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Mike Pence Tells NASA To Accelerate Human Missions To the Moon 'By Any Means Necessary' (theverge.com)
Today at the fifth meeting of the National Space Council, Vice President Mike Pence said the Trump administration is committed to sending humans back to the Moon by 2024, four years earlier than NASA's previous target of 2028. The Verge reports: Pence, speaking at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, noted that the administration will meet this goal "by any means necessary." He called on NASA to adopt new policies and argued that the space agency would need to embrace "a new mindset that begins with setting bold goals and staying on schedule." To do that, he said the administration may consider ditching some of NASA's current contractors -- which are currently developing new vehicles to take humans into deep space -- and using commercially developed rockets instead. "If commercial rockets are the only way to get American astronauts to the Moon in the next five years, then commercial rockets it will be," said Pence. "Urgency must be our watch word."
However, Pence offered few clear recommendations and changes that would help to accelerate NASA's return, apart from potentially switching rockets and contractors. "It was rhetoric about 'by all means possible' and 'we'll provide the resources necessary' and 'leadership is essential,'" John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University, tells The Verge. "I mean, they're all good words. But the devil's in the details."
However, Pence offered few clear recommendations and changes that would help to accelerate NASA's return, apart from potentially switching rockets and contractors. "It was rhetoric about 'by all means possible' and 'we'll provide the resources necessary' and 'leadership is essential,'" John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University, tells The Verge. "I mean, they're all good words. But the devil's in the details."
Setting bold goals and staying on schedule.
So I guess, they sacrifice safety.
Ah, very good then
And the dish ran away with the spoon...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
NASA director reads the memo again:
by any means necessary
Hrmmm, clickety clickety clickety...Wall funds diverted to NASA!
Yes, show me how its all going to be paid for, and most of it will be contracted out.
I'm all for going to Mars and sending someone there.
Pushing people to develop new technologies or think differently will help drive innovation.
But don't cut current programs and funding just because someone wants to get to Mars in their term.
By any chance, is there a "christian" prophecy which includes human presence on the moon?
Mars^H^H^HMoon^H^H^H^HMars^H^H^HMoon
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Not because it is hard, but because we think it sounds easy. And will look good.
Because the real service we offer, is to allow the crueler half of a large generation empty remembrances of what they used to like the idea of, as we strip of it of meaning.
I've been to science/media conventions where folks in upper-level NASA positions (often conservatives) speak frankly on these subjects, along with a lot of engineer coworkers that spent time on the - none of this lines up at all with anything they'd want.
Ryan Fenton
Why the sudden hold on not going to the moon?
Decades and no new human moon mission?
Getting to the moon and returning was not beyond German and US tech in the 1960-70's?
Get back to the moon.
A big new Lunar Flag Assembly ready for 8K TV.
Place another US flag on the moon and do the salutes.
Collect some moon rocks.
Place some experiments.
Mars next.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That means two things, neither of which is going to happen:
- Increased risk, including a likelihood of deaths.
- Reducing Congressional oversight, so they can't micromanage NASA's budget and force NASA to hand out pork to the "right" Congressional districts.
Realistically, it would probably also require a third thing: firing the NASA bureaucracy that has grown up in service of Pournelle's Iron Law.
So, no. Not going to happen. NASA as it exists today is not capable of doing this job.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
n/t
- give us more money. Give us half of the budget allocated to the military. Give us half of their seven hundred dollar toilet seats and three hundred dollar spanners.
There's no science goal to what is currently happening now, so anything else can only be an improvement.
Ezekiel 23:20
"Urgency must be our watch word."
Why? Is it going somewhere?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm not sure what "any means necessary means". Does NASA get a blank check from the government? If Elon says for 10 trillion he can get us to the moon earlier, they'll fund it? If it involves paying large sums to Russia of China, that's ok too? How about safety? Send 10 rockets, as long as one makes it there that's fine, even if 9 crash and burn? Who exactly decides what means are necessary?
Try a rocket, I hear that's the best way way to accelerate moon missions. Or any kind really.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Yeah, it's a priority, you know how much live that will safe/improve!!! Think about the children!
If it really is by any means necessary, does that mean the catapult option is back on the table?
We have millions of Americans who still cannot afford to go to the doctor, who cannot afford education, who cannot afford housing, and this asshat thinks we need to send people to the moon to do what, exactly?
I don't respond to AC's.
Why is Pence so hot to get to the moon asap? What could possibly be scheduled for 2024 that the vice president would want some great publicity for?
He did say by any means possible!
That's right, Mike Pence, the young Earth creationist, wants us to go to the Moon by 2024. This is a man who doesn't understand science or history of us getting to the Moon. He doesn't understand money either because NASA had 5% of the budget at that time. Currently NASA has what, half a percent of the budget?
Place something witty here
60 years ago we allegedly went to the Moon
And AC is allegedly intelligent. But then he says shit like this. Sure. Get off this site, you're no nerd.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Just remember that, as in the case of the chief executive's personal life, all Trump administration commitments are short-lived.
Even in constant 2014 dollars, the current NASA budget is barely a third of what it was at its height — and since Space Has Really Become A Thing since then, what with the space stations and satellites and such, NASA tasked with doing a lot more missions than in the heady days of '66.
We want to get back to the moon in 5 years when we don't have human rated launch capability? And we want to do it on a giant rocket that hasn't launched once yet? Fine, but they're gonna need to open the pocketbooks a hell of a lot more than they are now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
to Trump's vanity. He has no vision. Everything he does is looking backwards. Bring back coal, go to the moon; what's next, fly a hot air balloon around the world?
Even if we go back to the moon, will Trump supporters believe we did it?
The speed at which NASA gets things done depends upon how deeply they are funded. Since funds come from the US government they have power over the progress of NASA. They have cut funding deeply and left NASA in a hole for a couple of decades. Now, due to Trump's insanity the tax revenues for the US will decline. Obviously when firms like Harley Davidson and Ford effectively leave the US all together the hand writing is on the wall. Trump's trade policies were stated as the reason Harley was leaving the US.
Does this mean there will be adequate funding and an absence of political meddling?
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
Where's the line in the Malignanat Carcinoma's federal budget for next year where NASA gets a 100% increase, from $20B to $40B?
Oh, I see, like any sleazy CEO, do more with less!!!
Datum: At the height of the Moon Race, in the sixties, NASA's budget was also $20B... in 1965 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $180B or $200B now.
Anyone who wants more in space... without increasing the budget is a liar.
Because of budget and will that why we haven't been back. Also we went there more then once, and the ships and radio was tracked around the world.
Plus footage, and the fact we have shit on the moon.
Go back to your bigfoot/flat earth/ anti vaxx facebook page and stay away from here.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It just means they have to pay a little more to get bumped up on the SpaceX launch schedule for the BFR.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Trump's proposed budget contains CUTS to NASA funding! I've never seen an administration that contradicted themselves so much!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Elon Musk, SpaceX, along with funding/help from NASA COTS, NASA CCXDev, and DoD/Intel World have created the lowest cost launch system. The F9/FH is good enough to get us into LEO,and to send small cargos to the moon.
However, we need space stations, lunar stations, multiple landing capabilities, etc. And these have to be inexpensive as well.
TO make this happen, we need NASA to help companies like Axiom along with Bigelow. But simply getting them up there, will not make them inexpensive. They need multiple customers in them. That means letting other nations make use of this private railroad. The Middle East. Northern Europe. Brazil. India. South Korea. Etc. We should allow them to train/experiment on this system, while we get to the moon.
NASA/Trump/CONgress can make this happen.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sorry, I can't help thinking it'll go something like, "Hey kid. Wanna puppy? He's right in there, through that little door."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'm wondering if it's possible for any government to go to the moon anymore.
I mean, I know it's *technically* possible, but I suspect the design and deploy process is so messed up that any such attempt will inevitably go over budget and get canceled.
The sixties were a special time -- the US had the cash, and the process hadn't been corrupted yet. Or corrupted enough yet.
Perhaps a private company could manage it. But it probably wouldn't be a single stack ground-to-Luna solution like the Saturn V, as magnificent as that was.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
...but wtf'ing hurry?
Risk taking, dream chasing, gung-ho American drive. Where have you gone? Sit on the couch, play video games, let the other guys do the dangerous stuff. Why should actual biological beings walk on the moon or go to dry, oh-so-uncomfortable Mars? Don't we have robots or rovers for that? Haven't we learned our lessons about doing, you know, dangerous stuff? Don't we need another 5 year study on o-rings? America wasn't founded on 5 year studies of o-rings. The aviation industry was built on the backs of daring, living beings who were absolutely aware of the risks. We don't give meaning to past sacrifices by funding a NASA that's a bureaucratic sinkhole.
There's an accompanying miasma of responsibility aversion as well. "It's not my fault. I didn't do it." Just as Congress has ceded its responsibility for war to the Executive Branch, we, as a nation, have adopted a cautious vision of . . . what? What is our vision today? More martian rovers? Digging 6 inch holes for samples?
Can we go to the moon in 5 years? Sure we can. We did it in 1969 - 50 years ago. At the rate we're going we'd still be waiting for approval on the sale of Cessnas. My grandfather tested planes that would be grounded today. My mother was flying at 15. How do you say Captain Kirk in Chinese?
He also commented, "Mike Pence was my slave name, I now prefer Malcolm SpaceX."
You know that slashdot is starting to fall pray to the inanity of mainstream media when this utterly meaningless piece actually makes it past the moderators. Pence can say whatever he wants. Absent the requisite resources--i.e., MONEY, FUNDING, APPROPRIATIONS, etc.--NASA cannot do squat. Hence, by "by any means possible" Pence apparently means "without any additional funding" because he certainly didn't say that the US government intends to fund such a mission. This is the sort of bullsh*t with which the Trump administration covers up their attempts to kill all of NASA's environmental missions, like the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. Maybe scientists and engineers are politically naive, after all. Really disappointed, guys.
"...who search the reason of things
Are those who bring the most sorrow on themselves." --Euripides, The Medea
The politics seems so obvious but no one is pointing it out. Going back to the moon is great, but why five years? It absolutely must be done in that time and we'll do whatever it takes to make sure it isn't six? Of course there's a reason for that. If Trump gets reelected, that would mean it happens while he's president. In six years it wouldn't, and that's totally unacceptable.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
America needs to re-establish her ownership of the Moon.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
If you want to cut a project's delivery time in half, you almost always need to write a huge check.
So doing this means one of two things:
1. A big check is authorized by leaders of the nominally small-government political party.
2. NASA drops a number of other projects that are far more useful.
There is no point in sending a government tourist to the moon in 2019. Unless we are planning to establish long-term facilities or learning something important, the moon is a waste of resources. I see no indication of either benefit from the article.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
The key letter in the name A stands for Administration. They should never have developed anything in house. Nor should they do any direct science in house. They should stick to paper and sign checks. It should have always been subcontractors with more autonomy rather than than golf buddies, corporate welfare for defense contractors, and backroom payoffs. You had people designing contracts with irrelevant requirements such that only one company would qualify.
The government needs to change it's business model. It needs to set a price and not pay anything until it's delivered. The money should sit in escrow until completion just like the x-prize that started all this.
Larger, old chap.
I'll give you that. [pulls lapels & slaps face]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Will Mike still have a boner for spacesuit chastity conquest when NASA finally fesses up that modern PC optics mandate a mixed-gender crew?
""It was rhetoric about 'by all means possible' and 'we'll provide the resources necessary' and 'leadership is essential,'" John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University, tells The Verge. "I mean, they're all good words. But the devil's in the details." "
So, you like the message, but hate the messenger. Got it.
Just another day in Paradise
Does your boss understand every detail about the job s/he expects you to do? The larger the organization, the less likely the bosses actually know how to do the stuff required of their reports. The boss's job is to steer reports in the direction of the organization at large.
I can't speak to the dollars and cost, etc., of space exploration, and I'm willing to bet that you can't either (much less comprehend how to manage a national budget). "Percentages of budget" assume getting the job done has something to do with the constantly changing value of a slice of an imaginary pie which, in your superficial political opinion, should be sliced differently.
In fact, this situation looks like a leader laying down a challenge for engineers to figure out a way to get something significant done within a time and money restraint, a relatively typical scenario for large-scale projects (and, from what I can gather about engineers, something they are good at and actually enjoy). So what's your problem? Pence's faith? Orange man bad? Or is it that the system is oppressing your vastly superior intellect, thus preventing you from saving the world?
Any means necessary, you say...