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NASA Funding Boost, But No Shuttle Extension in Obama Budget
adeelarshad82 writes to point out that details have been provided for President Obama's proposed $18.7 billion in funding for NASA in 2010 (up from $17.2 billion in 2008). Quoting: "The budget calls on NASA to complete International Space Station construction, as well as continue its Earth science missions and aviation research. Yet it also remains fixed to former President George W. Bush's plan to retire the space shuttle fleet by 2010 and replace them with the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which would fly astronauts to the space station and return them to the moon by 2020. The outline does make room for an extra shuttle flight beyond the nine currently remaining on NASA's schedule, but only if it is deemed safe and can be flown before the end of 2010."
No idiotic talk of planting a flag on Mars.
* Continued funding of robotic exploration of everything outside of the Earth/Moon
* A focus on the meat and potato tech that is fundamental to our long term presence in space. Orbital construction, long term living in space, space science, space manufacturing, long term maintenance of equipment in space
* An eventual permanent base on the moon
But still good.
Anyone suggesting extending the shuttle program is advocating extending a clearly unsafe and inefficient program.
Instead, we should ramp up production to get the new systems in place ASAP. That it was scheduled with a gap in the first place is just shameful. It may be too late to avoid the lost air time, but I'd say we should try, and pay what we have to. The NASA budget is small potatoes, and incredibly important as we become more dependent on orbital systems.
No, "they" said nothing about that meaningless debate. Administrations generally don't design rockets in the federal budget.
Prediction: the heavy lift Ares V or its moral equivalent (Ares IV, DIRECT, yada yada...) will never be built. I will refer back to this in half a decade and you will acknowledge my brilliance.
The new budget commits only to Orion and it's launch vehicle (Ares I). That's the bare minimum necessary to replace the Shuttle in its LEO ISS crew transport and resupply role. Finishing Orion and Ares I is the politically easy thing to do because without it Obama would have to explain the end of US manned space flight, which is politically difficult.
Ares V, on the other hand, is several years down the road and a much bigger commitment. What's been done to-date can be dropped and quietly swept under the rug. It's not a 2012 issue and after that it doesn't matter, just as long as the NEA gets its dough.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Which won't happen until and unless we get a heck of a lot more competent in working in space. No giant Roombas. No magical lasers (with or without sharks). That is such a huge task (volume! volume! volume!) that our puny forays in LEO are just the very beginning of utilizing space.
In order for us to get anywhere near the tech to do that, we have to have a repeatable, sustainable presence in space. That's not what we're getting anytime soon.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Question: I have a picture of the LAST man on the moon in my screensaver - can you name him without looking it up?
While your raking your brain on that, let's go with your entertainment theory and assume people are not interested in science and just want to watch heroics. My prediction is that these people would not be interested in a Mars landing for the same reason they were not interested in the last man on the moon.
Why? - Because it's a rerun, they would simply shrug and say something like "what's the point, we've been to the moon already". The enourmous technological gap between a moon landing and a mars landing would be lost on them because they are not interested in men on Mars anymore than they are currently interested in men on the ISS. I was born the year after sputnik and grew up in the 60's, the Moon landing did indeed make the world stand with their collective jaws on the ground, but for the type of people you are describing the show ended with Apolo 11's return to Earth.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Orion and Direct are both pretty terrible, costwise. So Direct is a little better. In *theory*. But there are little incentives for the government to be efficient when they build these things. What congress should consider is Space X. Space X is fully private and is so much more efficient than NASA its crazy. And right now if we don't change anything we will use Russian Soyaz rockets to bring our people to the ISS, wasting taxpayers dollars in a foreign country. Even though Space X is 1 for 4, they already won the re-supply contract (pending some litigation) and their capsule is designed to carry people to space. We should cancel government funded efforts and instead contract it all out.
They would never get us to the moon, or put up the ISS. Instead, they would do something like build the Shuttle.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Dems have never been thrilled about 'spending money in outer space'"
Uhm... Do the initials "JFK" and "LBJ" ring any bells for you?
Dems have done plenty for spaceflight as well, and both sides like to use it as a chopping block when they need to cut spending, because voters are generally too short sighted to see the benefits.