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.'"

Comments

libertarian

[TheSHAD0W]

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.

Re:libertarian

[cohensh]

Yes, because there is a shitload of private developed launchers that can bring cargo into LEO and beyond. Go libertarian!

SpaceX and Orbital immediately come to mind. Not to mention the Atlas rocket family.

Re:libertarian

[simcop2387]

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)

Re:libertarian

[tomhath]

Private industry will continue to be in, not get into, space related projects when there's money to be made. Communication satellites are a good example, billions of dollars in private investment are being spent on building and launching them. Of course that industry wouldn't have ever been possible if the USA and other governments hadn't developed the technology first.

But exploration and development of new technology are risky with too little chance of ever recovering the investment for private industry. The Obama plan is nothing more than an excuse to shift federal dollars to companies that are friendly to Hope and Change.

Re:libertarian

[khallow]

How about 18 successful launches by the United Launch Alliance in 2009 (on the Delta II, Delta IV, and Atlas V platforms)? This includes several NASA and DoD payloads too.

Atlas doesn't count, it was designed by the US Air Force.

It was designed by Lockheed Martin.

Re:libertarian

[jcr]

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.

Re:libertarian

[astar]

yah, the private banks do so well at giving us a future.

to go where ever we want, we need high-energy "rockets". Otherwise serious colonization does not work. In the 70s we were ready to go with nuclear drives. Now the russians are going to finally do it. I do not see a lot of private investment in anything really different. Pooh, we now all hear about the virtues of innovation, and as far as I can tell, this is something marketing is especially good at.

if you are a conservative type, something to consider is that India will be in LEO with men in 2012 and on rhe moon, with people, in 2020. oh, India is involved deeply with the russians on the nuclear drive.

on a more earthly thing, China currently has 64 high speed rail projects. 1000's of miles. The usa has 64 miles of medium high speed rail. Some people talk about high speed rail in the usa as capable of causing a 15% overall productivity increase.

and last I looked, 54 nuclear power plants were being built, almost all in asia. the usa has one, an old mothballed tva plant being brought up.

so who has the potential for a future?

anyway, here is a video entitled "the destruction of nasa" which is supposed to be very good

http://larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=13392

Re:libertarian

[TubeSteak]

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.

Re:libertarian

[QuoteMstr]

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.

Re:libertarian

[laddiebuck]

Libertarian -- and therefore idiot. You mayn't be an idiot, of course, but you're just parroting idiot arguments. You're not sanguine about government subsidies, but you think getting private industry into the act is a good thing. Right: how the hell do you think private industry is going to get into it, without the last 100 years of government research into how it's done and how you build the tools to do it, and the currently proposed subsidies for getting there? Private industry on its own wouldn't touch space with a barge-pole, not now and not in the next thousand years.

My dear libertarian friend, please realise that government isn't evil, it's a necessity and basically a good thing. Without it we'd have anarchy -- like Somalia. Nobody wants to see levels of control like in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, but that's why we work to make it better, not to get rid of it.

Re:libertarian

[TwoUtes]

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.

Re:libertarian

[phantomfive]

And this is an example of why the libertarian party never goes anywhere. It is like the Republican "I hate government spending" on steroids. Most Americans realize that there is a place in the world for government spending, and that it includes things like social security and public education and science.

Re:libertarian

[langelgjm]

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.

Re:libertarian

[hey!]

OK ... here's my problem. It's OK, to say that morally the government should not do this. It's OK to say that private industry would do a better job. What bothers me is saying these two things right next to each other as if they were logically equivalent.

I'm not saying you're doing this here, it's just that these two kinds of positions are so often marshaled with each other without comment that I think it's important to note that one does not necessarily follow from the other. It might be morally wrong for the government to explore space, AND that government space exploration is the only practical way to get that done.

I think the call for private industry to step up to the plate with LEO is smart. From a pragmatic standpoint if this is not th time to do it, it's at least pretty close. But if we imagined a history without any government support of space exploration, I don't think we'd be at this point today. That alternate history might be more morally defensible, but nature and economics aren't obligated to give us a happy ending when we make the "right" choices.

Re:libertarian

[Nyeerrmm]

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.

Re:libertarian

[that this is not und]

You're throwing up a link to a video which looks to be from a Lyndon Larouche website, which you apparently haven't watched, because you say it's 'supposed to be very good'?? Why not watch it first so you can have a more informed opinion.

Also, your Cold War sabre rattling is a little ridiculous.

Re:libertarian

[FooAtWFU]

I'd like to hear about this purported 15% productivity boost which high-speed passenger rail would supposedly bring us. Last I heard about those studies, it was something like this regarding California's high speed rail...

The rail authority assumes that between 88 million and 117 million people will ride the trains each year. To put that in perspective, consider that the entire annual ridership of the Amtrak system, which includes 21,000 miles of routes and more than 500 destinations in 46 states, is less than 29 million. Amtrak's high-speed Acela Express service, which runs from Washington, D.C., to New York City to Boston, serves a larger and denser market than the planned California system and only commands a ridership of a little more than 3 million passengers a year.

http://reason.org/news/show/california-voters-were-railroa

Okay, okay, that's the Reason Foundation talking, and we know they're a bunch of libertarian loonies. But what about someone more sympathetic?

Even the pro-high-speed-rail California Rail Foundation found the project lacking, with its representative telling senators, "We can't believe any of the numbers presented in the business plan."

http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2484870.html

Re:libertarian

[timmarhy]

you do realise that getting a man on the moon was done by standing on the shoulders of 100's of inventions developed by private industry? NASA didn't invent the whole thing from scratch, sure they did some amazing stuff, but your comparison of powered flight taking 300 years to putting a man on the moon in 8 years is so flawed it brings tears to the eyes.

without people trying for powered flight for 300 years, NASA COULD NOT put a man on the moon.

Re:libertarian

[PopeRatzo]

I doubt if there are unions at SpaceX and Blue Origin, either.

I believe both SpaceX and Blue Origin uses IAMAW workers. It would be foolish of them not to, since they tend to be better at their jobs. I wouldn't so much as fly on a plane that wasn't made by union workers, nor would I ever buy a car that was built by scabs (which means my car didn't get just get recalled, by the way).

Having union workers does not necessarily make costs greater. That only happens if management signs stupid and greedy contracts with large legacy costs.

The reason the auto companies got into trouble is because they got greedy and tried to cheap out on worker pay when they negotiated big contracts in the 70's and early 80's. They thought they could stiff the workers by promising them rich health plans and retirement benefits instead of raises. They didn't realize that health care costs would skyrocket and that the retired workers would start to live so long. The UAW's position at the time was that they wanted a reasonable raise, not "cadillac" health plans or rich retirement benefits. If management hadn't been so shortsighted and greedy, more concerned about quarterly balance sheets than long-term viability, they would not have crashed and burned.

Please remember, the years when union membership was the largest in the US were also the years when our industrial base was healthiest. Libertarians might think that the way to help American business is to have a race to the bottom with workers' wages. All that's doing is turning the US into a country with a few rich people and lots and lots of poor workers. The funny part is that all the libertarians here on Slashdot don't seem to understand that this is also the reason why their own incomes and job conditions at their miserable little tech jobs is also in decline.

It's not accidental that "Right to Work" states in the US tend to also be states that went to war to protect slavery.

Re:libertarian

[TubeSteak]

and last I looked, 54 nuclear power plants were being built, almost all in asia. the usa has one, an old mothballed tva plant being brought up.

Heh, even if the USA had the political/public will to build more nuclear plants, we couldn't.

Why? Because all the companies that manufacture the heavy steel reactor components are in Asia (plus one in Russia) and have their output already spoken for. To highlight the point, the largest manufacturer is planning to triple production by 2012... and all that output is spoken for too. The USA doesn't even begin to have the manufacturing or infrastructure necessary to produce/handle the enormous ingots and then forge them into one piece components (which don't have to be welded together and inspected till the end of time).

The rest of the world is advancing at full speed and the USA is getting left behind.
Worse, the manufacturing queue is measured in decades and we're at the end of the line.

Re:libertarian

[Dausha]

"[J]ust 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."

We don't have to imagine. The U.S. railroads were an amalgam of private companies when the industry first emerged in the 19th Century. Early paved roads were also done by private companies as well.

Re:libertarian

[Teancum]

Why don't government contracts count as private sector?

What is missing here is the source of the R&D and how the rockets are being paid for. Most, nearly all of the rockets that NASA uses have been built and designed on what is called a cost-plus contract. In other words, all of the risk, all of the effort, and nearly all of the hard decisions were made by government employees. This is why government projects can go hugely over budget (including the Constellation program I might add) as the companies involved already have their profit in place. That is the "plus". Any costs that occur are held by the taxpayers, including performing major redesigns along the way.

I should add one more issue to consider with a pure "government contract": Any design is exclusive to the government and simply may not be used for any private citizen... at least not without a significant Act of Congress that explicitly permits its use elsewhere. In the past, there were investors who wanted to buy a couple complete Space Shuttles and had even found financing to build their own vehicle assembly building and launch pad facilities. They were simply told "No", they couldn't have them regardless of the price. It was exclusively the domain of NASA and NASA alone in terms of people going into space.

For something in the "private sector" to be genuinely in the private sector, the private company bears all of the R&D risk, all of the cost considerations, and the "government" is merely one of several different customers. That is the huge difference here, where these companies are quoting a figure, and are paid for delivery of goods. This is the huge difference between what has been offered in the past and what is offered now.

Under cost-plus contracts, there is absolutely no necessity to lower the cost of getting into space. Performance is the only driving issue, and if the project can be completed before the end of the current presidential administration. The Apollo mantra was "waste anything but time". That still, unfortunately, holds true even today including on the Constellation program, at least that is how it was operated.

Companies now have a legitimate reason to drive down costs with flat cost transportation services. A price is set, and companies can either make a bid to offer services or pass on the idea if they think it is to expensive. Competitive bidding may even start happening here, but more specifically if a company can drive down operations and development costs, that brings in extra profit to that company. The incentive to drive down costs is much more pronounced in this kind of purchasing environment.

That is the difference. If you or those supporting Constellation can't figure that one out, I can't help you any further.

Re:libertarian

[Teancum]

They were just worried about having Nazis on the moon :) Considering the Sci-Fi stories they would have been reading as kids, can you really blame them?

Please, let's be real here. The even though ORTAG was a German effort, there was substantial diplomatic pressure brought to bear upon the government of Zaire strongly suggesting that some other diplomatic favors would be granted if they would not be buying such launch services.

Yes, you can really blame these guys. If you are talking Nazis on the Moon, it would be Von Braun, the SS officer in charge of the Saturn V program. He held the rank of Colonel in the SS too.

Re:libertarian

[kklein]

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.

Re:libertarian

[Teancum]

I'd have to agree. The environment of sending people to and from Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) should be considered a solved engineering problem. It was a tough nut to crack and certainly is a challenge for any group of engineers who want to tackle the problem. A graduate aerospace engineering student who successfully launches something, anything, into orbit on their design likely deserves the graduate degree (especially if they can do it cheaply), but it isn't something their professors ought to be congratulated for as ground breaking or Nobel Prize winners by accomplishing.

There might be room to try and drive down the cost of getting into space. That is something that isn't even on the agenda for NASA and hasn't been for some time. The DC-X program was promising, and hopefully the guys at Blue Origin might take some of the ideas from the project and make them worthwhile and practical. There have been some other ideas on how to lower costs, including the efforts by SpaceX to make a vehicle that worked even if it wasn't at the top peak of performance.

The engineering mantra can be best described as the following:

What ever you want, it can be made:

• Cheaper
• Sooner
• Reliable

Please pick only two of the above options!

I've had bosses insist on all three at the same time, and what they get is none of them happening or the "reliable" aspect gets thrown out the window. Apollo selected the Sooner and Reliable options, and paid dearly for it (4% of the U.S. Federal budget I should note). Not many companies have bosses that are patient to wait for results that may be cheaper in the long run but take some time to happen.

Some of the newer companies getting into commercial spaceflight are now trying to see if it can be made for cheaper instead of sooner. Unfortunately, there are always critics who complain because they are expecting the program to be operated with the mentality that the Apollo program was built. This includes the Constellation program and its supporters.

Re:libertarian

[CodeBuster]

we know they're a bunch of libertarian loonies

By that definition, anyone who opposes the government holding them upside down and shaking until every cent falls out of their pockets is a loony. California needs another 50+ billion of debt for high speed rail (which btw most people will not be able to afford to ride without subsidies and more debt) like it needs a hole in the head.

Re:libertarian

[MurphyZero]

Lockheed and Boeing both came begging during the development. Each launch may be a fixed price contract (I believe it is) but the development was definitely government funded/aided. Both the Atlas and the Delta Heavy have had a failure (if you listen to the companies, they were anomalies at worst.) That said, the Atlas really ought to have been considered by NASA 10 years ago for the Shuttle replacement. IF NASA had, we would have the Shuttle replacement today. THAT is why Griffin and NASA are very much to blame for the mess that NASA is in right now. Obama's plan may not be the best, but it does have a good chance of righting NASA.

Re:libertarian

[phantomfive]

But that is an ideological statement, it is your belief. It is a fine belief, but stating it that way is not really a well thought out argument.

Re:libertarian

[mano.m]

The question is not "did a government organisation invent all of the technology used to land on the moon in-house?" The question is "would private industry have achieved the goal of landing a man on the moon in a decade, lacking a clear economic incentive?" The answer seems to be a "no".

Re:libertarian

[laddiebuck]

What has the X-prize done so far? It hasn't even put people into space, or at most for a few minutes. It also happens to piggyback on about 60 years of government-funded theoretical and practical research, starting with the Germans and British in the war, and the intense US-USSR space race after that. As usual, states pay for ground-breaking research and private industry comes in afterwards and cleans up the profits.

The rest of your post is just cliches, not practical arguments. Your life expectancy in an anarchic state might be 40 years on average, though less has been common. Losing your life is one of the greater freedoms it is possible for you to use, so at least we can establish that we need government. After that many of you call for the smallest possible government, forgetting that it is impossible to have decent defence, universal education, research and development, and good infrastructure and universal healthcare (not that America really has that) without a strong central government. Or to put it more bluntly, with the kind of government you want, you wouldn't be bitching here, because there wouldn't be an Internet, a World Wide Web, and the cables that take them to your dwelling,

Re:libertarian

[freshfromthevat]

So don't use multi-stage and only use Orion in deep space?

The I remember talking around a plan for a Saturn rocket in the late 60s had several redundant steam-rockets. I don't know if that was actually what NASA was talking about. It appeared that by the late 70's we could have had a vertical takeoff and landing single stage to orbit Saturn class space craft with just water as an emission. Fully re-usable. It would have had the power and fuel to leave orbit with a vehicle which could return intact. If one thinks a Saturn V taking off would be interesting to watch, imagine seeing one land?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket has some info about NERVA rockets. Saturn C-5N is a Nuclear version of the Saturn 1st stage, http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm I don't know what it's propellent was supposed to be but I'm sure that info is out on the web someplace.

Damn Jane Fonda for convincing the public that nuclear power was bad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16wwln-freakonomics-t.html

Re:libertarian

[DavidTC]

The reason that Amtrak has such low ridership is a few things, all things where it should have the advantages over air, but we've managed to break it:

Amtrak has to inexplicably wait for freight to get out of the way, resulting in random delays. Freight often has priority thanks to idiotic railway agreements. With planes, passenger planes have priority, and there actually isn't that much air freight.

They've managed to turn it into airport style security and hassle, resulting in you having to get there early. The entire point of train travel is that you didn't have to do that, and hence you could actually get places faster than a plane. Can't anymore. As you cannot hijack a train, and if you wanted to blow one up, blowing up a packed subway car in the middle of the city would make a hell of a lot more sense than blowing up a half empty train in the middle of nowhere.

As these two problems are so stupid, I am forced to conclude that they are almost certainly deliberate attempts to break passenger rail. Laws could trivially fix them and cause no problems whatsoever.

And there are a few infrastructure problems that would be more work to fix:

They refuse to build the system in any sane way, requiring people to get into a town to get on the train. For example, if I want to get on Amtrak, I have to go to downtown Atlanta. Trains need to end in large cities, but you need to be able to enter the system on the outsides of said cities, so you don't have to deal with the fucking traffic of the town you're trying to leave.Yet again, another thing that should be an advantage of rail, totally ignored.

Sane setups would pick up additional car as they leave a town or assemble trains out of cars from suburbs, but heaven forbid Amtrak be designed with any sort of sanity.

Likewise, at least here, getting from the subway to the train is not as easy as you'd think. A sane system would have the two trains pull up parallel to each other, and you just walk across. Perhaps you could even purchase train tickets on the subway, or at least once you get across.

Here, you lug your bags up to a whole nother floor, stand in line to buy tickets, go through a security screening (Which I already mentioned is nonsensical.), file into the train as they check said ticket, and then take a seat. Instead of a 60 second process, it's at least ten minutes. (Granted, it'd be a while anyway, as you'd have to wait for the train schedule, but ten minutes gets added to each trip, on average. And running around trying to buy tickets is much more annoying than just sitting on the train.)

Buying tickets probably deserves a special mention. For some reason, we've gotten rid of the tried and true method of handing tickets, which was that you could buy your ticket on the train, usually before it got underway, but occasionally people would make it on without tickets and couldn't or wouldn't pay, and hence got ejected at the next stop. It was actually less work than getting on the subway. You just walk on, sit down, and a guy would come around and ask to see your ticket. You didn't have it, you paid cash then and there, or got off the train. It was a perfectly workable and reasonable system, and even better now that everyone has credit cards and can actually pay $70 randomly.

But suddenly, gasp, terrorism was all over the place, and now we have to fucking ID check and security screen everyone because they might decided to blow up a train by riding on it. (As opposed to, you know, driving a car into a passing train at a crossing. That would just make too much sense.)

Out source space too...

[The Grim Reefer2]

I guess the US will be exporting space exploration to China now as well.

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[EdZ]

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.

My private sector asteroid.

[tjstork]

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.

Re:My private sector asteroid.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . I'm dropping the dino-killer right on their fricking heads.

Dr Evil . . . ? Is that you . . . ?

Re:My private sector asteroid.

[astar]

an interesting moral position

I guess when you look at whatever you are using for currency, you see an intrinsic value in it. So much so, it justifies genocide.

On the other hand, our current economic problems, including apparently expensive entitlement programs, stems ultimately from the silly view that currency has intrinsic value. as far as I can tell, this, when argued competently, is some sort of psychological value thing, and I suspect is based on a rejection of the idea that the universe is lawful and knowable. all very peculiar. but maybe it is a genetic defect.

Types of conservatives

[Junior J. Junior III]

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.

Re:Types of conservatives

[DigiShaman]

1) A person who holds to conservative principles or beliefs.

Correct.

2) A person who agrees with other people who call themselves Conservatives, without regard to their actions, statements, beliefs, or principles.

Wrong! Conservatives of all types constantly debate and fight among inner circles. You see it happening every day in politics, you just fail to be aware of it. Case in point, remember to Republican party "crack up" that's been going on lately? The party has no direction or leadership anymore.

3) A person who opposes anything that a non-Conservative (as defined by the first two definitions) says, does, or believes in.

Some things, not everything. It depends on who Conservatives compare their ideals too. This is to be expected with any ideology and not just conservatism.

Re:Types of conservatives

[fm6]

Wrong! Conservatives of all types constantly debate and fight among inner circles.

There are conservatives that do that. They'd be among those that have retained my respect. Sometimes they even manage to change my lefty-liberal mind about things.

Then there are those conservatives 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 "conservative", no matter how many conservative opinions they have — at best they're "conservative in name only." Our own Pudge is a prime example.

From where I stand, this second kind pretty much dominates conservative political groups and media right now.

Re:Types of conservatives

[0123456]

Then there are those conservatives 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.

You appear to be confusing conservatives with liberals.

Huge mistake.

[fatalexe]

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.

WSJ Debates the Pros and Cons of Private Space

[theodp]

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.

that's not why they hate it

[SuperBanana]

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.

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[Miseph]

Oh please.

Eisenhower was a centrist, and for that matter so was Nixon. If either of them were alive today running for office, they'd have teabaggers screaming "you lie" at every event and fabricating evidence that they are actually communist spies born in foreign countries who hate "the troops" almost as much as they hate apple pie.

Furthermore, liberals and the Democrats (NOT the same thing) are all for building and maintaining roads... perhaps you've noticed that a huge chunk of the previous stimulus package went into just that, and that a huge chunk of the new jobs bill does more still.

The bottom line is that the current budget has far too many massive mandatory expenditures (read: interest on the debt accrued during the past 8 years, Medicare [especially Part D], Social Security), two very expensive foreign wars (which just this past year went onto the books rather than being funded with supplementals... we're a lot more in debt because now we're actually counting ALL of the money we spend, not just half of it), and an enormous revenue shortfall. And guess who's crying the loudest about it and pointing the finger at the other guys (hint: they were in charge when most of these expenses experienced astronomical growth in the '00s)?

It's a damn shame that there just isn't enough money for NASA right now, but blaming liberals for it is just asinine.

Rational decision based on irrational constraints

[robot256]

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

Space is critical

[salesgeek]

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.

Re:Space is critical

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Do you think that clear objectives just happen? What made NASA so successful in the 60's and 70's is that we were in a pissing match with the soviets, which implied a number of well defined propaganda goals to be achieved(manned orbit, man on moon, manned anything, pretty much) and substantial investment in launch systems. Politicians exhibited "leadership" only in that they stood up and said what the situation required. If you want to see political leadership(bipartisan no less) today, just look at the downright heroic efforts being put into the destruction of civil liberties, which seems to be the project that goes along with the "war on terror".

Space exploration has been largely aimless since then because it is largely pointless, except as a matter of pure scientific curiosity, and a more-palatable way of keeping aerospace corporations and engineers on welfare. The one slice of space work that isn't largely pointless, near-earth satellites of various sorts, has been humming right along. Everything else has sort of meandered; because it is competing for funds and focus with less pointless projects. There is a virtually infinite supply of projects that satisfy pure scientific curiosity(not that the public has much of that), and a very long list of projects with more plausible payoffs in the short and medium(and arguably even long) term. It's frankly surprising that NASA gets as much as they do.

Re:Space is critical

[twiddlingbits]

Space Station was cancelled, restarted, delayed, changed, funding cut, etc. in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and so on. There NEVER was a "clear vision" for WHY we neede ISS other than a place for the Shuttle to go. I worked on at least two iterations of "ISS". The moon mission was a side effect of the Cold War and somewhat a legacy of JFK. There was some really cool inventions that came out of the program and were commercialized and lots of technology invented that went on to be used for many years. Right now, the leaders in invention and technology for Space is in the commercial sector, but there is not a heavy lift MAN-RATED launch platform in the US commerical or NASA inventory at this time. There were some other alternatives that were proposed that were strictly heavy lift for manned missions but they were shot down for the Aries that was more "scalable" for many types of missions. This was a mistake as those other missions are being filled right now by commerical ventures like Atlas and Titan IV. Maybe it was a case of NASA wanted the whole launch "business" to itself like back in the 1960s. If the program was refocused on building a simple, efffective man-rated heavy lift launch vehicle (think Saturn V but modern) I think something could be ready in a few years. Granted we might have to "license" some engine technology from the Russians but it is doable. Spending more $$$ on R&D isn't going to progress anything. A TON of research was done in the 1960s and 1970s that can be reused, updated and put into practice, there really isn't a lot of NEW things the R&D money is going to invent. Just a different kind of "pork".

I'll say it again

[axonis]

Remember where your Trillions in recovery came from, the US people are now long term paying for the Chinese Space Program.

American Manned Space Program is dead, dead, dead

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[Low Ranked Craig]

perhaps you've noticed that a huge chunk of the previous stimulus package went into just that

No, I haven't noticed that unless by "huge chunk" you mean 3%. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJAoR5GECKWo

It's easy to spot the *real* conservatives

[peacefinder]

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.

Conservatives? Who cares?

[QuoteMstr]

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:

1. When in power: transfer as much wealth as possible to the very rich
2. When out of power: throw a wrench in the works to make the government look bad enough to vote the GOP back into power

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?

Re:Conservatives? Who cares?

[QuoteMstr]

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.

Re:Conservatives? Who cares?

[Idiomatick]

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.

http://www.thefreespeechzone.net/images/charts/bush_deficit_graphic.gif now makes sense ... but the world seems too much like a sequel to Idiocracy, when is Brawndo going to become the GOP's official party drink.

Disclaimer: I don't believe that the GOP's incompetence is intentional.

Re:Conservatives? Who cares?

[QuoteMstr]

Are you really equating progressive social policies with slavery?

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[wizardforce]

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.

They complain about spending

[HangingChad]

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.

Going back to the moon was a stupid idea

[Animats]

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."

'Man rating' is bullcrap

[0123456]

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).

Re:Rational decision based on irrational constrain

[the eric conspiracy]

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?

Sen. Shelby (R-AL)

[Weezul]

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.

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[phantomfive]

Furthermore, liberals and the Democrats (NOT the same thing)

For someone who demands such a nuanced interpretation of liberal/democrat, you sure seem ignorant of what the tea party actually is. The tea party is a group of people, some crazy and some not, who are united by a desire for a sound fiscal policy. They are not happy with the Bush era policies (the people who are happy with that are the die hard Republicans, not the tea partiers; not the same thing) They also like dressing up in costume, which, if you live in San Francisco at least, shouldn't be too foreign to a liberal. In fact, your very next quote sounds exactly like it could come from a tea party:

The bottom line is that the current budget has far too many massive mandatory expenditures (read: interest on the debt accrued during the past 8 years, Medicare [especially Part D], Social Security), two very expensive foreign wars (which just this past year went onto the books rather than being funded with supplementals... we're a lot more in debt because now we're actually counting ALL of the money we spend, not just half of it), and an enormous revenue shortfall.

Now, I am not a tea-partier, I am just someone who enjoys observing politics, which brings me to my next point, has anyone else noticed that liberals and conservatives are sounding more and more like each other? Not just this guy, but if you ignore the partisan fighting of congress in the last year, for example, and go back to the election, both McCain and Obama (and Clinton) had healthcare plans that were very similar. Same with Bush's and Obama's stimulus plans and auto company bailouts. I think it's also safe to say that almost everyone in the US resented being deceived about Iraq's WMD, and also that nearly everyone wants to stop terrorists from attacking the US if we can.

I have a theory that both parties have a strong motivation to emphasize our differences and divide us (they have to, why would you vote for one if you can't see any difference between him and the other), but in reality there is more similarity between Americans than there are differences between liberals and conservatives.

Yay, mindless idealism!

[copponex]

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

Re:Rational decision based on irrational constrain

[amilo100]

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.

USA! USA!

[copponex]

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.

Very misleading summary

[FleaPlus]

The article submitter, Mark Whittington, is pretty well known on various space blogs for distorting the facts (to put it lightly) when it comes to space policy. Unfortunately, this submission is no exception. Here's a line-by-line of his summary:

"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.

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[that this is not und]

But if we did that, all the sugar growers in the Red River Valley would stop cultivating beet sugar. All that land would revert back to it's natural state, absorb moisture like it always did in the past, and the annual flooding up in the Fargo-Moorehead area would end.

Think of the people employed in dispensing Flood Relief Aid. Think of the sandbag manufacturers! We can NOT stop protecting our domestic Sugar Producers in the fashion you suggest.

The Constellation cancellation situation

[Geoffrey.landis]

Phrasing it more succinctly:
The situation with Constellation cancellation is consternation.

Re:Easy enough to balance the budget

[QuoteMstr]

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.

Re:Easy enough to balance the budget

[Idiomatick]

And veterans get an extra 57 billion. Welfare at least has a purpose to it. Have you looked at the feasibility of cutting these programs? You seem to have just cut a % you felt was good from each program without delving into them.

Cutting 20% from disability when you already don't have a health care system in place sentences a lot of the disabled to death. Often times there isn't much they can do about their situation, so putting pressure on them won't be helpful. Same with many of the welfare programs.

Cutting the school lunches one to me is the most offensive. The program is designed so that children can stay in school. That is the MINIMUM requirement to have any sort of fair equal chance at life. It is supposed to be children's responsibility to go to schoool, learn so that they may become productive memebers in society. They are not adults and if you enforce responsibility like that onto them it won't be good. Children can't often get full wage jobs, and often can't rent their own places, they are already under financial difficulty. I've known kids that essentially only ate at school because their parent's were useless.

By cutting this program you would:
Be massively increasing the cost of programs for kids, now having to properly take in these kids. While increasing healthcare for these malnutritioned kids. Paying for spikes in crime since believe me that will happen (abandoned kids that are desperate and at risk of death will do what it takes if they are old enough). And lastly end up with millions more highschool dropouts that we will be paying for the rest of their lives.

Simply cutting these will have lasting costs, unless you want to move the money to roving death squads to clean up undesirables. When you look at all that it seems obvious that liberals would prefer cutting from the 901BN dollar military budget.

I find it laughable that you're willing to spend that much money to protect the people from foreign attack yet unwilling to spend to keep them from harm within your own border.

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[hey!]

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.

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[darkmeridian]

You are full of shit. You're a racist, plain and simple. Instead of admitting that ARES was a shitty project that would have been a boondoggle had it continued, you want to pin this all on racial politics. You never address the substantive nature of the argue. You just blame the Democrats and the blacks. You wouldn't have made this charge against Bill Clinton the White President; you would only make this against Barack Hussein Obama the Muslim Black President. Republicans like you love to use race to scare others into submission. It's all racial politics, etc. etc.--you're right. You use race to your advantage, then blame it on the Democrats.

Republicans are the anti-science party. I guess you must have forgotten that President Bush stopped research on stem cells. Or that your white Republicans were changing textbooks to remove references to evolution. Or that you guys wanted to redefine pi as 3. The only reason you are willing to lower your environmental standards isn't to accommodate scientific progress but rather the big corporations behind them. This is more akin to letting huge mining companies dump more arsenic into our water than letting science continue.

You say that the Democrats are in charge of the dumb. Well, your party is full of Teabaggers and Sarah Palin, so go fuck yourself.

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[drsquare]

The tea party is a group of people, some crazy and some not, who are united by a desire for a sound fiscal policy. They are not happy with the Bush era policies

Then where were they during the Bush era?

Re:Space exploration is conservative.

[damburger]

Yep, Thatcher had her principles. And her failed monetarist experiment that gutted our industrial base. And her extra-judicial murders. And being caught flat out lying several times on national TV. And turning government run natural monopolies into private monopolies, ruining our infrastructure. What a brilliant PM.