Former NASA Chief On US Space Policy: "No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: During a congressional hearing Thursday, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had harsh words for the space agency and the space policy crafted by President Obama's administration. Under the Obama administration's guidance, NASA has established Mars as a goal for human spaceflight and said that astronauts will visit the red planet by the 2030s. However, a growing number of critics say the agency's approach is neither affordable nor sustainable.

On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics. The United States has not had a serious discussion about space policy, he testified, and as a result, the space agency is making little discernible progress. NASA simply cannot justify its claims of being on a credible path toward Mars, he added.

Comments

No one has harsh words for this haiku

[TheHaikuLover]

His erect penis,
Plugged inside a man's anus.
He is a faggot.

Re:No one has harsh words for this haiku

[Thanshin]

Burma shave

Re:No one has harsh words for this haiku

[lhowaf]

I wonder how many people get the cultural reference (to Burma Shave, not faggotry).

Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Thanshin]

China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.

Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[DerekLyons]

China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.

No, it won't. Not only is the Space Race long over, the political conditions that lead to it no longer exist, and the general public of the US never supported the race that much in the first place.
 

Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.

Apollo only had political support because JFK took a bullet to the head in Dallas. And even then that support barely lasted two years before the budgets started getting slashed - by the time we actually landed, the program was already running on vapors.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

We are no longer interested in such atavistic goals. President Obama's moonshot is to disenfranchise white people, while doing everything to usher in an era where the USA is irrelevant while providing as much comfort and support to those who do not like nor respect the USA as possible. I think he is doing a dam good job. Kennedy never did get to see a man on the moon. However, I feel that president Obama will indeed see the USA destroyed in his own lifetime.

It amazes me that liberal wackos will spend soo much fucking time worrying about CO2 and white privilege while poo pooing any kind of space travel. In is a certainty that if wee do not get off the planet the human race will die. That is everyone, even the underprivileged black and latino people you spend soo much time worrying about. After we have colonized several planets, then you can start worrying about the evils of white people and saving the desert tortoise. We need nuclear power rockets yesterday to get us off this prison planet. A killer asteroid could be waiting around the corner. I understand you are cool with killing off the white race, but you will be killing off non whites too. We should all realize by now that Black Lives Matter.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

After we have colonized several planets,

Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.

(It) is a certainty that if wee do not get off the planet the human race will die.

You've been reading too much sci fi.

We need nuclear power rockets yesterday

Yay, let's spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere than we already have!! And near places that are a lot more populated than Las Vegas in 1958!!

understand you are cool with killing off the white race

The only thing worse than some Utopian sci-fi nerd is a Conservative sci-fi nerd.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

Now that we've discovered how (1) incredibly harsh that outer space is, and (2) stunningly expensive it is to supply everything that we take for granted here on Earth -- from the downward force needed to keep our bones from cracking and our eyes from exploding, to the UV shielding that prevents us from (a) toasting and (b) going blind, and radiation shielding so that our sperm still works, and we don't die of cancer before having the chance to use it -- to the air, water and food all around us to the fuel and minerals that we quite easily dig out of the ground, it should be patently obvious that we're stuck on Earth, and nothing's gonna change that until Zefram Cochrane invents the warp drive (which won't happen until there's a Eugenics War).

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

After we have colonized several planets,

Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.

Didn't Mark Watney already colonized Mars? They even made a movie about it.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.

Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.

The PC-correct term is "race".

The verbiage they cannot use while testifying is the more accurate term, which is big dick syndrome.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

> Apollo only had political support because JFK took a bullet to the head in Dallas.

Does that suggest the conjecture that we have to sacrifice a president from time to time to Get Things Done(TM)?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

Without that drive to dominate other men and impress females with what great offspring we'd sire, we'd still be frightened primates on the plains of Africa.

BTW, chimps and apes have that same dominant, show-off streak.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we just send each other some dick pictures with plain text saying mine is bigger or something? It would be allot cheaper.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is the Space Race long over, the political conditions that lead to it no longer exist, and the general public of the US never supported the race that much in the first place.

You mean, the conditions of a Cold War where the US and Soviet Union both were trying to convince the other countries of the world to support them by showing off that their missile capabilities were superior?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Applehu Akbar]

What you're saying, then, is that China will get a colony going first, whereupon (Trump | Sanders) will accuse them of "cheating" somehow.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is the first sighting of Space Nutterus Conservatardus, at least for me! What a thrill! It's amazing the amount of nonsense a human brain can generate, isn't it?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Richard_at_work]

A good indication of how public feeling was fading was that Apollo 13 wasn't going to be televised during the lunar approach, and doubts were being had about the landing itself.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not at all, you sad, delusional old man living in the past. What we're saying is that all that space nonsense they threw at you as a kid was just a collective fantasy.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

His ID is too high to be an old man. But everything else you wrote is spot-on.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.

Human life? Yes, without extensive terraforming and environmental support. But life at all? Several moons, such as Europa and Enceladus, have enough liquid water and energy to possibly support native life forms.

               

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Maritz]

Quite a weird little combo you have going on there. Usually the racists are also anti-space/progress etc. Oh well, takes all sorts. I'm genuinely glad I don't live in your head though, seems like a toxic place.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Maritz]

As far as I can tell, your point is 'outer space is a harsh environment for humans". Well done you. You raised a point and it was correct. It was a completely facile point, yes, but you've got to start somewhere.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Salgak1]

Technically, only tropical jungles and savannas have the environment and resources to sustain homo sapiens sapiens. It is, after all, the niche we evolved it.

Other environments require technological modifications to allow successful human habitation. Perhaps you've heard of them: Clothing. Buildings. Et cetera.

We, as a species, modify the local environment to suit habitation. We can already sustain life deep underwater, and in extreme Arctic conditions. Space and other planets ability to sustain life are technological and political problems, but are eminently doable if and when the decision is made to proceed. . .

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so what? The bottom of the ocean has life, can we colonize it too?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Maritz]

We are still frightened primates. On the plains of where ever.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Salgak1]

No, we'll colonize once China and the US join to form the Confederation. Downside: Creepy guys in suits with Blue Hands. Upside: Companions. . . Trust me, it'll be shiny. . .

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, there is *no* local environment in space. That's the fatal flaw, the circular reasoning with you space fanatics. Every single spot on this planet is orders of magnitude more hospitable than a vacuum, wouldn't you think?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.

No, it won't. Not only is the Space Race long over, the political conditions that lead to it no longer exist, and the general public of the US never supported the race that much in the first place.

You are mostly likely a self-loathing millienial sitting in yer' mommies basement without a clue, without even a single clue in this world. Or you are LIAR. Most likely both.

I was there and the US population did indeed fully support, and was in fact enthralled by the activities of NASA in that time. It actually brought a lot of people together that would not normally be together.

Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.

Apollo only had political support because JFK took a bullet to the head in Dallas. And even then that support barely lasted two years before the budgets started getting slashed - by the time we actually landed, the program was already running on vapors.

Take your morbid revisionist bullshit and peddle it to your acquaintance in the trailer park. You are seriously full of shit. And I now see you are just a liar / Bernie lover.

Re: Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Then let's elect Trump and get it over with quickly! What'll we fund?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not at all, you sad, delusional old man living in the past. What we're saying is that all that space nonsense they threw at you as a kid was just a collective fantasy.

No, not at all you sullen, clueless, LUDDITE living a lie while being a clueless BIGOT with no facts at all. But you do FEEL you know history, eh. Just because mommie rubbed your back and told you how wonderful and special you are, doesn't mean you know anything. Infowars doesn't count. News for ya'. Mom was lying, just like she lied about all those "uncles" you had.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

But life at all?

That is what the "conversation" is about...

have enough liquid water and energy

"Where do we get the oxygen to burn the oceans of methane?"
"Crack the water, of course."
"But where do we get the energy to crack the water?"
"The methane, of course!"

smh

to possibly support native life forms.

And iron, aluminum, sodium, calcium, etc, etc ad nauseum?
The light that plants need?
Warmth?
Lead to shield us from the Europa's 5400 mSv (enough to cause severe illness or death in human beings exposed for a single day) background radiation?
And the constant earthquakes?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, that also ends everything for you. Another facile point, but fatal. Better stop putting so much energy into your space fantasies.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Space Nutter retard how's it going. Get mad at any weather satellites lately?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

We can already sustain life deep underwater

So.... exactly how many people currently live (as in "make homes, produce stuff, marry and make children, etc", as opposed to just visit for research) deep underwater?

and in extreme Arctic conditions.

Again, how many people live in extreme Arctic conditions? (No, Eskimos *do not* live there. They go occasionally on hunting expeditions, but that's it.)

Space and other planets ability to sustain life are technological ... problems

And so is taking a stroll on the Sun. Throw enough money at it, and easy peasey. :eyeroll:

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Ladies and gentlemen, a terrifying peek into the feverish, psychotic, unmedicated mind of a Space Nutter.

No facts, eh? Here's some facts for you:

www.distancetomars.com

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

As long as I get to pilot a ship with Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin and Jewel Staite! (Throw Melinda Clarke in for good measure...)

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think that China putting a railgun on the moon won't reinvigorate space exploration?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[sabbede]

I don't think Europe would trigger our competitive instinct. India, maybe a little. China definitely would.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[luis_a_espinal]

China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.

No, it won't. Not only is the Space Race long over, the political conditions that lead to it no longer exist, and the general public of the US never supported the race that much in the first place.

You are mostly likely a self-loathing millienial sitting in yer' mommies basement without a clue, without even a single clue in this world. Or you are LIAR. Most likely both.

I was there and the US population did indeed fully support, and was in fact enthralled by the activities of NASA in that time. It actually brought a lot of people together that would not normally be together.

Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.

Apollo only had political support because JFK took a bullet to the head in Dallas. And even then that support barely lasted two years before the budgets started getting slashed - by the time we actually landed, the program was already running on vapors.

Take your morbid revisionist bullshit and peddle it to your acquaintance in the trailer park. You are seriously full of shit. And I now see you are just a liar / Bernie lover.

You were mostly right till you started with the infantile name-calling. Bernie lover? Really? What the fuck does the OP's political allegiances (which you know nothing off) has anything to do with anything. What type of personal demons are you projecting? Chill the hell out.

You said a lot of things that are right and accurate, but they seem to be the only thing right about you. Stop acting like a deranged lunatic.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Native life forms, not human life forms.
Reading/comprehension problems?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[luis_a_espinal]

You don't think that China putting a railgun on the moon won't reinvigorate space exploration?

That, or we will buy one from them. If China can pull that off, it means we didn't do squat to either prevent it or do it first. And that will be the moment when we jump the shark as a nation... but we will be too busy fucking and drinking electrolytes as we cheer for President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.

Almost right, but not quite. What will get US motivated is the Asteroid Belt. The first one to colonize the Asteroid Belt will rule the solar system. Chelyabinsk was a wake up call to the Russians. The belt is chock full of nuke-scale explosive ordinance (rocks + velocity + impact = boom). Chelyabinsk meteor released 20 to 30 times the destructive force of Hiroshima, it just didn't strike ground... had it been made of the right stuff our current funding for NASA would be solved, just sayin'.

Bonus, [most] meteor impacts don't leave behind a radioactive mess. Nudge a few rocks in the right direction and you can intercept any incoming ordinance before it strikes the Belt Base. Sling a rock and destroy any city on any planet or moon. Strap a nuke to a rocky body and blow it up as it reaches orbit, you get an orbital debris cloud.

He who rules the Asteroid Belt rules the Solar System.

Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.

Fuck political support. NASA is just the propaganda arm for the NRO. US has no problem getting anything into space. We still launch the biggest rockets in the fucking world, they just carry the heaviest [spy] satellites in the world. We only partner with the Ruskies for LEO bullshit as a matter of diplomacy and as a front to give them some cash. We stopped going to the moon once our ICBM engines were fully tested (that's the real reason we even had a public facing space program).

You want support? Tap into some that's coming from our military, who has already advanced the space race so far in secret that you wouldn't believe what we're capable of today. NASA is not at the forefront of space exploration. We should fund the shit out of them to manufacture public consent to get the ignorant masses to do what's best for humanity, but I'm not surprised or losing any sleep over the future of NASA's Space Pork spending.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

And so is taking a stroll on the Sun. Throw enough money at it, and easy peasey.

Just go at night...

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

"outer space is too harsh an environment for humans" FTFY.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Lunacy. Paranoia. Misanthropy. Space Nutter trifecta! A hat trick of mental illness!

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

Several moons, such as Europa and Enceladus, have enough liquid water and energy to possibly support native life forms.

Too far, and simply not worth the trouble.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Ironically nowadays it will be, with all the channels.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Coping with temperate climates was both technological and evolutionary. Populations in inland northern latitudes developed lighter skin tones to maximize UV absorption for instance. North asians have an epicantric fold. Europeans developed the ability to digest milk throughout life to maximize calorie production from cows. So there really is no single homo sapiens species, its a number of different subspecies which have evolutionary adapted to cope with different locations on different areas of the planet.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Pumpkin Tuna]

I live in the relatively gentle climate of the southern United States. Yet if you dump me outside in February with no house, no clothes and no tools, and I would be dead in a day. Most of this planet is a hostile environment that we have to use our brains and tools to survive in. Mars would be harder, but not essentially different.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

Mars would be harder, but not essentially different.

The lack of air, and levels of radiation are much different than any place on Earth. And even on Earth there are plenty of places where nobody settles.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, an unmedicated Space Nutter has taken over the common room's only computer! Orderlies!!! Bring the barrel of Thorazine!

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

One isn't a racist because they understand that there are some people who are racists. Being anti-white is being racists.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

Yet if you dump me outside in February with no house, no clothes and no tools, and I would be dead in a day.

If I dump you on Mars with a house, clothes and tools, you'd be dead in minutes.

Mars would be harder, but not essentially different.

That "dead in a day" vs. "dead in minutes" is caused by some seriously essential factors.

And speaking of houses (the kind you'd need on Mars), clothes and tools...

• Where do they come from? Factories.
• Where do factories come from? They're built from difficult to fashion metals.
• Where do the metals come from? Steel ingots that are softened in huge furnaces and then pushed through really heavy extruders.
  
• Where do the steel ingots come from? Foundries with HUGE buckets that carry tens of thousands of tons of molten iron and force in just the right amount of carbon, chrome, vanadium, etc.
• Where does the iron come from? Massively complex refineries cook down iron ore.
• Where does the ore come from? Mines that use unimaginably large shovels and trucks, plus miles of crushers and grinders.

Shall I go on about nails, screws, glass, gasoline, rubber, etc, etc?

If you say that we'll just mine it on Mars, that won't work because the heavy equipment isn't up there, and neither are the refineries, smelters, fuel, etc.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

If you say that we'll just mine it on Mars, that won't work because the heavy equipment isn't up there, and neither are the refineries, smelters, fuel, etc.

On top of that, there's no infrastructure for moving stuff around. No shipping waters, no road network, and no atmosphere for flying. In order to build a factory from dirt, you need a lot of different stuff, and it is very unlikely you'll find everything within a short distance. It is more likely you'll have to go to every corner of the planet to collect the things you need.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[DarkOx]

I have to disagree. The real value in space exploration has been the technology that came out of the effort. Its debatable if that is even really the origin of much of that tech. Certainly rocket and delivery technology came out of WWII and that isn't terribly useful for doing anything but hurling weapons at each other or tossing stuff into space.

We did get a lot of valuable computer technology, and some spiffy things like Velcro out of space exploration effort. We also made a number of materials science advances that have paid real dividends. I can't help but suspect the military applications and desires for most of those technologies would have birthed them too, if NASA had not provided a slightly more open incubator. All and all it was probably worth the investment.

Here we are at the 80/20 point though. We have 80% of the tech we really need to explore the solar system. What is left is cooking up the other 20% which might easily end up requiring 80% of the total investment in space form the late 50's on when its finally tallied, at least by the time we have a mars colony. Its also quite likely the tech to come out of that will be highly specialized and not nearly so applicable to life back here on earth. So might offer us 20% of the pay back value.

Personally I think continued investment in space exploration is a loosing proposition, at least over the time horizon of a lifetime. I think it makes perfect sense to wait and let China or India prove there is some pay back out there. Its always cheaper to imitate than to innovate. Provided we take some steps to preserve our manufacturing industry ( like re-erect some trade barriers with China and India ) playing catchup should be fast and cheap if it turns out we need to do that.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

A Space Nutter thread is no place for a thinking man!

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

"We did get a lot of valuable computer technology, and some spiffy things like Velcro out of space exploration effort. "

For fuck's sake, no we didn't. Velcro was invented way before NASA even existed, you can look shit like that up, you know. And as for computers, they already existed as well, because believe it or not, people back then had an inkling they might be useful!

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the OP and have been involved with either JPL or NASA since 1987. Two Mars orbiters (one failure), an upcoming Jupiter mission and also a couple years with the manned space program (not nearly as interesting). With nearly 30 years involved professionally and the majority of my childhood interests up to that point, I've always found support for the space program to be very shallow. Few of the non techy people that I know were even aware that there was a probe that landed on Titan. Or even what Titan is for that matter.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Coren22]

Chelyabinsk was a wake up call to the Russians. The belt is chock full of nuke-scale explosive ordinance (rocks + velocity + impact = boom).

I'll give you a hint, the rocket you would need to change the orbit of a belt asteroid would contain more energy than you would achieve from hitting a city with it.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashdot_commentator]

Apollo was also backed by a legislative genius name LBJ. His "small" role ensured there would money for the 10 year investment (actually 6 years); and expenditure IIRC would amount to 4-5% of the national budget per year (US federal budgets were really small back then...).

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

William Shockley, who invented the transistor, pretty much acknowledge the fact there are racial differences including in IQ averages. Does that make him "racist". No. The term racist is basically meaningless today and a load of nonsense, because of the way it is used by politically correct people to demonize data and try to villify people who simply acknowledge facts. The fact is, we dont have any problem with race differences or dislike certain races because of whatever trait they have, though we are proud of our own. We are for a merit based society and one where there is equal opportunity for everyone. We are for preserving the races, rather than destroying them. We're not the ones who are insanely afraid and intolerant of race differences. I would suggest people who use the r word the most are those who actually have an insane fear and cannot cope with the fact that, gasps, people are different! This is not a bad thing! Those who are so apt to accuse others of being racist etc are usually the ones who view races as being a problem and who have a very low opinion of people and the ability of people to recognize and respect racial differences. We are for preserving all races. All I see coming from many people, who try to promote the idea that white people are bad and evil and how oppressed this or that minority is, is fear and hatred of the races and really are not for preserving them but have such a hatred of the races they want to destroy them. They have a hatred of white people in particlar that just oozes from every word that they say, including such a genocidal hatred that they cannot stand the fact that white people are a majority in some countries just as blacks are a majority in many others, and their solution to this is to exterminate the white population by piling up enormous financial burdens on raising children and trying to attack the family unit, and organize invasions of white countries. Thats not respect for human diversity, or tolerance, folks.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Kjella]

There's a huge difference between the places on earth we've turned into productive habitats and those we just sustain as research outposts through massive external support. Even in Norway that's a cold and hostile country we have cave dwellers from 9000 years ago right after the ice cap melted from the last ice age, so the description of most of earth as particularly hostile is exaggerated. It has air, it has water, it has radiation shielding, as long as you have wildlife to provide food and furs you're making a living. But we haven't and won't colonize Sahara, the Antarctic or the oceans because it's so hard to live there the net productivity is negative.

We literally only have a few hundred people on the South Pole and only a few thousand on the whole continent. Pretty much all the materials, equipment and supplies are flown in, because there's nothing but snow, ice and then some more snow. Unless you're in the realm of alchemy and can turn water into something else like wood or iron it's just not within our realm of scientific and technological progress to make it so either. A Mars base is a massive money pit. And turning it into a Mars colony well it's going to become a much, much bigger money pit before the trend turns and you need earth less.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that we've discovered how (1) incredibly harsh that outer space is, and (2) stunningly expensive it is to supply everything that we take for granted here on Earth -- from the downward force needed to keep our bones from cracking and our eyes from exploding,

You're aware that's just 1 atmosphere of pressure difference. That's fucking nothing compared to traveling via submarine... Your FUD is FUD.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[HiThere]

I do agree, but I also think that it's a mistake to reach too far. Not that NASA is actually approaching that.

If we weren't wasting money on new models of fighter that are worse than the last model, etc. and the money went instead to NASA, then a lot more could reasonably be done. But it's also true that given the US political environment no long term government funded plan has any security unless it's pushed by either a large majority of the people or by a strong special interest. An election cycle or two and the support will just vanish.

Because of this I'm all in favor of short term research, and low cost research that is unobtrusive enough to not be noticed. Improved ion-jet rockets is a thing that should be worked on. Also solar power satellites for beam-casting power to distant missions (say beyond Jupiter) as a replacement of the Plutonium that is being used up. Note that the beam-casting power could also have lots of more local uses, so once a modest version had proved itself it could be upgraded. Small incremental steps are slow, but they'll get us there eventually if someone doesn't beat us to the goalpost. And it's my opinion that space habitats are more reasonable than a Mars base. Very few people would accept that, however, so the only way to do it is slow small steps. And a good first step would be to construct actual closed ecosystems. (Get the necessary inputs and outputs to a bare minimum. You've GOT to allow energy input and heat output, e.g., but try for a real sealed environment.) Hell, start with closed environment mouse colonies. That should be fairly cheap. Then slowly work up to more complex ecosystems. BioSphere was an example of NOT being unobtrusive. The things I'm talking about would only publish in academic and engineering journals...not that they would hide from reporters, they just wouldn't court them.

N.B.: The kind of progress I'm talking about is going on right now. I don't always agree with the directions it's taking, but it's happening. I presume, without knowing, that the Vasimir ion rocket is being worked on and improved. It's main real drawback is a need for electric power. A really advanced ion rocket, though, would be able to work off of finely ground rock dust. But that would clearly take more power than pre-refined fuels.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[HiThere]

There's reasonable evidence that we've already "jumped the shark". This is something that can only be really determined a century or so later, but there are reasonable lines of evidence leading to that conclusion. The reason we can't tell for sure is probably that the next "leading nation" still hasn't gotten it's ducks in a row. China is a big contender, but it's not the only possibility.

OTOH, it is usually possible to recover from a stumble if you make correct moves, but Hillary? Trump? Of the major candidates only Sanders seems to even have a glimmer of understanding of the problems that are approaching, and I'm not to sure about him. And if he did get in, what could he get through a blindly obstructive congress? (Well, at least the Senate, we don't know what the House will look like after the next election cycle.) Please note, I'm not talking strictly about parties here. Only a very few of the current Senate appear to have even a desire to work for the good of the country (defining that roughly on the state of the median citizen ... and using a different median citizen for each dimension of measure of state. Nobody's average in all dimensions. If you want you could also count the mean and the mode, but I think that just makes the figuring harder without basically changing the result. OTOH, just figuring on the mode yields unpleasant results.)

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[HiThere]

If only he hadn't tied himself to the Viet Nam conflict. When Kennedy died we had, IIRC, 52 military advisors on the ground. And that whole imbroglio yielded NO promise of national advantage that I've ever been able to detect. The way it worked out there was certainly no advantage. ... Unless you count the ending of the draft, which allowed the govt a relatively free hand with how it used military force. *I* count that as a negative, but I can see why some might think it a bonus.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

We need nuclear power rockets yesterday

Yay, let's spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere than we already have!! And near places that are a lot more populated than Las Vegas in 1958!!

Umm...I don't know if you're being intentionally ignorant in an attempt at humor or just uninformed, but nuclear rocket designs generally call for them to be used only in space. Furthermore, spewing ionizing radiation into the air isn't remotely harmful unless something organic is being struck by said radiation. It's not like it hurts the air molecules.

There was a Cold War project to build a nuclear-powered bomber. They constructed the actual engine and it worked. Yes, it was hideously dangerous to be behind the engine while it was operating but it didn't spew permanent stuff like fallout or anything. Unless you were within range of the radiation while it was operating, it had no permanent effects on anything. The ultimately scrapped the project though due to weight (it had to have shielding for the crew), cost, and the fact that good old fashioned jet engines did most jobs quite well and ICBM's did whatever the bombers couldn't do.

Yes, I'm aware there were some designs -- even scale prototypes -- of fission rockets for atmospheric use that did spew fallout. None of these were seriously considered for obvious reasons.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

So.... exactly how many people currently live (as in "make homes, produce stuff, marry and make children, etc", as opposed to just visit for research) deep underwater?

Deep ocean habitats, along with the other examples like Arctic habitats, aren't readily done not because it's a technological challenge but for other much more practical reasons. For example, there is no pressing need for us to inhabit such extreme climates because we have much more habitable ones in plentiful supply right next door. Further, such climates are not only physically difficult but they're psychologically inhospitable in that you can't find too many people with a compelling desire to live in such conditions. The only reason we have such habitats right now is for scientific research and maybe a few economically interesting ones (undersea oil exploration, for example, which is something that's been dabbled in over the decades).

None of this does anything to dispute the OP's point, namely that these are already solved technological problems. Unlike your "stroll on the sun" comment, there's nothing required engineering-wise which is stopping us from doing it tomorrow. The fact that we don't doesn't imply we can't or won't. Should a sudden compelling reason come up -- discovery of valuable resources which are economically recoverable, for example -- you'd find people and firms lined up to make it happen.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

If you say that we'll just mine it on Mars, that won't work because the heavy equipment isn't up there, and neither are the refineries, smelters, fuel, etc.

Why be so short-sighted and ignore the obvious solution? You don't start with stone axes on Mars and build your industrial society from there. You take some of your technology with you when you go. Yes, it's fantastically expensive to move mass from Earth to Mars (hence my earlier comment on why the Moon is a better initial target) but it's still less expensive than starting from scratch. And there's nothing impossible or even difficult about sending stuff like smelters, excavators, extruders, and so forth to Mars; it's just expensive. But, like all things with cost/benefit equations, when there's a compelling reason to do it (either political, economic, or military) it will get done. You act like it's impossible because the gear isn't there waiting on us already.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

What? No Christina Hendricks? Who cares if she's batshit crazy when she has curves like that...and a redhead to boot!

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I'll give you a hint, the rocket you would need to change the orbit of a belt asteroid would contain more energy than you would achieve from hitting a city with it.

You, sir, get a fail in orbital mechanics. With gravitational assists and a long-running ion drive, you can get some rocks up to a very impressive speed, especially since everything in the belt (presumably your source of asteroids) is "downhill" in the gravity well direction of Earth. You don't need a very big rock, you just need it to go very, very fast. A rock the size of a bus would do quite nicely if you accelerated it to a few times orbital velocity.

Granted, such a thing would be immensely expensive and take years to plan, build, not to mention the many months or years of trajectory to build up speed. And hitting a specific target would be difficult given the Earth is both spinning and orbiting the sun during your whole "speed this rock up" phase years in advance. But it's all very doable even with current tech. It's just cheaper to use good old fashioned bombs or nukes.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

It's not like it hurts the air molecules.

You're the one ignorant of ionizing radiation. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=483&tid=86 When ionizing radiation from outer space hits the upper atmosphere, it produces a shower of cosmic rays that constantly expose everything on earth. Some hit gases in the air and change them into radioactive material (such as tritium and carbon 14). That rocket engine nozzle is pointed down, towards us.

I'm aware there were some designs -- even scale prototypes -- of fission rockets for atmospheric use that did spew fallout.

First you ask if I'm ignorant, and then you admit that it happened.

None of these were seriously considered for obvious reasons.

They were considered seriously enough to get off the drawing board and into the spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere phase.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

And there's nothing impossible or even difficult about sending stuff like smelters, excavators, extruders, and so forth to Mars; it's just expensive.

I don't think you realize how incredibly large and heavy this stuff is, compared to the spidery save-every-gram stuff that we can launch into space.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

Morena Baccarin has all the necessary curves.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Too far, and simply not worth the trouble.

There are genuine and quite expensive difficulties, certainly. Please note that this is a quite different claim than "Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life."

The difference has reminded me of the very, very old joke described at http://quoteinvestigator.com/2.... The situation is somewhat reversed: instead of establishing that we'd "sleep with another world" if paid millions of dollars, and now haggling over whether we'd do it for $5, you're saying that "it would cost too much to sleep on another world". But how low would the price have to be to allocate the budget to pursue this?

For example, there are potentially very profitable reasons to establish bases near Saturn. If and as space industry grows, water is an expensive commodity to ship to orbit: Most hydrogen and oxygen in modern spacecraft are used as rocket propellant, unrecoverable for use in space industry.Hydrogen is relatively easy to gather from solar wind, but oxygen becomes a commodity for both life support and energy supplies. The icy rings of Saturn are a _tremendous_ source of solar sail portable water. It takes long-term investment to harvest them, and careful management to deliver them safely and usefully to Earth orbit space industries. But in the long terms of space exploration, it could indeed be profitable to have stable, regularly harvested water deliveries from the moons of Saturn. And a stable base on a moon like Enceladus could provide tremendous scientific research benefit on possible water based life there, and also serve as a stable navigation, communications, and repair center. And with a whole local moon for material resources, one much less susceptible to orbital perturbations than a ship or space station, it could be an invaluable location for stored or emergency resources.

I'm not suggesting this is the best option or best project to pursue. But it's precisely the kind of speculative engineering and multi-purpose mission planning that NASA should be considering for longer term projects.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

There is a tremendous difference between "habitable by human life across an entire surface", which is what you seem to be describing, and "the environment and resources that we need to sustain life". I did mention the possibility of native life, given the existence of the tube worms that live near Earth's underseas volcanos, harvesting energy and chemicals from the volcanic vents, it seems quite possible that there may be life on extreme worlds that have energy and chemistry enough to provide liquid water.

Iron? That's a key for hemoglobin for many oxygen based life forms, but you and I would have a difficult time extracting it from water, rock, or even iron ore. We consume other life forms that have already concentrated energy and minerals and vitamins for us. Oxygen? Abundant oxygen on Earth apparently started when photosynthesis in plants started generating it, life from before that change was _poisoned_ by high oxygen levels. Sodium and calcium? Those are ions concentrated in Earth's oceans by the distillation of rain on land, bringing those salts to the ocean, then evaporating. It would be fascinating to examine their concentrations of those in other world's exposed or internal oceans and learn what other processes affect water chemistry there. How much do you need for life, if any?

The point is that nature does not "prepare the ideal chemical environment" and life appears automatically to take advantage of it. It seems that life starts from quite limited forms and capabilities, capabilities quite limited by local resources, and takes advantage of what it finds, to its own benefit. Over time it can profoundly alter the environment. Then other life forms can develop over time to take advantage of _that_ environment, and eventually you can get quite an active and sophisticated ecosystem built on many layers of consumption and modification of the local environment. It would be fascinating, and I think very educational, to see what other approaches might have already worked.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

But how low would the price have to be to allocate the budget to pursue this?

Depends on what you get out of it. I don't think we'll ever have a profitable space industry outside Earth orbit, so the possible access to water near Saturn is useless.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

What's the relevance of that whole, long bit of obviousness to whether we, in the near future, can not just live on -- for example -- Europa with a shit load of gargantuanly expensive support from Earth, but independently sustain ourselves on Europa?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

> What's the relevance of that whole, long bit of obviousness to whether we, in the near future, can not just live on -- for example -- Europa with a shit load of gargantuanly expensive support from Earth, but independently sustain ourselves on Europa?

Where, in this thread, did that ever come up? I became concerned about your statement quoted below.

> Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.

You're adding a new goal, namely to Independently sustain human life on another planet. That is a quite distinct topic than whether life can exist there, which you raised, and whether it's worth going there, which is what justifies NASA budgets and space exploration as a whole. I'm afraid that requirement may have that seemed quite obvious to you but wasn't in the actual questions or any published spec. Colonization of _any_ remote region takes lengthy support from the colonizing nation. There are often tools, technologies, and critical trade goods not immediately available in the colonies until they can build up the resources to produce them locally. And ecological disasters are common in distant colonies, even those with the advantage of a compatible biology such as European colonies in Australia and the Americas. One should expect disasters: I don''t believe anyone has said it would be risk free or easy. But that kind of colonization is a different question than whether it's worth establishing a base there.

I'm also afraid that this is extremely common in technological consulting or partnership. A project is proposed and bids accepted, or refused, on the basis of goals that are not made apparent in the published proposal. These goals may have seemed intrinsically obvious to the person who originally suggested the project, but need not be apparent to people paying for, or bidding on, the project. In other cases, the earlier, published goals are rejected by latecomers on the basis of _their_ assumed goals, which they've often failed to explicitly state and which no one involved in specifying or doing the work was part of the project. And the project can be poisoned by concerns or objections about these other goals, which were _never agreed on as part of the original project_. I'm concerned that this is what you're doing.

In real work, that's the point that it's vital to keep the original specifications in hand, and get changes written _explicitly_ so they can be billed for, and so that the project goalposts and expectations don't get moved beyond what anyone can or should provide. Very, very occasionally a new goal is added that actually makes the whole project much easier and saves everyone time and money. But I don't see that here.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Depends on what you get out of it. I don't think we'll ever have a profitable space industry outside Earth orbit,

Even Earth orbit stations need water and solid raw material. SpaceX is breaking the $1000/pound price barrier. But if the price for asteroid or planetary ring water farming gets low enough, particularly using cheap solar sails to navigate them, the difficulty might well be justified by the savings. I look forward to finding out over the next few decades.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

Where, in this thread, did that ever come up?

The whole point of "colonize other planets" is to escape reliance on this polluted, over-crowded, might-be-made-uninhabitable-by-an-asteroid Earth.

Colonization of _any_ remote region takes lengthy support from the colonizing nation.

I'm not sure you quite understand how remote that Europa -- and even Mars -- is, how little (both in weight and volume) rockets can carry, and how much stuff that a high tech society needs.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

china has already been to the moon - with robots Yutu - and no one in this country covered it.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Coren22]

It's just cheaper to use good old fashioned bombs or nukes.

You just reiterated what I said. That is exactly what I was saying, it makes no sense as a weapon to hit a enemy country, it costs too much, and has no accuracy. The amount of energy you would need to put into the asteroid wouldn't be worth it.

Orbital bombardment is great against a whole planet, but targeting a strike against only your enemy is unlikely to be effective.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Salgak1]

Any of the above ? I'll be in my bunk. . .

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

One female I won't be sleeping with is Vera.

The moon is too far for them

[Anonymous Coward]

They couldn't even make it to the Moon anymore, let alone Mars.

Not in the cards.

[Tablizer]

Americans are just not in the mood to pay for humans on Mars, unless somebody finds a cheapo way to pull it off.

Re:Not in the cards.

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans are just not in the mood to pay for humans on Mars, unless somebody finds a cheapo way to pull it off.

You say that as if Americans are in a "mood" to pay for policing the world. We sure a shit haven't found a "cheapo" way to conduct a war.

Re:Not in the cards.

[Mike Frett]

Yeah but we are in the mood to drop bombs on children and pay taxes to spy on everybody. Just imagine if we spin all that into a positive and put our efforts, instead, on the cosmos.

Re:Not in the cards.

[Maritz]

You don't need it to be cheap, you just need there to be brown people there that you don't like.

Re:Not in the cards.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all about jobs. Policing the world employs a couple hundred thousand people. Space significantly fewer.

Re:Not in the cards.

[Nunya666]

Yeah but we are in the mood to drop bombs on children and pay taxes to spy on everybody.

No, we're not.

Power-hungry government morons do that. We peons have no choice in the matter.

Technically, we could replace those morons with someone else. But the current presidential race proves that our only choices are either morons or liars.

No air, no reason, so sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Space is empty, there's a few deadly rocks floating around an empty hell. Sorry, The Six Million Dollar Man was fiction.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

It's widely believed Mars once had life. If so, it's very possible that the remains of the life turned into oil. If Mars has oil deposits, the dumb fat Americans probably think Mars needs some freedom. That's justification enough for them to go to Mars. I'm so glad I live in the EU where we don't invade countries, don't cause global warming, don't spy on our citizens, and aren't dumb and fat.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if Mars were made of solid oil with a thin crust of red sand, there is no way to get that oil and bring it back here. For one thing, the price of oil just crashed to record lows, and in any case, if we did have the energy and resources to get that oil, we wouldn't need to...

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[locopuyo]

Only because those damn environmentalists won't let us build a pipeline to mars.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Nutria]

It's widely believed

Weasel words.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Nutria]

if Mars were made of solid oil

Then it would be Evil Saturated Fat, and former Mayor Bloomberg would try and get it quarantined!!

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[wonkey_monkey]

It's widely believed Mars once had life.

Is it? Widely hoped, perhaps, but I wouldn't even say it's widely suspected, let alone believed.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Maritz]

Space is mostly empty.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Coren22]

I'm so glad I live in the EU where we don't invade countries, don't cause global warming, don't spy on our citizens, and aren't dumb and fat.

Are you sure about that? Every single thing you mention is actually wrong.

"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Weirsbaski]

"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

You know, that third one might be the cause of the first two...

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correlation is not causation ... oh wait!

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think "no point" is more the correct term. Its the same reason why no one has been to the moon in over 40 years.

Sending humans to Mars is extremely expensive and utterly pointless, it would be a complete miss use of resources that would literally decrease living standards with no realistic later return on investment to compensate.

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Let's allocate budget for (?).

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or vice versa.

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"miss use"??? Come on, dude.

Re: "No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a myth! Myth!!"
"Yeth?"

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[yodleboy]

"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ? "You know, that third one might be the cause of the first two..."

You know the first two might be the cause of the third... NASA publicity would have us all believe that a major Mars mission is just a small step up in difficulty from landing on the Moon, despite the fact that most of that Apollo expertise is aging and dying AND the fact that NASA hasn't done squat outside of LEO in 40 years (manned flight, of course). Nevermind ROI, people just want to believe that the money won't go into a black hole for 20 years and culminate with a one way publicity stunt.

I don't think there's a lot of confidence among the general public that NASA could actually pull something off at ANY budget.

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA publicity would have us all believe that a major Mars mission is just a small step up in difficulty from landing on the Moon, despite the fact that most of that Apollo expertise is aging and dying AND the fact that NASA hasn't done squat outside of LEO in 40 years (manned flight, of course).
 
This is why we have written and spoken language as well as educational institutions.
 
Do you honestly believe for one minute that we can't reproduce the efforts of the 1960s if we really wanted to because the engineers are dead/dying?
 
You sound like the fucktards who think that we couldn't build a pyramid today. The problem isn't the technology but the money. Who the fuck is going to pay 5 billion dollars to build a tomb today, let alone all the money involved in land acquisition and taxes?
 
We could do the moon today if the funding was there. I have no idea what it would cost, Google puts out the estimate of 1.5 billion. I'm sure that doesn't include a lot of things that NASA already sits on from an infrastructure standpoint. But who's going to put that out? That's more than 10% of Elon Musk's total worth and probably more than all his liquid assets combined. All that for two people on a single mission.
 
NASA doesn't have to provide a financial ROI but they do have to provide something beyond being able to say "We did it!!!! (again....)" in order to justify the spending.

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This one flew over your head, he meant health benefits and vision plan lol

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's drawing an analogy between sending humans to Mars and the wildly popular Miss Use Pageant, which was created to highlight everything superfluous and wasteful about establishing a system whereby we demean women by making them think we're honoring them with large promises of financial benefit and education that never actually pans out in a fake competition where they are judged by their physical appearance with only slight hand waving to their actual skill set and knowledge base to mask the fact that the entire thing is really a ploy to let dirty old men drool over their bikini-clad bodies.

But I digress--and disagree.

Trumpian Ship

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump: "I'll not only get us to Mars faster, but make the Martians pay for it, and build a yuuuugely successful casino up there! I've negotiated with Martians before, and I'm very good at it. And I'll rename Uranus, 'Trumpius'. Uranus is a disgusting name. Americans will be winning namers again under a Trump presidency. No more soft or disgusting names."

Minority Vision, Deceitful Plan, Wasted Budget

[fred911]

What more could one expect taking guidance from the commander-in-chief.

Re:Minority Vision, Deceitful Plan, Wasted Budget

[Anonymous Coward]

What more could one expect taking guidance from the commander-in-chief.

On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics.

2005-2009 means you might want to include G.W. Bush in that commander-in-chief statement.

Re:Minority Vision, Deceitful Plan, Wasted Budget

[Anonymous Coward]

I can hardly wait to see who they select from the latest 18,000 applicants. Expect them to be diverse.

Re:Minority Vision, Deceitful Plan, Wasted Budget

[currently_awake]

NASA's current plan is to spread the Pork around the USA so Merican Congress Critters get re-elected.

Re:More women in space

[Anonymous Coward]

All of them...

I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

I just watched The Martian and NASA was great.

Re:I disagree

[NotDrWho]

They're even better in Gravity, the movie that taught us all that NASA still has a shuttle program--and not just any shuttles, mind you, but kick-ass super-shuttles that can easily travel between Hubble and ISS.

Wait, NASA has a space policy?

[zioncat]

I thought its priority was muslim outreach with bit of "earth science" on the side.

Sad state of affairs and how we got here

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, the Apollo program was already winding down. NASA had purchased the final Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets and Apollo spacecraft. As much as President Johnson supported NASA, he valued his Vietnam war and his "Great Society" programs, including his "War on poverty" even more.

When Nixon walked into the oval office, he inherited the space program of JFK, the man he believed had cheated him out of the White House in the 1960 election. Every success of the program that landed a man on the moon in Nixon's time was attributed to JFK and LBJ, and this probably made the deeply flawed man even more insecure. The Apollo13 incident occurred on his watch and his administration was certain that it would be blamed for any fatalities, so they wanted NASA to stop the missions that went to places where rescue was not possible. The number of moon landings was cut on top of the Johnson cuts and hardware was re-purposed for safer Earth-orbit uses like Skylab and Nixon's Apollo-Soyuz. Nixon approved the space shuttle program but selected the least-expensive-to-develop option (reusable orbiter on the side of the stack, boosted by 2 SRBs). There were designs that would have been cheaper and safer to OPERATE, but cost more to develop including one that flew inline atop a Saturn V 1st stage, one that flew mated to the side of a manned fully-reusable flyback booster, and others - but as a typical politician he picked the one that would look best on the books during his time in office.

Ford ignored NASA. He was focused on the post Watergate mess. With NASA in an R&D and building phase, there was nothing there to provide him with the photo-ops that all politicians crave, and as a congressman from michigan with barely enough IQ points to play football and who'd been appointed VP (rather than being elected) and then elevated to President (again, without an election) he lacked any sort of mandate to do anything.

Carter ignored NASA. He inherited a program with no available spacecraft, and poor non-human-rated Launch Vehicles and with no desire to do anything with NASA he just neglected it. NASA just used the Carter years to quietly push ahead with the money congress provided to do the development of the shuttles.

Reagan loved NASA, embraced the Shuttle program including showing up at Edwards to welcome one of the early missions home. He called for a winged single-stage-to-orbit "national aerospace plane" to be developed to eventually replace the shuttles, called for a permanent American space station (which he named "Freedom") and ordered NASA to plan to eventually transition shuttles to commercial service like an airline with private sector operators. When Challenger exploded, he made sure the congress provided the funds to build a replacement orbiter. Unfortunately, with political problems in his last two years, his attention was elsewhere and he lacked the political power to get his higher priority items funded and still have the clout for the NASA items. The Space station and NASP were both funded, but not to the levels needed. Both survived his administration, but not with much inertia.

Bush41 had been involved with NASA during the Reagan years (it's customary for the VP to be involved with NASA) but seemed tepid. He is famous for saying that he just did not get "the vision thing". On the 20th anniversary of the moon landing he announced a "Space Exploration Initiative" to return to the moon, then move on to Mars, but rather than doing it on a pile of new money like Apollo, he proposed a pay-as-you-go pace .... then he never funded it, and he was booted out of office after only one term. in the middle of his one term, Bush appointed Norm Augustine to run a committee, which recommended ending human exploration beyond Earth orbit.

Clinton seems to have taken no real interest in NASA (presumably it did not help anyone but Astronauts "get the chicks", so it was of little use (yes, I'm joking here)) but his VP Gore did appear genuinely interest

Re:Sad state of affairs and how we got here

[Anonymous Coward]

one thing you didn't mention is:
NASA actively pursued promotion and advertisement of the agency... hence your last comment on Mission to Mars was more of NASA internal propaganda.

Also, you realize of all the presidents mentioned--they all lied about something (which resulted in good or bad depending). Except for Carter, which of course did nothing in this process. Funny isn't it? Who do you trust?

Soo

[Kartu]

Well, with major program put on shelves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I don't really know whom to blame, Obama, for sparing money on it (NASA's budget is roughly 18 billion $, which is about 0.5% of the federal budget) and effectively stopping the program, or NASA, for Constelation program being behind schedule and much more costly than planned.

Probably more of NASA's fault.

Anyway, as far as I get the recommendation of the committee::
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

goes, the plan is to skip the Moon (as 2020 is not achievable), invest into heavy rocketry (Ares V?) for which Obama promised to slap 6 billion $ and get to Mars by 2030.

Re:Soo

[NormalVisual]

I don't think there's really any single person to blame. Given that the kind of research needed to do achieve kind of substantial manned space flight objectives outside of LEO takes many years, NASA is always going to be hamstrung by the changing winds of political support. As a few have mentioned, the Apollo program owes a lot of its success to the fact that Kennedy died in an extremely public and sympathetic manner, and had already lost most of its political support even before Armstrong set foot on the Moon.

Any space initiative that can't be achieved in four, possibly eight years is going to have a hard road ahead.

Seriously... Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

They know full well that every 8 years, or even 4, they're going to be completely reset in order to secure the new leader's "legacy". Given what's coming through as the next one, NASA knows they're pretty much fucked anyway.

Trump? He's going to kill them just cos he's a fucking nutjob, and they're not about making a profit.
Any of the other Gopers? Well they'll kill every program (and not just NASA) just to ensure Obama goes down as a failure. They also have nothing that can be considered weaponizable, though they'll spin it as eliminating waste, and dump NASA's entire budget into the military industrial complex.
Bernie? He'll kill it so the money can be spent on welfare programs.
Scarily enough that only leaves Hillary as any potential candidate that might keep them alive, though they'll still get their budget slashed as she has no love for space either.

Given those constraints, why even bother trying to get a program off the ground that no chance of ever achieving the initial set goal?

Let's face it, the only reason America reached the moon, was that Kennedy had the good fortune to get himself killed while in office and it would have been offensive to destroy a _dead_ president's legacy, as evidenced by the speed that the program was killed as soon as the flag had been plated and the dream fulfilled.

Neither affordable nor sustainable..

[sTERNKERN]

It's kinda like a war, isn't it? Oh wait.. that is affordable and sustainable. /sarcarsm

Bust a Move!

[Anonymous Coward]

EmCeeUh

Base politicking is no substitute for vision.

[Bearhouse]

No vision? Well, arguably NASA has served its purpose; founded to "beat the Commies" after Sputnik "terrorized" the USA by orbiting over it, and then the Sovs. got the first human in orbit, NASA was successful in beating them to the moon. With a bit of help from some ex-nazi scientists and engineers...
An amazing achievement, but it was always a "because it's there" kind of thing.
Kennedy's remarkable "we choose to go to the moon" speech made no mention of establishing permanent moon colonies; that was never the vision.

So after that box was ticked, and the Space Shuttle disaster, NASA pretty much drifted into a quagmire of political infighting and over-communication.
Sad really.

Maybe stop stealing from the cookie jar....

[Anonymous Coward]

It is my understanding that NASA is essentially denied the ability to make any money off of its innovations. Maybe if they where allowed to do that they would have been able to supplement a decent part of their own budget over these past decades.

America must move on

[Anonymous Coward]

from President Mom Jeans to alpha male Donald Trump. America's space program will be great again.

of course not

[Anonymous Coward]

If NASA could give money to political campaigns it would be better funded.

Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[duckintheface]

Mike Griffin has complained about NASA priorities ever since he was fired in 2009 and stopped setting the priorities. You may remember the public campaign he and his wife waged to keep his government job. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2845... And he hopes a new incoming President will re-appoint him as NASA head.

  Griffin wants to go back to the expensive paradigm of sending humans to the surface of the moon. This may be an engineering objective (it's fun to build cool stuff) but it is not a top scientific objective. NASA is planning for exploration and eventual colonization of Mars. The truth is that it is astronomically (pun intended) expensive to put humans in such a hostile environment as space. There is really only one goal that makes such expenditures worthwhile. That is the establishment of a permanent self-sustaining human colony off the Earth. The rest, including further exploration of the Moon, can be better carried out by AI or remote controlled robotic vehicles.

Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[NotDrWho]

Just because he's an asshole doesn't mean he's not telling the truth.It could just mean that he's finally free to say what he should have been saying when he was director.

Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because he's talking about space, doesn't mean he's talking about something important. Get over your space fantasies FFS.

Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[dyslexicbunny]

Griffin wants to go back to the expensive paradigm of sending humans to the surface of the moon. ... NASA is planning for exploration and eventual colonization of Mars. The truth is that it is astronomically (pun intended) expensive to put humans in such a hostile environment as space.

It's like you need a testbed environment for those technologies to go to Mars. Something that represents the harshness of going to Mars but we'd like to not have our astronauts die so if something happens, getting home would somewhat quicker. Something relatively close seems like a great idea. Oh? They thought of that? Interesting!

In pursuit of these goals, the Vision called for the space program to complete the International Space Station by 2010; retire the Space Shuttle by 2010; develop a new Crew Exploration Vehicle (later renamed Orion) by 2008, and conduct its first human spaceflight mission by 2014; explore the Moon with robotic spacecraft missions by 2008 and crewed missions by 2020, and use lunar exploration to develop and test new approaches and technologies useful for supporting sustained exploration of Mars and beyond; explore Mars and other destinations with robotic and crewed missions; pursue commercial transportation to support the International Space Station and missions beyond low Earth orbit.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Now I hated the 2004 NASA plan because it basically gutted Aeronautics money and I was doing technology forecasting for Aero as an undergrad but the plan wasn't inherently bad. And compared to what the current plans are, it was certainly far better. It honestly doesn't matter as there seems to be no love for NASA or manned space anymore in DC and the purse strings are largely tightened. I think if you want to do exciting space work, go to China. They give a damn.

Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[prisoner-of-enigma]

There is really only one goal that makes such expenditures worthwhile. That is the establishment of a permanent self-sustaining human colony off the Earth.

Not to be pithy, but "the moon" qualifies as "off Earth" you know. Yes, it's not as sexy as Mars, but it's much closer. Much easier to get to and support a manned colony there than Mars. That equates to cheaper. And therefore all this makes the moon a better target assuming your "one goal" is really that. What makes Mars a better target for colonization? It's atmosphere is so thin there's little difference between it and vacuum as far as survival goes. There's water on both the moon and Mars. Neither body has a substantial magnetic field so no advantage there. What's the real compelling case to colonize Mars before the moon?

Scientists will argue there's little to be done on the moon of value compared to places like Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. I agree. But that's not what was stated. Pure science can be done much cheaper and safer with probes, at least to begin with. Colonization requires meat sacks and their attendant sources of food, water, and atmosphere.

Re: Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[a.swage]

Nasa had chance in 1992year with stardrive Engineering company to built a fleet of 10 warp dimmensioal drive saucers in Quantum mechanics physics ! Nasa had 6 engineers come download to penn yan new york to do all the testing on warp dimmensional drive saucer and all testing went well until we had explain in full great detail for 4 hours how computer navagation and secondary computer for warp dimmensioal drive and how it works in all in Quantum mechanics physics and advanced mathamatical principals and adanced equations in warp dimmensionald drive in electromagnetic harmonics resendence ! The 6 nasa engineers were totally lost for under Quantum mechanic physics in mathamatical terms ! Nasa tested the saucer 100 miles and back of total 200 miles with their stopwatches 90 seconds in 200 miles around trip ! The,saucer can across galaxys and multi dimmensional univeses in warp dimmensional bubbles in seconds !

Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[lsatenstein]

Just because he's an asshole doesn't mean he's not telling the truth.It could just mean that he's finally free to say what he should have been saying when he was director.

Do we really need to go to Mars, now that we know how to go to the moon. What minerals have been returned, or hotels constructed for long term stay.
And then the question is: "Can we use the moon as a garbage dump?"

The only benefit of moon flights is the development of technology.

P & S earthquake waves, remember?

[kefalonia]

wow, this is super interesting.

iff it proves to be the case that the same event causes G.W. & G.R.B observations and there is a relationship that connects the speed of the two arrivals,
like in an earthquake's P&S waves, this is a whole new tool to trace events in the cosmos, as they occur. Combining with an extra handful of observations points,
it would be possible to easily find the source point via triangulation, at distances which are mind-glowing (pun intended!). Good luck with this - literally!

"NO BUDGET"????

[Anonymous Coward]

"NO BUDGET"???? Please, give me $19.6 BILLION and I will not complain about having "No budget"

How about massive bureaucracy?

Re:"NO BUDGET"????

[sycodon]

Steely Eyed Missile Man have been replaced by Squinty Eyed Metrosexual Bureaucrats

Re:"NO BUDGET"????

[Thud457]

Steely Eyed Missile Man

Well there's your problem...
We just need another program that the military can use as a stalking horse for their priorities.

Of course, that didn't work out too well with v2.0 (the Shuttle program)...

Re:Mike Griffen has always had a hard-on for Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a class from him in the 90s (space vehicle guidance and nav). Final exam: plan a trip to Mars. It's no secret he really, really wants a Mars mission. I haven't seen him since '95 or so, but I wouldn't doubt that, with all this talk of Mars, he would really, really like to be in the drivers seat.

IMHO he's very smart, but in an assholish way. Sort of the opposite of NDT's smart but very affable public persona.

Legalize it

[Anonymous Coward]

... wait, were we talking about inner or outer space? Cyberspace or meatspace?

Not that it matters, NASA and China used the heck out of some **censored** *redacted* to get their space programs going like they are.

The problem is that in today's surveillance state, such hypocrisy no longer seems possible and largely the unqualified (but honestly so!) get into the positions necessary to execute such things.

Is space policy the same as manned space policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

To judge by the article, that would seem to be the case. Indeed, one might conclude that the only mission NASA has is to get to Mars as soon as possible.

The Republican chairman of the Science Committee, Lamar Smith of Texas, echoed those concerns in his comments, saying that under President Obama, NASA does not seem to be taking a serious approach to human exploration. The hearing comes at a critical time for NASA, now two months into the last year of President Obama’s second term and with a new administrator likely to replace Charles Bolden in 2017. Republicans in Congress have made it clear they do not favor the president’s plan to send astronauts to visit a fragment of an asteroid near the Moon and an eventual journey to Mars.

It is no surprise that Lamar Smith would like to make manned space exploration the priority rather than, say, global warming, since he is a notorious denier known for bullying scientiests who don't see things his way.

Not True

[Anonymous Coward]

They have that whole Muslim Outreach thing going on.

And they are working on ginning up fake data for Global Warming austerity push.

Re: Not True

[chopshopstore]

Troll

Obama a dreamer, not a doer

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama basically in eight years has accomplished nothing. He is a very poor manager, and more of a dreamer. One who wants to accomplish stuff, but never put's in place people who actually know how to do that. If you look at things like the ACA which was a disaster in the making from the start. Then the lack of focus on threats like ISIS, but a over focus on things like global warming. You then discover the man has no ability to prioritize or delegate much of anything. He actually has become rather disinterested in most of what the President should be doing. NASA has simply become another floundering agency in government that has plenty of ideals, but no real plan on how to make them happen.

Re:Obama a dreamer, not a doer

[oh_my_080980980]

Go back to watching Fox New moron. George W's fetish war with Iraq gave rise to ISIS. Given the long occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, most American tired of sending ground troops back to Iraq to clean up W's mess.

Bed wetting defeatist

[Anonymous Coward]

How ridiculous. A dung beetle might make similar arguments as he munched on a fresh elephant's dropping. In the long term it is a matter for finding a payoff, either economic or scientific.

The great conflict in NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA policy is torn between contradictory forces: the serious space science community, which overwhelmingly favors unmanned missions, and the grandstanding PR faction that relies on the enthusiasm of "space cadets" to secure funding for manned missions. The current state of propulsion technology renders manned planetary missions dangerously infeasible, but that is not stopping the joyride enthusiasts from grabbing as much funding as they can, thus starving the unmanned projects and slowing the advance of space discovery. The US space program is a mirror of the divided nature of the nation, revealing our half-sane and half-crazy character. Fortunately, the accomplishments of the sane side will endure.

Trump will get our ass to Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

And he'll make the rapey Martians pay for the trip!

Well Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

An unfunded mandate from some illiterate lawyer to build a spaceship to mars, and they aren't making progress?

Well for a certain value of "no vision".

[hey!]

In this case "no vision for putting a manned mission on Mars in the foreseeable future."

I know "politics" is a dirty word for most nerds, but if you want to spend the hundred billion taxpayer dollars that the optimists think it'll take to mount a manned Mars mission you should at least do them the courtesy of convincing them it's a the best use of their space science money.

"I want to go to Mars at any cost," isn't a vision. Taking a few half-assed first steps toward Mars in the hope that future admistrators will be forced to go down that path because that's all he's got after you've starved Earth and planetary sciences programs into insignificance -- well that's not much of a plan in my book.

No vision, No plan, No budget

[LynnwoodRooster]

That explains the Obama Administration to a "T"!

Re:No vision, No plan, No budget

[oh_my_080980980]

Maybe if we didn't have two pay for two wars, two recessions, crumbing infrastructure and tax cuts by W, we'd have the money for Mars...

Re:No vision, No plan, No budget

[slashdot_commentator]

Two recessions? I just remember a really long one that's lasted most of his administration.

Re:No vision, No plan, No budget

[LynnwoodRooster]

Two wars became 3. Two recessions became one long, extended one (with record numbers out of the workforce because of a lack of jobs). And our debt still skyrockets - nearly $1 trillion in the last 12 months. Yep - no vision, no plan, no budget (remember the first 4 years of the Obama Administration, and the complete LACK of a Federal budget, just continuing resolutions by Reid and Pelosi and Obama?)

Re:No vision, No plan, No budget

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, let's just ignore the fact that was because of a certain right wing party refusing to do anything, and blame it on Obama.

Moron.

Re:No vision, No plan, No budget

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Carol...
I'm afraid it's terminal...
He's got ODS.
There's nothing we can do.

Cable channels need content...

[oh_my_080980980]

And still nobody would watch. Just because some network carries it, doesn't mean they have an audience...

Secret Space program

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone in the Secret Space Program is laughing at NASA's 70 year old rocket technology like it's a wheelbarrow compared to f-22

Re:Secret Space program

[Anonymous Coward]

The F-22 is itself a 30 year old technology.

We don't need NASA

[wad4ever]

NASA broke the ground for us, but their day is over. Nobody has gone past near-earth orbit in 40 years. Let's not relegate our space exploration to a risk-averse government bureaucracy, paid for by taxes. Elon has the right idea.

Because obamacare wasn't enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the people I know that are on Obamacare get pain pills because they became addicted to pain pills from a previous events in their lives. For example: Kyle busted his knee in college football. They sent him home with 2 months worth of morphine. 10 years later, he still has to get pain pills for his knee... Even though his knee doesn't hurt anymore he still needs pain pill to function.

And I can't smoke a funking joint after work because it's illegal and I get piss tested.

As for Mars? We won't ever go there. Cost too much and there's nothing profitable there. Maybe if we find gold or some sort of magical treasure map or something.

different

[Anonymous Coward]

how is this different from anything else they have tried?