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Obama Choosing NOT To Go To the Moon
bonch writes "Obama's budget proposal will contain no funding for the Constellation program, which was to send astronauts to the moon by 2020. Instead, NASA will be focused on terrestrial science, such as monitoring global warming. One anonymous official said: 'We certainly don't need to go back to the moon.'"
Space is the future. If you don't go out there we will stagnate and disappear.
Killing arabs: We got money for that. Everything else: not important.
Someone explain to me again how he's a socialist?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
In the wrong direction. We should have spent the 60's on healthcare reform, increasing national spending, polarizing our government between the political parties, and copyright enforcement. Yes, that would have given the 70's a golden age such as the one we enjoy now, except without microprocessors -- which we don't need.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Which part of that has anything to do with global warming?
Why is it suddenly NASA's job to monitor global warming? Why not create an agency with that job, instead of re-allocating something that has for many decades been all about space exploration?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Does killing Moon rockets also kill any Mars programs too?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
'not to go to the moon in this decade and not do the other things, not because they are hard, but because not doing so is easy'
Or something like that.
...the Space Administration will be focused on terrestrial science?
Man, some days the jokes just write themselves.
A pity, the Moon would be the perfect way to get to the rest of the solar system. compared to almost every other body in the solar system, the Moon is right next door. It has water that can be broken down for air and fuel, it's got raw materials that can be used for construction without dragging asteroids into orbit, and hauling something out of the moon's gravitational well and off between planets takes a fraction of the energy needed to do the same from Earth.
Any trip to Mars that would be worthwhile (i.e. more than a quick stroll on the surface before making the second leg of a multi-month round trip) would have to start from the Moon.
Nobody should act surprised. He said he was going to kill Constellation during his original campaign.
We're used to seeing the arguments in partisan terms, but Obama has struggled as much with his own party as with Republicans.
In a sense, this should be giving Republicans what they want: less money spent by government. Assuming, of course, that this ends up as at least a small reduction in the overall NASA budget, and is not merely money being relocated.
I'd actually support that relocation; I think that going to the moon is little more than trying to win a pissing contest. Yeah, Tang, velcro, space pens, whatever. Money for science is money for science and I don't see why manned missions are somehow better than unmanned ones for fostering innovation, dollar for dollar.
Still, Obama is going to get a lot of pushback from his own party. (And one big loser: Parker Griffith, an Alabama representative, who became a Republican and now loses a bunch of money to his district.)
Democrats will fight to get that money put back, and we'll see if Obama gets any credit for actually trying to save money. Unfortunately, while talk of deficit reduction is always popular, actual spending cuts are always portrayed as apocalyptic by those affected.
Why would we need to go there! Why would we want to build anything there! Seems pointless to me! They should try and colonize the moon! A big las vegas in the sky! What happens on the moon, stays on the moon.
Very well said!
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”
~O2BNTEXAS
I'll probably attract a zillion flames for saying this, but I think this is great. NASA does a great job on uncrewed probes, and that's a mission that can't be carried out by private enterprise. The shuttle and the ISS, however, are pure pork and nationalism; now that the cold war is over, the politicians cover the crewed space program with a thin veneer of scientific research, but the amount of good science that comes out of *crewed* spaceflight is not in reasonable proportion to the cost. We need to get NASA out of the business of doing things that the private sector can do, because otherwise the private sector will never get off the ground in those areas. Suborbital and LEO space tourism are the killer apps for private-sector crewed spaceflight. Let's unleash their energy and creativity to get that going, rather than spending public money on poorly engineered concepts for going back to to the moon.
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Looks like Elon Musk would beat them there anyway.
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
It's important to remember that bailing out banks, bailing out people with mortgages, spreading "stimulus" money around, subsidizing healthcare, increasing the education budget and fighting two wars are all expensive endeavours. With the deficit soaring, I'm not surprised NASA isn't getting the money to develop new launch vehicles. At some point Scudder and his followers will be out and humanity will go to the stars again.
We are just a few decades from Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight amidst the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic USA. Conventional rockets are a waste anyway.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"Hope" "change" "vapid buzzword #3".
"Terrestrial science" and "global warming" sound to me like "not giving any money to NASA". I'm not a US citizen and I don't live there so I don't really know the economic situation, but it sure is sad to hear this news because I know that if anybody was to land on the Moon (again) it would have been NASA. On the other hand, I'm sure it's a temporary decision until the economy is booming again so it just is a delay of a couple of years.
Honestly. If we want to have any chance as a race we've GOT to get off this rock before we kill ourselves off. The longer we say bound up, the more chance some nutjob with a nuke and an axe to grind does something stupid.
Interestingly enough Niven & Pournelle had a fun little book on just what could happen if a sentient race had population control problems and limited space. "The Gripping Hand". Trash Sci-Fi but it a good thought-puzzle.
It is very sad that we won't go back to the moon, but why send humans there when robots can do a job as great as Opportunity, Spirit, MGS and all that?
It is less expensive and less risky, although not as fun, to send robots. We don't need to bring them back either.
Mallory O'Brian: And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?
Sam Seaborn: Yes.
Mallory O'Brian: Why?
Sam Seaborn: 'Cause it's next. 'Cause we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what's next.
- West Wing
The next space race should be about who can take the largest, most unweildly animal to the moon, let it run around, and bring it back safely. I say we try to a gorilla or a buffalo or a bear in a space suit that fits them and let them run around the moon a little bit and then the animal returns a hero. If that works we start with marine life. Let's put an enclosed dolphin tank on the moon and do a little show and then bring it all back home.
If we're doing this for science we can send probes cheaper and safer. If we're doing this for glory then send a giraffe or hippo.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Democrats will fight to get that money put back, and we'll see if Obama gets any credit for actually trying to save money. Unfortunately, while talk of deficit reduction is always popular, actual spending cuts are always portrayed as apocalyptic by those affected.
It's hard to take that point seriously less than 12 months after a trillion dollar 'stimulus.'
Are you kidding? Manned spaceflight is one of the most interesting things we do, Earth observing, while necessary, is boring. I'm glad China or India is going to beat us back to the moon because we're more interested in providing healthcare to lazy people.
With the Shuttle put to bed, and now Constellation, NASA is done. Yeah, maybe a few robot probes will go out, but that's not what people get excited about (and are thus willing to fund). If it's not welfare or war, it's up for cancellation with this government. The global warming crowd will still get some funding since that's still seen as a viable power grab (not enough people can add, apparently) but that can't last. It seems the commercial launchers will handle what the Air Force can't for government satellite needs.
So, does an aspiring American rocket scientist try to find work in China or hope to get one of the few jobs with Space X, Scaled Composites, or Virgin Galactic?
Amazing - the one government program even Penn & Teller can't bring themselves to hate is the first to fall. Ah, well, competitive forces at play.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The "space race" in the 60's and 70's were for national prestige. We couldn't let the Soviets beat "us"... and everyone was afraid of having Soviet dominating Space... imagine having Soviet missile platforms overhead and us not able to do anything about it... So, now, lets let China take over space... After all, they're the West's best friends and would never take undue advantage of their leadership position. They are currently on track for dominating science and engineering completely as well... Maybe they'll ferry our secret spy satellites and our military hardware for us? We can have them send our astronauts up as well. After all, the name of the game in this country is outsource everything! We don't need no stinking jobs or industry!
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
We'll just call our friends the Chinese or the Russians if we need anything in space.
Pandering assholes...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
It's those damn aliens.. Obama has been shown the "non-disclore" files on NASA's moonlanding and their warning not to fuck around on the moon. That must be it, the new president is a pantsy...
Or he might's seen the movie "Moon" and (SPOILER ALERT) doesn't know what to do with all these clones.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
So Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell are really whites wearing blackface?
Other than the little perks of a blackberry and using the internet to vamp up election day turnout, Obama is just short of a luddite. We spent(and will spend) almost 1T on a worthless stimulus package last year(and this year). We get nothing for this. Social spending, social spending, social spending. No moon, mars..etc.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
We certainly don't need to go back to the moon.
FAIL
Yes we do because it's there, it can provide useful science and insights about the cosmos. It's just like the space station only with gravity and built in supplies of water (ice) and doesn't need to be built by multiple runs of spacecraft or boosted into a higher orbit by same said spacecraft. Oh and it has a lot more room, too!
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
There is no dark side of the moon really.
Matter of fact it's all dark.
I don't get it, wasn't one of the main goals of the project the development of a new heavy lift rocket? Are they saying they will cancel this program and then start over on the heavy lift rocket from scratch? That doesn't make any sense to me.
Maybe they should just end NASA entirely.
The National Atmospheric and Science Administration has been a clearing house for all things 'science' since the 70's. Being related to space or aeronautics is not a prerequisite. If you want funding and it can be made to sound vaguely sciency, head to NASA!! Climate 'research', or something, is just the latest piglet with a tit.
Killing manned space flight has been a part of Obama's platform since he entered the national scene, regardless of subsequent back-peddling. Grownups know this, which is why those Congressmen with a direct stake in this are actively opposing this guy.
What might have been a credible future for space exploration is going to the NEA, and what is left of NASA will belong to Hanson.
Enjoy.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
NASA should be defunded completely, the launch pads closed, and the whole shebang turned into museums. That would at least bring in a little coin. Our country is broke, getting moreso, with no hope of actually ever balancing the budget while having all our other jobs outsourced, industries leaving, illegal aliens dragging down the charitable services, etc. etc.
Unless we can get our factories coming back, stop the outsourcing, etc., there's NASA and a whole whale of a lot of other things that gov't does that needs to be stopped. You can't tax people that have lost a good-paying tool-and-diemaking job, and are working some crappy-paying retail job, to do things like go to the moon or mars.
Get our industries back. Period. Otherwise, the military can do GPS, the commercial interests can keep launching comm satellites by paying the French to do it, and the military again needs weather info and so can do those satellites too. Everything else is just too expensive for the USA to be doing until we're back working again with GOOD PAYING jobs, not the near-poverty stuff we've been gravitating toward for the last 5 decades.
Why isn't the abundance of Helium-3 more of a selling point for the return to the moon? Especially with the recently /.'d mention of the impending shortage earth-side.
Right, because, you know, there aren't any resources up there or low gravity that could make it an interesting launch site for larger/long term space exploration vehicles.
Of course I've heard people talk about getting the same possibilities out of asteroid mining so maybe we'll head that route instead?
If Ares V gets canceled, that's another 2 decades wasted in Low Earth Orbit. So much for inspiration and opening new frontiers.
The astronauts will just be speaking Chinese.
Looking a manned spaceflight purely as a scientific research endeavor is severly short-sighting the full extent of the efffects.
Creating a more fuel effecient car... making a better containment unit for fission reactions... hell even curing cancer, none of these have the sheer wonder and awe of "hey, we've got humans on another planet. See that red speck in the sky, we've got people THERE. Humans, us, as a species, we're expanding our horizons."
When was the last time we as humans did something "scientific" that changed the humanity thought about themselves and their place in the universe. I'd say it was 1969.
but perhaps something better will come out of it. Like when I was a kid and I really wanted something and I didn't get it I'd sometimes have the phenomenon that I didn't really want it all that bad after all and found something better. Two steps forward one step back.
The vast majority of things the government spends money on, I would never be willing to contribute toward, if given the choice. Military, medicare, an social security? No way. Police, roads, NASA and a return to the moon? Absolutely. Now they decide that it's not worth it to spend money on extraterrestrial projects? It makes me ashamed to be an American.
The US Manned Space Program has been in sad shape for decades. The reusable shuttle that costs 3x as much per pound of payload as an expendable. (Why? The salaries of the staff needed to prepare it for each trip dominate the costs.) The ISS is the most expensive thing every constructed by man (by far), yet it produces little or no real science. (Why? Design tradeoffs again. Vibrates too much, too noisy, etc.) Given these programs have failed so badly, why weren't they cancelled ten or twenty years ago? Because of all the jobs they provide in countless congressional districts around the country.
We have thus arrived at a situation where most of NASA's money is spent on manned programs that just don't work, with just a pittance allocated to unmanned programs that do virtually all of the real science. That's a shame, because there are things people (and only people) can do. For example, a manned base on Phobos operating unmanned probes on the surface would be vastly cheaper than a manned mission to the surface of Mars, but vastly more productive than trying to operate probes from Earth. (With due respect to the fantastic accomplishments of the two Mars Rovers.) Scientists don't have to go to the sea floor to study it, but they do have to get their feet wet.
So I'm all for killing the current manned program, perhaps entirely, provided some planning is made to replace it with something sensible. I've long feared that if Congress cut the manned program, rather than give more money to unmanned missions, they'd probably cut those too. I'm still waiting to hear what the sensible replacement would be. The Augustine report was a step in the right direction, but I think it tried too hard to work inside the existing framework.
--Greg (the best thing about hitting yourself in the head with a hammer is that it feels so good when you stop)
Ms. Clinton does not seem amused, and according to anonymous officials, is refusing to pack her bags.
The point of contention seems to be, like the Mars Rover, her trip to the Moon will be a one-way mission.
Ms. Clinton commented through a spokesman, "I don't want to go on the cart!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Those darn Vulcans never let us do anything! Zefram Cochrane must be turning over in his grave.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Now that you've figured it out, you better be careful!
How about before we pour billions into "monitoring" global warming, we first prove it's existence beyond a Nobel-thieving lia...er, politician?
Oh, wait, I almost forgot. This "re-funding" idea is coming from yet another Nobel-thieving lia...er, politician.
In related news, there is a new Government-funded study to determine the effects of funding pointless studies. Since the budget itself is part of the study, it remains perpetual and therefore unlimited, eventually to be simply reclassified as a tax, which is set to trigger yet another study on the effects of converting perpetual funding...
Huh. I had a chance to join the Constellation program some years ago. I didn't take it. I feel as if I just dodged a bullet.
And considering my current job involves remote sensing of land cover change, I feel as if that bullet turned to gold and landed in my wallet.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
We don't need to go to the moon.
Just like I don't need a drink right now ... oh, I want a drink, all right, but I don't need a drink. Furthermore, I can stop drinking entirely, any time I want to stop.
I'm sure America can stop going to the moon any time it wants.
-kgj
If Colin Powell wanted it, he could have ran against Clinton in 1996 as a Republican, and in my opinion, would have won. The Republican party would have accepted him, but he just didn't want it.
Obama Cannot go to the moon.
This America thing was great while it lasted. But, we all know that in the global village everyone will live in a garden and be in balance with mother Giea. To do this we all must sacrifice. Teknowlegee is just another wichcraft that angers mother Giea by allowing more people to survive than can typically be supported by natural eecohsystum.
We don't need to do a lot of things. Magellan didn't need to circumnavigate the globe (yes, I'm aware he didn't quite make it, not the point). Columbus didn't need to sail across the Atlantic. You and I don't need to have hobbies. We don't need to have a sense of adventure or exploration. We don't need to have any amount of fun. We don't need to be curious about the universe in which we live.
This is what happens when you put a politician in charge of anything. The only thing they think we need to do is lead our drab little lives. Go to work, be a good consumer, pay our taxes; all so they can live fat and happy on top of the world while we spend our lives toiling away, chained to the desk of some office job. Sound fun to everyone?
To hell with politics and to hell with Obama. I knew there was a reason I didn't vote for him.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
Which MGS? 2, 3, 4 or the original?
Kinda too bad they are ending Snake's story, but I am interested to know where they go from here.
This is very frustrating. Here we have a program that would provide real long term benefits to not only the United States, but the world in general. Those benefits would not only come in the form of new technologies but in humanity's expansion into space. But unfortunately we're constantly hindered myopic, self-centered politicians. Unfortunately these kinds of programs require long-term commitments and do nothing to garner votes.
At this rate, without question the Chinese will be first to the moon. Despite all the problems I have with the Chinese government I have to give credit where it's do. They generally seem to do what they believe is in the best interests of the country. On the other hand, the US is saddled with a government interested in pushing agendas and pandering to special interests. Even when they get involved with something that could be beneficial it's mired down by garbage and the end result ends up not amounting to much of anything. But the problem doesn't just lie with the government. It lies with the citizens and their increasingly self-centered attitudes.
This sort of thing makes me regret having moved back to the states.
Maybe if some other countries had a serious plan to establish a moon base, the US would be more inclined to go back. If China or Japan landed a man on the moon in 5 years, I'd bet the US would invest a lot more money to establish some sort of base there. The cold war fueled most of the accomplishments in the space race - they weren't just done in the name of science.
One anonymous official said: 'We certainly don't need to go back to the moon.'" Well, they don't need to go into back into space either. They certainly COULD go back if they wanted to, it's been almost 40 years since the last landing and technology / cost / success rate would have to be significantly better than what it was in 1972. . Maybe they don't "need" to because no one else is planning to land on the moon.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
I can't believe this change!
I think, that the ultimate goal of the humanity is to become able to survive outside of our home planet. We, as the bearers of life and thought have limited time before our home planet is gone forever. We can't stick to one place, we need to explore further, we need to be able to survive, to spread and sustain the Life.
Till the existence of alien life forms is proved, we have to assume that we are the only bearers of Life with the potential to be able to survive a cataclysm which will inevitably render this planet uninhabitable. We can't sit on our hand and wait till someone invents warp engine or magic terraforming. It needs to be done, there is enough work for many generations, we can't really afford to back up.
than you just did... You know you f'd up.
The US is broke. They don't have the money to fix much of anything. It spends more on just paying the interest on the debt than on education. Cuts must be made everywhere. I'm a very big supporter of the space program and if it is cut to where there is no meaningful science being done, then it saddens me. I was not a big supporter of constellation as such simply because it was such a poorly engineered craft with very little or negligible new technology. If they weren't going to create a state of the art multifunctional roll spacecraft, then they should simply have reused the simpler re-stacking and tweaked shuttle components to get up there and simply stick a crew cab on top. They will be lucky if they can keep their commitment to the space station. At least it has the possibility to return some science.
The sad part is that the moon is a reasonable goal if there was funding to establish a base with real projects that could bring returns for investment. There never was such a long term plan. So it made a return far less valuable. There was no way that the NASA could ever get the funding because it's simply not there to get. The US will be lucky to escape their financial disaster they are in now. There is no will to fix the problems and now the supreme court has granted corporations constitutional rights, the task will become beyond fixable. The two part system is failing and if a corporation can run for office then there really is no hope.
Again, although saddened by this. You could see it coming a continent away.
I was really looking forward to Obama going to the moon. Preferably in person and before his term ends.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I see this keeps repeating, but this is utter bullshit. US military is needed just as much as a kick in the balls. Europe certainly doesn't need it. We have nukes (and we should get rid of them). The other day some commenter said that we needed the US military to defend us against Russia. Really? What's the US military going to do anyway should Russia decide to attack? Despite their Chicago school of economics-inflicted state of dereliction, they still have enough nukes in working order to pulverize the globe's surface 10 times over.
The only thing the US military does those days is war crimes. Lots of them.
Screw NASA on manned exploration, we do not need them. We need the FAA and the US Congress to make industry's pathway for manned exploration as painless and profitable as possible. Continuing to allow NASA to be all for manned exploration makes as much sense as having the military in complete charge of all air transportation.
And didn't Powell support Obama last election? Sounds like a real dyed in the wool Republican.
Plus I highly doubt Thomas would've gotten nominated if he wasn't preceeded by Thurgood Marshall, an LBJ nom. No one's stupid enough to oust the only black seat on the high court.
I'd be happy to see NASA focus its resources on unmanned projects instead of putting meat on the moon (again). But this line worries me:
Are they saying that NASA will focus only on Earth science? While that is valuable and practical, I still want to know what's left to discover in our solar system, around the galaxy, and throughout the universe. I want robotic probes searching for life on Mars and Europa. I want telescopes looking for habitable planets around nearby stars. And I want to know how the universe works and what's in its future. Those things don't need Constellation, but they do need attention beyond the surface of Earth.
Good move. It's time to pull the plug.
Space flight on chemically-powered rockets works no better than it did 40 years ago. Without some other propulsion system, it can't get better. There's only so much energy per unit weight available. It doesn't get any better than liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen, and that's already been used. Rerunning Apollo is just a money sink.
NASA mostly does tweaks on weight reduction, and that reached the point of diminishing returns some time ago. Without a better powerplant, there's little hope of progress.
Now, nuclear rockets - that might work. Nuclear rocket engines were tested in the 1950s. They would have to be launched from some very remote location, of course.
Was Constellation, specifically the Ares booster series, ever going to be practical? Let's assume for a moment that the nay-sayers are right, and Ares would be a huge hole to dump money into that wouldn't yield a usable launch vehicle in a reasonable time frame. If so, canceling the program provides a needed wake-up call for NASA, opens the door for consideration of lower-cost alternatives, and perhaps even gives a boost to the commercial spacecraft industry. In the short term, it helps (if only by a tiny amount) stem the money hemorrhage.
I know it's hard to take, but the question I have to ask is -- do we want to get back to the moon at any cost? Or should we take this opportunity to step back and see if there's a more practical way?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I only wish Colin Powell would have run in 2000.
The thing that frusterates me most about descisions like this are the jobs that are lost. How many aerospace employees will lose their jobs? How many starbuck employees that servered coffee to the aerospace employees? McD's? We could go on and on, and it isnt just this program, look at the F-22 budget. The JSF, funding for research projects. And how many of all of those high level employed people will get unemployement benifits? UNEMPLOYMENT CREATES NO ECONOMIC VALUE! Suddenly, their are fewer jobs the deficit is higher and we have absolutely nothing to show for it. No technological progression. As an economist, and as any other economist will tell you, economic increase comes down to cultural changes, technology, and education.
...like globalwarming? He ALMOST had it right, except put the money somewhere useful, like paying off debt. Climategate never ends.
I told you this years ago. The next person to set foot on the moon will be Chinese.
Great idea. Reducing CO2, which has a negligible impact on the non-problem of global warming, instead of developing space science. And what's even more ridiculous: Satellites have been monitoring the temperature of the troposphere for about two decades showing that there has been no warming since the last 14 years. And the guy who's heading the program recently gave a lecture with the title: Nature, not human activity, rules the climate. I think Obama is just annoyed that he didn't get his way in Carbonhagen.
And now please mod me down and bomb me with rebuttals because I am a climate denier.
The chinese are going to do it for us. The fools!
I would have voted for him if he had won the primary. I think he felt a bit used by the Bush administration (perhaps rightly so) which led to a bit of a rift later in his cabinet position, but I still feel he's a good middle-ground candidate. He's spent enough time in the military that he's not naive on defense.
"America is an uninhabitable wasteland, enormously expensive to get to, and impossible to survive in for long periods without costly, regular support deliveries from Europe." THat would have been the version from about 500 years ago. I'm pretty sure wet blankets have said the same since there was anything to colonize.
without some amazing and so-far-unforeseen advances in technology...
Right, and building a space program from the ground up is the way to develop those so-far-unforeseen technologies. Just like the first space program gave us many then-unforeseen technologies we have now. That's the collateral benefits of a space program - pick some insanely hard challenge that will require great engineering advancements to pull off, and go do it. Better that than the domestic studies NASA will get to do under the Obama administration, which will result in nothing more than incremental advancements of existing technology done at a glacial pace.
This is a rare opportunity to save on the education budget as well. There's no point in studying math and science if there is nothing to do with your education.
Let's face it, we've just got a bunch of homeboys up in DC now looting for every last federal cent to dole out to crackheads. That's great, instead of putting more people in space and on the moon, my tax dollars can now finance a bunch of crackwhores getting abortions and methadone.
We now officially have a government of the crooked, stealing on behalf of the useless.
Way to go, socialists, you win.
I hate you, I hate you,and I will teach my children to hate you.
This is my sig.
I wish this was the end of manned spaceflight. Instead those receiving the pork will bitch and complain and Constellation will get reinstated. Seriously, manned spaceflight has sapped NASA's funds for way too long.
Of course, someone has in mind a budget cut for NASA, but at least if those funds ever return to NASA ( unlikely ) half or more of them won't have to be wasted on manned spaceflight.
All in all this cuts the worthless half of NASA away. The worthwhile half can breathe a sigh of relief that it was unscathed in this round of belt tightening since NASA will have already taken a highly visible 'whopping cut'. ( That is if this actually happens which it won't because nothing ever goes right. )
You're a fucking idiot. Liberals have always been on the wrong side of racial issues, from slavery, to reconstruction, to eugenics, to civil rights. For fuck's sake, the longest-sitting senator Robert Byrd is a former KKK member AND a Democrat! Now there's an inconvenient truth for you! Pre-1960s, when civil rights for minorities were nonexistent in the South, the South was solid Democrat territory. You're welcome to stay there on the liberal ideological plantation if you wish. That's certainly your right. But I'm neither cruel enough, intolerant enough, or closed-minded enough to be a liberal!
Sadly, most people who would be a good president don't want the job, which is probably quite smart of them. Obama's not bad, but he could be a whole lot better.
1) Support earth activities (science/climate/earth observation/etc)
2) Jobs program and political/economic tool
3) Brief exploration for national pride (Apollo moon shots)
4) Enabling permanent, sustained human presence in space (colonization)
Right now, our space program is pretty much just a combination of options 1 and 2. My personal belief is that it should be 4. If humanity is to ultimately survive, or even just take full advantage of the resources and opportunities that space offers, then a permanent human presence in space will be required. Constellation, as it stands now, would likely only lead to options 2 and 3.
The most encouraging part of that article was:
One administration official said the budget will send a message that it's time members of Congress recognize that NASA can't design space programs to create jobs in their districts.
This has been NASA's biggest problem. Congress doesn't want to do anything with NASA that might upset the status quo of job distribution in their districts (along with those stupid cost plus contracts). It's high time that NASA get a cleaning and reorganization around a defined goal that will accomplish something in space. (And there's a whole other side rant about how going to the moon/mars as a goal is useless. Those are destinations/places to operate in fulfillment of the goal of colonization or resource utilization or just "exploration")
I really don't like to play devil's advocate here since I do agree with HSF/exploration *on environmental grounds*, but here's a strong point:
Justification for HSF/exploration:
"The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what's next."
Justification for canning CxP in favor of (probably) more influence at SMD:
"The history of man is hung on a timeline of *resource exploitation* and this is what's next."
Exploration and resource exploitation - and I mean exploitation in its literal meaning, not in some negatively-laden connotation - are entwined as far back as we can imagine and certainly as far back as we can historically support. Exploration is the initial step toward resource acquisition. (And notice that "step" is, in English, inextricable from "progress," "advancement," etc.) This way of thinking has brought us incredibly far.
But this way of thinking has also brought us to the brink of disaster many times, sometimes over, but never before to a potential disaster as serious as the one we can imagine now. The risk trades on this one are terrifying. But I think the argument here is this:
1. A refocus to Earth/planetary science will yield known-meaningful, known-valuable advances, regardless of how useful our current climate models prove to be.
2. Technology will advance, especially through commercial spaceflight, regardless of government focus. Punting to the private sector is not crazy at this point, and may be beneficial.
3. No one else is going to do the science NASA already does; NASA capabilities are second to none and are a world resource at this point.
4. If our models do prove to be close to correct, then we need an Apollo-style focus on Earth science *now*... exploration can wait and that work may prove more efficient after just a few more years' development.
Just sayin'. I've worked on analogues and will be sad to see 'em go (though I don't think they should, there's no reason to stop researching ops concepts even with CxP cancelled).
[|]
Because any person with half a fucking brain knows that the moon already has humans and ET life on it, and they do not want to let everyone know that they have been lieing to us for the last 60 years.
Thank goodness!
Now NASA has already taken a cut and it was nothing important. That which was worthwhile about NASA remains unscathed.
And if NASA's budget should ever INCREASE, then ALL the funds can go to worthwhile projects and not be wasted on manned spacefl-- I mean pork.
...
All those items you listed are done with money that does not exist, so how can that possibly affect NASA's budget. It would be like claiming NASA's budget isn't larger because of Iraq as many like to try.
NASA generates very few votes on a per dollar expenditure. It enabled rocket scientist for god's sake, not the average Joe. OK, so that last line is a bit sarcastic but the point is, its not something most people can relate it. It is also easy to vilify. The bonus is we can take the money they do have to prop up some special interest groups who are decidedly bigger voter blocks than Moon fanatics, namely the global warming crowd and greens.
Throw in the fact that its about them and not him. He can't claim anything if NASA does it, but if Congress allocates funds for a new bridge, a new school, or such, he can lay claim to that.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Except there is no reduction in actual spending accompanying this. NASA's budget will stay roughly the same. So really this does nothing at all to deal with the deficit.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
DIE, NASA! DIE! The sooner America has no access to space, the safer we all will be.
Our President is a short-sighted buffoon. Does he not get the "S" in NASA stands for space?
Our society benefited more from investment is space than most of the other investments our government has made historically. At a time when JOB CREATION should be a priority, how does monitoring temperatures compare employment-wise to say, building the Apollo/Saturn 5 or the space shuttle? Which provides more long-term benefits, actually building something (and developing significant technologies that benefit us all in the process), or recording temperatures?
I hope one of our final shuttle flights involves a way one ticket for our fearless POTUS!
We don't need "amazing and so-far-unforeseen" advances in technology for large-scale, independent colonies in space. We just need to get over our "planetary chauvanism." The feasibility of space colonies was largely proven in the 1970's by studies at the NASA Ames Research Center. We just need to build some of these.
I welcome the day the "Department of Homeland Security" and "National Security Agency" are renamed "Department of Homeland Science" and "National Science Agency." Oh well.
Bitter, not morose.
Wish they would just tell us that we'll be on Mars in five years, give the 18B to James Cameron, and have him fake one hell of a Mars expedition.
Nice to see that we are letting China get to Mars first. Or India. NUMBER 2!! We're NUMBER 2! Or 3? YEAH! We're NUMBER 3! Or MAYBE 4!...
So I guess running roughshod over a couple hundred years of bankruptcy laws and legal precedent in the case of GM and Chrysler doesn't count as "bad" in your mind, huh? How about treating the panty bomber as if he had merely robbed a convenience store? Not that bad, I guess. What about all of the closed meetings, lobbying, and back-room deals surrounding his health care bill when we were promised full transparency and full coverage on CSPAN? Still not too bad? How about that sweetheart deal he got on his property in Chicago from convicted felon Tony Rezko? Nothing fishy there, I guess. Still in Iraq? Check. Gitmo still open? Check. Voted to continue warrantless wiretaps of US citizens? Check. Continuing and extending airport security theater? Check. What does it take to convince you dunces that you all elected the Prince of the Dunces?
Well, NASA's anual budget is actually closer to the monthly cost of the Iraq war, but your point remains essentially valid.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I got seriously flamed yesterday on /. for even suggesting NASA was a waste of money, that the private sector can do most of the important stuff better and that without NASA space exploration will surge forward. Now the shuttles that were outdated before they flew can be stuffed in museums. The launch pads leased. The idiotic prices NASA charged to put heavily subsidised commercial vehicles into space. Don't be sad... the journey is just gonna start getting a whole load more fun again, we've been held back for too long.
Whoever marked this post as troll deserves to be meta moderated. It can be moderated insightful, overrated or underrated. But most probably it got marked as troll because the moderator did not agree to the post.
You knew this would happen.
Could this mean we'll see a push with privatization of space travel now?
Maybe NASA is hidebound, and Corporate America can get us there faster. But I'd like something to take a little national pride in.
Hopefully some of our tech-billionaires will step up to the plate.
interventionism outside their border.
Go ahead.
(Not holding breath)
As a non-american I dont want USA as a world police! USA is the last empire on the Earth! USA harming the world peace with left hand while helping it with right hand. To do goodie is just a side effect of USA's real intentions.
I say we start with the ISS and bears.
For shock value and ratings, don't let anyone know on the ISS, just wait until they open the airlock!
Hilarity and good TV ratings ensues!
"Huston we have a problem!"
An excellent overview of related pledges and current status:
Obama campaign pledges related to space
I haven't had time to thoroughly research the claim (that Obama pledged to kill Constellation), but as far as I can tell, it's false.
I don't personally recall Obama pledging to kill Constellation in his campaign, and I do pay attention to such things. He did promise to extend the Shuttle flight schedule by one flight, which has apparently been done. (The AMS instrument, which was built at great expense was going to be grounded by NASA in their rush to kill the ISS and retire the Shuttle, but that instrument shows up on the flight schedule, now.)
During the campaign, there were one or two articles claiming that he promised to increase the NASA budget during a speech in Florida, but those pledges don't appear to have been repeated anywhere, don't appear to have been followed up on by any career journalists, and it's not clear the reporting was accurate. Really, there was hardly any discussion of NASA in the campaign at all, by any candidate.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
..Orbiter, a graphic novel about the cancellation of manned spaceflight after the disappearance of the last Shuttle mission.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Human spaceflight is, at this time, an enormous waste and will remain so for decades.
We need a Beanstalk and variants thereof to get canned monkeys up into space at a reasonable price point, and we need semi-autonomous probes and drones to build the colonies on ... wherever, because this is not like the Frontier. You can't just stumble onto the Martian surface, chop down some trees, build a lean-to, then set traps for bunnies. We need drones to skitter through the Asteroid Belt, locate nickel-iron rich rocks, then smelt them down with either fusion (unlikely), fission (environmentally terrifying), or solar power to build three meter thick slabs of metal to shield the helpless, bored primates from the oncoming sleet of cosmic rays and other charming particles as they take a two year trek. By the time they get there, hardy robots will have needed to build an enormous infrastructure to support now less-healthy monkeys in an environment not particularly compatible with terrestrial life of more than a few dozen cells in scope.
We do not have the robotics and IT to make this happen. Instead, we get a metric/English issue and we slam probes down onto the surface of Mars.
Let me know when we get some reasonable colonization and return thereof from Antarctica. It's a far more welcoming environment. It's just not !!!SPACE!!! and therefore science-fiction fans everywhere do not get all excited about it.
Now I know everyone will get all excited about Tang and freeze-dried foods and all of the wonderful things we got out of our last serious space program. Great. What have we gotten since the Shuttle got started? Well, not much. Because we're doing the same old approach and have solved all of the technical issues encountered in doing that approach. If we use that approach to get to Mars, we will develop few new technologies.
Or we could build the aforementioned probes and drones. We'd learn a lot from that. Sending some folks to the Moon again? Not really.
The constellations wont take this belittlement. Orion stops hunting bears and aims towards Sol...
Tibet. An independent country was forceably annexed.
The overthrow of Mossadegh.
The assassination of Allende.
The support to the terrorist Contras.
The innumerable right-wing government in South America.
The splending Vietnam war.
All courtesy of the benevolent US war machine.
As for Haiti, what did I just learn? Fucking scientologists have the support of the US Air Force and were allowed to land with their bullshit emeters, while a plane carrying a Doctors Without Borders field hospital was turned away. Oh thank you so very much.
that would like to send Obama to the moon.
Phillip K. Dick will not be happy if we don't settle the moon.
I'm a BBS orphan in a blogging world.
Here you go: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1100/1
Constellation .... cancellation. Maybe that was the problem. Too similar words!
The world is in a very different situation now, compared to JFK's golden era.
USA got it's priviledged position after the WWII, being the only economic power not directly affected by the war. Not having to spend resources on reconstruction - USA were free to run ahead of all others, becoming a superpower, in all areas.
Some decades after, the world managed to reach you. Your economy, your industries, even your technologies are not far aheat of external competition anymore.
The competition is tight now. Your people will have to learn to live in a different way - Lucky you that your President can see ahead.
Agreed. Killing Constellation might prove to be better for manned spaceflight in the long run. Hit the reset button.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I've seen how NASA operates. It's bloated, undirected, and political. Maybe in 1960 they were the premiere organization for space technology, but that was 50 years ago.
Saying that the government is going to stop directly operating the US space program is great news. It's time for the private sector to pick up where the government is leaving off, and turn a bloated inefficient contractor feeding trough into a viable commercial industry.
... without some amazing and so-far-unforeseen advances in technology, any off-Earth colonies would die out within a few years of losing support with Earth.
Since when is amazing and so-far-unforeseen advances in technology a horrible thing?
Do you enjoy the capability of calling people with your pocket? Do you find the internet useful? Were either of those possible in 1900? Is quality of life directly worse since 1900 because of the technological advancements since that time, when folks were thinking that powered flight may someday soon be possible?
I say to hell with that line of thinking. Challenges are good, and finding ways to overcome those challenges is even better.
We do not need spaceflight - there will always be important problems that need solving right here on Earth. The fact that some of the solutions might be off-planet is just wild speculation. The sort of speculation that led to the integrated circuit, for one thing.
The leftist view of things is clearly that we need to treat the Earth as a closed system without any resources available from elsewhere. Fine, but that means we need to be a lot more focused on population control than we are right now. The pollution created by 6 billion people would be only half as much with 3 billion. Sustainable? Forget it - sustainable resource usage that could continue for centuries or millenia would require maybe 200 million people at a maximium. We aren't going to get there without several big wars, and maybe not even then.
We are going to be lucky if the Western leaders aren't telling us in 20 years that we all need to cut back on our lifestyle. Living through subsistance farming, for example. Could the planet support 6 billion that way? Hardly. So there is your population control right there in a easy, non-political package.
Manned exploration - and all the risks that are wrapped up in it - is key. There are two things this does: (a) it presents risks to be knocked down and solved, and (b) a new frontier for exploration. Man is an explorer, and that frontier is needed. Desperately.
When was anyone on there the first time? Can't go 'back' cause nobody has been there to begin with and the gig will be up when a new 'real' video from the moon is available on earth.
Let's give Bush money to go to Iraq, instead. That turned out well.
* Promise Kept 91
* Compromise 33
* Promise Broken 15
* Stalled 87
* In the Works 275
* Not yet rated
Only 15 outright broken, and 91 kept? Not bad at all. For a politician.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
From the article:
"In [Constellation's] place... NASA will look at developing a new "heavy-lift" rocket that one day will take humans and robots to explore beyond low Earth orbit. But that day will be years — possibly even a decade or more — away."
The 2020 moon return was a decade away anyways. NASA is getting a small budget increase too and this whole thing could open up opportunity for NASA to follow one or more options from their "Flexible Path" which has a series of steps (including some earth science missions) towards getting human beyond LEO again. I think this could actually be a move in the direction of a better thought out, more useful and more sustainable human flight program.
To me that's a good thing.
They apparently have all of the bugs figured out for the Space elevator, and are secretly working on the space "escalator"....
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
Yes We Can ... not go back to the moon.
Yes We Can ... Give Up On Space Exploration!
This is a waste of money. NASA needs to do what they exist to do, not track junk science. This is as stupid as having the CIA track "Global Warming". Oh wait, it is called "Climate Change"...oh, whatever it is called.
This article is just typical "journalism".
1) Find an actual story written by someone who knows
2) Respit it badly so that it fits with your editorial "guidelines" (in this case: bash the Obama administration) and doesn't make it look too much like plagiarism
3) Confirm your source by just asking the author you ripped off. He now is your "insider" and since it seems he actually had his info from the white house contrary to you can now also say in your article "according to White House insiders": makes it sound more serious.
4) ?
5) Profit
The move is probably actually a good thing: it's about not spending everything on creating a launcher (Ares I) that would only get us to LEO and mean we'd have to scrap ISS and refocus on creating a heavy lift vehicle that reuses as much as possible stuff that's already flying.
The astronaut Ed Lu is one of the smarter more capable people I know and I noticed recently that he has moved on to google. Perhaps this is the reason why?
By killing the Constellation project, he is also killing the Orion crew vehicle, which was going to ride on top of the Ares I.
Even if they manage to man-rate a Delta or Atlas, there won't be any place to put the astronauts!
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
How many jobs will this move create?
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
I believe he was a true Republican, until the whole UN / Iraq debacle. He went to bat for Bush Jr.'s administration, and in the end was made to look like a fool. IMO, he was so hurt by this that he decided to support Obama.
We choose to not go to the moon. We choose to not go to the moon in this decade nor to do the other things, because this is easy, but because this is not hard, because this goal will serve to disorganize and mess up the best of our energies and skills, because this challenge is one that we are not willing to accept, one we are willing to postpone, and one which we intend to lose, and the others, too.
For every dollar spent in NASA we get back seven in the economy from the advanced technologies based on things NASA had to invent.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/hqlibrary/ppm/ppm68.htm
Are they still planning to let the most expensive structure in the history of mankind de-orbit in a few years and just burn up? Would it not be worth it to boost it to a higher orbit and use all or parts of it for future missions? Could it be sent to Mars and parked on Phobos as a research base? It would take a long time but it could be sent unmanned and then have a crew on a fast transit meet up with it. It just seems like a collosal waste of money to let it burn up after such a short time after completion.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
In a sense, this should be giving Republicans what they want: less money spent by governmen
But we don't want this it all. Republicans aren't against all government spending. They are against things that could be done by private enterprise or not in the national interest. Building expertise in spaceflight is a strategic national interest, just as much as building an aircraft carrier is.
The amount of people happy with this decision are just either libertarian fruitcakes, or leftist fruitcakes on either side of the aisle.
I hate Obama and the Democrats and the Republicans that go along with this, with all of my heart and soul. They've ruined this country.
This is my sig.
I'll probably attract a zillion flames for saying this, but I think this is great.
You sure will. I hate you. I curse you and everyone else that likes this decision for 10,000 years.
God damn you all to hell.
This is my sig.
Socialists don't want people to learn how to live in space so they can keep them slaves on earth. With this decision the Left Wing makes the Gravity Well our prison as much as it did the Berlin Wall.
The only answer left is civil war.
This is my sig.
From the summary: "Instead, NASA will be focused on terrestrial science, such as monitoring global warming."
From the actual article: "In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects -- principally, researching and monitoring climate change -- and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible. There will also be funding for private companies to develop capsules and rockets that can be used as space taxis to take astronauts on fixed-price contracts to and from the International Space Station -- a major change in the way the agency has done business for the past 50 years."
I'm ambivalent about more Earth-science projects, but IMHO bringing back tech development at NASA with a focus on exploring the inner solar system is the way to go. Not many people seem to realize this, but many/most of the technology development programs in NASA were canceled so that their funding could be diverted towards developing the problem-ridden Ares I medium-lift rocket. The mention of exploring asteroids and the inner solar system is likely a reference to a Flexible Path to Mars architecture, which builds a robust in-space architecture instead of focusing on deep gravity wells like the Moon. It's counter-intuitive, but it's actually energetically easier to travel to an asteroid or the Martian moon Phobos than it is to go to the Moon, and the infrastructure you create for doing so is more applicable to other endeavours in the inner solar system. Establishing in-space refueling depots and mining fuel/water from asteroids will go much more towards making us a spacefaring civilization than landing on the Moon again.
Finally, the emphasize on using fixed-price commercial contracts instead of cost-plus single-source contracts for traveling to Earth orbit will go a long way towards freeing up funds for beyond-Earth exploration, as commercial companies can focus on the well-understood problem of traveling to low-Earth orbit while NASA can focus on beyond.
Why not support the chinese in going to the moon. They would and supporting them in doing so would cause a win/win situation on more levels than you might think.
At some point Scudder and his followers will be out and humanity will go to the stars again.
Let me fix that for you: "a dozen or two highly educated, mostly-military people will go into orbit again. And a couple of billionaires".
Just FYI, we've been doing the people-in-space thing for fifty years. Haven't learned much for the trillions of dollars we've blown out the airlock.
Please help metamoderate.
First, it's pretty fucking funny that you're using a fictional TV show to argue a point. Anyway:
There are a lot of hungry people in the world, Mal, and none of them are hungry 'cause we went to the moon. None of them are colder and certainly none of them are dumber 'cause we went to the moon.
Uh, actually, since that money went to going to the moon, it didn't go to renewable energy research, education, etc. Fun fact: the percentage of kids in the United States who don't get enough to eat has climbed steadily since the 60's. Right now it's around 13-14 million kids each year.
So yes, there are a lot of people who are dumber and colder and hungrier because of all the money flushed down the drain into what is little more than nationalism in the name of science.
Don't you think we have certain societal obligations before we flush hundreds of trillions of dollars down the drain putting a couple of guys in a tin can above the earth for the world's most expensive dog and pony show?
Newsflash, folks: politicians, even JFK, don't give a flying fuck about scientific exploration. They care about getting their agendas through and re-elected. Kennedy did what he did because if he hadn't, the anti-communists would have had a field day.
Maybe if we'd spent the money on renewable energy technology, we wouldn't be spewing so much pollution into the air to generate power and heat, wouldn't need to fight two wars in Iraq, etc. If our homes were generating their own power and more efficient, imagine what we could do with all that money not being wasted on a complex power grid? Hmm, maybe go into space?
Please help metamoderate.
The Democrat War on Science continues apace.
And the Soviets had nothing to do with the competitive environment? This rivalry even stretched to our involvement to Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc; both winter and summer Olympics, etc. The space race was just another of many races we had to prove "my dick is bigger than yours, comrade"
Trying to limit the 'snarkiness' factor and not be too trite, but I must say: We already are in space. We already are traveling through the universe. We should probably shore up our current vessel before we send out recon ships from the mother ship.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I guess I should clarify... Powell's Republicanism is in conflict with what the party line says a Republican should be.
There needs to be more Powells and less teabaggers...
Under Obama, the Space Administration will be focused on terrestrial science?
He promised change, right? ;-)
This is probably all redundant after hundreds of posts have already been made, but here are my 2 cents.
Spinoff tech happens from any megaproject - the human genome project, the current military adventures. Changing which projects are a priority does not mean the end of new tech.
We can wax poetic about the lost horizons all we want, but getting people into space has always been about national pride, not need. It was the nation-state equivalent of gorilla chest-thumping between the US and USSR: awe the world and subtly show such confidence in missile reliability that they'll put a man on it (how else do your demonstrate - to others and to yourself - that your ICBMs are the real deal and can all be expected to reach their targets; having the confidence to put a man on top of one proves their reliability). Now that space and the moon have been set as the litmus test of proving you're an advanced civilization, the next generation of pride-pounding will be between China and India.
The dream of real human colonization of space are never going to get off the ground unless (1) we can get material (human or otherwise) out of atmosphere at a tiny fraction of the current cost: not half the current cost - we're talking on the order of a thousandth and (2) we can demonstrate the ability to produce energy production equipment completely on-site (not just assemble what we send there, not just construct out of local materials, but construct it AND all the equipment needed to construct the next generation out of only material and energy there).
Overcome those two barriers and human colonization will simply happen. Don't tackle them and the space junk we leave behind will just be our version of the pyramids: awesome achievements of engineering but ultimately useless.
The constellation program has been a mess from the start. Particularly Ares 1. The only reason that the Ares rockets were chosen is that Ares was the NASA administrator's own pet project. There were other options suggested that were arguably superior to the Ares concept, but that didn't matter since the administrator had the power to sway the decision.
I am convinced that the decision to axe the constellation program, though a hard pill to swallow, will actually be a great thing for the future of space exploration. Stop what we are doing and start over with a better plan for the future. The Moon is neat, because everyone can look up at it, but it doesn't make much sense as a base for further exploration. The Lagrange points, or even geostationary orbit are much better places for that. In the end, we will have a better space program than we would have if we continued this push to go back to the Moon.
"Since when is the F-35 a defense boondoggle?"
Where do I start? There's so much. It's over budget, far behind schedule (only 10 percent of scheduled flight testing completed in 2009, with the prototypes spending most of their time parked on the taxiway or in a hangar). The fire control suite and EOTS are nothing but vaporware, promises, and plastic display models at this point. It's overweight. When anaysts said that it was less maneuverable than an F-16, Lockheed said "That's OK, dogfighting is obsolete anyway". Hmm, where have we heard that before? There are noise problems with the engine (on average twice as loud as an F-15 at takeoff), enough of a problem to current designated noise corridors that a least two cities are actually suing USAF not to bring F-35's to their area. Google "F-35 noise", and prepare for a lot of reading. The F-35 is quickly becoming the new F-111, a plane designed by committee for everyone and pleasing no one.
The cost is what'll probably kill this program, or limit its' sales. There are grumbles in the Navy department that they want to kill it in favor of new (and cheaper) Super Hornets. Lockheed says base F-35 models will be around $70 million apiece (compared to $50 a pop for Super Hornets). But realistic" estimates say the tag is more likely between $111 and $132 million, flyaway. At the top range, it would make them more expensive than the far more capable F-22. Oh, and the Navy just completed a study that found the F-35 would cost 70% more per hour to operate than Super Hornets, and that the F-35B's vertical thrust mode would damage current flight decks.
USAF should simply buy new build F-16's. The Navy should buy new Super Hornets. And if the Marines can't have new-build Harriers, then get the Marines out of the fixed-wing business altogether (a possibility that Bill Sweetman over at Aviation Week has also raised).
"
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Some people suggest that the best way to preserve humanity is by building robotic probes that carry the spark of life and all knowledge to the stars. It's impractical to build an actual interstellar Noah's Ark and Library of Congress. But if the information is stored digitally and sent on durable probes to seed other worlds then life and civilization can be spread ad infinitum.
Others suggest that this has already happened.
It was so expensive, that it's cost to do write the same today would prove that the $billions of USD back then was worth 10x now. All anyone ever got from NASA's experience was debt and bragging rites. Nothing good came of the moon landing films other than to experiment with technologies that existed as concept to prove they work. NASA does that all the time in their zero-gravity pools. John Kennedy sent hundreds of $billions in USD to private companies on America and over seas that had no connection or contribution to the moon landing video shot at night on a stage in Arizona. That's very sad. I think Bollywood over on India will learn past NASA's presentation of unadvanced Star Trek, and make a better film. China will best them with a film that will topple Total Recall's visit to a society on Mars; China will go to planet Venus.
The article from the "Orlando Sentinel" is just a bit slanted. Perhaps things aren't as bleak as that article and the summary suggest.
If we lose Constellation, it doesn't follow that the Manned Space Program is gone- just that we can't afford Constellation. See the Augustine Commission's report that claims that Constellation will only work if we give it another $3 billion a year. And this would have been for a program 5 years behind schedule, with no real test flights and several significant safety issues that haven't been resolved as of yet.
So what alternatives does the Obama administration have to look at? Well, as the article notes, Nasa will look at other heavy lift launch designs and come up with a plan to use one of those to replace the Ares V. As the Ares I was for Crew only, Nasa will look at the commercial launch vehicles such as the Dragon that we can use to ferry astronauts to the ISS and back. Nasa will get $200-300 million more a year to look at the new designs. This seems like a reasonable idea. We'll use commercial space services to lift the light stuff, and let NASA design the expensive, heavy lift vehicles.
The other point made in the article is that a new program won't be ready any time soon, implying that the new program would be starting from scratch. Given that Constellation wasn't going to be ready before 2017 at best, I'm not sure that we're going to lose any time we would have made up with Constellation. The other thing is that we won't be starting from scratch. Worst case, we start with the NLS review vehicle that NASA worked on back in 1993. Best case, we let those hard-working NASA engineers start with the DIRECT V3 proposal and get something up by 2015, a full 2 years before Ares would have been ready.
The Internet has no garbage collection
OTOH, we do have a choice about where we direct resources and what effect that has on the quality and length of life.
There. We are all going to die when the universe does the heat death thing, or collapses and re-explodes.
But we might live longer, depending on where we spend resources. Or better. Or (maybe) both.
Getting off the earth might mean our species survives for longer than if we put all our (womens') eggs in one planetary basket.
The federal government actually pays farmers not to grow too much food (or produce too much milk, etc.), so I hope we can agree there is no lack of food here. Those people are hungry due to various economic and social conditions, but mostly because, as a country, we just don't give a damn, not really. And every politician knows the next election will not be decided on the basis of hungry children, so the governments (federal & state) aren't likely to do much more than what little is already being done.
We could feed all those people and fund space exploration, if we really wanted to. But we won't. We say we care, and some of us have convinced ourselves that we care. But we actually don't, except for a tiny few of us. That's why they're still hungry, not because we went to the moon. Because we don't give a damn. Simple as that.
- T
The reason for "Moon, Mars, and Beyond", the Bush plan for space exploration was always to put a military base on the moon. If the choice was that or nothing, I'd take nothing. But Obama has shown genuine interest in Mars and in a plan based on Phobos prior to establishing a colony on Mars. That's the route that most astronauts favor as do most serious scientists. Failure to fund Constellation does not mean we are giving up on Mars.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
The ones spelled out at Nuremberg and in the UN charter.
Take the definition of "crime against peace;" it's the supreme crime in international law in that it contains all others, according to judge Jackson. Well China has never been guilty of it, while the US has repeteadly -- in fact, every single decade since WWII -- violated it.
I'm not saying they're bad principles. Quite the opposite. But you'd expect that the country that basically originated them would be especially cautious about applying them. The chinese government might a murderous dictatorship, but they're not violating international law on a regular basis.
Look up on the history of the island. It used to be an independent nation, until the US invaded and deposed its queen in the XIXth century.
They are cogs in the machine.
Being the anniversary of Apollo 1...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
...but....hope....and change....sniff...HE PROMISED ME!!!
Just another tool in a suit
Talk about your mass unemployment. A lot of businesses (including the non space related ones), schools, medical centers and other facilities that have been built around say Johnson Space Center are about to hit the unemployment lines. This hits JSC hard in my opinion. When contractors and civil servants no longer have jobs they will not be buying anything, heck they will probably be abandoning the homes for lack of an ability to pay. So the housing market tumbles further while small shops and/or chain stores will lose sales and start laying people off until they close down. So the surrounding areas will be ghost towns minus some work at the ship channels and in the energy districts.
yay change
Humankind has not yet been to the Moon...any sane person knows this! *sigh*
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
Disclosure
If we don't explore space, every other country on Earth will.
Get used to being last.
I have the solution to our terrestrial problems right here, in a format that an 8th grader ought to be able to understand:
A * B = C
Where
A = Human Population of the Earth.
B = Energy Use (and its byproducts).
C = Unfriendliness of the Global Ecology to Humans.
If we were really interested in solving our problems, we would try to solve the equation for one (or two) of the variables, instead of trying to subtly modify their values with vehicles that produce less CO2 or solar cells that are more efficient.
We keep hearing about the undefined 'hard choices', well here they are.
I have a great fondness for the human spaceflight program, especially the ISS which has given us some useful engineering and science. For the most part however the human spaceflight program appears to be for PR reasons. And that does have value as well but I think the real debate is what direction do we want to spend the bulk of the money going into NASA.
Probes like Cassini and landers like Phoenix, Spirit & Opportunity have given us much more science at a fraction of the cost. They have allowed us to understand the Earth (currently our only source survival), our solar system, and the greater universe in detail that we could not have gotten by trying to send humans everywhere. It seems that it would be wise for us to continue to send out as many probes and robotic systems to every planet, moon, and asteroid in our solar system to gain deeper knowledge about their makeup. If we are thinking in terms of human exploration of space we need to know what is out there before we start going ourselves. It makes sense cost wise not to mention in terms human safety.
And really the bottom line right now is getting to the science and engineering benefits. The AI research that goes into NASA alone has direct benefits that we can all enjoy. It would be nice to see a century of robotic exploration followed by an effective human exploration program.
For those who suggest that this is a matter of survival, I would agree on a very long time scale. But if we can not ecologically maintain Earth, which is rich with life, there is no way we are going to survive on a planet that is lifeless and or alien to our biology.
It hurts to let go of human space flight for now, but it might be the smarter thing to do in the long run.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
Over the summer, I had the privilege to intern at NASA. Every little scientist's dream is to grow up and work for NASA, and I accomplished that dream for a short time. Why do kids dream of growing up to work for NASA? Because NASA is super-cool, and it does things that nobody else thought was possible or reasonable to do. It does crazy, impossible things just because it can, and to show the world that it can.
How many of you, growing up, were highly interested in space? How cool did you think NASA was? Just about every scientist I know says that they loved space and NASA as kids, and it's part of what made them interested in science. Though going to the moon has little to no hard, monetary return, the return that it does have is priceless -- inspiration for multiple new generations of children to grow up into scientists to work their hardest and do things that we think now are impossible.
Without NASA and billions of dollars spent into producing pretty pictures of galaxies and producing wild stories of the creation of planets, it will be a lot harder to convince children that the sometimes-unbearable difficulty and mundanity of science is worth the effort.
Personally, I have a great love of science and discovery, and I believe machines are far more suitable solutions to the equations that trade-off between matter, energy, and time in space travel. But I also realize that, scientists often face not a choice between an expensive human and a cheap disposable machine, but rather a choice between an expensive human and nothing; politically the decision to allocate a budget is often not based on NASA's production of data, but rather on NASA's production of Big Heroes and USA-Rah-Rah-Rah. I have no doubt that the money saved by eliminating human exploration will largely not be re-purposed to more efficient manners of scientific discovery.
It was no secret in 2008 that Obama was going to slash the space program. The space program has always been a primary target of the Left. Some of us are old enough to remember the shrill cries in the late 1960s and early 1970s to cancel Apollo and use that money to "put an end to poverty"...well Apollo got canceled and we still have poverty.
I had hoped that I would live to see manned space exploration resume after it ceased nearly 40 years ago. It no longer seems that will happen, unless the Chinese do it.
At least I remember a time when there was manned space exploration; a time when we dared dream of colonies in space. Gen-X and younger does not.
Just because you support the idea of space exploration or colonization doesn't mean that every dollar spent on NASA's manned space program was a dollar well spent. I am not a rocket scientist, but many rocket scientists were not happy with the Constellation program because they saw it as a boondoggle and a catastrophe waiting to happen. NASA has wasted billions over the last three decades on 'the next spacecraft' without making any real progress. Why should we have expected Constellation to have been any different?
For that matter, if you RTFA, you can see that NASA's total budget is seeing a slight increase - the program got cut, not neccessarially the manned spaceflight budget. (Exact information on where NASA's budget will be allocated doesn't seem to have been released yet.) Personally, I don't think our present government can ever be a strong or particularly effective supporter of human spaceflight - I doubt it can do anything right. Just because politicans and bureaucrats say dollars for NASA, or dollars for a NASA program in their district or department means more/better human spaceflight doesn't neccessarially make it true.
Please, don't leave us Russians to compete with China alone! Come back some day, gentlemen.
If we're not going off planet then we might as well consider the sky as a big blue roof. Who cares what the other planets, stars etc. are like if we're never going to go there?
I'm just glad it's not up to America alone. Commercialisation of space will get us out there and I just hope it doesn't take too long!
Any more than I'm a Republican. If Obama was that,
"Well, I'm a pro-democracy, pro-personal freedom, pro-small (in terms of population) state, pro-nuclear, pro-space exploration and pro-gun ownership/self-defense rights leftie, and proud of it! ~"
I'd grumble about taxes and the muddling of the state in population, but, I'd at least say, well, the Democrats are onto something when the pictures come back from space or the under the sea. A bit of state oriented technocracy is a good deal imho.
This is my sig.
And Obi Bama explained eloquently, "That's no moon."
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
We are a petty childlike race worshiping tribal images.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
When this post went up, I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of lefty slashdot voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
I hate to say it, but I don't blame him for this decision.
I would love to see more space exploration, particularly manned space exploration.
However, I read the news. The country is hanging on by a financial shoe lace. We've borrowed money and taken donations to go to wars. The banking industry via the government is running of borrowed money from China.
People have lost homes and have been out of work for over a year.
Now is not the time to be getting spendy unless the spending will help the country recover.
Blame AIG, Goldman Sachs, the rest of Wall Street, the politicians who deregulated to let it happen and the politicians who didn't fight to put the regulations back.
President Obama is just trying to put the country back together first.
The private sector has different motives. One being profit. It can put satellites in orbit. It has no real incentive to explore. I think manned spaceflight is necessary for true exploration. Unmanned probes are useful, but limited at best. The Mars rover wouldn't be stuck if there was someone there to dig it out. Having it be NASA/USA creates a common national pride. A private company doesn't. Maybe that's not possible anymore with the polarity created by the current set of politicians. I think we've lost something along the way that nobody born after the 1970's or so will ever comprehend.
. . . that 1% is a lot more than you think it is.
Hell, 1% of my gross yearly pay is $540. That doesn't make it a prudent decision in hard economic times to run out and buy a very low end treadmill to maintain my health.
I'm not relativising China's record. I'm saying they are not breaking international law. YOU are relativising US crimes.
Instead of doing something exciting and inspirational, we're bailing out banks.
But this brings up another issue with NASA. People are always pointing out failures of NASA. But they can never succeed if their "focus" is changed every 4 years.
FWIW, I think the manned space program is the most inspirational and just about the most important thing we can do. And my vote lies in that direction also.
Don't make me get out of this chair and vote straight Republican!
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?
'If the most prosperous nation on Earth is not going to lead the charge back to the moon and on to Mars, then greatness is probably behind us.
Why are you talking about Finland?
The US has a serious non-political cultural attitude problem making you yourself your own biggest enemy.
Bravo Obama Time for the USA to start saving some money. The exploration will not add significant new technology or satellite communication (moon is satellite) abilities. I own a business, and in the SMB definition, I am closer to the S then to the B as in Big business. We put reserves away for slow seasons and we pay our debts off as much as we can. Time for the overspending for gadgets, luxuries which are non-essentials, to be watered down. China now rules the world, and the question is, what will it take for the USA to attempt to return to the role of most technically advanced affordable society? Obama, the millions of uninsured medical citizens appreciate what you are trying to do. Hip Hip Horahh YEAHHH!!!
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
And whose fault is this?
Could it possibly be the Republicans?
Seeing Obama lose his majority was incredibly annoying: everyone everywhere else in the world (well, me, certainly) thinks he's doing a great job.
"My statement was meant to point out that because of the space program there are many advances in science that ..."
Really, no. Your post was a reply to a comment about the vast money wasted. It implied that the money wasn't wasted because it generated tax revenue from scientific progress. No doubt the progress and subsequent revenue would have been much greater had the money been targeted at specific problems.
"Your argument is disingenuous at best."
Save the cliched argument fluff. It's stupid.
46 & 2
well looks like we are gonna have to have a telethon to try and save NASA ide much rather donate to nasa then hati anyway aglist nasa will actuarially benefit from my money
The parent was wrongly moderated as -1 troll. The writer's views may sound weird to people, who haven't done any research of the climate change fraud, that was very well documented in the climategate e-mails.
Good. It's dangerous up there. He should let us go instead.
These opinions are my own and not necessarily
the opinions of God or any other supreme being.