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Barack Obama: America Will Take the Giant Leap To Mars, To Send People There by the 2030s (cnn.com)
The United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth." This is all part of a longer-term goal of making it possible to "one day remain there for an extended time," he added in an op-ed published on CNN. The effort will require cooperation between public and private space interests in meeting that goal, the president added. As a sign of forward progress, private space companies will send astronauts to the International Space Station within the next two years. "Someday, I hope to hoist my own grandchildren onto my shoulders. We'll still look to the stars in wonder, as humans have since the beginning of time," Obama wrote. "But instead of eagerly awaiting the return of our intrepid explorers, we'll know that because of the choices we make now, they've gone to space not just to visit, but to stay -- and in doing so, to make our lives better here on Earth." The White House in a joint blog post with NASA said that seven companies have received awards to develop habitation systems. And this fall, NASA will provide companies with the opportunity to add modules and other capabilities to the International Space Station.
We invented Facebook.
Maybe he should be running the country instead of padding his resume as some kind of scholar?
..which will be needed on Mars... but still just hot air. This is not Kennedy saying we will go to the moon. This is a president on his way out making a speech that will likely not be followed up on by any new administration.
Silence is a state of mime.
Now that it'll be someone else's problem, he can promise the moon. Or Mars, in this case.
Can't we launch slashdot editors into space starting now?
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
Every outgoing presimadent since the Reagan, blessings upon him, makes the same grandiose claims that we'll put a Man on Mars real soon now.
Just like Lucy tricking Charlie Brown into thinking she's not going to yank the football away this time.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Apollo program was not entirely symbolic, it was in large part an effort to develop rockets powerful enough to plant a nuclear weapon anywhere on Earth. This is also why budgets fell out after ICBMs were complete.
obama should lead the way. he can leave as soon as possible, maybe next week!
In the US the space program has become a plaything for oligarchs. NASA is just going to dole out the taxpayers money to contractors like SpaceX so they can smash more rockets into the desert/ocean.
Obama '08
HOPE!
Colonizing Venus with floating cities is a far more sexier venture.
http://www.universetoday.com/15570/colonizing-venus-with-floating-cities/
3-ish months before the end of his reign the guy that killed US heavy lift development is prattling on about Mars..... WTFever.
Space is for China now.
Ignoring the physics problem (solvable with enough brute force), the radiation problem doesn't seem to be solvable in the near future. How do his advisors think that this will be solved? Pretending that the problem doesn't exist?
> than the US could ever hope to catch up on
That doesn't make sense. Getting more funding is not a panacea for advancement.
What is it about presidents at the end of their second terms that they love to float space goals?
Bush, near the end of his 2nd term:
""Our third goal," Bush said, "is to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond." He proposed sending robotic probes to the lunar surface by 2008, with a human mission as early as 2015, "with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods of time." "
While I'd love it ever to be true, I can't imagine any post Obama congress will fund it at all.
-Styopa
Us colonising the moon first. The moon doesn't have much to recommend it for shipping to earth, but it's the ideal launch facility for the rest of the solar system. And that's about all its good for.
"...they've gone to space not just to visit, but to stay -- and in doing so, to make our lives better here on Earth."
Yep, I can definitely think of a few people that would make life better on Earth if they went to live on another planet.
Mars is a dull spot to colonize- wouldn't get much. The moon is really only useful for rocket launches and observatories. The best spots in the solar system to colonize are Mercury (heavy metals), the Jovian satellites (liquid water, loads of raw material) and the Saturnian moons (same story). These are also the ones being ignored.
... of people who should definitely be sent to Mars - especially if there is no chance of their ever coming back again.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
It would be a good start!! Next, we follow with more and more congress critters and pretty soon, we can maybe start over with new representation that isn't bought and paid for.....be ruled by the people again.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Meanwhile chinas space station is uncontrollablely crashing to earth, possibly going to hit a city in the next few months...
You're aware that you elect your representatives, right?
The United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday the country will send Americans to Mars
First I'm hearing of this country called Tuesday. They must be pretty advanced! The people of Monday, on the other hand, are presumably in a constant state of depression and tiredness.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This is just insane
Indeed.
Funny
Barack Obama is full of shit. That lame duck should shut up and play golf until he's booted out of the White House.
What the fuck does NASA have to do with any of this? Space-X for the win.
"We choose to go to the moon.. in the few decades or thereabouts."
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
The United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth."
And once they return, they will be eminently suitable to hold public office. Like a fostering program for future presidents, senators, congresspeople and so on and so forth, if you like.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Even thousands of years ago history shows a love affair with space. Many even talking about Gods being from space, even televisions shows entertaining the ideal of ancient aliens visiting and directing human evolution. The ideal that our home or more exact our roots come from space could explain this need to return. The ideal that space is this come full circle back to where we began is certainly a reasonable theory. But we still have a long ways to go to populate another planet. Especially one that your cannot even say can sustain human life in any significant way with out a lot of work. Personally, I think developing a exploratory space craft would be a more plausible way to explore space than living on Mars. At least a space craft could be more controlled and developed for sustained human survival rather than the harsh environment of Mars. Not saying let's build a Enterprise ship, but obviously something that can sustain multiple human life for years.
Sadly, none of the one's I've voted for, except my local mayor, have won in almost the last decade.
The mayor is awesome, by the way, he spent his first year gutting useless city code...anything that wasn't directly health/safety related is getting yanked. Big emphasis on personal responsibility instead of government mandated "responsibility".
No purpose to it?
People go to Death Valley, Philadelphia, church, and climb Mt. Everest.
No purpose is required, just curiosity.
Is there nothing this man will not touch to secure his own tenable legacy? Please. I'm really starting to believe this life we think we have is just a simulation. Nothing makes sense anymore.
Yea, cause the vacuum left will be automatically filled with the greatest people; just look at the third world countries that did it.
I'm not too thrilled about them myself spend some quality time watching the stars and you'll realize they have several added benefits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There seems to be a tradition of U.S. presidents making bold claims about sending people to Mars on a time scale well after their political careers are over. Welcome to the club President Obama.
We haven't seen a meaningful increase in the NASA budget in how long? It certainly isn't going to happen any time soon, either. Even after Drumpf takes a beating next month in the general election we still won't see congress pass a budget for expansion of space exploration.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Mars in 2030s? Dream on! We'll have defaulted by then. NASA won't have funds to even stare at Mars.
NASA is a consultant on the Red Dragon project
We should establish a permanent presense on the Moon first. Maybe even build industrial infrastructure there, use it as a staging area for a future manned Mars mission. Honestly, how much easier would it be to launch from the Moon? Also, if we can't work out the kinks of living on the Moon, then how can we reasonably expect to live on Mars for extended periods of time? The Moon is the perfect Proving Grounds for this sort of endeavor, and it's literally right in our backyard. Seems like a no-brainer to me to take advantage of it. Also, in future decades, why couldn't any number of industries or research facilities build their facilities and do their work there? There's no environment to pollute, no ecosystem to destroy, you could do any number of things that are expensive or even prohibited on Earth without harming anything.
Just words folks, just words..
- Trump
Other than "it's there" and "Nobody else has gone" what's the point?
I seriously don't think it's worth the trouble to go to Mars, just to go. However, I support the effort because it will advance technology and likely lead to gains in scientific knowledge should we actually get there (which I don't think is likely).
What's sad here is that this is *obviously* Obama searching for a legacy, not a full hearted attempt to actually do this. Had this been important, why didn't he do it 8 years ago when his party had both cambers? Oh, no, wasn't important then. He has 180 days left with Obama Care is as popular as getting a root canal, it's over for him. Now he has a Congress that won't give him the time of day even if he asked nicely and literally zero power (legally and politically) to get this funded this so he's been reduced to plagiarizing JFK and banging on the bully pulpit trying to get attention in the middle of a election that is a whole circus of side shows. He's spitting into the wind.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I can go to death valley, and come back alive. Philly as well, though Chicago might be more of a gamble, but still.
Going to mars is a one way ticket, just to say "I did it first" and have some monument built back here on earth to you. Which is why egotistical maniacs like BHO and Richard Branson are prime targets to go. Let them waste their Billions.
Meanwhile, I would much rather see something like HyperLink built with the money, which would benefit more people more immediately.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
No one's going to Mars, coming back or not.
Really? You can tell the future? If you want to say you think no one is going to Mars in the time frame specified I probably would agree with you. I think pulling it off by the 2030s without a crash government program seems improbable given the technological, economic, and political realities of the day. If you are claiming no one will go to Mars ever I think that stands a very high probability of being a false statement.
There is simply no purpose to it.
Entirely false. There absolutely is a purpose to it. More than one in fact. You may not like or appreciate the reasons for trying to get to Mars but they are real and meaningful. Here's just a few of them. Scientific exploration, technology development, national pride, joy of exploration, curiosity, preserving our species, financial gain, biotechnology, and the list goes on and on and on. It's an expensive and difficult task and it will probably take decades if not centuries to actually pull off but to claim there is no purpose or value to it is just idiotic.
Apollo was the Mother Of All Demos, and it was a big stunt.
Yes it was. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing or that something like it won't be worth doing ever again. Furthermore the cost of getting to space has fallen substantially since then and we are a lot better at it now. Every indicator points towards cost to orbit continuing to fall. Once it gets cheap enough to get to space I would argue that a manned mission to Mars will become almost an inevitability. First for exploration and then for other purposes.
Less than 3 months left of this war monger and then... we get another one-- Hill Dawg! I wonder if the Eurotrash will put a Nobel Peace Prize on her, as well.
Any chance we can get Mr. "O" to volunteer himself and his *ahem* lovely wife as some of the first travelers to Mars?
It would be a good start!! Next, we follow with more and more congress critters and pretty soon, we can maybe start over with new representation that isn't bought and paid for.....be ruled by the people again.
That's a great idea! Instead of sending the telephone sanitizers and hairdressers, we sent the politicians to Mars! And the lawyers!
Are you serious? They're basically where the Soviets and US were in the early 1960s.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Lame duck indeed.
JKF in office January 20, 1961. "We choose to go to the Moon" speech delivered September 12, 1962.
BHO in office January 20, 2009. "Mars, yadda, yadda" CNN article posted October 11, 2016.
If you are serious about something like this, you open your presidency with it.
Colonizing Venus with floating cities is a far more sexier venture.
How exactly do you propose to float something the size of a city on Venus. Furthermore how do you propose to get it there and how do you propose to build it? Bear in mind that you don't get to invoke magical levels of sci-fi technology just because the idea is cool. Seriously - what is your credible plan to make such a fantastical thing happen within the next 1000 years?
Oh,come on now and be reasonable! People go to Philadelphia for many purposes, although most of those reasons are as a punishment. Many of the highways in the area also serve as examples of how not to build highways.
Lol! Get a load of this guy! He thinks there are more important things to spend US tax dollars on than giving it away to terrorists in Syria in an attempt to overthrow Assad for Saudi's interests! Hahaha!
Go watch a funny video of Oliver Stone and Jimmy Fallon and forget about space, kiddo. Uncle 'bamie and auntie Clinton got it all figured out for you.
You're aware that you're allowed to elect only certain representatives, right?
Biden would be preferable to Obama, Trump, or Hillary.
Other than "it's there" and "Nobody else has gone" what's the point?
Lots of reasons. Scientific discover, technology development (particularly biotech and life support), financial gain (funding tech R&D has a huge and long term payback), preserving our species, spinoff technologies, learning how to explore away from Earth, national pride, colonizing, and quite a bit more. Certainly more than "because it's there".
However, I support the effort because it will advance technology and likely lead to gains in scientific knowledge should we actually get there (which I don't think is likely).
I think our likelihood of getting to Mars depends heavily on how low we can drive cost to orbit. If it gets cheap enough a manned mission to Mars will become almost inevitable because just getting off the Earth accounts for the lion's share of the cost and a pretty substantial percent of the risk as well. There are some significant engineering obstacles but there is no reason to believe these could not be overcome if the economics can be made to work.
Lame duck or not. If Obama were on the rocket to Mars, Trump would get the Martians to pay for it.
There is simply no purpose to it.
Nothing has any purpose, even your own life, except that which your mind has imposed upon it. Going to Mars can be as purposeful as anything else we do, as long as we choose it.
$7 to $8 dollars in goods and services produced, for every $1 of government money spent. Acceleration of computer, miniaturization of computer parts, which benefited mankind. Software development Freeze dried foods Countless others. Before you go on with your anti-capitalist socialist agenda, you might want to look this up. It will help you from looking like a FOOL.
Creating the environment for ISIL to exist with your dual policies of negligence and inappropriate intervention is your legacy.
Not Mars.
How did that go last time? A democrat -- JFK -- makes the brace decision and announces we will go to the Moon. A Democrat -- LBJ -- carries through with the heavy lifting and budget work despite stiff objections from congress. A Republican Nixon lights the rocket, takes the credit and promptly cancels the program.
Nope. Do not want.
No purpose to it?
People go to Death Valley, Philadelphia, church, and climb Mt. Everest.
No purpose is required, just curiosity.
I thought people went to Philadelphia for a purpose... ... to buy drugs.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Going to mars is a one way ticket, just to say "I did it first" and have some monument built back here on earth to you.
You go there for science. You go there for discovery. You go there to lead to colonization and making mankind a multi-body species.
You don't go just to plant the flag. The red on the flag would clash with Mars's orange.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
And create more Democrat voters.
Bringing People Back makes the whole task more than twice as difficult. We should be aiming to make it a one way trip. At least a semi-permanent one-way trip. I'm not volunteering for such a trip but I'm sure plenty will.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Land.
emt 377 emt 4
He's trying to grab credit for a bunch of things that didn't get done over the past eight years so he can fly around making speeches about them at a million dollars a pop.
If he listed only the good things that actually got accomplished by his administration it would be a very short speech.
Low delta to land and take off. Lots of easy to excavate resources. Hydrocarbons everywhere. Obvious
I seriously don't think it's worth the trouble to go to Mars, just to go. However, I support the effort because it will advance technology and likely lead to gains in scientific knowledge should we actually get there (which I don't think is likely).
We don't need to get there to get the gains. Just like the heyday of NASA, the money spent on this goal mostly goes towards R&D, that historically has led to both direct and indirect commercial value and consumer products.
Inventing the stuff to get humans to Mars promises both medical advances and a serious reduction in payload cost-to-orbit, plus all the inevitable side-effect technologies and products.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Who's pee pee the POTUS is pulling, or vice versa. Alliteration is fun, kids. I bet Obama isn't on the self-proclaimed death mission, either.
I'm sure we can find good enough astronauts who would be perfectly fine to not come back. That should reduce the cost of the project significantly. At least these guys can consciously decide that they're fine with the outcome, unlike Laika.
We used that stunt to distribute wealth to private contractors to build gadgets for a symbolic purpose.
These gadgets weren't symbolic at all.
And I'm not speaking about "space technology has trickled into society" (Microwave, Velcro, whatever...)
I am speaking about very practical stuff some politicians had in mind :
- To send people to the moon, you need to be able to lift into low earth orbit everything they need to reach the moon : the astronauts themselves, their capsule, enough fuel to accelerate the capsule for the trip, and then decelerate when arriving, lander, fuel for the lander, fuel for the return trip, supplies, air, etc...
The whole trans-lunar package weights roughly about a hundred tons.
That's why the NASA needed to build the Saturn V rocket (and the Soviet attempted to build the N1-L3): to have something able to lift ~100 tons into low earth orbit.
It would have NOT been possible with previous generation of launcher technology (or you would have needed a couple of launches that you assemble in orbit. The kind of approach currently considered for Mars).
- The Tsar-Bomba, the biggest nuke ever, in its theoretical full 100 Mt configuration (not the "puny" 50 Mt that the USSR used for tests, to avoid too much nuclear fallout), would probably have weighted in the 50-100 tons range.
Do the maths.
Creating the Saturn V for the NASA (and attempting to create the N1-L3 for USSR) was not only done for the purpose of sending people to the moon.
Sending people to the moon is a very obvious demo telling the world : "We can send people to the moon. We have the technology to lift ~100tons into orbit. So we can lift a translift vehicle that will bring these astronauts to the moon. (And so we can also lift to LEO 100-tons worth of nukes, enough to completely obliterate a whole enemy country)".
The whole space race was for show and awe to the masses, but was thinly veiled menace between the defence programs throwing money at it. (A way to tell "with this new bigger rocket I could also be hurling even more nuke to you"). For the defence sector, lunar launcher weren't gadgets, they were very practical vehicle in a pissing contest/nuclear deterrent race.
It also explains why back then no nation bothered anywhere more than probes on Mars. Nobody developed anything bigger than Saturn V, and that could only launch very small payloads to Mars before getting hit by the Tsiolkovski rocket equation (or before considering in-orbit assembly like the current trend).
Given the lack of military application of possible solutions (even bigger rockets with bigger payloads, or in-orbit assembly), that's one reason less to get funding.
I am not saying that the single reason behind anything that happened during the space programs was due to the defence sector.
I am simply saying that potential military application was among the arguments that has pushed some technology faster forward than others and has contributed to prioritizing some aspect of the space program.
(Of course: economics and other have also played very important roles in practice).
And thus to fall back to the subject:
- space program wasn't a prestige only useless gadget.
- space program wasn't only a cash-cow for private subcontractors.
- it was also a program with very practical application for the defence sector (which helped fuel cash into it)
(And that's a small part of the reasons why it is a little bit less easy nowadays to re-start space programs :
- Military aren't interested in more space-toys - Drone and autonomous weapons are the new hot topic, No army desperately needs a 300+ tons package in orbit.
- Telecoms are the one interested in the current program (cheaper per-launch platforms means possibility to assemble in-orbit an interplanetary vessels like current Mars proposals... but also means cheaper way to put satellites in orbit).
- But those tend to has a smaller expendable budget to throw at the space programme).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Its really clear how CNN attacks the big O and H of America
Well, going to Mars will involve a lot of love for the O and the H and the exothermic combining thereof!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
America will not set foot on Mars.
This is a lawyer making promises far beyond his lifetime. His predecessor wanted to go back to the moon and he torpedoed it. America is already taking a back-seat in space, and that isn't going improve until efficiency in US government improves - which is not going to happen until we get another hot-war on American soil.
You are no longer the world leader in that arena - and you are making promises that cannot be delivered. That is how to fail.
Barry, welcome to the fraternity of idiot billionaires who will cure all disease in 2 years, get a man on the moon by 2017, and a woman in, er, 2069. Mars: the final boondoggle.
The entire solar system is in the hip pocket. Then you can pie in the sky about arid resorts on mars or balloon colonies floating on venus. Nuff said.
I agree that a President in his last 100 days probably shouldn't be writing checks that his predecessor likely will not keep.
I disagree that Apollo was a stunt. The materials science and computer technology alone was worth the cost.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Going to mars is a one way ticket, just to say "I did it first" and have some monument built back here on earth to you.
You go there for science. You go there for discovery. You go there to lead to colonization and making mankind a multi-body species.
You don't go just to plant the flag. The red on the flag would clash with Mars's orange.
The UN flag won't (if it is up to BO or HC, it probably won't be the US flag), but then again having a flag that shows a projection of the earth's land masses planted on mars might not be the best "progressive" legacy image either...
On the other hand the brain damage that occurs from cosmic radiation might just be enough to get this to happen...
Once I built a rocket, I made it fly
Made it to Mars in good time
Once I built a rocket, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
What's sad here is that this is *obviously* Obama searching for a legacy, not a full hearted attempt to actually do this. Had this been important, why didn't he do it 8 years ago when his party had both cambers? Oh, no, wasn't important then. He has 180 days left with Obama Care is as popular as getting a root canal,
Not disputing that yes, this probably should have been done at the start of his presidency, but you're betraying your Republican bias with the next statement. Obamacare seems to be pretty popular with those who are actually using it. The only people I still hear bitching about it are people it doesn't apply to any way. One of my old friends is a small businessman and he hates Obama with a passion but admitted to me that Obamacare has lowered the health care premiums substantially for him and his family.
with Russia that Hillary is set on starting?
We got the technology to launch a blimp on Venus.
No we most certainly do not have that technology today. Not on anything remotely resembling the scale you are talking about. We certainly have no experience doing large scale airborne construction starting solely with an airborne blimp. We haven't even tried this on Earth much less on another planet several light minutes away.
Large scale construction wouldn't be that far behind.
Really? How do you propose to get the materials there? How are you going to get them in place? How are you going to create enough buoyancy to actually float an honest to goodness city? How are you going to maintain the integrity of the flotation system? What is the flotation system going to consist of? Who is going to pay for the whole thing and what is the economic return?
Your link talks about a PRELIMINARY feasibility study at NASA that provides essentially zero specifics. It's basically a think tank mental exercise of a really far out there concept with no reasonable probability of implementation within the lifetime of anyone reading this.
The Chinese program is a joke. They are stuck in the 1960's.
Ok, so it's marginally more popular than a root canal, but the MAJORITY of voters don't like it and nearly EVERYBODY admits from Hillary Clinton on down that it is not working. Trump want's to repeal it, Hillary want's to fix it...
But that's my point, Obama is powerless now and has no real legacy that's positive, so he's left to stuff like this..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"The scientists found that even six months after radiation exposure, the rodents still were suffering from brain inflammation and neural damage. Neurons sported fewer dendrites and spines, which meant their neural networks were less interconnected than in a healthy brain. On behavioral tasks, the rodents exposed to radiation performed poorly on tests of learning and memory. Their ability to suppress unpleasant and stressful associations also declined — an effect that could make someone prone to anxiety over a multiyear trip to the Red Planet and back." http://www.latimes.com/science...
... the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth."
I'd like to go, but only if I can stay on Mars. Actually, can I go now?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The Apollo program was not entirely symbolic, it was in large part an effort to develop rockets powerful enough to plant a nuclear weapon anywhere on Earth. This is also why budgets fell out after ICBMs were complete.
Well, that was pretty much accomplished in 1957 by Sergei Korolev with the R-7 rocket that put Sputnik in orbit, and von Braun a few months later with the Juno 1. The Minuteman 1 (n.b. a solid fuel rocket) went into service in 1962, and from that point forward there wasn't really a lot of overlap between the US space and ballistic missile program. The situation was different in the Soviet Union, whose space program was really much more a step-child of the weapons programs. Soviet designers were just as capable as America (and America's Germans), but they could only dream of the kind of funding Apollo got.
Anyhow the whole argument about "symbolic" vs "practical" is naive. Something as massive a the Apollo program doesn't happen for "a" reason. It is necessarily the confluence of many different interests and purposes. One of them was clearly "symbolic", although that does *not* mean it wasn't practical. At its peak Apollo approached almost 1% of US GDP, and the politicians who approved it were not all interested in space at all. They had very practical, Earth-bound reasons to value the symbolic power of a US Moon landing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Not a bad idea. The Taiwanese, or the KMT, can reclaim China, and Tibet can be liberated. Oh, and why not send all Muslims to the moon, which is their sacred symbol? They'll have what they dream of - a heavenly body free of Infidels.
It could be that Obama knows that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are already competing to see who can get to Mars first, and making a promise to get to Mars a few years after the (overly optimistic) deadlines from private organizations makes him look like a forward thinker to future historians.
Hey... it worked for Kennedy, right?
And I hope you are one of many who understand that even though the representative that you voted for didn't win, it still means that democracy went into effect, and a majority of the local population voted for a different candidate that did win, thus negating the thought process resulting in the system "being rigged." Now if the representative that won is a complete and total moron, that means you live in a village of idiots.
Okay, to be fair, they do still (for a very brief while) have a space station, so let's say they're where the US and the Russians were in the mid-1970s. They have a bit of a leg up because of the work the Soviet and US space programs did, and they also have a lot more computer power at their disposal than their predecessors did in the 60s and 70s.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Successor. And I agree. This is meaningless. If he really meant any of that he would have said it in 2009.
Write-ins are always an option, but that isn't very effective if the person is relatively obscure to the public and not heavily involved in local or national politics.
It only needs fixing because congress ripped it apart and put together something different, ultimately with inherent problems. It wasn't going to pass without republican votes, so a lot of concessions had to be made, much to the chagrin of the democrats.
Terrorist 1: Why all this bombing? Why not hit the great satan where it hurts -- in the pocket book?
Terrorist 2: We though about that, but with Iraq, Social Security, Medicare, bank bailouts, quantitative easing and now Mars, their own government and federal reserve are simply beating us to it. We'd just be spitting in the ocean.
(Yes, I know poo-pooing a Mars mission here on slashdot will get me moded into oblivion, but really?!? Mars? Grow some crops in the desert first and then let's talk about space.)
Mercury lives close to the bottom of a very deep gravity well.
https://xkcd.com/681/
If you fall down that well, you gain an enormous amount of velocity that you have to dump if you want to orbit/land on the planet. Mercury has no atmosphere to aerobrake so you need fuel to stop.
The rail gun you'll need to send shipments back to earth would be pretty immense to lift any reasonable mass out of that gravity well.
Delusional comments made by a departing man with no real legacy other than the expanded erosion of personal freedom.
Wish I had some mod points. I would give you one just for mentioning Sergei Korolev, the most underrated genius of the space race. Sadly, most Americans won't even recognize his name, since we've been propagandized for so long to only hear about the NASA side of the story. If the Soviets get mentioned at all in the story, it's only that they launched a little satellite that prompted the United States to create the GREATEST SPACE PROGRAM EVEEEEER! No mention of Sergei Korolev and how he went from slaving in a gulag to accomplishing virtually every space "first" in less than 20 years.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...and by "ripped it apart" you really mean Congress "failed to throw boatloads of more taxpayer cash at it to keep it afloat". It did pass without a SINGLE Republican vote so there was no need to concede anything to them. Obamacare is exactly what Democrats wanted and they own it entirely. Some wanted even an more radical version (e.g. Single Payer), but they could get enough support from their own side to go an inch further.
Okay, done. Next?
(what this has to do with is unclear, but there is plenty of research on that score as well)
The current president has NO plans for Mars. Obama has never offered an actual plan, never proposed a Mars program in any legislation (unlike JFK who put actual legislation on the desk for Apollo), never budgeted for a Mars program, has nobody designing a Mars lander or a Mars ascent vehicle, or a vehicle to transport people to or from Mars (SLS,Falcon,etc are just launch vehicles). He has never done anything to actually get us to Mars other than have the NASA web site have a section named with some variation on the slogan "journey to mars" (the actual text on the site has varied over the years). They have designed NO vehicles for Mars, NO spacesuits for Mars, NO life support for Mars, nothing. The odd bits of R&D like the electric rover and the suits they have occasionally hyped are a mix of leftovers of the cancelled Constellation program and usual background generic NASA R&D. The Obama admin has tried repeatedly to eliminate the SLS rocket, yet not proposed any government-funded alternative launch vehicle; they've never proposed funding Musk's colonial transporter, just happily smiled as their supporters presumed that such funding might flow someday.
The Democrats are masters of messaging to every little interest group, and this is a button they push to activate some of their geek supporters every election cycle. In 2008, Obama pushed this button with a speech to the SpaceCoast workers in Florida. It was total baloney, but it worked to energize a fraction of a percent of his supporters and wavering space geeks. Same thing, different election cycle. Obama is no JFK, and there is no Mars program.
Everybody on these missions will die.
There is no known way to protect spacefarers from galactic cosmic radiation.
The Apollo astronauts were in deep space for a little less than two weeks and look what happened: http://www.nature.com/articles...
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
They're basically where the Soviets and US were in the early 1960s.
Ironically the US is now where the Chinese were in the 1960's; without a man-rated launch system.
Are you serious? They're basically where the Soviets and US were in the early 1960s.
So, in other words, you agree that their space program is more advanced than the one we have in the US today?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
It's naive to think this fantasy nonsense is about legacy. Its about stroking some of his major contributors. Youse guys are sooo naive. Obama is younger than me, so I'll not be around to say I told you so, on the day he's buried without a single person having yet stepped foot on Mars. In fact, at 55, he just might be around -but he certainly will be in no shape to lift his grandchildren (who will be adults) nor carry them on his shoulders. Look, there is nothing technical that prevents us from doing it. The cost would be literally astronomical - we'd have to shutter our military and most other discretionary spending, but it's technically possible, just not politically so. The most likely path to do it is either to create a world empire or set off enough (dirty) nukes so that Earth is no longer long-term viable (or both).
Mercury lacks water, which is the foremost thing you need, just for oxygen and propellants. Some of the Jovian and Saturnian moons are great, but they are so far away that getting there takes years, also solar power out there is sparse and radiation thick enough to kill you within hours. They are ignored for now with good reason.
http://www.space.com/18687-wat...
[...]
It's time to add Mercury to the list of worlds where you can go ice-skating. Confirming decades of suspicion, a NASA spacecraft has spotted vast deposits of water ice on the planet closest to the sun.
[...]
And he may well have accomplished the first manned moon landing if he hadn't died in 1966 (he was working on the manned moon program when he died). Even without him, the Soviet space program still accomplished the first moon rover (the first autonomous rover of any kind, in fact) and the first space station.
It would be nice if they'd just tell the truth about the Moon landing and admit openly that they never knew how to cross the Van Allen Belt. Of couse, we have come to expect consummate fraud from this government, so at least we should really expect this production to be top notch.
The Soviet and the US are still where they were in the early 1960's pretty much. The technological jump needed to make colonisation meaningful and/or profitable isn't there. Space is just too big for our current engines. Gravity is too powerful to make it economical. Obama's plan to capture asteroids is actually the smartest thing I've heard as it could have returns.
How many Africans will be working on this mission? (Since they lack the IQ to do anything useful...)
This happens every state of the union or other feel good speech and has nothing to do with actual goals or funding.
Whatever you are calling 'land'.
Had this been important, why didn't he do it 8 years ago when his party had both cambers?
Because there was more important shit to do. He was trying to form a legacy all along but has been hampered at every turn by congress. Now he's just thrown out something that congress can actually get behind, unlike healthcare, closing gitmo, pulling out of fake wars, etc.
Argent energy
Obamacare seems to be pretty popular with those who are actually using it. The only people I still hear bitching about it are people it doesn't apply to any way. One of my old friends is a small businessman and he hates Obama with a passion but admitted to me that Obamacare has lowered the health care premiums substantially for him and his family.
Under Obamacare, my premium (myself, my wife, and two young sons) shot up to $400 / month; this excludes the portion paid by my employer. $25 co-pay per family doctor visit. $45 co-pay for specialist. $150 for ER visit. Neither myself no any of my 6 siblings benefited from Obamacare.
Elon Musk's new favorite song is going to be Sabatoge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE
:T:R:A:N:S:
Actually the Republicans and the Democrats in congress held numerous sessions with Obama to concoct a bill. They decided on the Individual Mandate path instead of the Single Payer path, as the Single Payer option would have faced filibusters from the republicans.
A number of bipartisan bills were concocted with the Individual Mandate, at which point McConnell persuaded all of the Republicans to vote against it after the bills were formally established. They also were facing a nasty Tea Party that was surging, and the Tea Party was very Anti-ACA and hated anything Obama, so in order to save their spots in congress, republicans voted against the very bills that they helped draft.
Obamacare in it's final form was not what the Dem's wanted. They had preferred Single Payer, but they went with Individual Mandate to avoid Republicans blocking the bill.
The real BS here is the 2030 target date, which gives almost certainty that other things will come up that need the money more and so any money already spent on a 2030 launch will be wasted, we have seen this over and over with government run projects.
Obama is already importing hundreds of thousands of Muslim refuges from Syria and other countries where they don't want to stay and correct the problems there but instead expect us to send in more American soldiers to clean up their mess. We already have hundreds of thousands of homeless American veterans, but Obama is more concerned about providing free homes for mid-east Muslims, many of whom have radical views against America or want to impose Sharia law on Americans, than he is for American veterans who have served this country.
The obvious solution here is to not wait until 2030 but to start sending these refugees to Mars right away. On Mars they can have their dream world with Sharia law. And if we are smart enough to not give them weapons that they can destroy us with from Mars (although I doubt that we are), this would silence all the alarmist wack jobs who think it is a bad idea to just open this countries boarders to our enemies. Some might say that Mars doesn't have the resources to support all these refugees, but I say "Allah will provide!"
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No, I think the US space program is far more advanced, it's just in a sort of pause mode while the next generation of space craft come online. When China can put a Rover on Mars that will last 12 years, you let me know.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Oh who gives a crap about anything they do. They are the most uptight, full of shit, people on Earth.
In Russia, hero is food for gun.
It was a joke about how in the 60s we were building a man-rated three-stage Saturn V capable of 140000kg payload to LEO while today's best launcher isn't man-rated and only does 28790kg to LEO (about 20% as much), but nevermind.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Did you just do that?
Again?
You stupid fucking nïgger.
It won't matter, we'll all be dead before then. I'm hoping for a post apocalyptic scenario come 2017. I just don't know if I want a Fallout like world with Super Mutant Overlords, or a Mad Max like world with raging car battles.
would be like in the good old times, when criminals (and people considered inconvenient to have around for whatever other reason) were shipped from GB to Australia.
Sure. The Soviet space program was only a story of extreme daring and ingenuity in the face of overwhelming odds. Total yawn.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Other than "it's there" and "Nobody else has gone" what's the point?
Are you talking about Mars or Everest?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
I see this announcement more as being Obama's attempt to establish a position as 21st-century JFK in another ten or twenty years. Even if the first manned landing on Mars is by Chinese in partnership with Silicon Valley billlionaires, Obama will still hope to claim that the mission was in some way his idea. But while the early Sixties were one of the most optimistic periods in American history, with ebullient Roosevelt Democrats in charge coasting on the legacy of the New Deal and WW II, today's command generation is riddled with anti-scientific cultural bias.
A nation that can't build a telescope on one of its own mountaintops when other people are paying the entire cost has no business dreaming of Olympus Mons.
Land.
Which Mars has more of than the Earth.
A giant leap to Mars will not happen without a giant leap in NASA's budget. As it stands now, NASA will never make it to Mars by themselves, although they may be able to do something in partnership with private industry or international partners.
And while dreaming of the NASA funding levels, they developed superior rockets.
You can walk up Everest.... Just sayin'
Well, they kept working on them. That's bound to make a difference. There is immense value to be gained from decades of experience and improvement on the same basic designs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How did your coverage change?
"Mars, Bitches"!
Korolev was purged because some others wanted his job. He was released by Kruschev, and then led their brilliant space program.
However, his abuse in the Gulags crippled his health (kidneys), and he died half way through the program, before any moon launch could be attempted. And then the incompetents took over and nothing much more was achieved. Wikipedia is your friend.
Korolev's name was heavily suppressed in the soviet union, and he only recently became a national hero.
I had a Russian back packer staying with me recently. He certainly knew of Korolev, but not of the purging. He also "knew" that Stalin made the soviet union great, and that Gorborchov was the root of all evil.
As to the moon, I wonder why the Soviets did not just send someone one way. Much, much easier than getting them back. And they had already successfully landed a probe on the moon. One less soviet citizen would not matter. They could even send someone terminally ill.
Worse than plagiarizing JFK. He's plagiarizing GWB!
It only needs fixing because congress ripped it apart and put together something different, ultimately with inherent problems. It wasn't going to pass without republican votes, so a lot of concessions had to be made, much to the chagrin of the democrats.
NOT ONE REPUBLICAN voted for the affordable care act in either house. NOT ONE, not one time. This was done totally by the democrats who passed it in the dead of night because Teddy K's seat was being given to a republican and would give the republicans the ability to filibuster the bill in the Senate by denying cloture on the bill. Remember Nancy P saying "We've got to pass it to find out what's in it"? Nobody had time to read the thing, it had to pass NOW or face death in the Senate once Teddy K's seat got filled. The congressional record clearly records this, so don't keep saying it got changed to satisfy the republicans. It may have been changed, but it wasn't for the republicans.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
We already have fairly capable robots on Mars. But 2030 they will be moderately intelligent, capable of working autonomously for periods of time.
Ask not whether there will be people on Mars in 2030. Instead, ask whether the robots will still want people to be on earth in 2200.
Republicans couldn't block the bill. The Democrats had an iron lock on both houses. They held the majority in the house and had a filibuster poof majority in the Senate all the way though the passage of the bill. The republicans could do NOTHING to stop this but hold press conferences and stomping their feet, they didn't have the votes.
In fact, NOT ONE republican voted for this bill at any point after it became a health care bill in the house. Remember this NOT ONE republican voted for this. Go check the congressional record like I have. All the votes recorded to pass this bill where by democrats. The democrats pass this all on their own.
Not only did they pass this on their own, they literally did it in an all fired hurry because they knew they where going to loose their ability to avoid a filibuster as Teddy Kennedy had died and the special election had provided a republican who said he was committed to blocking this very bill. So Nancy P make her "You have to pass it to find out what's in it" statement to get her party to pass it NOW, before the democrats could no longer count on getting a cloture vote by themselves to advance a bill in the Senate from debate to a vote, short of invoking the nuclear option and changing the rules.
So, don't repeat this lie that the democrats somehow bowed to republican pressure because there was no pressure the republicans could actually apply. The only pressure here was the time crunch or from their own members (and those that caucus with the democrats). This is EXACTLY the bill the democrats authored with no republican amendments (they where not allowed to offer them) passed solely by democrat votes with EVERY republican objecting.
Also stop blaming republicans for ANYTHING to do with ObamaCare and it's failings. The blame for this is with those who authored the bill, refused to discuss it and then passed it all on their own over the objections of others. Who is to blame? The democrats..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
On Mars, I would take ocean over land any time!
Lol. We had missiles back in the mid 50s that sent our nukes anywhere. Apollo had nothing to do with military.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
1. Republican president Eisenhower started NASA as a bi-partisan response to Sputnik with then-senator Lyndon Johnson (Democrat of Texas who became JFK's v.p. and then President). It was under Eisenhower that the Von Braun team began the Saturn launch vehicle program and let the first contracts for the F-1 engine development program. The activity was done under the auspices of the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency then located at the Redstone Arsenal and under several project names including Juno V. The Juno V became the Saturn as the project and the Von Braun team were transferred from the Army to the newly-formed civilian NASA. This is how Kennedy was able to come along only months after becoming president and announce the moon mission and was able to watch the first Saturn launch from Cape Canaveral during his first term (and, sadly, only) year in office. Saturn started under a REPUBLICAN and had bi-partisan support
2. LBJ started chopping money for Saturns in his 1966 budget and eventually cancelled the Saturn rocket production line, thereby ending Apollo. He could not afford his war in Vietnam, his "Great Society" social programs, AND the moon program. On the day that Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon 6 months into the Nixon administration, all Saturn production had already been halted (under LBJ's budgets the least of which was made law in October 1968 before Nixon was elected. At that point, the Apollo Applications program was already well-underway and looking for the best and most affordable uses for the limited number of Saturn launch vehicles which had been built and were in storage. They ended up not even using them all since Nixon got really gun-shy after Apollo 13 and did not want to be the president to be blamed for losing people in space.
3. Like it or not, Nixon green-lighted the shuttle program while John Young was hopping around on the moon - setting up decades of both Republicans and Democrats wrapping themselves in positive PR of the shuttles.
4. Republican Reagan preserved and extended the shuttle program post-Columbia by having NASA build a replacement orbiter rather than leading the nation in a long navel-gazing exercise and hiding under a rock. Democrats and Republicans post-Reagan then rode on the coat-tails of shuttle.
5. Obama has spent his entire 8 years trying to kill-off NASA manned spacecraft and NASA manned launch vehicles. Every NASA budget he has proposed has either eliminated or severely down-sized the funding for these and every time congress has overridden him. The bi-partisan congress (practically the only cross-the-aisle cooperation) has repeatedly fought him to force construction of SLS and Orion; if SLS and Orion ever help send man to Mars(and I'm not holding my breath on that) it will be IN SPITE OF Obama rather than because of it as he will someday pretend.
You could know all these FACTS if you bothered to look at them - NASA has the entire history of the Saturn rockets online etc.
Next time, try using facts before pushing a partisan political agenda. NASA and its projects have had supporters and opponents in BOTH parties. Obama simply has not been one of those supporters. He's great with a teleprompter and he has a snarky swagger that seems to engender fanboy worship of him, but that facts put him in Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter territory with regard to Space rather than in Eisenhower, Reagan, JFK, and LBJ territory.
They are the most uptight, full of shit, people on Earth.
Clearly you've never met any Americans.
The day that Googles, Skypes, and Yahoos make their way to Mars is the day Martian colonization will go to shit.
You're not looking back far enough. Individual mandate healthcare has been a goal of administrations on both sides since at least Reagan. The opposition seems to always tear it down before it passes. In this case, it DID pass, forcefully, and that left a bitter taste. At this point, improving the ACA seems a better use of time than repealing it with no new plan in place, though I'd gladly examine a "good money after bad" argument that included a graduated replacement. I'm fine Auth single payer, but I'd be fine with anything that got close to 100% buy in AND reduced the original inflated costs of healthcare insurance has led to.
See, for a history lesson: https://www.google.com/amp/www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/02/07/the-tortuous-conservative-history-of-the-individual-mandate/amp/?client=ms-android-att-us
True. But also not true. Individual mandate is as much GOP as DNC. They wanted it, but didn't want THIS version of it. Pretty clear.
www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/02/07/the-tortuous-conservative-history-of-the-individual-mandate/amp/?client=ms-android-att-us
Wrong! Everyone knows Communism doesn't work because there's no financial incentive to do anything. Therefore everyone must have imagined any Soviet achievements in space research and development.
Fuck me. Why are so many Americans against single payer healthcare. I don't pay anything for any of those. Ok it's taken out of my salary but my first thought when I need to go to the ER or my doctor is not whether I've got enough money saved up.
Build a moon base first. We should've had at least one of these decades ago.
If we go to Mars it will be by private companies that aren't limited (yet) by bureaucratic inefficiency or an idiot at the helm. And note that he'll be long gone after doing NOTHING on his watch for 8 frickin' years. And this buffoon announces this? What a slimy PoS...
The system works when people make educated and informed choices. Unfortunately a large number of voters are stupid, bought, coerced, and sometimes dead. Since voter turnout generally sucks the candidate with the right lies or promises that can't possibly be fulfilled usually mobilizes the masses of idiots to vote for them.
Don't get me wrong we have the best system in the world. What ruins it is the idiots that don't understand it but participate anyway. It's like that one guy at a blackjack table that keeps taking the dealers bust card and causes everyone to lose.
Not always. Not all states allow write ins and most require the write in candidate to have registered in the state as a write in candidate, otherwise the write in vote is not counted.
Yep. Successor. Thanks for cleaning that up. I must have been distracted by... a thing.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Humans should leave Mars alone
Casteism
It wasn't going to pass without republican votes
Not a single Republican voted for it. Where on earth do you get these crazy ideas? It's an alternative reality altogether. And to think people wail about Faux news...
The Soviet Union never practiced the "to each according to their needs" part, and so wasn't doing true Marxist Communism. The excuse was that they were working towards it. The idealism behind Communism (and some other utopias) is that everyone really wants to contribute what they can, whereas in fact most people would be satisfied to sit on their asses and watch television. Communism could be successful and beautiful, but we're going to have to find the right intelligent species for it, because Homo Sapiens sure ani't it.
Communism seems to work reasonably well in rare cases on a scale no larger than a small town, for maybe a generation, with a charismatic leader pushing it. Aside from that, economic systems that want to get work done reward it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'm allowed to elect my two Senators, my Representative, my state Senator and Representative, county commissioners, and my City Council member, as far as the legislative branch goes. I'm allowed to elect my President, my Governor, and my Mayor for the executive branch. I can vote for everyone who makes laws and everyone with executive authority that affects me at home. There's some dilution involved, in that I have to share this electoral power with something like a couple hundred million other people on the electoral rolls, but that's true for everyone (although to a greater or lesser extent).
If you're complaining about who appears on the November ballots, well, you need to get involved with the party of your choice to affect that, or perhaps contribute to or campaign for who you like. I haven't heard of a party turning away volunteers (if the party makes you uncomfortable you might not have chosen wisely), and those who do work get some more say in what happens.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The Democrats had a filibuster-proof Senate majority for a very short time in fact, since Franken was not seated until June or thereabouts and Kennedy died shortly thereafter. As far as getting it through, the Democrats are a much less organized party than the Republicans.
Obama tried to include the Republicans, who absolutely refused to deal to make the bill better. After the first two years, the Republicans stonewalled Obama, and refused to do anything to try to change the ACA for the better. Instead, they grandstanded by wasting a lot of time showboating repeals that they knew would be vetoed, which wasn't particularly responsible of them.
The fact is that the ACA has been something of a success, which you wouldn't realize by listening to Republican propaganda.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
He was busy with the ACA in 2009.
My take on it is that, since he's not going to be President much longer, and isn't going to accomplish much more working with Congress, Obama is trying to champion a cause to give it visibility.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We need to allow voters to punish the elected for failing. If the mob can vote them in, then they can suffer the wrath of the mob when they don't meet expectations.
One of the most important things about a space program is cost per kilogram delivered to low Earth orbit, not what the biggest lift vehicle is. If Musk's plans work out, that cost is going to plummet. Get enough stuff into LEO and you can do anything.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The fact is that the ACA has been something of a success, which you wouldn't realize by listening to Republican propaganda.
"Something of a success"?? Well, I suppose it's had one or two positive results, but all the stuff we got told by the people selling this bill turned out to be patently false. Remember these?
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor....
This plan will save $2,500 a year for a family of 4..
There are no "death panels" in this bill..
This will not increase your healthcare expenses.
It's only going to cost (what ever the number was then)...
Your taxes won't go up..
We are not changing Medicare...
Every one of these was false... Every one..
Then there is this pesky fact the Clinton even admits that the thing needs to be adjusted, that it's got serious issues..
Oh, and that the republicans won't cooperate with the democrats on this is indeed true. If you believe that the idea is extremely bad to start with and the other party bypassed you to get it into law, why would ANYBODY then turn around and cooperate? The republicans are simply letting the bad idea take it's course, letting the thing grow more and more unpopular and reaping the benefits at the ballot box. Personally I don't see a problem with this. Republicans have said all along it needs to be repealed, not fixed, and their supporters keep putting them into office on that position. But go ahead and keep up your hissy fit/temper tantrums about republicans not helping you fix the catastrophes that befall you. We DID try to warn you, but you where not interested in hearing what we had to say. Live with your choices and leave us out of this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
America would never develop something like tsar-bomba
Yeah of course. They also would never develop technology to remotely kill anyone. Drones and other pilot-less flying devices will never have any military application.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Fine. Whatever. Let's militarize Mars. We can install a fuckin particle cannon on it. Now you have your reason to go.
Oh, and we could persuade the politician that there's also a lot of oil to annex... sorry... to bring democracy to on Mars !
That's also going to boost the space program.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There are no "death panels" in this bill..
Every one of these was false... Every one..
Right... uh-huh... and, uh.. where are those death panels?
Also: After the ACA went into effect, I did have lowered health expenses, I didn't pay more in taxes, and my parents saved a good deal of money also after they were provided more health insurance options.
One of the main reasons for health insurance companies losing profits is because of an under-regulated market on hospital service charges, medical equipment, and practically no restrictions on pharmaceutical costs. Hospitals are over-charging hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, in medical expenses.
If we were able to reel in and control how much a hospital could charge for a given exam, surgery, etc., and on top of that provide an appropriate ceiling to control how much medical equipment costs, coupled with a regulated pharmaceutical market(in terms of pricing, like almost every other clivilized nation), then we wouldn't be hurting so much. Without proper healthcare reform, the insurance companies will be hemorrhaging because of the several million newly-insured customers. Instead of lobbying against the ACA, the health insurance industry should have spearheaded regulation and reform to control the costs they were going to face.
We DID try to warn you, but you where(sic) not interested in hearing what we had to say. Live with your choices and leave us out of this.
Warn the Democrats? Again, the Republicans were apart of the process until the bills actually came out of committee, and stonewalled the rest of the way because they were scared of the Tea Party movement and losing their seats to even more radical Republicans.
Now, actually, Democrats tried to warn you about Trump. Look where that got the Republican party. Now you can watch your party implode, no thanks to a xenophobic republican base stirred up by the likes of Fox News, Limbaugh, Beck, Breitbart, and the lovely fear-mongering Congressmen with R's next to their name.
Nice sounding theory, but not true. The Tea Party barely more than a pipe dream before September 2009 when this bill was passed and nobody knew who they where. They certainly didn't have any pull yet with anybody in congress. The republican objections to ObamaCare where therefore in place a LONG time before it got shoved out of congress and that was before the Tea Party had any influence even in the red states. In fact, HARP and ObamaCare where likely the driving forces in making the Tea Party what it became, not the other way around.
But I'm glad you agreed to my basic point. Democrats did this on their own, disregarding republican input. The *reasons* they did this are really irrelevant because as passed, nobody on the other side of the isle voted for it and did everything they could to stop it. Democrats didn't care about the objections, and passed it.
Therefore, good, bad and ugly, your side owns this mess... Which is fine with me. Now you want to claim that the other side is being obstructionist because they won't compromise to help you fix your mistake? Grow up. Politics is a rough and tumble business and if you are unwilling to take your lumps, go home.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You and I both know that but try telling some of the black and white thinkers around here.
The bill went without Republican input because the Republicans refused to provide any. The ACA, like most bills, has flaws. The Republicans are completely uninterested in fixing any of the flaws, and far more interested in trying to impress their more gullible constituents by meaningless votes to repeal. Now, if enough Republicans were to say, "Gee, we still hate this, but if we make some changes here and here we'll hate it a little less", like real politicians, something could get done.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Actually, the Tea Party movement really got started in February 2009(though it was around before then, but very small), no thanks to Pete Santelli advocating Tea Party(think Boston 1773, not Taxed Enough Already) rallies to protest against TARP. It started to mutate and become it's own thing, and by September they had already hosted a number of rallies, hosting hundreds of thousands of people. A large number of Birthers defected from the Republican party to the Tea Party, and they were fighting everything and anything Obama, and with that and the mindset of demanding little to no government intervention, they were fighting the ACA ("Obamacare"), and were going after any Republican who at some point worked with Obama and the Democrats on the ACA, threatening their house/senate seats by voting for their own Tea Party Challengers. Out of fear of losing their incumbency in the 2010 and 2012 elections, Republicans quickly shifted gears and left the negotiating tables.
The ACA didn't get voted on and signed until March 2010, so there was about a year's time available for the Tea Party to inject their influence.
Again, the Republicans were apart of the process until the bills left the house and senate Committees, which had bipartisan support. Democrats were talked out of Single Payer by Republicans in committee, and Lieberman wouldn't provide his support (which was needed to overcome filibuster threats) until the public option was dropped and the Individual Mandate went forward with state-based medical exchanges, and then after that the Republicans fought against it, despite them providing similar proposals(using Romney's Massachusetts health care system as a template).
The Democrats should have fought harder for the public option and single payer, but couldn't risk being blocked and stalled by Republican and Independent filibusters. The writing was on the wall by the beginning of 2010, and they could see that their time of holding the majority in house and senate were coming to a close.
Now here we are. Instead of the Health Insurance industry lobbying for reforms and regulations to combat the rising costs of taking high-risk customers, they exhausted their time, money, and efforts battling something that was inevitable.
Fortunately, the Democratic party won't need to worry about falling apart in shambles. Sure, there may be some squabbling among them, but it's nowhere near the shit-show that has become the GOP. Hell, I think the Democrats have come together and unified more than ever in the last 4 years because of the GOP. My guess is that in 2-3 years, we may see an even farther right wing political party appear, born out of the flames of the disastrous alt-right uprising caused by Trump and the rampant xenophobia that Conservative pundits muster up.
Have fun with that.
Other than "it's there" and "Nobody else has gone" what's the point?
Hey bobbied, nice to hear from you all the way from the Afar Depression. Say hi to Lucy for me. If you are in any way curious, no, it's not nicer here in the new world. Stay.
you miss the point. The Tsara is WAY TOO BIG. If you throw it and it fails, then you are in deep trouble.
Then go back in time, and explain to the military that they don't need a huge powerful launch platform, but multiple smaller one.
Then maybe by now, the most normal way to do exploration outside the LEO would be to assemble the translunar/martian/whatever vessel in space, instead of throwing it from earth...
More seriously : you missed the point of the whole nuclear deterrent / MAD (mutual assured destruction).
The point isn't strategic targeting using nuclear head and precise tactical strikes.
The point is, once you press the big red button, basically the whole planet is toasted. Because at that moment, every one is going to press their respective button in retaliation.
And therefore (went the logic behind MAD) nobody will dare to be the first to press their button.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If CNN says it, It must be true.
If your employer is paying a portion of your medical insurance, you aren't under Obamacare.
Obamacare is personally paid insurance, not employer paid insurance.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
though Chicago might be more of a gamble, but still
Do you mean Detroit or Baltimore?
I would much rather see something like HyperLink built with the money,
Hyperloop possibly?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?