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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.'"
I guess the US will be exporting space exploration to China now as well.
killing of manned space flight
When did this happen? Last I heard, a NASA project that was even more horrendously delayed and over-budget than usual got canned. There's nothing to stop another, better, project from taking it's place.
Or for, you know, any other country with manned craft from launching them.
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.
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.
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
well that's one thing where, even though I'd say I'm mostly libertarian, I'd disagree. getting infrastructure in place is one of the things that government can do easier and (if you can eliminate most of the pork and other bureaucratic shit) should be doing since it is one thing that most definitely does benefit all citizens equally, just imagine if the roads were done by private companies, there might be more that are very well maintained but something like the interstate highway system would be near impossible to create because you'd be so hard pressed to get the companies to actually cooperate in any reasonable manner. Funding NASA helps fund the research and development that allows for the possibility of creating that infrastructure we so desperately need up in space in order to do any of it. There are so few people that seem to realize that we are so incredibly far away from being able to mine the asteroid belts and things like that. And even so many years after the space program has started, there is not one company that can go into LEO to do the things NASA can do, simply because the returns aren't there in LEO to be profitable in the short or even medium term. Government does not have any business in morality but infrastructure is one place that it can really do a huge amount of good for the citizens and possibly the world (and our own economy if we get the infrastructure up there and charge others to use it)
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.
NASA is one example of where government can pool together resources to achieve national objectives the private sector would not do.
Consider the history of flight: the government wasted money on Langley, and he had all the right connections and credentials. He failed. Who got us off the ground? The Wrights, Glenn Curtis, Alberto Santos-Dumont, and thousands of others who risked their own life, money, and work. Why did Lindbergh fly the Atlantic? There was a prize for it, posted by a consortium of private parties.
The government spent a shitload of tax money on beating the Russians to the moon, so we'll never know what the private sector would have done to develop a near-earth launch capability, or maybe to go to the moon for something like the x-prize.
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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
Getting private industry into the act is a good thing, in my opinion, although I'm not so sanguine about government subsidies.
Like the nuclear industry, who do you think is going to end up insuring private space flight?
Getting rid of government subsidies isn't nearly as easy as we'd like to think.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Our federal budget is 4.5 trillion this year. Why is NASA's ~20 billion so hard to pay for when we seem to have little trouble finding enough to spend about 2.5 trillion on entitlements yearly? Tell ya what; end the agricultural subsidies and we'd free up more than enough to pay for NASA. Maybe then we'd see more actual sugar used instead of that HFCS crap.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
What private company do you expect to fund the GPL and send probes to the outer solar system? Or Hubble, for that matter?
Yes, reasonable people can argue that LEO launches are so routine these days that they should be turned over to private industry. Fine. But there are tons of other NASA programs that have no profit potential whatsoever, yet tremendously enrich humanity culturally and scientifically. Because private industry would never fund these programs, NASA must. And we're better off for it.
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
Mod this parent up. U.S. industry is loathe to spend money on any R&D that does not have an immediate return on investment (read:shareholder gains). That is why there are not now and never will be manned private launchers entirely from the so-called 'private sector'. Too expensive for too little return. This new plan from the Obama administration doesn't change that one bit. The U.S. Treasury will still be spending the money to design and build a man-rated launcher. Instead of ATK, Lockheed, Boeing, etc. being the recipients of this largesse, it will now be SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, and others. Basically, the money has been diverted from large government contractors that have already been in the space business for a long time, to a bunch of newcomers. Same game, different players.
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."
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?
It was designed by Lockheed Martin.
I don't know the specifics of this case, but if it was designed by Lockheed Martin on a government contract, that's not an indication that it would have been feasible to do so in the private sector.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
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
You realize Boeing and ULA (a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed) are two of the primary contractors under CCDev, the precursor to a larger 'commercial' manned operation. Furthermore, SpaceX, Blue Origin, et. al. employ a large number of people who used to work at more traditional companies -- Boeing and Lockheed do not have experience, the people working for them do.
The difference in the game isn't that the money is going to different people, its how its being managed. Before, we were operating in the same way we did in Apollo, by telling companies what we wanted built, and paying significantly more when things didn't work out as cheaply as we hoped. This made sense in the 60s, since we didn't really know what it took to complete the task. However, after we have been launching people into orbit for 50 years, we should no longer be able to claim to not be able to predict the costs. So the difference here is that instead of funding development of vehicles, NASA is instead saying they'll be a guaranteed customer, and purchase rides at a fixed price from these companies. While this may seem like a fine distinction, it changes the incentive structure significantly so that programs are more likely to stay on time and on budget, proposals are more likely to be accurate, and congress is less able to meddle.
Costs for missions beyond LEO are harder to predict, so government directed cost-plus contracts may make sense in this regime -- however, they will be far more successful if there is a robust, reliable, multi-vendor infrastructure for getting people to and from LEO.
You're confusing individual liberty with social justice.
It's not possible to enjoy personal liberty when you are worked to the bone, discarded at a whim, and can't afford medical care for your children. It's not possible to appreciate persona liberty when you're not educated, and it's not possible to rise out of those circumstances when economic opportunity is inherited. Without regulation, capitalism reverts to its natural state: liberty for the very wealthy and feudalism for everyone else, and Republicans have opposed regulation of markets for over a century.
If you really care about maximizing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you'll support policies that give everyone a chance to achieve these things. In the process, you'll be amazed by how much people "contribute" in return.
See, the conservative mindset is that lack of success is a moral failure on the part of the failed. If someone is down on his luck, he must have done something wrong, and therefore must be punished. It's really a modern breed of Calvinism, the religion tenant that God has pre-destinated certain people for heaven and others for hell, and that he demonstrates His grace toward the chosen by handing them with worldly success.
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.
"Whatever is, is right" is an evil idea.
Amusing thought, It'd be interesting if it were planned to reduce trust in government generally by repeatedly failing OR making the dems look horrible/dragging them to failure. That way people with their short memories and only two parties to choose from will vote for the party arguing for 'less government'. They don't need to follow through with it, they know that they were voted in by people that pay little attention to specific actions in politics due to decades of plummeting trust and hope. And merely listen to emotional grandstanding. Hell, if they screw up badly enough it will only increase their chances in future after the dems get a chance to fix things.
... but the world seems too much like a sequel to Idiocracy, when is Brawndo going to become the GOP's official party drink.
http://www.thefreespeechzone.net/images/charts/bush_deficit_graphic.gif now makes sense
Disclaimer: I don't believe that the GOP's incompetence is intentional.
I've been saying for 10 years or more: America is over. The image of America is really just the image of being the only large country that didn't suffer massive infrastructural damage in WWII. We were the only man standing afterward, and as a result, got to call a lot of the shots and also attract the best talent from around the world, and had a lot more money than others.
However, that "USA! USA!" image has ultimately undone us. Americans feel they are great because they are the USA, not that they should strive to be great because they are the USA. It's a bit like the student in the honors program at an American university I taught at, who was getting a solid B in my Japanese language class. He came to my office and with a straight face told me that because he was an honors student he needed me to change his grade to an A, because if he didn't get an A, he'd be out of the honors program. I suggested to him that the honors program was for people who got As, not that getting As was for people in the honors program. He didn't like that and stormed off. Then his advisor called me and chewed me out, saying "this kid is an A student!" "Um, not in my class he's not. He's doing pretty well, but not great. That's a B." This, I think, is the same confused thinking that holds the USA back. For a few decades it was able to skid along on the momentum of that head start in 1945, but without ever getting serious about any innovation or development, we're fading into irrelevance.
I'm pretty lefty (well, for the US--I live in Japan and here the same views make me right-of-center, as they do in most of the world--I consider myself a moderate conservative, but the US is so red-tinted that I look totally blue by comparison), so I have to point out that all of the projects you have pointed to are large-scale, publicly-funded projects. Most of the heavy R&D lifting anywhere has to be done with government funds, because you never know when the thing will be able to turn a profit. But if you do it right, it ends up creating lots of opportunities for the private sector to innovate around what the people have paid for, and that benefits everyone. Americans, with their (sorry) idiotic Ayn Rand Reaganite Libertarian mindset continually pat themselves on the back for their rugged individualism and individual responsibility for things that were gifts to them by the intelligent use of collective funds. That isn't to say that the private-sector doesn't innovate and doesn't sometimes do things that the govt. heavyweights can't, but, as an academic, I can tell you that virtually all fundamental research is paid for by governments. If you dig into virtually any invention or product, you'll be hard pressed not to find some concept, technique, or technology that wasn't at least partly paid for by government funds.
What am I saying? With the education system we have, all innovation is thanks to public funding.
I read a great quote, but I don't know who first said it, about Libertarians: "A libertarian is someone who looks out from the Empire State Building and thinks he's 1600 feet tall." --He totally ignores the blood, sweat, and tears shed by a multitude of forbears that put him up there and thinks it's all about him being so great and tall.
Unless we can get over our libertarian, anarchist fetishes, we can expect the future to be something that happens somewhere else, while we go back to just growing a bunch of corn for everyone, like we used to do.
I don't actually, however, think we can get over that, though. Americans are just too ignorant to even know that there's a problem. They are told they are great, so they're great. Even in the face of ever-mounting evidence that the US is mediocre at best in just about anything you care to measure, it will forever be the greatest country in the world in the minds of its citizens.
And that's why I live in Japan.
Nice job of selecting the denominator to give you the result you wanted to report.
The total set aside for highway improvements: 30 billion.
Amount of that to be spent in 2009-2010 : 5 billion.
Now I don't know who thinks that five billion dollars on top of the huge amount being spent for showcase infrastructure projects (pork) isn't a lot of money, but I sure wouldn't call them "fiscally conservative".
Now the thirty billion could be spent faster, but I've seen what happens when government is spending money like it's burning a hole in its pocket. It stinks. It's an invitation to corruption and boondoggle and crony capitalism.
After 9/11, and after the anthrax attacks, I was working in a field that could be related (in a very tenuous way) to bioterrorism security. The Feds wanted lot of money spent, and *fast*. Nobody even *knew* how to spend that much money that fast on the problems they were supposed to be solving. But certain operators sure knew how to build a machine to consume money. You set up a subsidiary or company, hire lobbyists, hire cheap contractors (often outsourced after a layer or two to really cheap labor) and throw together some total BS project that you expected to disappear as soon as the mania subsided. It was the bottom feeders who were ready and willing with "shovel ready" projects.
What did we get for all that money spent so quickly? Nothing. The only people who could absorb money that fast were the dishonest ones who were specialized in sucking up money when it had to be spent faster than anybody could manage responsibly. People who were working in fields for years who just needed *little* things, a couple thousand dollars or maybe even ten thousand dollars were frozen out while consultants with no actual domain knowledge absorbed hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions for BS projects.
Spending the money more slowly makes sense for several reasons. From the good government standpoint, it discourages the most rapacious freebooter contractors. It encourages people with sustainable projects to take the time to compete with the bottom feeders. If anything less jam today and more tomorrow would have been better.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.