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The President’s Space Policy Will Compromise American Jobs and American World Leadership

By: Rep. Robert Aderholt (AL-04) (Diary) | June 29th, 2010 at 05:15 PM |

RESIZE: AAA

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space. Since then, there has been no turning back for the U.S. space program and we have led the world in space exploration ever since. Throughout the next 50 years, NASA would land astronauts on the moon, launch the Hubble space telescope and help build the International Space Station (ISS).

However, the President now wants to severely downgrade the one task which makes NASA unique — human exploratory space flight. On February 1, 2010, the Administration announced a budget which proposes to eliminate the NASA Constellation program. Since that time, NASA has canceled the awarding of contracts or put on hold parts of numerous contracts which were a part of the regular fiscal year 2010 work for the Constellation program, despite the fact that Congress must first approve its termination before it becomes final policy.

President Obama and NASA are putting American jobs in jeopardy because of a drastic proposal that isn’t even actual law. This plan put forth by the President is simply that – a plan, and NASA should not be assuming that this plan will be approved by Congress.

Since February, I have fought the President’s proposal to cancel Constellation because it will forfeit America’s leadership in space and it will cut thousands of jobs in Alabama and the entire nation. During the last month, contractors, under intense pressure from NASA regarding contract termination liability, have already begun laying off workers and canceling subcontracts, despite the fact that Congress has not approved the President’s proposal. That’s why I have introduced the “Protecting Human Space Flight Act of 2010” this week. This bill directs NASA to use FY2010 appropriated funds for what it was intended to do – work on the Constellation program, not a termination liability account.

President Obama has been saying for years that the goal of his Administration is to save or create American jobs. With the President’s new proposal for NASA, he is doing just the opposite.

Tags: NASA, President Obama

COMMENTS

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chriser

The

aesthete

In all honesty, NASA’s budget has been leaking like a sieve for some time now, and I think that the decision to focus on unmanned exploration, while unromantic, is a wise one: diminishing returns to human-based exploration make it an expensive proposition that we can’t afford.

The argument about American jobs is a particularly odd one for a conservative to make: the government’s job is not to create jobs; that is a byproduct of the governmnet carrying out its functions. I would be irked to find that institutions like the military are mere make-work programs, rather than protectors of our way of life. The money used to fund these jobs can surely find some use, and foster employment, in the private sector, and it is wrong to use the coercion of taxation to fund a jobs program.

Future developments in space travel may make human-based exploration more tenable or necessary, and I hope that humanity’s thirst for exploration will not be satiated at orbit’s edge, but at the moment, it’s a drain on our coffers that we can ill afford, and which makes little sense considering the benefits.

Joliphant

NASA needs to be in the exploration business not the launch business, nor the launcher business. NASA should not be defining more than amounts of cargo delivered to point x,y,z in space with velocity vector ( X ,Y,Z) at time T. I have no trouble with them building robotic exploration vehicles, its something that they arguably do better than anyone else in the world but I would like to see more commercial spin off from the program.

Despite the spin we have not received the greatest return on investment from NASA. Focusing them down to what they are actually good at, and moving anything that might have commercial possibility away from them seems to offer a more promising future for all.

You also have to question whether its wise to hand more dollars and the influence that goes with them to an organization that while it may not have an agenda certain of its members certainly seem to.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/03/researcher-says-nasa-hiding-climate-data/

At some point you have to ask just why someone has to file freedom of information lawsuits for non classified climate data that is by law in the public domain ?

I remember watching the first rockets to the moon from the roof of the building I lived in. I drove to cape Canaveral to see the last night launch of the shuttle before the challenger disaster. I grew up in love with the idea we would have a new frontier. NASA just isnt what is going to get us there.

There long has been an association between the Republican Party and space exploration. Perhaps its just part of the general hopefulness and optimism we try to embody but NASA as an organization is not our party’s friend, and its no longer the road to the future.

aesthete

I’ve found that they, and economists, associate more with conservatives and libertarians than others in the educated class. In addition, its main facilities are either based in “their” states (Texas and Florida), or on USAF bases (I’m sure that the affinity the military has for conservatism doesn’t need to be elaborated on).

Swamp_Yankee

That is exactly why Obama is canceling Constellation. It has nothing to do with jobs, science, the deficit or pragmatism.

This the globalist, the marxist Obama at his worst; the radical who grew up studying and loathing the imperial West and what he perceives their exploitation. He is still harbors a grudge with Great Britain over their African empire.

In space, there is no one to reign the great powers. In his mind, the possibility of the US using outer space to gain exclusive access to new science, data, materials and military resources is something to fear, not embrace.

NeoKong

Space… the final frontier…or at least it used to be.
Now it’s health care and Organizing for America.
I remember when I was a kid and we used to get these little Explorer readers in school that showed us how we were going to explore the universe. I remember watching the first moon landing with my brother sitting on my mother’s bed.
“Houston …the Eagle has landed.”
Every ten seconds or so there was that little metallic beep.
Every kid wanted to be an astronaut.
I don’t ever remember wanting to be a community organizer or sing songs about the president.

cactusjack

you have but I live in one of the affected areas, and have seen first hand how this played out so follow me if you will, RSers, on a trip deep into the recesses and formative associations within the political subconscious of the Bamster. As Penguin’diary this week has us thinking about where he “comes from” psychologically and why he does what he does, consider if you will the following associations:

1) “Texas” = biggest RedState, with guns =very bad = didn’t vote for us in 08 = must be punished! = remove funding, shut down JSC Manned Space center in Houston (the crown jewel in the NASA organization). Collateral damage to Huntsville AL and KSC-FL, a “three-fer.” [Spare NASA JPL in CA (done).]
2) “Louisiana” = promising Red State governor = can’t hide my mess in the Gulf, won’t vote for me now = very bad = must be punished! = withhold federal assistance = shut down platforms = twist in the wind, Pelican State!
3) “Arizona” = State defying federal edicts! obviously = Alabama 1964 = German shepherds barking at freedom riders = must be punished! = sue Arizona = issue Executive Order on Amnesty = you must be dragged into the “future,” Arizona.

Whether you’re for it or against its programs, to the O, NASA was an easy political target to make a quick hit on three (not Blue) States & their defiant governors.

The above is only part /snark/. I really think some of this has been operant to some extent in recent WH decisions. Fault lines in this Administration, more than any I have ever seen, are geographic.

http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

Unfortunately, there’s nothing new about spending dollars in the districts of political supporters and if necessary taking dollars away from the districts of our political opponents.The classic name is the spoils system.

Both parties have done this in the past, and right now the Democrats have the ascendency. Hence Item 1 – which is business as usual. And given the increasing red/blue polarization, the consquences tend to be more geographically pronouncedl.

The oil spill management and the declaring war on Arizona is outside of the box (2 and 3) are out of the box behavior, but the NASA budget and cuts seem within the bounds of normal political behavior.

Now if we can vote in enough Republicans who will end pork, the perhaps the system will change. Hard for elected officials to resist the allure when “every one else” is larding up but if enough citizens pressure our elected officials, then things will change.

Richard Mullins

When come to many other agencies, it more of a drop in the bucket. If JSC closed tomorrow, where would they go? Get degrees in the Oil Field so they can work in the Oil Industry? The One wants to kill that quick. What about retool themselves to work in the Texas Medical Center? No, The One worked on a way to kill that too. When it comes down to pork, it comes down to whose pork it is. Pork is really a relative thing in DC. Even though a good number of Houston residents voted for him, he still want to punish the area. Everything would seem fine if the moron with the Credit card wasn’t in the WH.
http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

which would pay for scores of NASAs and then cut a program that is vital to national security just as a rising China is advancing in space. astoundingly stupid but probably related to Obama’s sense of justice to make Alabama pay for past sins and since they are Republicans. Obama is punishing many red states while he rewards unions and builds DC into the seat of power for the First Citizen of the World.
lurker9876

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/30/video-welfare-can-and-must-be-reformed/

Cutting the NASA program just won’t do it.

I completely disagree with Bolden’s decision and I don’t understand why NASA chose to go backwards on the Constellation design. First time I heard it, I was hoping that the Constellation design is the stepping stone towards the shuttle replacement…eventually.

Defense still uses NASA resources for its defense work even though they have their own products.

There are some comments made about the NASA budget and its waste. If only those that made these comments could understand the fallacy behind these comments. MSM has painted this picture entirely wrong.

There wasn’t much and significant waste in the various NASA programs.

I do not believe that commercial aerospace is the way to go and that it will work. We tried something similar prior the Challenger accident and it didn’t quite work out.

There are many issues regarding commercial aerospace indstry and it is simply not going to work. Some of them will eventually go out of business entirely for various reasons.

One of the issues deal with the liability of manned space flight. Another one is safety requirements.

And commercial aerospace as envisioned by Bolden isn’t going to be any different from what we already have today. NASA is going to fund them just as much as they are funding today’s companies.

Sorry, there’s no better or worse way between what we are doing today versus what will be done tomorrow.
aeromom

of the federal budget. If I am personally drowning in debt, determining to cut my potato chip spenditure from one bag to none per month, is kind of pointless. I am going to look for the big ticket items to cut first.

I know I sound like a broken record, but NASA is one of the few agencies that actually does something useful for the country. I know many here do not believe that, but it is true. One example is that often experimental data obtained on various vehicles or shapes is used to validate flow prediction codes – which benefits private industry and gives them more confidence in their codes.
The experimental facilities alone are national assets that companies cannot afford to maintain and keep up to date. The facilities need to be maintained and staffed continually – they aren’t something that can be left alone fo months at a time. Many large aerospace companies have 1-2 smallish wind tunnels, but those still do not meet all of their testing needs.

Commercial aerospace companies (as well as other industries) use NASA experimental facilities, and pay for those services. NASA does not give that away. Customers pay to use the facilities.

I understand those who think the government shouldn’t pay for ‘exploration’ or ‘research’, but companies cannot afford to do a ton of basic research and cannot obtain the data they need on their own. Besides the cost of maintaining high-tech facilities, companies who are competing against each other can use the same NASA facility to get the data they need. Gulfstream would not want to test in a Cirrus-owned wind tunnel, for obvious reasons. But they can call come to a government-run facility to get their data, without worrying about the competition getting a hold of their results.

You are right about the commercial space plan described in the administration’s new plan. It just shifts taxpayer money to a private company. I am all for commercial space, but the new plan isn’t what I consider ‘commerical’ space – it is still being funded by taxpayer dollars.
redneck_hippie

h/t Mark Levin

No wonder The One (termer) runs around sucking up to the tyrants. We’re not going to be able to defend ourselves, once the left gets done cutting.

http://marklevinshow.com/goout.asp?u=http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/28/debts-deficits-and-defense/

The Stash is for welfare, not science and technology and defense.

Joliphant

The solution isn’t to coerce the federal government into returning the pork its taking away because those states didn’t support the current administration. The solution is to diminish the Federal government so it isn’t rewarding states with their own money in the first place.

Every time our party plays the pork game we lose. If you are a small government republican you need to remember every bureaucrat is your enemy until proven otherwise and probably even after you think they have proven themselves.

You say return the funds by way of federal programs to our states ? If I understand you correctly ? I say if we get in take it away from their states and return it to the people with tax cuts.

cactusjack

what I am trying to point out is, for this President & staff it’s not just a tool of local politics as usual, it appears to be their primary purpose, to effect a massive, massive nationwide shift of trillions of dollars, like nothing seen in our history, from industry to unions, from private to public sector, from in the black states to deficit states, from red states to blue states. Like the current of an underground river reversing course and draining an acquifer. So much so, that one can actually predict from now going forward almost everything they will yet try to do.
Richard Mullins

Cutting one agency and getting the saving of it is pie in the sky. That isn’t going to happen and having it back as tax cuts, is the last things are leftists in Congress and the WH want to do. So you like to play the political pork game but under the bit of being a champion of smaller government(if you want it smaller, you might want to trim some waste first). Getting private space flight is quite a ways off from being able to make a profit(how many people can afford $200k for a sub-orbital flights). To many of politicians don’t how to cut pork because they like lard it all up.
Joliphant

Why bother with anything.

This has happened in the past we actually managed a balanced budget twice in the last century, and I’ll give you three guesses which party was in office.

If you think our party should be the other white meat and I don’t mean unicorn then you might as well throw in the towel now.
Joliphant

We really have to communicate to the members of our party that business as usual, just benefiting the nominally conservative side of the aisle is not acceptable.

Its likely we will be able to put our party back in come november but they should remember just why we had a collective yawnfest in 08. The people out there protesting Obamas policies aren’t saying Yeah thats what we want just point the pork cannon in a different direction and raise taxes and increase the weight of the government’s thumb on people I don’t like. People are saying enough already just what the heck has happened.
http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

NASA is a critical part of national defense. The only part dedicated to space. We can’t cede space to China and not risk the possibility that their research while we are idle could risk them making advances in the technological use and domination of space to acheive military superiority. Most every nation that acheived that power in history abused it terribly, exceot for us.
Joliphant

They already run their own space program as it is. There is also ample precedent for the military exploring the frontier.

About the only thing I could give NASA a grade A on for the last 30 years is unmanned exploration. But they have completely messed up manned exploration.

They have also been more in the business of technology prevention than advancement.

I don’t know if this will embed in the current version of redstate so i will just provide a link and hope it works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls&feature=related

This is video of the Delta Clipper an advanced single stage to orbit concept that got coopted and killed by NASA

Why was it killed ? You can only guess and infer at this point. The people working on the project said NASA burried them in paperwork to the point where they were burning out.

There was the fact that by NASA standards the project was extremely low cost and they had dreams of the X-33 and X-34 Their home grown project.

This is from NASA spaceflight.com

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2006/01/x-33venturestar-what-really-happened/

And here is the relevant quote of the then NASA director to congress concerning the shutdown.

“The principal purpose of the X-33 program is to fly all the new technologies that interact with each other together on one vehicle, so that they can be fully tested in an interactive flight environment,
http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

Time for conservatives to put their money where their principles are. NASA is a great start, because it sure isn’t working right anymore.

avgamerican

President Obama has by design made it his policy to turn the United States into a third world country. He has managed to convince enough voters that this is good for them. Never in my adult life have I seen what is so obvious so obscured to so many. The space program, our infrstructure and industrialization is all going to go away. We will be unable to meet any future challenges and will have to rely on the rest of the world whom we know we can’t count on.

Gmac

because I think the (P)resident is a petty vindictive thug who finds ways to support his union buddies at the expense of everyone else that didn’t support him.

Layoffs have been ongoing at KSC and Marshall as well as at Boeing for several months now. There isn’t an end in sight as he turns NASA into a climate information gathering organization.

It will take a decade or more to recover from this, I saw the same thing happen here in Huntsville in the late 60′s , early 70′s when the Appolo mission ended. The lost knowledge and flight of engineers will cripple the space agency and it can all be laid at the (P)resident’s feet because he decided that the false religion of global warming could be changed by limiting man made activities.

God help us all.
conservativecrusade

people lose their jobs, this is just about the only decision I agree with Obama on. NASA has been a spending giant and when times are tough, you cut. While there have been some new finds due to the space program, very little has been accomplished over the last 10 or so years except bleeding a budget dry. Time to cut the spending and find ways to take picture of space without spending trillions to do so!

jmimac351

of course, like Obama she is promising jobs and fiscal accountability. Cocoa, Titusville, Melbourne, etc in Brevard County, FL are being crippled by Obama’s disdain for American leadership on any issue, in this case Space. And they were being harmed by people like Suzanne Kosmas who tries to hide her liberalism by using words like “fiscal responsibility”. Maybe CEO Obama can make GM build a plant in Brevard county? Oh, that’s right, NASA is going to develop new “green” energy technology now. Obviously the private sector has totally missed out on how viable / profitable those “green” technologies are. Who knew?

November cannot get here fast enough. One way or another, real change is coming. The issue is how much pain people are going to endure before they’ve had enough.
jmimac351

and you don’t use GPS, check the weather, worry about information our Intelligence agencies have access to, etc. “NASA” is not just about testing rat pee in a zero gravity environment.

conservativecrusade

may be involved in those aspects, it is privately funded. And our defense has its own agencies that also deal with missile defense, spying through satellites, and so on. NASA may be involved, but the whole issue mostly deals with their serious abuse of our money to shoot up into space. There very well may be reason to keep the dinosaur around, but it def needs to be reigned in and forced to cut its spending and stay within a real budget. And with so many other issues in our country right now, space stations and picture taking should rank very low on our important meter right now.

utahtim

Constellation is bad rubbish and good riddance. You may be correct that Mr. Obama’s space policies will reduce the number of government jobs in Alabama and elsewhere, but claiming NASA is good at “human exploratory space flight” anymore is just plain wrong. NASA hasn’t put a man beyond low earth orbit (unless you count fixing Hubbell) since the 1970s, and when it has put people in low earth orbit, it’s only been a few government employees at a cost of roughly $1B a flight, and not very often at that. NASA doesn’t even have a good safety record. I favor the idea of human space exploration, but there are far better ways to go about it than with the expensive, bloated, dated, and constantly slipping government project that is Constellation. No thanks.

freeus

I have worked at KSC for almost 20 years and this is NOT the NASA that launched the Apollo missions. It has become no different than any other Government agency bogged down with endless rules, regulations, inefficiencies, and bloated beaurocracy. It took 25 years – YEARS! – to build the ISS and Constellation had spent nearly 10 billion over the past 5 years with little to show. I’m certainly not an Obama supporter, but cancelling Constellation (and Shuttle – another incredibly inefficient program) is the right thing to do. The way NASA has been operating for decades has got to stop.

JSobieski

The out boundaries of exploration have often been funded by governments.

SteveLA

jmimac351

Every one of those services that you applaud, no man in space to deliver them, ever consider that?

The real question, what is the mission that we are in space to achieve? The Moon, Mars, what? There has been zero Presidential leadership in the space industry sense Apollo and this very question, and His Obamaness is not going to change that long and inglorious trend. Let’s not even talk about the man v unmanned fight that has also been going on for a very long time. I’m on the unmanned side of that one and have made a good living working on space systems that aren’t man rated.
neukm

Russia’s GLONASS (global navigation satellite system) is now available for commercial use here, unfortunatlely.

Why not eliminatle NASA’s climate research budget instead??

aeromom

NASA’s budet is less than 1% of the overall federal budget. While there is certainly waste in every federal agency, you could cutting waste in NASA is hardly the place to do it and have it actually make a difference.
You could cut the NASA budget to zero and it would not even make a dent in the overall federal spending.

And to say that very little has been accomplished by NASA in the last 10 years is just plain silly. NASA does not always do a great job of touting its accomplishments (I’m sure the budget for PR is quite small), but NASA manages to support quite a bit of innovative research in space and aeronautics. I am an aerospace engineer (not a civil servant) and have supported numerous NASA projects over the years, so I know first hand.

Most don’t appreciate how much it costs to conduct one wind tunnel test or run a CFD (computational fluid dynamics) code. In the case of a wind tunnel test, there are model design and fabrication costs, instrumentation, pre-test planning, the actual test, data reduction, post-test analysis. For computational data, one has to generate and refine your grid, set conditions for the code, computing time, etc. For almost every test, engineers must make hard decisions on what data points to give up acquiring, because of budget constraints. Every experimental data point we give up results in engineers having to make assumptions about that vehicle’s charactieristics or behavior. Additionally, it is one less point that can be used to validate computational predictions.

Sorry for getting all geeky on everyone, but NASA is one of the few federal agencies (not including DoD) that actually is productive with taxpayer money. Several of the Mars exploratory vehicles (cannot recall specific names at the moment) have lasted much longer than they were orignally designed to last.

Not saying NASA is perfect, because it isn’t. But it is hardly the poster-boy for government waste.

BTW, I think this is my first post to RS. Have been following the site for some time and love it. Thanks!

SteveLA

aeromom

That’s the Million dollar question, what’s the mission, why are we doing what we are doing.

Mike Griffin couldn’t or wouldn’t answer that question, Dan Golden couldn’t answer the question, or at worse had a different answer every day in-between fixation on “Meat Balls” and other nonsense.

The 17,000 jobs on the line with the ending of the Shuttle program and shutting down of Constellation is the price being paid by NASA for not being able to figure out the very hard but seemingly very simple question. Don’t blame just Obama for this one, blame every President sense the one that was able to set the goal with these words:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

And yes, this is a mistake, but other than turning NASA into a jobs program for the 17,000 highly skilled and highly specialized jobs that support a manned launch processing capability, what other answer is there?

Achance

that England had laws prohibiting people with skills in building steam engines or in gun-making from leaving the country or the reasons for the Jones Act we’re all lamenting right now. If we eliminate those jobs, somebody else might decide they want to bear any burden and pay any price, and that somebody might not be friendly to us.

See my post below. I’m actually more on your side than aeromom’s, but there are good “national interest” reasons to keep this talent working for US rather than, say, the PRC or the NorKors – and they will rather than starve or become WalMart greeters.

SteveLA

Art

That’s a valid, but non conservative argument, one I actually agree with.

If as a matter of national policy the government decides that an industry must be preserved, skills must be maintained, a standard of living must be preserved, by all means use every tool at the government’s disposal to achieve that objective. Just don’t make that argument around a full on conservative capitalist that thinks that market forces should be the final arbiter in true Darwin economics of only the strong survive.

I probably part company even more with many conservative capitalists in that I think that as a matter of national interest, in a broad sense of that term, I’m fine with protectionism, government support of industrial policy from an objectives and even cooperative endeavor view.

Heck I think there ought to be an outright ban on local governments outsourcing things like IT and call centers to places like India, even if it means higher taxes.
JSobieski

For example, we don’t support free markets with respect to nuclear weapons, military equipment, or top notch encryption technology.

I do think it is contrary to conservatism for the government to intervene in the market in order to determine winners and losers, or to otherwise achieve economic ends through the disruption. If National Interest is simply some economic goal, how are you different than Obama?

For example, Obama getting involved in the car companies and the banks is for the purpose of impacting the domestic economy, not for some national security objective. When Bush intervene in setting steel terrifs, that was also NOT conservative.

Defense, and by extension space, are areas where conservatives have non-economic objectives that trump the functioning of markets. Heck, there really isn’t a market at this point in space exploration, and a lot of our space stuff is very much intertwined.

I do think the difference is important. Once you decide that the national interest means picking “champions” worthy of protecting you are on the track of Obamaism.

You don’t think Obama can justify everything he does on some “national interest” basis?

Protectionism is not OK unless it is based on non-economic factors. Otherwise, unions will take your “national interest” formulation and turn this country into France (or worse) in a couple of years.

aeromom

the direction of NASA is subject to the whim of politicians. Projects get started and stopped with each administration and/or a new Congress (who actually determines the funding).
NASA does more than just space. A lot of work is done in the fields of transonic flow, hypersonics, innovative aircraft designs, materials, fluid mechanics, flight simulation,…
I am not defending the program of record, just saying that to call out NASA as this bloated agency from which tons of money can be saved is misguided. Cutting NASA’s budget by 50% would be a statistically insignificant reduction in the overall money Congress spends.

Many other agencies have have budgets orders of magnitude larger than NASA, have little to show for it, and are riddled with waste (and everyone here knows that).
Just saying that to make a big deal about cutting NASA’s budget is about like trimming the toenails of a giant and patting yourself on the back about reducing the giant’s size.
I just get weary of the everyone beating their chests about the size of NASA’s budget and how much money is wasted, when the Depts of Education, HHS, and others are well and truly bloated and riddled with seat warmers.
If we want to talk about trimming government waste, why don’t we start with the worst offenders?

aesthete

I (mostly) agree with you, JSob, and the others who have commented in favor of NASA. That said, the only thing being cut is the Constellation project: a waste of funds better used to fund other things in NASA or returned to its rightful stewards.

conservativecrusade

the amount it would save is not relevant. Do we only cut those programs that are a much bigger portion of the total fed spending. That is the argument libs have used to cut defense spending.

Here is what I mean. Each year the federal government spends between 2.5 and 10 million on studying the effect that animal waste and farting has on the ozone and on global change. That is just a drop in the bucket when looking at the total spending of the fed government. But it needs to be stopped, it is pointless, it delivers no real advantage or benefit to this country, etc. Now find all the stupid spending like this and cut it all and all of a sudden you have a tremendous budget surplus.

We can argue all day long on the relevance of NASA, but reality is NASA blows money like it can be re-printed tomorrow, has not produced any significant gain for this country by spending all that money, and is luxury this country can ill afford to keep right now. The fat needs to be trimmed and trimmed greatly.

aeromom

“reality is NASA blows money like it can be re-printed tomorrow, has not produced any significant gain for this country ”

That is so obnoxious and ignorant. Might want to read up on all of the things that go on at NASA. I don’t see the point in listing all of the industries that have benefited from NASA-sponsored research since many here seem unlikely to believe it. NASA is not perfect and can be frustrating to work with (as any bureacracy), but people work really hard to get the most bang for the buck.
I am sure the many gifted researchers I have had the honor of working with will be pleased to hear that their research efforts have been and are insignificant. I am sure they will also wonder how their projects missed out on all that money NASA has ‘blown through’.
If you think the US can do without a national aeronautics and space administration, fine, close it tomorrow. But totally unnecessary to belittle and denigrate a whole group of people (CS and non-CS) because you ‘think’ nothing has been accomplished.
You could close NASA tomorrow and all work on developing quiet aviation technologies, ‘green aviation’ concepts, more efficient aircraft designs, etc would slow way down. Most companies do not have the money to maintain these facilities for themselves. Already, Europe is passing us by with their state of the art wind tunnel facilities.

JSobieski

There are some things that if government doesn’t do, they won’t get done.

Public roads fit into that category. But so does sending man to mars.

I would rather blow $20B on manned space exploration than bailing out state pensions.
conservativecrusade

you are correct that the bailout would have been better spent on NASA or even the Boy Scouts. Still does not make it right nor do the horrible bailouts mean we should turn a blind eye to NASA spending.

When sending a man to mars or any other celestial object gets us on a better road, I for one will change my support and distaste for NASA. Until then our taxpayer dollars need more accountability. And when the other things that NASA does can not be done by the private sector or by being funded by the very private sector that will benefit and make money from it, I may change my position.
JSobieski

I am defending NASA as a concept, not NASA as currently constituted
cabanon

Government has no business spending tax payer money on “research” for aviation companies that don’t want to innovate as part of their business practice but want the government to pick up the tab.
JSobieski

because no individual or business could afford otherwise.

Who else could have paid for Christopher Columbus to sail across the Atlantic?

Magellan across the world?

Lewis & Clark across the US?

Land men on the moon?

Government should not act when private action is possible, but in some areas it isn’t. Defense is a clear example, but there are others.

We can have private rocket companies now (because of what was done by NASA in the 60s and 70s), but in the 1960s and 1970s there was absolutely no way.

Similarly, there is no way that a private business can afford to send man to the moon or space probes to Jupiter.

The key question is: can the private sector do this?

In terms of research, do you think IBM can afford to pay for a new particle accelerator that is worth building?
cabanon

My response was to aeromom about her comment.

“You could close NASA tomorrow and all work on developing quiet aviation technologies,
JSobieski

You will note that President Jefferson used government monies to pay Lewis & Clark and the country did not riot.
cabanon

NASA’s budget is $19B a year Exxon Mobil’s profits from last year were $19B and BP’s were $14B. The fact is there are plenty of private companies doing well enough to fund their own research or other exploration or whatever they want. Government does not need continue funding NASA.
JSobieski

are too distant for a private company to do it.

Just as Columbus would not have sailed across the Atlantic in 1492, Armstrong would not have walked on the moon in 1969 without a sovereign funding the expedition.

Not saying NASA is any good, just saying space exploration is a justifiable expense if done well.
JSobieski

but the founders spent government money nonetheless.

The value of exploration was never doubted.
cabanon

NASA’s Mars rover mission cost $1B over 6 years thats just $160M per year a number of private companies could have funded that level of exploration and research,

They don’t because they might not see an immediate economic return. So again why should taxpayer money be used to take the risk?

And just stop with the Columbus reference, about half his funding came from private investors this was very common at the time.
JSobieski

understand that a $1B mission with no foreseeable direct payoff will not be undertaken by the private sector.

Your logic supports a US response to sputnik consisting of . .. nothing.

Do you realize where that would have led to? Are you prepared to let a country like China take the lead before having a space program again?

Half of the funding for Columbus = no trip.

What about Lewis & Clark? Just a unconstitutional power grab by Jefferson?
aesthete

as with espionage and other implied powers, exploration is necessary for a vigorous defense from threats seen and unseen. No, that doesn’t just mean aliens or other fanciful nemeses: another nation on Earth could find some advantage in space that we wouldn’t know about unless we were up there ourselves. Space exploration paves the way for private ventures to flourish in that sphere without the danger of reprisal from some group or other.
cabanon

was of course our own satellite launched a few months later by the U.S. Army. The Soviet’s launched and threatened us and we countered with a military space action.

In your posts you have conflated space exploration and space based military operations. They may have overlapped in the 1960s but they are not the same things and you can’t swap them interchangeably to suit your argument.. GPS for example is not a NASA spin off, the first GPS satellites were launched by the Air Force from an Air Force base on modified ICBMs that is ALL space based military operations not the civilian space program. Our technology advantage won’t disappear if NASA is shut down.
JSobieski

that certain space-related activities required government funding.

Why didn’t we just wait for Boeing or IBM to respond to the Sputnik challenge?
cabanon

or even what NASA actually does. Previously you credited NASA with spawning rocket companies.

“We can have private rocket companies now (because of what was done by NASA in the 60s and 70s), but in the 1960s and 1970s there was absolutely no way.”

And you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Numerous aviation companies were manufacturing rockets well before NASA, they were making ICBMs. The Titan series, the Atlas series, the Saturn series which put men on the moon, all of them were built by private companies who had been manufacturing ICBMs, not NASA.

So we didn’t have to wait for private companies to respond, they were already building rockets.

Civilian exploration didn’t do anything for aerospace. Seriously, stop trying to argue things you don’t understand.
JSobieski

ICMBs – US government was the exclusive customer
Titan, Atlas, Saturn – US government was the exclusive customer

You are entirely missing the point. If the US government didn’t fund the R&D to build Titan, Atlas, Saturn, et al—they would not have been built.

My argument has always been about government spending, not “NASA” per se. You should try reading before responding.

But in case you are still having difficulties:

Without the spending of US dollars in rockets and satellites, there would be precious few if any of these things out there. These industries grew out of government spending, and only late had private customers like Verizon.

So insult me if you want, but you are still missing the entire point of what I said.
cabanon

spending on civilian space exploration vs.government spending on space based military applications? I’m not arguing about government spending for military applications, just NASA.

“My argument has always been about government spending, not
JSobieski

there would be no industry, or at least we would be decades behind where we are now.

I have been arguing for government investing in space exploration. As I noted several times, I am not a booster of “NASA” per se. I have simply argued that your argument of having private industry make investments with no foreseeable profit horizon is nuts.

There was no market for Titan missiles before the US government created the market. There still is no market for for anything outside of US orbit.

I never said NASA manufactured anything. Where did I ever use the word “manufacture”? The NASA program was very much involved in the design of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, feats not yet replicated in the private sector.

I have been arguing generically against people saying that we should leave space exploration to the private sector. I never said that the government should manufacture anything, just that government money is required for projects that do not have a foreseeable payoff.

THe private companies I was referring to are not rocket companies selling to the government, I was referring to the private market for satellites, and the private market (which is developing) for putting people into a low orbit.

My point remains that the government created this market by investing in it decades ago, and that IBM will not be spending $10B to land things on mars any time soon. Instead of arguing my substantive point, you assert that I said NASA manufactures rockets. No what I said was that NASA investments in the space program are now benefitting commerical companies, and that without NASA, companies like Verizon wouldn’t have a bunch of satellites out there.

I never used the word manufacture. Do you think that I think the air force makes their own planes? Do you think that the army makes it own tanks?

I don’t know why people bother to comment on here if they aren’t interested in actually addressing the main point. Why presume some word choice that I didn’t make instead of addressing the main point?
cabanon
JSobieski

Do you understand English? Who paid for the ICBMs? The Titans? Who? IBM? GM?

No, the US tax payer. Only after billions were spent (and many expensive accidents), is a truly private spaceflight industry coming it to its own. However, that industry is limited to the outer reachs of earth orbit (just as before, private commerce was limited to aircraft).

Pushing the boundaries of space exploration is always to speculative a business proposition to justify shareholder money. Only after government creates a market by being a customer (see ICMBs Titan, Saturn, et al). would a private company say “hey, I can make some money investing further in this technology.”

I have made this point, repeated it using different phraseology, and you are clearly incapable of understanding it.

How many rocket companies where there before the US starting spending money on rockets?

How successful were those companiues?

Can you answer these questions? Or would you prefer to focus on the difference between “rocket” and “space flight”?
cabanon

NASA was not the first or only government spending on rocketry, its not even the primary spender on rocketry, the military is. And I’m not arguing about ALL government expenditures just NASA’s. Thats why your statement is flat out wrong and thats why you’ve shifted your position. You still haven’t explained what NASA did, you’ve conflated it with all government spending and that is simply disingenuous.

And if you think rockets and spaceflight are the same think you might want to inform NASA so that they don’t have to waste money on a launch site in Cape Canaveral and a mission control site in Houston. Now go google that to figure out why.
JSobieski

I don’t think you understand what you read. My familiarity with NASA goes back a long time and its a deep and meaningful relationship.

Let me know if you still stand by your statement that a private market (i.e. the government is not the customer) for space exploration can happen any time soon.
JSobieski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies

if any of these companies would exist if NASA did not have the mercury, gemini, and apollo programs (note that there were NASA programs)? Thus, what NASA did in the past is the reason why we have these private spaceflight companies today!

Now that wasn’t too hard, was it? If you knew anything about modern commerical spaceflight, I think you would realize that this is what I was referring to.

The phrase “private spaceflight” companies is used because the government entities like NASA and the DD are not involved. Please note that these companies do not build their products from scratch either. They buy parts from other companies. Many use subcontractors. The are nonetheless considered “spaceflight companies” despite their failure to mine resources out of the ground and build the ship from the ground up. They are considered “spaceflight companies” because their are the project manager in terms of specific missions into space. Analogous to what NASA and other government agencies have done.
cabanon

“private spaceflight” is different than “private rocket companies” you can’t use them interchangeably.

And why do you think NASA’s manned missions (the ones you list are all manned missions) contributed to the entire private spaceflight industry? You don’t need to know how to land on the moon or outfit an astronaut with a biotelemtry system to put a satellite in orbit.

Maybe you just need to be more accurate with your terminology.
JSobieski

You need to admit that you were wrong about private investors funding spaceflight. What you meant is private companies FUNDED BY THE GOVERNMENT. Whose terminology was more sloppy?

To say that private spaceflight is somehow vastly different that private rocket companies is pretty silly. Do a google search and you will find similar results for both searches. Of course, this is all a smokescreen—you nitpick terminology to avoid the central point of your position—NO GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR SPACE TECHNOLOGIES EVEN THOUGH ALL OF YOUR EARLY EXAMPLES OF PRIVATE COMPANIES RELIED EXCLUSIVELY ON GOVERNMENT FUNDING.

Is spaceflight a different word than rocket? Sure, But you are just flat out wrong about how businesses make investment decisions. You aren’t going to hear about a Google space probe to Jupiter until it gets to the point where a government funded space probe visits a planet in another solar system. Private funding can occur when there is a market, but when it comes to space, a government has historically been needed to create the market.

If there was no Mercury program, there would be no commerical satellites now. Government money paid for all of the expensive failures to get us to the point where putting a satellite up could be done sensibly.

Who knows what future benefits we miss out on if we don’t push the boundaries of space. Meanwhile, you will dwell on the fact that spaceflight is a different word than rocket, even though every space vessel in existence to date has been launched on rockets.

Petty.
JSobieski

and space exploration isn’t cheap.

The companies in the business of bulding rockets and launching satellites were are built using taxpayer dollars.

Private companies built ICBM’s because the government paid them to do it, not because the envisioned all of the resulting commercially applications.

I know will proceed to simply ignore my point and insult me, but I thought I would try one last time.
JSobieski

“NASA
mdd1956

First, NASA could use a little streamlining, most of the inefficiency issues have to do with politics.

This crowd would have you believe they are science guys, nothing could be further from the truth, they are apperatchecks at best, they believe in science the way they believe in spirituality…. they believe in their own divinity.

However:

Want honest answers in global warming, NASA observation is best way to get real average global temp data.

Want to find better energy, NASA physicists are the best chance to develop fundamental understanding of how to do that. (Do you remember from the third grade that the SUN warms the earth ?)

Want to solve the issue with rogue nations having nukes, SDI / NASA are the answer.
http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

meaning always vulnerable to preemptive attack, I do think it is a dereliction of duty to abadon our presence in space with China remaining there.
JSobieski

nt
http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

There are some legitimate functions for the central government and one of those I believe is some level of scientific research funding.

This is one of those areas where pragmatic history trumps ideology. It is easy to see a DIRECT correlation between such funding and technological breakthroughs that enhance a nation’s wealth, power, and well being.

I could point to literally hundreds of examples going all the way back to the Civil War when the government began to provide some money to fund weapons research.

And big projects such as the Panama canal, Hoover Dam, the TVA, the Manhattan project, the Eniac project, the Interstate Highway System, and the Space program have all yielded breakthroughs in applications, productions, and engineering.
conservativecrusade

I have never called for it to be shut down, only that its funds are deeply cut. There is a difference you know.

Now lets move on to some of your other points since you seem to feel all of us who feel a certain way are obnoxious and ignorant. Rather than tell you to shove your attitude and BS name calling somewhere, I will simply respond as an adult.You ought to try that here and there by the way!

Libs like to take comments and act as if the comment was a blanket comment just as you did. No one, myself included, stated anything about there not being some bright, gifted, underfunded, etc researchers at NASA. What I and others have said is the spending at NASA has been way out there, our taxes are going in there so we DO have a say, and the gains given to us by NASA do not justify the spending. Now in your mind, as displayed above, that means we are saying everyone there is abusing funds. But try again, it simply means the organization as a whole is a money pit.

And since so many companies, as you stated, have benefited from NASA research, let them pay for it and let us spend our money elsewhere. And just as many advancements have been achieved in the areas you posted through private research which does not cost the taxpayer a dime except when we use or buy their product, which is how it should be.

Our government is not supposed to be in the research business when it does not 100% benefit the taxpayer. Even then, they really should be heavily monitored. You can spew off all you want and yet you will still not justify or explain why NASA should keep getting the money it has been getting only to waste a large portion of it. Their funding should have been cut years ago and it is a shame the bum in the white house is the one who may do it. He should never get kudos, but on this he will.

Now when you read this, try to read correctly so that you can see that none of us are making blanket statements about everyone that works there. That way you do not have to come back with such a hissy fit and start the “you are ignorant” rant.

By the way, England has also passed us in free health care, higher taxes, socialism, liberalism, going broke, etc and we will let them keep winning. We will work hard to keep our tax dollars out of companies and from spend ready politicians.
JSobieski

If that answer is no, the US should have responded, then the question is do we have to wait for China to starting knocking at the door, or can we start now?
pittbull

Someone slipped a goodly amount of money into his pocket that was not spent on “proper” equipment and materials. Seven Astronauts paid for his avarice and greed with their lives, and now we no longer “have” a space shuttle named Challenger.
We need to make strong and lasting changes before space exploration can be practically resumed.
JSobieski

Pushing the envelope in space exploration is both with regards to projects that the private sector cannot fund.
conservativecrusade

NASA should be funded by the private sector for the things that benefit it and as to the rest, it has shown for many years that it can not be trusted with the money it has been given, loves to waste what it is given, so cut the funding drastically.

But in regards to space exploration in the current economy, no I do not think any funds should be going to that. While what NASA gets may only represent 1% of the federal spending, it is one percent that can go to other more necessary things. Quite frankly, most of the manned space exploration is outdated and does not further America at all. Lets say we landed on Mars tomorrow, how would we benefit. So what if China gets there first, let them spend the billions to do so. Most of what NASA does anymore can and should be funded through private sources as they are the ones who benefit from it, get it from the backs of taxpayers, then turn around and charge us for the use of it.

What was needed back in the race is not what is needed now. It was a matter of pride back then, but we have enough pictures of it now. Let the other countries waste billions or more to get to mars, lets fix the economy, force NASA to spend the money we allow them to have wisely, and when our country is fixed, we can revisit the NASA funding issue then.
JSobieski

The world is more than a bunch of economic actors interacting in an economy. The “international community” is a neighborhood of thugs and barbarism.

If the US lets a tyrannical power become the leader in space, we will pay for it so many different ways.

Being conservative doesn’t mean thickheaded and stupid. Responding the challenge of Sputnik both made sense and was necessary. We shouldn’t wait for China to take the lead before getting off our @$$es again.
conservativecrusade

but it is Apples and Oranges. The race to space back then was something this country needed. We were in a cold war, fear of war between the two countries was a real scare, and people in this country needed to beat Russia. But we no longer need that feeling.

We land on mars today, put another crew in the space station, build another bigger better multi trillion dollar space center, etc what does it gain us. How does it advance any American cause or better our way of life or current situation. Now lets say China makes it there first, how does it hurt us or harm us? It does nothing to us nor does it gain us a thing. It does not put our national safety at risk, nor would being first make our national security better.

We are on the brink of a depression and spending money with NASA makes no sense when it comes to space exploration. NASA has a poor track record when it comes to money and should rely much more heavily on private funding since most of what it “accomplishes” benefits the private sector.
JSobieski

which is fine, so long as you acknowledge that your strategy is per se reactive and in many ways risky.

As an FYI, I am not specifically supporting NASA or a Mars mission, I am merely trying to support tha proposition that space exploration and certain kinds of basic science research (particle physics requires large super colliders) can be government government funded, and that conservatives should not be per se against it.
JSobieski

It will mean that we have fallen technologically behind. It means that we will be seen as a fading power, and China as the new U.S.

The ramifications for the world would be immense
conservativecrusade

if China gets to Mars first. How? And how will China on Mars relegate us to a technological last? Maybe I have not said this clear enough, I do not think NASA needs to be shut down, but it needs to rely more on private funding rather than taxpayer money. The main reason other than the obvious (our money would not be blown away) is that under private funding, NASA would be held to a much higher standard when it comes to spending and advancements. With taxpayer money there is no real accountability and that is something NASA has abused for years. And for years our money has gone to NASA and the return has been advancements for the private sector which we then have to pay for again when we use the service.

Space exploration is a feel good idea that has not given any real advancements to the American people in years. It has not furthered our country one iota in the last 10 years and will not further us in the 10 to come. Landing on Mars will not elevate us nor will not landing on Mars hurt us. And the same applies to 99% of the other aspects of space studies. NASA should be placed in the private company entity and let their funding come from those sources, not our tax dollars. If it is shown later that not beating foreign countries in space exploration may cause us harm, the congressional check book is not far away.

We as conservatives are screaming for lowered taxes, lower spending, more accountability, and for the Congress to quit spending money on things that are not needed. We can not then turn around and support more spending on something that is not 100% needed just because we like the thing the money is being spent on. Have to draw the line somewhere or it never gets drawn.
JSobieski

I am not arguing with you except with respect to one specific point: space exploration is more important than you think, and it is a legitimate reason to expend funds.

A mars project could be funded with money in the foreign aid budget, and would do more for psyching out our enemies than anything else.

What you don’t factor in your analysis is that when Americans achieve things like moon landings, it makes our enemies think that we can achieve anything. One of the reasons why SDI was so important to the USSR was that they had believed strongly that we could do anything we put our minds to.

Right now, we are planning on paying rent to the Russians for access to space. How will we sustain our satellite defense system without an independent capacity to put things into orbit.

We can’t predict in advance what technologies are created as the result of space exploration, but we do know that they are created. The fact that we haven’t accomplished that much in terms of manned space flight in the last 30 years doesn’t mean we should take the next 30 years off.
conservativecrusade

you have argued your side quite well and kept it civil for which I am thankful. You have made great points and since it seems neither of us will move the other way, I will leave it at this:

Thanks for an enlightening debate and for keeping it civil and educational. Look forward to further discussions in the future!
JSobieski

No business would have invested in those programs because the payoff would be too indirect. Heck, when the telecom industry went crazy in the 90s, smart companies waited for the companies investing in all the broadband lines to go broke, and then pick up the pieces.

Would China landing on the moon change your answer?

How would you have responded to Sputnik?

Libertarianism presumes the existence of police and a court system. When it comes to foreign affairs, there are neither. So in areas of activities where only states can effectively act, the US has to act as a state.

conservativecrusade

my definition of spending giant is not the size of their budget, but how it is spent. There are plenty of organizations at both the state and federal level who do a decent job of staying within the budget given to them and spending the funds wisely. Then the spenders and budget breakers go up from there to the point where you have “spending giants’ who always seem to need more money, constantly get called on the way the money is spent, and never seem to give anything back for the money they keep on getting.

Read Chesterton

my definition of spending giant is not the size of their budget, but how it is spent.

And you have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that you haven’t a clue beyond the PBS “All Things Considered” talking points how NASA spends its budget.
Had you been around when Sputnik was launched, you would have used the same argument against the space race. You may have ridiculed Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative. But today, fifty and twenty-five years later, respectively, literally millions of lives have been saved by weather satellite technology and GPS alone, leaving alone the computing and medical technology spun off from the manned space program.

To dismiss the ongoing development all of the above as so much waste is is simply pig ignorant. To assume there’s no more being done or no more to do is to display a stunning lack of imagination and vision and to call glaring attention to yourself as part of the internet noise known as “uninformed opinion.”

Now, if you had called NASA on its complicity in the AGW scam… you might have gotten a kinder response from me.

conservativecrusade

but you missed the boat here. Taking excerpts and ignoring the context does little for your argument.

Needless to say, you sort of missed what came after that which was:

“There are plenty of organizations at both the state and federal level who do a decent job of staying within the budget given to them and spending the funds wisely. Then the spenders and budget breakers go up from there to the point where you have

Old_Crow

Seems the agency has an ill defined mission, too much money, and time on their hands.

Unmanned spaceflight is the way of the future. NASA has the same 1990′s mindset that the USAF had resisting UAV’s. The future of military flight will be 75% unmanned. The future of spaceflight is unmanned as well.

We can continue the a space program without the huge costs of manned flight.

And yes, I have some good friends who are astronauts.

aeromom

down everyone’s throat. If you want a research experiment to be funded, you are more likely to get funded if it can be related to global warming research in some way.
The aeronautics budget usually is a favorite target for getting cut. It has taken a hit (a true cut, not just a reduction in the year to year increase) for several years.
Aeronautics is lately getting more money to pursue ‘green aviation’ (gag) technologies, but maybe not so much for studying circulation-control wings, flow control devices, wake-vortex reduction, spin avoidance, etc. Sometimes one can piggy-back a smaller experiment onto the main one, in order to get a little bit of extra data, but they do the best with what they have.

Achance

Everything stopped for the early spaceshots. I think we only had radio for the very earliest ones, “Educational TV” didn’t come until the mid-sixties. The principal would put the radio broadcasts on the school PA system. We built rockets and dreamed of being involved with the space program, we knew all the Mercury Seven’s names. I literally lived the movie “October Skies.” The excitement held even through the turbulent sixties and even people that had long hair and opposed the war gathered around a TV on July 20, 1969, though they might have had a joint in their hand.

But it has all become just another bloated bureaucracy and like all bureaucracies, it exists primarily to protect and if possible expand itself. It has no goals and no real purpose beyond “to boldly go where no one has gone before,” except we’re mostly going to the same places.

I can support pure space research; probes to look at whatever we can look at, to understand everything understandable. I can understand and support the things from which we all, or most all, benefit; GPS, satellite communications, Sat TV and radio, intelligence satellites, survey satellites, etc.

Looking back, I don’t know that we’d have gone to the Moon if the Soviets hadn’t been trying to go there, and there has been no benefit from actually going, though the process brought us all sorts of stuff that has been way cool though we might have been better off without some of it. Unless somebody sends a probe and discovers that Mars has oceans of oil just below its red surface, we got lots of red dirt on Earth. For most commodities, it is hardly economic to go get them from distant places right here on Earth, so what are we looking for?

We had a powerrful mythology about man’s drive to explore behind the original space race, but it wasn’t true then nor now. Those iron men, mostly iron headed men, who set out in wooden ships didn’t go out on the bounding blue out of intellectual curiousity; the set out to get rich by finding a faster, cheaper way to get spices, gold, textile, porcelain, otter fur, or whatever looked profitable at the time. There doesn’t seem to be much profit in space exploration these days, so if the only reason is intellectual curiosity, there isn’t a big consensus for that and expenditures in pursuit of that curiosity are going to be limited.

NASA doesn’t embody a dream of spaceflight anymore; it embodies a large bureaucracy and its supporters’ desire for self-preservation.

hickorystick

The Museum of Flight broke ground today on the first phase of its new 15,500-square-foot Human Space Flight Gallery.

The new state-of-the-art gallery is a precondition to being awarded one of the retiring United States Space Shuttles, which may be delivered on the back of a Boeing 747 as early as July, 2011. How long do you think the planning, fund collection, and permit process took? The fix was in on the Shuttle long ago, as was the hit job on the mixed neighborhood of color. The east end of the bridge is about half a mile north of the Museum of Flight.

http://georgetown.komonews.com/

They are shutting down my bridge tomorrow. Co-incidence? Nay I say!
Whataya do but through a wake. I am definately in the mood for a wake

http://georgetown.komonews.com/content/all-details-south-park-bridge-wake
Joliphant

Its enough to burst my tired old heart. Its such a mind numbingly staggering accomplishment and then to think that it was our nation that did it is just beyond belief. If that was the only thing America had ever accomplished as a nation we would have to go down amongst the great nations of all time. Whenever I used to hear a stupid kid say what a horrible nation we live in because of the wars we were involved in, or whatever made up injustice we were supposedly committing that day, I would just smirk and say we are the only people ever to have traveled to another world and that is just one of the great things we have done. Show me a nation that can top that.

But the sad truth is you are right, for the past 30 years NASA has been doing more to get in the way of the dream than move it forward. Now with it playing legislative advocacy games on “Environmental issues” and their researchers playing fast and loose with the data http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/30/nasa-data-worse-than-climategate-data/

Its time to downsize and try to encourage more private space activity.

JSobieski

There are a lot of people who love to have a manned mission to Mars.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

That an America for freedom has remained free along with all that are free in the world because we also had the best weapons. With our weapons we could have made the world our slaves like most of the dominant powers of the past. One day, some nation will discover a way to dominate Earth with weapons from space. If we dont stay first in space, some nation could and that would be as if Hitler or Stalin got the bomb first.

Reagan, peace thru strength. We have to be first.

Achance

I understand the technological issues; I’m just not so into the egos of wannabe astronauts who are pissed that a machine is getting their flight. Sorry, the machine can do things they can’t and do it cheaper. Funny how conservatives/Republicans really like that idea when it is replacing the cashier at a big box, but when we’re talking about something like this, the calculus is different.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

have a vehicle to go into space to deal with a vehicle of other nations that could pose a threat there. In other words we will be doing research and China has Capacity to act. NASA is our space research arm of national security. Want to make it more efficient with machines? Of course, but to shut down actual presence in space is risky, in and of itself. I just can’t look at NASA like any old govt pork program as a favor for a state. Its great to support research, but the demonstration of ability is also an arm of deterrance. Moreover, as in the Star wars threat Reagan used to defeat the USSR, one also must be seen as having the will to do whatever it takes to stay superior to one’s adversary. To defund NASA and abandon unilateral access to space in control of transporation equipment and apparatus is to communicate weakness and a lack of will.

kaw211

I knew that the Bush’s VSE plan was in trouble when Obama was elected and also because of the the economic meltdown we are in. Obama earily in his campaign said that he was going to delay Constellation 5 years to help pay for his education plan. I was not prepared for him to totally dismantel the human space flight program!

I do support Commerical Space, but the problem with Obama’s plan is until another Company develops a Commerical Crewed vehicle to which would cause true competition. Currently Space X is the only “Commerical” Company that is close to developing a manned vehicle. Which could take years. So we will be dependent upon Space X success. In a Congressional panel, there was some concern that Space X could require bailing out if it runs into trouble.

While I supported Bush’s VSE, I was not a big fan of the “Program of Record” or the Ares 1 launcher (Launching people on a solid rocket, bad idea) What I suggest is this, design the Orion capsule so it could be launched on either the Altas or Delta Heavy lift Launchers, vehicles that have a proven record. That would give us reduncy in launch options. Heck, make it Compatible with the ESA’s Araine launcher that gives us 3 viable launchers too choose from if one should suffer a launch failure. That would give us a bonus of a rental or leasing fee to ESA to use our Capsule design and they could pay us for flights to the station. Allow Space X and whatever other companies that come along to continue to develop their own manned vehicle would give us further redunancy. Obama’s current plan talks about using the Orion as a lifeboat for the station, but to get it up their requires a launch of some kind unmanned. Why not just go ahead and give it manned launch capablities.

Here are a couple of articles discussing/debating the Commerical space plan

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1648/1

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1655/1
izoneguy

Russian Spaceship Zooms Out of Control Near Space Station

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/07/02/russian-spaceship-control-near-space-station/?test=latestnews

What now???

Send a Space Shuttle up – oh wait……

RS

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