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Obama's Space Plan — a Conservative Argument
MarkWhittington writes "The Obama space proposal, which seeks to enable a commercial space industry for transportation to and from low Earth orbit while it cancels space exploration beyond LEO, has sparked a kind of civil war among conservatives. Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects. Other conservatives like the commercial space part of the Obama policy and tend to gloss over the cancellation of space exploration or even denigrate the Constellation program as 'unworkable' or 'unsustainable.'"
Coming from a different point than conservative or liberal - NASA has always been a huge waste of money and ought to be deprecated. Getting private industry into the act is a good thing, in my opinion, although I'm not so sanguine about government subsidies. Also, while low Earth orbit may not be as grand a vision as going to the Moon, or Mars, or the asteroid belt, it's a good starting place of all of the above; let's get some infrastructure up there and we'll be able to go wherever we want.
Conservatives are not opposed to federal spending when it is in the geo-political interest of the nation as whole. Eisenhower kicked off the federal highway system. Republicans and conservative Democrats came through with money for Apollo. Richard Nixon, actually, Caspar Weinburger, kept the space shuttle alive, and none other than Dan Quayle intervened to keep the Space Station and Space Shuttle going when Bush the Elder proposed cutting it.
The issue with federal spending is usually around entitlements, which are a different argument that I don't want to start here.
But...
The way I read the whole killing of manned space flight is that there has been, even dating back to Apollo, this idea in liberal camps that we should not be spending any money on things like space or defense, or even roads, for that matter. Instead, the federal government in their eyes should not do anything until every poor person is somehow fixed. Walter Mondale made this argument in the 1960s, and Barrack Obama made this argument elliptically during his campaign. There's not a talk of the "private sector" building into space. There's no economic benefit immediately of sending a man to explore Mars or the Moon or an Asteroid. It's a national project with payoffs in intangibles that are hard to even forsee. But it is one of those things the country must do, and keep getting better at, to get ahead.
But the fact is, space exploration is dead in this administration. It just is. Democrats aren't pro-science. They are a pro-poor party these days. Exploration, as the government would do it, in the tradition of Columbus and Cook and Shepard and Armstrong, is now dead to Democrats. Once again, conservatives have to pick up the torch, because the left is so fixated on redistribution of wealth that it has forgotten how to manage a nation as a whole. You can't stop exploration to ensure that every idiot has a slice of bread.
Sometimes people have to be left behind, and that's what this is about.
This is my sig.
I guess the US will be exporting space exploration to China now as well.
All I gotta say is the if I ever had my own private sector asteroid, and the liberals wanted to tax it after killing manned space flight and wrecking the future of America so some morons can gobble down their welfare government cheese, than I'm dropping the dino-killer right on their fricking heads.
This is my sig.
Conservative: n. 1) A person who holds to conservative principles or beliefs. 2) A person who agrees with other people who call themselves Conservatives, without regard to their actions, statements, beliefs, or principles. 3) A person who opposes anything that a non-Conservative (as defined by the first two definitions) says, does, or believes in.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Without an active maned launch program I fear the United States will quickly loose our position of technical and scientific leadership. Already we have slipped to 9th in the world for science and technology education. If they money were to be invested in higher education I would be less worried but seeing as my tuition went up after North Carolina instituded a "education" lottery, well things just don't look good.
Over at the WSJ, Peter Diamandis makes a case for private space, while naysayer Taylor Dinerman says he's seen this movie before, and argues the private sector simply is not up for the job.
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects.
Uh, no- all congresscritters hate it because NASA is giant cash-cow for the defense industry- companies like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. Hell hath no fury like a congresscritter who wants to stand on a platform in front of a defense factory in his or her district, come election time, and talk about how important the makers of the A43 Latrine Servicing Truck are to the defense and security of our great nation.
All those probes, satellites, etc? Built by defense contractors, carried up on rockets built by defense contractors, and very often launched from launch facilities owned by defense contractors.
The shuttle costs half a billion dollars per launch, for example...and almost everything NASA does is outsourced to government contractors.
Please help metamoderate.
Remember where your Trillions in in recovery came from, the US people are now paying long term for the Chinese Space Program.
To me Obama's plan sounds like this
'Here is a bunch of money, more than you usually get. I want you to spend it, but I don't want you to do anything with it.'
Which is essentially how the rest of the scientific community works. But there are thousands of Universities and private labs who already do that work.
NASA is the only organization in the world that can do what it did, manned exploration of the universe.
Why don't we leave aimless R&D to academia and let NASA do what it can.
If you got rid of all the scientific bloat on NASA's budget there would be plenty of money for moon and mars, and science will follow.
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Is it really that big a deal? I'm sure it's not going to polarize conservatives.
I hear strawmen in the article description. "Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects. Other conservatives like the commercial space part of the Obama policy and tend to gloss over the cancellation of space exploration or even denigrate the Constellation program as 'unworkable' or 'unsustainable.'"
Like who? Which conservatives? All the conservatives I've talked to think that unless there's a corporation somewhere profiting from our activities in space, it's not worth spending money on. I have no doubt that Obama's plan to focus on profitable LEO projects pleases the typical conservative, while launching RC cars to Mars plays as a complete waste of money in their minds.
I'd like to see a fiscal conservative support sending ice drilling autonomous subs to Europa to search for possible signs of life. I think their heads would spontaneously explode....
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
If conservatives want to have a civil war over the space program, then fine. The simple fact is that the new space program is the most rational allocation of the woefully inadequate NASA funds that politicians are willing to throw at them. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a NASA engineer, I agree that it is a shame we are shutting down all our manned launch programs for the time being, but completing the Ares project would have meant shuttering just about every other research & development effort. NASA's most valuable resource is their innovative scientists and engineers--it really is a waste to have most of NASA's budget going to routine space flight tasks.
The new budget cuts manned launches but redirects those funds to long-term research that will make future manned launches both more productive and less expensive. Extensive research into propulsion, navigation, life support, and self-sustainability will be carried out using inexpensive robotic missions and the International Space Station.
If the Republicans want someone to blame, then they should blame nearly every politician since the end of the Cold War for not pushing for more NASA funding and relevant priorities. And no, pork barrel projects don't count, only money that can be distributed based on scientific merit and technological feasibility really makes a difference.
The bottom line is the political climate makes it impossible to properly fund anything, including space travel. If you want to change that, tell your congresspeople to increase funding and support the scientific priorities--not pork projects--we need to make real and tangible progress in the quest to explore the universe
I always love debates on the space program. Lots of big ideas, but what is missing is leadership. What made NASA so successful in the 1960s and 1970s was that there was a clear objective: put a man on the moon. Build a reusable launch system. Put up a space station. The problem is that there are no real national goals with space, so it is exceedingly difficult to sell, say a heavy launch vehicle. Put some goals in, and suddenly money becomes easy because people buy into the grand plan. Say the goal is to put a permanent colony on the moon - or to put a man on Mars. Suddenly there is context and justification for spending, inventions to invent, and what is science suddenly turns into applied science.
Our politicians need to lead, not look for the people to lead them when it comes to space. An ambitious space program is just what is needed.
-- $G
Remember where your Trillions in recovery came from, the US people are now long term paying for the Chinese Space Program.
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No two ways about it. The shuttle is on its last legs, Orion/Ares is mis-begotten, and anyone who thinks that private enterprise can deliver a man-rated system in the near future is delusional.
Give it up...we're in this position because of lack of intelligent investment over the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Testing aviation systems and technologies, then passing on the information and systems to commercial and military applications
"one that touts limited government and the empowerment of the private sector, the other that touts national security and national greatness as virtues as well."
I think it is naive to suggest that Obama's space plan started this "civil war". In case you have been living under a rock, there has been an ongoing disagreement between conservatives and the virtuous neoconservatives and their ambitions for national greatness.
They're the ones cheering at the cancellation of Pork In Space.
I'd certainly like to see a viable human spaceflight program, building our way out to Luna, Mars, and beyond. Problem is, Constellation wasn't it. Constellation was treated as an excuse to pay aerospace giants megatons of money to develop a new launcher which would - at best - just barely achieve its aims. NASA appears to no longer be capable of serious launcher development, because the industry lobbyists own the politicians, and the politicians own the engineers specifying how the industry's products must perform. I am dead certain NASA engineers can do fine, fine work, but they haven't been free to do what they do best.
With the new approach, this counterproductive cycle is at least interrupted and hopefully broken.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
It's a damn shame that there just isn't enough money for NASA right now, but blaming liberals for it is just asinine.
I have the Federal Budget right in front of me as I'm building an application that details the number of days the average citizen has to work to fund each and every 600 odd line items, including details of entitlements.
The fact is welfare has been a persistent and chronic drain on the federal budget now, for a generation. We've spend a trillion dollars a year to help urban centers and eradicate poverty, and what has it accomplished? I mean nothing.
You want funding for NASA? I'll tell you what, I got it for your right in these line items:
50 billion plus for food stamps
20 billion for school lunches
150 billion plus for unenemplyment
150 billion plus for SSI disability
And I haven't even started on Medicare or Social Security yet.
So, here's the deal, I'll cut 10 billion from food stamps, 5 billion from school lunches, 30 billion from disability, and 30 billion from unemployment, and in just one year I've got nearly the entire cost of the Constellation Program.
Entitlements aren't too blame.
I thought liberals knew how to add.
This is my sig.
The only real positive reconfiguration of the space program would be as a stair-step program, each step dependent on those before. As some criticisms of Obama's plans state, this would take quite a while to accomplish. But as time goes on, the program design becomes more necessary to maintain and it's continued future more assured. Twenty to thirty years is a long time? Only to those unfamiliar with planning for the future of the species in the context of the universe. Even for them, a comparison of 40 years is constructive, and that's the amount of time since people walked on the moon.
Sadly, nobody has even mentioned the possibility of planning for such a program, much less taking advantage of this opportunity to setting it up. Even when it is mentioned, such 'plans' are often ruses with no inherent intentions of carrying it out. So this rebuilding of the future is, while still possible, not yet being seriously considered.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Let's not be so naive as to think these objections are based on what is best for humanity. Most are based on what will strengthen the political (or financial) position of the speaker, and weaken his opposition. Part of doing that is making arguments that sound vaguely plausible to the audience (that's you). But please, don't be a sucker.
Here is a bunch of money, more than you usually get. I want you to spend it, but I don't want you to do anything with it.
Go build a statue, a pyramid, anything, as long as it's not useful. Classical Keynesian economics.
Deleted
Why are we even talking about what conservatives think? The GOP has amply demonstrated that it has no interest in governing the country in good faith. Their entire program is:
Any conservative argument needs to be critically examined in light of the question, "how does this allow the GOP to continue its looting?" Just look at Chicago economics, Reagan tax cuts, Bush's imperialism, and flagrant anti-union rhetoric. It's not made in good faith.
Conservatives have no interest in the real welfare of the country. This little spat about NASA is merely a disagreement among the foxes about whether to go through the front or the back of the hen-house. It should be an awfully strong hint that the rest of the world is governed by parties to the left of even the left here, and is going better for it.
Can we please stop wasting our time and giving attention to these right-wing lunatics and their pernicious ideas?
If you got rid of all the scientific bloat on NASA's budget there would be plenty of money for moon and mars, and science will follow.
Wha? You mean like the Hubble Space telescope, the Terrestrial Planet Finder, the New Horizons probe and the Spirit mars rover? How about all that perfectly good money wasted on expensive, can not afford to fail humans? What science has that multibillion dollar space station generated?
The US has the Titan and Atlas rockets. SpaceX will get the Falcon 9 fully tested in the next few years. Then there is the Ariane rocket series from Europe and the Russian rockets. China is developing its Long March Rockets and India will have working Rockets in a decade or so. The US does not need any more rockets.
The US should get out of manned flight, hand the science over to the NSF and turn NASA back into an airplane reserach organization.
Take enough time, and without going to space humanity is unsustainable.
Obama's been hard at work for the last year growing the size and scope of government. Why the sudden love for private industry? My theory is that he realizes that we can't pay for both space travel AND expanding the welfare state, so he's chosen the path of most votes.
I have my doubts that private manned space travel will ever succeed in the US. We are far more pussified than we used to be. The safety and regulatory hurdles are astronomical. We treat every space death as if it should be the last time we ever send a person into space. We're strapping a person to a giant rocket and launching them into space. Guess what? IT'S VERY DANGEROUS! Now get over it! No one is being jettisoned into space against their will, although sometimes I wish all of Congress were.
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects.
They complain one day about out of control government spending, so when Obama cuts an expensive program that isn't working, they complain about that. Those fiscal conservatives in the Alabama congressional delegation are having a collective heart attack trying to hang on to their pork projects.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
- Liberal till death
Going back to the moon on chemical rockets was a stupid idea. If we had a better technology that allowed, say, a permanent base with a hundred people, it might be worth doing. But just repeating Apollo is pointless.
Worse, it would probably fail. Apollo had top people, including many experienced aircraft engineers who'd designed many successful aircraft, and, of course, the best German rocket engineers. That pool of people is gone. As Ben Rich, once head of Lockheed's "Skunk Works" (SR-71, stealth aircraft, etc.), wrote, "I worked on 22 airplanes in my career. Today's engineer is lucky to work on one."
anyone who thinks that private enterprise can deliver a man-rated system in the near future is delusional.
So you're seriously claiming that a private company can't build a system which kills its crew less often than every fifty flights? Because based on the shuttle's record, 'only' killing the crew 2% of the time is what 'man rating' means to NASA.
And before you respond, you might like to consider that Delta already has about a 98% success rate over the last twenty years and so far capsules with escape rockets have a 100% success rate in saving the crew. Stick a capsule on a Delta with an escape rocket and you're already more 'man-rated' than the shuttle (and yes, I do know you would need some minor mods to ensure that the capsule could escape safely at all points during the flight).
The other priority should be a campaign to combat superstition and promote naturalistic views of the world. Turn on TV you get talk shows promoting psychics and alternative medicines. Open up a phone book and it's full of Chiropractors and Acupuncturists.
How can you expect to make an investment in sciences and develop a sound technological basis for the future of mankind when only 40% of the population believes in a naturalistic explanation of it's own existence?
From what I understand, the choice is that we can either keep flying the Space Shuttle, past its design lifetime and with its two fatal crashes in its history, or we can use someone else's rocket and work on developing a superior replacement. Is this even a choice? Who in their right mind would choose the former?
Why don't you americans see that this is a great way to create jobs!
Don't forget how Sen. Shelby (R-AL) behaved like a spoiled brat by placing holds on all Obama's appointees trying to extort $40B in pork. Any redirection of resources away from Alabama right now will help reduce pork long term.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I would like to see the shuttle operational for as long as possible. I would like to contract some of the ISS work out to private launch concerns. It may be that US astronauts have to go up to the ISS on other crafts. I would like to see more unmanned missions to more planets, and an emphasis on micro satellites that will allow a wider range of persons, down to high school students, in the US if the US is funding it, gain experience with LEO.
What I think I am saying that that space exploration and LEO is no longer the exclusive domain of the privileged few. I really do know how difficult space flight is, and that things never work the way one thinks they will, so I know it is risky. But we have to gain a broader experience. At this point, to some extent, we are just protecting government jobs, not doing useful work.
The most hypocritical things I have seen is Senator Olson, who represents the JSC area, crying because people at NASA are going to lose their jobs. Is that the job of republicans? To save government jobs? If there is no shuttle program, something which as decided under a republican president, they why do we need shuttle controllers? This is like complaining that health care reform is going to cut $500 billion out of medicare, then proposing a bill that would cut $650 billion out of medicare. NASA cannot be a jobs factory. They have to, and have been, doing useful things. If we want to keep the astronaut core up, then keep and expand the ISS, and let other take us up.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
There are liberals that do that. They'd be among those that have retained my respect. Sometimes they even manage to change my righty-conservative mind about things.
Then there are those liberals who only know how to attack anybody who disagrees with them. They do not concede that anybody can honestly and intelligently hold contrary views: people with opinions they don't like are liars, stupid, or both. And they will never allow such a person the label "liberal", no matter how many liberal opinions they have — at best they're "liberal in name only." Our own./random [slashdot.org] is a prime example.
From where I stand, this second kind pretty much dominates liberal political groups and media right now.
Libertarians are often ignorant of the fact that they effectively lobby against civilization. In terms of GDP per capita, life expectancy, innovation, and quality of life, the middle of the road socialist countries dominate worldwide. That's because if you shackle your society with continuous relearning of generational lessons, you can never move beyond basic progress.
If you'd like to refute the massive progress introduced by the Apollo program in the sixties, go ahead and make your case for a private corporation in the same time frame spending a good portion of the US GDP for pure research. Bell Labs is the only thing that even comes close.
A world of self regulation is just as absurd as a world with complete government control of production. Use the market for easily duplicated services that are not necessary. For everything else, try and use your brain. Mindless idealism nets nothing of value.
Summarized in economic terms by Adam Smith:
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
Who also believed
The legal rate... ought not be much above the lowest market rate. If the legal rate of interest in Great Britain, for example, was fixed so high as eight or ten per cent, the greater part of the money which was to be lent would be lent to prodigals and projectors [promoters of fraudulent schemes], who alone would be willing to give this high interest.A great part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it.
When the legal rate of interest, on the contrary is fixed but a very little above the lowest market rate, sober people are universally preferred, as borrowers, to prodigals and projectors. The person who lends money gets nearly as much interest from the former as he dares to take from the latter, and his money is much safer in the hands of the one set of people than in those of the other. A great part of the capital of the country is thus thrown in the hands in which it is most likely to be employed with advantage.
(from naked capitalism)
GDP Per Capita
Life Expectancy
Quality of Life
I honestly can't tell whether you're being sincere or ironic.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
There were lots of private companies trying to privately spend a small portion of US GDP for private research in order to get to space. And since we didn't need NASA for anything, it's amazing that the technology developed at NASA appeared worldwide in the same time frame without the subsidization of any other government.
Consider the history of flight
Indeed! The technology required to fly 200 feet and put a human on the moon are shockingly similar.
Ahhh, I'm just kidding. You know you're full of shit. And so do I.
The other priority should be a campaign to combat superstition and promote naturalistic views of the world.
Uhm... no. The US government should not be in the business of propaganda (for whatever the reason). The idea is good - but many ideas with good intentions (like this) ends up really bad.
PS, there are a lot of other silliness that people should stop. One example of this is 30+ guys dressed up like nancies in kevlar suits chasing an eggy-ball while 50,000 people have nothing better to do than to watch them chase the eggy ball. WTF?
What happens between a man and his TV is their business.
Yes, please ignore the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war industry.
And hey, let's throw out every social service program and see how our society looks when kids are starving in the streets. I get fucking ill every time some blowhard claims to be patriotic while they lobby to throw their countrymen in the street so they can continue to have their war toys.
How about we just return tax levels - literally 4 to 5 points higher at incomes above 90,000 a year - to the Clinton days, and balance the budget that way? Or, end the war tourism programs that are actually draining the treasury, and have been for fifty years.
Only now are we paying it? China has been lending us money for years. We didn't just recently start borrowing from them so we've been paying for their program for awhile.
"The Obama space proposal, which seeks to enable a commercial space industry for transportation to and from low Earth orbit
So far true, although there are other parts of the proposal.
while it cancels space exploration beyond LEO,
This is just plain incorrect. It cancels one particular program, which was widely regarded as badly mismanaged and possessing many inherent problems. The Constellation/Ares program also suppressed any research into technologies which weren't seen as immediately relevant to the specific lunar return scheme the former NASA administrator had in mind, with several perfectly good programs getting canceled to pay for the increasingly overbudget and behind schedule Constellation program. It replaces it with a plan initially focused on developing the technologies critical for sustainable exploration of Mars and the rest of the inner solar system.
has sparked a kind of civil war among conservatives.
Well, it's sparked a civil war between those conservative who either have a financial interest in the status quo or are stuck in a cold war-style lust for repeating Apollo. Other conservatives though, such as former House speaker (and National Space Society board member) Newt Gringrich, and former House Science & Technology committee chair Robert S. Walker, have enthusiastically endorsed NASA's new plan, and consider it one of the few positive things to come out of the Obama administration.
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects.
Uh, strawman much? This isn't a "retreat from the high frontier" -- NASA's getting a significant budget increase, and the new plan is much better suited for engaging in meaningful space exploration than the old one could ever have, even if it hadn't been going drastically overbudget.
Other conservatives like the commercial space part of the Obama policy and tend to gloss over the cancellation of space exploration or even denigrate the Constellation program as 'unworkable' or 'unsustainable.'"
They denigrate it as 'unworkable' and 'unsustainable' because it quite simply was. It had already spent $9 billion just to try to produce yet another medium-lift rocket (the US has had at least two medium-lift rockets already in regular operation for many years now), which only passed its preliminary design review several years late through some fairly blatant bending of the readiness/safety criteria. Independent analysis by the Augustine Committee found that the current program wouldn't even produce its medium-lift booster until 2017-2019, and wouldn't produce a lunar landing until sometime in the late 2030s. At that point all you'd have is an Apollo repeat without any new technological capabilities, since the plan was specifically devised to avoid any new tech development. That seems pretty much by definition 'unworkable' and 'unsustainable.' NASA's new plan is far superior by pretty much any possible metric, with the possible exception of not delivering as much money in the short-term to Alabama.
I love the idea of doing research that needs to be done for deep space exploration, but having NO plan except "do more research until we think we can get there cheaper and faster" with no specific timeline, no specific goals and no inspiration will NOT get us into deep space. What it WILL do is make NASA a big bloated funding agency with no direct expertise in putting people into space.
Also, let's not forget that you can make plans and test all you want but if you really want to go someplace in space you need people with experience and you need the experience of being in space to test the results of research. I smell something fishy and it sounds like the opponents of ANY American manned space exploration have crafted a plan knowing full well that without any specific goals and dismantling what we have now we will practically ENSURE that America's involvement as a primary player in space will end.
Why not shut down the space program altogether? It's not good for anything anyway.
Phrasing it more succinctly:
The situation with Constellation cancellation is consternation.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Everybody you've ever known is in space. The Earth is a part of space. It is not separate.
In the meanwhile, we're spending $1 TRILLION a year on the military and two pointless wars. And Guantanamo is still right the way it was.
Hope and change, my ass.
It's your fault you know. You didn't hope hard enough.
Hope HARDER dammit!
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Recall that in the near future USA will be the third economy of the world,
just after China and India, the two Asian Giants. So it will be very natural
that expensive efforts to improve our life in every matter will be
performed there. I like Americans very much, in spite and because their naiveness,
but they should be prepared to move back in their rank.
MIchael
At least we have one conservative who's not afraid to say what's really motivating his opinion.
You are welcome on my lawn.
i guess i don't know why if there can be a valentine day every february 15th why can't there be a day when ppl can fart in public? it could be on the 16th or w/e. anyway we work pretty hard every day holding them in, lol. it would be nice if there were a day when it could be considered polite to do it at work or church or w/e. write back and let me know what you think
-vlad
It's not propaganda, it's education.
The way I see it, by canceling a lot of Earth observing and space science, conservatives pretty much made a mess of NASA. Now it is time to clean it up and try to get back a little of what was rolling before Bush got into office. The manned program is going to have to sustain in the space station for a bit while technical capacity (and confidence) is rebuilt. The planetary protection mission needs a restart.
The constitution does not allow Congress to fund NASA. This is not a conservative for liberal opinion; it is a statement of fact.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Haven't you heard? Prisons are the latest fashion in government subsidized private profiteering. You get your congressmen to pass laws to throw non-violent drug users away for life, get them to then open private prisons in their district which receive government money, and then turn the prisoners into indentured factory workers.
They've even shut down small factories to move the labor inside of a prison, throwing people out of work and then forcing them to compete with slave labor. It's a win-win for business though - you get to drive down wages and have access to cheaper manufacturing facilities at the same time. The following snip is from the 90s... I'm not sure if they're still brazenly pulling the same stunts.
Lockhart Technologies. Lockhart Technologies, Inc. closed its Austin, Texas, branch, laid off 150 workers and moved its operations into a state prison located in Lockhart, Texas, that is operated by Wackenhut Corporation. The prisoners are paid the federal minimum wage to assemble circuit boards, provided no health or other benefits (they have them already) and allowed to keep 20 percent of their wages. The products go to computer industry giants like IBM, Compaq and Dell. Joe Gunn, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, complained that Wackenhut violated federal law by not consulting with organized labor and declared this kind of prison labor "absolute indentured slavery. [Wackenhut] puts people to work under conditions that we criticize China for." The Texas Employment Commission, on the other hand, said that the only economic impact was in largely rural Caldwell County, where the prison is located and where there were no unions to be considered.
I am all for the government helping "pave the road to space" like they helped the transcontinental railroad (which was a success in its day). BUT, the two things that bother me is that Constellation has already made a sizable investment that will be lost (just like the investment in the original station) AND it is going to decimate many, many high tech jobs. I am all for transition to private industry but to just fire literally thousands of scientists and engineers. They want to make jobs, not destroy them but I hear estimates of over 5,000 jobs in Houston alone and probably more than that in Huntsville.
NASA and its contractors do a TERRIBLE job of promoting success and good work to the public. Instead all you hear is bad news. The press helped when it was fun but they've left. Don't believe me? How many of you can draw a reasonably accurate diagram of Apollo? Now how many of you can sketch a reasonably accurate floor plan for ISS? How many modules are in it? Does it have one truss, two, or none?
If you want to see what they have REALLY been up to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2IQVZmHnJQ
And thus we die.
The legit Chiropractors and Acupuncturists work for many things. period. Its not superstition; its your ignorance. Simply because something is ahead of science and not understood does not make it false. Simply because you are BEHIND does not mean it has not been proven. Do you realize many so-called discoveries are merely describing something that worked which was being used for generations? Nature has done billions of things for billions of years without science there to prove it and make an abstraction (which is then frequently revised until settling.)
I don't even believe in god (had a catholic christian) so I'm NOT going in as a sucker. I have tried both and I'm a scientist. Yes, you theists are the real suckers -there I just said it! Psychics are nowhere near alternative medicine - both of which are constantly being studied by science; psychics consistently do poorly. Alt medicine often produced "new" drugs.
Science is merely a testing process; there are more untested than tested theories. If something works, we don't need to understand it to use it; its up to science to eventually explain why it works (and humans have limits and therefore science won't be able to solve everything that is testable.) Science can help decide if something is effective without knowing why. Many "effective" things are actually less effective than their socially stigmatized alternatives. (Now we are using leaches for blood letting again... double points for that one.)
In fact, we get into plenty of trouble applying discoveries that are not mature enough when it comes to biology. The many failures of technology to be responsibly delayed for further research has caused people to lose faith in established science. Its not science's fault but it gets the blame; its no wonder we have a movement away from science - there was a whole generation who was promised houses on the moon by now; "science" didn't deliver on the hype. (again it wasn't science itself to blame here.) The reality is that people can't know it all and most must place faith in the experts in science like they do their experts in god. I don't have faith in science or religion but I know that science's positions are the best guesses humans have and I could study it myself and come out with the same answers (unlike religion's constant contradictions which produces different output to fight over.) That is me-- many people don't think it out; its just faith and therefore quite similar to religion from their perspective.
The witchdoctor shouldn't be dismissed but should be studied and explained. In the mean time, we can function just fine in ignorance with reasonably predictable outcomes. I suppose you do not think hypnosis exists? Yet hypnosis works and we have a better understanding of it despite not having a clue of what is actually going on - the explanations out there are no worse than what acupuncture has. It is UNSCIENTIFIC to just dismiss something; as the parent post does - (psychics should be obvious given their poor history; but clearly the poster is a few decades behind on the others.)
There are quacks everywhere - medical docs can/do scam people too. My HMO now does acupuncture and chiropractic work and its because they see actual results in the statistics - it is not to make the customers they screw over happy! We do not have a good system in place for most alternative medicines - before doctors had one there was a bigger range in the quality of "doctor" out there. I've been to good ones of both with easy clear cut test cases and clear results.
I agree the USA has a science / reasoning problem culturally among many other issues that have been leading to its downfall. If people just believed in results it would be a better nation - wouldn't hurt if we didn't get so suckered by hyped expectations either...
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It's a wicked, wicked idea. Society should be built around the idea of helping everyone succeed, not rewarding an arbitrarily-chosen lucky few while punishing everyone else for things that aren't their fault.
First off, a lot of failure is people's fault. The left has to own up to this, and it is true, moral failures have a lot to do with it. Too much drinking, drugging, gambling, womanizing, entertaining oneself, the whole liberal idea that if it feels good do it, is just totally wrong.
Now, with that said, I'm all on board with the idea of having some wiggle room so that people can make some mistakes and not get ruined by them. I've made some tremendously bad decisions but was fortunate to be in computers at the right time and recovered from it somewhat with a lot of hard work.
The answer is, free trade has to go. The only way all Americans can succeed in a society where 100 million workers have to compete against 5 billion workers for jobs for their own market is if they are absolutely perfect, supremely educated, and even then, the whole idea that the USA will somehow "win" an economic competition against the whole world is the stupidist possible jingoism. We cannot possibly win that competition. Chinese people are smart. Indians are smart. Mexicans are smart, and everyone around the world works hard. There is nothing the American worker can do to better himself or herself that one in ten counterparts around the world cannot do.
So, free trade has to go. You can't just say "oh, this job in the factory is something no one in the USA wants... there's plenty of people out there that would do anything just to have a 9-5 in the factory droning on and making cars. You can't do that with any skill. It's enormously disrepectful, its just arrogantly headed, and wrong. Free trade, its just got to go. It's not worth throwing away the lives of millions of people with every flow of capital or consumer fancy.
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And one idiot liberal who believes that a conservative is posting this.
Historically, the racists have been democrat.
For the same cost, there can be many times the number of robotic missions that will continue to provide great amounts of information regarding space beyond LEO.
"Let's privatize it" is the government's way of saying, "we don't want to do this anymore". Or it could also be construed as, "the companies that will take it over are our kind of people. They have and/or will donate to our campaigns".
See, Ahhhnold and the prisons. Taking care of cons is just no fun. Nobody wants to be chief administrator of the penal system. Dead end job. Outsource it. Problem solved from their PoV, at least until we end up with Blackwater Gulags and that starts causing problems for them again. Then some new politico gets to come along and play white knight, prison reformer, blah, blah... the story just goes on and on...
Is Obama cancelling all missions beyond LEO or all manned missions beyond LEO? In any case, we can't afford an ambitious (which for NASA translates to "aimless") space program right now or in the future. This is the sanest action Obama has taken so far. And that's understating it because Obama is a marxist nutcase and a disaster for the country.
You guys can argue about the semantics all you want... but this will be the end of the US space program. It's done, gone... we'll likely never go into space again. If that's cool with you, fine. But if you think there's any business that's going to actually risk the kind of cash that's needed for REAL space travel, you're deluding yourself. We'll have cheap, sub-orbital tourist trips while India and China build real, legitimate space programs.
Cancellation of the shuttle by the last president and then cancellation of the remainder of the manned space program by the current president, along with the cancellation of so many military programs after massive investment shows that "long term research" just gets cancelled by our politicians.
It doesn't matter what the "new budget ... redirects" the money to. Those projects will be cancelled as well, by yet another self important politician who wants to "redirect" the money to something in his own name. It will happen because so many "got excited" about Mars and didn't fight for the shuttle, a working system that was successfully building a major space station, and allowed Bush to cancel the entire era of learning to do construction in space.
The space shuttle / space station era, of learning to do construction and repair of large systems in orbit was important, and critical to any future planetary exploration. In parallel, the robotic exploration of the planets could provide great science. Things like Chandra and the James Webb telescope WERE being done at the same time.
The manned space program is over because neither our politicians nor our people are willing to follow through on anything, even when it is showing great success.
Welcome to the post-industrial society. It means a society that used to be able to accomplish things.
You can't transition a town full of machinists into some sort of data entry clerks. I mean, the answer is, you need to keep a manufacturing society and have all the elements of an income ladder in place for a diverse population, and the only way to do that is to get rid of free trade.
If you got rid of free trade, you'd have a stabler society, more jobs for more different kinds of people, and you wouldn't have to have nearly the welfare state that you do today.
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Give it up...we're in this position because of lack of intelligent investment over the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Lack of intelligent investment? Ha. Haha. Hahahahaha. That's funny. $8,800,000,000 just up and disappears in the desert under the Bush administration and nobody bats an eye. That's not poor investment. That's the result of letting criminals like Clinton, Bush, and Obama "lead" the country. Fox. Henhouse.
"The legit Chiropractors and Acupuncturists work for many things. period. Its not superstition; its your ignorance."
The entire rationale behind Chiropractic and Accupuncture is not based on science. Entire fields of science would have to be in error. When Chiropractic care mimics physical therapy it works-but that means it is NOT CHIROPRACTIC. As for accupuncture, toothpicks randomly placed are just as effective as needles. It doesn't work. It's WOO.
"My HMO now does acupuncture and chiropractic work and its because they see actual results in the statistics - it is not to make the customers they screw over happy!"
They do it because it is required (many states), saves them money and makes patients happy. It costs them virtually nothing (low reimbursement rates). It's a cheap way to placate patients while their problems resolve on their own. It's still WOO.
"It is UNSCIENTIFIC to just dismiss something;..."
No it isn't, actually. You don't really understand science. It is reasonable to dismiss homeopathy out of hand, for instance. It is counter to basic science as we know it. It's WOO. Being open to evidence does not mean that you accept something as true until proven otherwise. For instance, in the case of the witchdoctor, we should dismiss a scientific explanation until we are provided a reasonable basis for one. It's WOO.
I've read that the manned space program has resulted in not a single refereed journal article in the scientific literature. It's a big waste of money.
I work for a Japanese company, in the power division (but not the nuke division). We are currently trying to sell nuke reactors in the US. The big, 1000MW+ units, biggest in the world, which require some fairly large machinery. It's true that we have very strong relationship with our forging suppliers. A US manufacturer would have a difficult time trying to beat our lead time and price, since they would have to beg with our suppliers to do so. But, it is a little misleading to say that because of this, the US will never build any more nuke plants. The design and major manufacture will just take place overseas.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
If by historically you mean before 1960's, yeah.
If you want to include the last 40 years, historically the racists have been conservative.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
It is by far the most reasonable argument on this entire page. There is nowhere in the constitution that grants Congress the power to create and fund an organization such as NASA. I guess the familiar saw, "people spend more time and energy researching cameras and cell phones than their own rights and governing documents," is especially true here on slashdot. No wonder my site has only ever gotten 3 clicks from this site.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Historically, Republicans don't know anything about history. Pretty good troll, though.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
The original House version:[8]
Democratic Party: 152-96 (61%-39%)
Republican Party: 138-34 (80%-20%)
Cloture in the Senate:[9]
Democratic Party: 44-23 (66%-34%)
Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%)
The Senate version:[8]
Democratic Party: 46-21 (69%-31%)
Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%)
The Senate version, voted on by the House:[8]
Democratic Party: 153-91 (63%-37%)
Republican Party: 136-35 (80%-20%)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act
Democrats: 47–17 (73%-27%)
Republicans: 30–2 (94%-6%)
House: 333–85
Democrats: 221–61 (78%-22%)
Republicans: 112–24 (82%-18%)
No, it is not education. Promoting a “naturalistic worldview” is often just a guise for people with an agenda to promote their ideology. Here is a good example where it happened:
> The State recognizes no religion, and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people
That quote was from the constitution of Albania. You probably know what happened there? Oppression, torture and execution of religious people.
My point is that everyone must believe and do with their time as they like. As another example, I personally think that lotteries and gambling is stupid and (statistically) naïve – but do not think that it should be banned or the government should promote propaganda (under the guise of education) to stop it.
You do understand that Chiropractice and Acupuncture ARE science?
Acupuncture is a study of the human nervous system, and how specifically applied thermo/kinetic charge can effect the body.
Chiropractice is the study of the human skeletal structure and musculature.
Acupuncture and Acupressure works, because our body is a complex bio electric system.
Some alternative medicines work, because some herbs/plants/soils DO have healing properties for certain things. Not to mention, that positive thinking does help. You won't cure cancer with positive thinking, but if you give up fighting for life, you will most assuredly die.
Psychics, well that's different. But try not to be an uneducated bigot about the rest.
You are full of shit. You're a racist, plain and simple.
Actually don't you think you would be a racist for even daring to assume that the black caucus would have the same economic priorities as the white caucus? White people are in fact, fairly well off, and it is easier for us to justify spaceships. But have yourself a walk downtown the streets of any American ghetto - and I've LIVED in them, and ask the residents if they think American money should go into buying space stuff. These are people that have nothing, and they are represented by their leaders. Obama's just listening to them, that's all.
Now if you want to talk about science, and what's killing it, have a gander the handiwork your Democratic buddies have wrought upon states like New Jersey, where science programs and other academic programs in affluent districts are being cut in the name of social egalitarianism. Essentially, since some people in NJ cannot afford a great education, no one should be allowed to. That's your Dems for you, and if they weren't doing stuff like that to drag down the best and brightest in public schools, you wouldn't have the tidal wave of home schooling your seeing now.
All of this talk about creationism and creationists is really so much of a strawman set up by the left to detract from the very real fact that the left has wrecked public schools by dragging down the excellent, funneling contracts off to patronage jobs, and basically just looting their own children.
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nd her failed monetarist experiment that gutted our industrial base. And her extra-judicial murders.
The thing is, you left wingers have it as rule #1 in your book, that you don't have to tell the truth about anything. It's all just accusation and throwing as much mud at a person as you can get your hands on so you can have your people's revolution. But the thing is, every time you jackasses get in power, you invariably make things worse. I mean, you complain about Thatcher, but at least she didn't give a pair of Rolls Royce Nene engines to Joseph Stalin as a gift. How many Americans died from that fricking mistake, I wonder, in the skies above Korea.
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There have been numerous careful studies of chiropractic and acupuncture. THEY SHOW NO BENEFIT. THEY ARE FRAUDS.
Sorry to be an anonymous coward on this one, i'll own up to it when i get an account made.
I'd like to add reality TV as a furtherment of anti-naturalistic views of the world. The families who used to sit and watch programmes like "Tommorrows World" or "How did they do that" while eating their dinner are now all watching "X-factor", "Big Brother" or "I'm a Celebrity, Get me out of Here!"
I often ask myself whether the materialistically driven society we live in is seriously pushing the scientific community into the "kook" domain, making it more and more difficult for young people to seriously persue the things that should be allowing them to test their own potential.
You can call it cowardice or whatever you like, but too many kids are underachieving due to irrational social constraints, perpetually fed by the malnourishing television people call Prime-Time.
Well my own study shows it works. those "careful" studies are frauds OR they are testing quacks.
There are plenty of medical quacks that can be taken down and then used as an example for whole profession. Its not a representative sample; I have first hand proof so you can't convince me it does not work.
The largest "proof" is when insurance covers it - in the USA the insurance corps love to screw you out of coverage for long-established proven cures if you cost them too much money. They are not inclined to pay for things that do nothing; after all, they don't like to pay for stuff that works either.
I tried chiropractic when my doctor sent me to one unofficially because at that time it was still taboo. It was that or risky back surgery. My chiropractor was a former back surgeon, phd etc. Problem solved.
Ever have oral surgery? Ever use acupuncture instead of being drugged?
Stuff it. punk.
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You're ignorance is laughable. All red states get way more money back from the federal government than they pay.
You're tanker project would actually have sent an enormous amounts over to Europe, only the final assembly would have taken place in Alabama.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The thing that will really make a difference as to whether or not this will work will be removal of all of the red tape around private launches. If you listen to some of the talk from the smaller launch groups it sounds like half of the cost/difficulty is jumping through all of the legal, regulatory, and insurance hoops. I doubt we'd be flying anything more than flying 2 seat, single prop "Piper Cubs" today if the Wright brothers and later flight pioneers had been forced to put up with similar restrictions.
You're kind of proving the GP's point, since it was these Civil Rights battles of the sixties that alienated white Southern Democrats. Johnson knew he was taking that risk, and the GOP hatched the Southern Strategy to exploit the racial discontent and scoop them up. In the process it of course threw out the relatively more enlightened positions on race that it had inherited from Lincoln.
It's also true, that before the Southern Strategy, the parties were less ideologically committed than today, and in that regard, it's misleading to use the terms "Republican" and "Democrat" as if they mean exactly the same thing today as in the 50s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Southern_strategy
So you rename racist democracts republicans to keep your image that republicans are the racist party?
And the GP specifically said "before the 1960's" so I would say I have countered his point
Thank you.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
So you rename racist democracts republicans to keep your image that republicans are the racist party?
No, the racist Democrats renamed themselves Republicans.
And the GP specifically said "before the 1960's" so I would say I have countered his point
By before the 1960's I meant before the civil rights legislation and southern strategy. Given my audience I should have been more specific. I always make the mistake of assuming conservatives will have a cursory knowledge of our nations history when I talk to them.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Conservatives have more than a cursory knowledge of our nations history. We also have a pretty good grasp at numbers.
I guess I should have realized in your terms, 1965 came before the 1960's.
Funny enough, George Bush extended the Voting Rights Act by another 25 years in 2006.
Ronald Regan was the one who made Martin Luther King Day a holiday.
What legislation are you referring to that shows the racism of the republican party?
Not that this is a conversation that can be discussed logically since you discount history after some arbitrary date and consider any southern democrat that is a racist to really be a republican.
I guess I should have realized in your terms, 1965 came before the 1960's.
You win. My point was completely invalidated by not being specific enough.
Funny enough, George Bush extended the Voting Rights Act by another 25 years in 2006.
No. Congress extended it and Bush signed it into law. While we're on the subject, the only members of congress that has the gaul to oppose it's renewal were Republicans...from the south of course.
Ronald Regan was the one who made Martin Luther King Day a holiday.
He also exploited racial fears of southern democrats to get elected. He also vetoed sanctions on apartheid South Africa, which, thankfully congress overrode. I don't think Ronnie was at his heart a racist, but like many Republican politicians since the 1960's (oops I did it again!) he didn't hesitate to exploit people's racial fears to gain votes.
What legislation are you referring to that shows the racism of the republican party?
Since "racist" legislation (however you want to define that) from the post civil rights era would be politically impossible to pass, you set up a criteria (and probably the only criteria) in which Republican can not lose. Nice try.
Not that this is a conversation that can be discussed logically since you discount history after some arbitrary date and consider any southern democrat that is a racist to really be a republican.
My original point was that racism is a conservative trait, not a Democrat or Republican trait. It you are the one that is stuck on the Democrat/Republican thing.
And let me just throw this out there: Historically, Germans have supported and participated in mass genocide.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
It was a joke, dufus. Did you read the headline?
You don't even rate a "whoosh".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Who cares what conservatives think about any science-related program? Half of them believe the universe was created 10,000 years after the domestication of the dog and the other half think that global warming is a vast international conspiracy by 90% of the world's scientists that is either run from an obscure school in the UK or Al Gore's house depending on which one you ask.
Being at all concerned with what conservatives think about science is like asking a 4 year old with Down's Syndrome what he thinks about Keynesian economics.
I define myself as a conservative but do not think of myself as racist. (I hate to bring this up as a point since it is personal and irrelevant to me - except when being called a racist due to my ideals - but I am married to a black woman and the only one that makes a constant point of it is my liberal father. That said, I do not think all liberals are racists but some are just like there are some racist conservatives.)
I have issues with either side being lumped into the racist category as a whole.
My original comment was to point out that those anonymous racist posts reek of someone trying to set up conservatives as racist. It irks me because it undermines the legitimacy of being a conservative. I usually ignore those posts as transparent but PopeRatzo reply to Anonymous just bugged me.
That said, I have enjoyed the conversation with you as you have tried to debate facts. (I enjoyed it enough that I kept checking back to see if you responded.)
Allow me to provide you with a counterexample.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Negro_Space_Program
Insurance companies cover this crap because state legislatures pass laws that require them to in response to lobbyists. It has nothing to do with the validity or efficacy of the practices.
As far as your own personal experiences, ever hear of the placebo effect? Do you really think your anecdotes are the equivalent of the extensive investigations that have been done in these areas?
The National Science Foundation has a good publication on this topic.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind00/c8/c8s5.htm
And there is a lot of other literature on the topic, if you are interested in it:
http://www.chirowatch.com/cw-corruption.html
http://www.chiroweb.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=42556
http://www.rebuildyourback.com/chiropractic/school.php
As far as acupuncture, did you know the Chinese themselves banned it in 1929? It was only during the Cultural Revolution (trip back to superstition and ignorance) that it became allowed again.
Here is the National Council Against Health Fraud position on Acupuncture.
http://www.ncahf.org/pp/acu.html
These guys are frauds and quacks. Their prevelence in our culture is a simple indication of the failures and limitations of our educational system.