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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.
Is that you, Milton? :)
My UID is prime. Hah!
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?
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.
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.
The only private enterprise I am currently aware of that has any chance at the moment is SpaceX. However SpaceX's dragon capsule is not designed to get us back on the Moon or to reach Mars.
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.
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...
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
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH:
http://perotcharts.com/category/challenges-charts/page/14
The tumorous growth of entitlements grows unabated.
http://www.pensiontsunami.com/
Here is a crowning look at doom:
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2008/09/26/supercycle
So, we're all kind of baked.
Cheers,
Smitty
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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)
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.
The last thing NASA needs is a funding cut in the middle of development!
Sorry, but "what NASA needs" is a rather lower priority than getting a lid on government spending.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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
What most people, including the parent of this thread, don't understand is that NASA and other federal R&D facilities do is fuel our economy.
/. work in the IT field. Well you can thank NASA for the Beowulf Cluster. NASA also worked with industry to make cordless drills, CAT Scans, digital thermometers, welder's goggles and thousands of other products.
Many people here on
Don't take my word for it.
http://www.beowulf.org/overview/history.html
http://space.about.com/od/toolsequipment/ss/apollospinoffs.htm
http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/spinoff.html
Engage brain before moving mouth.
Overrated, Troll, and Flamebait mod points are not to be used towards posts you disagree with. That IS censorship.
(well, at lest the "space" part. Seriously, that brought very very little. not even the teflon pan.)
You've heard of satellites, right?
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
Like heath care?
I guess those super high-tech weapon systems might be a waste of money anyway, the US has already left the rest of the world way behind in the arms race but that high-tech army seems to be a massive money sink if it's ever fielded. 1.4 trillion USD just to fight a few cold war era relics? I guess they should research how to make the army cheaper, not even stronger. Noone's doubting its stength but if using it bankrupts the nation perhaps enemies of the US would consider the US army no longer a real threat as it hurts the US more than the target it's thrown at (especially when that target is an amorphous threat like terrorism).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I'm a huge fan and proponent of robotic exploration of the solar system. NASA, JPL, the aerospace contractors and their partners in universities across the world have done an amazing job with comparitively tiny sums of money. Alan Stern (the head of NASA's Space Science Directorate who resigned when his plan to make visible the pain caused by the massive cost over-runs on MSL by shutting down the Spirit MER rover was overruled by higher-ups) has recently pointed out that routine cost overruns are crippling NASA. Ares and Orion show every sign of following this trend, and for what? To keep alive the fallacious dream that seems rather too popular that Star Trek is a plan for future space exploration, rather than an entirely traditional drama turned to SF by the addition of magic impulse drive / dilithium crystal devices. When we've done a robotic Mars sample return, which although fiendishly hard to accomplish is infinitely more practical than doing a manned mission), let's talk about Moonbase Alpha or whatever. (And whilst we're at it, for god's sake abandon the ISS, the most expensive white elephant ever to wreck astronomical observations.)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
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.
IMO, the only way to significantly put a dent in the budget would be to cut back on gratuitous spending, period.
You know, the dole out's in the millions of dollars to study stupid shit like environmental studies for running a highway through a congressman's swamp property.
And who came up with this harebrained scheme to give my tax dollars to Joe Crackhead and Janet Babymachine?
But congress will never pass the line item veto or adopt a ban on earmarks. Never that is, until we have an armed uprising.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
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.
I agree with you in principle; Obama should definitely validate the actual need for existing programs (military and domestic), and kill those we can live without. I disagree, though, that the F-35 is "bleeding edge" (its focus has always been on affordability as an export fighter set to compete with the French Rafale, the Swedish Gripen, and the multi-national Eurofighter rather than "performance at any cost"), or that it can be replaced by "incremental upgrades" to the existing fleet.
The F-35 has strong international support from US allies who have helped fund and execute the program (including the United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore). It is the only potential replacement for the badly aging AV-8B Harrier II, and will also replace the F-16, A-10, EA-6B, and F/A-18 (except the Super Hornet model, for which it serves as a stealth-capable adjunct).
in favor of re-capitalizing with incremental improvements to exiting proven systems
This argument just doesn't work well for the F-35. While we could arguably replace existing F-16 inventories with the F-16 Block 60, and just buy more F-18 E/F Super Hornets for the Navy, we'd be left with two problems that make your suggestion impractical.
"Incremental improvements" to the Harrier II would be cost-prohibitive, and likely wouldn't solve the major supportability issues it faces. Remember, a STOVL aircraft lives or dies on weight. Cutting weight is hard. Adding weight in a mid-life upgrade is easy. Cost-wise, an "incremental improvement" to the Harrier II is equivalent to a re-design - and we've already paid for a redesign in the F-35. (Same basic problem in the long run with the A-10, though we have more time in that aircraft's instance.)
Second problem is more severe - you can't "incrementally upgrade" an existing aircraft to stealth. Other than the (expensive and non-exportable) F-22, the F-35 is the only fifth generation stealth fighter available to the allied military. The value of stealth has been proven thoroughly and repeatedly; GIYF.
Just as you have to eventually forsake upgrading your beloved IBM XT and buy a new freaking machine, it's time to replace Harrier II's and their generational cohorts with a new platform for the next 50 years - which explains the strong international support behind the F-35.
The F-35 is already in low-rate production after 12 years of competition and detailed design work, and is only 4 years from initial deployment in the USA and UK. Killing it now would be incredibly foolish - and I don't think Obama is foolish in the least.
(All of the F-35 info above I pulled from Wikipedia, of course.)
The question is, are the F-22 and F-35 (a) addressing the real needs of our military forces, and (b) are they cost-effective ways of doing that (particularly the F-22, which costs upwards of 100 million per plane)? Currently, the United States Air Force has air superiority, and few nations have anything (or plan to build anything) that can touch the F-15. Now, it's probably a good idea to make sure that we retain our air superiority, but do we really need both the F-22 and the F-35 to do that, or could we get by with just one? Or what about maintaining air superiority using unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs)? Doubtless, being able to maintain air superiority is going to be critical in future wars. But the reality is that many of the wars of the next 20-30 years will probably look a lot more like Afghanistan and Iraq than they will look like World War II. A 100 million dollar supercruising stealth plane doesn't do you a hell of a lot of good if the enemy's primary weapon is illiterate, brainwashed jihadis armed with kalashnikovs.
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.
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.
This can be logically extended to, "every tax dollar you don't spend on the army means killing more of your own soldiers". So, should we cut down on everything else, and redirect any gains to the army, to "support the truth"?
Of course, it is a fallacy. If you're not willing to see more your fellow countrymen in your armed forces die, just stop fighting in pointless wars.
"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.
Currently, the United States Air Force has air superiority
...
That's why it's called air superiority, not air just-a-little-better-than-everyone-else. Its purpose is to ensure that the air can be used at will by the commander - not that he might-or -might-not be able to use the air, if the enemy doesn't try too hard, and he got a mother may I
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.
Rant!
This is the main beef I have with people who call themselves "anarcho-capitalist economic libertarian" etc. Social programs like healthcare apparently mean nothing, but when scaling back our gluttonous military-industrial complex (well over 50% of our federal taxes) is ever brought up, you guys sound all butt-hurt. Sure, it could be a different technocrat group, but it sounds like it's coming from the libertarian camp. If I were to cut back government spending, the "richest military in the world" budget would be the first place I'd look.
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.
I second this. IMO, the only way to significantly put a dent in the budget would be to cut back on defense spending.
Then you have no actual knowledge of the Federal budget. Defense spending has decreased as a percentage of discretionary spending every year for the past 42 years, while entitlement programs have ballooned to make up the vast majority of the federal budget. Cutting more defense spending would be cutting a small chunk off of a small chunk.
Now I'm not saying we couldn't/shouldn't cut back on defense spending, but to imply or state that it would be the *only* effective measure in reducing the deficit is just not factual.
http://perotcharts.com/category/federal-budget-charts/page/9/
2007 Defense spending is approx 20% of federal spending as a whole, so even a 25% cut in defense spending would only have a net effect of a 5% reduction in spending. Not nearly enough to put a 'significant dent' in the budget.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
"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.
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
Typical. What happened to: The money came from the people, give it back to them.
A recent report by the Washington Post reports that over $49 Million in farm subsidies has gone to people who make more than cut off $2.5 Million per year. I've never been a fan of subsidies to begin with, I bet you can imagine how I feel when anyone making millions a year gets a check for free money
Link
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...
if you don't want to lessen the value of human soldiers, then the best thing to do isn't to waste money on exorbitant defense projects, but to deploy the armed forces only when it is absolutely necessary. that is, if you value the lives of soldiers you won't put them in harm's way unnecessarily.
our defense budget is far and beyond that of all other nations, but i very much doubt that Canada, France, Sweden, Japan, etc. value the lives of their soldiers any less than we do.
No! We call ourselves quasi-pseudo-post-incremental-neo-economic libertarian logistical confabulators for anti-social justice..and veggie vampires...per se...
Who? You mean the guy who designed the income tax withholding system?
If the US would like to remain a world military player, being able to put people in orbit would probably be a plus.
If we're talking defense, being able to at-will remove the people others spent a fortune putting into orbit would be a double-plus
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.
Because while the US is more than capable of "bombing Iraq back to the stone age", as many people were very fond of pointing out back then, and your comment about levelling the place reflects, the problem in Iraq is political, and turning Iraq into a smoking crater wasn't a solution to that problem. The US knows how and has the ability to do that very well, what it struggles with is with understanding politics.
I remember what it was like back then quite well. The general american impression was that the US Army would stride into Iraq (no problems there), quickly crush Iraq's army (no problems there either) and the entire population of Iraq would run to hug their saviors. Well, that last part didn't happen. And blowing things up and killing people doesn't that make more likely to happen either, so the US is kind of stumped there.
On your comment of "levelling the place": Nobody is impressed. Everybody knows you can do that, but there's the little problem of that the whole point was to liberate Iraq, not to kill every single person in it, and such a "solution" to the problem wouldn't be welcome by the rest of the world.
But the reality is that many of the wars of the next 20-30 years will probably look a lot more like Afghanistan and Iraq
You only need to lose one conventional war on your home turf to realize how important defense spending really is.
Yes. Like Health Care.
I am hoping you didn't post your comment to posit the notion that government should have any major role in Health Care.
Big lies are not going to be allowed to continue.
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.
Spoken like someone who has no idea why it will always be possible for a single crazy fuck to damage large areas.
You could put a platoon on every block in this country, and I could tell you how to blow up a building. Defence against a small one shot attack is impossible in the long run. And while money is poured into the problem endlessly, it's simply a no-fix situation.
Even when we sort out the fact that half the world thinks we're satans bastard children, even when the world is singing and dancing together, there's still going to be sick fuckers out there who want to blow shit up, and defence is never 100% for that in a country with any semblence of freedom.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
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.
Exactly! Thats why the French, the Germans, the Italians, and the Polish spend a vast majority of their national budgets on defense! God dude, you're fucking brilliant, you should be the SecDef!
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Imagine you have the most amazing collection of hammers in the world in your toolbox. If you don't have any screwdrivers or wrenches then a lot of tasks are going to be awkward.
The US military is poorly equipped and organized for the kind of thing we were trying to do in Iraq. A lot of the money goes into things that are force multipliers: making individual soldiers more deadly, making units of force agile and able to move in a precisely coordinated way. In a way, we made our military a powerful instrument for imposing our will upon regimes; imposing your will on a country requires a different set of skills and a different organization.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That's not going to happen, Obama is already planning an end run around the constitution by establishing a Civilian National Security Force
That sounds like a lot of poorly trained "troops" on the ground not restrained by the typical constitutional limits on authority and funding that the Army is under.
So basically once anyone wanting a decent education will have to become one of Obama's brown shirts and submit to indoctrination the powers that be deem necessary. The eventual NASA cuts will just be part of the "throw the baby out with the bathwater" approach typical of radical anti-estabishmentarians.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
No, it was $2.5Mil gross income. Totally misleading story it was.
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.
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?
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
I think you mean manned jets?
You'll find the answer fighting any AI creatures in any FPS game on the planet. Computers still lack the tactical depth and flexibility of the human mind, and a remote link suffers from temporal, tactile and reliability shortcomings on the battlefield.
Perhaps in 20-50 years we'll be able to replace soldiers on the battlefield (land, air and sea), but in the meantime, wetware in the loop will win almost every battle.
There are two similar, but distinct conversations on this topic. You replied to somebody who talked about the common defense because that's in the constitution. The only reason the US Federal government exists is because some people drafted a constitution to create it. It doesn't inherently exist, and it has no inherent authority or duties except what the constitution says. Talking about what the government should be doing according to the constitution is one conversation. It's supposed to be doing (in this sense) some of what you talk about. For example, the constitution explicitly mentions post roads, so an interstate transportation system is among its duties and obligations.
There is also a conversation about what an ideal government in an ideal modern society ought to do. It sounds like this is what you are talking about. It's not a bad conversation. And, frankly I support the idea of the federal government being more involved in education, which you mention. But, it's important to realise that there are two different conversations going on between yourself and the person you replied to.
If the federal government fails to provide for defense, then it is violating the rules that permit it to exist, and the citizens have a right to dissolve it and declare the government null and void. That's the deal. If we get to a world where defense seems like an archaic task for the federal government, we could certainly create an ammendment to change the list of things that the government is "supposed to be doing." But, it's not about "according to who." It really is a concrete, not personal opinion lists of things that the government is supposed to do. (Though, interpretations of that list are of course wildly variable! That's the fun of vague arhcaic language.)
So, I'm not arguing with you. I'm just pointing out that you aren't arguing with the guy you replied to.
For profit is really working, isn't it?
Show me the other choices.
(cue the rants about how we'll all be waiting in line with compound fractures)
Since 1967, the federal government has appropriated the excess monies paid into the Social Security system into the rest of federal spending because after just 4 years of the Great Society, politicians realized it was already bankrupting us. In return, Congress gave Social Security an IOU, promising to return the money when Social Security needed it.
That is, Social Security money goes into the general fund and is spent as fast as it comes in. It isn't invested and it isn't saved for the day Social Security starts paying out more than it takes in (projected to be 2017). So, yes, Social Security is as much a part of the federal budget as national defense spening.
The fun will be, come 2017, when Social Security becomes insolvent. Benefits will have to be cut for the baby boomers (pissing off an entire generation), taxes will have to be raised extraordinarily on the working age people (pissing off multiple generations) or we're going to have to deficit spend until there is no tomorrow, obliterating the value of the dollar. We've been playing games and sticking our head in the sand hoping that the day will never come, but it will... if it isn't 2017, it'll just be pushed back another couple years. The best part is, the people who are responsible for the decades of wasteful spending, appropriating Social Security money for federal spending, refusing to reform Social Security, etc will be dead and gone, having left us with trillions of dollars in debt while they lived it up at our expense.
Stop Koolaid Politics
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.
FCS and F-22 are needed not for Iraq, but for a different mission all together; In case we are attacked by another super power. Keep in mind that we WERE the ULTRA power prior to W getting in (that is, that we were alone in capability). Now, W and the neo-cons have destroyed our ability to fight as well as have allowed countries like China to become a superpower (mostly by doing NOTHING about the theft going on AND our companies selling and transfering tech and knowledge to there). Roughly, W has created a HORRIBLE situation in which instead of 1 ultra power, we now have 3-4 superpowers, which tends to lead to wars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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
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?
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 ?
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." - John F. Kennedy
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.
Maybe those farmers should consider NOT growing Franken-crops from Monsanto, then, if it's no longer economically advantageous to do so (to say nothing of any of the other negative impacts of those crops). Maybe they should go back to more "old fashioned" methods where they can, you know, actually keep/trade seed they've grown which they can use to plant next year's crop for free, instead of being bent over the barrel by greedy corporations every single year. Free seed, more biodiversity, less profit for scumbags like Monsanto... ahh, who am I kidding? It's a pipe dream.
Currently, the United States Air Force has air superiority That's why it's called air superiority, not air just-a-little-better-than-everyone-else. Its purpose is to ensure that the air can be used at will by the commander - not that he might-or -might-not be able to use the air, if the enemy doesn't try too hard, and he got a mother may I ...
I think you are speaking of air supremacy - i.e. we would be able to destroy any ( perhaps several :-) ) air force(s) that dared to take to the skies.
Air superiority is merely having a significant advantage in the air.
I know. I said "should".
Notice the situation we've gotten into here. "Program A is wasteful; we should cut it!" "You think A is wasteful? We should cut B instead!" "Well, what about C?"
Unless we restore the Constitutional limits of government, which would mean getting rid of programs A through Z through Omega, most of NASA included, then we're unlikely to ever contain spending until we suffer a collapse.
Revive the Constitution.
No it wasn't misleading at all. Some of the people they found where multi-millionaires like ex-Microsoft owner Paul Allen. The money was meant to go to small farmers, farmers whos gross incomes where in the 400,000-500,000 dollar range with NO OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME beyond what they made farming. Its going to mega-corp farmers who are using accountants to play around with their income though which is not what it was intended to go to.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
"will do" sounds pretty much like political-speak for required to me
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In America (so far, anyway) Capitalism stands not so much on it being most efficient, but on the human rights. See, unless a behavior hurts somebody, it is allowed. My right to sell a product or a service at whatever price I darn please derives not from this being the most efficient way of doing things, but from that famous Right to Pursue Happiness.
If that seems "cut-throat" to you, then so be it — nobody ever promised you anything other than pursuit of happiness. Or, at least, so it was, until one asshole realized, he can get elected by telling 19 people: "See that 20th guy over there? He is very rich. Vote for me (19:1) and we'll take from him and give to you. Woo-hoo!" Never mind, that the 20th guy is already paying for himself and 11 others — he can pay for even more, because we'll make him.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
Listen to the words of Peter Schiff who predicted this mess. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5ifr0iskSc