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House Outlaws Obama's NASA Intervention
TopSpin writes "NASA's Constellation Program and Ares rockets appear to have strong support in Congress. An appropriations bill passed by the House includes language that bars 'any efforts by NASA to cancel or change the current Constellation program without first seeking approval of Congress.' The Administration's appointed NASA leadership is being publicly hostile towards its traditional aerospace affiliations. As Charles Bolden put it to industry execs, 'We are going to be fighting and fussing over the coming year,' and 'Some of you are not going to like me because we are not going to do the same kind of things we've always done.'"
But if the goal is to send people to space sustainably and for the long term, then NASA should be doing things like building and testing space stations that can spin and thus create artificial "gravity", and have decent radiation shielding. The long term goal should be creating space colonies, in _space_. Colonies where future generations of humans can live and reproduce. Thus the target would be developing technologies that would make it possible.
Not working on sending people to Mars or the Moon. Getting to the moon has already been done.
Getting people stuck on other gravity wells in the Solar System is silly and expensive. And talks of expensive, rushed (because of poor shielding and other issues), potentially one way trips to Mars are even more ridiculous.
What's so great about living on the Moon or Mars? It's not like they are human friendly places. What can you get from Mars or Moon that you can't get from asteroids?
There are plenty of asteroids to mine out there. Asteroids have a lot of water:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050907_ceres_planet.html
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/10/08/more-water-out-there-ice-found-on-asteroid/
You might even be able to hollow out an asteroid and turn it into a space station.
Just because we're living on a decent planet doesn't mean that getting stuck on other gravity wells should be our goal. We should only get stuck in one if it's as good as Earth (or almost as good). And the other planets and moons in the Solar System are far from meeting that mark.
I think you missed the point, as did anyone who modded it troll.
The language that effectively ties NASA's hands was inserted in the bill by Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from...drum roll please.... Alabama. Where NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is located.
And that language boils down to: "no changes". Subcontract a part of the crew module out to Russia, Germany or France? No. Not unless Congress approves. Even if it'll get Ares off the ground sooner...nope. Cancel or delay Ares I to concentrate on Ares V? Nope. Even though Russia already has, and will continue to have, the capability to put people in orbit thus rendering Ares I redundant, while what's really needed is the heavy-lift capability of Ares V.
Shelby wants one thing: Money in Alabama. So say bye bye to Kennedy Space center, and write off the US Government using commercially (read: private industry) available means to ferry crew to space. If SpaceX or Virgin Galactic manages to get people into LEO by 2015, NASA wouldn't be able to buy a seat without Congress' approval.
The 'no changes' language has nothing to do with getting into space or not, and everything to do with making sure money flows to contractors in Alabama.