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Senators Demand NASA Continue Spending On Ares
FleaPlus writes "Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL and ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee handling NASA funding) and Robert Bennett (R-UT) have added an amendment onto an emergency spending bill for military operations in Afghanistan, reiterating that NASA must continue spending its funds on the Constellation program, particularly the medium-lift Ares I rocket. Alabama and Utah have strong ties to Ares/Constellation contractors, and both senators are opposed to the new direction for NASA, with Shelby describing it as a 'death march' for US spaceflight and criticizing the emphasis on commercial rockets."
And this is why the US is such trouble. When politicians are eagerly representing a companies views rather than the country.
Budget be damned! Hold funding for the troops hostage to a steaming helping of pork. I thought Republicans where supposed to support the troops and be against deficit spending.
These actions speak louder than words, and I hope the voters are listening this November.
Yes they are listening, just through republican ears. These are highly tuned and will hear roughly the following: Democrats who vote against this are against funding our troops, republicans who vote for this are voting for our space program!
Really, politics is a lot simpler then people think.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I don't know what they're talking about. NASA is military spending because most of NASA's contractors contract for the military. NASA is also a military organisation, believe it or not. It has been and continues to be a massive white elephant black hole for money. Whereas military contracts are for the military military contractors have also made tidy sums out of NASA's supposedly 'civilian' spending.
The focus on commercial spaceflight is right and proper because that's the only way things will move forward. Creating another Apollo craft forty to fifty years on to hop, skip and jump into space simply isn't going to work. We're at a stage in spaceflight right now where the Wright brothers were with flight, and we've been in that position for fifty years.
Spaceflight has not turned into the everyday occurence that everyone thought it would around the time of the moon landing. Hell, 2001 was nine fucking years ago. I still can't get over that. Frankly, progress has been a failure.
What planet did I wake up on today? Republicans criticizing the commercialization of low-orbit space flights? Demanding the return of a gigantic, overbudget, behind schedule rocket to nowhere? Obama for the privatization of space and Conservatives for the continuation of a government monopoly on space? Has everyone gone space crazy?!
I take pride in NASA but it will be a sad day when the last shuttle lands and we have to rely solely on others for LEO travel.
1960's: "Do you have the right stuff?"
2010's: "How's your Russian?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Spending truckloads of money on a super expensive brand-name rocket that not only do nothing more than the generic ones around but whose purpose of shuttling stuff to the ISS makes it entirely fucking retarded as by the time the rocket gets to orbit the atomized remains of the ISS will be floating in the pacific.
This is the most apparent short sighted bill i've seen in a long fucking while. Someone should add a clause that draws the additional funding required from the pocket of the senators and the companies they are puppets for, perhaps they would be motivated to produce something that's a bit less shitty and budgethogging if they had to pay for it themself.
It's those engineers and support personnel who are about to be out of a job in those states are the ones that need Ares funded. Although I do support the commercialization of space and getting NASA out of the manned LEO rides, I can sympathize with those who are about to be unemployed because of the budget reversal. My memories goes back to the mid 1970s when my father and his friends lost their jobs when Apollo 17 completed it's mission.
Can I blame those GOP Senators for pushing for funding to keep jobs in their state? Nope, sure can't. Do I think it should be funded, nope, sure don't.
American politics.. I admire how parts of it are beautifully crafted where checks and balances work.
And then there are rider bills and the lobbying industry,.. wtf? you can do better America...
If this were an Archie comic, it would be called Rocket Racket.
.... so that some other crony capitalists can take over space flight, technology only developed because of the huge public expenditure on space in general through the military and NASA, and sell it back to the public.
Wow.
This isn't about "NASA is bad" as much as it's about Obamas new friends getting to feed at the trough. In the end it's still the American taxpayer paying. Fortunately I'm not one.
This is all just my personal opinion.
Do a bit of research. What aerospace firms are in Alabama and Utah?
It is ALWAYS about the money. 'Nuff said.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
He will no longer be a senator shortly. Didn't make it into the primaries this year and will be unseated in November. That leaves only one Senator backing this bill. I suspect it may not make in the final version if anyone pushes back.
The fact that we're not trying to get to mars is... well, a shame. Shame on obama. And Shame on Nasa for wasting all those years on the POS space shuttle. Commercial space flight isn't going to do a damned thing other than fly millionaires around for a long time.
It's not pork; it's R&D that's every bit as valid as anything else the Federal government spends money on, if not more so.
It keeps thousands of aerospace engineers, scientists, and technicians productively employed.
It restores funding to a project that is well underway and is built on known, working technology (Apollo).
It gives us an American manned launch capability in the near future, versus the complete unknown of relying on the private sector.
It's a tiny investment; Nasa needs about $6 billion a year to keep Constellation going. It's literally a drop in the bucket compared to many other appropriations.
The country needs a manned space program. Say what you will about the Shuttle and other manned spacecraft, they have been an inspiration to generations of young Americans to pursue science and engineering careers. While our private sector engineering jobs have dwindled along with our domestic industrial production, aerospace remains a promising field. Jet aircraft are just about the only big ticket industrial item America still exports, and aerospace technology from Nasa bleeds over to the jet transportation field all the time.
Now consider what else the Feds spend our money on:
$700+ billion economic stimulus - truly, this is almost all pork and includes various "jobs training programs", money for local construction projects, items like that which are traditionally considered bacon. Individually, these projects may have merit, but why should the federal government be funding them with a huge a deficit?
$600+ billion for defense. Surely, 1% of this budget could be redirected to Nasa with no damage to our national security.
$125+ billion per year for new healthcare obligations. That's roughly twenty times the sum Nasa needs, and it won't even cover all the uninsured. It basically is a payoff to medical providers to take care of the indigent or working poor who can't or won't provide for their own healthcare funding.
We could easily cut a trillion or so dollars from our national budget and not even notice the difference. Maybe 25% of Pentagon funding, and a bunch of entitlements, and the economy would actually benefit from the expanded availability of lending capital.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Here is the current direction of the space program ... in China
Chang'e 2 - 2010, second lunar orbiter
Chang'e 3 - 2013, lunar lander
Chang'e 4 - 2017, return lunar sample to earth
Chang'e 5 - 2020-2025 - manned mission
Japan, India and Russia may also be competing for the 2020-2025 moon race.
So I almost lost my breakfast over this one. The amendment doesn't say word one about getting anything useful, only that the spending continue. The legislators in question don't seem to care if the money spent returns anything worthwhile, only that we keep spending. Barf! No wonder everyone hates politicians.
Regardless of the reason, the Shelby blackmailing the passage of legislation isn't unusual. Between 2008 - 2010 he's requested a total of $488,734,050. I have no idea if they were all/any "good" programs (and I have no definition of good. I suppose "good" for his state is different than "good" in the overall picture.) For more info, source is here: legistorm.com
Bark less. Wag more.
I agree that corporations have way too much influence over government policy. But that's not the problem here.
You're oversimplifying things when you cast it as "the people" versus "corporations". In this particular case, the two are actually aligned. If Ares is canceled, it isn't just corporations in Utah and Alabama who will lose out there, it's all the people who work for these corporations, and everybody in the state who would be affected by the damage to the local economies. Which is just about everybody. Which is why "the people" are actually for Ares. But not all the people — just the ones that live in Utah and Alabama.
To most of us, Ares is pure pork. But not to its supporters. The problem is not "us" versus "them", it's the fact that everybody wants their own bit of pork, and everybody thinks that somebody else is being too greedy. That attitude is screwing us up on every level: health care, physical infrastructure, education, you name it.
Alabama = Marshall Space Flight Center = Jobs which is why that senator wants funding to continue Utah = Rocket company Thiokal = Jobs which is why that senator wants funding to continue. This is always been the problem with legislators who depend on money for elections. Until the USA gets behind term limits, and banishes these "lifetime" politicians, this BS continues. Oh, let one senator keep is million dollar pet project here, another with a 2 billion dollar project there, it's not "that" much money. After you total up the entire 500+ idiots we call legislators, you can see why the USA is in such trouble.
Issues on Afghanistan and NASA aside, it should be made illegal to tack irrelevant points to legislation in an effort to piggy-back otherwise ridiculous things into law or to sabotage bills with unpopular additions.
Seriously what the fuck.
I work in the space program and this is not a fun time. Many people I know moved to the areas where the work is being done because they love space and want to be a part of advancing civilization. Here is the problem with space budgets. There just aren't enough flights to recoup development costs. So take the $10 Billion that was already spent on Constellation. Just guessing that half was for the Ares I rocket. So what would $5 Billion buy you on the commercial market today? 50 Atlas V/Delta IV launches or about 15 Delta IV Heavy Launches. That is a lot of payload in space. I personally think NASA should get out of the rocket design business. I think it would be better to get the countries involved in the ISS and work on an IMS International Moon Station. Let the Russians launch people until our commercial guys can prove they can do it. Consider it a return on the favor when we kept MIR operating for 4 years with the shuttle. Build the parts small and light enough to fit into existing launchers. Also to spur development use a Prize system with no more feed money. Say set aside $2B a year to put into a pot that keeps growing until someone successfully launches 3 missions with a 100 ton payload. That way you can harness private money for the development costs and the tax payers aren't stuck with a bill for a useless design. The money is there. $19B is a lot of money. The jobs will be there too we just may have to move to find them. Since most of us already did move to work in this field we will do it again.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
So a budget increase, a scope increase and general revitalization of a flagging agency are a death march? Only when some of the suffering is in your district. Obama is promising more NASA for more uses and the Republicans are screaming no.
Ares I is slated to cost $35 BILLION to develop. This is for a basically existing design. Delta and Atlas EELV cost about $5-7G together and produced two families of light-medium-medium-heavy launchers. Ares is a joke and the sooner it dies the better.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
True and it boils down to the 3 laws of politicians 1: If a politician's lips move he's lying 2: He or she is full of shit, the only question is human, bull, dog, or horse. 3: Yes, laws 1 and 2 are true of your favorite politician too. Why yes, I am a bit jaded and cynical.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The problem is that your country is too big. Really.
I live in a lot smaller country. We do suffer from the same problem to some extent: The Keskusta party has its base of support in the countryside so it tries as hard as it can to "decentralize" resources (people, governmental institutions, services, etc.) away from the cities which we living in the said cities consider quite a nuisance. (Keskusta is one of the three largest parties in Finland yet it only has 3 out of 85 politicians in the city council of the capital)
But even so... It is a lot less of a problem in this scale. People move, have relatives in different cities, often visit different parts of the country on vacations, know a lot of people all around the country... It is never completely "My benefit against theirs" kind of situation. Anything that somehow benefits people 200 miles away might still benefit me somehow. And if it doesn't, there is a pretty good chance that it does benefit someone I know. (And conversely: If unemployment rates would skyrocket in some areas or such, it could well hurt someone I know)
Now, I imagine that this is not the case when a country is the size of a continent. (which is pretty much what EU is turning into) If I lived in the USA, I would probably want to vote for a party that... Hmm. I am a liberal leftist and could never vote a party like the republicans, yet I would want a lot less involvement from the federal government and... Damn. I've never truly realized how fucked up the two party system is. I might just not vote.
The whole line of discussion on this topic is pointless.
It's business as usual, politics as usual. The government has not changed, the oil companies are pointing their fingers at everyone but themselves. The checks and balances are not checking nor are they balancing, all the while the oil spill/leak is continuing to grow and spread in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe when the spill overflows the gulf and into the Atlantic Ocean will you assholes get it.
How does anyone know if the continuing release of oil from under the Earth's crust is related to the ever increasing seismic activity.
Like anyone else, I enjoy waking up to apple pancakes however, you sheople are about to wake up to a baseball bat upside your collective heads!
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
I don't think that the links you posted contradict the beliefs you stated.
"For example, there are many cases where US national debt has decreased under Democratic presidents, and many cases where it has increased under Republican presidents" <-- Simply means that in many cases the democrat policies have been the right tool for the situation at the time and in many case the republican policies have not. (Actually, it doesn't necessarily even mean that. Four years is a short time and many decisions reflect on the economy on a lot larger timeframe. Thus, in many cases a lot of statistics on the era of one president might have been influences significantly by the previous president) It does not however say anything about whether or not the democrat policies do include high taxes, etc... It only implies that whatever they do include, it occasionally works.
As for highly educated (and thus well off) folk voting democrats... That doesn't seem to contradict anything either. There is only a contradiction if you assume that the well-off portition of the people want to vote the politician that promises them the lowest taxes. Thankfully, this doesn't seem to be the case.
but is it the best use of NASA funds???
1) It's not a good design,
2) there are already other off the shelf American launchers
available that can do LEO for cargo for less money and are less expensive to make man rated including
the Atlas V, Falcon 9, and Delta IV heavy. The Delta and the Atlas are already proven launch vehicles
and the Falcon 9 will likely have proven itself in a month or so. Ares I would not be ready until 2018.
3) Ares sucks money away from other more viable space exploration activities
4) If you want to keep NASA employees productively employed let them work on missions that get us out of
Low earth orbit instead of trying to reinvent apollo(on steroids, on crack, on lsd?)
I think Elon Musk may have said it better than anyone else:
http://spacex.com/press.php?page=20100415
And his calling out of Senator Shelby was pretty epic:
"A lesser President might have waited until after the upcoming election cycle, not caring that billions more dollars would be wasted. It was disappointing to see how many in Congress did not possess this courage. One senator in particular was determined to achieve a new altitude record in hypocrisy, claiming that the public option was bad in healthcare, but good in space!"
I value politeness. If you extend it to me, I'll extend it to you.
When did the republican mantra become "Spend Baby Spend". Oh, wait, they do like to spend don't they, it's the paying the bills part of it they have a problem with.
No problem then - it can have it's own funding bill instead of this blatantly evil opportunism that is giving the entire project a bad name.
It reminds me of the Get Smart joke -
"How long will it take to get the government to fund it"
"Six weeks."
"What if we say it's an emergency?"
"Twelve weeks"
These utter bastards are playing with an urgent bill to drive their own agenda and it really doesn't matter how noble their agenda is, this is against the spirit of a Republic let alone a Democracy.