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US Manned Space Flight Taking a Budget Hit
An anonymous reader points out that Congress has quietly begun dismantling NASA's manned space flight program. "Other recommendations contained in the bill include a $77million reduction in NASA's proposed space operations budget, which includes the space shuttle and international space station; a $6 million reduction in science; and a $332 million shift in funds from the Cross Agency Support account to a new budget line-item included in the subcommittee's mark. Dubbed Construction and Environmental Compliance, the new account would be funded at $441 million. Congressional aides said the new line item and accompanying funds are aimed at consolidating NASA's various construction efforts into a single pot of money."
In a bad economy, pure science and space exploration seem to be first on the budget chopping block. However the information learned and technology developed while performing these activities quite often lead to innovations that fuel the economy for years to come.
The shuttle replacement is over-budget, under-spec, and without a realistic mission. We have trouble building and servicing a base going around the Earth, in zero-g... why does NASA think we can do this without busting timelines or budgets on the moon?
I wish Bush had set a more realistic goal... landing on near earth asteroids. Then NASA would have two things going for it - something never done, and a bs fallback line to feed axe wielding politicians (we need these missions to learn how to blow up incoming astroids - you want to tell your constituents why they need to live in a tent camp for the next 5 years when we evacuate all of New Mexico?).
Now all NASA has is a half-assed Apollo clone, no clear goal, and a loud insurgent campaign (DIRECT). I just hope this doesn't blow-back and foul up the fairly successful non-manned space missions.
Obama will put stimulus as he promised for science...
I just saw this April 2009 video interview with John Carmack this morning, where he mentions that some of their NASA work is up in the air, pending the budget shakeout. Does this mean no more NASA work for Armadillo Aerospace?
It does emphasize one benefit of private research and development: not subject (as in "we kill you right now") to such political money shuffling.
-Malloc
___________________ I want to be free()!
order-of-magnitude reduction in U.S. credit financing.
Yours In Space,
Kilgore Trout
The expensive thing about manned space exploration is the added costs of bringing the explorers back. Manned exploration would be cost-competitive with robotic exploration if we just sent astronauts on one-way trips! Any volunteers?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
(1) NASA. Censored documents on global warming and climate change to meet his views, but at least the funding was relatively fine. (2) The U.S. Mint, because how dumb do you have to be to screw up the seigniorage from the state quarter program? Based on this, we can conclude that the Mint will do something stupid, like a series of sharp-cornered triangular dimes with a series of vice presidents on the front, in order to provide stimulus for the band-aid industry.
With robotics coming such a long way since the 60s, it is more efficient and cheaper to just send robots to do all the exploring and data/sample collection in space. Until the average American thinks the cost of human presence in space is a priority for the tax payer dollar, space flight will have to be unmanned in the meantime. We are just going to have to wait for China or another rising global leader to send humans to Mars until the US population is willing to put in the extra effort and dollar to compete in a second space race and reinflate their ego as the "pioneers of space".
"Engineering. Where the noble, semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream." -Sheldon
If there is no market for manned space flight, then using your taxpayer dollars for it is simple misallocation and waste of resources. Ask the Soviets what the ultimate outcome of such State resource management is.
The next pasture is always greener
billions will go to israel
(slow down cowboy!! slashdot can't handle your quick posting!!)
And the money we 'sunk' into GM was peanuts compared to what we sunk into Wallstreet. Am I correct in guessing you are one of those people who saw that as perfectly justifiable? If not, why not mention GM instead?
No, the money sunk in Wallstreet was a colossal mistake.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Without our biggest dreams, even our smallest hopes are lost.
And so the Spirit of our country is lost.
:T:R:A:N:S:
That is exactly how they would like it portrayed. The real truth is we are lucky to have any budget for NASA currently. Considering the reckless, if not criminal, debt being piled up in just the first year I will be surprised if NASA doesn't get bigger cuts going forward. How long can the funny money last? The real threat to scientific investment by the US government is all the new entitlements and "stimulus of the moment" bills coming down the pike. Eventually reality will bite us hard, we cannot print our way into having it all, someone pays the bill.
NASA's budget has always been pitiful. It will continue to be so because it isn't the science of the rich and powerful climate groups who have the money to buy influence to get even more money. I expect NASA money to be directed into more "Climate" areas as a way of funneling money to payoff people who voted right or supported the right people.
Each year we seem to get new reasons to blame NASA's budget shortfall but in the end it really all boils down to NASA is being kept around because they have to keep it. If it were not for other nations reaching for space currently or the military needing to keep progress going I would have had no doubt that NASA would be reduced to unmanned flights.
Until NASA becomes a real public interest it won't get money. NASA generates very few votes. It would probably take a meteor or Extraterrestrial's to get people interested enough to where they get the funding many of us here like.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Obama: cut Constellation to pay for education
November 20, 2007
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2007/11/20/obama-cut-constellation-to-pay-for-education/
The consistently weird thing about Obama is that all of the very worst predictions about him keep coming true [Bill Clinton, for instance, was far more inconsistent in his politics] - Obama really does subscribe to this tribalistic, Bolshevik form of Mugabeism - he really is a true believer.
He's working out great, isn't he.
Russia, China, India, the hope for a human future in space.
Right, lets leave it to private enterprise, so they can do for spaceflight what they've done for the financial services industry.
Your invisible hand is superstitious bullshit. Market equilibrium is a concept entirely at odds with empirical reality. Get over yourself, and stop ramming idiotic libertarian pop economics into every argument.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
...but I have a better plan..
We did the Apollo thing not really to do it, but to rub the Soviet's nose in it. The the NASA manned program feels like it's been coasting on "hey, wasn't that AWESOME?!" for the last thirty years.
Don't get me wrong - I love the space program and think it's money well spent (overall - Ares/Orion is debatable, but look at the science we've gotten from Hubble and compare the cost of the maintenance flights against, say... the F-22 Raptor program). However, there's no competition in the manned arena and there hasn't been since the days of the Saturn V and the N-1 (or space stations, if you want to go there - We've fielded one and a fraction. The russians have done much, much more in that area).
And there won't be competition until China - who's been excluded from the ISS program - starts making some serious strides towards putting a man on the moon. Or mars. Or an asteroid or a comet or whatever.
So despite the setbacks they've faced, I'm all for the Chinese space program - eventually they'll catch up to NASA/Roscosmos and we won't have a choice - we'll have to get off our asses and start giving a shit about the manned program again, or lose the prestige forever.
NASA costs pennies compared to the black hole of the bailouts and massive defense boondoggles such as the recent USAF tanker fiasco or the Army's Future Combat Systems. Pennies - fractions of pennies - on the dollar, with REAL results.
Obama needs to grow a backbone and stand up to the Republicans he is trying to appease by continuing overseas military operations.
You seriously believe this - that the ineffective and lame Republicans are somehow holding Obama to continuing overseas operations? That they are somehow doing this with an effectively filibuster-proof majority in congress (taking RINO's into account)?
I'd love to hear your theories about the 9/11 attacks.
That's because we spend far more than any other country, not because we are efficient. I'm not sure that's the same as "competitive".
Plus, it could be argued that unmanned missions are scientifically more cost-effective (a long, complicated, contentious debate).
Table-ized A.I.
Okay, so what's the national interest in manned space flight? I'd be firmly against cutting NASA's more scientific work, but the manned space program doesn't do nearly as much for science as other NASA programs.
It's cool to get people off the planet, but it costs a whole lot of money to get them into low Earth orbit, let alone somewhere interesting.
Manned space flight seems to have lost the inspirational value it had in the 1960s, it doesn't produce good scientific returns compared to the unmanned probes, it takes money and attention from the really useful space stuff, it's hurt our satellite-launching capability, and if there's commercial value in sending people into LEO some company will take it up. Why should we be doing it?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It's always been clear that the Democrats would gut the space program.
Sad, by electing Obama, we've put the last hopes of space progress behind us. We're a smaller nation as a result. Pretty much the plan, I guess.
Obama needs to grow a backbone and stand up to the Republicans he is trying to appease by continuing overseas military operations. Instead of diplomatically engaging with the Muslims, keeping a heavy military presence in their countries in order to "stop terrorism" is only pissing away funds that could be better used elsewhere.
Obama is engaging heavily with Muslim leaders, even making overtures to Iran to prevent the next mid-east debacle (which would make Iraq look like Candy Land). So it's not a matter of "instead". As far as the military presence, he's pulling out of Iraq -- not as fast as I'd like by any means, but about as fast as is responsible I must admit. Afghanistan, now that's the conflict that actually made sense, and with an actual enemy and lines and territory won and lost, our military has a prayer in hell of winning. It will still be expensive at a time we don't need it, absolutely, but at the same time we can't let Afghanistan fall to the Taliban again. Hopefully with us focused solely on that, and Pakistan starting to get serious about their Taleban problem now that it's hurting them, we can resolve it soon. Okay, I don't have that much hope, but it will help.
The full budget requested by NASA was 4 billion dollars (As per TFA, Congress reduced it to $3.2 billion). Guess what? We piss away this much amount in Iraq every two weeks!
I hear ya. Really, this pissing around with millions here and there, targeting "earmarks" and such that nobody is going to be able to get rid of anyway, is just a distraction that can ultimately just backfire. You might think the ten million here, half billion there would add up and it does... to a pretty small fraction of the budget. There are bigger issues there. Robbing NASA of $800 million that can be used for doing their special kind of advanced R&D that can benefit us going forward... silly.
So getting back to one of the things that does matter, I wonder how much cheese we will save when at long last we're not more than a token presence in Iraq. I know we're ramping up in Afghanistan, so that offsets any gains. I am willing to bet it'll be enough that scraping that $800 mil off NASA's budget won't seem like it was much use.
The enemies of Democracy are
Manned space flight is a complete waste of money right now. It achieves very little and makes everything an order of magnitude heavier and more complex. We need less astronauts and more Mars rovers.
No sig today...
The invisible hand that allowed the financial mess in the first place. Except this hand wasn't invisible, it was Uncle Sam's hand who allowed the credit swaps and actually encouraged it, it was the government who allowed bank mergers creating full service banks which was not technically possible until they relaxed the rules, and it was the government that drew up a pyrimid scheme with Fanny and Freddie in which they sought to artificially increase real estate prices as a way repay bond holders.
You cannot rest the blame on the mess your talking about purely on market forces, the government shares just as much if not more blame through their relaxing and refusal to enforce regulation. And no, you can't blame it on one party either, the democrats have a much larger majority then the republicans ever had and it took both parties to make it happen.
While I'm an advocate of the commercial space segment, I think you're reaching a bit far here. Most people calling for it (myself included) believe that NASA needs to get out of the business of building launchers and buy them off the shelf, but continue their efforts to explore the frontier.
There are plenty of commercial opportunities for launching to LEO, and new NASA programs like COTS are attempting to foster this development by basically assuring the companies that the government will be a reliable customer. As such, it makes sense that NASA should limit its work on directing the construction of new launch vehicles and help to develop an open market that they and others can purchase from. Things like COTS, as well as efforts to reform ITAR would go a long way for this.
However, there is no reasonable commercial reason to do science and exploration, yet there is very high value for society in exploring and doing this science and development. This is exactly why we formed governments in the first place, to do the things that benefit our society and advance our interests that individuals and private groups are incapable of doing. Defense isn't really commercially beneficial (neglecting war profiteering which just leaches off of the government effort), but I think most people agree its necessary to some extent, thus why we have governments do it. In the 1500s and 1600s, governments paid for the initial exploration of the world, and only later did commercial entities come in to exploit and profit from it. Continued government spending on exploration efforts seems appropriate and proper if we ever want to leave the planet, especially at the low level of funding it has.
but this is just bullshit.
Baseless self confidence kills more people each year than bathtubs.
So what you are saying is that by not preventing (regulating) private action (creation of CDSs and full service banks), the government prevented the free market from working?
If I read you correctly: the government doesn't do anything==bad. The government does something==bad.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Oh no! Does this mean they'll have to use a sound stage in Vancouver?
Obama is following the SOFA agreement Bush put into place. The only difference is in the naming of the remaining forces. The SOFA agreement is the agreement giving the US authority to be on Iraq soil abd was negotiated by Bush before the Obama became president. It appears that it follows McCain's plan pretty close too.
War spending shouldn't be in conflict with other spending. That's why it is typically done off budget. Putting it on budget only causes crap like this to happen where good spending get cut under the cover of paying for it. Sure, we are spending more money then we should be. But not spending money in Iraq or anywhere else doesn't not mean that money would then be spend somewhere else nor now that it is on the budget, does it mean it will stop being spent. When they put the war spending on budget, it was done to raise the budget ceiling which is used to keep congress's spending somewhat under control. Now when the war is done and the spending isn't needed, congress can simply spend the money somewhere else.
No, what I am saying is that the regulation was already there but not enforced and loopholes in the regulation was created to allow practices that were specifically denied by laws and regulations on the books.
It's not a matter of Government regulation being good or bad, it's a matter of improper regulation, improper enforcement of regulation, and the lack of either all tied together being bad. We don't have a free market in the banking sector, we have a quasi-free market and actions by the government or the inaction by the government strongly effects it. It was a combination of actions in certain areas and inaction in others that allowed the blowup. This is why so many people blame elements of the CRA, Fannie and Freddie, the ponzi schemes, credit default swaps and so on. Not one of those caused the problem, a combination of them plus the lack of enforcement of existing regulation did. The private citizens involved outside of the schemes, was operating within the rules being enforced at the time.
Sending humans up into space is colossally expensive, and of little scientific interest in itself. (It has been proven that you can send humans up into space.) Actual experiments in space, be they to do with zero gravity, telescopes, or what have you can generally be conducted much more economically by mechanised probes.
For the past few decades, manned spaceflight was more a PR exercise than anything else. Someone would go up with a few schoolchildren's experiments, make a few transmissions and get some heroic news coverage. This would be great for national prestige, and to be one of those kids whose plant seedlings got taken up on the space shuttle would have been pretty awesome, though the scientific value of such missions hit the point of diminishing returns a while ago. Now the PR value seems to be declining as well (it has been almost half a century since the first astronauts went up), and the question must be asked: is it really the best use of such sums of money?
Ok, let's hear your theories about why Obama is still wasting so much money over there. As the other poster said, the entire NASA yearly budget is spent in Iraq every two weeks. What return are we getting on our investment?
Other recommendations contained in the bill include a $77million reduction in NASA's proposed space operations budget
When I read this I decided to see what that is relative to the Iraq war.
I'm using this chart as a reference. It says we've been at it for about 7 years, and it's cost about $670 billion in total.
So, 7 years is about 2500 days. Divide that through and you get about $268,000,000 per day. That works out to 11.16 million per hour.
77 million / 11.16 = 6.89 hours.
7 hours.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Obama is following the SOFA agreement Bush put into place. The only difference is in the naming of the remaining forces. The SOFA agreement is the agreement giving the US authority to be on Iraq soil abd was negotiated by Bush before the Obama became president. It appears that it follows McCain's plan pretty close too.
Yep. One thing I agree on with my very pro-war (and McCain) father is that the outcome was largely already decided and who got elected made little difference.
When they put the war spending on budget, it was done to raise the budget ceiling which is used to keep congress's spending somewhat under control Now when the war is done and the spending isn't needed, congress can simply spend the money somewhere else.
Well what on earth do you expect them to do? Relinquish the opportunity to spend money? Haha, fat chance. They've got to press on in the name of bipartisanship. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
We need less astronauts and more Mars rovers.
I think the exact opposite is true. While it is true that a robotic mission gives you the best science bang for the buck, in this economy we need inspiration more than data. Landing a team on the Moon, even if it is just a flags and footprints mission, will do far more to inspire people than some electric go cart taking pictures of rocks.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
...Might ask themselves whether the annual $650 billion military budget (fully half of the world's total military expenditure) might be better spent on things other than raining death on other countries.
You know, like schools, hospitals, roads, fire stations, police, ... and oh yeah, the manned space programme.
you had me at #!
I volunteer the politicians who put us in this budget mess to begin with.
Screw that! Why should they get the privilege? Let them rot in their piles of play money with their cronies, and send ME!
I'm actually serious about that. If there were an opportunity for a one-way suicide trip to Mars, then I would absolutely take it, if given the chance. A single person on Mars with some equipment and ingenuity could do more science in a few days than the Mars rovers have done in all off their years of service (and this is not to belittle them; they are brilliant feats of engineering).
One of my biggest dreams, that will most likely be unfulfilled, is to watch the sun rise from the top of the 6km high cliff along the southeastern base of Olympus Mons. And I would certainly NOT complain if that were to be the last thing I ever saw.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
doesn't mean it's a "non-thought"
Nice try, but it was mostly Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that fucked of the financial services industry.
Even still, maybe the private sector would do for space flight what it's done for the computer industry?
Also, even comrade Obama disagrees with you here, because as he's cutting NASA's budget he's giving out hundreds of billions of dollars to private companies in an ill conceived attempt to stimulate the private sector. Maybe you should tell him to stop spending so much money bailing out that "superstitious bullshit", and divert more of it to seemingly better causes, like the war on drugs, paying single moms to have kids, paying farmers not to farm, and sending people to Mars for no good reason.
Maybe not
I wish that was what everyone expected them to do. However, the manipulation and posturing with this scares me quite a bit.
Yeah, NASA could save bundle buying "off the shelf". For example, have you seen the prices on an IKEA Space Station? Who needs to do any of that international cooperation cr** for a measley little space station?! Of course you can't pick it up at a local store so you need to pay for shipping (LEO shipping costs an arm and a leg!) and some of the parts might be missing or a poor fit. But hey, they'll probably throw in some free rancid meatballs!
But seriously, while NASA's COTS efforts are saving money it can only go so far before pricey one-of-a-kind items are needed. It's amazing how much the price of something changes as soon as it becomes a safety-critical system, must endure harsh conditions, or operate reliably at distances that make repair impossible. Any one of those factors probably causes prices to double. Manned spaceflight often requires all three factors (and more).
Well what on earth do you expect them to do? Relinquish the opportunity to spend money? Haha, fat chance. They've got to press on in the name of bipartisanship. :)
Perhaps things will change after the economy collapses and Congress and the other politicians start getting a first-hand French history lesson in what the guillotine is and what it was used for by a violently-enraged general public.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
What you have blurted out of your noise hole is directly contrary to the consensus amongst professional economists. It is also contrary to logic - if these institutions were flawed because of government intervention why did they fail when government intervention in them was reduced, not when it was greater?
As for the computer industry: Bletchley Park, APRANET, the World Wide Web, Linux, the Apollo Guidance Computer - all developed without your beloved profit motive. Suck on it.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
.
The Pentagon will pick up the slack. They're almost finished with Phase One of Skynet. It's going to be... wonderful.
More news.
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blog me no blogs
Is this part of the Republican War on Science?
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Why? what right do you have to be there?
Actually, you don't have any right to be there...
Perhaps things will change after the economy collapses
What do you define as a collapse? Smaller countries which have collapsed recently typically ended up with more than 50% unemployed, no public services, and no electricity and running water most of the time- is this the sort of thing you are predicting for the US? If so, by when? (so we can check your sage predictions).
Ok, let's hear your theories about why Obama is still wasting so much money over there. As the other poster said, the entire NASA yearly budget is spent in Iraq every two weeks. What return are we getting on our investment?
None whatsoever. The reason to remain there is because you caused a fucking mess over there and now it's up to you to clean it up before you pack your bags and leave.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Which economists do you mean? And what reductions are you talking about? In fact, until very recently, government pressure to give out sub-prime loans had been increasing.
And most of those were only possible because of rapid developments in semiconductors and computer equipment, which evolved even faster, and didn't need government hand outs.
Also, Linux doesn't belong on your list, as it's not supported by taxes. I'm not arguing in favor of "profit motive" - I'm arguing against having to pay for stuff I don't think is important. If you want to voluntarily donate money to sending people to Mars, feel free, but you shouldn't be able to spend my money on sending people to Mars.
Maybe not
With no more manned space program to sap the funds from all the very worthwhile space exploration and science, we could be doing, there will be that many more discoveries made.
Except that the money will just disappear into the general fund. Still, it's better than completely wasting it on manned space missions.
...
How come it is that the cancellation of regular increases in the manned spaceflight program during a period when no manned spaceflight is planned is being called the "dismantling of the manned spaceflight program" in the summary? NASA's budget and program planning show an intent to keep the program running at the present level while they decide on what the next program is to be. Per TFA:
"In his opening statement at the markup hearing, Mollohan said the cut should not be viewed as a diminution of the subcommittee's support for NASA's human spaceflight activities. "Rather, it's a deferral taken without prejudice; it is a pause, a time-out, to allow the president to establish his vision for human space exploration and to commit to realistic future funding levels to realize this vision."
A summary so clearly contrary to TFA without the summary calling TFA wrong or a lie indicates no attention being paid to the facts. Could be an agenda with no support looking for an outlet, could be just a wild guess used instead of reading TFA. Either way, it's a good case for /. editors doing at least minimal research comparing the summary and TFA. Not doing so causes them to make the same mistake as the submitter.
It's criticism, in my opinion warranted, plainly presented, posted calmly, and you can like it or not. It is therefore not, per moderator guidelines, flame bait.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I wonder why the DoD wanted to be able to retrieve sattelites intact unless they had nuclear material on them.. Maybe there were sattelites with nukes orbiting the earth at one time... Probably not though. They probably just planned it to make some of the Star Wars junk they were scaring the Soviets with seem more plausable. I mean we wouldn't send up a sattelite with nukes ( such as that once planned sattelite that would explode a nuke to generate an X-Ray Laser to shoot down ICBMS. ) if there were no way to retrieve them. You wouldn't want to shoot it down ( or have it fall out of orbit ) with nuclear waste on board.
...
I mean, really. I quote paragraphs 3 & 4 in the article linked to:
Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the subcommittee's chairman, described the move as a "time-out" in the budget process as the White House awaits the findings of a 10-member panel tasked by the White House to reassess NASA's post-shuttle exploration plans. That panel, led by former Lockheed Martin chief Norm Augustine, is expected to report back with its findings in August.
In his opening statement at the markup hearing, Mollohan said the cut should not be viewed as a diminution of the subcommittee's support for NASA's human spaceflight activities. "Rather, it's a deferral taken without prejudice; it is a pause, a time-out, to allow the president to establish his vision for human space exploration and to commit to realistic future funding levels to realize this vision
--- end excerpt ---
Which is perfectly reasonable.
mark
Nice try, but it was mostly Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that fucked of the financial services industry.
Ok if that is true then why did these two organizations have the some of the lowest rates of "toxic assests" of all the financial lending organizations? The answer is because they were followers, not leaders in the CDO-swap maddness. To use a swimming analogy, really they only waded out into ocean up to their knees while many private firms cannonballed into it off the end of a pier.
While those two organizations do have their problems, blaming the financial crisis on Freddie and Fannie is red herring. It is also one without even the slightest connection to reality if you listen to interviews from people who were in the private financial firms and were involved in the actual lending and trading.
Given that I'm more interested in acquiring actual knowledge about Mars than I am with sending humans into space for the sake of doing it, color me onboard with robotic exploration of the planet.
Then again, I'm also totally onboard with the concept that Iraq was a much bigger waste of money than a manned space program, so there you are.
If the hardware component of NASA were to go away completely we would get way more bang for the buck. The analysis guys decided what they want to see/know, publish the specs, and let private enterprise create the cool toys.
The idea works like so:
We want X,Y,Z and we will pay $4B to the first company to complete the checklist for us and deliver the data to the public domain.
We'd get much more efficient use of the money and much faster progress. If you don't succeed you don't make any money, winnowing out the nut jobs that currently decide how NASA will spend money on rockets that don't/can't work. And yet we still get the data.
Maybe some small core group of scientists would remain NASA to do this pure research, but all the hardware and software to go get the data would move into the private sector funded by venture capital and rewarded by prizes.
There was never any chance Bush's plan would go forward no matter who was in office. We've sucked up so much money between pointless land wars in Asia and bailing out the financial sector that there's simply no discretionary money left, and the Bush plan was unbelievably expensive. Now if we were to cut our bloated defense budget (do we really need to spend as much as everyone else on earth... combined?), there might be some room for space exploration. But as it is, we continue to just burn money on more defense capability than we need.
Geez, it's like talking to a wall. 1) We have absolutely no use for Helium-3, and won't until we get fusion figured out (always 20 years away). 2) It will never, ever be more economical to go to Jupiter to get energy than it will to produce it from solar, etc, right here. 3) Asteroids are made out of nickel, iron, and silicates. So is the earth. It will never, ever be more economical to get these materials from space when we already have them here. You talk about how it's not economical to recycle some metals. So, hauling tons of material from space is going to be cheap? Give me a break.
Yes, having colonies in space would be cool. What it won't be is cost-effective, and that means it's probably not going to happen.
Right? I mean, if we can scrape together $4 billion taxpayer funds for Acorn, surely we can scrape together $100 million for NASA.
No, the answer is that the purpose of Freddie and Fannie was to buy mortages on the secondary market, securitize them, and then resell them. In other words, the entire point was to give credibility to the loans and then sell them off to other financial firms. That's why they had so few "toxic assets"... the entire point was to resell. The secondary result was that financial firms were more willing to make bad loans because they knew Freddie and Fannie would buy them.
Question: You're an official with a major financial institution, hoping to score some bail out money. You're high enough in the organization to speak to Congress and go on TV. Do you go in front of everybody and place the blame where it belongs, on the government, killing any chances of getting "free" money, or do you suck it up and take the fall, along with all the money that goes with it?
Businesses (especially huge, faceless businesses) don't have pride, and turning down billions of dollars of "free" money is just stupid. That's why the financial firm "insiders" are willing to take the blame.
Maybe not