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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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: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.

"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.")?

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

[mdwh2]

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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: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.

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"?

[Logic and Reason]

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

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"?

[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"?

[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"?

[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.

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: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: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: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.

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: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.

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.

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.