...
Wow that is quite a lot. I wonder seriously how much of that is being wasted or mis-spent. You think it's a matter of like the $800 toilet seats? or more for the $80,000 missiles?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
You sir, are a shining example of why he had better not cut a penny from education.
We can't afford to go to canada.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
This is one of those areas where I don't CARE if his motives (or JFK's) are impure for doing it. I could care less if he thought putting a man on the moon would suddenly get him laid (more)... the fact is that it was a good choice which pushed us forward technologically and as a people.
If Obama justifys space by saying it's to prevent terrorism I'd sign up for it. Whatever keeps the great minds there expanding our knowledge as a whole.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
First of all, like most Slashdot headlines, it's horribly slanted. The headline could just as easily be "Obama Team Considers Accelerating Development of Ares, Orion". Cost estimates are requested for both.
Secondly, your statement is obviously, blatantly false. It was Democrats who put a man on the moon the first time.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
GTFO you worthless lie-spreading troll.
I have no love MSL. That project zapped roughly 30 MUSD from my project. But JWST is also grossly overbudget and it cost roughly 10x MSL. Oh, and MSL is actually mostly assembled, very close to ship to the cape. While JWST has not assembled a darned thing. MSL is going to fly before Obama's first fiscal year begins. This is not going to be a problem for that administration. JWST on the other hand...
Every time a Space story hits Slashdot, I write a little note to remind all the dreamers in Slashdotland that there is going to be no real space program in the future.
The USA is broke. There is no money for manned space exploration. What that means is that there is a lot of talk and a lot of plans and a lot of projects with cool names in the works, but, one by one, they will be quietly abandoned.
The good news is that as the real space program shrinks, the Hollywood fantasy space program gets bigger and bigger. It's cheaper and more profitable to make a series of 100 million dollar StarTrek and StarWars movies than it is to actually put people in space. And they both accomplish the same thing: make millions of people feel good. Make them feel as if they are part of a new age of mankind. Make them feel as if they are reaching for the stars. Where their God will manifest Himself to them and enlighten them with their true destiny.
In a few years all this will be apparent. And when people as 'What happened to the space program? Where did it go?', then you can tell them that it went to AIG in November 2008. It was given to the men who stole the money, hid it, transferred it to their Cayman Island and Swiss bank accounts, and fled to Dubai to live luxurious untouchable lives. A final present from the Bush administration to the American people. The last thing that the Republican party did before disappearing.
But actually there really won't be too many people that care about what happened to the space program. They will be far more concerned with protecting themselves from the lawless heavily-armed and bloodthirsty militias roaming and plundering the suburbs. They will be concerned about the lack of food, lack of jobs, lack of electricity, lack of health care, lack of everything.
The space program will resume and be better than ever before. But it will in 100-200 years from now. Not in our lifetime.
Well ... the problem with the spin-off theory, it always seemed to me, that there was no reason to believe that the space program was the cheapest way to get those spin-offs, or that those spin-offs were the best purchase for our money.
Furthermore, we have to be careful about what we call a "spin-off" of what. Satellites, for example, are arguably as much or more a spin-off of nuclear weapons delivery systems than they are of space exploration.
We also have to ask about the opportunity of manned space presence. It may be that the fastest and most economical path to human space colonization is through developing basic technology using robots.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Money invested in NASA DOES come back to you dumbass, hint the I.C.s in the computer you are typing your Slashdot posts on were very much incubated by NASA for use in the space program.
And above and beyond those practical materialistic considerations is the joy and wonder of expanding human knowledge. Or we could let some self proclaimed pseudo Libertarian keep the money to "invest" in more landscaping for their pretentious mini mansion. I know which choice I'd make, sigh.
And yes it's very legitimate to debate WHERE NASA ought to spend it's money I think projects like Hubbell and space robots give us better bang for the buck than manned exploration, but in the bigger picture NASA ought to be getting more money, not less if the U.S. is to maintain world class science research.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
In answer to a number of responses I've gotten so far, perhaps I should clarify what I meant:
I'm not advocating killing off Constellation, or that changing NASA's focus, yet again, would help in the grand scheme of things. I think space flight is really hot shit, and the stuff that NASA is able to pull off is downright mind-blowing.
What I object to is the notion that we need to look to Mars for a challenge to focus the national attention and spur innovation. Put a man on Mars and what do you get? Lots of pictures, lots of abstruse science, lots of jobs while the program lasts, and a whole lotta feel-good. You get side benefits at home, and technological innovation with on-Earth benefit, certainly, many of which cannot be predicted.
But couldn't you get much the same by instead tackling the pressing challenges of today, such as energy and climate change? It's less glamorous, but isn't it more necessary? Maybe it isn't a zero sum game - I would hope that you could do both.
Brownian motion gets nowhere. Stick to one direction, and actually fly something.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Those options are on you ballot in a democracy.
At least in part because he puts that big "Office of the President-Elect" sign on his podium (along with the questionable use of the Great Seal of the United States), even though no such office exists, and as you mention, he isn't even the president-elect yet. The Presidental Transition Acts of 1963 and 2000 allow the incoming president's campaign committee to be treated as a real government agency (this is how they got the "change.gov" domain), but nowhere in there is this bogus office established or defined.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
The documents that give government it's authority (ballots) have whatever people want on them. Everything else is mutable.
You might but I would then suggest that you read some good history books.
Kennedy.
1. Set more and more troops to Vietnam.
2. Went forward with the Bay of Pigs.
3. Didn't support the Bay of Pigs.
4. Ran on the platform that the US was lagging behind the USSR in missiles and nukes.
5. Supported the deployment of Thor, Jupiter, Atlas, Titan I, Titan II, and Polaris missile systems.
6. And almost brought the US into a full on nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.
The one that kept things from really getting out of had wasn't JFK it was Khrushchev and it cost him just about everything.
JFK's memory has a reality distortion field that makes Jobb's look tiny.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
JFK wasn't the JFK we know today until he was assassinated and the myth of Camelot was created. Before that he was just a young president with a wife who knew how to dress well.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
China's Military is the one pouring money into their space program. In addition, they are currently building 1-2 new nuclear attack subs/year and 1-2 new ballistic subs/year. And that is what we KNOW. They are on a build rate that even Germany, UK, or US had prior to WWII. The US had geared up to join WWII for 4 years. It was one of the highest build up rates of a military. China is making it look like chump change.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Further proof that he is no JFK - how about instead he challenge us to get to Mars before the decade is out !!!
He may be no JFK, but there was an article (I lost the reference), which indicated that even within NASA there was pessimism as to the whole project. Quite honestly they would probably be better off licensing the designs for the Russian or European space vehicles. What is happening at NASA at the moment is probably down to bad management.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Lets not forget which president ended his presidency with a surplus.
Not Bill Clinton, that's for sure. The debt never dropped under his watch. Chart
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
when I posted this I knew that some moderator would call it Flamebait - but the fact of the matter is this - those of us that did not vote for him get to say I told you so every time Obama does something to bring our country down in technology - this is only what will be the first of many things - extravagant social programs cost lots of money and for those programs to ultimately get payed for we will have to sacrifice other things - Space, Military, National Physics labs, and on and on... We will certainly lose any leads we have to China and other countries before its all said and done. I seriously doubt all of us that work in those fields in the U.S are going to start working on the Obama National Energy Initiative - so that means we will probably all lose our jobs. I grew up on the Space Coast watching Saturn V's and Space Shuttles launch into orbit, it was this that got me energized to be an engineer in the first place - it makes me sad that Obama is considering dismantling our manned space program.
Mod parent up insightful! Hint hitting the wasp nest of terrorist harboring countries with a baseball does nothing but infuriate the terrorists for you CAN'T kill them all when they hide in the population. Air strikes just increase recruitment.
Here is another riddle what EXACTLY do programs like nuclear subs do in fighting terrorism? Bonus points for links to actual research and not just spouting neo-con talking points you heard on O'Relly and talking vaguely of "national defense" How does missile defense help us when it can be defated by child's mylar ballons? Again bonus points for real research to refute my points and not just vague platitudes.
And no a non military response does NOT mean doing nothing, hint the British ended IRA terrorism with diligent police work and not bombing Ireland back to the stone age. Too bad irrational thirst for revenge tinged with more than a little racism that discounts the value of brown lives blinded to better, longer term solutions to the terrorist problem.
Hint #2 we could feed all the world people for about 50 billion a year. This would certainly help drain the swamp of the bitter young hopeless men who are easy targets for Al Queda recruitment. If we did that and it worked we could probably cut military spending in half and save 300 billion by closing the vast majority of overseas military bases. How would you like if the Chinese had a military base here? Be honest in your answer. Investing 300 billion to save 300 billion sounds pretty good to me. And having the U.S. know not for an empire of bases but rather a network of real substantive foreign aid out posts that is feeding the world would make me proud to be an American. And now that we are committing crimes against humanity like torture and bombing cvilians? Not so much...
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
the Government needs to issue more debt still, lots of it.
The reason you get the impression is that's what McCain kept saying, over and over, even though it's not even close to true. It is in a politician's best interests to amplify the importance of something and then deal with it. He spent a lot of his time talking about earmarks too, not all of which are necessarily bad.
The biggest component is, far and away, defense-related spending.
The Ares 1 and Orion commit a lot of funds to manned space flight using old, expensive technologies. We learn little from those efforts, they clearly are not a sustainable direction for space travel, and they only take time and money away from the efforts that actually matter.
If they cancel those programs and redirect even a fraction of that money into new launch technologies, robotic space exploration, and basic technologies, both manned and unmanned space flight will progress faster overall.
As much as I'd like to see someone other than Obama being our president, he is a Natural born US citizen, Hawaii is a state and was a state when he was born so the other technicalities don't apply. McCain on the other hand did have to do the technicality dance because Arizona was a territory not a state when he was born.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
FDR was forward thinking but had some of the biggest problems to solve - making all else seem relatively insignificant. Avoiding WW2 was popular opinion! Provoking Japan to get the USA in WW2 early WAS actually long term thinking on FDR's part (and sneaky.) The Nazi's would have eventually attacked an unprepared USA and likely won (if they waited a few decades.)
NASA wastes tons of money. Bush redirected NASA; which should ring alarm bells... Didn't anybody notice that during the rise of earth science in politics Bush undermined NASA's role and aimed them towards a costly fast track to mars? Don't get suckered by Mars! Complain and get them to dump Mars and support better launch technology and earth science.
The Department of War (aka DoD since they got P.R.) can't have its budget cut due to corruption. See "Why We Fight" for an introduction on this topic.
USA Dollar is only alive because it is Oil backed. Green energy fundamentally undermines this.
How about no more bailouts? They are ready to do another one (they actually did 2 already;) however, the last one was larger the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the moon shot, the 80s S&L (Bush's brother,) the Korean War, the New Deal, the 1st Iraq war, the Vietnam War, and NASA budget (all years) cost less (adjusted for inflation.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I'm well aware of each item you mentioned, thank you. My point wasn't to say that Kennedy was a great president, but rather that he was *much* closer to dealing with a real possibility of WWIII than any president since.
The one that kept things from really getting out of had wasn't JFK it was Khrushchev and it cost him just about everything.
Because he was an idiot for having tried to station missiles in Cuba in the first place, lied to Kennedy about putting them there, and took the only real option left to him when his back was put to the wall? A nuclear war was Kennedy's to choose to fight (and almost certainly win) or not, and he chose not to.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I think we need to step back a moment and ask ourselves what is the US government space program doing really?
What are the things the government should be actively involved in--and where should the government function mainly as a customer?
In the early days of aviation, the government was a major customer for aerial photographs for survey purposes. I think that was a highly legitimate government function. When we have a variety of private _US_ based companies active in various forms of launch services, it is isn't obvious to me the government should be actively competing in that arena. In fact do so may actively slow space development by discouraging private investment in an area in which the government is picking winners.
The big issues in space development include developing
a) less expensive routine launch services
b) developing an infrastructure for use of non-terrestrial materials
I think the proposals for a space elevator are REALLY interesting, but those are both a bit further off.
I'd love to see an increase in some government sponsored prize awards similar to the X prize, but for the development of new areas--like say demonstration of a lunar space elevator.
I want to see space development happen. I just don't think the management techniques used by organizations like the post office are going to make this happen.
Read the whole thread that you're replying to. It started with: "you may be too young to realize it but most of the really useful technology we use today has come out of Space and Military research."
So yes, microwave ovens count.
And the grandparent post specifically referred to space research, not to military research:
"And you are old enough to belive that myth. (well, at lest the "space" part. Seriously, that brought very very little. not even the teflon pan."
Now I'm not agreeing with the statement that space research brought about very little technology. I know that a lot of modern technology is the result of space research. However, one thing it didn't have a hand in is microwave ovens. Microwave ovens were a direct result of military research, not space research.
Sapere aude!
But that $30 billion is much greater than NASA's total budget.
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.
Of course. The reason why Australia is under constant attack nowadays and has been for the last decaded, from all sort of evil countries from all over the world, is precisely that they do not have F-22s.
Your grasp on reality is quite weak...
I guess so. I did not realize that the World was so peaceful and no one has anything to worry about.
Paying people to preserve farmland (not being
done unfortunately) helps with the needs of a
large future population.
Paying people to produce more food than needed
is useful as protection against disasters that
wipe out crops. (storms, freezes, bugs, rot...)
Monsanto can charge $500 because farmers can pay.
They can pay because of the subsidies.
It's much like higher education, where hardly
any institution charges less than what the
students can get in assistance and loans. (but
that's more severe because the money is unusable
for any other purpose)
To some extent, we see this in health care.
People don't just give up and die if somebody
else is paying $million for a few more weeks
of life.
If you can pay, you will, especially if it isn't
your money.
The fact that since we have bigger governments humanity has advanced immensely more rapidly (in terms of technological and scientific advances, the well-being of the populace, and what not) is apparently lost on you, I guess... Let me hear you talk about how you'd have preferred to spend your childhood in the times when Dickens was alive.
The US has reached Mars with rovers, that's all that's feasible currently and all that makes sense, a human wouldn't be more useful than a rover over there and would just die faster (and weight too much if you include the food for the four years of travel and the few months of survival on the planet). Sending a man to Mars is a pointless prestige goal that looks cool to the layman but does nothing scientifically useful (of course building a spaceshiop that can go outside the Earth's magnetic shield without having its payload toasted would be useful but that doesn't require landing on Mars).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You, my friend, obviously have no idea what libertarianism is, or what the libertarian ideals are. So you think it's wrong to be forced to have individual rights and freedoms? I fail to see how wanting the government to follow the democratic process outlined in the constitution makes libertarians against democracy. The complete opposite of the libertarian ideal is letting the government do whatever it wants, without any type of democratic process - that is totalitarianism. When the government starts creating loop holes for itself to get around the democratic process you are heading down that path and the rights of individuals will suffer - this is exactly what the libertarians are against.
I strongly suggest you read up on US government and the various political schools of thought before commenting on such things because you are quite clearly ignorant to the topic.
I just saw the documentary "The Atom Smashers" - what was sad was how bush was cutting the program so much that America is no longer the place for Heavy Physics. Now, Obama wants to cut funding to NASA. How many things were discovered and/or created that is a part of our everyday lives? Look at the Internet: it went from a military research project to billions of dollars of revenue being generated by it. And then all the companies that make their dollar off of computers and the Internet. If the Government hadn't invested in these projects what would the world look like. I know that Obama has to rescue the economy but shouldn't he be looking at how he can cut programs that are truly stupid, Farm Bill anyone?
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
mod parent up. You pretty much cut straight to the central contradiction/flaw of Libertarianism, nice going.
Do things that make sense: Fly Delta, Atlas, Ariane, Soyuz and Proton. Fly SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Dragon capsules when ready. Continue Shuttle until ISS is assembly complete, increase international cooperation and involvement on both inter-govt and corporate levels. Remember that there are things that only the USA and Russia can do together in space. Reduce the Orion capsule to a COTS-level program, cancel Ares I and Ares V as redundant. Support long-duration Centaur mods that will create a mesh of space-tugs and modular fuel storage on-orbit. Fly on existing rockets-with-stuff-on-top. It works.
Encourage NASA toward doing what it does best: deep space missions. Leave the LEO segment to the private sector and blaze new trails for us.
None of the proposed Lunar payloads are much larger than current rockets can launch. The heavy part is the propellant needed for TLI and TLI, that can be flown on whatever is cheapest and available. The proposed but unbuilt EDS and Artemis moon lander are only marginally heavier than Delta IV can currently lift (about 20-30t each, empty). There is no need for a 110-ton booster that is going to take 20 years to field to do these things - NASA could fly Delta and Atlas, etc, today.
Dr. Marburger outlined Bush's Vision for Space Exploration as "Expand the human economic sphere into the inner solar human" not as a jobs program for a maybe moon base and someday HLV.
NASA and the government should help in creating the opportunities to open a new frontier. We need a first generation of pioneers.
Here's a neat space industry video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBnJLPpGIGQ
Josh, tax payer and space cadet.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Are you sure you're counting only the money spent on space and military research, or are you counting all the money spent on space and the military, including the money spent on building and maintaining bunches of copies of already-researched weapons?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Have you considered the possibility that so much innovation comes out of space and military research because the government's spent so much money on them?
This is more a question of the military spending than space exploration, but it applies to both. I'm not saying they're bad for innovation. Spending on those projects indirectly fuels technological advancement. But before I get modded down for not being a NASA fanperson, shouldn't you at least consider what might happen if the middleman were eliminated and the money was spent directly on technological advancement?
"Because he was an idiot for having tried to station missiles in Cuba in the first place, lied to Kennedy about putting them there, and took the only real option left to him when his back was put to the wall? A nuclear war was Kennedy's to choose to fight (and almost certainly win) or not, and he chose not to."
The Russians had active nuclear weapons in Cuba at that time. I don't think that would have been a "win".
Well at least not if you lived in South Florida.
Also The USSR really did have as much right to put those missiles in as the US had to put them in Turkey and the UK.
Kennedy was a Hawk and frankly made more mistakes in his short time as president than any I can think of.
The bay of pigs was the WORST possible choice that could have been made.
It is a real shame because Khrushchev was one of the more progressive leaders of the USSR. We really could have worked with him if he had stayed in power.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
He said he was going to delay it 5 years & fund preschools & U voted 4 him. Why did U expect anything different?
Your constitution has a dispute resolution mechanism; the courts.
Libertarians don't want to do this because they know they're wrong. They don't really respect the constitution and want to place their whims above it.
How the US President is elected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Electoral_College
December 5th "consideration" (private discussion of merits of the case) of citizenship issue:
http://donklephant.com/2008/11/23/supreme-court-to-review-obamas-citizenship-2/
The natural born citizen issue is actually rather complex (and should have been addressed a year ago):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born_citizen
I once heard that the design of the automotive airbag was a similar "propping up" for those same companies, as part of the "peace dividend." The way I heard it, the ordinance in an airbag is basically solid rocket fuel, and it's rather nasty as it comes out, so they put it through a chemical drier to clean it up.
The way I hear it, replacement airbags cost in the $1500-$3000 range, and frequently an airbag deployment becomes reason to total a vehicle. Oh, plus many of those replacement airbags are also non-functional fakes, because the high cost means high fraud potential.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You're joking about McCain's age, but the fact is he was born August 29, 1936 in Coco Solo Naval Air Station, Panama Canal Zone, Panama, AKA not in the US of A.
Racist Obama haters are too busy checking the font on his birth certificate to own up to this fact.
NASA is already over budget. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask the agency to prioritize and put price tags on their various projects. Otherwise there is no way to even look at their budget and make rational budget allocations, either bigger or smaller.
I would suggest that at least in the case of Russia, W did far from nothing. Practically the day after taking office, the focus of the State Department became getting out of the ABM treaty, so we could begin deployment of Star Wars leftovers. That went a long way to restarting the Cold War by lending credence to the hyper-nationalistic forces backing Putin. We've barely missed going toe-to-toe again, but from what I can see, the Cold War is very nearly back.
As a plus, while the State Department was fully focused on the ABM treaty, we turned an utterly and completely blind eye to the Middle East and Islamic world in general. What little information tried to like in - little reports like, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in US," were forcefully neglected.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
A typical single shuttle flight is about 700 million. A hundred times that would amount to 70 billion. I don't think 70 billion was spent on X-33. That's close to the cost of an Apollo type mission including the landings.
Table-ized A.I.
Use the Shuttle 2 launches one for an uprated modern LM second to launch a booster to boost the package to the moon so were talking a billion for Development, and a billion for both launches add 500 million for support upgrades to the shuttle/space station
Where, I ask, is the righteous /. indignation? Where is the geek outrage? Where? Where?
sigfault (core dumped)
Okay, but what happens when the cargo is much more valuable than the lifter? You certainly do want 100% reliability. Just ask any of the companies putting billion dollar comsats in orbit. Honestly, humans are the least valuable commodity you want to stick into space.
What currency are they denominated in?
Something will have to give.
The government can't pay off the bonds by printing money without crashing the $.
They won't be able to kite them onward by having Treasury AActions ('With double AA for twice the bad paper Auctioned!') Who's going to loan us more money.
Recent events have convinced me that rational actors holding those bonds will not wait for 2017.
But the recent market crash has caused a run on treasuries and the only major international holder of treasuries selling into this market is Brazil.
Which is very strange behavior unless you assume that China, Japan and the Arabs decision makers actually believe they HAVE TO support western currencies and economies. Granting on a level they do have to, but that just can't last forever and bailing out of, whatever the fuck that economic pacts name was, has to be better then waiting for the treasury/dollar bubble to pop and wind up with change for your years of exports.
I'm going to 'invest' in a turret press.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Pretend that oranges are a critical food.
We can grow them in California and Florida.
If we grow 50% of our need in each location,
we won't have enough when one state gets a
hard freeze.
If we grow 100% of our need in each location,
we'll have enough oranges even if one state
gets a hard freeze.
Doah, of course I was wrong, I was confusing him with an other president while researching the natural born allegation.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
See for instance the Federalist Papers, #41, in which the Federalist (pro-Constitution) faction explained why the new Constitution was desirable. Their argument was that they had created a Constitution of sharply limited powers, and that the idea of such phrases as "general welfare" and "interstate commerce" into unlimited powers was a paranoid fantasy.
"Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction..." [See the next paragraph too.]
The idea back then was that unlimited government would lead to tyranny, or at least an ever-contracting liberty for the states and individuals. So, treating the Constitution as a blank check to do whatever a majority wills violates the principles of the Founders. To the extent that we let the government act outside of this limited legal authority, it is a threat to our rights.
Revive the Constitution.
To support your point, check out this map of farm subsidy payments to people living in New York City. So yes, any waste in NASA is dwarfed by waste elsewhere in the budget.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) is absolutely the way to go. Gary Hudson has been pushing that idea for some time. Go up, come down, refuel, and go back up.
The Rotary Rocket idea didn't work out for unforeseen reasons; this is why we have "research".
It's a shocker, but implementing a fleet of SSTO's would be cheap and would work . . .
which means our government isn't interested! *grin*
-- Dave
They seem to be enthusiastic about it. Dusting off 40 year old NASA concepts and whizzing about.
Once they find out the the Moon does in fact suck and is quite worthless, perhaps then they will have finally done some real R&D that we can plagarize in 60 or so years (after all turn about is fair play.)
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Actually, no. The U.S. is a Constitutional Representative Republic. Governmental powers are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. You can't amend the Constitution by ballot; there is a considerably better thought out (and, thankfully, not so easy) way in place to do that.
At the national level, ballots are pretty much limited to voting for who you want to represent you.
I suppose ultimately the people could revolt and try something completely different, but for the last 143 years that has never gained traction.
The government does not "appropriate" money from Social Security. The Social Security Administration uses their surplus revenue to buy government bonds. Those bonds are part of the government's general obligation. Paying those bonds and the interest on those bonds isn't optional. Just as the Federal Government must pay back China, it must pay back Social Security.
Social Security isn't going to implode in 2017. The SSA's government bonds give it solvency all the way out until 2045 by conservative projections and even after that it's projected to be able to pay out 75% of the current benefit.
Now that numbers of these bailout and stimulus packages hit the front page, how can we take cancellation of a project that is so small in comparison as a good step towards fiscal responsibility? It's like losing your house in poker game and going through your couch for change in order to make it alright.
I believe space exploration to be by far the most worthwhile of possible Human endeavors. I don't think we should scale back any of it. Answers to our problems will not be found down here, but rather out there.
The Russians had active nuclear weapons in Cuba at that time. I don't think that would have been a "win"
Almost certainly none of the missiles aimed at the US would have made it into the air, and the Soviets knew it was suicide for them to use the tactical nukes in Cuba against an invasion force. Kennedy already knew where the bigger missiles were and was looking at a large scale pre-emptive strike against Cuba, during which all of the missiles capable of reaching the US would have been neutralized. The nuclear exchange everyone was concerned about would have primarily involved battlefield targets in Cuba, a few strategic targets in Europe, and at most a handful of coastal targets in the continental US within range of cruise missiles on the very few Soviet SSGs that would be able to survive long enough to actually launch, but most importantly the entirety of the Soviet Union would have been smashed flat owing to the overwhelming firepower advantage held by the Americans. By the time any Russian missiles got into the air, all of the medium-range launchers in Cuba would have long been left as smoking craters, and *any* Soviet nuclear response anywhere in the world would have resulted in the effective destruction of the Soviet Union and the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens. Kennedy knew he had an overwhelming advantage, so in exchange for removing the Russian missiles he offered to let Khrushchev save face by removing the U.S. missiles in Turkey (which by that time were strategically insignificant anyway). He knew that Khrushchev really had no other choice but to accept the bargain. In the end, both sets of missiles were removed, and everyone went home happy and un-incinerated. Obviously, no one wins in a nuclear conflict, but in this case the US would have survived easily, and the USSR would not.
I still stand by my assertion that Kennedy is the only president to have to deal firsthand with preventing an imminent nuclear exchange, Reagan's experience with hair-raising technical issues notwithstanding. Whether or not Kennedy was a competent president has never been and still is not the issue I'm debating.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Libertarianism is just a pretty name for Corporatism. You trade the federal government for large corporations, [which] are totally unaccountable to you.
No sensible definition of libertarianism makes it a "pretty name for corporatism." There are many branches of libertarian thought, and I suppose a proportion of these embrace some degree of corporatism, but libertarianism is at its heart a statement about INDIVIDUAL HUMAN liberty.
Corporatism is actually pretty much a statist idea. Corporations are protected by laws limiting liability in ways no ordinary citizen can take advantage of, and laws (such as patent laws) which choke competition. Many if not most libertarians would prefer such laws be greatly weakened or done away with.
If you want to see corporatism in action, you need look no farther than all western democracies, communist china (where it is embraced in controlled fashion), and of course all fascist states.
Dollars. And if you didn't even know that then you should consider keeping quiet because you're only going to embarrass yourself.
Or presumably the government could just pay off the debt as was done under the Clinton administration.
Treasuries are the one asset class that is shining in this godawful market. Everybody went into the treasuries which is why the yield on the t-bill is so low. It's even been negative, that's how much in demand those t-bills are.
I'm astonished when I encounter this aggressive ignorance on slashdot. I wouldn't expect somebody to start mouthing off about circuit design if they had never studied EE, but for some reason when it comes to Economics every slashdotter imagines himself to be an authority not matter how ignorant of the basic facts he is.
I would have to agree with you. I know also that there has been a team at NASA that were developing alternatives on their own, who have been derided by management for doing so.
I am not particularly concerned about the specific mechanism, but we MUST continue and expand our space exploration. It is one of the few hopes we have left.
On the other hand, I would share concern with others over a system based on the already-overly-complex shuttle program. We need to get simpler, cheaper, and more reliable.
NASA had invested $912 million in the project before cancellation and Lockheed Martin a further $357 million.
Is Wikipedia wrong, or do you somehow think that an individual shuttle flight costs a mere nine million dollars?
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
1) A budget surplus does not imply that the debt is decreasing. Read a book.
2) Even by your own chart you can see that the Clinton was the only fiscally responsible President in recent history. Furthermore, he improved every year he was in office. So what's your point? That Clinton doesn't deserve any credit for being fiscally prudent because he wasn't marginally more prudent where he actually achieved a surplus that exceeded the interest on the debt? Because that's a very dumb point.
A Big ol' sloppy ass welfare state (welfare for both non-working slobs and non-working companies)
Britain used to have an empire that spanned the entire world, now they cannot even send a single person into space.
I say our only hope for space access is now to work with the ESA, and have them pay private companies like Space-X for space access.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Somehow that got posted anonymously. A slip of the mouse I guess.
Seastead this.
It is pretty stupid to increase government spending on one hand to boost the economy, while cutting expenses elsewhere that could help the economy as well. I'd rather have a space program than saving every shitty bank with more money than the entire bank is worth.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
We are like natives paddling out to the nearest rock ouotcropping in our dugout canoe, crowing that we have conquered the Pacific ocean.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The real solution is to restart the Orion Project. This would be considerably cheaper, would definitely work, and would revolutionize the space program. If only people weren't so afraid of the nuclear... Read about the long-dead project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
Space-based solar power is nothing but junk science. Just like the space elevator is based on the lack of understanding of physics and a childish/immature desire to implement ideas from sci-fi comic books. Nether of them are feasible in real life.
The word you should have used is "engineering". These projects may be "junk", but they are *engineering* not *science*. Moving on, there's no uncertainty about space-based solar power and beamed power. The science is nailed down. Similarly, there may be some modest uncertainty in the space elevator dynamics (and vast uncertainty in the materials and how they'll hold up to a space environment), but they're right about the basics. The science isn't in question. When you determine whether something is "feasible", it isn't a scientific judgement. Feasibility is an engineering concern.
Asteroids and comets are already being cataloged, so why start a new project. In fact, even the suggestion shows that the team is just a bunch of idiots making up the story just to do what they do best ... make a mediocre person look promising by exaggerating and making up facts.
Because the effort is slow and incomplete. The ultimate goal is to find every earth-crossing asteroid (including the new ones coming from the Asteroid Belt and beyond) and monitor its trajectory. Current efforts are insufficient.
Perhaps requiring several rounds of them, but the point remains.
Further, governmental powers aren't limited by the constitution at all. They're limited by the interpretation of the constitution by the courts. (and not, as so many libertarians seem to believe, by them personally)
You better read up more before being so sure. For one thing the USSR had the Golf and Hotel Class subs in service. Let's talk about that "hand full" of costal targets that could be reached by the SSGN btw the USSR had SSGNs Echo calls, SSGs the Juliett class, Hotel call SSBNs, and Golf Class SSBs. Then lets throw the Foxtrot class and the November class subs with nuclear armed torpedoes. So that hand full of targets let's see... New York, Boston, Philadelphia. Charleston, Washington DC, Savanna, Jacksonville, and Miami... Some freaking handful.
If the managed to get a few into the Gulf of Mexico then you can add Tamp, New Orleans, Mobile, and Houston. But those are just maybes. That is without a single missile from Cuba or any IL-28s getting through.
So I would say your assumptions about a win is just nuts.
Now as to Kennedy being the only president to prevent a nuclear exchange that is also not very accurate. Truman during the Berlin crisis and the Korean war faced that option and frankly he really could have won those exchanges. Nixon came very close to that during the Six Day War as well.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Be careful when using the word "all."
It is evident that you don't understand the elementary nature of Constitutional government in the U.S. No rounds of ballot, on their own, can amend the U.S. Constitution. Period.
If the U.S. Supreme Court were to blatantly reinterpret the Constitution more than they already have, a Constitutional crisis would likely ensue. In the course of this, the power which the Supreme Court in fact arrogated to itself, to pass final judgement on what the Constitution says in plain English, could become subject to review by the other branches of Government.
This could be fun, but only in the sense that the last full blown Constitutional crisis, known as the Civil War, was "fun."
You better read up more before being so sure.
Oh, I'm aware of what the Soviets had in the way of missile boats at the time. They're irrelevant since there were only six Soviet boats in total involved in the crisis, all of them were tasked with dealing directly with the Cuban quarantine, all were intercepted and contained, and anything else of concern was either tied up at a pier or had an SSN attached to its ass. This was all to change in the years after the Cuban crisis as the Soviets learned more about the SOSUS nets and how to make quiet boats (all the ones on your list were *horribly* loud), but during the crisis itself Soviet missile boats weren't a particularly big concern. If the trigger had been pulled, the Soviet boats that would have been a source of worry would have been turned to hot gas at their piers 15 minutes later, or immediately had holes punched in them by the U.S. SSNs that were following them.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
At least one Foxtrot slipped it's tail and it was armed with nuclear weapons. It could have taken out Jacksonville or Miami.
The Hotel, November, and Echos where very loud but the Golfs, and Juliets where not. One off of New York, Boston, or DC and it would have been very bad.
While I am far from a tree hugging liberal I just can not bring myself to see the destruction of any US city as a win. No matter how much damage we do in return.
And let's not forget the lives that would have been lost in Europe. Again I just can not be okay with the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of our allies as being a win for the US.
So yes in my book if one gets through it just can not be called a win.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Ted Kennedy wouldn't turn into a hard boiled conservative if he visited Cuba anymore than Cheney would suddenly be liberal if he hung out with Fransisco Franco. Anyone who thinks that Obama is "far left", even in the U.S., needs to see a nice doctor in North Korea for their anal obstruction. Once the doctor has finished removing the person's head from their ass, they can take a look around and see what "far left" really looks like.
Conspiracy is what politicians do for a living and anybody thinking otherwise is a sucker (and a typical American. --hint to mods-- that is how a troll posting is written.)
You criticize my conspiracy 'theory' while presenting your own conspiracy theory. Any form of blockade (especially an Oil one) against a nation at war is an act of war. Supply chain is the KEY to winning wars you know.
FDR and his staff collaborated on many schemes to get the USA into WW2 and their intention to do so is not in dispute. Japan took the bait before Germany; I don't care what FDR said to either nation, his actions to both nations were hostile and they obviously knew it (while the American public did not.)
If this is a negative collaboration then FDR's actions are by definition conspiracy.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
NASA is a waste of money. It should not be our priority, particularly during this difficult economic time. Planet earth needs our complete attention.
This is definitely the attitude we need to take with space exploration. There have been many valid points made in these posts. I would like to highlight just a few: Firstly, the gov't has no place competing in commercial markets, that's not it's point. NASA should not be trying to provide commercially available services, whether it is ferrying rich tourists into space, or launching satelites. So it should get out of these markets, and let private firms do the research and development that is the focus of this. Let the private folks do the LEO stuff. On the other hand, private firms have no interest in going where there is no immediate profit, or even short term profit. Gov't, on the other hand, can and should be aiming at things that aren't profitable now, but will be critical and likely very profitable in 15+ years. Manned space flight to the moon, and especially to points beyond are a case in point. Asteroid mining, a staple of Sci-fi, is not profitable right now. Nor is it likely to be in the next ten years. But when industry gets into space, when we actually start having cities on the moon (or mars, or space stations, take your pic), mining the rest of the solar system is going to be very profitable. There is the potential for millions, possibly billions of jobs in that, since, eventually, the entire economy, from janitorial all the way up to senior management, will be replicated in space (hopefully more efficiently, but probably not). The country that gets there first, that actually becomes an space power (not just who can reach space, but who actually is permanently in space) is going to have a tremendous advantage in nearly every sphere of influence. Throwing money at it won't help much, but taking away what they have is likely to hurt a lot more than the potential benefit of increased efficiency. Efficiency is good, but not if it means retarding the entire manned space flight program by decades. In reality, we are still in the pre-space age. The space age will truly have arrived when space is a work place for more than a select elite and a few rich guys.
Z
Modern fiat money has value because it is accepted for payment of taxes. In the same way a winning McDonald's monopoly coupon good for one small drink has value because McDonalds accepts them for payment in return for small sodas.
But the coupons need not be redeemed for small sodas at McDonalds immediately.I can spend my winning coupon on a small soda at McDonalds or I can trade it to my friend for a cigarette. I can do the same sort of thing with dollars or yen or euros or whatever.
Even if I may never have the need to pay taxes in Japan, I wouldn't worry about accepting yen in payment for an item. I will be able to find someone willing to trade something I do want, ( maybe dollars ) for the yen, perhaps a Japanese person with a lot of dollars who needs to pay their taxes in yen, but more probably just someone with dollars who wants to buy something that is being sold for yen.
Legal tender just means I can pay any debt, even one denominated in say porkbellies with the legal tender currency in an amount equivalent to the value of the porkbellies at the time the debt was paid. That could be one dollar per porkbelly or one billion dollars per porkbelly, depending on the relative market values of dollars and porkbellies. But I couldn't force a creditor to accept payment of my porkbelly debt in gold, or board-feet of lumber, or winning McDonalds monopoly coupons good for one small soda, or the currency of another country - only legal tender can be foisted on a creditor.
I think this system ( the one we have ) is superior to basing currency on work units, which like other goods are subject to fluxuations of value relative to other goods. In addition to the problem of deciding what a 'work unit' is ( is this piece work or are we paid hourly? ) the increase in productivity that is called progress, will, if it continues, increase the work units available year by year in a form of work unit inflation.
The current system is fiat money with fractional reserve banking. In the US, the required reserves are 1/10. The money multiplier is 10. The need for a lender of last resort has over the course of the 20th century slowly caused the complete abandonment of the gold standard, which in my opinion is a good thing. Why mine something hard to find like gold when paper does just as good? The alternatives to fractional reserve banking are Full Reserve banking and No-Reserve Banking
In full reserve banking depositors pay the bank to keep their deposits rather than paying interest on savings, and charge fees for services. Loans are not made out of deposited funds, but rather they are the funds of investors. Investors put their money into the bank's pool of loanable funds. The bank makes the loans charging a percentage of the repaid funds for the service of making the loan to the borrower, including the labor involved in finding an eligable borrower, and collecting payments. If the loan is not repaid, then the collateral if any is sold, and the remaining funds are returned to the investor. The loss, is to the investor, with the bank making money only for charging for the labor it provides.
Under Fractional Reserve banking, the loanable funds are the money multiplier (10) times the reserves. When there is a loss of 1 dollar the reserves are reduced by 1 dollar, which means the pool of loanable funds decreases by that dollar plus 9 more dollars, reducing liquidity in the economy ten times more than if the funds lost were lost by investors.
The internet bubble was about the same magnitude ( possibly a little smaller ) as the housing bubble. However the internet bubble was funded by investors, whereas the housing bubble was funded by banks. The internet bubble, when it burst, caused a mild economic downturn. The housing bubble is forcing governments around the world to pull out all the stops to avoid another 'Great Depression'.
No reserve banking me
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The new administration should be looking to support projects like this that create high quality job opportunities in the US not shutting them down.
Proceed @ 11.5740741uHz