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Calls For Funding NASA Commercial Crew Grow
MarkWhittington writes: As summer starts to give way to fall and the end of the current fiscal year draws nigh, demands that NASA's commercial crew program be fully funded are being heard with greater frequency and urgency. Astronaut Scott Kelly took time off from his year-long sojourn on the International Space Station to entreat Congress to pony up. IO9 was a little more caustic, stating "Dammit, Congress: Just Buy NASA its Own Space Taxi, Already." Monday, Slate became the latest media outlet to take up the cause
The situation is depressingly familiar to those who have followed the fortunes of the space program since the Apollo moon landings. When President Obama started the commercial crew program in 2010, NASA estimated that it would take a certain amount of money to get government funded and commercially operated spacecraft running by 2015. Then the space agency would no longer be dependent on Russia for rides to the International Space Station.
Congress has decided to allocate less money than NASA feels it needed for commercial crew. This situation is not unusual, as Congress often does this to space projects. However, the politics surrounding the creation of the commercial crew program, which featured the abrupt cancellation of the Constellation space exploration program, has exacerbated the conflict between NASA's will and Congress' won't. President Obama did not consult Congress when he cancelled President Bush's return to the moon program. Congress has displeased ever since.
The situation is depressingly familiar to those who have followed the fortunes of the space program since the Apollo moon landings. When President Obama started the commercial crew program in 2010, NASA estimated that it would take a certain amount of money to get government funded and commercially operated spacecraft running by 2015. Then the space agency would no longer be dependent on Russia for rides to the International Space Station.
Congress has decided to allocate less money than NASA feels it needed for commercial crew. This situation is not unusual, as Congress often does this to space projects. However, the politics surrounding the creation of the commercial crew program, which featured the abrupt cancellation of the Constellation space exploration program, has exacerbated the conflict between NASA's will and Congress' won't. President Obama did not consult Congress when he cancelled President Bush's return to the moon program. Congress has displeased ever since.
welfare. They're taking our money at gunpoint to give to corporations.
You see, the thing about my penis is that it happens to be extraordinarily penisey!
Just sell NASA to private investors and rename it Weyland-Yutani Corp.
President Obama did not consult Congress when he cancelled President Bush's return to the moon program. Congress has displeased ever since.
There are three things to observe about the above remark. First, there was no return to the moon program to cancel. Second, Congress cares far more about campaign contributions from Alliant Techsystems, the makers of the Shuttle Rocket Boosters or SRB, who collect considerable revenue from NASA for making an obsolete product. The whole funding cut for NASA's commercial crew program is just an attempt to eliminate competition to the Space Launch System (SLS), a costly boondoggle which is the latest incarnation of the big rocket program.
Third, the article submitter is finally coming around to supporting commercial space. I told you so.
President Obama did not consult Congress when he cancelled President Bush's return to the moon program.
But, Bama's the greatest, such progress and change. That's why so many hip young progressives voted for The Bama. How could The Bama possibly be even less progressive than Bush?
Perhaps it might have been a bit too hasty to kill off the Shuttle & friends since it means we have to hitch a ride with the Russians.
At least it would make sense instead of waiting for a dressed up Apollo II craft.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
KICKSTARTER TIME!
actually, no, that's not very penisey. that's your thumb.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Now it's holding up an array of fully-erect hand penises. If it tries to insert them, activate vivisectors.
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU SPACE COWS!!
You want a space taxi? Well, if it's going to be anything like the German version...
maybe the US version could be less embarrassing?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How many times can you conduct the same study of how fast fingernails grow in space before the taxpayers tire of footing the bill? We haven't learned anything on the International Space Station that we couldn't have learned way cheaper some other way Sorry to be the dreamcrusher of five year olds everywhere but out here in the real world we adults have to pay the bills and frankly I see no compelling reason to fund low earth orbit manned space flight or even trips to other planets out of the public purse. If such things become necessary or profitable then the private sector will do them quickly and more cheaply than government ever could. Although, from all that I'm acquainted with the current understanding of physics, a "destiny in space" is not a likely future outcome for humanity unless and until we make some serious breakthroughs which for all we know might be impossible anyway. However, the current manned space program or any likely replacement doesn't offer any meaningful hope of such breakthroughs. NASA, like the rest of us, needs to learn to live within its means. If that means shutting down manned space flight for now and assigning the astronauts to other duties or giving them their walking papers then so be it. Come back with your manned space flight proposals when you have a viable interstellar drive and somewhere interesting to go.
In 2010 Obama killed the Constellation program w/o discussing it with congress first and with NO PLAN for ANY American manned spaceflight going forward; his plan only funded the Americans using ISS for a few more years via Russian Soyuz flights before dumping ISS into the Pacific Ocean There was vague rhetoric about new tech development and a possible commercial crew taxi program, but. That was it. Congress had a freak-out because Constellation had been a hard-negotiated bi-partisan program with support and buy-in from the hard-right in congress all the way to the hard-left in congress and supported by both Bush and the Pelosi-Reid team. Constellation had even made it through the 2008 election cycle ans the change of power in congress. Congress under-funded Constellation back then, as they always do to NASA, but Bush and his team did not go around whining about it and blaming the underfunding on Democrat hatred of Bush and/or white people. Obama's supporters have used commercial crew underfunding as "proof" that his opponents are racists; they LOVE this fight.
Obama's plan got such a negative backlash even from prominent Democrats that he cobbled together a plan to come up with a plan and, after months of back-room negotiations, ended up calling for a manned version of the Bush-era commercial cargo program, combined with an extension to ISS operations (which even now not all of the ISS partners have agreed to). Congress (again BOTH parties) were so unimpressed with the plan that they insisted on the SLS rocket as part of the plan and the law that ended up getting written allowed Obama's commercial crew program but also REQUIRED the SLS rocket. Obama signed that into law, but has been playing passive-aggressive games with it ever since. Every year, he tries to shift money from SLS to commercial crew, which angers congress and they in turn refuse to increase the commercial crew funds. He then announces that SLS does not need the money any way, then in separate reports to congress announces that SLS is slipping its schedule due to lack of funds (he actually says it's slipping because of delays to the Orion's service module - but THAT is because ESA is building it because he said we could not afford to have Lockheed build it in the US (an budgetary bankshot))
Congress wants a rocket to enable the US to return to the Moon and go on to Mars.
Obama is adamant that we not return to the Moon and that we will go to Mars someday in the distant future
There's no happy compromise between such opposite views.
Obama's NASA fills its website with Mars-centric rhetoric but absolutely no plan, budget, goals, or schedule (this is called "planning to fail by failing to plan"). He attempts to square-the-circle politically by making it look like he is agreeing to a deep-space future for NASA while in actuality he keeps trying to limit NASA to renting taxis for flights to and from LEO that will be easy for a future President to kill-off (since it will lack the political constituency of a big NASA program). He could EASILY get the funding for commercial crew if he would do 2 things: [1] stop slow-walking SLS and robbing its funds, and [2] agree to let congress increase the NASA budget WITHOUT tying that to an across-the-board budget balloon (boosting NASA would require either cutting something else or violating the budget caps, and Obama insists that he be allowed to bust the caps on all social spending programs if NASA gets a boost); Obama is using NASA in a supremely partisan set of fights and it's VERY bad for NASA.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/07/02/2212257/rocket-labs-picks-new-zealand-for-its-launch-site
http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544&lat=-43.533&lng=172.633&loc=Christchurch&alt=7&tz=NZST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26EicKfNYPg
http://www.aulis.com/stereoparallax.htm
Dinosaurs are a joke too. Stupid, gullible Heathendom...
Of all the space programs on Planet Earth today, India's space program is the cheapest. For example, India's MARS mission carries a price tag of $74 million
NASA should spend its money very wisely
In other words, by outsource everything to India NASA will get the loudest " BANG!! " for every single of its freaking buck
Stop with the bullshit government spending. As much as I love space exploration, funding NASA isn't an imperative just because *I* care about it. Let private enterprise figure this shit out at their own expense.
As long as NASA is seen be some in Congress as a way to funnel pork to Utah and Alabama, we're talking nothing but wasted effort.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
These NASA programs are expensive, bloated drains on the economy. They attempt to accelerate technological development by brute force, slowing down wealth creation and making the nation as a whole poorer.
I've suggested a Citizen's Dividend which, as a secondary effect, causes the wealth cycle to speed up: the expansion of niche markets and the creation of new markets occurs more rapidly, speeding up the creation of new jobs. It also has secondary effects such as freeing up the application of wealth to more quickly reduce labor employment in a particular production line, which sits at odds with its effect of reducing labor costs and thus delaying the implementation of new management tools and techniques (such as automation) until they become less expensive.
The whole thing is complex, but it should have a tendency to actually speed up movement through the wealth cycle, particularly in the area of creating jobs to replace those lost each time we find a way to more efficiently provide a good or service.
The growth of wealth in our nation reduces the proportional cost of things like NASA. As we become more efficient, the total buying power increases: the full income (not GDP) of every business and individual, in total, can buy more shit. Since NASA is funded by a portion of the total income, it becomes able to buy more and better components and crew for the same taxes: if NASA is 1% of our income, doubling our wealth doubles NASA's effective funding, even if inflation doesn't keep up (i.e. even if there are only 1.2 times as many dollars) (although inflation lagging behind tends to be bad for those with debt; conversely, it would encourage lower-interest loans, which ... could also be bad, particularly for persons seeking mortgages, although those actually selling those houses are quite happy with a low-interest market).
It's not precisely a prerequisite; but deploying a Citizen's Dividend first would provide greater opportunities to run a program like NASA in the long run, that long run being a very short projection--less than ten years. The budgetary requirements of NASA would shrink, which would make the required budget easier to justify.
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"Congress has displeased ever since." Yes, it certainly has, and not just on NASA funding.
The GOP, esp. the neo-con elements, are the ones working hard to kill off private space. IOW, it is a small faction of CONgress, and to be fair, it is a small CONTROLLING faction of the GOP that is really causing this.
What I find interesting is that the neo-cons like Shelby, coffman, etc would rather pay Putin MULTIPLE BILLIONS, than pay American private space, 1 Billion. It speaks volumes about the GOP.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.