The Difficulty of Dismantling Constellation

Last month, we discussed news that President Obama's 2011 budget proposal did not include plans to continue NASA's Constellation program, choosing instead to focus on establishing a stronger foundation for low earth orbit operations. Unfortunately, as government officials prepare to shut down Constellation, they're warning that it won't be a quick or simple process due to the contracts involved. From the Orlando Sentinel: "Obama's 2011 budget proposal provides $2.5 billion to pay contractors whatever NASA owes them so the agency can stop work on Constellation's Ares rockets, Orion capsule and Altair lunar lander. But administration officials acknowledge that this number is, at best, an educated guess. ... Many inside and outside of the space agency, however, think the number is too low. The agency has signed more than $10 billion worth of contracts to design, test and build the Ares I rocket and Orion capsule that were the heart of Constellation. But government auditors said last year that the costs of some of those contracts had swelled by $3 billion since 2007 because of design changes, technical problems and schedule slips. How much NASA will owe on all those contracts if the plug gets pulled is unclear. Many of the deals are called 'undefinitized contracts,' meaning that the terms, conditions — and price — had not been set before NASA ordered the work to start. That means the agency will need to negotiate a buyout with the contractor — and that can be a long and painful process, according to government officials familiar with the cancellation process."

Comments

Of Course

[DarkKnightRadick]

We could continue the Constellation project - or sell out to private companies - and quit letting the government take over health care.

Since neither will happen, not sure what else we can do. We've lost our backbone for adventure as we've continued to reinforce the entitlement mentality that is draining our country dry of resources.

Re:Of Course

[Kral_Blbec]

One of the best lines I have heard in a movie in a long time is from The Incredibles.

They keep coming up with new ways to celebrate mediocrity!

I should put that on a bumper sticker.

Re:Of Course

[DarkKnightRadick]

I'd buy it.

Re:Of Course

[Nyeerrmm]

In case you didn't notice, Constellation in many ways was a much bigger sellout to private companies -- these undefinitized contracts seem to be a handy way to funnel money to the big contractors with little oversight.

Space exploration is not about adventure for its own sake -- for that we can send all our astronauts to climb Mt. Everest instead. Its about advancing the frontier, and learning to live and work sustainably in space, and Constellation wasn't doing that. Even at the time of Apollo, Von Braun et.al. knew that that architecture was not the way forward, because each mission was individually incredibly expensive. Rebuilding Apollo in the form of Constellation was always doomed to repeat flags and footprints with little else, and without the political impetus of cold war and a mission from a martyred president, it was quite frankly stillborn. A cheap LEO launch vehicle with true spaceships that never re-entered the Earth's atmosphere was always a better long-term plan, it just couldn't get built as quickly, so didn't fit the goals of the time.

This was what the original Bush VSE said, until CxP hijacked it, and its what the Augustine commission said. Sustainability is key, and the FY2011 budget, despite the piss-poor PR to go along with it, lays out a path for sustainable, flexible exploration.

Re:Of Course

[Kral_Blbec]

Ya, then I would get hit with a cease and desist letter and lawsuit for infringing Pixar's copyright. Thanks a lot.

Re:Of Course

[couchslug]

"Adventure" is what you have when you are too lazy to plan for the long term. We don't need humans in space for other than entertainment reasons at this point in time. Our robots and other remotely operated systems which are preconditions for effective human exploitation of space need vastly more development, and the benefits of making these systems clearly outweigh the entertainment value of sending humans so early.

Master space with spacefaring machines, exploit the expendability of those machines to gain RAPID development cycles, then send humans for their own amusement after the way has been paved.

The old idea of "humans first" made sense when humans were utterly expendable and wooden ships were cheap. Those days are over. Humans burden their machines by requiring life support systems, resources, and the return of expeditionary systems to bring humans back. We have a thousand years if we like to perfect the machines we must have anyway. Build and deploy the machines first, and perfect VR suits for those who want to interact with new environments. There will always be a barrier between human and the utterly hostile off-world environment, be it the skin of a space suit or a data link back to Earth.

Re:Of Course

[FleaPlus]

It would be quite bad for NASA to continue the Constellation project, as it miserably fails to achieve any of the goals which were set forth for in the Vision for Space Exploration; the VSE is what Constellation was ostensibly designed to fulfill. From the 2004 VSE:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/55583main_vision_space_exploration2.pdf

Goal and Objectives
The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States will:
* Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and
beyond;
* Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
* Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
* Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests.

Let's look at these original goals one by one and compare them to Constellation vs. the new plan:

Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and
beyond

Constellation was pretty much the opposite of sustained and affordable, with costs constantly increasing and an ever-slipping deadline. Not only that, but Constellation's going overbudget resulted in the cancellation of many human and robotic projects which would have contributed to making exploration sustainable and affordable.

The new plan for NASA places sustainable and affordable exploration as its primary goals, allowing us to make steady progress towards expanding into the inner solar system, with key near-term development and in-space tests of technologies like propellant depots, cost-effective access to orbit, nuclear propulsion, lightweight manned modules, in situ resource utilization (asteroid/moon mining), and nuclear electric propulsion. All of these things were unfunded under the old plan.

Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations

According to the Augustine Committee's report, Constellation wouldn't have been able to even produce the Ares I (essentially an in-house duplicate of the existing Atlas V, Delta IV, and Falcon 9 rockets) by 2017-2019, which would have only been able to transport astronauts to the ISS several years after the ISS had splashed into the ocean. They wouldn't even be able to develop a lunar lander until "well into the 2030s, if ever," or the mid-2020s if NASA got a massive funding boost.

Under the new plan, IOC for several competing commercial crew vehicles is 2014/2015. The precise plan is still being formulated, but it's likely to involve propellant depots in low-Earth orbit and the EML-1 lagrange point in this decade, which makes the Moon (and near-Earth asteroids, and Phobos, and ultimately Mars) much easier to access for both robots and humans, using already-existing rockets.

Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration;

If you read through the documents which established Constellation, innovative technologies were deliberately excluded, as they didn't want to have to re-adapt the 15/20-year program if any of those technologies worked out differently than expected. Avoiding innovative kind of makes sense for short-term projects, but for a long-term project pretty much guarantees that your end product is going to

Re:Of Course

[Frnknstn]

Your entitlements:

1. Life
2. Liberty
3. Pursuit of happiness.

Health care fall under number 1. Why do you believe you are entitled to adventure?

Re:Of Course

[EvilDroid]

How useful is a VR connection to Mars with a 20-minute communication delay?

Re:Of Course

[mano.m]

We've lost our backbone for adventure as we've continued to reinforce the entitlement mentality that is draining our country dry of resources.

If the Nordic countries can run some of the most competitive free market economies in the world while assuring poverty does not become a leading cause of death, I'm sure the Greatest Nation on Earth can manage to manage.

Re:Of Course

[MightyMartian]

Sell it to the Chinese. Whatever their flaws, at least they're a society that hasn't taken up skullfucking itself as a new national past time. Obama is just the symptom, the US is in decline, visionless, pointless, militarily overextended, and it might as well admit it. If an American ever lands on the Moon again, it will be in a Chinese spacecraft.

Re:Of Course

[c6gunner]

Your entitlements:

1. Life
2. Liberty
3. Pursuit of happiness.

Health care fall under number 1.

lol. So when you inevitably die, your relatives can sue the government for failing to keep you alive? Awesome idea! As soon as you get that clarified in the laws, I'm SO getting a green card.

Re:Of Course

[tftp]

Please note that you are not entitled to life. You are only entitled to your right to life. How you implement this right is up to you.

Re:Of Course

[SirWinston]

> We don't need humans in space for other than
> entertainment reasons at this point in time.

I disagree entirely. We're never going to answer the big questions by manipulating tiny little payload-limited rovers from millions of miles away on a speed-of-light-imposed time delay. As an example, if there really is microbial life on Mars, we've probably been accomplishing nothing but cooking it with the primitive methods we've been trying to use to find its traces. If instead we'd had either a manned landing or a presumably cheaper and/or safer manned spacecraft in Mars orbit directly manipulating large rovers, with far more extensive scientific testing capabilities, in realtime--we'd have found any traces of past or present life if they exist near the surface, without question.

That to me is a world-changing event waiting to happen--finding irrefutable traces of life on another planet would broaden more minds all across the globe than any other event in human history. Most people are still very tribal and local and narrow-minded folks who put themselves, their inherited beliefs, and their limited view of the universe at the center of everything they do. Proof that life is so common as to exist right next door elsewhere in our solar system, and that Earth isn't a special and privileged ball placed by God at the center of the universe with everything out there just to support us, would remake the way many or most people view...everything.

If that isn't worth tens of billions of dollars, nothing is. We can't retard the progress and evolution of all of mankind to make the poorest few percent a little less poor. We don't let the slowest learner in the class dictate the speed and level of education for everyone else. It's sad, but by necessity some few people will always fall behind; we can try to help them as well as we can without dragging everyone else down, but ultimately we must compromise with a few to advance the many.

Manned exploration of our solar system is expensive, but it's the only way to definitively answer the big questions and so must be undertaken sooner rather than later. We put men on the Moon within less than a decade after committing to it, nearly 50 years ago. Today's goal should be putting people either on Mars or within Mars orbit with large scientific capabilities within 20 years. It can and should be done, and if when there they find definitive traces of past or present Martian life...the world will change, evolve, and broaden almost overnight.

Re:Of Course

[lgw]

Your rights never extend to forcing other people to do things for you. I mean, I understand the appeal of forcing someone to give me heart surgery, or build me a Ferrari, or whatever, but we decided early on that slavery is a no-go.

Life, liberty, and property are rights, not entitlements. Entitlements are bullshit leeching. When the government takes your liberty or property in order to fund others' "entitlements", that's the opposite of protecting our rights.

Should we anyway provide minimal health care for the poor? Of course, but only because diseases are contagious, not because it's any sort of right.

Re:Of Course

[MartinSchou]

The USA: Celebrating Mediocrity Since $year

Then you could pick your own year and be done with it.

Re:Of Course

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much that we've lost our spine, it's that we are still paying for--and will be paying for decades to come--the ruinous decisions of the Bush Administration. Lowering taxes, increasing spending, starting two wars that we will be forced to be involved in and pay in blood and dollars for many many more years to come. It doesn't leave a lot of room to pay for any other ambitious projects like space exploration or universal health care. Hell, it remains to be seen if we were able to spend enough money to sufficiently save our economy from the economic crash and to return to what we knew before without destroying our financially solvency.

Re:Of Course

[Eravnrekaree]

Perhaps there is no better way to do space travel than Constellation. Everyone assumes there is a better way, but, the fact is, it may not and probably is not possible to make space travel affordable enough for a large number of people. The costs will always be extraordinarily expensive. We say we cancelled constellation to look for better alternatives. I believe that either we will see private space existing entirely on public subsidies, and either providing inferior technology to constellation, or essentially the same technology. I have not seen, any physics data, really any way to make space travel actually in any way a cheap thing.

I think cancelling constellation was politics, and probably will just delay space travel for technologies which will be inferior or the same as constellation provides, and with private corporate managed profit based industries, will be, just like privatised health care, excessive in cost to what publicly developed constellation would have been. We will probably end up subdising a corporate white elephant for some crappy technology when we could have at least had a successful launch system with constellation.

Constellation was indeed based on proven technologies, but this also meant it was tested and reliable. Quite frankly the alternatives, whatever that exist, will be unlikely to work and are pie in the sky.

Re:Of Course

[Eravnrekaree]

The fact is, the US spends twice as much per capita on health care than ANY country with a socialised system. If we got rid of private health insurance companies and socialised health care in this country we would be able to cover everyone for what we pay already on health care. Government run health care would actually improve quality and access and reduce costs.

I also believe we should place primary priority on human life. A large number of people either cannot find jobs or work very hard for low pay. The amount people make has no relation to how hard they work, otherwise we would have people like Bill Gates penniless and the hard working factory workers would be millionaires. Capitalism, is based on greed, and this means exploitation of other people to enriches a wealthy elite that control capital.

People need to get out of their ayn rand fantasy land and her destructive ideology which worships greed, arrogance, cruelty and corruption, and leads to a society where everyone is out to exploit others, one that eventually tears itself to pieces. This can be seen with the real estate speculators who so overpriced housing that average families could not afford it, and ignoted the bomb that was the over leveraged financial system created by greedy bankers. Most real technologies and developments came from compassionate, passionate people who intensely enjoy what they do and like making the world a better place and achieving useful things, not people who look to get rich with as little real contributions as possible. Ayn Rand cannot imagine a world where people are not driven by greed. The fact is, the world is kept running by people who put compassion and responsibility to the common good before greed. Einstien was not interested in money, money was only the means, not the end, he was interested in making the world a better place to live and expanding knowledge.

Re:Of Course

[Kartoffel]

Makes no sense that a government hellbent on government-run health care would want to throw away government-run space exploration.

Re:Of Course

[RogerWilco]

I've already posted this twice in this discussion, but most people only seem to believe this when they see the numbers, so here goes again:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita [nationmaster.com]

Compare
UK: $1764 per capita
USA: $4631 per capita

Providing free/cheap health care to your entire population is in the end much cheaper than only providing it to those who can pay, because it leads to a much healthier population, which results in lower hospital bills.

Re:Of Course

[Nyeerrmm]

Constellation as an architecture was fatally flawed. This is not a question of privatization, of the viability of human settlement or anything like that -- the program of record was an unsustainable throwback to the Apollo era that was simply unviable in the current environment and didn't complete the goals laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration. The fact that it was based on shuttle technologies is besides the point -- they screwed this up anyway by using 5-meter tankage and 5-segment SRBs that eliminated much of the advantage of being 'shuttle-derived'.

The statement by the Augustine commission that "if Constellation were completed now, it would still have to be cancelled because we couldn't afford to operate it" is the most succinct way of stating the flaw. Even after all of the development costs, the amount to fly each flight is so high that NASA would have to continue operating at the politically untenable +$3B budget . This is exactly what happened with Apollo: it was built, we went to the moon, but each flight was so expensive that it couldn't be sustained after the impetus to beat the Soviets was removed. This isn't to negate the accomplishment of Apollo -- the Saturn V stack, sending it all up at once, was the best way to do it as quickly as possible, but definitely not the cheapest.

Now instead consider the current situation. NASA's budget is limited to approximately 0.5% of the federal budget, we have nothing to prove, we understand the basics of space flight, have much better computer and control technology, and we are interested in doing real exploration. The only things that actually need to get from the Earth's surface to the Moon's surface and back, each time, are humans and their research equipment. All the landers, Earth-departure stages, communications equipment and long-term life-support can be pretty easily re-used. They will be more expensive than their equivalent disposable counterparts (say by a factor of 4), but if you run 10 missions you've saved money. So what we do is we have a lunar transport vehicle (LTV) that sits in Earth orbit, refuels from orbiting fuel depots, and simply goes back and forth to the moon. Fuel depots could be brought to orbit more cheaply, even by more ridiculous methods like space-guns, because they can handle extremely high G-loads. Astronauts get to orbit and rendezvous with the LTV using simple low-cost vehicles that resemble Dragon. Note that I don't discuss how they're developed -- cost-plus or fixed-price rides.

It may take 30 years to get to the moon this way, but it makes a lot more sense. The simple capsule could be completed in 5 years easily, and fuel depots are another independent project. The LTV and other components again could be broken up into manageable pieces that could be completed within a single administration. Budget cuts wouldn't eliminate previously developed capabilities, since they're already deployed, and once you have the entire thing completed you can get astronauts to the moon for a cost equivalent to a couple of STS flights.

Of course this is all just musing on my part, I'd have to run a lot of numbers to see estimate sizing, and cost savings. All I hope to demonstrate is what a better approach is than Constellation could look like. Constellation was pie-in-the-sky because it depended on the nature of our politics changing, which is far more difficult than solving mere engineering problems.

Re:Of Course

[badasscat]

Makes no sense that a government hellbent on government-run health care would want to throw away government-run space exploration.

I agree. We should have both.

Re:Of Course

[cyberfringe]

The "Vision for Space Exploration" of George W. Bush was a politically motivated move to show he was "visionary" at a time in the election cycle when he really needed it. Recall that his father, George H.W. Bush also had his version of this, the "Human Exploration Initiative" at roughly the same time in his presidential career. In both cases, they failed to support the program either with political leadership or sufficient budget requests. These programs were completely insincere and many of us who worked on them for all the right reasons never quite could accept the evanescent political nature of the programs because we were (and are) true believers in the spirit of exploration. Is Obama's vision for NASA any different? Time will tell. Unlike either of the Bush presidents, Obama has proposed increased budgets for NASA. That seems sincere to me. Will he back it up with political leadership as well? I don't know. This guy has a lot to think about right now with two wars and an economy on the brink and the health care system falling apart. NASA really shouldn't even be on his radar come to think of it. I disagree that Constellation is too big to shut down. Nixon shut down Apollo and it was (in comparative $ and labor) a much larger and SUCCESSFUL program at the time. Constellation has nothing to show right now. It will go down fast, like the Titanic.

Re:Of Course

[Spliffster]

The fact is, the US spends twice as much per capita on health care than ANY country with a socialised system. If we got rid of private health insurance companies and socialised health care in this country we would be able to cover everyone for what we pay already on health care. Government run health care would actually improve quality and access and reduce costs.

Listen Americans, this guy is right.

I am working for a Hospital as Software engineer. Part of my software is accounting, so i have about 20 Years of data to look at (it's not a small hospital).

My country decided, after a lot of lobbying, to partially privatise our national healthcare about 15 years ago. It was insurances at first.

The result of this privatisation is, that we get less treatment for roughly double the price now. It's not the doctor who decides what treatment is appropriate, it's the insurance company. And guess what they usually say? No! Despite the fact, that we pay higher and higher insurance bills every year (ca. 15%+ this year). Insurance companies making a fat profit and we still pay more every year.

Cheers,
-S

Re:Of Course

[Eravnrekaree]

Thanks for this. I think the evidence quite clearly supports that a privitised system is more inefficient. Private insurance companies are structured, in the US, to generate the maximum profits, this means provide the worst services at the highest cost, as much as they can get away with. These systems are not designed to help people get healthcare, they are designed to make shareholders wealthy. Thus we have a health care system that provides extremely expensive health care that many cannot afford but it is very profitable for the elites that run it.

A non profit, democratic (run by people elected by whom it serves) health care system would of course allow greater efficiencies, would be required to keep profit margins low, to provide health care to everyone at the lowest administrative overhead possible.

Re:Of Course

[lennier]

The new plan uses new technologies as one of its foundations, investing in near-term flagship technology demonstrators.

Uh-oh. Anyone else just get serious Shuttle deja-vu?

Though Constellation looked like crap to me too, but... well... isn't 'flagship technology demonstration' what the Shuttle could be charitably described as? Turns out it wasn't a particularly good idea to both cut costs and focus on one vehicle, and make that vehicle use bleeding-edge technology which would rapidly become obsolete while still remaining fragile.

And NASA has done plenty of tech demos since Shuttle - it's just that they seem to keep somehow never turning into actual products.

Still, I guess anything's got to be better than Constellation... surely?

Re:Of Course

[Aklyon]

Which is avoided with Creative Reorganization of Phrase.

Re:Of Course

[Big_Breaker]

QuickLaunch is one of the most interesting concepts for cheap LEO launches I have ever seen. It could make LEO incredibly cheap for hardened payloads (everything but people). Traditional chemical rockets or Virgin Galactic style two stage vehicles can transport the squishy and relatively light weight humans.

http://www.popsci.com/category/tags/quicklaunch

With one of these firing five times a day, it is really feasable to put a space tug in place for boosting orbits and repairing satellites, establish a fuel depot in LEO and even work on massive projects like a skyhook - the LEO hyper velocity kind that we actually have the cable to make.

Re:Of Course

[FleaPlus]

Uh-oh. Anyone else just get serious Shuttle deja-vu? Though Constellation looked like crap to me too, but... well... isn't 'flagship technology demonstration' what the Shuttle could be charitably described as?

The Shuttle showed us is that it's a bad idea for a single vehicle to be BOTH your flagship technology demonstrator AND your sole operational vehicle. The new plan is to have many competing operational vehicles, while also doing flagship demonstrators. Also, the "flagship demonstrators" aren't space vehicles, but things like propellant depots, in-situ resource utilization, etc.

undefinitized contracts

[Manfre]

They seriously signed a contract that stated "do work and we'll pay you"? I know a pretty good way of getting the budget under control. Don't do that!

Re:undefinitized contracts

[Bruiser80]

In our business, it's called a "Time and Materials" project. Keep throwing money until the buyer gets a finished project, or they run out of money.

For projects like this, they probably set up contracts to do the engineering and development to manufacture with a promise of a minimum quantity of product ordered once finished. Cutting the contract at this point should just be a simple matter of paying the contractor for the work already accomplished and NASA getting any drawings, models or work produced in exchange (if specified in the original contract).

The sticky question is defining how much work was done and how much will be paid out to these companies.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[SpinyNorman]

Hard to say whether that's better or worse than the common NASA "cost plus" contract where they agree to pay development costs plus an agreed profit margin. Where's the incentive for the developer to keep cost under control?

Re:undefinitized contracts

[hanabal]

Because of sarbanes oxley, all of the companies would have impeccable records of time and materials spent on projects so it would be a simple matter of billing what was used. Time and materials contracts get cut short all the time, I'm not sure how this will be very complicated, unless the contractors are out to fuck NASA over. But you can't blame Obama for that

Re:undefinitized contracts

[Teancum]

Because of sarbanes oxley, all of the companies would have impeccable records of time and materials spent on projects so it would be a simple matter of billing what was used. Time and materials contracts get cut short all the time, I'm not sure how this will be very complicated, unless the contractors are out to fuck NASA over. But you can't blame Obama for that

If in real life it were so simple. Depending on the contract that was signed and the interpretation of that contract in courts or by attorneys for both the contractor and the government, there is a whole lot of gray area to wiggle around here. It certainly is not so simple as to say "show me how much you spent, we will pay for that".

As for who to blame for this, I suppose we could blame the Roosevelt administration, who came up with these kind of contracts for World War II. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the contracts were mostly broilerplate that was originally written in the 1940's.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[Teancum]

Hard to say whether that's better or worse than the common NASA "cost plus" contract where they agree to pay development costs plus an agreed profit margin. Where's the incentive for the developer to keep cost under control?

None at all. Well, relatively little incentive.

There is the potential for somebody to come in that will do the job for such a drastically cheaper price (*cough* SpaceX *cough*) that it starts to get the attention of the powers that be in the government.

Of course this is where you have military bases now authorized to head over to the local Wal-Mart or Home Depot to purchase things like hammers and toilet paper, when they can buy it from local suppliers cheaper than from a central military logistics command.

There are many reasons why spaceflight continues to be expensive, and this is a good example of why.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[jimbolauski]

If it was a T&M contract it would be easy to track cost, all charges made by an employee are to a specific charge code which gets billed to the customer. The government requires a certain level of accounting practices for contracts to be awarded keeping track of money is not a problem. The problem is that the project simply can't be stopped immediately, NASA would own everything and will need to collect it, this means everything has to be inventoried and shipped most companies will charge for the space all the equipment is taking up as well as all expenses from inventory and shipping. Then NASA gets everything and has to account for everything and either store or destroy it.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[jimbolauski]

T&M can have the same problem most of the time they are funded in stages so cost can be controlled.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[greg_barton]

They seriously signed a contract that stated "do work and we'll pay you"?

Bush Administration 101: this was considered "more efficient."

Which is probably the main reason Constellation is being scrapped: rampant corruption that needs to be purged, and the only way out is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[ooshna]

Ok I had to do it

In Soviet Russia President blames you

Re:undefinitized contracts

[Reverberant]

They seriously signed a contract that stated "do work and we'll pay you"? I know a pretty good way of getting the budget under control. Don't do that!

I've been in contacting situations with the Fed Gov where the contractor (us) was set, and the scope and price were agreed upon, but the contract itself was held up for various reasons (sometimes political, sometimes mundane, sometimes related to a family emergency that the contracting officer is dealing with). If it was a situation where a delay would increase costs, we would be told to start work ("Notice to Proceed") with the indication that we would be paid our negotiated rates & expenses, and the contract stuff would be worked out.

It's the conflicting between trying to do things by the book ("don't let them work without an itemized contract!") and responding to concerns about efficiency ("you could have saved $1 million of taxpayer money if you let them start work early? Why didn't you let them start work?").

Re:undefinitized contracts

[tftp]

I'm not sure how this will be very complicated

Here is an example then. NASA orders a rocket made. The contractor orders tons of materials, hires 1,000 engineers, buys computers, software, rents a vehicle assembly building for 5 years, and signs a contract for range time. If at some point the "stop work" order comes, these costs and obligations must be accounted for. Some of those expenses are huge.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[Chris Burke]

In our business, it's called a "Time and Materials" project. Keep throwing money until the buyer gets a finished project, or they run out of money.

Which works pretty well in my limited experience with cost-plus contracts as long as the buyer is regularly paying the contractor, because it means at any point when the buyer or contractor wants to back out, the buyer isn't on the hook for a lot of promised payments, and the contractor isn't on the hook for a lot of extra work.

If NASA has a lot of back payments to make for work that was already done because they wanted to play games shifting the expenses to different budget years or something, well that was dumb, but still just paying for work that's been done. Shouldn't be that big a deal.

However if these were bid contracts (common with defense contractors, and always seemingly with clauses for cost overruns so the bid can still be a bald-faced lie), then NASA could simply have promised these contractors a certain amount of money, and if NASA says they don't want them to do the work, well they'll still owe the money.

Someone else said it best, that the main difference in the new Obama plan is the changes to procurement.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[tftp]

Where's the incentive for the developer to keep cost under control?

The "plus" part is usually small, smaller than the profit that could be had under other types of contracts. That makes "cost plus" contracts not always interesting. As I recall, they pay just enough to keep you afloat, but not much more. Also, the "cost" part is audited frequently; you can't go out, get a yacht and charge its upkeep to the contract - and get away with that.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[hanabal]

yes but there should already be a record of all of this. They could be huge costs but the amount should already be known. That's why it shouldn't be complicated. Sarbanes Oxley required accurate and complete records of all time and materials spent on contracts, especially time and materials contracts. If the contractors were following US law then the records are done already.

Re:undefinitized contracts

[badasscat]

I'm not going to defend the constellation program, but they could have thrown the baby out without also including the bathwater.

What I'm saying is cancel constellation if you must, but replace it with something that has a chance in hell of working and is NASA controlled. I'm sorry, but I haven't seen a private contractor yet that's anywhere even close to NASA's level of expertise in launching men into space. NASA's not perfect, but what they do have is 50 years of experience in space - no private company can match that.

To put it another way, the US government has just pulled funding from the most experienced agency in the field, and is giving it instead to a bunch of unproven upstarts. That is generally not a smart move, in any industry.

Cancel constellation, go back to the drawing board if you have to. But don't waste 50 years worth of knowledge and experience like this.

I truly believe this is the end of the United States' commitment to space exploration. And without us there, somebody else will beat us back to the moon, and Mars.

the dangers of cancelation

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen it happen in the software industry... if project after project is canceled, people eventually assume that the next project they work on will *also* be canceled. And when that happens, they subconsciously or otherwise don't do a good job any more, because they don't really believe that what they're building will ever see the light of day.

In aerospace, that can get people killed. Sometimes it's better to actually build something imperfect, then to start and stop program after program after program without ever producing anything. Sooner or later, the institutional knowledge of how to actually do something gets lost.

Surprise, surprise...

[Third Position]

Is anyone surprised shutting down Constellation isn't any easier than shutting down any other government program? How often does that happen?

OTOH, I suppose if they're successful, it's a one-time cost. But I'm skeptical that it will ever actually be shut down. There's too much pork for too many districts for Congress to ever let that happen. The cost of the political horse-trading to make it happen will probably be expensive enough that it would be cheaper just to complete the damn program.

Re:Surprise, surprise...

[Teancum]

Is anyone surprised shutting down Constellation isn't any easier than shutting down any other government program? How often does that happen?

OTOH, I suppose if they're successful, it's a one-time cost. But I'm skeptical that it will ever actually be shut down. There's too much pork for too many districts for Congress to ever let that happen. The cost of the political horse-trading to make it happen will probably be expensive enough that it would be cheaper just to complete the damn program.

In this case, it is debatable if letting the Constellation program continue will be cheaper in the long run. Perhaps some interesting R&D can come from the development effort, but as was said in the Augustine Commission report, "if Constellation was ready to go and already developed, it would have to be canceled tomorrow because we can't afford it."

It shouldn't be surprising, however, that the contracts were set up in such a way that it couldn't be easily canceled. Many government projects are set up in a similar manner.... which is why it would be impossible to shut down Head Start centers or repeal the Social Security Act.

Clever of someone

[peacefinder]

"Many of the deals are called 'undefinitized contracts,' meaning that the terms, conditions -- and price -- had not been set before NASA ordered the work to start."

Oh, that sort of thing always ends well. /sarcasm

I thought the previous administration had thought itself good at business dealings?

Re:Clever of someone

[Amorymeltzer]

Well, yeah. What part of "Create unrest and bad political will for the succeeding and opposing party" isn't a good business deal?

Re:Clever of someone

[swanzilla]

"Many of the deals are called 'undefinitized contracts,' meaning that the terms, conditions -- and price -- had not been set before NASA ordered the work to start."

Oh, that sort of thing always ends well. /sarcasm

Actually, that thing ends quite well in most industries. Work that is done as 'Time and Materials' is often mutually beneficial to both contractor and client due to the inherent flexibility (client requirement changes) and predictability (set percentage for contractor.)

The more you horse around with deviations of processes, the more attractive T&M work becomes...unless of course mounds of paperwork and scope creep is your thing.

Re:Clever of someone

[Teancum]

"Many of the deals are called 'undefinitized contracts,' meaning that the terms, conditions -- and price -- had not been set before NASA ordered the work to start."

Oh, that sort of thing always ends well. /sarcasm

I thought the previous administration had thought itself good at business dealings?

I suppose it is all relative. The U.S. Federal government is so screwed up fiscally that perhaps the Bush Administration was better at management compared to the previous presidencies. In other words, they got a "D" grade instead of an "F".

You are also forgetting that the point of contracts like this is to reward political constituencies, not to necessarily save money or to find the best contractor for the job. The only thing that really matters in Washington is if the elected official can make it to the next term and get re-elected. They seem to do a pretty good job of getting that to happen too.

Re:Clever of someone

[Kartoffel]

Two ways to remedy that: 1. Abolish re-election. One term and out. 2. Hold candidates accountable for campaign promises. Make violation a felony.

Re:Clever of someone

[RogerWilco]

Or just get rid of the stupid two party winner-takes-all system. It makes it hard to have any true reform, because the choices are too limited.

Re:Clever of someone

[RogerWilco]

Pah, from this side of the Atlantic Ocean, it looked like Reagan/Bush 1 were big spenders, Clinton then fixed the budget, and then Bush 2 spent money in a way that paled even the Reagan years.
http://bethemedia.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/deficits.jpg

Re:Clever of someone

[Teancum]

Pah, from this side of the Atlantic Ocean, it looked like Reagan/Bush 1 were big spenders, Clinton then fixed the budget, and then Bush 2 spent money in a way that paled even the Reagan years.
http://bethemedia.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/deficits.jpg

Clinton was admittedly a fiscal conservative, even if I didn't agree with his lifestyle nor his social policies. Also missing here is that unlike what happens in Britain, the "chief of government" often tends to have the opposition party in control of the purse strings. Reagan only had a Republican majority for two years, it never happened at all with Bush Senior, and W had some particularly nasty political fights with congress in the opposition party too. I could also point out the same thing with Clinton and that he had to work with a Republican controlled congress for most of his tenure.

Only Jimmy Carter and now Obama have had a congress that was of their same political viewpoint to pass legislation that reflected their governing style that made a difference with influencing spending.

BTW, if you used that graph, the current deficits by Obama simply fall off the chart completely.

Re:Clever of someone

[badasscat]

Or just get rid of the stupid two party winner-takes-all system. It makes it hard to have any true reform, because the choices are too limited.

Last I remember, there were approximately 20 serious candidates at the start of the last election cycle. I'm not sure how the choices are "limited".

Oh, you mean the guy you wanted didn't win? Tough luck. The same would be true if all 20 went to the end too. You've got a one in 20 chance. Most of the time you're going to be disappointed, no matter how many candidates are actually on the ballot come general election day.

Re:Brilliant idea!

[tgd]

Yes, by all means we should pay many times the cost of cancelling it it to continue it, and then pay ten times the cost for every launch from that point forward.

A big problem in this country, no matter what side of the political coin you are on, is people like yourself that either deliberately, or because of a lack of understanding, spout bullshit not because there's a real issue, but purely because its against someone you don't like. Your position is not supportable, and yet you'll post it because it gives you a chance to tell everyone how much you don't like Obama.

There are lots of actions Obama has taken that have perfectly valid positions on either side of the coin, but this really isn't one. Politicians, lobbyists and people employed by the project were and are the only ones who *ever* supported it.

That should tell you something.

Not just contract stupid

[Wardish]

The fact that Nasa is contract stupid (I'm guessing deals to placate various legislators, but hey, I'm paranoid.) is only part of the problem.

Nasa lives and dies over gee wizz flashy programs to get funding. Nasa has to impress the powers that be, President, advisors, legislators, defense contractors, and even lobbyists, to get decent upper management and funding. They have to be even more impressive to maintain the needed funding over multiple years and administrations.

Because...

Most ventures having to do with space require a lot of time as well as consistent funding. Congress, who holds the purse strings, is motivated by short term goals and is easily swayed by other vested interests (see above).

The only way I can see to fix this would require a law or constitutional amendment, if necessary, to enable congress to assign budgetary funds, ideally multi-year, that are paid in advance and very difficult to change. At least a 2/3 or even a 3/4 vote should be necessary to remove or repeal. This sort of protection will have to include the top management at Nasa as well.

Not a lot else you can do unless you can make all three branches of government reasonable, honorable, and able to think and plan on a long range basis.

Re:Not just contract stupid

[mdwh2]

The only way I can see to fix this would require a law or constitutional amendment, if necessary, to enable congress to assign budgetary funds, ideally multi-year, that are paid in advance and very difficult to change. At least a 2/3 or even a 3/4 vote should be necessary to remove or repeal. This sort of protection will have to include the top management at Nasa as well.

As sad as I am to see space funding wasted like this, be careful for what you wish for. How would this work for say a scheme we might disagree with? E.g., a Government pledges billions to be spent implementing some draconian scheme like a centralised DNA database, which the following Government wants to cancel?

(As a real world example, here in the UK the Government has been spending years implementing compulsory ID cards and centralised database. They are likely to be out of power by May this year, and the opposition parties say they will cancel the scheme. But one of the Government's tactics has been to spend as much money as possible on getting the scheme implemented anyway, and to tie themselves into contracts, so that to cancel it will look like a "waste of money".)

Re:Not just contract stupid

[CrimsonAvenger]

The only way I can see to fix this would require a law or constitutional amendment, if necessary, to enable congress to assign budgetary funds, ideally multi-year, that are paid in advance and very difficult to change. At least a 2/3 or even a 3/4 vote should be necessary to remove or repeal.

Constitutional Amendment. Congress is only allowed one year budgets.

On the other hand, making NASA an entitlement would more or less get around the problem.

Re:Not just contract stupid

[crow]

Wrong:

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec8

Appropriations for the army are limited to two years. Other appropriations may be for any period of time. There has, in fact, been talk from time to time of changing the procedure in congress to make all the major appropriations bills two-years bills, so that they only have to deal with half of them every year.

Re:Not just contract stupid

[cyberfringe]

I used to work for NASA. You are totally wrong about the need for "gee whiz flashy programs". NASA lives or dies by its ability to deliver jobs and contract $ to states and Congressional districts. Furthermore, NASA and the space industry (the big guys like LockMar etc.) are joined at the hip. I remember procurement-sensitive meetings at NASA where NASA managers with lots of responsibility would say, "can I bring so-and-so (their pet contractor) to the meeting?" The reason is that the contractors, at least in the human exploration side of NASA, do most of the hard technical work. They will close out these contractors and it will also be the end of career for many NASA people who don't have the right stuff for whatever comes next. These changes in NASA are really at heart a local jobs issue. Regarding "placate various legislators": no, you are definitely not paranoid! Look where the NASA Centers are located. They were deliberately place in southern states during Apollo to woo those states to the Democrat side. It didn't work all that well. But now you have these government centers in places where they provide a disproportionate amount of state revenue and jobs for the region. OF COURSE THIS IS POLITICAL. Any change to the work that NASA does, and which NASA Center gets the work, directly affects the fortunes of one state versus another, which affects the direction of NASA as a whole. Expect to see a lot of high and mighty words from Senators and Representatives about what is right for NASA, but what they are really talking about is jobs and total contract $ for their political domain. That's all it is. That is their motivation. Its plain as daylight. Nobody is Congress plans for the long term of NASA unless it is spelled out in terms for jobs and $.

"negotiate a buyout with the contractor"

[larry bagina]

Like they negotiated the bank bailout ("you will take this money or we will spend the next 10 years auditing you")? Like they negotiated the GM bailout ("sorry bondholders with a legal contract, we're fucking you over in favor of the unions")? Or like they negotiated the Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, and AIG bailouts ("how much money do you want? Let's triple that just in case. Come back in 3 months and we'll give you some more.")?

Re:"negotiate a buyout with the contractor"

[Rozine]

Mod parent up. This is actually one of the first posts I've seen on slashdot that's actually gotten the bailouts factually correct.

false dichotomy

[mdwh2]

I wish there was more money for space, but for heaven's sake - if it really was a choice between socialised healthcare for people, or socialised manned space travel, I'd still put the former first.

But it's not one or the other. Curiously this false dichotomy is used by people against manned space travel. After all, the argument against the common "But the are more important things to spend money on than manned space travel" is not to somehow argue that manned space travel is more important than people living and having basic needs, but to point out that there can be money for both. As one example, perhaps if they spent slightly less on a socialised military, there'd be plenty of money for both socialised healthcare and socialised manned space travel.

We've lost our backbone for adventure as we've continued to reinforce the entitlement mentality that is draining our country dry of resources.

Yes, obviously it's those evil people who are ill who are just draining resources, obviously they should be paying for those who have a sense of entitlement to go travelling in space. There's no "entitlement" here - your view on how taxes should be spent is no less an "entitlement mentality" than anyone else's.

Re:false dichotomy

[nido]

I wish there was more money for space, but for heaven's sake - if it really was a choice between socialised healthcare for people, or socialised manned space travel, I'd still put the former first.

Here's a nice graphic that puts the budget in perspective:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html

To make things even more clear, hit the button at the top that says 'Hide Mandatory Spending'.

To save NASA's Constellation program, methinks the military-industrial complex should take a haircut. I've read that the pentagon's off-budget items dwarf what's officially spent...

Re:false dichotomy

[c6gunner]

Heh. I think it's really funny that medicare is considered "mandatory spending", while defense - one of the few legitimate duties of government - is considered discretionary. It's also interesting that the FBI and the Department of Energy also fall under the "National Defense" label.

Unlike the parent poster, I'd much rather have a socialized space exploration program than socialized medicine. The medicare budget alone could fund NASA 20 times over. You could have had Americans walking on Mars by now, instead of paying for gang members to get stitched up after their weekly gunfight.

Re:false dichotomy

[sadler121]

Medicare and Social Security are NOT Mentioned in the Constitution, yet the national defense is. If you want to start cutting programs, go for Social Security and Medicare NOT National Defense.

Now, there are problems with the "Military Industrial Complex" that Eisenhower famously warned us of. Much of NASA's woes come from the boon doggle that are Cost Plus contracts. This is why switching to the COTS program is a big step in the right direction. Companies don't get money until they produce results, they can't just suck at NASA's teat.

Re:false dichotomy

[nido]

I didn't mean to imply that I approve of Medicare or any of the other medical-based wealth transfer schemes. I'm just saying that the Pentagon's budget is disproportionately huge, compared to everything else.

When you're to balance your budget, it helps to look at the big items first.

Re:false dichotomy

[DerekLyons]

Yes, obviously it's those evil people who are ill who are just draining resources, obviously they should be paying for those who have a sense of entitlement to go travelling in space.

It's funny that you believe that people with a sense of entitlement to health care are somehow 'better' than those with a sense of entitlement to go traveling in space.

I say keep them both the hell out of my wallet.

Re:false dichotomy

[petsounds]

Speaking of the military-industrial complex, I'd love to see a comparison of cost overruns between the DoD and NASA. I'd wager that NASA has a much better track record at shipping product, and at a substantially less cost excess.

Re:false dichotomy

[mdwh2]

Does the constitution specify how much must be spent on the military? Because no one suggested scrapping it completely.

Re:false dichotomy

[mdwh2]

It's funny that you believe that people with a sense of entitlement to health care are somehow 'better' than those with a sense of entitlement to go traveling in space.

Can you point me to where I said that?

I don't believe such a thing either - my point is that branding views on tax as "entitlement" is nonsense.

Re:false dichotomy

[ppanon]

Oh, for goodness sake. When the constitution was written, doctors still thought bloodletting was a commonly useful treatment. Modern medicine didn't really get started until nearly 100 years later when the American Civil War demonstrated the usefulness of things like aseptic work areas. Of course the Founding Fathers wouldn't have thought it was important to socialize the support of glorified witch doctors! They didn't foresee the potential of modern medicine just like they didn't foresee Ingram Mac 10s or whatever the drug dealers' automatic pistol of choice is these days. The question is, would they think it's worthwhile if they were alive today? For the most part, they were really bright rational people who would look after the common interest, unlike nearly all Republican politicians (and far too many Democrats) around these days.

Re:false dichotomy

[weston]

Medicare and Social Security are NOT Mentioned in the Constitution, yet the national defense is.

National defense may be mentioned, but there's not a lot that's mentioned with regard to implementation. If we chose to, we could probably get away with a Swiss-type national militia option.

Similarly, medicare and social security may not be mentioned in the constitution, because they're implementation details. It is, however, clear that part of the raison d'être for the Constitution is to "promote the general welfare", and there's clauses that yield powers to various arms of government that enable this. Is this implementation ideal? Probably not. Is it any less germane to the Constitution than our current defense complex? Not really.

Re:false dichotomy

[guruevi]

Everybody is complaining about how much health care would cost but if you can replace Social Security, Health Care, Veterans Benefits and Medicare with "Universal Health Care" you would be able to spend $5000/person in the US on health care. That is a about as much we currently spend per capita on health care and a whole lot more than many of the countries that already have government run healthcare.

Re:false dichotomy

[Anonymous Coward]

That just shows that you don't understand the terms. You think that, in this case, mandatory spending is spending that someone decided was going to take precedence over other spending, and decided they wouldn't cut one way or the other. All it means is that it is spending the government doesn't get a choice in, because it is either required by law (medicare) or a preexisting obligation (interest on debts). Discretionary is everything else. While SOME spending on national defense is necessary, there is no law that states how much must be spent on it, so it doesn't end up in the mandatory category.

Re:false dichotomy

[SteveFoerster]

I wish there was more money for space, but for heaven's sake - if it really was a choice between socialised healthcare for people, or socialised manned space travel, I'd still put the former first.

In that case I'd definitely pick the latter, since we can better withstand mediocre manned space travel than mediocre healthcare.

Re:false dichotomy

[nido]

The Flexner Report is the reason why "modern medicine" costs so much. To quote the article:

One of the consequences of Flexner's advocacy of university-based medical education was that medical education became much more expensive, putting such education out of reach of all but upper class white males. The small "proprietary" schools Flexner condemned, which were contended to be have been based in generations-old folk traditions rather than relatively recent western science, did admit African-Americans, women, and students of limited financial means. These students usually could not afford six to eight years of university education, and were often simply denied admission to medical schools affiliated with universities. At the same time, the Report tended to delegitimize existing women doctors and doctors of color. While many such doctors continued to practice, usually within underserviced clienteles, they did so under proscribed circumstances and for less pay. In general, the standardization of medical education advocated in the Report led to the domination of American medicine by well-off white males. It also made it more difficult for people of color, residents of rural areas, and for those of limited means generally to obtain medical care in any form. The Flexner report recommended the closure of several African American medical schools, including the Leonard Medical Center, the oldest four-year medical school in the country for African-Americans.

-Flexner Report: American medicine becomes a less diverse profession

I don't know that there is a single politician in Washington who really groks the health care clusterfuck. 100 Years of Medical Robbery is required reading, as is the followup, Real Medical Freedom.

Today's health care systems sucks because an artificial monopoly has been given to a certain kind of "healer". End the monopoly, and things will improve.

To get back on-topic, the Pentagon surely has something better than rockets in their toolchest... I'd bet they have a SSTO spaceplane buried in the western deserts somewhere. :)

Re:false dichotomy

[inthealpine]

Health care reform as it stands isn't about covering everyone for health needs, it's about controlling the mechanism for health care. That's why the major push is to FORCE everyone to buy coverage, meaning healthy young people will poor money into the system paying for resources they don't want or need.

Re:false dichotomy

[inthealpine]

The founding fathers did take health care as a serious issue. Benjamin Rush was a physician and is considered the Father of American Psychiatry. You have a very obvious limited view of history and think that all the problems we have now have never been an issue before. Your delusional...!! You don't think that there were major advances in weaponry when the founding fathers considered the 2nd amendment? The founding fathers in the American War for Independence used war tactics that started to show how deadly firearms could be. MY GOD MAN PICK UP A BOOK NOW AND THEN... You are by far one of the most ignorant persons behind a keyboard I've seen in quite a while.
You want to talk about common good and Republicans, how about democrats that have controlled major US cities for decades upon decades and plunged nearly all of them and the mostly minority population into poverty and dependence. I will say that it seems Democrats and Republicans are in a race to the bottom and only conservative(real conservative) and liberal (real liberal meaning libertarian) ideas will stop the bleeding.

Re:false dichotomy

[mdwh2]

Young people never need healthcare, and healthy people never become unhealthy?

Btw, if you're a young healthy person who decides only to get private health insurance after becoming unhealthy, how does that work out for your premiums?

Re:false dichotomy

[jonadab]

> I wish there was more money for space, but for heaven's
> sake - if it really was a choice between socialised
> healthcare for people, or socialised manned space travel,
> I'd still put the former first.

I disagree, strongly. The government doesn't have a long history of screwing up space exploration extremely badly. Arguably they've paid too much for some things, but other than that NASA hasn't done a bad job. And even if they DO a bad job with space exploration, it's not that big a deal.

Health care, on the other hand, is far too important to let the government run it. I'm pretty sure they'll run socialized health care with approximately the same level of competence and skill they've displayed running Medicare and Social Security. Do Not Want.

Re:false dichotomy

[RogerWilco]

Though this might be a contributing factor, the medical education is organised in a similar way in most western countries. Still in the USA health care costs about double of what it costs in countries like the UK, Germany or Sweden.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita

Compare
UK: $1764 per capita
USA: $4631 per capita

This huge difference is mainly due to other factors, not the way medical specialists are organised as that is very similar in both countries. It's mainly due to something that the western-european countries have figured out a while ago:

Providing free/cheap health care to your entire population is in the end much cheaper than only providing it to those who can pay, because it leads to a much healthier population, which results in lower hospital bills.

Re:false dichotomy

[RogerWilco]

Exactly, as I already wrote in another post:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita [nationmaster.com]

Compare
UK: $1764 per capita
USA: $4631 per capita

Providing free/cheap health care to your entire population is in the end much cheaper than only providing it to those who can pay, because it leads to a much healthier population, which results in lower hospital bills.

Re:false dichotomy

[badasscat]

The US spends far more on programs like SS and Medicare than it does on the Pentagon. Indeed, looking at the big items first would help. In order to support the existing medicare committments, with no further socialization of medicine, tax rates would have to reach 80% in my lifetime.

Quit pulling numbers out of your ass. That number you just quoted has zero basis in reality. Ok, how about this: in order to keep funding the military at the rate its growing, taxes will need to reach 90% in my lifetime. Top that!

And do you see that big chunk of the budget labeled "health"? Yeah, that's what the health care bill is designed to reduce. Without a health care bill, that chunk will only get bigger and bigger. It's amazing to me that some people don't understand this.

Re:false dichotomy

[badasscat]

That's why the major push is to FORCE everyone to buy coverage, meaning healthy young people will poor money into the system paying for resources they don't want or need.

I hope you go to sleep one night "healthy" and wake up the next day with a collapsed lung like I did. We'll see what you think about health care coverage you "don't need" then.

Re:false dichotomy

[sabre86]

Strictly speaking "national defense" isn't mentioned in the Constitution, either. "Common defense" is, though. But providing for the "general welfare" is also in the constitution and I think it's clear Medicare and Social Security are meant to be implementations of this government obligation, just as the Air Force, not explicitly discussed, is a implementation of providing for the common defense.

--sabre86

Re:false dichotomy

[RealTime]

It is exactly because the Founding Fathers could not see the future that the U.S. Constitution has an amendment process. It is difficult to argue that the commerce and general welfare clauses (relative to the founders' original intent; read the Federalist Papers) have been utterly abused to expand the Federal government at the expense of the states and the people.

We have the Supreme Court to thank for this state of affairs, with the real damage starting during the New Deal era, when they could not stand up to Roosevelt's threats to expand and stack the Court. (On a somewhat related note regarding expansion of the Federal government, modern economists seem to be equally split on whether the New Deal turned a bad recession into the Great Depression or not.)

So, if health care is supposed to be "right", then why not add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution making it so. Ditto Social Security. Otherwise, give this responsibility back to the states where it (currently, without changing the Constitution) belongs.

My biggest complaint with the Federal government is that much of it is simply unconstitutional. Also, a Federal bureaucracy seems to add a lot of wasteful "friction" to the tax dollars collected. Wouldn't they be better (more efficiently) spent if collected at the state level and spent in that state?

Re:false dichotomy

[RealTime]

Actually, the general welfare clause is very much abused relative to the original intent of the authors of the U.S. Constitution (try reading the Federalist Papers some time). Programs like Medicare and Social Security are the responsibility of the individual states.

Re:false dichotomy

[nido]

There were a pair of shows on This American Life last fall about the health industry clusterfuck. The first one was called "More is Less", the second "Someone Else's Money".

Wealthy americans get much more medical care, but the outcomes are the same or worse. The problem is, essentially, that American medicine is philosophically bankrupt.

American doctors don't care about nutrition, or psycho-somatic medicine, etc. American doctors are trained in how to pick a drug or surgery to perform. ... But at the same time, some of the "Alternative Health" practitioners in the U.S. are the very best in the world.

Re:false dichotomy

[Nulifier]

The problem is not that there isn't that they need to raise taxes to pay for health care. Its that the US spends too much on its privatized health care.

Look to your neighbors in the great white north, they spend less per capita than the US on health care and I can get medical treatment without paying a dime other than taxes.

The concept that the government is not responsible for healthcare, as so many people are saying here, is so foreign to me that I had to re-read the sentence several times, just to make sure I got it. A government's primary responsibility is to see to the welfare of its citizens and to space exploration farther down the list.

Maybe you should start putting peoples lives above any other priorities.

Re:false dichotomy

[inthealpine]

I'm not saying regulations don't need to change so coverage is more affordable and covers pre-existing conditions. That's not what's being pushed, a complete command and control takeover of health care and 2 un-constitutional statutes:

1. People will be forced to by health care (as I stated)
2. The legislation says it cannot be revoked by any other congress after it's passed. Yeah, that's right folks, we can amend our founding documents, but health care reform is a FOREVER document.

A one paragraph law could be passed that says premiums cannot be based on pre-existing conditions, and it would PASS WITH EASE...but that's not what is being pushed, because a bill like that solves a problem and health care 'reform' being pushed is about power and money.

Re:false dichotomy

[inthealpine]

Well you should have made the choice to buy high deductible catastrophic health insurance with a health savings account you keep forever. This would be much much cheaper than a normal health plan and you save money for the future when your health needs are greater. Make health insurance more affordable and plans that make sense. I don't need the same type of plan my grandmother needs. The health care legislation being pushed hikes up costs and forces people to get coverage they don't want and might not need. It's about power and money which is why the legislation still leaves millions of people without coverage (depending on what bill you look at).

Re:false dichotomy

[delt0r]

If you really want a space program, I don't think saving Constellation is the best way to do it. It never was about getting back into space and more about extending shuttle type contracts.

Re:false dichotomy

[delt0r]

Using a plane to get to space make about as much sense as using a train to cross the Atlantic.

Re:false dichotomy

[lgw]

Medicare's unfunded liability is ~$38 trillion, and the yearly cost is growing far faster than inflation. The governments amazing record a reducing the cost of stuff through government procurement speaks for itself. Clearly NASA is the cheapest way to get into space, and the the pentagon is famous for its ability to buy a wrench or a toilet seat for only $1000. But I'm sure your right and this time it will be different! Why, all your opponents have is facts and evidence, the fools.

Re:false dichotomy

[mdwh2]

Well, there are other ways of doing it than the Government running it directly - e.g., outsourcing to companies, or even simply making it so everyone receives insurance, that they then use for existing private companies.

The NHS here in the UK has many problems, but it's still nowhere near as screwed up as a system without any national healthcare, in my opinion.

Re:false dichotomy

[lgw]

Maybe you should start putting peoples lives above any other priorities.

That exact reasoning has been used to justify slavery countless times in the past. Liberty is more important than safety - really. Quality of life matters. The benefits of health care for everyone are indeed great, but not infinitely so.

Private health care in the US is expensive, sure, but we do most of the world's medical research, and we pay for most of that ourselves. We also pay an amazing amount to medical malpractice suits, to the point that we now have a shortage of doctors to rival our shotage of nurses, because the take-home pay (after insurance) in many specialties is so low compred to other profesional work.

If the government succeeds in capping what a doctor can charge an insurance company, but does nothing about what an insurance company can charge a doctor, specialties with a high risk of lawsuits will continue shrinking quickly. Ob-Gyns, for example, have a real crisis - AMA survey found that in the 12 worst states almost 40% of practicioners were planning to discontinue their obstetrics services. Only about 2/3s of open ob-gyn positions are filled from US medical schools, and about 10% of positions aren't filled at all. Anesthesiology is in the same boat.

So how is this going to work? Is the governemnt going to force people to work in certain fields? Force Americans to live healthier lifestyles so as to make health care cheaper? There's certainly little evidence that government procurement makes things cheaper than off-the-shelf!

Re:false dichotomy

[jonadab]

> The NHS here in the UK has many problems, but
> it's still nowhere near as screwed up as a system
> without any national healthcare, in my opinion.

We actually have pretty good healthcare in the US. The main complaints are that it's not entirely unlimited (although, the limits are higher than in most countries with socialized healthcare) and not free of charge. Our health care would NOT be improved by letting the federal government take over. Quite the contrary. It wouldn't improve the level of care people receive, and it *certainly* wouldn't make anything cheaper.

Re:false dichotomy

[c6gunner]

Look to your neighbors in the great white north, they spend less per capita than the US on health care and I can get medical treatment without paying a dime other than taxes.

Yeah, and the quality of care and the amount of time you have to wait are directly related to how much less we're spending.

The concept that the government is not responsible for healthcare, as so many people are saying here, is so foreign to me that I had to re-read the sentence several times, just to make sure I got it.

I'm sorry to hear that. Any semi-intelligent individual should be familiar with the socialization vs. privatization argument.

A government's primary responsibility is to see to the welfare of its citizens and to space exploration farther down the list.

If the Canadian government were following that logic, they'd treat other markets the same way they do health. You wouldn't be able to buy food from private suppliers - you'd get "free" food at government owned stores. After all, we can't have people starving now can we? You'd also get "free" clothing, and "free" transportation - all of it equally rationed, of course, with no private option.

I don't know about you, but the reason I love Canada is because of the liberties and opportunities which it affords me. I don't need a government to babysit me. Getting rid of the socialized medical system - or at least allowing a private alternative - would only make it an even better place to live.

Re:false dichotomy

[HBoar]

How is health care, and more generally looking after the country's citizens, not mandatory spending? To those of us who have grown up with tax funded health care, your statement sounds ridiculous.

Re:false dichotomy

[lennier]

Heh. I think it's really funny that medicare is considered "mandatory spending", while defense - one of the few legitimate duties of government - is considered discretionary.

Conversely, I think it's really funny that funding an expensive, aggressive military posture that angers and provokes the rest of the world (and is mostly useless against a determined low-tech enemy) is considered adequate 'defense' while funding public domestic healthcare - which is not only the first line of defense against biological terrorism, but also pays off hugely as a hedge against natural disasters and epidemics while boosting the productivity of the economy - isn't.

Different spectacles, different views of what the problem is.

Re:false dichotomy

[Hurricane78]

About there being enough money... This pie chart really says it all, and end all arguments:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bailout-pie.png

A Mars base? That’s literally a drop in the bucket compared to those other “expenses”.

Re:false dichotomy

[c6gunner]

How is health care, and more generally looking after the country's citizens, not mandatory spending?

Why should it be?

If the government is responsible for providing healthcare, why not also provide food? Shelter? Clothing? Where do you draw the line?

To those of us who have grown up with tax funded health care, your statement sounds ridiculous.

I grew up with a tax funded health care system, and I think your statement sounds ridiculous. Moreover, I think you're an ass for presuming to speak on behalf of millions of people. I'd be quite happy if my nation decided to abandon socialized health care, or at least allowed a private option.

Re:false dichotomy

[HBoar]

Obviously our countries have a different way of going about things -- We do have a private healthcare option in addition to public healthcare. Our government will also provide food, shelter, and clothing to people if needed.

Break the stranglehold

[unixguy43]

I know this won't happen because the government likes maintaining it's stranglehold on US space exploration, but why they don't just privatize NASA?

We're far away from the the 60's where the government had a mission to get to the moon. For the last 15 years, NASA's manned missions have all been about international cooperation. The government hasn't been able to do it all on it's own- it's needed help from virtually every technologically advanced country on the planet in order to (A) keep the shuttles flying, and (B) put the ISS in orbit.

The level of cooperation needed in order to allow NASA to go beyond the shuttle program, and beyond the ISS is going to be enormous, and is going to need involvement from everyone to make it happen. Privatize NASA- yes it will take some time, and won't happen overnight, but it can put them into a position to try and become a global space exploration company that can bring in resources from wherever it finds them in order to fulfil a GLOBAL mission of putting a human being on Mars.

If there's anyone out there watching us, let's give them some indication that we can work together as a planet to do something spectacular.

Re:Break the stranglehold

[Nyeerrmm]

While I'm a big proponent of privatizing LEO launch and things like that, NASA (or an entity like it) will be the critical partner in exploration for a long-time to come.

Exploration is very high-risk, and theres not a whole lot of guaranteed reward in term of monetary profit. Pushing the sphere of humanity is something that (at least I feel) has great value for society, but its not good business. Like the national defense and laying out infrastructure, the 'Lewis and Clark' role will always be best handled by a government entity.

However, after the initial exploration, its then time to consider privatization. Boeing, Bigelow and SpaceX aren't going to take us to NEOS, the Moon or Mars, but they're damn sure going to be able to get us to the near frontier, 500-miles up. From there they can get on a NASA vehicle and push on to the far frontier. As NASA keeps going, more of what was once the far frontier becomes the near frontier, responsibilities shift, and progress is made. What we're seeing now is the growing pains of learning how to hand off the torch.

Re:Break the stranglehold

[CrimsonAvenger]

Exploration is very high-risk, and theres not a whole lot of guaranteed reward in term of monetary profit.

Given the Treaty forbidding anyone other than the UN from making any money from any body in space other than Earth, I rather imagine that there is no reward in terms of monetary profit whatsoever, and never will be.

Re:Brilliant idea!

[M1FCJ]

What does it have anything to do with Obama? Constellation is a Bush project and it's the Congress that's preventing the cancellation. Obama inherited the white elephant and trying to get rid of it and others are preventing that.

Reminds me of the super collider

[joe_frisch]

Where rather than paying about $10B for a giant accelerator we paid something like $3B for a useless hole in the ground. Spending billions of dollars on a marginal project may not be a great idea, but its a LOT better than spending billions and getting nothing.

Re:Reminds me of the super collider

[elwinc]

I can't remember if the funding for the supercollider was already allocated. What I do remember is that the cost projections had a nasty habit of doubling every few years. Whatever was allocated was inadequate. I know it wasn't a case of bait-n-switch, but it smelled just like it. And it should have been built on the grounds of Fermilab so the existing ring could be an injector. Too much politics was played with the supercollider.

In 2004 George W Bush gave NASA the ambitious mission to send men to the Moon and Mars, but he never allocated significant funding for Moon-Mars, see http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/14/bush.space/ So all NASA could really do was "study" the mission. And even to do that NASA had to cannibalize other (unmanned) space science missions (maybe that's the explanation for the delay of DSCOVR http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0903/01dscovr/ a mission to Lagrange 1 that had already been paid for designed and built). Just like Bush, Obama is not funding Moon-Mars. However, unlike Bush, Obama is not pretending someone else will fund it.

I agree that wasting NASA money sucks. And I know this sounds more like a "blame Bush" rant than I would like. But I think most fans of space science agree that ordering Moon-Mars without funding it was going to lead to grief at some point.

Re:Reminds me of the super collider

[Teancum]

The final funding bill to allocate the required funds is what ultimately failed in congress. No, the funds really weren't allocated, but the project had started earlier and the land purchased to get the project built.

As for why they didn't use the grounds of Fermilab, that is located in the middle of Illinois and the real estate was valuable enough that they couldn't afford to buy out the required land to get it built. The land for the SCSC was available in Texas, which is why it was done there. Yes, I know that CERN was built in land that was about as valuable as that found in Illinois, but that was a European decision and not an American one.

This is actually a pretty good analogy, although at the time I was a supporter of the SCSC and let my elected representatives know that too. Little good that did.

As for the "Blame Bush" crowd.... I should point out that Bush knew full well that he was not going to be the president to see people get back to the Moon and that any such program would be at least a couple of presidencies beyond his own. The time to make decisions on this is now, and that onus belongs to Obama... for good or ill. Bush did what he could at the time, as did his father before him. Neither were willing to do a JFK-type moment and strongly commit a substantial fraction of the federal budget to spaceflight activities like the Apollo program.

Keep in mind that the Apollo project ate up about 5% of the federal budget. At the moment, NASA is only 0.5% of the budget. That is a huge difference and something that I don't see Obama changing either.

Re:Reminds me of the super collider

[joe_frisch]

I saw a long talk on the sad history of the supercollider some years ago. My take is that the basic budget increase was moderate (~25%), and that the apparent budget increase was much larger as changes were made to how the budget was described (escalation, whether the detector was included, whether other site facilities were included, etc).

The conclusion of the talk was that the supercollider was basically a cold-war project that could no longer be supported as the war died away. Not that it was a military project, but that it was part of the "everything the Soviets do, we can do better" cold war.

In general I'd like to see a better way to fund long term projects so that they can't be canceled as the political situation changes.

Time and materials, baby

[Overzeetop]

plus reasonable shutdown costs to complete archiving of documentation. That's the way it should be.

The problem is that all the people who have regular contact with the contractors and their employees are good friends and colleagues, so they're far more likely to make sure their "friends" has a soft landing.

Now we'll see what kind of idiots work on the contract negotiation side of NASA. Time for the blood sucking lawyers to get to work...

What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear Americans so often talk of this so-called "entitlement mentality". It is a confusing concept for us non-Americans.

On one hand, many Americans claim there are certain abstract concepts that are inalienable. That is, things that everybody is entitled to, without having to earn it. Freedom of expression, the right to life, the right to bear arms, and so forth.

Yet those same Americans will turn around seconds later, and complain about how other Americans have an "entitlement mentality" when these other people want such basic things as affordable (not even "free"!) health care, or even a slight degree of job security.

What differentiates between those ideas that it's okay to feel "entitled" to, versus those that lead to a "entitlement mentality"?

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[paiute]

What differentiates between those ideas that it's okay to feel "entitled" to, versus those that lead to a "entitlement mentality"?

FOX News

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[pushing-robot]

Most Americans believe that they pay an inordinate amount of money on taxes, and therefore anything they can possibly take from the government is rightfully theirs, and any money the government gives to anyone else is "stolen" from them.

It doesn't help that the country is full of loonies on radio and TV that are telling them the exact same thing.

Of course, it all boils down to selfishness. If it benefits you in some way it's a right. If it benefits someone else it's an entitlement.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[CrimsonAvenger]

What differentiates between those ideas that it's okay to feel "entitled" to, versus those that lead to a "entitlement mentality"?

The one set is free, the other set involves taking my money and giving it to someone else.

If the "someone else" then gets the notion that he has a "right" to my money, problems come up.

Note, by the by, that few Americans are categorically opposed to a social safety net. The debate is usually over the size (and cost) of the net, not the presence or absence of a net.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's funniest is that the same Americans who are against taking money from all Americans to help offset health care costs for some other Americans often turn around and scream the loudest about how important it is to take money from all Americans to fund the military and kill innocent civilians half-way around the world.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[Logic and Reason]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[c6gunner]

Yet those same Americans will turn around seconds later, and complain about how other Americans have an "entitlement mentality" when these other people want such basic things as affordable (not even "free"!) health care, or even a slight degree of job security.

What differentiates between those ideas that it's okay to feel "entitled" to, versus those that lead to a "entitlement mentality"?

The fact that inalienable rights are things which nobody has to give you - the only reason we even talk about them is because others have tried to take them away. Whereas the "rights" you're talking about inherently depend on someone else. Health care isn't something you're born with, or something you'll find in the middle of a jungle - it's something that requires the labor of another person. You can not have a right which requires someone else to do things for you.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[c6gunner]

What's funniest is that the same Americans who are against taking money from all Americans to help offset health care costs for some other Americans often turn around and scream the loudest about how important it is to take money from all Americans to fund the military and kill innocent civilians half-way around the world.

Yep, every citizen I've ever talked to has explicitly told me that they're in favor of killing innocent civilians. They also want the government to go around curb-stomping puppies and raping nuns. Those yanks really are a bunch of evil bastard, eh?

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[turgid]

A man after my own heart!

Would you like a tour of my workhouse here in Whitechapel? No able-bodied man over the age of 3 gets gruel rations until he has broken his daily quota of rocks. It's good for their souls! When they have worked off their debt by the age of 21, most thank me for my seemingly unending generosity and are reluctant to leave. Most send their sons and daughters to be brought up in the industrious and humble fashion in which they themselves were moulded.

Next year I am to receive a knighthood.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[pushing-robot]

The one set is free, the other set involves taking my money and giving it to someone else.

Which rights, pray tell, are the "free" ones, that cost no money, effort, or lives to enforce?

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[regular_gonzalez]

Any money they can *take* from the government is rightfully theirs? Methinks you have it backwards. The government doesn't have their own money, they have that of taxpayers. How can one take one's own money?
Honest question, and answer with your first, gut instinct: Does the government grant rights to the people, or do the people grant power to the government?

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[Jacked]

I don't have any mod points, so I'll just post an agreement, instead.

The one set is free, the other set involves taking my money and giving it to someone else.

If the "someone else" then gets the notion that he has a "right" to my money, problems come up.

Exactly, that's what most people don't seem to get.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that inalienable rights are things which nobody has to give you - the only reason we even talk about them is because others have tried to take them away. Whereas the "rights" you're talking about inherently depend on someone else. Health care isn't something you're born with, or something you'll find in the middle of a jungle - it's something that requires the labor of another person. You can not have a right which requires someone else to do things for you.

How delightfully theoretical! Our society and economy are definitely not a jungle; and haven't been for at least ten thousand years. Your very existence depends on "the village", which defends your inalienable rights as well as your private property. Back in the jungle there were no inalienable rights; you'd be killed, robbed, enslaved and/or raped by whoever could do it.

Since the whole economy is a man-made game, the society gets to decide how to apportion its fruits. It will always be a compromise between decency, fairness and practicality, and the compromise will evolve over time.

Now that the society can provide universal health-care coverage, it definitely should be considered an inalienable right because the alternative is inhumane.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[R2.0]

The difference is in opportunity vs. outcomes. The Constitution is based on the idea that people are entitled to the opportunity to achieve, or fail, at our undertakings. It does NOT guarantees that those undertakings be successful, or that other citizens be held responsible for the success of someone.

In that sense, every American already does have the right to health care - no government entity is stopping them from getting whatever healthcare they want and can pay for. If someone cannot afford it, why does that mean that they have the right to have someone else pay for it? And can force that person to pay for it at the point of a gun? One might argue that indeed people HAVE that right, but you'll notice that an actual debate about whether such a right exists is singularly absent from the current debate. THAT's the "sense of entitlement" being referred to - the idea that some should get what they want, payed for by others, without going through the bothersome process of asking for it.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[c6gunner]

Twits/trolls like you are the reason for the first part of my sig, but what the hell:

So there are still millions of Americans who believe that surgical strikes and smart bombs only kill the bad guys and that it's OK to get involved in military adventures for corporate interests.

Fine me ONE. I've tried. They aint there. It doesn't matter how stupid you are, nobody believes that smart bombs only kill bad people. However, apparently idiots do beleive that others believe that.

There isn't anyone quite as stupid as those who think they're smarter than everyone else.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[RogerWilco]

I need a bit more explanation than this.

Take for example this Medicare thing. It seems about 35-40 million Americans depend on it.
http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/7305-04-2.pdf

I suppose for most of them, they would not survive without this support.

Given that apparently a large part of the USA populace is in favour of cutting Medicare spending, does this mean that they would like to see these 35 million or so people die?

That would be about 1 in 7 Americans, probably a lot of them children and elderly, who are not able to provide for themselves trough a paying job?

Or am I not understanding this Medicare program, and is it mainly spent on cosmetic surgery or something?

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[badasscat]

Any money they can *take* from the government is rightfully theirs? Methinks you have it backwards. The government doesn't have their own money, they have that of taxpayers. How can one take one's own money?

a) He didn't say "any money they can take from the government", he said any thing. You're reading things the way you want to read them. He was talking about products and services, not money.

b) When you pay your taxes, that is no longer your money. This is a fundamental concept that many people seem to misunderstand. It is no different than paying for any other service. If you pay a security company to guard your house, is that your money once you've paid it to them? Of course not - you gave them money to provide a service, they provide that service and then the money is theirs. Government works no differently. The funny thing is that it's always the capitalists, for whom this concept should be the simplest, that have the hardest time understanding it.

Now you're going to say "but I don't use any government services, so they're stealing my money!" to which the obvious reply is two-fold. Because first of all, you're using government services whether you think you are or not - what do you think pays for all that military hardware "protecting our freedom" in places like Iraq and Afghanistan? Who do you think paid for your schooling? Who built the roads you drive on? Who provides the police that protect you?

Secondly, this is not money you're directly paying for any specific service for you personally. Think of it like union dues. It goes to the collective. If everybody could just pay whatever they wanted for individual programs, there'd be total chaos. We live in a representative democracy on purpose - it was not a mistake that our Constitution (which people like you like to hold up whenever it's convenient) was written in such a way that government is not controlled directly by the people, but by representatives who are tasked with providing for the general welfare of the union as a whole. This is specifically intended to filter the selfish whims of the people - and the founding fathers people like you hold up as beacons of light designed the government this way.

I feel like I'm conducting an eighth grade civics class here, but sometimes it seems like that's what's necessary. I guess if I've got a complaint about where my taxes are going, it's that nobody bothers teaching basic government concepts - or even common sense - in US schools anymore.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[badasscat]

Or am I not understanding this Medicare program, and is it mainly spent on cosmetic surgery or something?

You're understanding Medicare perfectly.

What you are not understanding is the selfishness and short-sightedness of many Americans. This is a country that elected Bush president, after all (once, at least).

Many Americans look at a program like Medicare, see that they personally don't need it, and therefore think it's a waste of money to fund it. Only when they do come to depend on it do they then hold onto it like grim death. And they often don't even see the contradiction there.

I actually saw a sign somebody had painted at a Tea Party rally a while back that said "Don't raid Medicare to pay for socialized medicine!" which I think just about sums it up.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[laddiebuck]

The one set is free, the other set involves taking my money and giving it to someone else.

Considering that the money spent on the military, police and intelligence (not to mention all the money that is channelled into the military-industrial complex as kickbacks) is quite a bit greater than that spent on healthcare and education, and furthermore that the cost of healthcare would go down under a socialised system -- your argument doesn't make sense.

Nasa's next project

[edxwelch]

I heard NASA are engaging in a new project far more ambicious than the colonisation of the moon:
http://punchbaby.com/2010/02/nasa-scientists-plan-to-approach-girl-by-2018/

Re:Nasa's next project

[kuzb]

You could at least link directly to the onion instead of giving a linkjacker credit.

Re:Brilliant idea!

[Kral_Blbec]

Errr, the article is about how canceling it is going to cost about as much to finish it. Pretty much all the posts I've read here so far say pretty much the same thing, ie, just finish it.
Yet since I dared mention the great Obama, you pick me to bash. How about this little tidbit from the article.

The agency was careful to point out that the letter "is in no way to be construed as direction to cease [work]." Congress has forbidden NASA from canceling any part of Constellation without its permission, which so far it shows no signs of giving. Indeed, about 30 members of Congress wrote Bolden recently to warn that his efforts to prepare for termination without permission from Congress — including gathering information about closeout costs — could be viewed as illegal.

So really, Obama has no authority to really cancel it. Its just more fingers into a pie that he isn't supposed to be touching anyway.

Assuming....

[m509272]

Assuming this is true, then if they idiots spend $5 billion on alternatives then the idiots really spent $15 billion. That's just beautiful.

New HTML tag needed

[paiute]

and quit letting the government take over health care.

needs a kneejerk /kneejerk tag

Re:Brilliant idea!

[Waffle Iron]

Errr, the article is about how canceling it is going to cost about as much to finish it. Pretty much all the posts I've read here so far say pretty much the same thing, ie, just finish it.

In hindsight, the space shuttle program should have been shut down in the 1970s. Given its astronomical operating costs, even if it had cost 5X as much to shut it down as finish it, we still would have come out way ahead if we had replaced it with a sane launch system.

Since this project is based on recycled shuttle hardware and people, I'm sure it's the exact same situation. Shutting it down now and replacing it with a more cost-effective launch system will save money in the long run, even if it doesn't cost any less right now.

Re:Brilliant idea!

[FleaPlus]

Errr, the article is about how canceling it is going to cost about as much to finish it.

False. The cost of "finishing" Constellation is estimated to be $100-$160 billion dollars from 2010 through 2020 (on top of the $9B or so already spent), at which point it wouldn't have even accomplished a lunar landing yet -- the Apollo-style landing would be in either early 2020s or late 2030s depending on whether you spent closer to the $100B or $160B. Most of these costs are for developing the Ares I and V rockets, and the Orion capsule.

This article is about how the cancellation costs may be higher than the anticipated $2.5B, but it'll still be quite a bit lower than $100-$160 billion.

fair

[DaveGod]

People carrying out plans need to make contractual commitments, otherwise nobody would invest in it (either their money, capital equipment, reputation, education or career). It can seem disgusting to be paying out for things you no longer require, but these guys made investments and plans based on promises and they shouldn't suffer - unduly! - because they lived up to their bargain but the other guy broke his word.

True, they shouldn't be compensated for nothing. They should be paid for work they have done and everything else is to take them to a position neutral to what he would have had if the contract had never taken place.

The question really is on whether the contracts were reasonable in the first place. People entering into contracts tend to be convinced there will be no backing out on their part and therefore are happy to agree to a 100% commitment in return for a 2% price cut. This is where protocol and leadership comes in - people with foresight concerned about risk. But much of the time with any major organisation (government, corporation, whatever) the guy who makes the decisions to commit is actually short sighted - he knows, assumes or at least fears he will lose responsibility for it well before it becomes an issue.

Worse, the detail is being arranged by guys who are aware that their ultimate boss is relatively short term. They are wont to make contracts solid basically to make it as unappealing as possible for the next guy to back out - acting against their employer's best interests in order to entrench their position and secure their own jobs.

Agency risk does not only apply to deliberate action against the interests of the principal, most of the time it's just people acting human.

P.S. In evaluating whether Obama is making the right decision here, it's a fallacy to consider all this money as being wasted. The money was already committed, it's a sunk cost - irrelevant to decisions. The decision today must be based on whether a) the additional money to continue Constellation or b) the additional money to pursue the new plan is better. If you want to discuss this committed money, you're appraising decisions made in the past.

Re:fair

[azrider]

True, they shouldn't be compensated for nothing. They should be paid for work they have done and everything else is to take them to a position neutral to what he would have had if the contract had never taken place.

That includes compensation for not pursuing other projects.

What about saying fuck it?

[markass530]

how many time has the American gov been screwed by contractors? Why not pay back the favor and pull out

Re:What about saying fuck it?

[Warped-Reality]

For the same reason that if you build me a house, I can't pull out halfway through construction and leave you out $50,000?

Dynasoar Was Also Canceled

[RudyHartmann]

Project Dynasoar was nearly complete when they canceled it. It is probably they way we should have been going into LEO. Then we could have started building a nuclear powered VASIMIR. Heck project Orion might have been done by now.

Re:Dynasoar Was Also Canceled

[FleaPlus]

Project Dynasoar was nearly complete when they canceled it. It is probably they way we should have been going into LEO.

Coincidentally, the Air Force is getting ready to launch a vehicle to orbit which could be considered in many ways a spiritual successor to Dyna-Soar. I submitted an article about it yesterday (unfortunately rejected, but that's the way it goes sometimes), and have pasted the text below for the curious:

Air Force Spaceplane Preps For Launch

The US Air Force is currently preparing for the launch of the secretive X-37B OTV-1 (Orbital Test Vehicle 1) spaceplane; NASA had previously dropped the project in 2004 so it could devote more funds to the Constellation project. The reusable spaceplane is set to launch in April on top of a commercial Atlas V rocket, orbit for up to 270 days while testing a number of new technologies, reenter the atmosphere, then land on auto-pilot in California. The X-37 previously conducted drop tests and autonomous landing tests using the Scaled Composites White Knight carrier aircraft.

Re:Dynasoar Was Also Canceled

[Macrat]

Project Dynasoar was nearly complete when they canceled it. It is probably they way we should have been going into LEO.

Coincidentally, the Air Force is getting ready to launch a vehicle to orbit which could be considered in many ways a spiritual successor to Dyna-Soar.

They likely are going to space today already.

How long has it been since the Air Force used the shuttle for a mission? A long time ago.

Re:Dynasoar Was Also Canceled

[DerekLyons]

Project Dynasoar was nearly complete when they canceled it.

And one of the reasons they canceled it was because in the form it was nearly complete in - it wouldn't have worked. The shock wave coming off the nose tended to impinge on the wings, burning the wingtip rudders off. This is one of the reasons the Shuttle 'bellyflops' through reentry rather than flying the entry entirely nose first. (That and it avoids the heavy and complicated jettisonable heatshield the Dyna-Soar required over it's cockpit windows.)
 
Then there is the issue of it's booster, significant work on which had just begun. It has started out just needing a Titan - but by the time is was done it was heavy enough to require uprating the Titan core and adding solid fueled boosters. (Not to mention the huge question of the effects of the massive fins required on the first stage to counteract the aerodynamic effects of the Dyna-Soar and maintain stability during launch.)
 

It is probably they way we should have been going into LEO.

No, no, a thousand times just fucking no. The Dyna-Soar was a prototype of the mistakes NASA would make with the Shuttle just a few years later - trying to leap too far too fast in a single bound coupled with an unwillingness/inability to stop and rethink the design when the numbers started going south.
 
I agree we should have stayed with aerodynamic craft rather than spam-in-a-can, but the way to go was to extend from what we knew (I.E. the X-15) rather than trying to leap from the DC-3 to the Concorde in one fell swoop. We keep trying that in space, and it just doesn't fucking work.

Re:Dynasoar Was Also Canceled

[RudyHartmann]

I didn't mean that in it's form when it was canceled it was perfect. I am aware of some of the same problems that have been brought up. But for I have also heard from many aerospace engineers that putting the craft on the top instead of be strapped right next to the rockets was a far safer launch method. I also agree that the X-15 should have remained a continuing technology. I think the Space Shuttle was a huge cluster-BLEEP designed by a committee of compromisers. We should have kept up the technology and jigs to continue to develop our Saturn boosters.

Re:Dynasoar Was Also Canceled

[RoboRay]

The Dyna-Soar was a prototype of the mistakes NASA would make with the Shuttle just a few years later - trying to leap too far too fast in a single bound

Ok, so let's back up, get back to basics with the old-school, time-tested rockets and capsule techniques that took us to the moon before...

...and cancel that, too.

Re:Dynasoar Was Also Canceled

[DerekLyons]

I didn't mean that in it's form when it was canceled it was perfect. I am aware of some of the same problems that have been brought up.

Yet you failed to mention them, implying that canceling it was some form of a mistake.
 

I have also heard from many aerospace engineers that putting the craft on the top instead of be strapped right next to the rockets was a far safer launch method.

It's safer, but orders of magnitude more complex and expensive and difficult,
 

We should have kept up the technology and jigs to continue to develop our Saturn boosters.

The Saturn V is one of the few boosters to make the Shuttle look like a bargain. The Ib had such abysmal performance that no rational reason exists to continue it's production.
 

I think the Space Shuttle was a huge cluster-BLEEP designed by a committee of compromisers.

  Every engineering project is a huge bundle of compromises.

Re:Dynasoar Was Also Canceled

[lennier]

Not only that, a critter much like Dyna-Soar makes an appearance in the wonderful Apollo-era space thriller, Marooned. Those were the days... Apollo Applications Program, sigh.

Highly recommended just to see a young Gene Hackman as an astronaut gone space crazy.

The problem was the name . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

"Superconducting Super Collider": that just sounds too expensive.

When Congressmen are hunting for some pork for their district, they look for the biggest beast to slaughter. So that there will be enough pork to go around for a group of them. This collider project got their attention, just because of the name.

So my advice to physicists: avoid "super" and "collider" in the name of your project. Call it something like, "mini-micro particle separator." That name will not draw any attention, because it sounds innocuous.

Oh, and the reactions of Alabama's politicos seemed like a giveaway: it just smelled like someone had just stolen their pork.

Unfortunately, Congress is more interested in pork procurement, than science.

We lose.

Again, anything new

[tuomoks]

I'm a little amazed about complains - people voted for these programs (through their politicians), why to complain now? Governments, as anyone else (except of course the banks and car companies - used to be mining, copper, banana, chemicals, etc) are supposed to honor the contracts, or?

Until someone is kept responsible on bad deals / ideas this will go on and on. And today keeping responsible is nicer than it used to be - in old times you lost your head, today it should be money, position, maybe ended with a concrete booths, etc instead of a promotions or votes to make more mistakes?

So - what else is new?

Re:Again, anything new

[inthealpine]

Well said. 'We' are the real idiots than elected the brain dead politicians who drastically change the 'game plan' every 4 to 8 years which only wastes time and money. I mean look at the presidential helicopter program that was canceled. Canceling that program will cost the government more money in the end than if they just followed though with their contracts. When the helicopter has to be replaced it will cost the tax payer more to complete. Not to mention I live in an area where the cancellation of that program alone has removed hundreds (near thousands) of good jobs... That fucking zero gain near trillion dollar stimulus did jack shit except create DC jobs or jobs that last a week and then back to the unemployment line.
You want know why the economy sucks still in the US, it sucks because no one knows what the next failure is going to come out of DC. What stupid tax or policy will come out next that cripples our country and is of no real benefit to anyone.

Rights

[Garrett Fox]

As explained by the likes of John Locke, the idea of fundamental human rights stems from the idea that you are your own sole master -- or in a religious wording, that nobody can claim ownership over you but God. Therefore, if anyone kills you, or enslaves you, or forces you to work for their benefit, they've infringed on this ownership. This idea of life, liberty and property stands in sharp contrast to ideas like a "right to health care", because the modern "rights" necessarily involve using force to violate other people's lives, liberty or property. To grant your right to live -- that is, to not have anyone take your life by force -- all I have to do is not murder you. To grant your supposed right to health care, I have to work and let you take the product of my labor by force. Meaning that you claim partial ownership over my labor and my thoughts, independent of the practical argument that we must tax people to protect their rights against each other's aggression. To turn a "right to life" into a "right to take anything you need to live" has the same problem of innately violating other people's rights.

The fact that Americans are now divided by whether they accept what I (and our Founders) said is why we might, unfortunately, be headed for civil war.

Re:Rights

[witherstaff]

Sadly the constitutionalists and libertarians are considered fringe political groups. So many people bitch about the direction of the government from both parties but they keep voting for the same idiots. They toss out buzzwords during campaign season and one issue voters or lifelong party members stand by their party regardless of anything the person may actually stand for. Or whose pocket they are in.

As to civil war people seem way too apathetic to care to even vote most of the time. Give people American Idol and they could care less about politics. Of course if the 20% real unemployment figures stick around long enough, or the federal spending actually kills the dollar, and people can't afford to watch American Idol, then people may finally get upset and take a real interest in politics.

Reckless decision makers

[amightywind]

Expensive? Difficult? Since when did these ever dissuade the reckless decision makers in this Whitehouse? I am quite confident when Falcon 9 crashes in the Atlantic next month that the congress will take control of NASA and reinstate Constellation.

Get a clue

[amightywind]

The X-37 is a terrific alternative to Orion - if we want to launch midgets. Get a clue.

Re:Get a clue

[FleaPlus]

The X-37 is a terrific alternative to Orion - if we want to launch midgets. Get a clue.

Who said anything about replacing Orion with the X-37? It's a technology testbed, not an operational crewed spacecraft.

Re:Brilliant idea!

[lgw]

In hindsight, the space shuttle program should have been shut down in the 1970s. Given its astronomical operating costs, even if it had cost 5X as much to shut it down as finish it, we still would have come out way ahead if we had replaced it with a sane launch system.

Since this project is based on recycled shuttle hardware and people, I'm sure it's the exact same situation. Shutting it down now and replacing it with a more cost-effective launch system will save money in the long run, even if it doesn't cost any less right now.

That's the first coherent arguement I've read in this whole thread. Maybe we can have a sensible discussion.

There are two kinds of engineering: "rocket science", filled with cost-plus contracts and parts delivered exactly to spec, which pushes the limits of technology, and "real life", where off-the-shelf parts require serious engineering work just to make up for the fact that the vendor is a lying bastard and none of the parts are within tolerance, but you have to make it work anyway. Most engineers do the "real life" version, because the "rocket science" version is 10x as expensive.

It seems likely that getting a payload into orbit can now be done with "real life" engineering, especially if you put the best and the brightest on it. (But we don't know this for a fact yet.) The thing is, "rocket science" is far more fun, and a great many engineers working in the NASA ecology accept sub-par pay just for that reason, and really aren't interested in doing mundane engineering instead (especially without a pay raise).

I can't see how NASA could make the needed cultural change. Given that, I don't see why anyone would expect the next attempt to be any better or cheaper than Constellation. Yes, it sucks, but paying a huge sum to shut it down, then replace it with a new progam that sucks just as much after the next presidential election? I'm not seeing the wisdom here.

What the article doesn't say

[laing]

Pretty much any government contract can be canceled on a moment's notice. Yes, there is usually a penalty and some associated 'closeout' costs but just because there is a contract, it doesn't mean there is an obligation to continue the work. or pay the contract in full.

As an aside, I almost feel ashamed to be an American right now since after this year, we will no longer have ANY manned space flight capability. The Russians, Chinese, and even the Indian's have active manned space flight programs but the United States of America does not.

WTF?

You are confused

[nido]

The graph was on the first page of results for the search term I used - 'federal budget graph', iirc. I agree that it's misleading - where are the figures for off-budget items?

There is no difference between most democrats and republican. They tow the party line and beat their drums about change, but the railroad tracks still go in the same direction.

There are two exceptions (and maybe a few others): Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. The rest are clueless, stupid, or deluded with 'false power' (that is, they think they're a bull, but they really just get led around by the party-installed nose ring).

I choose to get off the train, and go my own way.

Re:You are confused

[laing]

If when you say there is no difference between Democrats & Republicans, you mean that they are all crooks, then I agree with you. There are differences between the party platforms however. Republicans (claim they) are for smaller government and less spending. Democrats make no such claim.

Re:Your chart lies

[paiute]

The "mandatory spending" is only mandatory because of the !@&#(* spending bills that REQUIRE certain monies to be spent on certain things.

So...mandatory spending is only mandatory because it is mandated?

Re:Your chart lies

[badasscat]

What else would you expect from the New York Times? The chart is highly misleading.

The "mandatory spending" is only mandatory because of the !@&#(* spending bills that REQUIRE certain monies to be spent on certain things.

Uh, yes? In what way is this misleading?

I realize that during the Bush years, Republicans didn't think laws were much more than general guidelines. But we're back in the real world now, buddy.

Our (Democrat Party controlled) government has been spending like a drunken sailor with no regard whatsoever how to come up with the funds to meet our spending obligations. Democrats will typically point to the Bush administration and say "Look at what he spent!". Does one irresponsible act warrant another?

When eight years of deficit spending got us into this mess, it's going to take about that long to get us back out of it.

Were you not listening when some of us were saying it's going to take 20 years to undo the damage Bush was doing to this country during his two terms in office? He took a surplus and turned it into the largest deficits this country has ever seen. And he did it during economic prosperity. How do you expect Obama to take a recession he inherited and turn that deficit spending around in a year?

The damage Bush did is going to take a long, long time to recover from. This should not be news to anyone.

Double Entendre? :)

[orichter]

I love the double ententre implied in your statement. We've definitely been celebrating mediocrity since dollar year. I'm not sure which dollar year you are referring to, but whenever big dollars are in play, mediocrity seems to follow :)

Re:Your chart lies

[laing]

Funny how my post above was modded flamebait and yours is +3 interesting.

Does Bush's out-of-control spending justify Obama ramping spending up by an order of magnitude?

If when you talk about "the damage Bush did", you are referring to the growth of entitlement programs like free prescription drugs for seniors, then I agree with you.