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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.
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=-
'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.
Yes. Constellation wasn't just the moon. It was the next generation of NASA rockets for human spaceflight. If Constellation is cancelled, this isn't just the end of the moon. It's the end of Mars too. Hell, it's the end of America's manned spaceflight program in general.
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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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"?
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.
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'
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)
So Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell are really whites wearing blackface?
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...get a grip zippy.
But the are you willing to pay for it? How much in taxes are you willing to pay for manned spaceflight?
Other than pure sensationalism there is no practical reason for manned space flights. We have learned more about our universe through deep space probes, satellites and planetary probes than we could have ever learned from manned space flights. They also have the added benefit of costing less, lasting longer and not killing anyone!
No, they will cancel actually developing a heavy-lift rocket, and instead just 'look at' developing a heavy-lift rocket. It's much cheaper.
Not really. It's been pretty deregulated since '84 and actively encouraged since '90. The only major hurdles are the FAA regs for atmospheric flight, which is pretty simple compared to the complexity of spaceflight.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight
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.
And just how the hell do you expect to fly men to these near-Earth asteroids? The shuttle ain't gonna do it. We'd need to develop a replacement vehicle. Like Constellation - the one that he just friggen canceled funding on.
It's like a parent promising they'll take their kid to Disney world if they can bring home 8 A's on their report card - when the kid only has 7 classes. Only an idiotic kid would perceive that trip to Disney as still being in the cards.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Tell you what - since according to your philosophy we can pick and choose where our money goes - however much of my taxes is going to the military? Send 75% of that to NASA instead. Welfare? Send 90% of that to NASA instead.
I'm perfectly willing to pay for NASA via my taxes if I also get to stipulate what I'm NOT willing to pay for.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Unfortunately, a trained human geologist could have done everything that these probes have done, within 2 or 3 hours of setting foot on Mars. The robots simply *can't* do things as well as humans can. Think about that... Opportunity and Spirit have been doing fantastic science on Mars for the past 5 or 6 years, and all that work could have done by a trained human within a few hours.
Don't get me wrong, there are situations where they make sense. Putting a human in orbit around Jupiter, to be irradiated by high energy particles for a few years, would be an amazingly stupid thing to do. But don't kid yourself that the robots can explore Mars or the Moon as well as humans could.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
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.
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.
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")
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.
As great as Opportunity and Spirit are, let put things into context. In their 6 years on Mars the two rovers have travelled a combined 27km. In 3 days Gene Cernan and Harisson Schmitt covered 36km on the lunar surface and collected 50kg of samples.
Spirit has been stuck in the sand for 9 months (and is now permanently stuck). An astronaut on the surface could have solved the problem in 30 seconds.
So while human missions are orders of magnitude more expensive, they also produce orders of mangitude more data. As for risk, there once was a time where humanity accepted risk as the price of knowledge. Less than 10% of the Magellan expedition made it back home.
Vietnam: Invaded
India: Invaded
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
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.
"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).
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Life is hard, and the world is cruel