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NASA May Drop Ares I-Y Test Flight
Matt_dk writes "Just one week after the first test launch of the Ares I-X rocket, NASA says it may decide to cancel a follow-up launch called Ares 1-Y, which wasn't scheduled until 2014. Reportedly, program managers recommended dropping the flight because, currently, there isn't funding to get an upper stage engine ready in time. Depending on whether the Obama administration decides to continue the Ares I program, this decision may be moot. Earlier this week Sen. Bill Nelson said Obama may make a decision on NASA's future path, based on the report by the Augustine Commission, by the end of November."
I wonder if NASA is going to be able to keep up internal interest on these projects with the way their budget keeps getting cleaved. Hell, I wonder how they managed to keep people onboard, what with a 5 year delay between test flights.
Too bad we spend a trillion dollars invading the wrong country based on obvious lies and fabrications. I think we would have been better off spending that money on cool space toys or at least getting Afghanistan right the first time.
We will be paying for the George W Bush's disastrous presidency for a very long time.
...that Obama is really a conservative, not a liberal.
I hope you're joking...
I suppose in some very liberal circles, Obama is conservative ... if you use "conservative" as a "relative" term. But you usually don't use it in a relative term without stating what it is relative to. A conservative democrat? A conservative republican? Conservative conservative?
Anyway, Obama seems to be more "populist" than anything. He won based on his popularity and charisma, not so much his liberal or conservative policies. From my viewpoint, Obama is very liberal. But then, I'm very conservative. So there you have it.
Have you seen his energy initiatives? You can pursue science and "the future of our species" without spending billions on pie-in-the-sky space projects.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a space junkie. I like Battlestar Galactica just like any other red-blooded American geek. And if we were overflowing in riches right now, I'd say let's go for it.
But the practical fact of the situation is that space exploration is only one miniscule part of science, and it is very, very expensive. Yes, you make engineering discoveries, and some of it is really glamorous on the 6:00 news. But if you're looking for bang for your buck, let's be honest. You can pursue science that is much cheaper and which has much more immediate gains by investing in stuff like developing alternative energy, beefing up our computing infrastructure, etc.
Just because money isn't spent on the stuff that you personally think is neat doesn't mean that it's not being well-spent or being put to productive use.
Back then they were able to link landing on the moon with beating the Russians, which at the time virtually guaranteed as much money as you could possibly want to accomplish the goal. Having the goal set by a president who was later assassinated, and carried on by his VP who basically set himself up to be the guy who would carry on JFK's legacy, didn't hurt either. Of course, after that goal was reached, NASA's funding was slashed, and they've been unable to accomplish much in the way of manned exploration since then.
Now, if you could somehow link landing on Mars to beating the terrorists, we could get all the money we need to get this thing done quickly. Until then, though, they can only do things as fast as their ever-shrinking budget will let them.
Manned space flight != science.
Not that it isn't worthwhile as a human endeavour.
Sure, let's spend money on science, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that manned space flight is an efficient way to do space science.
I'm going to break Slashdot etiquette by replying to my own reply, but this is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
If you were president, and you had the choice to, say, send a manned mission to Mars to collect some dirt and maybe begin the steps it would take to, if we're lucky and very, very good, colonize the planet a century or two from now, or roll out a national energy infrastructure that will get us off of fossil fuels today, thus keeping our own planet from boiling away (and most likely discovering a lot of very useful stuff that would make such a manned Mars mission much cheaper, safer, and more practical when we DO do it), which would you choose?
Some people are still under the misguided notion that we don't have to make such choices, that we can just do both. That's one of our problems with science initiatives today. We're trying to do everything, and we end up half-assing it all and nothing gets done.
Personally, I'd rather just not have a space program (well, nothing much more than putting satellites in orbit now and then) than spending billions on the white elephant of one that we have today.
The design is inherently unsafe, segmented SRB's. Cost per manned launches estimated to be about $1 billion, the test launch cost $500 million. That's about the same as a shuttle launch, epic fail on controlling cost, Falcon X claims to be able to do that for 1/10 the cost. Just another example of government waste. Oh yeah the SRB's are extremely harmful to the environment when compared with liquid fueled rockets. The private sector can and will do this better for less money and much greater safety.
Bah, his reasoning is wrong anyway. A conservative, as defined in this era, would happily spend money on the project because they would see a potential military/commercial gain from the results. A liberal, as defined in this era, would not want to spend the money because it doesn't do anything to further their socialist agenda and spread the wealth.
It's been a long time since a Republican could describe (much less act like) a conservative, either.
Well NASA sure as heck isn't raking in the funding under Obama either. And don't go saying he'll be giving more funding to have NASA do Earth Science either because of his stance on Global Warming, because he isn't doing that either.
All I see right now is liberal special interest groups getting waaaayyyy more money than NASA is even asking for showered on them and NASA continuing to get the shaft from this administration just like they did from the last one.
I am sick of hearing how science can now breathe a sigh of relief because Obama's in the White House. They won't be doing anything at all unless they get some real funding pretty soon.
Yes, since when did 'conservative' start to mean 'dedicated to spending as much as possible on massive military buildup and wars of world domination', anyway?
And when did 'spreading the wealth' become un-democratic?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
A liberal, as defined in this era, would not want to spend the money because it doesn't do anything to further their socialist agenda and spread the wealth.
The problem is that "liberal" and "conservative" as defined in the US have no substantive policy differences, just different talking points that the American media sells to American consumers as profound and fundamental differences in policy, to the extent that when members of your two nominally different poltical parties do exactly the same thing those actions are universally believed to have different meanings.
When a "conservative" runs up a massive budget deficit it's to keep America safe. When a "liberal" does exactly the same thing it's because they're growing government power to promote their socialist agenda.
When a "conservative" bails out a business it is "saving the American free enterprise system" (still don't understand that, but that's what "conservatives" say.) When a "liberal" bails out a business it's to reward their friends in Big Labour and promote their socialist agenda.
When a "liberal" says we must "spread the wealth" it's furthering thier socialist agenda, but when Sarah Palin said it--which she did!--it's "conservative" government support of the common man, or Real Americans, or something.
I've put the above examples in conservative-interpretive terms because conservatives are the dominant political and cultural force in America today, as suggested by Obama's continuance of almost all substantive Bush-era policies on killing people around the world and looting the national treasury in favour of Big Business. But one could just as easily put a liberal-interpetive spin on them: "conservative" spending is "supporting the military-industrial complex" while "liberal" spending is "providing jobs for our hard-working men and women" (in the military-industrial complex.) And so on.
No actual policy ever changes as presidents and congreses come and go: the single-party oligarchs and keptocrats change the window-dressing and continue to amass power and loot, and the nattering idiots that populate American political discourse continue to steadfastly quibble with each other as if the two wings of the Party were the least bit different from each other in any substantive sense.
For your own sake: wake up, people. Please.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
How about a project of national proportions to get us off of fossil fuels, or at least completely energy-independent, today, and for a fraction of the cost of whatever you have in mind?
How about a project of national proportions to beef up our computing and telecommunications infrastructure so that every American has pretty much instant, real-time access to, well, pretty much everything?
Or for that matter, how about a massive funding effort of national in medical research, with the end goal of something like a cancer vaccine, maybe even a cure, or other goals such as extending the quality and quantity of life in general? That would certainly captivate me.
I love sci-fi, I love sci-reality, I've been a space junkie since I was a kid, and if I had the chance to go to Mars, I'd sign up tomorrow. But I'm also practical, and I realize that there are a lot better things that we could spend a lot of money on than the space program.
Maybe "change I can believe in" means "we're going to stop spending billions of dollars on white elephants and put that money to more practical use." If so, consider me on board. I don't want the space program to die any more than anyone else, but I do think that as a country, we have much higher priorities that we should concentrate on.
We do want to control malpractice insurance costs. I agree with you there! The system is just far too litigation happy and we have lawyers who make a living off frivoulous lawsuits. But Part of the problem though is insurance companies with have 30% overhead compared to 4% for medicare. If we got rid of the insurance companies and replace it with medicare for all, we would save enough money to cover everyone in the country. Just by getting rid of private insurance and their $120 million dollar salary executives! The insurance companies have so corrupted government, especially repubs. but also the democrats, like Max "Insurance company lapdog" Baucus, that we will never see a real universal single payer system that works best for americans rather than insurance companies. The public option was the middle ground between the conservatives want, the current corrupt, fatten up the wealthy on the pain and suffering from out of control costs on average americans, private health care systems, and the ideal and best option single payer. Single payer would actually give you the most choice, under progressive proposals, to choose any doctor, adn there would be no bureaucracy, doctors and patients would make the decisions about what treatment is best. it would be the opposite of death panels because you would not have private insurance denying life saving treatments so the CEO can get another yacht, and millions of uninsured and dying off. The Republicans are such an immoral and scandalous, outright liars to propogate this totally false lie that there would be death panels in the bill, when the private insurance system they protect IS a death panel and the Republicans are responsible for 40,000 children dying every year due to lack of healthcare so some sleazy CEO can get rich!
The man has been in there for 10 months, has been dealing with the 2 wars, the worse economy since 1935, massive corruption in the previous admin, taking American rights, quite possibly war crimes by the previous admin, and you think that NASA's underfunding by the neo-cons for 7 long years is his top priority? Really?
So far, Obama has nearly DOUBLED the amount of money being spent on Science that W/Neo-cons did, and I HOPE that Obama will br brighter than them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think you mean Republican and Democrat. Neither party seems to fit the old distinctions of conservative and liberal. Instead, they have just been used by the media to polarize the country, while in the end they aim for the same things.