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?

Sheesh

[Shivetya]

Quit whining about budgets and work on cutting edge projects?

HELLOOOO

Why do you think they are not? Simple because their budget isn't there. They can't pie in the sky because they aren't getting money. They don't generate enough votes.

Politicians look for votes. Our money buys them votes. As such they will put the money to where it gets the most votes for the least investment. NASA is a large investment for a small return, 10 billion spent at NASA doesn't cover nearly as many votes as 10 billion on a new bridge or entitlement program. I am quite sure they have lots of CE projects on file, they just know they will not even get a hearing because the politicians are more concerned about feeding the greed of America's new looter class because that class keeps them in power.

Science and Math will become a priority when they generate votes. Just like your child's education, when those kids can vote then education will become a priority, they don't worry about the parents because every parent thinks their school is fine - its just those other schools. Hence education gets dumbed down, kids don't learn, instead of wanting to become a scientist they want to play ball and space sits out there waiting for a nation driven by pride and hard work will be the one to exploit it.

Re:Sheesh

[jswatz]

Hey there--it's John, the guy who wrote the story. There are other factors at play besides the number of votes that an initiative can generate. For example, the place that the votes are generated is important, and space states like Florida have pretty important votes. The companies that benefit from space spending are also influential. NASA centers and NASA work is spread out all across the country. There are many reasons that Congressional support for NASA remains high and bipartisan -- not just the ones I've named, but the inspiration that NASA can provide to kids who might pursue careers in science and engineering. But the support hasn't been there to give NASA substantially MORE money, and that's why there's going to be a gap in US space flights.

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.

Re:Can't keep putting everything on our credit car

[Shakrai]

Even after a large asteroid hit

Why do we have to take the hit if we have a workable space program? I'd rather deflect the damn thing than start digging tunnels while meekly accepting the fact that the vast majority of the human race and biosphere would die off.

The space program is pretty cheap if you look at it that way.

Re:But teh gubment is BAD! Corporations are teh GU

[Skye16]

Okay, sure. There are approximately 6 billion people in the world, all with their own particular values and opinions. You could surely collapse some values of certain swathes of people into a group of norms, but we're still talking at least hundreds of thousands of viewpoints, if not millions (depends on how specifically you try to categorize said opinions). Just looking at their books and various other writings, I can easily assume that they did not take into consideration hundreds of thousands of viewpoints. Therefor, they did not take into consideration all of the variables involved in reality.

I do not have to get more specific than that. They may have focused on the most prevalent viewpoints, but to say they considered every last aspect of humanity's individuality and its' effects on the average social viewpoints is patently absurd. The problem is, since everybody is different, the interplay between the individual and the social norm is subtle. The best way to describe the reality of society is to liken it to determining the weather. Chaos theory, perhaps, describes it best.

In essence, Marx and Locke focused on abstracts. The problem is reality has so many specific instantiations of unforseeable behavior that their economic models tend to break down the moment you put them into play with large groups of people. These models then need "fixes" applied, like patches, over time. It's not to say that Locke or Marx were idiots; they were quite intelligent men, regardless of your opinion on their socio-economic models. But to say the abstract models they specified will work flawlessly in society is foolishness. Every model currently in play in the world is an example of that. They were adopted with the purest of intentions, but patch after patch was overlaid upon them to rectify some perceived flaw in some specific case. Then you get American Capitalism, British Capitalism, German Socialism, Vietnamese Communism, Chinese Communism, etc, etc. They're all examples of how these models broke down upon entering society. In an ideal world, no one would want to modify the models at all, and then Locke or Marx's utopia would flourish and everyone would be dancing in the street as they basked in the fruits of their perceived "right way to live" socio-economic model.

But it has never happened and it never will happen, and therein is the entire point I was trying to make.

Re:Can't keep putting everything on our credit car

[shmlco]

Further, people talk about spending money on "space" like we take the dollars, stuff 'em in a rocket, and shoot it off. Those dollars are spent here, on earth, and create jobs and opportunities for lots of people. Not to mention the spinoffs we get as a byproduct.

We can either just give money away (welfare), or spend it to create jobs and knowledge. I prefer the later.