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Armstrong, Cernan Testify Against Obama Space Plan
MarkWhittington submitted a story about the first man to walk on the moon testifying yesterday that President Barack Obama's plans to revamp the human space program would cede America's longtime leadership in space to other nations.
Of all the things that Obama is doing, am I the only one who feels that him killing NASA really struck a nerve? It's literally the only thing he's done that made my blood boil.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
dont we have bigger issues than who has the biggest space penis??
Buzz Aldrin disagrees.
Really, so what if it does? It's time to scale back government's involvement in space. Forcing people to pay for something should be seen as a temporary crutch, not a permanent solution. The permanent solution arises when people start to volunteer their money for these things, and if you look around, that's exactly what's starting to happen.
...which has been overambitious and underfunded.
We haven't had a decent space plan since getting to the moon. We have had some lofty goals, but never proper commitment or funding. We've also had changing directions every administration or so.
Perhaps the worst thing about Obama's plan is that it is a little more in line with reality instead of wishes?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
We haven't had a decent manned space plan. Galileo, Cassini, Spirit & Opportunity, and plenty others worked out very well.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I really hope your being satirical.
Apparently this is a troll because someone disagrees with you.
+1 Inconvenient Truth, IMO.
Sent from your iPad.
Where in the Constitution is Congress granted the power to create and fund an organization such as NASA? I challenge you who disagree with me to quote the section that grants them such power
For those who are unaware, the Constitution gives very limited and specific rights to Congress.
Buzz Aldrin disagrees
Neil Armstrong Vs. Buzz Aldrin Over Obama's Space Plans
CBSNews URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20002451-503544.html
Who do you think would win in a fight, Buzz Ald(I won't even finish the question)
*(sound stage)
(ducks)
No seriously if somebody else sends a man to the moon and they find no evidence of us being there.... just hypothetically... what would that mean to the U.S. and to the world?
What is it with this administration that everyone who disagrees is a racist? Was it not Hillary Clinton who said that disagreement is a fundamental principal of a democracy?
Unfortunately racism is alive and well in the USA. But to call everyone who disagrees with you a racist is to cheapen the entire civil rights movement.
asperger much?
Armstrong has a financial interest in keeping Ares alive.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Like any bureaucracy, NASA existed only as long as it pleased its political leaders. The result is a space agency that's known for stunts.
Put a man in orbit. First! {Grab genitalia and grunt here).
Put a man on the moon. First! (Grunt repeatedly here).
Seriously, if NASA's main missions now were spaced based power, Zero G industries, low-grav hospitals, a satellite based internet, a space based mirror climate control system, or any of *thousands* of practical, profitable, useful projects, would we even be having this discussion?
Instead, NASA is all about Texas and Florida political pork, controlled by politicians and shaped to *their* ends. Market based solutions, as bad as they are, would still be better than techno-military welfare that we can't afford.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Come on, what is the value of this 'space leadership' bullshit? If he is talking about military applications, the United States and Soviet Union looked into this stuff for a long time. As for actual weapons, it is cheaper to use a semi ballistic missiles. It is of military value to be able to shoot down satelites, which the missile defense program has already demonstrated/could be made better. As for science, robots, with the help of humans on earth, is much cheaper, albeit slower.
I think Obama did the right thing by hurting a large portion of the manned space program.
Constellation would have done more to kill NASA than anything in Obama's new plan. Constellation was already over budget and behind schedule. If a fully developed Ares rocket had been dropped in NASA's lap, it wouldn't have been able to afford to operate it. So what do you think the next admin would do with NASA if it had been allowed to continue, accumulating delays and going further and further over budget?
The new plan is the best chance NASA has had in a long time to get back on its feet and stop languishing in LEO. Developing the higher technology needed to go beyond LEO and the moon is what NASA should be concentrating on. Let commercial companies deliver stuff to ISS and LEO.
(One a side note, it seems to me that almost everyone who hates Obama's plan forgets that there would have been just as long, if not longer, gap in US human spaceflight ability WITH constellation. We're not exactly losing a whole lot by giving commercial companies time to produce their human ferrying ability, as opposed to giving NASA time to work on Ares-1)
With NASA buying rides at a few tens of millions each vs. billion+ per launch there will be a lot more money for accomplishing things besides putting stuff into orbit on a rocket with a NASA logo on it.
So I'm all for the new plan. My biggest worry is that congress will screw up the whole thing trying to protect their pork.
The only reason for manned flight is to get to a place worth colonizing. The only place worth colonizing is Mars. All other missions can be done better, cheaper, faster, with robotic craft. So Obama has it exactly right. There is no reason to go back to the moon (Bush just wanted to use it as a military base and didn't even make progress with that). Armstrong is an old guy who was trained as an engineer and made one flight that put him in the history books. That doesn't mean that he knows much about the long-term space policies we should follow. And you notice that he is still thinking of space as a playing field for international competition rather than cooperation. This is the '60s talking.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
As I came back from lunch today, I saw a single retiree-looking gentleman standing on the corner of Saturn and NASA Rd. 1 with a sign protesting the Obama plan. That's here at JSC, home of the astronauts.
I dunno, maybe more people will join him once work lets out. As someone who works in this industry, I still remain on the record saying that the current plan is the best one NASA has had since the Shuttle was a dream given form*.
* Not quite the form it should have been, though.
[citation needed]
The manned space program has gained us what, exactly? The strongest argument that the first man on the moon can make is that we might lose our precious bragging rights. I say good riddance to a bad program. Unmanned missions are far less expensive and vastly more useful in obtaining the data we might need. We only need to send men into space to repair the things we sent there, and the fact we sent them there so we wouldn't have to go there is the epitome of irony.
The parent may be a bit over the top but really why do we care what Neil Armstrong thinks? Yes he is a celebrity but has he ever run NASA? A government? Yeah didn't think so. So when a duly elected politician actually tries govern this guy comes out of the wood work and we are expected to take his opinion as meaningful? I am having awful recollections of Jerry Seinfeld trying to get me to trust Windows during this whole thing. We can raise taxes to 100% of income and still have to slash the budget or slash the budget to just Defense, Social Security and Medicare and still have to raise taxes but we quibble when someone gets half a clue starts cutting failing programs (NASA's manned space flight program was significantly over budget and severely behind schedule was it not?). NASA does much more than manned space flight and our government does much more than NASA... really get the bigger picture and start letting failing programs fail.
NASA is insignificant compared things he has done and not done.
DADT is still the law of the land.
We poured even more people into Afghanistan
We still have Guatanamo Bay
We have deficit spending that is simply unbelievable, its beyond stupid now
We sitting around watching Iran build the bomb all the while apologizing to them and also ignoring them slaughtering their people
We have a Justice Department who wants to not to read Miranda rights to people it calls terrorist.
Do I need to go on?
Hell, NASA is a rounding error in our budgets. It would be paid for in one Senator's pork many times over.
Damn, no wonder this guy got in, people are stupid
and this all Obama has done to make your blood boil, damn your a great little sheep.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
it makes no sense to send people into space... until we know of someplace we can permanently stay.
robots are faster, more accurate, more durable, can stay out there virtually indefinitely, and are 3-20 orders of magnitude cheaper.
from a scientific perspective, low-earth-orbit (the only place we're sending people) just isn't that interesting. virtually all space-related scientific data comes from unmanned probes and robots.
until we're talking about settling another planet/moon, people in space are just tourists. so why is the government funding it?
http://kered.org
Was it not Hillary Clinton who said that disagreement is a fundamental principal of a democracy?
You didn't get the latest memo, did you? Dissent is only patriotic when the other party is running things. Once your party seizes all the levers of power, that same dissent becomes un-american and grassroots opposition movements are nothing more than racist astroturfing operations.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Look guys, do you know that the Government will spend $1.60 per dollar it takes in in revenue this year? That works out on a $4 Trillion-some budget to be ~$1.4 Trillion dollars of additional debt.
The future?
$1 Trillion each year in the red. Nevermind the unfunded liabilities of medicare and medicaid.
That means:
You have to CUT! lots of spending has to be cut! If you want those programs to go ahead regardless, then send in a cheque and help them fund it! Just my opinion, Regards
While these men are heroes, I find it difficult to reason their logic. NASA has not been able to produce a successful launcher since the days of Apollo. Apollo was executed because it was driven by cold war politics - not science and exploration. In today's world, NASA simply does not have the budget or political motivation to execute an Apollo style program.
Furthermore, I would argue the United States government has never developed a "successful" launcher. I define 'success' as a launcher places a significant payload into orbit, reliably, safely, and is most importantly *financially sustainable*
Armstrong, Cernan, and Lovell have ignored the financial question in their criticism of Obama's new budget.
I believe Obama's budget is a truly visionary budget for NASA - for the single reason that it focuses on launcher cost reduction. Market competition (even if spurred with government incentives) is the only way to lower costs barring the development of some fantastically new technology.
And besides, without a significantly lower cost to orbit, none of our collective spare-faring dreams will become a reality.
Did anyone think to ask him under oath if he actually walked on the moon? Just sayin ...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Obama should looking into his tax records and see if there is anything in there to shut him up. You know if he is crazy enough to disagree with Obama that he MUST be up to something.
He doesn't have tax records, they agreed to never to make them pay taxes again after saving the planet from that huge asteroid.
him killing NASA really struck a nerve
Except that he isn't killing NASA. If you RTFA you'll see that his proposal is for NASA to go to Mars, and get out of the business of low-earth lifting.
In other words, he is supporting the outsourcing of some of what NASA currently does. Why his predecessor didn't propose the same is beyond me.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Get the unmanned stuff right, get the cost down, innovation up, and then human flight might make more sense... Or, let the moon be the Wild West, and let commercial interests drive that.
Armstrong and the other astronauts got to walk on the moon. What do I get for billions of dollars thrown at more human spacetravel? Nothing.
I'll take the robots and the science instead, please.
than into the pockets of the already wealthy.
It's just sad to see all the money spent on "saving the economy" going to waste while we could've used it for so many better things.
We are all God's parents.
Will Obama's "Commercial" Human Space Program Need a Bail-out Bigger than GM?
May 13, 2010 (LPAC)—As the Congress is forced to try to rally itself to make decisions on the future of human spaceflight, Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan told members of the Senate Committee on Commerce Tuesday afternoon, that NASA, itself, has little confidence that the crazy plan to have private companies ferrying American astronauts to low Earth orbit, will succeed.
Cernan and Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong, who also testified, were briefed, for two hours last week, by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on the Administration's "plan" to kill NASA's Constellation program. Cernan said that Bolden expressed his concern that the private companies "might have to be subsidized" by NASA until they succeed. According to Cernan's account, which he said was based on notes he took during the conversation, Bolden said it "may be a bail-out like GM or Chrysler — it may be the largest bail-out of all time," when the companies run into difficulties and out of money.
Cernan said that, based on his own experience, the program for private enterprises to safely launch astronauts into space within five years, and more cheaply than NASA can do, will, in fact take a decade, and cost two to three times as much as they predict." He told the Committee that there will be "unplanned delays, costing unallocated billions of dollars." He cited a study by the Aerospace Corporation, which projected that it would cost $10-12 billion, not the $6 billion the White House is allocating, to develop, test, and fly a new crew vehicle. And these costs do not include the necessary infrastructure, Cernan explained, including simulators to train the crew, changes needed to Mission Control in Houston, or the ships and command for sea-based rescue required for the returning craft.
His recommendation: stretch out and add to the Shuttle flights, to close the gap "on the front end," and "knock three, four, five years" off developing Orion, to close the gap from the "back end." Neil Armstrong added that he saw no reason not to continue to fly the Shuttle, and that since the design for Constellation was optimized for safety, the Constellation vehicles should be completed. Neither astronaut saw any value in Obama's offer to develop an "Orion lite" version, that would be taken to the station unmanned and just used for emergency escape. The Russians already provide that very well, with the Soyuz, they both pointed out.
Leaving aside embarrassingly idiotic queries from chairman Rockefeller (D-WV), and lies and obfuscation by greenie "science" advisor John Holdren, there was no defense of, but much skepticism concerning, wrecking the nation's manned exploration program.
from astar: It is fun that Holdren appears in the climategate emails urging on Jones that everyone must be "true believers" in global warming. No one wants to say any more that Jones is an attractive sort. But it is interesting to think he might have once been in fact, as opposed to perception, respectable. And then you think about what happened and you consider what politicians (oops, respectable scientists) like Holdren might have done to his environment in the past. And now you get to see something similar going on with respect to NASA maybe. And even some of the same players.
Like appointing intellectual property lobbyiests and lawyers to high-ranking positions in the Department of Defense, and supporting that anti-gun treaty.
Call me a radical if you like, but I believe in sticking to principals, not parties. I didn't like the Patriot Act under Bush. I dislike it even more under Obama. And this concept of no fundamental right to privacy of location? Starting to sound like Nixon and J Edgar Hoover spying to me. And this modification of Miranda rights for US Citizens? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Where is the ACLU?
the short sited ness of your govt
and by then it will be too late
Effective Fusion generators first, then space travel.
Hell it turns out the moon is rich in Helium-3 which makes for ideal fuel for fusion reactors, so I suppose if we figure out fusion we'll have to go to the moon.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
>racists
Troll.
I am all for the manned program, but the Bush plan was a guaranteed trip to Nowhere. Science needs to have a role in the planning to achieve deep impact results. A quick survey: The Journal Nature has 32 articles in 2009 from NASA: not one is from the International Space Station (but a good number from the Hubble Space Telescope). This says it all. If we have a meaningful, science focused manned program we will rejuvenate NASA like never before. And that means going somewhere. It means newer and better robots to work hand in hand with the astronauts. People had their livers in a quiver when we found out that the moon was not totally dry but is simply as dry as a bone. Come on man! Get out to the icy asteroid zone and get me some samples. There's this entire branch of science called organic chemistry that is just starved for data and it's going to take a bunch of deep space manned missions to do it! The Augestine/Obama plan is the one to get us there.
On the one hand, yeah, they're right. We're losing our status as a front-runner in space tech. I think we need a strong manned space program.
But on the other hand, if we're going to do it, we need to do it right and give NASA the proper funding to do it right. If we're instead going to continue to bumblefuck our way through it with yet another half-assed woefully underfunded attempt, why waste even that much money?
We need to either lead, or bow our heads in shame and get the fuck out entirely. Anything else is a waste of money. I grew up during the space program (born shortly after Shepard's Mercury launch) and think space is where mankind needs to be looking. But I'm not interested in seeing another half-assed shuttle project where we create the shuttle, and then have to create the space station so the shuttle has something to do. Go big, or go home.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Who cares about the civil rights movement? We have here the sharpest weapon available to absolutely kill the right, and you don't want us to use it?
It would be far more damaging for the civil rights movement if Bush and his thugs were to return to power. We have the first black president in history and a chance to put an end to republicans forever! Being a racist is nearly as bad as being a pedophile, and we need to use that! It's a slam dunk! By all means, call them racists! Everyone who disagrees is a racist! Everyone who questions is a racist! Keep it up until we are all free! THEN we can worry about the small details. Until then, we need to take action by any means available while we still can!
The average American believes NASA is a quarter of the US budget and a symbol of excessive government spending.
He used to sit on the board of Thiokol after the Challenger incident. (source)
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a kid
Have you lived all your life in your mom's basement? What do you gain from leaving your room that you wouldn't gain, in a far cheaper way, from ordering everything delivered to you?
Need a job? Telecommute. Need exercise? Order a treadmill. Need vacations? Watch TV. You don't need to travel, that's what the National Geographic channel is for.
If you want to be completely practical, most of the things we do aren't really necessary. But our species seem to have this intrinsic need to get beyond our reality, to dream of things that have never been done. That's why space flight exists.
The GP was a troll, crafting a fake "liberal" outrage in order to evoke precisely your emotional response. Congratulations, you and the person who modded you insightful bought it hook, line and sinker. You need to stop watching Fox News because this administration has not once called anyone who disagrees with it a racist. Some people have actually said a lot of the criticism of the adminstration is racist in origin, but I can't see how you seem to think it's fair to criticize the adminstration for something other people said. The only person I can recall that called anybody a racist is Glenn Beck.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Good point - I'll have to agree with you on that one.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Yeah I was going to say.. 'cedeing defeat'.. over the moon?? We haven't been there in most people here's lifetime! Obama was 11 the last time we had someone on the moon.
Reading some of the post's It looks like most agree to giving up hope on human space travel. How far we've fallen. With Obama's new space agenda, his desire to have private companies take over human space launches, at least to orbit, is admirable. The thing is right now, there is no private company who has launched a single person into orbit. True my favorite, SpaceX, has a launcher and a proposed manned spacecraft, but it has not been tested or launched. If it fails, meaning huge costs to SpaceX and possible liabilities meaning they could easily be bankrupted setting us back years. I have to agree this isn't the way to go.
I think manned space exploration is a waste of money right now. We need to develop better propulsion systems first and work on space biology, and neither of those is going to be advanced cost-effectively by shooting people into space.
Projects like the Mars rover and Cassini have yielded enormous amounts of material. Let's blanket the moon, Mars, Titan, and asteroids with rovers and automated labs. Let's send gliders to Venus and the gas giants. Let's watch it all in HD stereo, create virtual worlds that allow 3D walkthroughs, etc.
Let's give schools, universities, and anybody who wants to pay a little money telepresence on the moon. Let's develop the robotic technology to prepare a moon base, and the propulsion technology to get to the outer planets fast.
In a few decades, manned exploration will be easy. But if we make it our focus now, all the science and engineering that we should be doing will be put on hold and we'll end up with the same situation that we have been in for the last half century: we may get a man to Mars, but we won't be able to do it again for a long time.
Not a troll at all. I share others' fear at the loss of manned spaceflight. But having watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" not long before watching the moon landing at age 13, I'm also saddened that there's no orbiting Hilton, no Clavius Base, or any of the really neat stuff.
What I read out of Obama's plan is that after 50 years, the task of getting stuff into LEO ought to be something mundane and well within the realm of private enterprise. The fact that we're still stalled with LEO still a major task this much later is a clear sign that we haven't been progressing well. It seems that there are perpetual NASA critics, no matter what they do. I remember seeing posts on Usenet in years past that NASA is killing the private spaceflight business by continuing to develop LEO capability. We've switched directions how many times in the past 40 years, and still gotten nearly nowhere. Let's see what happens when we try fostering private enterprise. The pessimist in me says private space launch will just start making it when some future administration changes mission again, putting NASA directly in competition with them.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Space exploration of the kind necessary to figure out where we're going to go when our Sun dies (or some other pre-supernova catastrophic event) is going to be a global effort anyway. Let other countries spend enormous amounts of their GDP on space R & D for a while. I'm not advocating getting rid of NASA or anything drastic, I just don't think that putting billions into a program just so we're "the leader" is a tad egotistical at a time when there are other more important things we could be NOT spending money on. Yes, the space program is necessary for technological breakthroughs and advancements, but let's not get our panties in a bunch if Japan, Russia, or China decide they want to outspend us for a while. It's going to ultimately take the United States involvement to carry out any real major manned missions. Let some other countries do some of the heavy lifting for a while.
Since he hates Obama so much it is likely he likes to Tea-Bag.
Anyone want to join me in burning VHS and DVD's of the first moon landing?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I have to agree here.
The NASA Space program has always suffered from having champagne tastes and a beer budget.
Compile that with design changes forced on them by the DOD, NSA, CIA, and congress and it is a wonder how NASA gets anything done.
A good example is in the 90’s when we had 2 competing programs for replacing the shuttle.
NASA chose wisely for science and moving us forward and poorly for congressional budget constraints.
(The Lockheed Martin X-33 VentureStar vs The McDonnell Douglas DC-X, Delta Clipper)
Now almost 15 years later all we got is a third shuttle replacement program killed off.
So yes love or hate Obama he is trying to move NASA forward with what little budget congress will approve for them.
And we all know who picked up the clipper ball after NASA dropped it.
TeTalon
You are either a part of the problem, or a part of the solution, which are you.
From his 2010 State of the Union Address.
If you look at these two quotes from Mr. Obama you would think he would want us in first place! Leading the world in the greatest frontier left. Our space program is a key driver for science and it what builds American innovation!
"You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China's not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany's not waiting. India's not waiting. These nations aren't standing still. These nations aren't playing for second place. They're putting more emphasis on math and science. They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They are making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.
Well I do not accept second-place for the United States of America. As hard as it may be, as uncomfortable and contentious as the debates may be, it's time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth."
__
"Next, we need to encourage American innovation. Last year, we made the largest investment in basic research funding in history – an investment that could lead to the world's cheapest solar cells or treatment that kills cancer cells but leaves healthy ones untouched. And no area is more ripe for such innovation than energy. You can see the results of last year's investment in clean energy – in the North Carolina company that will create 1200 jobs nationwide helping to make advanced batteries; or in the California business that will put 1,000 people to work making solar panels. "
I beg to differ
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186566/
(Space Cowboys)
We haven't had a decent manned space plan. Galileo, Cassini, Spirit & Opportunity, and plenty others worked out very well.
This is really the crucial point. We have done some first rate science without having any meat on board, and in most cases, we couldn't have done it with meat on board because meat is just not tough enough to do the job, and launching the necessary equipment to keep meat alive in space for years at a time is prohibitively expensive, and meat wouldn't serve any actual practical purpose in most cases.
Mind you, I am an enthusiastic supporter of manned spaceflight, but let's be reasonable and make sure we're putting people into space because we need them to do specific jobs that machines can't do, not just because it's cool to put people in space. All of the proposals for manned spaceflight I've seen in recent years start with the unquestioned and unsupported assumption that putting meat in space is a good thing. Seldom ever does anyone start by saying that accomplishing X would be a good and useful thing, and X requires a human presence in space, which probably shouldn't be surprising, since there isn't actually much of anything we need a human presence to accomplish right now.
The bottom line is that there is no end of productive scientific projects we could pursue with robots for a fraction of the cost of a handful of much less productive manned projects. Moreover, the more we learn about the solar system through robotic probes, the more likely we are to discover actual reasons for a manned presence in space.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
because this administration has not once called anyone who disagrees with it a racist
So what? Their supporters in the Congress and the pundit-sphere have. That was enough for people to condemn GWB when he was in office, why not BHO?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"He used to"
Key words. K thanks.
"The only reason for manned flight is to get to a place worth colonizing."
Though I'm a big critic of Obama, I'm sympathetic to a lot of his new program, and I simply thought Constellation was a waste, but not for the same reasons as you. I very much disagree with your statement above. Sometimes, as corny as this sounds, the reason for doing something is simply to fulfill the human spirt. "Because it's there" is as good a description of any for this kind of philosophy.
What scientific or commercial benefits do you get from having men climb to the top of Mt. Everest? None. You can't live there or colonize it, and if you were simply scientifically curious, you could have air-dropped insruments there from high altitude. But getting to the top is still important to us, it says something about us. Animals don't do "because it's there". Only men do. It's one of the truly heroic things about being human.
So I opposed Constellation simply because "eh, been there, done that". We weren't going to do anything different this time, or build a base and stay, so it was just a nostalgia trip. I oppose a trip to Mars now only because it's virtually impossible at this point. "Because it's there" is good. Tilting at windmills is not. One day we'll be able to go to Mars, but we're nowhere near that right now. Still, you can't just sit back and hand it all to the robots. To hell with that. Efficient science? Yes. Heroic? No. We need heroism. We need feats. It inspires us. It makes us better. And more importantly, people follow heroes. No one follows the safe, orderly manager that pooh-pooh's all risk. That way lays insignificance and cultural death. We put guys like that in charge of warehouses and HR. We put them in nice, boring bureaucracies. We follow the daring guys. They become the leaders. People want heroism and frontiers. People need them.
So, once again, let me advocate a manned trip that hasn't been done, but can feasibly be done with recent levels of technology; a manned trip to a large asteroid. Why? Because it's there.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"Are there people out there who don't like me because of race? I'm sure there are. That's not the overriding issue here,"
does not equal
"obama says criticism is racist"
Your not seriously saying that the KKK only disagrees with his policies and not some... physical aspects of his person, are you?
The worst thing about Obama's 'plan' is that it isn't actually a plan. It isn't actually much of anything in fact. It can be usefully summed up as: "cancel some stuff that many people wanted to cancel anyhow, maintain the status quo on some other stuff, fund a few minor programs without real goals or schedules, promise something for everyone a few years down the road".
Seriously, everyone is treating this 'plan' with great fanfare - but the Emperor has no clothes.
Consolidation of military and civilian programs is a good idea. The military will never declassify boron fusion tech for airliner travel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP5JgG1-0jg
What they actually have, and what they are willing to share with the current president are two completely different things.
Necessity and Incentives Opening the Space Frontier
Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Space
by James Bowery, Chairman, Coalition for Science and Commerce
July 31, 1991
Mr. Chairman and Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee:
I am James Bowery, Chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to address the subcommittee on the critical and historic topic of commercial incentives to open the space frontier.
The Coalition for Science and Commerce is a grassroots network of citizen activists supporting greater public funding for diversified scientific research and greater private funding for proprietary technology and services. We believe these are mutually reinforcing policies which have been violated to the detriment of civilization. We believe in the constitutional provision of patents of invention and that the principles of free enterprise pertain to intellectual property. We therefore see technology development as a private sector responsibility. We also recognize that scientific knowledge is our common heritage and is therefore a proper function of government. We oppose government programs that remove procurement authority from scientists, supposedly in service of them. Rather we support the inclusion, on a per-grant basis, of all funding needed to purchase the use of needed goods and services, thereby creating a scientist-driven market for commercial high technology and services. We also oppose government subsidy of technology development. Rather we support legislation and policies that motivate the intelligent investment of private risk capital in the creation of commercially viable intellectual property.
In 1990, after a 3 year effort with Congressman Ron Packard (CA) and a bipartisan team of Congressional leaders, we succeeded in passing the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, a law which requires NASA to procure launch services in a commercially reasonable manner from the private sector. The lobbying effort for this legislation came totally from taxpaying citizens acting in their home districts without a direct financial stake -- the kind of political intended by our country's founders, but now rarely seen in America.
We ask citizens who work with us for the most valuable thing they can contribute: The voluntary and targeted investment of time, energy and resources in specific issues and positions which they support as taxpaying citizens of the United States. There is no collective action, no slush-fund and no bureaucracy within the Coalition: Only citizens encouraging each other to make the necessary sacrifices to participate in the political process, which is their birthright and duty as Americans. We are working to give interested taxpayers a voice that can be heard above the din of lobbyists who seek ever increasing government funding for their clients.
Introduction
Americans need a frontier, not a program.
Incentives open frontiers, not plans.
If this Subcommittee hears no other message through the barrage of studies, projections and policy recommendations, it must hear this message. A reformed space policy focused on opening the space frontier through commercial incentives will make all the difference to our future as a world, a nation and as individuals.
Americans Need a Frontier
When Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, we won the "space race" against the Soviets and entered two decades of diminished expectations.
The Apollo program elicited something deep within Americans. Something almost primal. Apollo was President Kennedy's "New Frontier." But when Americans found it was terminated as nothing more than a Cold War contest, we felt betrayed in ways we are still unable to articulate -- betrayed right down to our pioneering souls. The result is that Americans will never again truly believe in government space programs and plans.
Without a frontier, for the past two decades, Americans have operated under the inevitable conclusion that land, raw materi
Seastead this.
The USA does not, has not, and likely never will have the 'leadership' position in space exploration.
This is carefully managed propaganda by the US government. The term 'won the space race' was redefined in the US to mean 'first man on the moon'. Ignoring, other milestones like 'first satellite in orbit', 'first man in space', 'first probe on the moon' etc
Now they are stuck with having to hitch-hike rides with the Russian's to get to the ISS, and getting the Eurpoean's to launch their satellites.
It amuses me how much the US public has bought into this cold war propaganda.
PS 'America' is not a country
So, Mr Armstrong, are you against this because we have made so much progress in the past 20 years?