Cool NASA Tech That Will Never See Space

coondoggie writes to tell us that with the "new and improved" NASA budget on the way it looks like many of the cool projects NASA has in the works will never see the light of day, let alone space. The biggest cut looks to be the Ares heavy lift rocket but other cuts include a new composite spacecraft, deep space network, inflatable lunar habitat, and an electric moon-buggie.

Comments

Modern Libs have always hated NASA

[pease1]

This isn't surprising at all and was completely predictable. Even during Apollo, post modern liberalism has always been lukewarm-cold towards space exploration, a fact I always found interesting since many NASA supporters at the grass root level are Democrats. The whole global warming thing has pushed not only the liberals against NASA, but brought along the environmental movement as well. "How can we afford to rape another world when we can't take care of..." and "How can we afford to provide jobs to highly paid engineers when there are poor..."

That NASA screwed up the engineering of some of new hardware didn't help. That NASA could only look at and award to the normal fat-cat defense contractors didn't help either.

The combination of the two and NASA's own problems are all quite deadly when it comes to this administration.

Amazingly hope for American humans in space will now rely on Republicans and the US private sector, assuming we just don't try to contract it out to other countries (and lose yet another technology base).

Just as amazing is a lack of understanding by the liberals and environmentalists that the destruction of human space flight dooms the long term prospects for robotic exploration; which is a key tool to understanding the environment and natural resources on Earth. When the over all size of NASA is reduced, it's ability to innovate across programs is gone and the technology stales over time.

Finally, you could assume that even the environmentalists could start to see the only viable long term solution to maintaining Earth's ecosystem is expansion to other worlds, but clearly they don't have that kind of vision.

Re:That's disappointing, but...

[blind biker]

If I made more money, I'd probably have a set of new golf clubs on my wish list for this spring. As it is, I don't have an unlimited budget, and there are other priorities which are higher, such as food, healthcare, and DirecTV. I mention that last one intentionally, by the way.

You see I could do without DirecTV and save myself enough to get a new set of golf clubs every year. Thing is my wife an daughter really like the programming. They don't begrudge me my greens fees or my high power rocket purchases. Each of us gets something from the family budget, though perhaps not all we want. We simply don't have the unlimited funds for that.

It's interesting what happens when you must have a balanced budget - certain choices have to be made.

You fail at comparisons, if you think a family is analogous to a nation of hundreds of millions. It isn't. Canceling a space program that could bring mankind to the moon, mars and beyond would produce a shitload of useful science and technology, it would inspire the whole nation, energize it and contribute to pulling it out from the doldrums. Your comparison of such a program with a set of golf clubs tells a lot about your contempt for science and space exploration.

Re:NASA needs more budget.

[nomadic]

How come Bush's promises of massive explorations with no funding backing isnt stupid, but when Obama has to clean up Bush's mistakes and bring Bush's BS promises to a real budget, then suddenly he's the bad guy?

Because a large number of slashdotters, while declaring themselves "libertarians," are really closet republicans, though they oftentimes won't even admit it to themselves.

Re:Philosophically inclined geeks

[tjstork]

Whine whine, cry cry. People who respond to these threads have the outraged attitude of eight year olds denied a toy. Tell me me how you intended to pay for bubbles on the moon and maybe I'll take the "tragedy" rhetoric seriously

Oh shut up. You could say that about -anything- the gov't spends money on. If you want to play that game, how about we play it with entitlements...

whine whine whine, your grandma will starve unless I pay for her to get some gov't cheese. how about you tell your grandma to go get a job. I'd rather have my tax dollars buy a spaceship. It's a lot better to watch a cool space show on TV than it is to watch some wheezy old tart that didn't save suck up millions of taxpayers dollars just to keep her drooling and pooping herself for another few months.

Re:Stop spending so much on the military...

[clarkkent09]

How about cutting the entitlement programs that take up two thirds of the budget instead of seeking to massively expand them (healthcare)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fy2009spendingbycategory2.png

No, we don't need a defense budget that big either so there is plenty of room to cut if there is political will.