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."

Comments

To whom it may concern:

[Anonymous Coward]

First post.

Suck it long and hard,
Anonymous coward.

Re:To whom it may concern:

[Anonymous Coward]

I love sucking dick, thanks for your first post. Fuck, I'm horny! Time to jerk off to Rob Malda porn woop!

More proof...

[ktappe]

...that Obama is really a conservative, not a liberal. A liberal would have spent money on space exploration without a second thought. I really wish we would someday get a leader who is interested in science and the future of our species.

Re:More proof...

[Sponge Bath]

...someday get a leader who is interested in science and the future of our species.

Future Leader: Let's use science to process people into Soylent Green!

Re:More proof...

[Captain Splendid]

Somebody doesn't love his karma!

Re:More proof...

[CannonballHead]

...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.

Re:More proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:More proof...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Another comment from another guy who doesn't understand anything.

In other words, how are those low low deficits from Republican presidents working out for you?

Re:More proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're calling him a conservative? Wow. I am not sure he could describe a conservative (smaller government, less taxation, less spending, less private sector involvement, and the ability to make military decisions rather than ignoring the bloodiest month in Afghanistan).

Considering the trillion dollars spent toward our deficit with no honest gain (car sales and house sales that correlate directly with government money are not honest gains), I'd say it points more toward his own incompetence than an unwillingness to spend.

After all, what decision has he made other than to wastefully spend money? It certainly hasn't been anything dealing with Afghanistan or Iraq.

I'd say the chances for NASA are good, in terms of getting funding, but in terms of getting funding for useful projects, I'd say they are probably not going to do so well.

Re:More proof...

[Nefarious Wheel]

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.

Agree, especially your second line. The point of manned space flight isn't the science, the point of manned space flight is to get us out into space, where infinite resources are available for the patient race. Science will be done in service to this goal. The goal itself is one of very long term economics.

Re:More proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:More proof...

[SECProto]

Actually, conservative is always used in a relative sense - see for example the Conservative Party of Canada. While they are quite conservative relative to most Canadians and Canadian political parties, they really would not be branded as such south of the 49th.

Re:More proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been a long time since a Republican could describe (much less act like) a conservative, either.

Re:More proof...

[kevinNCSU]

I'm not sure not spending money on space flight in a conservative philosophy as I at least would consider space abilities to be very much in line with providing for the national defense. There's a lot of overlapping technology and abilities in that realm and most conservatives don't have a problem with the government spending money on programs that are huge boons to our technology/industry/defense sectors. I've lived in both New York and conservative North Carolina and I've never heard any backwoods Conservatives down there complaining about spending money on NASA. But I have heard a lot of saved the world through government programs liberals complain about spending money on space flight when we could be feeding people instead. In reality I think there are people on both sides of the fence that support it and people on both sides of the fence that don't

Either way the one thing we POSITIVELY want to avoid is anyone managing to label supporting space exploration as a "liberal" or "conservative" policy and having party lines drawn on the issue as that way we'll never get it done. Space Exploration isn't something we can accomplish during the time span that one party is in power, it has to be a common endeavor supported by the entire nation.

Re:More proof...

[JWW]

I wonder if thats not part of the problem. Currently everything Washington does is spelled out in US/THEM terms. NASA is not well defined in those terms, so it gets left in the cold while those in power fund only the things that are ideologically theirs....

Which, by the way, is a horseshit way to run a country....

Re:More proof...

[lennier]

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?

Re:More proof...

[radtea]

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.

Re:More proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Considering the trillion dollars spent toward our deficit with no honest gain (car sales and house sales that correlate directly with government money are not honest gains), I'd say it points more toward his own incompetence than an unwillingness to spend.

The economic melt-down and the subsequent financial bail-out both started before Obama took office.

Whether this was spent "with no honest gain" depends on whether or not--as was hypothesized at the time by many economists--the economy was about to go into a liquidity crisis and subsequently drop into depression equal to the great depression if immediate action was not taken. (The current belief is that the great depression could have been averted, had the government not been too timid in its actions).

Now, I don't know whether this was really just about to happen, or if it was just doomsaying. What are the chances-- five percent? Fifty percent? 90 percent? And, at what point should you act?

Maybe it was a crisis that we would have come out of anyway. But it seems to me that, if there's even a modest chance that the spending averted another great depression, it's an "honest gain" to me.

(And before you say "well, so what-- they all deserved a depression"-- go do some research on what the Great Depression was really like. It was not a camping trip.)

Re:More proof...

[zach_the_lizard]

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?

After World War Two, the Old Right that was anti-war (World War One and Two) began moving in a more interventionist direction.

The Democrats of the era were already in favor in foreign intervention. Before Pearl Harbor, FDR was waging pretty much an undeclared naval war on Germany to help the Allies. Wilson before FDR engaged America in WWI. Truman jumped into Korea, and Kennedy in Vietnam (though it was in the planning stages, IIRC, in the Eisenhowever administration).

The rise of the neo-conservatives provided the spark to twist the Old Right from non-intervention in economy and diplomacy into an evil legion that pretty much approved of any war put before them. Prior to this point, IIRC, the Old Right called before Pearl Harbor for students to sign up to oppose the draft in case of US intervention in Europe. IIRC it was supposed to be the largest anti-war movement in US history, but it was totally destroyed by Pearl Harbor. Odd how they forgot their roots so quickly; the transformation likely began in this era, and I believe this transformation became more or less complete around the time of Vietnam, where many on the American left became anti-war (save for those such as Johnson). There still were (and are) those who follow the tradition of the Old Right in this era, opposing the war, but they were pushed to the sidelines of the conservative movement.

War mongers such as William Buckley became highly influential on the Right, and Republican presidents that were influenced by this new pro-war tradition cranked up the bellicosity. The US military was thus dispatched to Grenada, to Iraq, to Lebanon, and to many other places. Liberal leaders began to pick up some of the anti-war slack, but, just as with the Old Right, they haven't been totally effective. And not all of them have been converted, either. Bill Clinton, for example, began US interventions in Somalia and Serbia. He continued the bombing of Iraq, and also bombed Sudan and Afghanistan half-heartedly a few times after the embassy bombing in Kenya. Returning to a neo-con, Bush engaged the US in yet more war. While he was president, the anti-war movement sprang up. It was mostly confined to liberals, but there were also libertarians amongst their midst.

With Obama's election, the anti-war movement has (sadly) died down amongst the liberals. I still hear libertarians denounce the wars, but I now hear fewer liberal voices amongst them. Conservatives call for the expansion of the war into Iran and, on the furthest fringes, Pakistan.

Re:More proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its hard for a person to be really a visionary and convince the people that he *is* a visionary. People believe whatever they see and are told.

Re:More proof...

[Grishnakh]

Um, no. A true liberal wouldn't "waste" money on anything that could promote the economy (by creating new technologies and new businesses), and would instead want to spend that money on social programs to help "disadvantaged" people who would then use that money to buy booze, drugs, or have more kids to get more benefits, who would all then need free lunches at schools.

What Obama is, I'm not exactly sure. I think he's more of a statist/leftist who wants to create a giant government to build more power for himself and his cronies and corporate benefactors, and appease the voting masses with some hand-outs which don't cost much. After all, look at his actions: he's spent giant fortunes bailing out failing companies run by rich people, which has done nothing but further enrich these people and not help regular Americans at all. He's continued useless wars which only serve the military-industrial complex, and get regular Americans killed. And he's been working hard to pass a healthcare "reform" which wouldn't reform healthcare at all, but would only spread out the giant costs of litigation and malpractice to all taxpayers, instead of actually reforming the system to reduce these costs (which are why healthcare costs so much these days). Basically, he doesn't want to do anything to hurt his corporate bosses in the insurance and legal industries.

Re:More proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the OP, but what he said is no joke. We're talking about a president that praises the free market at every opportunity, refuses to nationalize assets that have been identified as critical but incapable of supporting themselves, refuses to even breathe the phrase "single-payer", it all adds up to a conservative capitalist pig, and your bloviations about his liberalism change that not a whit.

Re:More proof...

[guppysap13]

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.

Internal Interest

[Microlith]

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.

Re:Internal Interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there's still plenty of work to do in the meantime. Just because a test flight isn't going to be scheduled doesn't mean the vehicle development will stop. The same thing happened with the Shuttle in the 70's. Ultimately, NASA decided to have the first test flight be manned/crewed (considered by many to be the single most hazardous test flight ever conducted -- John Young and Robert Crippen are studs forever).

We might see the first "real" test of the Ares-I happen during the first crewed flight.

Re:Internal Interest

[khallow]

So far, the NASA budget hasn't been "cleaved" (I interpret that as a significant year to year cut) since the 70s aside from a few years in the late 90's when the US underwent a serious effort to cut overall spending.

Re:Internal Interest

[demachina]

If you are just running a jobs program its actually better to do as little as possible. Hardware and launches cost money reducing funds available for salaries. As long as Congress and the President let's them get away with it, and keeps sending them a few billion each year, it would be ideal to schedule the next launch in the 2040 time frame, which is practically what they are already doing.

If you've watched NASA over the years, especially when they are doing new launch vehicles they ALWAYS produce awesome computer animations of what it would look like if they actually built it, and then they never do. I'm assuming Congress, being not very bright, are fooled by the animation and think they are getting actual space vehicles and launches for the billions.

They also run an awesome 24/7 TV channel to show all the awesome computer animations they do. I think they should start running reality TV shows and an American idol spinoff on it, sell commercials and they could fund their hardware, if they actually wanted to build spacecraft anymore which I don't think they really do.

The other dynamic going on here is I think NASA would actually like to continue the status quo and just spend all the money on a few shuttle launches a year, watch the ISS spin around the earth and do research no one understands or values. This is really the safest and easiest job program. Developing and testing new launch vehicles is really hard. They have the 100 meter high pile of paper necessary to do a shuttle launch nailed.

Re:Internal Interest

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are just running a jobs program its actually better to do as little as possible. Hardware and launches cost money reducing funds available for salaries. As long as Congress and the President let's them get away with it, and keeps sending them a few billion each year, it would be ideal to schedule the next launch in the 2040 time frame, which is practically what they are already doing.

The problem isn't that NASA is trying to run a jobs program. Instead it is trying to run a hi-tech research and development with multiple goals from various politicians, while receiving improper funding to do everything being asked of it. Furthermore NASA looks more like a jobs program because that is what individual politicians find it most useful (to themselves) to be.

Much of this situation stems from NASA being the largest independent agency of the Federal Government. Unlike most federal agencies NASA doesn't have a layer or two of departmental bureaucracy to shield it from direct congressional scrutiny. A result being that more than any other agency what NASA does is determined by Congress, even the President tends to have less influence over NASA than Capitol Hill does. So going back to the funding situation, the most reliable way NASA secures funding is by making various members of Congress look good. Bringing high paying professional jobs to their districts is what most Senators and Representatives think will get them the most votes.

If you've watched NASA over the years, especially when they are doing new launch vehicles they ALWAYS produce awesome computer animations of what it would look like if they actually built it, and then they never do. I'm assuming Congress, being not very bright, are fooled by the animation and think they are getting actual space vehicles and launches for the billions.

Only for values of "ALWAYS" that only include time after the mid-1990's. Some of us remember when the post-Apollo NASA was only slightly better at selling itself directly to the US citizen as Slashdot would be today. The history of NASA's PR is rather mixed, in the Von Braun era there were a major articles in the magazines and the Disney specials. However, after Apollo NASA dropped from the public consciousness and there was a lack of any consistent media strategy. The reason why they've improved their program pitches in the last ~15 years is not so they can maintain status quo. Instead it's because they want money to actually finish the programs and are hoping that adding evocative imagery will secure funding better than dry technical reports alone.

They also run an awesome 24/7 TV channel to show all the awesome computer animations they do. I think they should start running reality TV shows and an American idol spinoff on it, sell commercials and they could fund their hardware, if they actually wanted to build spacecraft anymore which I don't think they really do.

Make no mistake, the main intended audience for NASA TV isn't Congress, it's the taxpayers. However, I don't think this is bad thing, because they have more than just slick animations on NASA TV. In addition they have ISS live feeds, mission launches, science programs for kids, shows about the current research and technology programs, and archival footage. People are always complaining about transparency in government, at least NASA bothers to show taxpayers quite a bit of what they do with their money.

Oh and NASA can't do what you propose, not unless there is a congressional act signed into law to allow them! It is actually illegal for the vast majority of the Federal Government to generate revenue beyond fees directly related to the costs of services rendered. If you think about it for you'll understand why this is generally a good thing, at least while we still have general taxation.

The other dynamic going on here is I think NASA would actually like to continue the status quo and just

Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

And you'll be paying for the errors of your bank managers for even longer.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[ColdWetDog]

We will be paying for the George W Bush's disastrous presidency for a very long time.

Don't worry, we aren't paying for it. Our putative children (and their children) will be paying for it. We just put in on the big VISA card in the sky.

Ka-Ching!

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

or at least getting Afghanistan right the first time

or why not just get the hell out of deciding whats good for other cultures and peoples ?

Dont blame George W, you been at this for the last 50 years ....

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[CannonballHead]

Too bad we spend a trillion dollars invading the wrong country based on obvious lies and fabrications.

Over what, eight years?

We just spent almost a trillion in one year as a "stimulus" that has apparently helped nothing... and if it has, very little and it's really hard to tell and it appears that a lot of it is being wasted. As one economist put it, it's like taking a trillion out of your left pocket and putting it in your right pocket; no net gain. And the current administration is trying to say that it's working, but that higher unemployment is still on its way... so the economy is getting better and employment is getting worse. *scratches head*

But pardon me for interrupting your hate-Bush-more-than-anything-else party. Just wanted to mention that the current administration appears to like spending more and spending faster... and seems to like it a lot more than the previous administration... to the extent that while promising to get rid of wasteful spending, I haven't heard of a single spending cut - only dramatic increases that appear to have done negligible good...

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad we spend a trillion dollars invading the wrong country based on obvious lies and fabrications.

Over what, eight years?

We just spent almost a trillion in one year as a "stimulus" that has apparently helped nothing...

... and you conveniently overlook that it was the Bush administration that encouraged and started the stimulus spending before Obama took office.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Wonko the Sane]

or why not just get the hell out of deciding whats good for other cultures and peoples ?

Too be fair that particular criticism applies to a lot more than just one country. The list of nations that are not guilty of that now or in the recent past is quite small.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

keep rooting for a Great Depression

that's what you and your lot's retarded sense of economics would lead to

thankfully, the grownups have taken over running this country

or, should I say, thank God

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[CannonballHead]

... and you conveniently overlook that it was the Bush administration that encouraged and started the stimulus spending before Obama took office.

I am a conservative and feel that Bush was a rather moderate Republican. He made mistakes and I disagreed with him a lot. And I did not overlook that he liked spending - he did, far more than I thought he would, actually. But to say that Bush is a "big spender" and "wasted" in comparison to the current administration seems to be a ridiculous statement, even from a simple look at the traditional positions of their respective parties.

It seems that Obama is still enjoying some amount of popularity based on Bush's current unpopularity... which, IMO, is an absolutely horrid reflection of the current American voter. To vote someone in simply because you hated the previous person is pretty stupid. You'd think people would want to vote someone in based on their positions, policies, history, and honesty... not based on the "other party's previous candidate."

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[CannonballHead]

thankfully, the grownups have taken over running this country

Ah yes. Reid and Pelosi, Axelrod, Gibbs, and even Obama at times, definitely act like grownups. Especially when they cry about Republicans not being bipartisan and then - for the first time in the history of the rule, I believe - push a bill out of committee without the quorum of two minority group members.

Actually, IMO, it seems most Senators - on both sides - act more like three year olds than what "grownups" are supposed to act like.

I guess the 70s was the conservatives' fault and the 80s and 90s were the liberals' fault? Meaning the unemployment and inflation in the 70s, and the rather good and rising economy of the 80s and 90s.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Wonko the Sane]

But to say that Bush is a "big spender" and "wasted" in comparison to the current administration seems to be a ridiculous statement, even from a simple look at the traditional positions of their respective parties.

I don't think that Obama has caught up yet if you compare the federal government's total unfunded liabilities before and after Medicare part D, but of course Obama has made rapid progress so far this year and he's well on his way. It seems like no one will believe that the government can't spend forever without limit until the credit card finally gets declined. Our only hope is that this happens as soon as possible.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Abcd1234]

We just spent almost a trillion in one year as a "stimulus" that has apparently helped nothing... and if it has, very little and it's really hard to tell and it appears that a lot of it is being wasted.

So, wait, let me get this straight... it's "really hard to tell" if the stimulus has done anything. But, despite that admission, in the very same sentence, you claim it has "apparently helped nothing... and if it has, very little".

Uhuh.

Yup, definitely a clear, unbiased, level-headed analysis, there...

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Nadaka]

when the economy gets better while unemployment rises. It means the wealthy are earning much more than when only one of those conditions are true.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[megamerican]

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.

There really is no reason for us to be in Afghanistan either, but the media and White House has framed the debate on whether we sould "stay the course" or add more troops. That is the exact stupid debate we had about Iraq a few years ago. Our only support is from local warlords who don't care about our laws and are only loyal to us because we give them taxpayer money and allow them to engage in the drug trade. Even the NYtimes admits that the Presidents brother is in charge of a lot of the drug running and is on the payroll of the CIA.

The Afghanistan War was never about getting Osama bin Laden. The FBI still doesn't list 9/11 as one of the reasons why he is a Wanted person because they have no proof he was involved. The only "proof" is a video released in December 2001, supposedly found in a house in Afghanistan which supposedly had bin Laden admitting to being involved in the plot. The US media were the only ones to not question its authenticity.

Why can't people get past the obvious shell game being played?

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad we spend a trillion dollars invading the wrong country based on obvious lies and fabrications.

Over what, eight years?

We just spent almost a trillion in one year as a "stimulus" that has apparently helped nothing...

... and you conveniently overlook that it was the Bush administration that encouraged and started the stimulus spending before Obama took office.

That was complete theft from the people to the banks, but it is important to remember that both Obama and McCain were in favor of it. You can find a clip of Obama on the Senate floor urging people to support it.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Aereus]

Our national debt went from 4 trillion to over 8 trillion during Bush's tenure in what was supposedly very good economic times. The economic policies pursued during that same administration led to the greatest economic meltdown the country has seen in 80 years. The stimulus package planning was begun under the Bush administration, and finalized in the early months under Obama in order to partially mitigate the poor choices made by our banks and Wall Street.

A number of recent economic markers are pointing to the economy starting to be on the way up again -- I would say that 12-18 months turnaround on this depression is fairly quick compared to recessions of the past. FDR's economic policies in the 30s may have been shocking back then, but Americans expect far more "socialist" programs out of their government nowadays. Not spending any money certainly wouldn't lead to less unemployment, and very likely would cause the depression to last longer as the banks are still hesitant to do any sort of major lending -- which leads to companies hesitant to do new hiring.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Abcd1234]

Ah yes. Reid and Pelosi, Axelrod, Gibbs, and even Obama at times, definitely act like grownups. Especially when they cry about Republicans not being bipartisan and then - for the first time in the history of the rule, I believe - push a bill out of committee without the quorum of two minority group members.

Just on this topic, ignoring the bailouts and all that, the Republicans have taken on a very simple strategy in the last six months or so: Block *all* proposals coming from Democrats. Period. How the hell can you possibly expect the Democrats to fulfill their promises of bipartisanship if the Republicans do everything they possibly can to hijack the democratic process?

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[JWW]

The unfunded liabilities of universal health care will make Medicare part D look like pocket change.

I know the US is spending too much money, but for stories like this it pisses me off because the US government couldn't be farther from funding the things I'd like to see it fund or not fund for that matter.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[CannonballHead]

How the hell can you possibly expect the Democrats to fulfill their promises of bipartisanship if the Republicans do everything they possibly can to hijack the democratic process?

But the Democrats won't listen to or accept a single change to bills from Republicans, apparently, unless it is one that the Democrats all approve of in the first place.

In other words, the bipartisan effort in the Obama administration/current Senate goes something like this: Hey, why don't you just agree with us and be bipartisan?.

And if they don't agree, they are being "partisan." Or racist, for that matter.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[FlyingBishop]

But if the economy gets worse while unemployment sinks, that's communism and clearly worse for everyone.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[CannonballHead]

Because there is always evidence for anyone's point, these days, and you can find economists that say the stimulus hurt and the stimulus helped the economy.

But I haven't read any that said it helped very significantly.

If you asked me what I actually thought - in my non-economist and "my macro-econ class boiled down to really complex terms for really simple ideas"-mindset opinion - I would tell you that I think it did nothing good and, if anything, some amount of bad. All it seemed to do to me is put the US government even further into debt. I know, we can't get rid of all debt ...

... but according to wikipedia, the US is around 90% of GDP in debt (estimated for 2009; 70% in 2008). Also according to wikipedia, there are very few countries even above 70%. Above 70% are Hungary, Israel, Sri Lanka, Barbados, Belgium, Bhutan, Egypt, Sudan, Greece, Seychelles, Italy, Singapore, Jamaica, Lebanon, Japan, and Zimbabwe.

I read the "you don't get it, we need debt, too" comments a lot on Slashdot. My response is ... they don't get it; we don't need THAT much debt, unless we want our economy to look like the economy of the ones I just listed. The only "good economy" - and actually, the only real "world power" - that I see in that list is Japan.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Abcd1234]

But the Democrats won't listen to or accept a single change to bills from Republicans

The Republicans aren't proposing simple changes. Once again, their approach is simple: our way or the highway. That's it. Meanwhile, the Democrats have been folding on some of their core proposals in order to get things moving (a public healthcare option being the most glaring). There has been *no* attempt from the right to work toward a bipartisan solution. NONE. The Democrats can hardly be faulted for that kind of uncooperative, even childish behaviour.

Worse, in cases like healthcare, the Republicans are actively blocking measures that over *60%* of the US population supports. If that isn't pure, unadulterated political brinksmanship, I don't know what is.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Nadaka]

clearly. ;)

But if the economy improved with unemployment going down, what would we have to complain about? We can't be happy without something to complain about, regardless of what side of the fence is stuck up our behind.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Abcd1234]

As an aside, I happen to think this whole idea of bipartisanship is, at this point, completely absurd. Since the last election, the Republicans have clearly chosen to swing even further to the right (one need only see the NY-23 election to see that), latching on to the extreme right-wingers like Sarah Palin. As such, I simply don't think there *can* be any kind of bipartisan effort between the Democrats and the Republicans, simply because they're so distant ideologically. Meanwhile, the Republicans are really interested in one thing at this stage: tearing the Democrats from power. And if that means blocking any and all attempts and meaningful reform, then so be it.

In fact, I would go so far as to say they've concluded that it's in the Republicans' best interests to ensure that *nothing* the Democrats want gets passed, as if the Dems can show any success on the issues that people actually care about (healthcare, the economy, etc), it'll only solidify their hold on the political ground they've gained during the last 4 years. Much like our good friend Rush Limbaugh, I really believe the Republicans hope Obama and the Democrats fail and fail miserably, regardless of the consequences it may have for America.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[CannonballHead]

So, Republicans can only propose minor details, not large changes? If Republicans want, say, investigation into nuclear energy but Democrats don't, they aren't allowed to suggest it - it's too big of a change? Or too complex? Or whatever?

It seems that most of the current bills are very ideologically Democrat centered. Public healthcare and climate change stuff (but not nuclear, it seems). As I recall, House Republicans/conservatives submitted a lot of proposals from the so-called tort reform to abortion to making sure illegal immigrants don't get the public healthcare insurance option. None of them - and those are not "major" in comparison with the bill - were accepted.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have been folding on some of their core proposals in order to get things moving (a public healthcare option being the most glaring).

They folded on that? It's still in almost all of their bills, if not all of them, and it is one of the major things that many people don't want. As you mention, "60%" of the US population supports ... what? Supports healthcare reform or supports the current bills, as they are, in the House, including the public option? There's a huge difference there.

The Democrats have not folded on a public healthcare "option." Actually, I can't really find anything they have folded on, at the moment. Pelosi and Reid have repeatedly said they refuse to have a bill without a "public option" though.

The American public is a lot more split than you think on healthcare, according to Gallup.

Saying one party or the other, at the moment, is at fault and doing "pure, unadulterated political brinksmanship" appears to be dependent on who you read/listen to. I try to stay out of the finger pointing, and blameshifting, as that appears to get nowhere - and Republicans and Democrats are very at fault for doing that. Right now, it seems to me that we have some very libecal Senators/House Reps that are trying to push a certain ideology.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Abcd1234]

Because there is always evidence for anyone's point, these days, and you can find economists that say the stimulus hurt and the stimulus helped the economy.

...

If you asked me what I actually thought - in my non-economist and "my macro-econ class boiled down to really complex terms for really simple ideas"-mindset opinion - I would tell you that I think it did nothing good and, if anything, some amount of bad. All it seemed to do to me is put the US government even further into debt. I know, we can't get rid of all debt ...

Uhuh. So you have a completely uneducated opinion based on one econ class you took once, then you chose to cherrypick opinions from economists in order to reinforce your views which were, in all probability, already coloured by partisan glasses.

Like I said... that's some very level-headed, unbiased analysis, there.

Confirmation bias. Look it up.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

... and you conveniently overlook that it was the Bush administration that encouraged and started the stimulus spending before Obama took office.

I am a conservative and feel that Bush was a rather moderate Republican. He made mistakes and I disagreed with him a lot.

And, most notably, he was not a conservative.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Glenn Beck or Rush or some other Republican hyponotist on right now? You should really be running along, child. Your talking points are rubbish.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Chris Burke]

In other words, the bipartisan effort in the Obama administration/current Senate goes something like this: Hey, why don't you just agree with us and be bipartisan?.

I think that distinction deserves more than just a slash. Obama has made a significant effort to reach out to Republicans and incorporate their ideas. It's the Democrats in both houses of Congress that don't want to play along. They're the ones that are riding high on their majorities and same-party president (apparently just having a majority wasn't enough to accomplish anything) and giving the Republicans a taste of their own medicine... Which is totally what the country needs right now. *sigh*

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[CannonballHead]

As an aside, I happen to think this whole idea of bipartisanship is, at this point, completely absurd.

I'm really ok with non-bipartisanship, to some extent. But at least say you're not interested in it, don't try to say one thing and do another (not talking to you... talking to Washington. Who isn't reading. hehe.)

I simply don't think there *can* be any kind of bipartisan effort between the Democrats and the Republicans, simply because they're so distant ideologically.

I would tend to agree.

tearing the Democrats from power. And if that means blocking any and all attempts and meaningful reform, then so be it.

And again, I agree. Same that Democrats wanted to do. Power-struggle, pretty much, on both sides. However, I think that the current "meaningful reform" is actually bad, not good, so I'll side with Republicans at the moment.

Much like our good friend Rush Limbaugh, I really believe the Republicans hope Obama and the Democrats fail and fail miserably, regardless of the consequences it may have for America.

Limbaugh, IMO, is very smart, very arrogant, and can be very annoying (to both sides). I'm not sure most Republicans/conservatives hope Obama fails. However, I think a lot of Republicans/conservatives think that the policies Obama/Democrats are trying to put in place are bad, and thus would rather have the current administration and Congress fail sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, I think the sentiment often goes way too far ... in that the "consequences it may have for America" are forgotten and it becomes an us-vs.-them mentality. Which is not good... and IMO, until we get honest politicians (oxymoron alert), we're going to continue to have power-struggles and corruption instead of actual good representation. I don't think the current administration nor the current Congress, for the most part - on both sides - has the non-corrupted decent-person honesty.

Anyway, to answer the charge against "Republicans" personally - I don't hope "Obama and the Democrats" (sounds like a movie, hehe) fail... but I think their policies will or would fail, and thus I would like it to happen quicker rather than later/drawn-out, if at all. I also don't think Obama is a good leader. Good PR, good campaigner, and maybe even a pretty decent guy - I don't know him personally, obviously... but I don't think he is particularly good at making hard decisions unless it gets support from everyone. If he had to make the "right choice" even if it meant being unpopular, I am not sure he would. And I don't think I agree with what he thinks is right oftentimes, either.

As for Democrats in Congress, I think most of them are pretty much bought by lobbyists. We were promised, by Obama, no pork/less-spending/more-accountability and we're getting the same amount of pork, more spending, and a lot of "czars" that don't appear to be very accountable to anyone.

Why am I rambling so long? No idea. :)

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Mo Bedda]

The unfunded liabilities of universal health care will make Medicare part D look like pocket change.

Well, lucky for us there aren't any unfunded universal health care bills on the table. Perhaps you should inform yourself on what health care bills are currently under consideration.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[khallow]

How the hell can you possibly expect the Democrats to fulfill their promises of bipartisanship if the Republicans do everything they possibly can to hijack the democratic process?

I personally don't care. The junk coming from the Democrats is extremely harmful to the future of the US and unworthy of bipartisan compromise. The Democrats have majorities in both branches of Congress. If they can't get their own members to vote for these bills, then why should they expect Republicans to vote for them?

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[demachina]

"How the hell can you possibly expect the Democrats to fulfill their promises of bipartisanship if the Republicans do everything they possibly can to hijack the democratic process?"

How did the Republican's manage to ram through nearly their entire, fairly extreme, legislative agenda for six years, if not more, with a smaller majority in the Senate than the Dems have now? There are at least some Democrats to blame here, for either voting with them then, or not having the guts to fillibuster when they could have. Can also blame the gang of 5 or 10 or whatever it was led by McCain and I think Lieberman that got together and blocked most fillibusters during the Republican reign but not now.

Joe Lieberman being the former Democrat, now Independent, is probably the most to blame for being a continual turncoat.

But fact is the Dems are gutless, spineless, clueless, Reid and Pelosi in particular, they can't control their own members to pass their agenda and they failed to block the more extreme parts of the Republican agenda. The are also not nearly ruthless enough. Delay and Cheney were ruthless.

So yes, in fact I can blame the Dems for not getting anything done.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

We will be paying for the George W Bush's disastrous presidency for a very long time.

And our kids will be paying for BO's policies even longer. :(

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

Where were you when the Democrats gutted the healthcare reform bill as a result of Republican crying, even though no Republican will vote for the final bill, regardless of what it contains?

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[CannonballHead]

In general, I would tend to actually agree. I disagree very strongly with Obama, but I also strongly disagree with many Republicans and conservatives in the very disrespectful way they treat him - the same disagreement I had with the many Democrats and liberals that treated Bush with the same disrespect. And hatred (on both sides/both Presidents). Obama appears to be pretty decent in his own personal actions, but I think he chooses to align himself with people that are much less dignified than he is.

And he does seem to have a tendency to not give straight/honest answers all the time, tailoring his speech and tailoring the facts to those he is talking to (e.g., his speech in Cairo). Which is more an indictment against all politicians, not just Obama... but he raised the bar on himself by claiming to be above that and wanting to change it, etc.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[dbIII]

I am a conservative and feel that Bush was a rather moderate Republican

Forget the Republican part, he was the closest thing to a monarchist in US government since Hamilton was shot. That playboy prince simply reacted to things and did whatever was expedient which is why there was a big spending government with huge new departments, nationalised industries and all the other things against Republican principles.
A lot of the current waste is the tail end of the previous waste (and it's a huge tail with two wars and a pile of other military actions as well as throwing money down the hole to keep the Enron culture on life support). A lot more will be wasted to clean up various messes from a decade of neglect. McCain would have been stuck in the same situation. IMHO McCain should have been President, and it should have been in 2000, while Obama is a good choice to follow a disaster like Bush. Obama may not have much political experience but he does seem to be the sort of President the USA needs now even if a lot of people are impatient with his slow approach.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[dbIII]

The only people that will lose if health care is cleaned up are the insurance companies and the most dishonest drug companies, both of which can still make some profit if they are operated honestly. In the long term it removes a huge drain on the economy.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

When did / turn into The Huffington Post?

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[khallow]

Something I've noticed is that the Democrats have a majority in both branches of Congress. If they can't pass their agenda over the objection of the Republicans, then something is wrong on the Democrat side.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[WankersRevenge]

But the Democrats won't listen to or accept a single change to bills from Republicans, apparently, unless it is one that the Democrats all approve of in the first place.

If you actually watched the committee hearings instead of reading about them, you'd be surprised at how conciliatory dems can be about their own bills. They make concessions when they don't have to (to the ire of the left and myself). And yes, Repubs make some crazy request, but they also some good ideas which are taken up. Yet no one talks about that because it doesn't make a good sound bites.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Abcd1234]

Something I've noticed is that the Democrats have a majority in both branches of Congress. If they can't pass their agenda over the objection of the Republicans, then something is wrong on the Democrat side.

Agreed. But that wouldn't be very bipartisan, would it?

But way to miss the entire point of the conversation. Really, good job! Did you hear the woosh as the point flew over you?

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Abcd1234]

How did the Republican's manage to ram through nearly their entire, fairly extreme, legislative agenda for six years, if not more, with a smaller majority in the Senate than the Dems have now?

By tossing out the idea of bipartisanship. You know... that thing that the original OP complained the Dems weren't focusing on, thereby trigger off this entire discussion?

So yes, in fact I can blame the Dems for not getting anything done.

Completely agreed. And also completely beside the point.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

or why not just get the hell out of deciding whats good for other cultures and peoples ?

Sure, they can start first.

Oh, you thought they were bombing us because we had troops stationed over there? The Islamists want us dead because we're the Great Satan. Infidels that let their women go about uncovered, and don't give proper respect to Allah's chosen ones! They'll keep attacking until we submit, because... they know what's good for our culture and people!

See how that works?

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Kjella]

Well, I only have a few classes in macroeconomics, but I have a fair bit more in industrial economics. My analysis of the situation, looking at it more like a company:

If you don't got liquid capital, the company can't function. You need that for inventory, paying off suppliers and day-to-day operations that generation income. In my world money normally doesn't fall from the sky, so usually you would talk about selling assets to get more cash. Pouring money into the economy can help the liquidity situation.

However liquidity is only a fix for your cash flow, it's not a fix for spending more money than you have in the first place. You see this with excessive credit card use, they take up new debt to pay off the interest on old debt in a death spiral because their cash flow is good but the profit/loss statement is crap. We had exactly the same in business simulations, a cash strapped company could be helped with liquids but doing the same in a business losing money it only increased your interest payments making it even harder to turn a profit.

Even in macroeconomics, with the global economy you can not print money like you used to. The moment you set up the US dollar to lose value to cheat away your debts, the investors would abandon it in droves and really kill the economy. You also see it on global interest rates, the other central banks around the world follow each other so you can't keep a sustained interest difference just because you want to. I don't think it's really all that different from my world at all.

So did the stimulus package help? Well it might have helped to not kill off reasonably sound businesses that would otherwise fail due to short term cash flow, but it will not fix the economy. That requires a much more deeper fix that can't be done by moving around debts, The world's investors aren't more stupid that they can read a country's "balance sheet" with assets and debts and figure out where it's going just as easily as a company's. And if the US was a company, I'd say many red lights are blinking...

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Hurricane78]

getting Afghanistan right the first time

Yeah, because a country with a completely different philosophy of its community, were everybody in the last 1000 years literally failed, will be possible to "get right" (for your view of "right", which is not the Afghans' view of "right" anyway).

My father is Afghan. And I can tell you: It's not worth it! Please just leave the country alone, everybody. The only ones who could help, would be those with similar philosophies. (In Afghanistan it's all a big hierarchy of respect. Nobody is going to vote against the one above him [e.g. the clan leader]. Not because of fear of what could happen. But because it's the basic philosophy. So "democracy" can't work by definition. And it's also not needed.)

So what you may see as "getting it right", can be "imposing unnatural values on the people" for them. And nobody of you is wrong, in his view on reality. Also, nobody's view is somehow worse. Unless you happen to be arrogant and egocentric. Which I don't think you are.)

Of course, as Afghanistan was just a strategic battleground for other regimes since forever... (The cold war was not cold at all. It was in fact very hot. But it was an indirect "war by proxy". Sometimes the US took a dummy nation to fight for them. Sometimes the Soviet Union did. But always, Afghans or people of the other dummy nations died.)

So everybody get over yourselves, and leave the once green and beautiful country, that now is a mountain of rubble, alone. Thank you.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Wonko the Sane]

The only people that will lose if health care is cleaned up are the insurance companies and the most dishonest drug companies

That is a true statement. Now how likely do you think that what the government is trying to do will in any way "clean up" the health care system? The plan most likely to pass forces the entire population to buy the insurance companies' product! Compared with plans that actually attempt to solve the problem it is clear that the only thing that congress will pass is corporate welfare for insurance companies and unions.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

And we will be paying for Obama's money printing spree for MUCH longer than we will be paying on Bush's spending. At least Bush wasn't printing money on a whim like he was in a Monopoly game.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[Anonymous Coward]

For anyone interested in the evidence that we used as a basis for the WMD/Invasion beliefs, read the book Curveball. It is excellent and really sheds a damning light on our intelligence agencies (as well as the Brits and Germans). In short, we used unvetted information of one rogue defector. The Germans had the guy, but because of a lack of cooperation between agencies, we never had a chance to vet the guys information. Then when the Germans found out this guy was lying or at the very least, misleading us, they didn't want to look bad so hid it even more. It was a giant clusterfuck of stupidity.

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[khallow]

The point is that politics isn't about being bipartisan or not. The Democrat leadership in Congress wants certain things. They have the power to get it. But they continue to fail to get their agenda passed. That is a failure of the Democrat leadership not partisan politics by the Republicans. In other words, why are the Republicans unified opposition while the Democrats are not to pass these bills? Even a filibuster in the Senate can be overcome by just getting a few Republicans to defect.

The Republicans are so successfully vicious because the Democrats are weak. And I believe the Democrats are weak because the leadership is attempting to pass destructive legislation that, if successfully passed, would doom many Democrat legislators in marginal districts (for example, the "blue dog Democrats").

Re:Blew Your Wad Too Early

[JWW]

You really think its actually going to cost what they say?? The unfunded part I speak of is the costs they ignored, the future savings they planned for that will be unrealized, and the general fact that there's nothing I see in any of the bills that will actually make health care cost less, which they also assume to be true.

Government Fail.

[Jugalator]

So Bush initiates Project Constellation, and at a time when it's barely started, after lots of time and resources have been plown into structuring the project, it's on the verge of being shut down?

Well, if it's shut down, at least we saw some cool flames at the back of a rocket!111 Durr...

Re:Government Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!

wtf is C++?????????????/

Re:Government Fail.

[Nyeerrmm]

Sunk costs don't matter for deciding future policy, only costs to complete it matter. When analyzing whether or not something should be done, you have to consider whether or not the remaining cost is worthwhile.

The Augustine Report, on which any policy decision is likely to be based lays out the options and considers the completion costs on a 'stay the course' direction. And the only place where significant sunk costs may be wasted is on Ares 1. Ares V hasn't been significantly developed, and all options presented by the committee keep Orion on the table, since CCDEV options are only good for LEO missions. And considering that Ares 1-X, a shuttle SRB with some simulators stacked on top cost $450M (more than all of SpaceX, designing LVs from scratch), I don't have trouble believing that going back to the drawing board with a shuttle-derived system or an EELV may be cheaper.

Discontinuing a flawed plan despite sunk costs is very responsible, as long as a well-thought-out plan that learns the lessons of previous failures replaces it. Let's hope that better decisions are made this time.

5 years?

[methano]

It will take 5 more years to get another one ready for testing? Clearly someone else (yea, I know, the nazi) was running things back in the old days when they went from speech to stepping on the moon in about 8 years.

Re:5 years?

[eln]

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.

Re:5 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Our new moonbase will be able to instantly detect and neutralize any nuclear weapons. Thanks to its lack of serious atmosphere, it can much more easily recognize radioactive elements at a distance of 10 miles.

Re:5 years?

[EvilBudMan]

--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.--

You gotta watch out, those terrorists will be on Mars any time now. We gotta get there first so they don't pull any suicide attacks there.

Re:5 years?

[natehoy]

Woulda worked better back in the commie days. "Beating the reds to the red planet" would have had so much good marketing in it.

Re:5 years?

[Ceiynt]

Or link landing on mars with helping American's find jobs, or getting Detroit back on it's feet, or keeping your bank open.

Re:5 years?

[DerekLyons]

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.

Of course, after that goal was reached, NASA's funding was slashed

 
That's what the urban legend would have you believe, but as usual, the reality is much different.
 
In reality, NASA's peak funding (during the Moon race) was in 1965 - and was slashed dramatically in '66/'67. (Before the Saturn V even flew, it's production was already capped!) By the time Apollo 11 landed, four missions of the planned sequence had already been cut and the program was starting to run on fumes.

Re:5 years?

[natehoy]

Wait a minute.... I want to be clear of the linkage you are drawing here... ...you want the people responsible for bringing us the "K" car in charge of manned spaceflight?

I mean, that'll make spaceflight cheap and all, and I'm all for that, but roadside service centers in space are mighty scarce. And you know what they say about vacuum - it sucks.

Re:5 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, maybe it's easier to talk the Chinese into a manned mission to mars and then get the US to join the race.

Re:5 years?

[rabidmuskrat]

For all we know that's where Osama Bin Laden is hiding. We must get there quick to continue the search!

Re:5 years?

[EvilBudMan]

Yeah, too bad, hugh.

Re:5 years?

[rainmaestro]

Yup, and even at the peak of funding, it only comes about to about 2x the current budget, adjusted for inflation.

NASA never had a *monster* budget, they found ways to do a lot with a little, and cut a lot of corners in the process.

Re:5 years?

[bencoder]

NASA never had a *monster* budget, they found ways to do a lot with a little, and cut a lot of corners in the process.

You mean like faking the moon landings entirely? ;)

Re:5 years?

[khallow]

You mean like faking the moon landings entirely? ;)

Not that. They went all out on that set.

Re:5 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

--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.--

You gotta watch out, those terrorists will be on Mars any time now. We gotta get there first so they don't pull any suicide attacks there.

after all they like desert.

Sad, but kind of Accurate

[WindBourne]

Far too many ppl think that NASA and other RD programs do better under conservatives, but Nixon, reagan, and W were by far the worst presidents WRT NASA, or any spending on RD programs. To be fair, reagan did massive cuts in civilian programs (nsf, nasa, nih, etc), but he did increase funding to DARPA (not as much as the cuts).

Re:Sad, but kind of Accurate

[JWW]

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.

Re:Sad, but kind of Accurate

[J05H]

No the fact is that Congressional consensus since Apollo is that NASA gets between 1/3 and 1/2 of 1% of the Federal budget, no more. This has fluctuated only slightly for 3 decades. When Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, NASA somehow decided based on very little evidence that they were in for a budget increase. It never happened for very good reasons that have nothing to do with liberal/conservative issues or even the recession.

NASA needs to live within it's budget.

Re:Sad, but kind of Accurate

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:Sad, but kind of Accurate

[JWW]

NASA needs to live within it's budget.

Except that what's being asked of for NASA to do is akin to asking someone to drive across the country and then giving them $20 for gas.....

Space program != science

[KingSkippus]

I really wish we would someday get a leader who is interested in science and the future of our species.

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.

Re:Space program != science

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I'm am going to play the false dichotomy debuff card on your fallacy and add an alternative perspective to the game. From the way you presented your comment it sounded as if you were saying that we have the choice to either invest in useful cheaper science here on the ground, or invest in expensive fluff science up in space. I would assert that we can, and should do both. The federal government annual budget is not a simple pie that is divided into a few equally sized proportions. It is made up of thousands of expenditures on everything from federal employee wages to excessively expensive arms contracts to student grants for college assistance. If we cut spending on some of our more absurd money sinks that are not as valuable to science as say, alternative energy and space exploration, we could easily afford to fund useful science like alternative energy and space exploration simultaneously.

If you take an hour out of your day (really, you have plenty of time left in your life, you can survive 1 hour) to do some poking around over at USASpending.gov you will see figures pop up like the fact that the top five federal contractors this year were:

1 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION ... $29.748500571 Billion
2 THE BOEING COMPANY ... $18.231538802 Billion
3 GENERAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION ... $12.318737574 Billion
4 NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORPORATION ... $11.900713440 Billion
5 RAYTHEON COMPANY ... $11.156782353 Billion

Now you may already know this, but if not, another hour of research won't kill you, but each of those companies is very diversified in the types of products the provide to their customers. They work on everything from appliances, to housing, to spacecraft. However, a little more research and a little intuition will show you that these companies are, above all else, arms developers. And the majority of their contracts coming from the federal government are those dedicated to developing the new, powerful, absurdly capable weapons that would have been useful in the Cold War, which ended ~20 years ago. If you add up the total monetary value of the contracts provided to these five companies for FY 2009, you see that, together, $88.356272740 Billion (with a B) was awarded to companies that are essentially developing technology to fight a war that fizzled out 20 years ago. Now of course, neither economics or politics are as simple as I am making this out to be, but it does illustrate a point. While these companies probably are also getting plenty of money for advancing science and engineering in general, the mass majority of the spending by the federal government is spent ramping up what is already the most powerful and capable military in the world right now.

Suppose, for a second, that the war-machine lobby groups could be quelled long enough that the exorbitant level of funds being diverted to arms development and obscure wars on ideas (terrorism, drugs, etc.) could, instead, be cut significantly and diverted instead to, as you put it, meaningful science pursuits. We could, quite easily, save money on a federal level AND fund space exploration (manned and unmanned) AND fund alternative energy AND fund stem cell research AND fund computer infrastructure development etc. Instead, however, we have allowed our federal government to be infiltrated and overtaken by corrupt, greedy, selfish corporate interests. Thus, rather than funding valuable, civil science and tech, we have a government whose spending levels are out of control. A good amount of that spending goes towards funding wars that are sketchy at best, and a dormant lion of a military that needs nothing more than a twitchy trigger finger on its leash to free an unholy uproar of annihilation and chaos.

In short, our current priorities are the only thing that keep our country from properly funding the sciences that both you, and I, find valuable simultaneously

Re:Space program != science

[Apocryphos]

The fact that there is this kind of money to be spent is rather dependent on the overwhelming power of the US military at this point.

As long as the US is The Superpower, their money will hold value no matter how much debt they go into.

Divert the funds into what you describe sure, but if it doesn't yield marketable results quickly, the US would end up in trouble.

Re:Space program != science

[WayGoneDoug]

There are good, species preserving reasons to continue developing our launch capabilities. As I said in my blog: One of the things that has been obscured by all the hand wringing and arm waiving about global warming is the existence of a threat to our planet that is very real and could arise suddenly. That threat is from non-planetary bodies within the solar system: asteroids, comets and other celestial wanderers. While the world's politicians and tree-hugging blowhards rail about the damage climate change might cause, a symposium was held in San Francisco to address a problem that actually could end life on Earth. For the full story see http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/forget-global-warming-sky-really-could-fall

Re:Space program != science

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Perhaps my original scenario presented was a little extremist, though that was not my intention. I am aware, at least somewhat, of the complicated international relationships that keep the U.S. in the position it is in today. I also understand that it is important to maintain our supremacy if we want to continue to be the big kid on the block with the hardest stick. While I did say that the U.S. should cut and divert funds from it's war machine, which is prone to the interpretation that I meant ALL funds, what I meant to say was that the funds should be cut to an extent. The level of spending on America's military that should, in my opinion, occur, should be a level that allows America to maintain whatever position of power it wants in the world, but does not require it to bloat its military to unnecessary levels. Projects like the ABL, the F-22, THAAD, and so on are hold overs from a period where we were preparing for WWIII. We can and should, in my opinion, cut military spending to 'reasonable' levels (yes I know this is subject to interpretation).

The bottom line is that our military spending is bloated even if we want to maintain the advantages we have over other countries. We should reduce said spending, not cut it entirely. That was what I originally meant to get across and I do realize that I was not particularly specific in that manner. Forgive my lack of particulars.

Also, before I get dinged for it, I do know that the ABL and F-22 programs have been cut, somewhat, but those cuts so far have just been a very minor chip off the iceberg...there are dozens of other bloated contracts to consider...

Re:Space program != science

[Geoffrey.landis]

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.

The correct statement is "space exploration is only one miniscule part of science, and it is ridiculously cheap."

At the moment, the whole NASA budget-- research, robotic exploration, human exploration, aeronautics, all of it-- is less than half of a percent of the federal budget. Too small to even see on the pie charts. That's cheap cheap cheap.

Here's my proposal. Let's fund NASA with five percent of the US military budget-- that is, for every dollar the military gets, a nickel goes to NASA. This will have the result of roughly tripling NASAs funding. Sound good?

Re:Space program != science

[codemaster2b]

You raise good points, but let me question one of your assumptions. First lets suppose that we do in fact spend $88 Billion on our military annually. You are right to refer to our military as "a dormant lion of a military that needs nothing more than a twitchy trigger finger on its leash to free an unholy uproar of annihilation and chaos", in fact, most militaries are. If you ever studied the Roman Empire you might remember that the biggest problems in government happened when the the military had nothing to do. If they weren't needed, could you cut military spending? Um... no. Because soldiers like to get paid. If they don't, things like government coups happen. I seriously doubt we are completely immune to this. So, basically, since we have a military, we must maintain it and feed it money so it doesn't turn around and gnaw our faces off.

Re:Space program != science

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Please see my response to the other response to my original post. There is a difference between maintaining and funding further bloat.

Re:Space program != science

[zippthorne]

Blah blah blah, We get it. You want to drive your neighbor's yoke instead of the brown fellah in the big house the swamp.

But the proper thing to do, if you find you can spend less on defense contractors, is to take the savings and *not* find something else to spend it on. It's not your money, therefore you should always spend as little of it as possible. Don't invent "worthwhile causes" to justify keeping your budget high and maintaining your little bureaucratic fiefdom.

If space programs are vital to the national interest, then they should be undertaken. If they are not (and as someone who spent some time in the industry and would like to spend more time there, I must admit that they probably are not. At least not manned space projects), then they have no business being funded at the point of a gun. There are other deep pockets than the collective pocket.

Re:Space program != science

[L4t3r4lu5]

So, Barack Oursaviour says "Change we need! Cut military spending by 40%!" and the world rejoices.

It sounds like a troll, it looks like a troll, but it also makes sense.

Re:Space program != science

[BJ_Covert_Action]

It's not your money, therefore you should always spend as little of it as possible.

Actually, part of it is my money. I am an employed, independent citizen of the United States. I file my taxes every year. I certainly do contribute money to the federal budget every year. My own accounting of my own finances shows me that. That accounting is reviewed by the IRS. So, yes, my money does go towards the federal budget. As such, I am entitled (not because I am part of an 'entitlement generation', but because I am a contributing member of society) to my opinion on how that money should/could be spent. Also, as a citizen of the United States of America, I have a right to express that opinion in any form I see fit so long as it does not impinge upon the rights of others (see First Amendment). This means that, if I so choose, I can express my opinions via comments on the internet that include resources for readers to go investigate themselves. I could also choose to express my opinion through other means such as voting, discussing ideas with my federal and state representatives, writing letters to people I consider influential and so on and so on. In fact, I exercise this right in many forms other than just posting on the internet. This is something I am entitled to as an educated, competent, contributing member of society.

So yes, you can mock me if you like:

Blah blah blah, We get it. You want to drive your neighbor's yoke instead of the brown fellah in the big house the swamp.

...because you, too, are entitled to the right to express yourself in various mediums. You can also overlook significant portions of my post, as well as my other responses, which discuss my advocacy of not only diverting funds, but also cutting spending in general. This would allow you to say things, in a naive manner, such as:

But the proper thing to do, if you find you can spend less on defense contractors, is to take the savings and *not* find something else to spend it on. It's not your money, therefore you should always spend as little of it as possible

Since you seem to remain blissfully ignorant (by choice or by coincident, I don't know) of the content of my post which included advocacy for rethinking the way our country does things in many realms, through many avenues (cut spending, divert remaining funds appropriately, consider the threat that lobby groups represent to the interest of the people, re-prioritize our nation's agenda, etc.).

In fact, you are even entitled to the right to express, via your opinion pieces, that you are an authority in the industry that is being discussed (an industry that I, too, work in) and, therefore, your comments should be given some clout because, well, you just know better. In fact, this liberates you from the burden of actually providing any third party reference material or further reading for readers of your comments which is convenient for you. This, of course, is not a problem as your comment contains little meaningful content that could, in anyway, be substantiated by third party contributions or research. That is also convenient.

That's all fine. I have no problem with you expressing these things in the manner you have chosen to do so. I do hope, however, that you are also fine with the fact that neither I, nor many other people on here, are going to take your post to be anything more than some opinionated drivel which mostly equates to you whining the mantra, "They took our money!" (a close cousin to the related mantra of, "Dey took our jorbs!"). Actually, I hope that you are so fine with these things that you understand why this will be the last response I post in this thread because, well, I have other interests that I feel would be more productive than encouraging the lovely cruft spouted from your fingertips in your last post by inviting even more drivel in another post.

Cheers Mate.

To be fair, W and reagan's

[WindBourne]

were about the same. Both ran up monster deficits for no real reason. Both had economic bumps up front, so, I could not blame them for that spending. BUT, once the economy turned, they both increased the debts and threw money away. Between their debts, invasions of other countries, stealing of American rights, etc, the American dream is about to be the American nightmare.

Re:To be fair, W and reagan's

[Hurricane78]

Oh, there *is* a real reason! And there is no such thing as a president or government that is not following it. Since somewhere in the 18th century.

Look at who profits from this. A deficit is always something, where you gave all your money away, and now have to lend the money you need from someone else.

And who might that be?

There is a theory, that banks create unnecessary wars, so the country has to lend money from them, and so the banks get power over the country. Because now if the banks say no, the country goes tits up. Which means the banks own and control the country. Same thing with your personal loan: They own you. And that's the idea, according to the theory.

It certainly makes sense. Since every time the government starts to get out of of debt, somehow a large war starts for no reason. You can track this all the way back trough the centuries.
Does anyone remember, how in the Clinton era, the news was full of "we'll finally be out of the debt" for a short time? Well, and what happened next?

I can imagine that you're now saying: But what about the dying banks?
Well, they were dummy banks, supposed to die. For profit of the others. Look, it worked like this:
You have two banks. You move all the bad credit stuff to one, and all the good stuff to the other.
Then you let the "bad" bank die. And ask for huge sums of "bailout" money from the government.
Who itself has to lend that money from your "good" bank.
Then your good bank buys the "bad" bank with all that bailout money.
Tadaa! You just shifted a huge sum of money to yourself. And made the government depend on you because of them owing you money.
Time for some new laws! Isn't it?
First let's throw away the designated scapegoat president, and put our own employee/friend into its place, who will be received with open arms, because he will use the old lies-before-election/truth-after-election method, and supported by an even worse dummy candidate of whichever was the scapegoat party this time.
And then the fun starts.

Wait for this bailout only being the beginning. We can still work much harder for them, in our hamster wheels, to pay up a debt that can never be payed back, by the basic rules of physics. (Because if you lend 100 people $100, with 1% interest, then after 1 year, there will be $10100 to pay back. But still only be $10000 in existence. Which means one guy has to be left with no money, so they others can pay their $101 back. The only ones who could create that money out of nowhere, are the banks themselves.

Obviously, I'm not saying that any of this is proven to be true. I'm just saying that it makes a hell of a lot of sense. And that some things, like the wars right when we could be free, are more than telling. (The gold-based (and thereby not usable for creating artificial debts) dollar that got killed off by the federal reserve, through a nasty trick, is another good example.)

Re:To be fair, W and reagan's

[Anonymous Coward]

so the country has to lend money from them

Sorry you lost me there. How do you lend money from someone?

Ares should be funded and continued.

[Eravnrekaree]

Cancelling Ares I in my opinion would be pretty foolish, especially after so many resources have been invested into it. Its like, they barely funded the project, so that it struggled to produce, and then after they produced a working system, they decide to kill it off. I know conservatives babble on about private space and so on but I am doubtful that those would be as capable as Ares or that they would be any cheaper. More likely, the American tax payer would likely end up spending millions on some wealthy CEOs salary just like what happens with health care now. The problem with NASA not having enough funding can be solved by making sure it is properly funded rather than spending it on these stupid wars.

It has been said that Obama is not a liberal as a liberal would usually support the national space program instead of wars, along with a single payer health care, and I agree. We will be paying for Bushs mistakes for a while, and now (conservative) Obamas, and the rotten corruption of the conservatives lack of regulation on the banks and the financials, which are throughly republican and conservative, but after years of trying to kill of social welfare programs and the space program, are the first to line up for a huge government handout for their OWN mistakes. The irony, is, the people who have been denied social welfare because they lost their jobs, lost their jobs because of the mistakes of the wealthy elites, including those who totally screwed up GM and so many other American companies and have massively offshored the US jobs offseas, and are taking billion dollar bonuses while they continue to drive the US econom into the ground and screw US workers. Then we reward them with huge bailouts and welfare for the rich!

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[Anonymous Coward]

*popcorn*

More of your liberal conspiracies.

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me? Regulation and oversight was blocked by the Democratic lead Congress in 2002.

I fully endorse the idea that both parties are full of corruption, and I do not call myself a Republican. However, the spending spree and the level of stupidity coming out of the Democratic party is unmatchable. They already want Freddie Mae and other lenders to give the high risk loans that got them into the situation in the first place (I do not read the person's blog, but I found it as my Google search... use links from it to get other sources).

So, point your finger at the Democrats as they not only leverage government to buy these bad loans, but restart the whole process that they created by requiring these loan offerings in the late 90's.

Go be a tool somewhere else. And in no world is Obama a conservative--he may be more conservative than you, but he is not right of center.

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[Grishnakh]

The Dems and the Reps are both equally corrupt, and amazingly so.

Single-payer health care sounds like a good idea, but what Obama is trying to pass isn't the answer. He wants to socialize the costs of everyone's health care across the entire taxpayer base, but he doesn't want to do anything to actually fix the reason that healthcare costs SO much. Healthcare has gotten expensive because of malpractice, malpractice insurance, and litigation. Obama doesn't want to fix any of that, because that's not good for his lawyer buddies or his friends at the insurance companies. Instead, he wants to keep healthcare expensive as hell, keep the useless insurance companies as an unnecessary middle-man, and force taxpayers to pay for it all.

Just look at all the crap he's spent money on in his short term: bailing out rich insurance and financial companies, "cash for clunkers" and bailouts for big auto companies. What has he done for average Americans? Nothing. He could have gotten behind the "4/40 Freedom Loan" initiative to help homeowners stay in their houses and reduce the rate of foreclosures, but he (and the rest of the corrupt Dems) didn't want to annoy their rich buddies at the financial companies that they had just given billions of dollars to for nothing, so they ignored it.

The Dems and the Reps are just tools for the rich elites; they just cater to different groups of rich elites, and the Dems pander to poor people and union workers to vote for them, while the Reps pander to religious nuts.

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[camperdave]

Actually, it would be foolish to continue with Ares-1. It has no distict advantages over the Delta-IV and Atlas rockets, or the proposed commercial rockets (Falcon 9). It can't lift much more, and it costs a lot more. NASA's been trimming the Orion crew module to make it light enough to lift. (Backwards thinking. Design the crew module, then build a rocket large enough to lift it.)

The biggest cost (both in terms of dollars and time) in rocket development is the design and testing of new engines. This cost could have been completely avoided if NASA had adopted the DIRECT plan. The DIRECT plan involves taking the engines out of the shuttle and tacking them onto the bottom of the external tank. Mount the Orion crew module on the top of the external tank, and away you go. This configuration, called the J-130 could be flying in three years. It would easily be able to lift a fully stocked Orion crew module, plus an extra 20 metric tons of supplies to the ISS. The Jupiter, because it is made of existing shuttle parts, allows most of the people currently employed in building and deploying shuttles to keep their jobs (especially if the shuttle program is stretched out for a couple of years.

By adding a fourth engine and an upper stage, you transform the J-130 into the J-246. It is capable of lofting 85 metric tons into orbit. The upper stage is similar to the upper stage currently used on Centaur rockets. (It can even use an existing Centaur upper stage, I believe.) Because it uses the same core configuration as the J-130 (which is itself a minor variation of the existing shuttle), it can be built, deployed, and launched on the same lauch pad, using the same gantry cranes, by the same experienced personnel that will be running the J-130. ARES cannot do this because the rockets are so dissimilar.

Now, the ARES program is called a 1.5 launch configuration. The 1 launch is the ARES-V, and the 0.5 launch is the ARES-1 with the crew. No matter what you call it, it is still two launches (of significantly different rockets). With the DIRECT plan, you still launch two rockets, but because they are both carrying cargo, you wind up with more tonnage in orbit. Also, since the rockets are practically identical (apart from the upper stage and additional first stage engine), you don't need separately trained personnel. Best of all, both the J-130 and J-246 can be built and flown with NASA's current budget. We could be on the moon by 2020 if we so desire.

Now don't think that all of the development that went into ARES would be lost. By no means! Development of the human rated RS-68s would continue. When ready, they would replace the SSMEs used on the Jupiter core. Development of the J-2X could continue as well. The thing is, they would be optional upgrades, and not required equipment.

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[Eravnrekaree]

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!

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[Eravnrekaree]

Are you kidding me? The Democrats first got control in 2006 (first time since 1994). By that time the problem was already well underway. The loan policies have questionable influence on what happened. It is the fact that we had rampant real estate speculation (drove up prices and led to bad mortgages due to too high prices) and there were no regulation on derivatives that caused the systemic collapse. Unless we regulate the banks, it will happen all over again. THe republican control house gutted out the Glass Steagall act which allowed alot of this to happen, and as well, continued to preside over a period of deregulation where the banks ran wild.

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[Eravnrekaree]

The ideas sound great. 3 years is pretty incredible and if so, makes one wonder why they are messing around with Ares when they can get something just as good in a shorter period. Unless, the Ares has a better safety rating. I have thought, unless the rockets can replace the in orbit satellite repair capability of the shuttle, if they should keep the shuttle going, unless that can be duplicated with the new system. Could the new system, for instance repair hubble in orbit?

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[Anonymous Coward]

I did misspeak on the "lead" part, but I meant filibustered.

Anyway, I agree that the loans being passed around in the background did certainly add to the faults, but it was without a doubt the fault of loans given to people that didn't deserve to have them.

If that had been prevented, then the background noise would simply be noise. The background only got in trouble because they didn't realize they were getting such risky loans, while the loaners were giving out exceptionally high risk loans, knowing full well that they'd be paid for them by the background traders.

I also agree that Glass Steagall should have still been in place, but it was passed 90-8 in the senate in the final vote and similarly in the house (to be fair, the initial senate vote was pretty much along party lines, while the house vote was a very large majority [343 - 86]). This again goes back to the corruption I pointed out in my last post. It also does not change the fact that Democrats blocked re-regulating, or at least looking at these practices.

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[Grishnakh]

As far as I'm concerned both Dems and Reps are responsible for people dying.

Litigation and frivolous lawsuits aren't the only problem. Many malpractice lawsuits are legitimate. There's constantly cases of people getting the wrong limb amputated and other ridiculous things. There was something on the news just yesterday about some hospital in the east (Rhode Island I think) that had so many surgical errors that the feds had to step in. Lawsuits are needed for things like this; you can't tell people they're just screwed when a doctor or hospital screws up, and I think that's what some people want to do.

What they need to reduce this is some type of system that keeps bad doctors from practicing. We currently don't have anything like that. What they have is something like the Bar for lawyers, which is just a group of other lawyers who say they keep watch over all lawyers, but in reality they don't do anything unless it's so ridiculous that they have to disbar someone to keep from looking totally ineffective. The doctors have the same thing; do these doctors that amputate the wrong limb or make other terrible mistakes get their licenses pulled? Nope. A medical board which really keeps bad doctors out of business is needed, and this would reduce malpractice cases greatly. The other thing would be tort reform, a "loser pays" system where anyone bringing suit has to pay the other side's legal costs if they lose. Most civilized countries, like those in Europe, have such a system, and as a result don't have a lot of frivolous lawsuits. There's too many people bringing lawsuits for things that really aren't under a doctor's control, such as a woman having a stillborn baby because she didn't have proper prenatal care, and suing the delivering doctor. This can only be stopped with tort reform.

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[camperdave]

Could the new system, for instance repair hubble in orbit?

Yes. You would use an Space Shuttle Payload Delivery Module (SSPDM). Essentially, this is a structural frame that provides exactly the same mount points as the shuttle's payload bay (including the Canadarm if needed). It would sit in the payload fairing behind the Orion. With a SSPDM, a Jupiter rocket can loft any payload that the shuttle currently can, without requiring any modifications to the payload.

The only thing it cannot do is return payload back to Earth. But then again, neither can ARES.

Re:Ares should be funded and continued.

[Eravnrekaree]

Oh ok, that sounds good. I do agree it sounds like a good system to me

Obama might also increase the funds, no?

[blind biker]

Change you can believe and stuff? What better than a daring scientific project of national proportions to catalyze the United States, to unite the minds and the hearts of all the people, to inspire them, to give them hope and a vision?

During the Apollo missions America had a dream larger than life, a vision that propelled her forward for decades to come. The creativity, genius and overpowering enthusiasm that this country showed was what, I think, eventually broke the USSR - the Star Wars "threat" was so much more frightening to the Soviets, because they (the old gard, anyway) still had in mind the Apollo missions and thought that these crazy yankees might just pull this off!

America is now just a shell of its former self - a gigantic trade and budget deficit, a country wholly subservient to foreign (mostly arab) oil, and almost bought out by the Chinese government.

You want a stimulus, one that will really stimulate all the people, all their endevours, all their emotions? Give NASA more, much more money, and tell them to dream big!

Re:Obama might also increase the funds, no?

[mewsenews]

America is now just a shell of its former self - a gigantic trade and budget deficit, a country wholly subservient to foreign (mostly arab) oil, and almost bought out by the Chinese government.

You've answered your own question about why America will not return to her glory days. More NASA funding would be nice, but the country is still embroiled in Iraq and the economy is still reeling. The government owns General Motors. The shining beacon of individual liberty and "can-do" capitalism has been forever tarnished.

Re:Obama might also increase the funds, no?

[anarche]

Actually you've just enunciated why America is not in her glory days. She can return, it just requires you seppos to stop whinging (about wars, the Government, each other) and bring back that can-do attitute.

Government now owns a car manufacturer. Stop and think, what could you do with you've very own car manufacturer?

Personally (spoken from one of your little eager-beaver states)I'd love to see the US back on its feet...

FRIST STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

right now. I tried, 200 runningj NT tired arguments Members all over

For example...

[KingSkippus]

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.

Re:For example...

[Wonko the Sane]

We're going to get the worst of both worlds: no manned space exploration program and a white elephant "green" energy infrastructure that won't be good for much except making the investors who started the Chicago Climate Exchange richer.

Re:For example...

[morgauxo]

As the price of fossil fuels rise the market will fund alternative energy sources. For the market to fund the steps towards colonizing the solar system the price of space travel must fall. The first will happen in spite of what anyone does. The second requires someone who can spend money without expecting a profit to do the initial work, ie taxpayer dollars ie government.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you learned your lesson Parent. Saying the space program is a white elephant is insightful, while saying green energy technology initiatives are a white elephant is heresy and therefore trolling ;)

Re:For example...

[morgauxo]

Our population rises exponentially. No matter how green our technology gets we ultimately have 3 choices.
Extinction.
Kill our excess children.
Expand out into the rest of the solar system and beyond

The only thing really up for argument is how long we have until we have to make the choice. The thing about that third choice however is that if we don't start it soon enough there won't be time before we have to choose between the other two.

That being said.. Let the market push green technology. Have you been watching the price of oil? There are fortunes to be made! There are many fortunes to be lost before we colonize space. There is too much technology to be developed yet so the market isn't going to do it. We need a money source which isn't required to justify itself by earning a profit to develop space travel technology. We need it to be cheap enough that corporations start shipping people off world to look for resources they can turn into money. The only source I know of is tax dollars.

Re:For example...

[JWW]

Um, if _I_ were President, I would immediately put a stop to the Treasury handing out any more TARP money and fully fund NASA's budget.

There that wasn't so hard.

And yes, it is what I would really do if I were President. I believe completely that the TARP program was one of the worst things my Government has ever done.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

".. billions on the white elephant..."

If you knew what the hell you were talking about with regard to what the U.S. Budget ACTUALLY spends its money on, you would have a heart attack right now,and save /. the time of reading your banalities.

You know what happens if we drop NASA and keep space exploration strictly private? You and I lose, the Corporations win ( and probably at 3x the actual cost), and China surpasses the US technologically.

Yes. We SHOULD completely drop all government funded space endeavors. Thank you for suggested we plateau the adventuresome spirit our species once had. You are truly a fore-thinker and futurist.

Re:For example...

[Again]

Our population rises exponentially. No matter how green our technology gets we ultimately have 3 choices. Extinction. Kill our excess children. Expand out into the rest of the solar system and beyond

Well that's a false trichotomy if I've ever heard one.

We can also slow our population growth to 0 by using birth control.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably some GE or Goldman Sachs employee got mod points.

Re:For example...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I partially agree with what you're saying.

One one hand, we could get more scientific value out of launching 5 or 6 Mars Science Laboratory type projects (or 12+ MER-type projects) per year than a few Shuttle or Ares missions. The human spaceflight program does produce useful science, but it's very, very expensive compared to unmanned missions.

Note that I said science, not engineering. The human spaceflight program does far more for developing our ability to build and survive in space than an unmanned program could. But we need to evaluate just how important that ability is.

On the other hand, NASA's budget is tiny compared to the DOD or many, many other programs. Compare, for example, the cost of the F-22 program, which is equal to about 6 years of Space Shuttle missions.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the spirit of breaking Slashdot etiquette, I am going to request that parent and gp are modded down. I honestly can't believe they've actually been modded so high.

If you think $18 billion per year is going to roll out a national energy infrastructure that will get us off of fossil fuels TODAY, then you are sorely mistaken. In fact, suggesting a dichotomy between our space program and energy R&D is just plain stupid. There are dozens of other more wasteful, less beneficial government agencies/programs that would be much more fitting for your silly hypothetical, but that's not even the proper argument for increasing energy R&D funding.

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.

Who is "we"? The scientists/engineers working on the space program aren't the same ones working on renewable energy (although the space program is responsible for several advancements in the field). The fact is we can, have been, and will continue doing both. Suggesting that "nothing" gets done is ignorant.

And so long as I'm an AC, your mother and I had intercourse last night.

Re:For example...

[PhxBlue]

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.

Can't we, though? NASA's 2008 budget was about $17 billion -- less than we spent in three weeks in Iraq the same year.

Re:For example...

[uncqual]

Or, world population growth trends might just continue and the world population will stabilize. Last week's Economist has an article that discusses this trend. The article projects that world population will reach 9.2 billion in 2050 and stabilize at that level. Of course, it's just a projection, but that's all anything is for the 2050 time-frame.

Birthrates drop as people become more wealthy and some of the poorest areas of the world have the highest birth rates. The notion that the solution to excessive population growth is to put the "excess" bodies on space ships and send them to live somewhere else is absurd - the cost of the launch alone likely exceeds the total cost of caring for the kid here on earth for the rest of their lives.

The supply of humans, like rabbits, is nearly unlimited - only the resources to provide for them are limited. It might make sense for some reason to send a few prime "breeding pairs" (human and/or non-human) to populate other celestial bodies - for example, if one believes that forms of life on Earth are unique enough in the universe and superior in some way to other life in the universe that it's important for some moral, ethical, or religious reason to preserve and propagate Earthly species even after the Earth is uninhabitable (having been baked to a crisp by our sun for example). But, doing so won't have a measurable impact on Earth's human population.

Re:For example...

[donaggie03]

It isn't a false trichotomy if the antecedent remains true. You falsify the antecedent by changing the rate of population growth by making everyone use birth control. GP would have been a lot closer to correct if he said "IF our population rises exponentially, then . . " Of course that's all just semantics about logic statements, and people could argue both points . . i.e. is it likely that we as a population will ever be able to change our growth rates, using birth control or otherwise? Maybe, maybe not. People who argue no have that previous trichotomy to work with. People who say yes have a whole lot more options. Some other options would be to wipe out large populations through, plague, war or genocide. Or sexual segregation. All women are physically separated from men. But then you run into another problem. A lot of people would consider any method of population management as being inhumane. Not because you are trying to manage the population, but because inhibiting a person's reproductive rights or starving them or killing them are all bad things to do. If this logic holds, then you cannot control the population growth, which means the original antecedent remains true, which means GP was correct. Now wasn't that fun?

Re:For example...

[Eravnrekaree]

I would place the energy problem far ahead of the one regarding space travel. Lets face it, this idea that we can totally %$%$ up this planet and then just fly off to another one is absurd. Lets focus on fixing things here. Too often here on slashdot, I see people both promoting insane things like space travel, which will never be feasible for more than a few people adn who wouldnt survive well on these other planets, and destructive technologies like GMOs which are literally causing a global ecological collapse. Its our moral obligation to take care of this planet. Many of these same people are all gung ho for every dangerous technology which could totally ruin this planet including the vast array of chemicals which are causing cancer, various diseases, even causing a collapse of maleness and various male birth defects and reduced sperm counts, just to name a few. GMOs have been proved to cause cancer, damage the liver and kidney. This technology is truly dangerous, and could totally destroy this planet and ruin our food supply. The fact is it cannot be done safety and is just not worth the risk. The risk is much higher than weith selective breeding because we are circumventing the safeguards in natural conception, and will never fully understand the complex multiple functions of genes. There is an ethical issue here. Science has helped us understand nature, but a part of the deal was that we were not going to redesign and restructure nature. The GMO technology allows a few elites to impose their agendas on everyone. Nature does not have an agenda but scientists certainly do. GMOs are just too risky and really need to be banned. Many of the chemicals, such as those used in plastics and in farming have been proven to cause an array of physical degenerations. it is quite possible that we will, with our technology, end up causing a deevolutionary collapse, into a deformed, mentally retarded, physically impaired species, due to the cumulative GMO damage of the tons of chemicals, GMOs, radioactive waste that we are poisoning ourselves with.

Re:For example...

[recharged95]

"Personally, I'd rather just not have a space program" Considering the air in the ISS is likely cleaner and better than the air currently on this Earth, that we recycle more efficiently on the ISS than anything on Earth, and energy use made and used more efficiently than anything on Earth.... I rather have a space program that discovers more ways to makes things better than look at ground science solutions for a better energy infrastructure.

Cause frankly, we need thinking "out of box", and fresh ideas to solve these ground problems like an energy infrastructure. And that where "space" science comes to play. It is just unfortunate as another post mentions that "space" science is currently "political" science.

Re:For example...

[khallow]

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?

I'd weigh the cost/benefit of each. Odds are really good that I would do neither. The Mars program would probably take place in the absence of any economic launch infrastructure to space and hence, be hideously expensive. The national energy infrastructure would most likely be a boondoggle and a bad choice. It's better to allow the market to chose a energy infrastructure rather than impose a bad idea (especially one chosen on the basis of what selfish special interest groups are most powerful).

Instead, I would probably focus on spending reduction, not just of expensive, delusionally misguided military projects, but everything including entitlements.

Re:For example...

[khallow]

Or we can skip the pointless speculation and use birth control which has been shown to work well in the developed world.

Re:For example...

[khallow]

Our population rises exponentially.

No, premise is wrong. Some parts of "our" population have exponential growth rates and some have exponential decay rates. And projections are that the global population will start to decline around 2050.

Re:For example...

[blind biker]

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.

I really don't see why you had to answer your own post - you could have just included this stuff in your original post, where it belonged.

That said... just pouring money into Obama's energy initiatives (which, by the way, don't impress me all that much - nothing really courageous, groundbreaking... really quite bland) won't necessarily create the best results. What you're forgetting is the human element. What is going to transform money into results? People. Motivated people. Creative, thinking and dedicated people. And money by itself won't be enough for that. You have to give people something more than just the cold and utilitarian gold: you have to give them a vision they can believe in. That's the spice, the fertilizer that will then enable the monies to achieve results.

Re:For example...

[khallow]

Lets face it, this idea that we can totally %$%$ up this planet and then just fly off to another one is absurd.

My view is simply that successful space development grows our economy, cultures, and knowledge in ways that mere ecological damage control cannot. Space development is not about escaping our problems, it's about growing up. Someone is going to live in space. It might as well be us.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh OK! But its all right to have a space program if another country becomes more advanced in their space program? The government just reflects the opinions of people like you who really don't want to have a space program. If the government had continued the funding for the Apollo program maybe we would have colonized Mars and Moon by now. The government should not decide what kind of science gets done.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahaha. are you serious ?
not ONE of the birth control measures have worked so far and extending human lifespans is going to exacerbate that anyway.

Re:For example...

[DirePickle]

Guh? How does spreading out into space help our population problem? It gives us redundancy, yes, but there are 200,000 (from my first Google hit) more people born every day than die. That's 550 747s worth of people we'd have to fire out of cannons at other planets every day to maintain a steady population. The physics of escaping from gravity wells isn't very nice to such ideas.

Re:For example...

[tftp]

Or we can skip the pointless speculation and use birth control which has been shown to work well in the developed world.

Developed world already has negative population growth, thanks not only to birth control but primarily to extreme costs and liabilities of raising children in their countries.

The other world, OTOH, couldn't care less about birth control because a) people want children, culturally b) people need children to prosper, and c) children are affordable there. So in the end the "developed world" will be a drop in the ocean of other nations.

Re:For example...

[khallow]

The other world, OTOH, couldn't care less about birth control because a) people want children, culturally b) people need children to prosper, and c) children are affordable there. So in the end the "developed world" will be a drop in the ocean of other nations.

The "other world" is becoming the developed world. The same dynamics that created the developed world are at work everywhere in the world. Remember a mere century ago, the developed world was the other world.

Re:For example...

[gmb61]

Actually, the One Child policy in China has been successful, to the tune of 300 to 400 million less people than if the policy had not been implemented back in 1979.

Re:For example...

[Eravnrekaree]

Pretty much the only thing a trip to mars is that space travel is totally impractical and extremely expensive. it is also likely that anyone who does go to mars will die of cancer prematurely due to the exposure to cosmic rays. The think would basically be a pointless stunt that would waste billions on something that will be pretty useless and pointless as far as human welfare.

As a moral issue, and as an issue of saving the only planet we have, we need to make sure our planet is a healthy place to live into the future. Growing up means leaving a good, healthy, unpolluted world for our children, not wasting billions on some stupid space journey stunt to stoke your ego. Trying to waste precious resources on pointless space programs that could otherwise be spent to save this planet are greatly irresponsible.

Re:For example...

[Chris Burke]

As the price of fossil fuels rise the market will fund alternative energy sources. [Moving to non-fossil energy sources] will happen in spite of what anyone does.

Of course they will, but the question is will this funding be soon enough and large enough to sufficiently replace fossil fuels at a pace that matches the rise in oil prices?

Our entire economy is dependent on fossil fuels. If the price goes up, and there isn't enough alternative sources available so that we need to continue paying this increasing cost, it will put a severe drag on our economy. If the price of oil rises to quickly, and the alternative energy sources are not ready, it could drive us into a depression far worse than the mere recession we're still struggling with now. Where, then, will the money come from to continue developing alternative energy? And what good will it do when it takes years and years to build up?

We are facing a severe problem with fossil fuels if we don't do something about it well in advance. If "the market" is going to wait until the price of oil is prohibitively expensive, then it's going to be too late.

Funding alternative energy means getting the free market to do something it normally doesn't very well, which is respond to obvious problems before they materially hurt the market's bottom line.

Personally I think we can fund NASA too, but that's me.

Re:For example...

[khallow]

Pretty much the only thing a trip to mars is that space travel is totally impractical and extremely expensive. it is also likely that anyone who does go to mars will die of cancer prematurely due to the exposure to cosmic rays. The think would basically be a pointless stunt that would waste billions on something that will be pretty useless and pointless as far as human welfare.

A lot of people die prematurely. Might as well be in service to a good cause. Second, billions is not a lot of money. The problem is that using near future technology and a NASA-style approach, the trip can cost somewhere between 100 billion and a trillion USD. That's ludicrous. The cost of doing stuff in space would have to be greatly lowered before it makes sense. But that's one of the parts of growing up. Learning how to do stuff without widespread looting of public funds.

As a moral issue, and as an issue of saving the only planet we have, we need to make sure our planet is a healthy place to live into the future. Growing up means leaving a good, healthy, unpolluted world for our children, not wasting billions on some stupid space journey stunt to stoke your ego. Trying to waste precious resources on pointless space programs that could otherwise be spent to save this planet are greatly irresponsible.

Nonsense. A key problem with environmentalism and related social causes is that they don't actually fix what is wrong. The problem is that we don't have a relatively "clean" way to maintain our standard of living and our civilization. Rather than fix that problem, a lot of talk is given to "sacrifice". Which in general means losing parts of our society (like good, healthy standard of living) for parts we value less (abstract ecological goals like reduced rate of loss of species or reduced carbon footprint).

I agree that there's serious problems with space development projects as they are currently practiced. But there's no reason we can't address those problems and create a new growing part of our society that helps us with the real problems we face.

Re:For example...

[camperdave]

Our population rises exponentially. No matter how green our technology gets we ultimately have 3 choices. Extinction.
Kill our excess children.,br> Expand out into the rest of the solar system and beyond

Expanding into Space doesn't help. Imagine a sphere centered on Earth, and expanding outwards over time. That sphere will grow geometrically, eg t^3. As you've posited, our population rises exponentially n^t. Eventually, we will overpopulate space. Expansion is not an option.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume our planet will remain livable for us for long enough for the free market to produce alternatives.

The free market does not charge for environmental damage.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please. you make it sound like the space program is this massive expenditure and an enormous percentage of the federal budget. News flash: it's not! In point of fact, NASA represents less than 1% of of the federal budget. Killing the space program would do nothing -NOTHING- to help solve the other problems you mention.

Re:For example...

[Retric]

Tarp has a high chance of making the government money, because they are charging significantly higher interest rates on the loans than they are paying to borrow that money. At this point it's still just IOU's being tossed around but wait ten years and you will probably be surprised.

Re:For example...

[khallow]

not ONE of the birth control measures have worked so far and extending human lifespans is going to exacerbate that anyway.

Three counter examples: the Pill, abortion, and the condom.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

heheh... he said do do... heheh.. heh.. heheheh

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the all-time best /. posts I have seen. For a site that harbors intelligent minds, there sure are a lot of ignorantly biased tunnel-vision posts. This one is a most welcome departure from the norm. Thank you!

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

Our population rises exponentially.

No it doesn't. Take a look at birthrates in Japan, Italy, and Germany. They're below replacement. The US is around or below replacement if you don't count recent immigrants from developing countries. The wonderful truth is that if you make people rich (raise the standard of living to western levels), give them access to birth control, educate them a bit, and leave them alone, population growth levels off and overpopulation even corrects itself, over time. No one-child policy or culling is needed (unless you're one of those who counts voluntary family planning as "killing our excess children", in which case further discussion is pointless). That surprised the hell out of me and a lot of other people, but the numbers don't lie.

Now all we have to do is get the developing countries up to standard and get them access to family planning, and the world's population problems will go away in a century or two. Not that it's easy, or guaranteed that the Earth's carrying capacity will fit 8-10 billion people living at western standards. There's still a lot of work for engineers and scientists to do - but there's hope.

Also, colonizing space is really not an option for relieving population pressure, at least not without massive breakthroughs in space travel and other areas. Think about it. Using any technology that's even on the far horizon right now, how would you _move_ a substantial fraction of the human population of Earth, say a billion people (and their stuff), to even a nearby Lagrange space station? How would you build a station big enough for that many people in less than a century? Or terraform Mars or Venus in less than a century? Even if they get fusion powered VASIMIR, space elevators, and self replicating AI space robots all working tomorrow morning, it will be centuries before we can talk about moving billions of people to offworld colonies. The vast majority of us are here to stay, for your lifetime and your grandkids' too.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've assumed that the rate at which the sphere expands is constant.

Re:For example...

[TheDarkMaster]

Some day We (mankind) will need to leave the berth (Earth).

Because a giant asteroid struck, overpopulation, out of resources, maybe even the Sun going to red giant.
So, sooner we learn to cross the space and colonize other planets, better.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've assumed that the rate at which the sphere expands is constant.

Well, it must be below c!

Replying to the GP; the rate of growth of a sphere is only ~ t^2 and not ~ t^3 as you have to take the derivative, but apart from that, I totally agree with your argument.

Re:For example...

[morgauxo]

It's not about the market responding to a problem such as oil running out, becoming rare, being too expensive... etc Nor about the market trying to save the environment.

It's the fortunes which can be made by coming up with a less expensive alternative. If that's not enough motivation then what are tax dollars supposed to do?

Re:For example...

[petermgreen]

Which means the real question is will the living standards in the poor world rise to levels that halt thier population growth before a resource crisis and/or runaway climate change drags the whole world down.

Re:For example...

[khallow]

That is reasonable to ask. But it's worth noting that living standards aren't tied to a particular level of resource consumption or land use. My view is that we have decades of demonstrated modern living standard improvement in the presence of severe resource and land use restriction. I feel the question has already been answered positively.

Re:For example...

[JWW]

I really hope so. But I don't trust the banks to eventually pay it all back. They're certainly off to a very slow start. And I have no faith AIG will be able to pay its share back in the next century let alone the next 10 years. AIG should have been left to burn....

Re:For example...

[Painted]

[citation needed]

You've got a whole lot of eco-apocolyptic talk in your post about the child-eating horrors of GMO and *gasp* chemicals without a whole lot of scientific proof. I think you've enabled the hyperbole button- as many eco-warrior types do, about how our entire ecosystem is on the very precipice of doom, if we don't act now we'll all be dead in 5 years... I've heard this exact type of hyperbole for most of my adult life, and we've past at least 3 "THE WORLD WILL END IN 10 YEARS UNLESS WE STOP..." deadlines.

Honestly, you'd do much better using a more calm tone of voice and argument- "GMO crops have not been tested thoroughly enough in my opinion" is a much more valid statement than claiming that they have "been proved to cause cancer, damage to the liver and kidney" since there is NO proof of that. You've basically made that statement up, and it's a lie, and it does your cause no service. In fact, it simply makes most people place you in their mental "This guy's an eco-nut who wants us all to live in grass huts and return us to 20% infant mortality and a 45 year lifespan."

Re:For example...

[Saliegh]

Posting to undo accidental moderation.

Re:For example...

[steeviant]

thus keeping our own planet from boiling away

You had me until this part... does anyone seriously believe this kind of hyperbole? We're talking a change in temperature of a few degrees, the seas aren't going to boil away, the dirt isn't going to catch fire or be submerged under hurricane powered waves.

Putting aside the fact that it would be physically impossible to boil away the oceans, and that mankind would become extinct long before the effects of anthropogenic warming could reach those levels, the most immediate threat to life on Earth from climate change is the same thing that has threatened our existence since the 1950's, that a shortage of resources could trigger global wars that contaminate the entire ecosystem with so much toxic fallout from whatever massive energy weapons are in fashion at the time that the ecosystem is rendered practically sterile.

Re:For example...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope so. But I don't trust the banks to eventually pay it all back. They're certainly off to a very slow start. And I have no faith AIG will be able to pay its share back in the next century let alone the next 10 years. AIG should have been left to burn....

Perhaps, but IMHO the main reason why there is a "Pay Czar" is to encourage the banks and other financial organizations to repay with all practical speed. After all, the only real power this position has is over the companies which received federal loans. One of the biggest problems with the original TARP was there were few if any strings attached to the loans. No matter what you think about Obama, you have to admit his administration is trying to rectify that.

The whole program should be scrapped

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The whole program should be scrapped

[Areyoukiddingme]

The saddest part is the test launch of the Falcon 9 has been sitting on the pad since JANUARY. It's been tied up in paperwork ever since. If I had my tinfoil hat handy, I'd say it was tied up solely to make sure the Ares launch happened first. SpaceX has demonstrated their competence with a successful payload delivery to orbit on board a Falcon 1. Not giving the go-ahead for the Falcon 9 smells of excuses, to me. Canaveral is built to handle rockets that size, and the Canaveral range officers have a fine understanding of rockets that size. They know how to use an abort button if necessary. There isn't any danger to anybody, anywhere, whether it works or not. The hazards are to Elon Musk's wallet and to certain pork barrel charity-for-engineers NASA programs. Playing politics has crippled space efforts more than any launch fatalities, anywhere.

Re:The whole program should be scrapped

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what you're talking about. Mod this DB down.

Falcon 9 was on the pad in january for integration tests. Most of the hardware on the rocket- minor things like the tanks and engines- were not flight ready. They also didn't have the pad fuel, oxidizer, or water tanks built yet, so even if the rocket was ready they couldn't fuel it.

If you even bothered to, say, visit the spacex website you'd have learned this.

The only "paperwork" holding back the falcon 9 is nobody has offered to pay for the development work to make it man-rated. But they have a huge contract for development flights and ISS resupply, so they're not exactly stopped in their tracks as far as flying the thing is concerned.

Re:The whole program should be scrapped

[cheesybagel]

Eh? No. The Falcon 9 stuff you saw on January was just a photo opportunity. The upper stage was a mockup and they didn't have sound suppressors in the pad, or liquid propellant tanks to fill the vehicle.

The first stage was sent back for more testing. Then they did second stage engine tests without the engine nozzle. Second stage mechanical tests. They should still need to make a second stage engine test with the nozzle on, an integrated second stage fire test, vehicle hold down firing tests. Pad work probably isn't 100% finished either.

Making Hay

[Nethemas the Great]

The summary is trying to make hay. There are other tests already on the board between now and the 2014 Ares I-Y test flight. Project managers simply decided that the objectives of that particular test fly could be achieved by other means (test flights) thereby saving the program unnecessary expenses. A very helpful thing considering their already tight budget.

Re:Making Hay

[khallow]

The Ares I-Y is a key test because it'll be the first test with the real Ares I configuration including 5 segment motor, thrust oscillation suppression, and a real second stage. My take is that if it or some virtually identical test doesn't fly, Ares I doesn't fly.

Nay-Sa should get out of the way

[dloyer]

NASA is paralized by its own size and poltical bagage.

Space should be explored and public money should go to help fund it, but by people not afraid to try new things and maybe die in the process.

People are going to die, while exploring space, just like every other new environemnt. I dont see anything wrong with that. It is still worth doing.

OldMilitantBastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's time to merge NASA with the Military again, just like in the glory days.
NASA might have a chance to a bigger slice of the green pie.

Merge NASA with DoD

[Anonymous Coward]

Let NASA compete for a bigger slice of the green pie.

Better

[KingSkippus]

What better than a daring scientific project of national proportions to catalyze the United States, to unite the minds and the hearts of all the people, to inspire them, to give them hope and a vision?

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.

Re:Better

[khallow]

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?

Why would we want to do that, when it'll occur naturally as a result of market forces? I say let it happen when we're ready for it to happen.

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?

Most people have that right now. You're just speaking of coverage for a few rural communities. I don't think that's a good use of government funds.

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.

We're already spending billions a year on R&D and tens of billions a year on treatments. Plenty of incentive for anyone who wants to develop a cureall.

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.

Such as? You haven't mentioned one yet. All those other are stuff that will happen anyway. Mars settlement isn't something that will obviously happen in my view due to the high risks involved and lack of infrastructure. That makes it a somewhat more legitimate consideration for public funding.

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.

Would be nice.

Re:Better

[dpilot]

> Why would we want to do that, when it'll occur naturally as a result of market forces? I say let
> it happen when we're ready for it to happen.

If we really had free markets, I might concur.

We don't.

We have giant corporate oligarchies fighting to the death to keep making their money the same way they're used to making it. Normally the free market might be able to take care of that too, but in this case those oligarchies have gotten so big that they could cheat in the classic monopoly fashion, if needed, and they don't need to cheat (much) because they've bought the right legislation to keep them where they are.

I don't like what I'm seeing from health care legislation - but what I WOULD like to see is for Congress to repeal the "monopoly exception" that the health insurance industry currently enjoys. Now THAT's a little free-market reform. For that matter, nothing else in the medical industry acts like a marketplace, either. Try shopping for success rates or prices - though I understand such things can be found, neither is as readily available as ... say, online reviews for computing hardware or purchase options and prices for same.

Also while we're talking about free-market and informed consumers, the favorite Republican trot-out is tort reform. I can see the value to it, but not yet. The statistic I once read was that 10-15% of doctors are responsible for 70% of malpractice payouts. Hospitals quietly shuttle them away - make them Somebody Else's Problem. When the information is generally available to the public so we can avoid the bad eggs - use the free-market to drive them into another line of employment - THEN I'll listen to the idea of tort reform.

Oh, and another fun one... In the year before California got it's new governor in a recall election, Enron (perhaps with help, don't know) manipulated the energy markets to create the California energy crunch that instigated the recall. That's right, economic manipulations by a corporation toppled the government of the 8th largest economy in the world.

Then we could talk about agriculture....

Free Market, my foot!

Now a Libertarian would say that these problems exist because of government tampering in the commercial sector, and to some extent I'll agree. Unfortunately at this point, I don't believe that removing government influence in the commercial sector would fix it, because bad things are already too baked in. To be honest, I don't know how to cure it, perhaps a combination of "getting out" along with a one-shot "correction" to fix what is. Of course with legislation being the piece of sausage that it is, the "getting out" legislation would grease right through and the "correction" legislation would be fine-tuned to make the problem worse.

Re:Better

[khallow]

We have giant corporate oligarchies fighting to the death to keep making their money the same way they're used to making it. Normally the free market might be able to take care of that too, but in this case those oligarchies have gotten so big that they could cheat in the classic monopoly fashion, if needed, and they don't need to cheat (much) because they've bought the right legislation to keep them where they are.

Sure, we have large corporations and other businesses. We don't have widespread oligopolies (not oligarchies). Refineries (and perhaps interstate pipelines) probably qualify as some number of oligopolies in many local US markets, but not the rest of the petroleum supply chain.

Oligopolies never get big enough that they become monopolies. That's because "big enough" is not the characteristic of a monopoly. While oil is subsidized, I don't think it is as subsidized as people believe. It's only about $200 billion a year (in my view), mostly defense related. That, if paid solely with gasoline would be about $1.50 per gallon in additional excise tax. In areas like solar cell and wind generator production, the market looks very competitive to me.

As for the rest of this post, I don't see the point. Sure, good parts of the US economy aren't free market, but so what? Why does that imply in these cases that it's better to throw public funds at a particular problem rather than fixing the structure inefficiencies and failures that are the cause? The rest of the economy actually works pretty well. As indicated above, I count fuel and transportation infrastructure in that category. I also count medical innovation (even in the presence of patents!) and internet service.

It's worth noting that I was advocating a Mars expedition which in is very unlikely to be market driven. I think this a somewhat better use of government funds because it's something that isn't likely to get done "soon" (say this century) in the absence of government support. Some other things (like the cancer vaccine) might not either, but so much money is thrown at those problems that I don't see government action helping enough to justify the cost.

What does NASA have against the Falcon 9?

[Baldrson]

Ares payload: 25,000 kg.
Ares status: Years from flight.


Falcon 9 payload: 29,610 kg.
Falcon 9 status: Countdown on hold pending paperwork.

Re:What does NASA have against the Falcon 9?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Falcon 9 payload is 10,450 kg. You were thinking of "Falcon 9 Heavy", which is also "Years from flight" (if it ever flies).

Re:What does NASA have against the Falcon 9?

[Baldrson]

I don't call 2010 "years from flight", but you're right that the Falcon 9 Heavy isn't sitting out on the launch pad right now.

People just don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about war (why some responses seem to think it is...) it's not about the money really - it's about politics.

The government in just a matter of a couple of weeks dedicated $700 BILLION (with a B) to TARP without question. But they want to cut NASA's budget which is only $17.2 Billion. What did / would TARP get us? Hopefully a bandaid over a problem until the economy works itself out. What would NASA get us?

NASA is very good about sharing inventions with the world. To answer that you need to look at what NASA got us economically over the past few decades:

Joysticks - developed for the Apollo rover, helped spawn a whole generation of consumer video games
Kidney dialysis machines
GPS Navigation
Satellite TV
Temperpedic mattresses (and shock-absorbing helmets)
Automotive insulation
Firefighter suits (based on space suit technology and NASA developed insluation)
Smoke detectors (developed for MANNED SPACE FLIGHT & Skylab!)

And much much more...

That small investment created thousands of scientists and inventors, spun off no doubt hundreds of new small businesses opened by former NASA employees, and provided entire new markets of consumer products. Most importantly, it helped us thrive as a technological nation, with a drive to invent and produce that drug us out of the industrial age and into a tech and service market.

Not to mention, NASA's budget is about one half of one percent of the Federal budget. In cold-war days it was 5.5%. It's like saying "Well now that gas has gotten so expensive, we're not buying any for our family anymore" - despite the fact that how much you spend on gas as a percentage of your overall budget from two decades ago has actually gone down despite the "price" increase.

We're talking about refusing to fund innovation here. NASA is a huge machine of innovation that also happens to explore.

Full article here: http://www.ossramblings.com/is_nasa_too_expensive

I'll raise you a false dichotomy...

[KingSkippus]

I never said that other programs don't need to be cut. I hope that the insane amount of money that we spend on the military is, in fact, cut quite a bit and repurposed. I also never implied that we must only engage in one scientific endeavor at a time, either.

I only said that given that there are a finite number of dollars budgeted for scientific research, which will always be true, that most space "stuff" is pretty low on the list of priorities.

I'll happily stand with you in trying to get that finite number of dollars increased, especially by reprioritizing science in general relative to other things such as insane military budgets. If it happens, then maybe we can talk again about how those dollars should be spent, and yeah, maybe the space program will once again be worth it, in its proper place given the new budget.

Until then, I stand by my post. There are far more useful ways that we could be spending the dollars that we have, and it doesn't upset me very much that, given the budgets we have to work with, the space program is suffering from a lack of funding. If it means allocating those funds to more productive scientific endeavors, I'm not against cutting it even further.

Bullshit. Total Bullshit

[WindBourne]

Since Nixon, the budget has been at ~1% of the federal budget. It dropped pretty heavily under reagan and W, stayed mostly even with Clinton and Carter (though both dropped it in their last years due to the economy) and increased with Poppa bush. This current budget which is W's has it at .52% of budget.

It remains to be seen what Obama/Dems will do with it. When it comes to ppl screaming that they do not live in their budget, I see nothing by idiots. The president SETS NASA'S DIRECTION. W set it to be massive new undertaking, but then grossly underfunded it (just like everything he did).

Right now, everybody is screaming for NASA to push THEIR idea of what should happen, and few want to provide proper funding for any of it. Personally, I hope that the dems get the clue that the neo-cons did not; Space is near to being able to survive on its own and grew RAPIDLY. This is the time for the dems to pour a BIT of money into it and get this set up. It is NOT hard to do. What is amazing is that with less than and increase of 3 billion next year, 2 billion the year there after, and then 1 extra billion for the next few years thereafter, they can create in space what the Internet did; massive jobs and new frontiers.

Re:Bullshit. Total Bullshit

[strong_epoxy]

I see nothing by idiots. The president SETS NASA'S DIRECTION. W set it to be massive new undertaking, but then grossly underfunded it (just like everything he did).

You must be looking in the mirror. The president doesn't fund anything. Congress does.

Re:Bullshit. Total Bullshit

[WindBourne]

No, they do not. The president puts forward the budget that he wants and then congress goes through and adjusts and passes a budget. Then the president signs off. Basically, it was W that said that he wanted NASA to be undercut. Since neo-cons controlled congress until 2 years and nobody controlled it for the last 2 years, I would said that the 7 years of underfunding belongs to W and the neo-cons( You need to start looking in the mirror and not just passing it by).

The question remains, what will Obama and the dems do.

Be a real shame if NASA cancelled Ares

[physburn]

Its might not be an inoviative program, but it would work with sufficient funding, with Ares, or a modern launcher, moon and mars exploration is most likely finished for the next decade at least. That is unless the US decides to help fund a international program for space. But an international program would more than likely be bogged down in politics.

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