Slashdot Mirror
NASA Faces Rough Road In 2013
MarkWhittington writes "With the National Research Council report that concluded that President Obama's plan for a mission to an asteroid has no support, either inside NASA or anywhere else, the space agency faces a decision point in 2013. The NRC suggested that the administration, Congress, NASA, and other stakeholders in space exploration come to a consensus behind a new goal. But the space agency's problems run deep, caused by a lack of direction, a lack of leadership, and a lack of funding."
How the hell can you plan a major project when every year you're faced with the possibility of major cuts?
But the whole United States is locked in a situation where hope and optimism is starting to get rare.
The Democrats and Republicans seems to be blocking each other as much as possible causing a deadlock. Today it seems like the creationists are taking over step by step.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
From TFA (second link):
The dimensions of the train wreck that is the Obama space policy are impossible to exaggerate.
The dimensions of hyperbole in that statement are impossible to exaggerate, too. Reading that second link (possibly written by a very bitter pundit-turned-scientist Rove) was an absolute waste of time bemoaning everything from NASA considering too many options before making a decision, to Mitt Romney losing the presidential race. OP's summary was more educational and less biased than that pile.
we'll spend ten times that amount occupying, maiming and killing people who did not attack us on 09/11/2001. because that's important and of lasting benefit to humanity.
Well then, fly!
That way, you'll encounter severe turbulence.
Have gnu, will travel.
Fact of the matter is this - instead of being the leader of the citizens of the United States of America, Obama chooses to be a crowd pleaser.
Instead of concentrate the limited resource available to make America strong - by spending them on R&D and also space programs - Obama opted for spending the money for welfare to feed the crack addicts and those who are too lazy to work
The president doesn't make these decisions. You might think he's supposed to lead by telling congress what to spend money on, but you would be just another person enabling congress to continue to suck. The president is designed to hold back congress from doing crazy stuff. That's why he has the veto power - and nothing more. Congress sets the budget and congress fails when the budget is wrong. There are 535 people with their own leadership structure. When they fail it's not the presidents' fault, no matter who it is.
Blaming the president for Congress' failing through lack of leadership just enables the executive branch to assume more power and the legislative to point more fingers.
...crack addicts and those who are too lazy to work
Goldman Smack
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This is why sending robots to Mars, while scientifically interesting, doesn't really help rally the nation. Do you think sending a rover to the moon instead of an astronaut would have created the same excitement and motivation? How far behind would we be with technology had that excitement not lead to all kinds of collateral innovations along the way?
Set a vision for sending a team of scientists and engineers to Mars, within 10 years, with the goal of setting up a basic outpost. Nothing huge or complex, just some FEMA-type structures large enough for storage and manufacturing. Mars has a ton of iron, so there's little reason a foundry couldn't be setup up there.
Lack of sufficent funding to (eg) NASA is a fundamental problem, because it shows that The US of A is losing sight of some things which are really important.
I'm not just talking about "more science is good" but a thriving Space Program through NASA pumps something quite literally vital back into the economy.
Confidence In And Hope For The Future.
Almost NOTHING that NASA does is "for today", everything is long term, future thinking, "some day you will thank me for this" work.
Problems with lack of direction (etc) at NASA are mostly a reflection of uncertainty in funding (both current and future).
You can't blame the Captain of a ship that he's not steering anywhere useful when you won't put fuel in his tanks.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The president is designed to hold back congress from doing crazy stuff. That's why he has the veto power - and nothing more.
AND NOTHING MORE ???
You mean to say, the role of the POTUS is not being the ***DE FACTO LEADER*** of the USA?
If the position of the POTUS is designed, as you said, "to hold back congress from doing crazy stuff", how come presidents such as Lincoln, JFK and Reagan managed to lead the United States of America to greater heights?
Or to put it another way --- Do you, Sir, really understand the true role of the POTUS?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If you're short on money, stop wasting it dreaming about putting people on the moon again, or going to Mars with a human crew.
1)There is no practical purpose in placing humans on the moon; certainly nothing that justifies the tenfold jump in complexity. There wasn't back in the 60's, either - it was done for patriotism and xenophobia.
2)We have real problems right now, like the lack of replacements for aging weather satellites, in an era of accelerating climate change and instability. In case you all hadn't noticed, the last hurricane hit one of the largest economic centers of our country AND our eastern ports. In case you hadn't noticed, the midwest suffered the worst drought since the dust bowl.
I've been saying it for more than ten years, any time Slashdot starts getting romantic about human space flight: Stop eating your dessert and start eating your vegetables.
What's really pathetic is that we make fun of North Korea for lofting a satellite while people starve. We live in a country where 20% of our students go hungry, even more don't have enough textbooks to go around, and teachers are spending personal money on supplies...but hey, they get to watch some video of an incredibly privileged, elite person floating around on a space station doing science that nowhere near justifies its cost (NIH's budget is about 3x the annual spending of the ISS, but yet the NIH manages to fund more distinct disciplines than the number of ISS research projects.)
Our public transit system is pathetic, our court systems are vastly underfunded, our retirement system is essentially a pyramid scheme, we have a huge homeless population, the world's largest (both by percentage and total headcount) prison population, and we're one of a shrinking pool of countries which doesn't provide health care services for all.
We need to at least get to the point where we're not damaging the environment and climate further, and maybe even starting to restore it. THEN, and ONLY THEN, you can have your rocketships for human space exploration. Don't give me that "we'll use space technology to escape our doomed planet" bullshit - we have a population of 7 BILLION. Even if you think we have any hope of lifting even just 1% of the world's population, how do you morally justify screwing over everyone else to save those 1%? Further, if we can't co-habitate with this planet's ecosystem, why should we just start fucking up another planet?
Please help metamoderate.
Wow. You're so very not right.
The President:
Has veto power, oversees the executive branch, is the Commander in Chief of the US Military (sometimes this doesn't mean that much, but right now we have military action going on all over the place), Is the boss of the top law enforcement officer in the country.
He also is supposed to send a proposed budget for running all that stuff he's responsible for. Now it is correct that congress is supposed to pass a budget that may or may not agree with the one the president proposes.
All in all the President's a very powerful guy.
I will also go out on a limb here and say that if Obama wanted to go to Mars, he could make a strong case for it. It just doesn't appear that he's that interested in space or NASA. It does disturb me however that if Obama said "Mars by 2020!" the republicans would automatically be against it because Obama asked for it (the reverse is also true, see GWB). I'm sick of the parties playing games with NASA.