The Fight Over NASA's Future

swestcott writes "The New York Times has an interesting article about the transition to the Obama administration and NASA's transition to the new Orion."

Comments

I need rehab

[mcgrew]

Troll biter's rehab. Damn but it's hard to ignore the clueless trolls. I guess I'm off the wagon again, I have to respond.

"Pork"? WTF??? Do you have any idea how many technological advances, especially in medicine, that have come from the space program?

Do you have cable TV? A cell phone? GPS? None of these would be possible were it not for the "pork spending" on space. All of them rely on sattelites.

"physics"? What kind of drooling anti-nerd can't understand that launching a heavy machine into outer space doesn't use physics?

"Chemistry?" You realise how much chemistry work is involved in fuels?

If I were modding I would be undecided whether to mod the parent as "troll" or "funny". Who let all these clueless MBAs in here anyway?

But teh gubment is BAD! Corporations are teh GUD!

[damburger]

NASA is being set up to fail, because of the prevailing pro-corporate attitude in the US. The idea is that private entities are efficient, responsible, and capable of long-term planning and technological development. So nobody wants to be accused of being 'socialist' by giving more money to a government agency.

The original Apollo program cost $135 billion in modern(ish) money over about 10 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_costs_and_cancellation

Whereas Constellation is being given $3 billion a year for about 20 years, or about $60 billion in current money.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/detail/10004394.2006.html

So the US government is expecting a great deal more, for a lot less money, when there has been no real development in interplanetary manned travel since Apollo.