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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.
dont we have bigger issues than who has the biggest space penis??
But we have to do it. How else will we have money in the budget to bail out bankers and pay for their billion dollar bonuses?
What do we gain from manned space flight that we wouldn't gain, in a far cheaper way, from unmanned missions?
...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.
a media event!
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
We haven't had a decent manned space plan. Galileo, Cassini, Spirit & Opportunity, and plenty others worked out very well.
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Colonization of other worlds is clearly impossible without manned flight.
Colonization of other worlds (which ones did you have in mind, by the way?) is clearly impossible without technologies that don't exist on Earth right now and won't exist for at least another few decades. Spending many billions of dollars on chemical rockets isn't going to get the job done.
Killing NASA by increasing its budget certainly counts as change though. Most of the earlier presidents focused on improving NASA by decreasing its budget.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
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.
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All of *my* eggs will always be in one basket. It does me no damn good to have someone walking around on another planet. No, as cool as it is (and yes, it's very cool) it's a *massive* waste of money that could be redirected toward, oh, I don't know, science education, basic research grants, 10-times as many unmanned flights. Besides, the dangers inherent in manned flight hold us back from trying things. I mean, look at our early Mars record: we kept throwing things at Mars and only a few landed nicely. Eventually, we hit a couple jackpots with the current rovers. Prestige? Bullshit! Let's do some *real* science, damn it!!
That's funny, if we send humans to Mars that could be all the time they have to spend. Robots just need sunlight, we humans need much more logistical support. Robots also just need one way tickets.
Humans in space? Colonies on other worlds? Ending the cosmic equivalent of having all of our eggs in one basket? We're one natural disaster away from complete annhilation of our race. I'd kinda like to have at least a few people offworld just in case.
And we still would be if all we did was build a giant rocket that could, at best, send a handful of people to the moon or eventually Mars.
The technologies the new plan is set to develop much more directly tackle the issue of humans surviving -- not just visiting long enough to plant a flag, but actually surviving -- than Constellation does. Constellation does absolutely nothing but let us put more boot prints on the moon. Yay. When we finally decide to send astronauts to Mars, there should already be robotically assembled habitats and a factory processing ice for oxygen and fuel waiting for them. We should have everything in place so the astronauts can stay on Mars for a year, or even more. It should be the foundation for a permanent settlement on Mars.
If you're serious about this "eggs in one basket" problem, and are serious about humans permanently occupying other planets, then you should be all for the new NASA plan like Buzz Aldrin is. He wants a permanent base on Mars, not a boot-and-flag mission.
Manned missions for their own sake, or to try to recapture lost glory by repeating what we've already done, is just wankery.
All this talk of "Unmanned missions are just as good!" is pretty unconvincing when reports come back that the latest rover mission may be failing because it's stuck on a 3 inch rock and can't wiggle it's way off . . .
Yeah, only 6 years of nearly continuous operation on a budget that is comparable to a manned Low Earth Orbit mission, and vastly less than any manned mission to Mars would be, and where even the stuck rover can still perform useful science, surely shows how unconvincing the argument for robotic missions is.
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