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NASA Ends Plan To Put Man Back On Moon
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Times Online: "NASA has begun to wind down construction of the rockets and spacecraft that were to have taken astronauts back to the Moon — effectively dismantling the US human spaceflight programme despite a congressional ban on its doing so. Legislators have accused President Obama's administration of contriving to slip the termination of the Constellation programme through the back door to avoid a battle on Capitol Hill."
riiight.... because skipping around on the Moon is sooo much more beneficial to society than giving medicine to poor sick people. Oh, wait... I just realized you're a fucking parrot moron. Forget what I said... going to the Moon is stupid. Give me medicine.
It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space. I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
At this point in US space travel's history it seems like we're in a transition period. The old technology has finally caught up with itself and now without the Shuttle we must pay the penance for its mistakes and not having proper plans afterwards. Rushing into a new manned programmed for what seems like no good reason other then to just do it will be a waste of money and take awy from developing tech. Spend the next 10 years using robots for science (the area NASA/JPL does very well with) and develop new propulsion, energy, life support etc for a new manned directive in the future. In the meantime let commercial ventures work out some new low cost delivery systems. Any plan for a moon base would involve robot systems paving the away ahead before humans regardless so let's focus those funds long term rather then making a couple of special interests happy.
Unless we can set up a colony there, it just isn't worth it.
The moon, you see, is a harsh mistress.
YEAHHHHHHHH!
I vote we just send you to the Moon... with no health insurance.
The Admin and the Engineer
Yep. All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
Constellation, particularly Ares, was a boondoggle that was years behind schedule and was never going to get us there. Now we can work on Mars and do it in a feasible manner. Commercial companies like SpaceX can handle the LEO stuff, and maybe even heavy lift. Also, it gets rid of ATK, who should have never gotten another contract after blowing up Challenger.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
If Congress is really mad that the Obama administration is shutting down the moon program, then there is a simple way they can handle the situation. They can vote to fully fund NASA's programs. So far, all I hear from Congresscritters is lip service. If they really want to send humans back to the moon, then show us the money. Talk is cheap. Space hardware is not.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
People act like any measures taken now determine the future of the American space program forever. The budget is what it is. If NASA needs to focus on less expensive methods of exploration, that doesn't mean it will be that way forever. If it's a major setback, that's unfortunate. It doesn't change the financial health of the country, however.
I really don't have a problem with this. We've already been to the moon several times and have found that it is, in fact, a giant rock. I really see no reason to go there again without some kind of purpose in mind. For example, constructing some kind of permanent base there.
This is a symptom of the "winner gets the spoils" approach to administration in the US. Every administration is supposed to set new policy in every direction, which comes from the system where every new President appoints his people to jobs all over the executive. This frequent revision of policy makes sense for short-term issues, especially ones central to the election (say DOJ anti-drug projects or FTC business regulations) but is an absurd way to manage scientific and engineering projects which naturally have timescales much greater than 4 years. Having every president retask NASA (or the agency of your choice) leads to enormous waste as projects are cancelled and new projects are started so they can be cancelled by the next administration.
The article and the information within don't add up. If you want a screaming article about the end of the Constellation program, direct your anger at NASA's budget, fewer then 1% ( about half of that, actually ) of the federal budget. Don't go insulting NASA. All the voices against it in this article are biased. Why do they want to keep it? Not because they support the system. They want the jobs in their district. Really, they dont care about the program at all. At a time like this, you have to ask yourself- what is NASA? A job programme, or an exploration agency? Constellation is a waste. It had to be cancelled. It was unsustainable. Even if NASA got one rocket right now ( from santa ) with all the research done - THEY COULD NOT SUSTAIN IT. It is too expensive, way more expensive then even the shuttle. Compare this: After 9 nine billion spend on the Constellation program. How much is there in orbit? After half a billion spend on a new family, SpaceX falcon have had succesfull launches, into orbit - And faster! There is something wrong with constellation and / or Nasa management. You HAVE to scrap or fix it. This cancellation could be seen by industry insiders from years away. It ended right after the beginning, when the funding was slashed by congress
[blockquote]An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Times Online:[/blockquote]
Isn't it odd that these days, more and more, Americans have to find out what their government is doing from foreign newspapers?
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Going to the moon now would have been Apollo all over again, with little to gain. The moon has been done and we should leave it to commercial and new scientific activity now.
If we, as a species, want a project of comparable difficulty (compared to Apollo from the 1960 perspective) then we should send a human crew to Titan.
But the problem is how to fund it. The cold war and the US taxpayer funded Apollo. The Soviet people helped in their own unique way, by showing how not to do it. A new space program would have to be a global exercise, with contributions from many countries. If we decide to have just one war less then finding the money should not be a problem.
For a couple of decades we have been avoiding an important question: why do we want human beings to go into space? We should think hard and come up with some answers pronto.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They should just shoot another Moon landing footage on a studio lot in Burbank. That should be enough for another 40 years of national bravado.
Except this time we'll do it in 3-D and put it on Pay-Per-View with heavy product placement. Doritos Moonwalk? Why Not?
Social insurance and spaceflight are not mutually exclusive.
I imagine if you swap two wars for a space program, we could be halfway to Mars by now (at least).
Seriously, there is no place on Earth as deadly as the surface of the Moon or Mars. There is no place on Earth that costs as much as a hundredth, maybe a thousandth of the cost of just getting to the Moon, much less Mars, much less staying for any period of time.
The same could have been said of America or Australia from the perspective of Europe, before colonisation.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
> but at the end of the day, no matter how bad the Earth gets, it's exponentially more comfortable and practical than any other place in the Solar System.
While you are correct as far as your limited imagination goes, ponder these notions:
1. One medium size nickel-iron asteroid has more metal content than pretty much everything we will need for decades. Space has a LOT of resources and there isn't any sort of ecology to worry about despoiling. So do YOU care about the environment? Or are you a poser interested in the egoboo of recycling your plastic Walmart bags? Or perhaps a pave the Earth nutjob? (See how easy it is?)
2. The one thing space has is space. Something we have run out of here, there aren't any places to go here and start over. Yes there are barren hellholes almost as hard to colonize as space but you won't escape the long arm of civilizatrion ANYWHERE earthside. A frontier is a great social relief valve, allowing a certain personality type to be a useful asset instead of a bomb waiting to go off.
3. Sooner or later Earth is doomed. If we are still all here when that happens we go extinct.
4. Resources expended on space exploration has a hell of a lot more useful economic benefits than warehousing losers in housing projects.
Democrat delenda est
There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
Why be interested in that, when you can keep fighting in silly wars that no-one can win, when you can keep bailing out finance sectors and car manufacturers even though their business models clearly got them into trouble in the first place.
Sorry, my rant toggle must have been on, and I didn't notice.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Yep. All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
No one is interested in the Moon unless we'll build a base there. No one wants to pay for another trip back to the Moon if we're just going to plant the flag and come home again. Been there, done that.
Do something new and different, or don't go at all.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Ah, I see you're one of those people that are self made. No one helped you, it wasn't luck, it wasn't fate, just you alone against the world with the same exact starting point as anyone else. All your blessings you gained for yourself, and none came any other way, huh.
The poor still pay taxes, dick wad. Taxes payed for the Apollo Missions. I'll bet anything the poor outnumber you sophisticated science-types about a million to one. Also, I think they'd rather have $2 worth of free antibiotic than whatever fantastic discoveries await you on the Moon at a cost of trillions (but, oh, man, tang and microwave ovens made it sooo worth it!).
Then again, you have a point... those poor engineers and scientists... what WILL become of them if we DON'T go to the Moon? They certainly can't advance science on Earth, certainly not if medicine is socialized!
Hey, IQ22, keep up the good work for humanity. We're all counting on you.
The Admin and the Engineer
Good thing most people in power haven't historically shared your worldview, or we'd still be debating whether it's worthwhile to move out of the caves.
Don't forget the funding of that idiot "Blair" on "NASA Edge."
I liken the attitude, the irresponsible attitude, to really really wanting to go to Disney World. You want to go so bad, you rationalize the cost, even if you can't really afford it. That is the issue. We can't afford it. Discovery is not a right or a necessity, it is a luxury. If the return on the investment was actually knowable, or even if Apollo had been a remotely profitable investment, it might not be so clear cut. But as it is, whatever discoveries await us on the Moon will still be there when we can finally afford it. Discovery is not going anywhere. In the meantime, the neighbors' kids are hungry and sick. Yes, that is EVERYONE'S responsibility. If you disagree, save up your cash, and please go live on the Moon. And don't come back until you understand... it's not me against you, or us against them, or everyone for themselves... we are all in it together. The world would be a better place if these space cadets would read and understand Kant, or MLK, or Ghandi, rather than trying to find the most expensive way imaginable to kill themselves.
The Admin and the Engineer
Umm...things like Social Security, Medicare and Unemployment aren't real welfare, just social nets. People paid into SS, Medicare and Unemployment and that is why they get them, true welfare programs, like Aid for Families with Children go to people who never really paid into them.
Spend the next 10 years using robots for science (the area NASA/JPL does very well with) and develop new propulsion, energy, life support etc for a new manned directive in the future. In the meantime let commercial ventures work out some new low cost delivery systems.
As an astronaut has said recently (I think it was Armstrong himself), you cannot say "develop technology for next 10 years". Technology doesn't appear out of nowhere. Any technology developed is to get to some goal, be it digging a well or landing on the Moon or Mars. If there is no goal to land a man on Mars or to have long term presence on the Moon, then such technology will not be developed. It's as simple as that.
We currently have our multi-core, 64-bit processors and 8+GB of RAM in our computers at affordable prices only because of AMD and Intel rivalry for the almighty dollar. If AMD never existed, Intel would never needed to develop the technology they currently use. We would have our Pentium Pros and we would have to be happy with them, as a step up in performance would be the Itanics. Goals and an attempt to reach such goals is what drives technology and development, not mere attempt to "we want technology".
But then who needed that useless Apollo program anyway, eh? NASA was one of the only major purchasers of early silicon chip technology. Without that money for that "special interest" of silicon chips lasting 10-15 years, well, modern CPUs would have been a pipe dream. Definitely no PCs today and everything that they encompass.. Apollo program payed for itself 1000x over just through their funding of the early silicon technology.
The poor still pay taxes, dick wad.
No they don't.. Bottom 50% earners pay less than 3% of total taxes collected. Bottom 47% pay nothing. Top 5% pay 60%.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Only if they are defensive wars against other nation states who attacked you. The problem with the US policy is that it attacks others "preemptively" (the very same official reason given by Hitler when he attacked Poland and by Japan when it struck at Pearl Harbor) or attacks nations in pursuit of amorphous non-state entities and on other, flimsiest of excuses all the while pursuing a thinly-veiled strategy of global domination.
In this context "gotta" apparently is a result of a supremacist attitude and total disregard for anything but greed and thirst for power, very like that of a typical citizen of Ancient Rome who too would believe that the Empire just "gotta" expand into those "barbarian" lands to bring "civilization" in exchange for a slight payment of loot and slaves.
In modern times the US exacts a different kind of payment for exporting of its "civilization" but on the altar of its self-declared superiority, the dead just keep piling up all the same.
It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space.
I don't quite understand how "Not going to the moon" translates to "Not going to space."
Space is a lot bigger than just the moon. Also wasting money and time trying for human transport to the moon is...a waste. It would be much better used trying to, I dunno, try different things?
I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.
See, I don't get this. It's like saying "Well, we've tossed in billions upon billions of dollars down a hole with no end in sight already, why don't we just toss a few billion more in there?"
They're stopping the program since it's a *waste of money* that's taking away from other viable programs. I don't understand why people want the government to keep throwing money at the same outdated plan in the vain hope that, somehow, with enough money, you'll hit some magic point where the money spent actually becomes economically sound.
Man, shit. Give me 10 million dollars ever year and I'll show you a productive space program. Trust me. I'll always project completion 5 years in the future.
So according to you, the millions of people who currently want jobs but can't find them don't deserve to live? I mean, its not like there are people who do want jobs but have been unemployed for over a year.
My point is the rather severe problems we have should be attended to before we shoot the Moon. If it was as simple as walking out of a cave, that'd be another story. but it's not like that at all, and your metaphor is not well received.. If you can't imagine yourself in a less fortunate position, there is something wrong.
The Admin and the Engineer
Humans aren't fit for space
Humans aren't fit to fly from Australia to Europe in 20 hours at mach 0.8 but somehow we manage to make it routine and safe.
(the satay sticks with peanut sauce in MAS business class are absolutely FTW).
http://michaelsmith.id.au
> If the return on the investment was actually knowable...
I know the US was the undisputed tech leader during the NASA era. We aren't anymore. Correlation doesn't always mean causation but in this case it almost certainly does.
> Discovery is not going anywhere. In the meantime, the neighbors' kids are hungry and sick.
Uh huh. By that 'logic' we wouldn't spend a dime on any R&D until we had made the world a utopia where nobody was ever wanting for anything. But of course we don't have the wealth to even attempt such a thing and the sort of socialism needed to try would destroy the world's productive economies. R&D is the way out you fool. We can argue whether we should be spending our R&D on space, safe nuke plants, green bullshit or whatever but saying R&D can't happen until we have heaven on Earth is a sign of a unserious person.
> Yes, that is EVERYONE'S responsibility. If you disagree, save up your cash, and please go live on the Moon.
No it isn't everyone's responsibility. First off, care to explain why society shouldn't be telling prospective parents "If you can't feed em, don't breed em!" I don't object to private charity to help those who have the unusual/unexpected happen to them but I do object when the State trys to do it. For they always make things worse, creating an entitlement mentality such as you exhibit.
And if we could, many of us WOULD go to the moon to escape the sort of civilizational suicide folks such as yourself represent. But we can't. After all, even Columbus's three ships (fully equiped and manned) represented the sort of inventment few private sources could have managed and space, for now, is a lot bigger job. Of course the potential rewards are equally greater if we but had the imagination to seize it.
Going to the moon and then losing the will to plant a colony will almost certainly be remembered as the moment our civilization failed. It would be like Moses leading his people to the Promised Land, them looking over the mountain and saying, "Nah, too hard we are going back to Egypt."
Democrat delenda est
federal income taxes != taxes
gas, state and local sales, state income, property, &c
thanks for playing
Absolutely! Particularly enslaved are those unable to work due to, say, debilitating diseases! If only you could convince them to die of starvation quietly, they would truly cast off their yokes of slavery and croak totally free! No?
And then there are those poor over taxed "innovators" like, say, Bill Gates, who wouldn't know innovation if he tripped over it, fell down the stairs pulling it behind him and if it landed on his face with a bone crunching impact. Poor tax molested Billy and his bunch of jolly henchmen! I mean just think how many more poorly thought-out rehashes of technologies and ideas invented in 1960s could we have if he paid less then zero in taxes (since near $0 is what Microsoft and many other pan-national conglomerates already manage quite handsomely as it is)! The mind boggles!
I take issue with 2, 3, and 4.
2. There's lots of space at the bottom of the ocean. It's a lot less dangerous, and a lot cheaper, too. See my point? Space is a barren hell hole that makes the barren hell holes on Earth a paradise. I don't know what you've heard, but... Space... it's not a nice place.
3. You are mistaken... wrong headed here... it's humanity that is doomed sooner or later, not Earth. Earth is a rock. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Even after the Sun novas, there will still be Earth... just quite a but different than it is now... maybe not all in one place either. People are what matters about Earth, and little else (my cats, too!).
4. The point of housing those that can't afford it is not about economic advancement. It's about being human. You should try it.
The Admin and the Engineer
I don't think the case for visiting the moon (and Mars) is compelling enough for the current economic climate.
There will never be a good economic climate to fund space exploration.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Ya it's too bad that guys that work hard and innovate like Sergey Brin are not in any way financially rewarded in America.
OTOH when a kid can inherit 9 billion bucks tax free when his dad dies in 2010, I agree that kinda kills any financial incentive that kid had to contribute anything to humanity and he'll probably just spend the rest of his life consuming rather than producing.
I would guess the deep abyss of certain places in the ocean are more deadly. You have vast amounts of pressure, I'm no rocket surgeon or brain scientist, but I think that's a lot harder to deal with then the vacuum of space. Actually if you were exposed to those pressures you would be crushed and dead instantly, where you could survive at least 20-30 seconds in space and live. Plus there are giant squid.
*DrugCheese rants*
Morons like you traded all that for a welfare state
Yes, because you have to be moron to prefer taking care of actual people rather than making big, symbolic, and above all, expensive gestures.
Going to the moon was never more than President Kennedy's dick waving; he wanted to show the world that his testicles were bigger than those of the Soviet leaders, so the US spent huge amounts and took appalling risks with the lives of astronauts in order to plant a flag, using what now seems to be stone-age tools. Big achievement, but not hugely useful in itself; unlike the modest Sputnik, which ushered in the era of satelite communication and all the blessings of Sky TV (oops, there we go on the sarcasm again, sorry about that).
Having a proper, well equipped and well-funded space station would be useful, and a base on the Moon might in time become useful too. I would vote for going to Mars as well, but not in the haphazard way we went to the Moon, and it should ideally involve all nations capable of contributing to the project: the US, China, Russia, India, countries in Europe, and who knows, in South America and Africa as well - it will take many years before we are ready to go to Mars, and hopefully both Africa and S.Am. will have overcome their current struggles by then.
Uh huh. By that 'logic' we wouldn't spend a dime on any R&D until we had made the world a utopia where nobody was ever
No, just the R&D that costs trillions with no foreseeable return. There is nothing even remotely as expensive as space exploration. It's not the same as spending $500 million curing a disease. That's a bargain. There are no bargains in space... it's all retail x1000.
No it isn't everybody's responsibility.
Yeah, it is. And you agree or you would stop paying Social Security. Unless you're a hypocrite. Or a coward.
And if we could, many of us WOULD
Buuuuuut this is reality, and you can't. And even if you could, trust me, it would suck. Space really sucks. A Moon colony would only suck slightly less, because, presumably, we'd ship air and food and something to protect you from cosmic rays, solar flares, and the vacuum of space. But what's the point? Just so you don't have to live here? You'd be far happier living here on Earth in something much worse than, say, a nasty college dorm room, than with any accommodations on the Moon. At least here you can walk outside without dying instantly. On the Moon? Not so much.
The Admin and the Engineer
Seems to me there is really no good reason for a manned spaceflight programme just now.
Research and exploration can pretty clearly be done more cost-effectively by robots. Even if a certain proportion of them get stuck in stupid ways that a human could fix in a minute, they're just so much cheaper per mission than people that you get much more science per $billion from the ones that survive.
Colonization and so on is a great goal, but I suspect the best way to pursue it just now is to simply to grow the economy on Earth and research basic materials science etc., until it becomes more affordable.
So, that leaves bad reasons -- national flag-waving (being first for the sake of being first); and media/political appeal (easier to get $10b to fly an astronaut than $1bn for 5 robot missions).
Makes me a little sad -- I share the "living in space" dream, but I truly can't see anyway it makes sense at the moment.
My point is the rather severe problems we have should be attended to before we shoot the Moon.
The problem with that otherwise insightful meme is that there is a finite sum of money available for all projects and it is suggested that at some point in our future the Earth will be so densely populated that it will take ALL the money just to keep people alive and there will be no spare cash for space exploration. It will also be political suicide to pull the plug on "worthwhile" Earth-bound projects to fund space programs because people will die. At that point we are doomed as a species because we have to get off this rock.
That point may not have arrived yet, but at this point in time we DO have sufficient spare cash to decide to build a base on the moon, and from that experience perhaps Mars next, and we can do that without robbing the money from projects that keep people alive.
It's now or never (for some values of "now").
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
I think your rant may have been well placed. With the international treaties against nations laying claim to space objects, and agreements not to send any armed space vehicles, it doesn't allow for war there. On the other hand, if a nation were to do exactly that, they would have the upper hand.
Imagine some rogue nation develops a significant space program, *AND* arms it. There would be no way to defend against it, or for other nations to fight against it. Of course, with the way things usually go, the rogue nation would be the US, swearing to defend the neutrality of space through superior force, and in such stop evil nations from having a space program.
Since we can't militarize space, there's no incentive for military involvement in space, except for spy and communication satellites, which are run happily from the ground.
I've argued quite a bit, if nations of Earth were to stop wasting their resources on crap they are now, we could have a significant space presence, with a strong step towards deep space exploration. We will never learn how to do it unless we work at it. ... and for a car analogy. If we had looked at the M. Brezin car 1769, which could do a whopping 2mph, and said "this is too slow, it will never be worth pursuing", we would still be traveling on foot, horseback, and by horse drawn carriage. Today, we look at space travel and say "it will take too long to get anywhere", so we don't try. 6 months to Mars? Of course it is, we're still in the Bronze Age of space travel. We've discovered a little, but we have an awful long way to go.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The only way to get the rich to disgorge money is to persuade them that an external enemy wants to take it from them - hence the constant use of communism as a bogeyman by the Right. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and its presence in space, the external enemy was lost. If you want a new space program, better get the Taliban to start launching satellites.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Repeat the feat? That would just be another waste. If we go back to the mooon at all (and I hope we do) I want to see a BASE STATION built, with personnel stationed there permanently. Hydroponics, mining, extraction of atmospheric gases, as well as water - you know, built a habitat for a few thousand people, then grow it to a few million people.
But, what I REALLY want to see, are manned missions to the Mars and the various moons that might be made habitable with a minimal effort. (Minimal effort, meaning the erection of domes, and/or digging into the surface, as opposed to some moronic effort to put a base on a gas giant, or a hot planet, like mercury.)
Nope, I don't want to see a stupid scrap of cloth hung out on some barren rock. I want PEOPLE there, to transform the barren rock into something useful.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It seems to me that the human race needs to work on improving its skills in robotics in space exploration and many other areas. We are seeing them used in deep sea disaster recovery and warfare and it is time to see them used in positive projects. With an aging population exoskeletons need to be commercialized. Space exploration by robots is the next step and the technology developed there is going to help us get through the next few years of difficulty we are going to be experiencing.
at some point in our future the Earth will be so densely populated
I used to be concerned about this when I was in school. I actually attempted to start a movement I called "Get Off the Planet." But then, er, later, I drove across the country a few times. Right now, there is miles and miles, thousands of miles of room. And places like India, and parts of China, where the population is denser than anywhere, we do not see people eating their young. The one possible future of overpopulation is not so bleak as you describe.
When it becomes a real problem, we deal with it. Let's not put the cart before the horse, or try to cross a bridge we haven't arrived at yet. You know, the tires on your car will be bald someday. Why aren't you buying new tires now?
The Admin and the Engineer
Gotta fight wars?
Dude, I'm unpopular with a lot of slashdotters for defending the troops. But, really, Iraq wasn't a "gotta fight" war. Afghanistan was, but we've done it all wrong. We should have just done a punitive expedition into Afghanistan, punished the Taliban for harboring Al Queda, then got the hell out. But, nooooo, we have to play some silly game of "nation building".
Aren't we the morons? Those Afghanis have been right there, in the same place, for thousands of years, defying any and all comers - most recently the Soviet. When the invaders go home, those Afghanis just go back to growing poppies, herding goats, and whatever else they do in those hills of theirs.
Gotta fight wars. Crap, I could have fought that Afghan war for less than pennies on the dollar, and avoided the Iraq war altogether.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
To attempt to head off common misconceptions about NASA's new plans (like those in the article summary), I'll go ahead and post the contents of an FAQ straight from the source. Also, it's important to note that the new budget -increases- the amount of money for NASA.
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/new_space_enterprise/home/faq.html
This section contains answers to frequently asked questions about NASA's exploration mission and its associated programs and projects following the 2011 Budget Rollout.
Why is the Administration proposing a new direction for Human Space Exploration?
In May of last year, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) tasked an independent committee with reviewing U.S. human space flight plans and activities, with the goal of ensuring that our nation is pursuing the best trajectory in this arena - one that is safe, innovative, affordable, and sustainable. While the committee did determine that the Constellation Program was technically sound, they found it to be "be on an unsustainable trajectory" because it NASA was "perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources." In other words, the budget did not support the Constellation architecture.
What is better about the new approach?
The new approach proposed by the Administration focuses long term investments on the fundamental capabilities required for human space flight beyond Low Earth Orbit, but that we currently lack. The plan calls for technology development in areas like propulsion, in-orbit propellant storage, automated and autonomous rendezvous and docking, advanced closed-loop life support, and tele-robotic operations. It also increases funding in NASA's human research program, allowing us to better understand the potentially harmful effects the space environment might have on people and how we can best mitigate them. Most importantly, this approach is financially sustainable.
Does this mean that NASA has given up on returning to the moon?
Absolutely not. In fact, recent discoveries of water on the moon have made it more scientifically interesting that ever before. Our focus in the near term will be discovery through robotic missions, such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, followed by robotic precursor missions, to scout the terrain for the eventual return of humans.
Why is turning over a portion of human spaceflight to commercial industry a good idea?
NASA has already committed a significant investment to commercially provided space flight services. Almost all of our satellites and many science missions are launched commercially. In addition, we recently contracted with commercial companies to carry cargo to the International Space Station commercially. The next natural step is for NASA to buy commercial flights for our astronauts to the ISS. This will free up NASA to pursue the greater challenges in the way of a trip to Mars.
Exploration Systems was the directorate that managed the Constellation program. What will its role be under the new plan?
Under the new plan the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) will be responsible for many research and development programs including exploration technology and demonstrations, heavy lift and propulsion technology, exploration precursor robotic missions, and human research. In addition, ESMD will manage the commercial crew and cargo spaceflight programs.
The US budget is $18.3b for NASA in 2010 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget. and The United States currently pays around $20 billion per year to farmers in direct subsidies as "farm income stabilization"[10][11][12] via U.S. farm bills - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a federal government entity designed to supplement regular oil supplies in the event of disruptions due to military conflict or natural disaster, costs taxpayers an additional $5.7 billion per year. and who knows how many billion on protecting its gas corporations - http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm. Space research is cheap, repays in technology dividends and uplifts people. Subsidies encourage the status quo and defer the inevitable.
This is fine, until someone else puts a permanent base there. Then they will have the high ground; literally. The gravity well on the moon is so much less than earth, that kinetic weapons will work so much better from it. Hence, it is a strategic imperitive that someone will utilise the moon for a weapons platform at some stage.
What about the USA buying rocket technology from ESA ? Ariane is an excellent vehicle with a great record.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
It's never been the National Aeronautics and Mars Administration. We're talking about blowing off putting an American on the Moon and Mars, not everything higher than a dozen miles off the surface of Earth. We got space really close to Earth we can still discover stuff in, still expensive, but at least we can afford it. And one thing NASA is relatively good at is probes. Are Voyager, Viking or Pathfinder style missions chopped liver? No! They're fucking awesome. NASA rules... even on their relatively tiny budget.
The Admin and the Engineer
The issue is not space to inhabit, perse.
1. It is, partly, space for the animals to inhabit. Without animals, we cannot have our current Eco-system. we are not the only animal on the planet, and if we squeeze out all other animals to serve our own needs, many other animals might die off, leading to cascading effects.
For instance, if we squeeze off wolves, hawks, and other animals that eat rabbits, it's possible one day rabbits will become a significant threat to our agricultural output. If we kill off bees, then pollination will become difficult for many many plants, again killing our agricultural output. I'm willing to bet that the attrition rate of human caused traffic accidents and territory loss against mid level predators significantly outstrips
2. It is arable land. A quote from a study published by a guy Cornell and a guy in Rome.
(link: http://dieoff.org/page40.htm)
# At the present growth rate of 1.1% per year, the U.S. population will double to more than half a billion people within the next 60 years. It is estimated that approximately one acre of land is lost due to urbanization and highway construction alone for every person added to the U.S. population.
# This means that only 0.6 acres of farmland would be available to grow food for each American in 2050, as opposed to the 1.8 acres per capita available today. At least 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current American dietary standards. Food prices are projected to increase 3 to 5-fold within this period.
# If present population growth, domestic food consumption and topsoil loss trends continue, the U.S. will most likely cease to be a food exporter by approximately 2025 because food grown in the U.S. will be needed for domestic purposes.
This is a BIG problem
Especially for all of the people dependent on US agricultural exports. 'Screw them, we need food' is a valid opinion. But by 2100, the birthrate will have either gone down, or the starvation rate will have gone up. Current population growth rate is unsustainable with CURRENT agricultural technology. This may change when it becomes economical to build greenhouses and desalinate water in the desert because food prices have risen above the cost of growing them in said environment.
It, in my opinion, is a foolhardy argument to say 'we have plenty of space, so we will never reach a population crisis.'
What a lot of people don't know is that even if they only live in a 2000 square foot house, their net resource footprint, put into the perspective of how much land worth of resource production is necessary to sustain them, is significantly larger than what they can immediately see. Farm land, factories, roads to bring factory goods to the people, highways to move places, land to dedicate to bio fossil fuel production once petro fossil fuels runs out (or alternatively, build new renewable or non-exhaustible fuel (nuclear) powered plants), transmission lines to get them their electricity, etc... etc..
Right now, it would appear that Cuba is actually one of the most efficient providers of standards of living per hectare of land used per capita. We might all live like Cubans one day, if our population keeps spiraling out of control. Which wouldn't be bad, but would be much different than the world you know at the moment.
The reason why we can't put men on the Moon is that we never really had that capacity. Yes, we managed to put a few people there at enormous expense, but that was simply not sustainable; technology is only now starting to near the point where maintaining a presence in the Low-Earth Orbit might be.
But, rather than look at the problem and even trying to understand the reasons, you blame it all on the poor not starving as they should, like a right-wing tool you are. Moron.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
And then the question becomes, "Do we seriously need to keep trying for Constellation?" It doesn't seem to be working whereas new techniques may or may not be applicable here.
Imagine if all the money wasted on Constellation had been spent on, I dunno, researching better rocket tech? Making better robots? Doing actual science?
I understand the stepping stone thing, but look at it this way. Imagine there's a stepping stone in the river. The first time we made it by jumping there and BAM we made it. So now we keep thinking up bigger and better ways to jump there and started building the same shoes we had last time. Only, we've been building those shoes for so long and spent an insane amount of money on it.
What if we tried building a bridge with planks to the stone instead of spending half a century trying to build the shoes we used 50 years ago? Or, I dunno, get some modern shoes?
Making mistakes and learning is one thing. Wasting insane amounts of money on a rocket to nowhere is something else.
It's not about "OH NOES NO MOON ROCKET!" It's "OH NOES NO MOON ROCKET THAT USED UP SO MUCH MONEY THAT IT IS RIDICULOUS HOW IT STILL CAN'T FLY AND HOW OUTDATED THE TECH IS."
Sorry, the money didn't go to welfare, it went to the banks and car companies.
The can-do attitude was replaced with the "can we make a profit on it by swapping stocks around".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's all a matter of perspective. From Sagan's perspective, we're already in space, on a great big blue space ship. Sure, it sorta only does this one loop, repeated... but if it's good enough for millions of NASCAR fans, it's good enough for you. We'll even let you drive, as long as you don't attempt to turn left.
The Admin and the Engineer
The first is from those who say "ending Constellation will cost jobs in my state" (i.e. those who just want more pork thrown their way and more lobbying money from the contractors) and who wont accept any option other than the status quo.
The second argument is from those (including various astronauts etc) who say that the alternatives proposed by Obama will leave America without manned space flight capability for too long (forcing the US to buy expensive seats on a Soyuz to get to the ISS). They claim that the "commercial providers" Obama wants will not be able to deliver a manned booster/capsule fast enough (and have zero experience with manned booster/capsule production). This group is open to alternatives to the current program, just not the (currently non existent) alternatives Obama wants.
And libertarians wonder why people think they're crazy.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
No, just the R&D that costs trillions with no foreseeable return.
There are plenty of returns for all the R&D even ignoring our eventual need to expand beyond this planet.
What are you talking about? Obama didn't veto the NASA budget, he redirected the focus of NASA. The parent's post is saying, correctly, that if Congress wants NASA to go back to the Moon they have an easy solution: write a line item in the budget dedicating X-billions of dollars to returning to the Moon. The US does not have line item veto and Obama isn't going to veto the general budget.
You misunderstood. Top 5% of earners (in 2007 that meant whoever earned over $160K/year) pay 60% of the total federal income tax revenue that the IRS collects. It's nothing to do with the tax rate.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
If the trillions of present day dollars that went into the space race alone were just diverted to pure R&D to better humanity do you think the accomplishments would not have been similar, if not better? Saying we would never have happened upon velcro or microwaves without NASA just because that is historically what played out is simpleton logic.
There are definitely some things we learned from the space race we probably wouldn't have learned nearly as quickly other wise. But we are past that. There should be diminishing returns technically from near earth limited space exploration like any other technology. The automatic justification should be revoked and hard ROI criteria should be set for any future programs of significant costs.
Sending people into space quickly isn't necessary, merely entertaining. It is emphatically NOT exploration.
We REQUIRE robots and remote-operated systems to interact with everything out there anyway, and those are useful on Earth too. We can EXPLORE space and learn at a much better ROI by developing remote-manned systems that don't need life support and won't need to return. Space exploration not being a mission of US conquest, let some other countries spend the money to put humans up. We can do to them what they did to us and exploit their tech later. The race isn't always to the swift.
I understand the anguished horny craving of Slashdotters to go into space. Get rich, pay a contractor for the ride, and be entertained.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
... until we come up with a space propulsion system better than the rockets and ion drives that we currently have. Despite the talk, putting humans in a tin can for 3 years 30 million miles from earth is not realistic for medical or psychological reasons. Unless a system can be developed that can get people and materials around the solar system in months rather than years or decades then we can forget about colonising or exploiting it in any realistic manner.
I'm not much into society working towards a common good,
So, you're stuck in the Cro-Magnon, every-man-for-himself era, and completely believe that everyone who ends up on hard times should just be left to rot? I call that being a selfish bastard myself. It's particularly amazing, given this attitude, that your offspring lived to their teens and twenties; from your statements so far, I'd figure you for the sort to let them figure it out after they left the teat.
especially when 1/2 or more of society are worthless shits anyway.
This, I have a hard time figuring out what kind of statistic makes this anywhere near a half-reasonable argument; I can't recall a time where unemployment got anywhere near 50%, or the homeless rate for that matter; and if you go by wages alone, that's not a matter of choice for most anyone who isn't a professional athlete, who can hold out for an extra few million a year. Minimum wage is minimum wage, and if an employer sticks to that as the entry wage regardless, the people are pretty well stuck. This is why labor unions exist, a group of people in a common trade working for the common good, so that people with their skillset don't become the aforementioned worthless shits. Taking the other extreme, the number of people who make significant advances in anything useful, that's been in the range of 0.001% of people, and certainly nowhere near 50% of all those even living now.
That business of society working towards a common good mostly means that hard working people are supporting lazy asses
You mean the undertaxed executives, directors, and the like, who directed needless layoffs to justify employing people in 3rd world countries (by their arguments, to support the people in those countries and the economies there, which by your arguments, is something that is un-Darwinian), or otherwise unjustifiably firing employees just to save a few bucks? Those are hard-working people? Or do you count corporations who rape their employees as people now, since the Supreme Court gave them pretty much the same leeway as you or I would in campaign contributions? Even so, they would be in the minority, and they significantly take advantage of tax breaks issued by the government; I would posit these as in the same class as single mothers taking advantage of tax breaks, who would probably fit in your class of the aforementioned worthless shits of this country, ultimately rendering that argument invalid.
This isn't to say that there aren't those taking advantage of the system; in fact, those that are make a pretty good argument for their inclusion in the species ongoing; they've adapted and survived. But the fact that those people exist does not, by any means, indicate that programs in support of (intentionally or otherwise) disenfranchised people is inherently wrong; and the unsupported figures you present in support of that argument are bigoted and wrong.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space. I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.
Contrary to the prevailing public relations blitz that is being put on by ATK and certain entrenched interests within the D.C. beltway, The United States of America is not ceeding leadership in space to other countries. Instead, the paradigm is changing from that of a central government bureaucracy that is responsible for the financing, acquisition, and planning of such an endeavor to something that is more de-centralized, mostly privately led, and allowing freedom to ordinary individuals to try and get into space.
For commercial spaceflight companies, America simply dominates the rest of the world combined. When I hear of things happening in spaceflight and can compare stuff that is happening elsewhere, there are about two to three times as many companies formed and activities like the creation of a new spaceport than anything happening in the rest of the world. No, I'm not saying that private companies aren't being set up elsewhere and there certainly is something afoot in the European Union too in terms of private efforts for getting into space, but if you want to get into the action and see where the hot activity is taking place, it is currently in America. South-western USA to be exact if you want to know where the bulk of these companies are working at.
Never get into space? I suppose that this flight was a figment of my imagination. This is hardly the only company going into space, and I don't see vehicle production lines necessarily getting shut down.... except in Utah. I call that simply ATK having a singular problem trying to figure out how to make a profit in the current market rather than a national crisis. Sometimes dinosaurs go extinct too.
The same could have been said of America or Australia from the perspective of Europe, before colonisation.
It could be said, but only incorrectly, since the Europeans were well aware that those places were inhabitable before colonising them. Also, in both cases, there was specific reasons why humans were sent (or went of their own accord). In those days, infections often meant amputation. These days, we are able to cure most infections using penicillin. Similarly, in those days, exploring or exploiting remote, inhospitable locations meant sending humans. These days, we no longer need to send humans to exploit or explore remote locations, instead we do so using robots.
The old ________ has finally caught up with itself and now without the ________ we must pay the penance for its mistakes and not having proper plans afterwards.
There, generalized that for you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Or with the case of Constellation, which was designed for 6 month global access missions (Apollo was only equatorial) with the purpose of exploration and the construction of long term habitats and research facilities on the moon, absolutely been there, absolutely not done that.
I agree with you 100%, I just find it strange that no one, including Obama, read the mission plan for Constellation, instead of just seeing that Ares wasn't doing well and saying the whole thing is trash. It was designed to do things that we've never done before.
The Constellation moon missions were to the Apollo moon missions as Portland is to the Lewis and Clark expeditions.
"...And who wants to make buttprints in the sands of time?" ~Bob Moawad
It's much cheaper to simply launch your weapon on an ICBM or launch a stealthy weapons platform in space than it would be to go to the moon and set up a giant frickin' laser. If there's ever weapons on the moon, they'll probably be used for fighting other people on the moon.
Besides, there's that whole outer space treaty that makes the moon a neutral zone like Antarctica. Hasn't been too many wars on that continent, and it's a lot nicer than the moon.
federal income taxes != taxes gas, state and local sales, state income, property, &c thanks for playing
Good point. Rich people don't own houses or cars, they don't buy gas, and they never, ever buy anything at stores.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
There is a third, that Constellation was a failure due to engineering issues from the get-go without a huge budget-up. But that the mission can be done on the budget that we do have.
That argument is called DIRECT, as in Directly derived from the shuttle stack. It is an evolution design, which was originally proposed in 1978 and always kept on the back burner should the need arize for heavy lift, which a lunar mission all but demands. It has already passed through qualifications, all of the components exist now (unlike Constellation which was all-new) and we can have it flying within 36 months according to the engineers as well as the contractors involved. And that is the conservative estimate.
http://www.directlauncher.com/
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The fact that rich people pay sales/property taxes doesn't negate that poor people also pay those taxes. Since the original statement was that poor people don't pay taxes, your comment doesn't disprove eldepeche.
Virg
they also earn 99% so they should pay 99% to be fair right??
"Those Afghanis have been right there, in the same place, for thousands of years, defying any and all comers - most recently the Soviet." I agree with a lot of what you said, but i would like to point out that the gud ol' USA was instrumental in helping defeat the soviets.... They did not build their own stingers... You miss the point of the war completely. We are not actually fighting anyone... just small skirmishes and limited operations to maintain a large military presence in the region in furtherance of our bullying powers.
In fact, the US is the ONLY superpower in the world today.
Go grab some statistics about the nation today, and X years ago. With any measure you can come up with, you'll find the US is just as well off today as it was X years ago.
Look up some numbers, and you'll find the US has lower taxes now, than we have through much of the nation's history.
Here's just one chart, of just one : http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates-graph.php
Federal Income Taxes on 1mil USD were 77% in 1918. Earning more than $100,000 in 1950 would result in 91% tax rates. Today, taxes top-out at a mere 35%.
Yeah, get to work you blood-sucking orphans! Stop mooching off the gub'mint!
Actually, we're doomed if Medicare costs aren't brought under control. But hey, right-wing shills just want their taxes cut further, they don't want health care reform!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It is interesting, to say the least, to see non-NASA people's opinions on this issue, and moreover, to see people's opinions who are technically minded but outside of NASA. As someone working on Constellation at NASA, I am living this issue every day, and have been living it for months now. There is lots of misinformation on this thread, and lots of opinions I disagree with. I won't take the time to really respond to any of them, but in the case of the former, it's entirely understandable considering the poor communication coming out of NASA (both in general and on this specific issue) as well as the poor quality of news reporting as it relates to spaceflight (and by extension, nearly everything technical in nature). In the case of the latter, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Mine is that we need to get society off this rock as soon as possible and establish a permanent self-sustaining settlement on another one as a means of risk mitigation against the various calamities that could destroy human civilization. Second, I feel it should be us (the United States) because someone is going to do it - it will happen eventually. That point should not be up for debate. For us to sit around spending money on things like wars and bailouts instead of continuing the role as the leader in space is, in my humble opinion, short sighted. But I digress.
The one thing I will say is that Constellation is not dead - yet. It's had its head cut off by reassignment of the program manager. It's been dealt a tough blow most recently with HQ telling the prime contractors (Lockheed, ATK, Oceaneering) that they need to put money into reserve for contract termination liability - the costs associated with winding down a contract. Typically this contract clause is never enforced, and especially not at this time of the year. Our fiscal year ends on Sept 30. These contract termination liability costs now represent about 50% of the money left in the budget for this fiscal year, which essentially means that things need to be cut to the bone to get there. Many people feel that enforcing this clause is a pretty shady way of circumventing Congress and the law, because until Congress signs a new budget or specifically tells NASA to stop working on Constellation, NASA is legally obligated to continue working on it as the program of record. By enforcing this clause, it could be construed as circumventing this legal process. If a budget agreement is not found by the end of the fiscal year (and that is looking more and more likely), then NASA gets a continuing resolution - the same money allocated the same way for next year as it was this year. So hypothetically, NASA could pick back up with this "new money" and continue working on Constellation.
That being said, for months now, before this contract termination issue came up, most of the different Constellation projects (Orion, suit, etc) have been working to try to scale back design, remove Lunar content, accelerate the schedule, reduce scope, etc to try to "bridge the gap" between what Congress says they should be doing and what HQ and the executive branch says they should be doing.
Lastly, I think that most people at NASA don't necessarily have a problem with Obama's general plan for NASA - they have a problem with its lack of specificity, lack of a concrete goal, lack of a timeline. I get the feeling that if Obama came back and said he wants to cancel Constellation, come up with a new heavy lifter (both things he has said before) but also that the goal is to establish a human presence on "X" surface "Y" years from now, more people might get on board.
This is fine, until someone else puts a permanent base there.
It should be us who put a permanent base there.
Constellation is not the first step in the process of doing so. It does nothing to help us towards that goal.
The R&D into automated factories and robotic assembly, in-space refuel, cheaper propulsion systems once outside earth's atmosphere, and so on are the first necessary steps.
We should not go back to the moon for a stupid boots-and-flag mission. We already did that; the flag and bootprints are still there. People should not be going to the moon until robots have already built a habitat for them there.
The enemies of Democracy are
43+% of the people in the US pay no income taxes, over 50 million of them are families that make over $50,000 a year.
If you're worried about people being sick, reform the FDA and USDA to better regulate what we put into our bodies. Pass laws to reform how much drug companies can overcharge for those antibiotics to recover research costs before they become generics. Pass laws to contain healthcare costs like they do in Canada and the UK who pay much less for the same drugs that we use.
Pass laws that forbid hospitals from charging to treat secondary infections they caused. There ARE hospitals giving patients $20 worth of topical antibiotics before surgery to prevent thousands of dollars in secondary infections after the surgery.
We have more diagnostic information available to us now, and the doctors are using it to make poorer decisions, or to protect them from lawsuits. Doctors with too much info perform surgery to remove small cysts that they would have left harmlessly in the patient using older lower resolution scans. Defensive tests cost us Billions of dollars in unnecessary costs every year.
Use of hospital protocols (continuous process imporovement) uses data to greatly increase patient outcomes, and reduce hospital costs. Lookup Intermountain Healthcare, the Cleveland clinic, or Mayo Clininc if you need examples.
Pass laws to require doctors and hospitals to declare their patient success/survival rates, secondary infection rates, etc. If we're all free marketers, maybe Doctors should be incentivised to do better if they want customers.
A better idea from the last is to let the doctors work for Hospitals, and not worry about running a small business, and spend more time being doctors. Let the Hospitals compete for business on the merits of their treatment. Certainly there is some other Entrepeneurial Practice management that can remove being an administrator (accounting/HR/payroll) from the Doctor's schedule.
None of these things costs any more than what we are doing now. The problem is the Doctors/Hospitals/Insurance companies get to bill more $$$ for doing a bad job, then taking care of you while they fix their mistakes and extend your recovery time and outside of the state of Mass, there is hardly anyone calling them out on it.
The other thing to know about Socialized Medicine is that stealing every dollar of NASA's budget will not fix even medicare, much less healthcare costs increasing many times the rate of inflation.
The only way to have socialized medicine, or just affordable healthcare with private insurers is with comprehensive healthcare reform.
More money paid into an inefficient system will not fix the problems it is having.
The first problem with the libertarian argument is that free markets exploit only that which is profitable. Discovering that which is profitable is often a thing done by or for governments. If you look at the history of innovation over the past hundred years, almost all of it would have been impossible without the direct involvement of government. The computer was developed for the defense industry, as were rockets, jet propulsion, modern nuclear physics, refrigeration, microwaves, radio, the list goes on and on.
Lately the profit motive behind going to space has been more or less limited to tourism. A visit to the moon by NASA, especially an extended manned one with the intention of exploiting the moon's natural resources and discovering the problems of long-term hostile-environment extraplanetary colonization could provide the very sort of research that would create a profit motive for private industry to exploit the moon.
The second problem with the libertarian argument is that the companies developing these technologies already are private industry, they are merely funded by the government.
The third problem is the cost. If you compare government spending in any given year, 3bn is a drop in the bucket, but it's a drop in the bucket that could result in MEN WALKING ON THE FREAKIN' MOON. What part about MEN WALKING ON THE MOON did you miss?
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
But, nooooo, we have to play some silly game of "nation building".
Nation-building isn't a silly game at all, unless you like dealing with unaccountable non-state actors.