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NASA's Cashflow Problem Puts Moon Trip In Doubt
krou writes "According to the Guardian, the Augustine panel is going to declare that there is simply no money to go back to the moon, and the next-generation Ares I rocket is likely to be scrapped unless there is more funding. The $81B Constellation Program's long-term goal of putting a human on Mars is almost certainly not going to be possible by the middle of the century. The options outlined by the panel for the future of NASA 'are to extend the working life of the aging space shuttle fleet beyond next year's scheduled retirement until 2015, while developing a cheaper transport to the moon; pressing ahead with Constellation as quickly as existing funding allows; or creating a new, larger rocket that would allow exploration of the solar system while bypassing the moon.' All of this means that NASA won't be back on the moon before the end of the next decade as hoped, 'or even leaving lower Earth orbit for at least another two decades.' Another result of the monetary black hole is that they don't have the '$300m to expand a network of telescopes and meet the government's target of identifying, by 2020, at least 90% of the giant space rocks that pose a threat to Earth.'"
We're in the middle of a recession that's one of the longest on record. They're projecting that the budget they have now will be the same fifty years from now, and everyone panics over this? Oh please. Just wait until the Chinese start firing rockets into space with people on them and design their own Apollo program. I bet legislators will look between the couch cushions then and find the spare cash they need to one-up them. I've never credited Congress with an abundance of brains, but pride? Oh, they got that in spades.
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It's in Congress' collective pockets. And going towards fruitless things like corporate bailouts.
I propose a new tax. Hear me out please. Every time a white boy is raised in a loving home in suburbia and thinks he's a bad-ass, hard-ass street thug because he listens to top-40 rap on MTV and carefully rehearses his Ebonics until he speaks like someone who grew up in the Projects, tax half of his income. Put that money towards NASA. There's so many of these otherwise useless bastards that it should take about one year before we have a McDonalds on fucking Mars.
The "get off this rock" crowd is a magical-religious cult, not a serious proponent of realistic, feasible, affordable, desirable, or even specific projects.
Except that space advocates have been for decades proposing projects which are entirely realistic, feasible, and specific. Whether they're affordable is of course an open question, and whether they're desirable is a matter of opinion, but there is nothing like the ambiguity you claim.
Manned colonization of the cosmos is, at the present time and likely for centuries to come, no different from a belief in an afterlife filled with saints, virgins, and angelic personages.
By saying "cosmos," you're conflating science-fantasy ideas about warp drives and such with well-understood science and engineering problems involved in colonizing the Solar System. I suspect you're doing this deliberately to make it all look equally silly. In case you're really so ignorant that you don't understand the difference:
Cosmos -- not going to happen without fundamental changes in our understanding of physical laws. Too bad.
Solar System -- easily doable with technology that exists right now, using little more than a Newtonian understanding of the world.
It is not real.
Human footprints on the Moon are real. Many of the people who put them there are still alive. That's as real as it gets.
If you want inspiration, stick to anime.
How about being inspired by the actual record of what people did? Are you actually more inspired by fiction than by real life?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Because it certainly has not had any impact on the orgy of irresponsible spending of President Obama and his fellow Democrats.
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Face it, it isn't because we "DON'T" have the money its because NASA != votes.
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I/O:
Please don't toss out "Iraq". That old throw away line was childish during Bush's years and just as tired now. Iraq had no bearing either.
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It is no more difficult than that. There is no conspiracy.
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This not because of Iraq/Afghanistan. This is not because of a bloated defense budget.
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It simply is because NASA does not generate votes or control and as such does not qualify for a President or Congress not interested in science.
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Please don't confuse a President who TALKS about being for science, just understand the science politicians support is the science that polls well.
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