Posted on 11/20/2013 5:41:54 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Discretionary Spending--Option 11 Eliminate Human Space Exploration Programs
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Human Exploration and Operations programs focus on developing systems and capabilities required to explore deep space while continuing operations in low- Earth orbit. The exploration programs fund research and development of the next generation of systems for deep space exploration and provide technical and financial support to the commercial space industry. Complementing those efforts, NASA's space operations programs involve operating in low-Earth orbit, most notably using the International Space Station, as well as providing space communications capabilities.
This option would terminate NASA's human space exploration and space operations programs, except for those necessary to meet space communications needs (such as communication with the Hubble Space Telescope). The agency's science and aeronautics programs and robotic space missions would continue. Eliminating those human space programs would save $73 billion between 2015 and 2023, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.
The main argument for this option is that increased capabilities in electronics and information technology have generally reduced the need for humans to fly space missions. The scientific instruments used to gather knowledge in space rely much less (or not at all) on nearby humans to operate them. NASA and other federal agencies have increasingly adopted that approach in their activities on Earth, using robots to perform missions without putting humans in harm's way. For example, NASA has been using remotely piloted vehicles to track hurricanes over the Atlantic Ocean at much longer distances than those for which tracking aircraft are conventionally piloted.
Eliminating humans from spaceflights would avoid risk to human life and would decrease the cost of space exploration by reducing the weight and complexity of the vehicles needed for the missions. (Unlike instruments, humans need water, air, food, space to move around in, and rest.) In addition, by replacing people with instruments, the missions could be made one way -- return would be necessary only when the mission required it, such as to collect samples for further analysis -- thus eliminating the cost, weight, and complexity of return and reentry into the Earth's atmosphere.
A major argument against this option is that eliminating human spaceflight from the orbits near Earth would end the technical progress necessary to prepare for human missions to Mars (even though those missions are at least decades away). Moreover, if, in the future, robotic missions proved too limiting, then human space efforts would have to be restarted. Another argument against this option is that there may be some scientific advantage to having humans at the International Space Station to conduct experiments in microgravity that could not be carried out in other, less costly, ways. (However, the International Space Station is currently scheduled to be retired in 2020, postponed from an earlier decommissioning in 2015.)
After Obama was elected, the decommissioning of the Shuttle fleet remained on course, while the program to develop off-planet resources [with a different launch vehicle] and slowly build up and hand over to commercials companies, was scrapped.
Commercial space (COTS begun under Bush) became NASA's central focus [mission] under Lori Garver. The U.S. national space program began receding into the background and Space X began it's ascent.
Space X [Elon Musk owned and run], Telsa Electric Car Co. [Musk owned and run] and Solar City [Musk, the major investor of company headed by his cousin] - ALL par excellence recipients of government contracts, tax credits and carbon credits [$1B territory]. Musk is a large Obama donor.
There are ongoing investigations, with calls for more concerning Tesla and Solar City.
Obama's Science and Technology Adviser, John P. Holdren (Population Bomb author w/ Ehrlichs/and other green and population control publications) told U.S. students that the U.S. can not be number one in everything; that it is better for us when the playing field is leveled.
Even China is puzzled by the broken U.S. space program: [China's National Space Science Center Director Wu Ji] "......Wu says he is dismayed by the recent changes in the U.S., whose space programs have long been the envy of the world.
"I don't know if your [NPR] listeners or people living in the U.S. understand these changes," he says. "But as I observe them from the outside, I feel that America is gradually contracting and closing itself off. It's a very strange thing."
So here we are faced with the demise of U.S. Human Spaceflight program (end of Johnson Space Center/Marshall Space Center/etc), but it is surmised that if ONE "commercial" provider of U.S. manned space access can continue getting NASA $$$ and develop a manned space craft (read Space X "reinventing the wheel" - Obama pal), the U.S. manned program might be able to scrape by, and if not, they'll have "Sequester and Congress" to scapegoat.
".....The amount of funding NASA gets for the program in 2014 may determine how many companies win CCtCap contracts this summer. “Getting the systems as soon as possible and also having competition are both goals that NASA would like to maintain through this program,” said Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA, at Wednesday’s briefing. “I can’t say one is more important than the other.” He added they would wait to see the contents of the CCtCap proposals submitted in January. “Those proposals will really dictate how fast we go and how many we have.”
The OIG report, though, concluded that funding shortfalls like those seen in previous years may force that early “downselect” to one company. “While NASA officials said they would prefer to continue to work with at least two companies until the transportation services contract, a lack of funding will likely require them to ‘down select’ to a single partner” for CCtCap, the report stated, adding that such a downselect, while saving money in the short term, may drive up costs in the long term based on experience with other major spaceflight programs......" Life after COTS
We're watching the dismantling of NASA and an Obama bundler profit [build 3 companies with the help of U.S. taxpayers and U.S/EPA green regulations].
And if Space X can't deliver - and NASA [and the United States] has been "leveled," the playing field will not be kind to us [despite the pronouncements of Obama's Science and Technology Adviser and big GREEN advocate, John P. Holdren].
Cut spending, period. that’ll reduce or eliminate the deficit.
Bring back American businesses.
Build up America.
I doubt human kind will survive until the Sun becomes a red giant. Some event in the those billions of years will terminate mankind’s existence on earth. We don’t know what the Sun in its orbit around the galactic center will encounter. IIRC that’s around 200 million years. Are the asteroid hazards different along that orbit?
Not pursuing getting off the planet may have ensured mankind’s extinction.
You are a low information bore, trolling every post with your import tarriff nonsense.
No matter how many times that it is pointed out to you, by so many FReepers, Industry & business will never return to America again until and unless regulatory and tax burdens that drove them out in the first place are removed.
As that is not going to happen in Amerika, its ainta comming back, capich?
Please stop trolling
Buy American.
At 50 dollars per line of great computer code... we will spend 25 billion dollars to fix the Deathcare website. Kill obamacare and fund NASA.
In one ear and out the other, Bill. He simply does not hear us. Like a typical liberal, he's resistant to facts, logic, and reason.
It is projects like Human Space Exploration that create the technical advancement needed to keep the USA technically advanced.
It is expensive for business to do research, but research is needed. Inventions that we use every day came from these types of projects. Some of the things that came from similar projects are: computers, Velcro, Kevlar, Styrofoam, ceramics for cooking utensils, cell phones and a long almost uncountable number of other items. The liberals would have us squander these funds on welfare programs to garner the votes of the uneducated masses.
How do you bring them back?
My own idea is to enact a national, all-products (no exceptions at all) 10% tariff.
Importantly, no exceptions.
This would accomplish three things: First it would begin to assure American producers that America wants them to make things right here in America.
It would bring the subject into the American national discussion.
And finally, it would contribute money toward supporting the US government, which is currently 17 trillion (and growing) in debt.
You and others probably have other ideas. I welcome all ideas, I am simply starting a discussion.
America can not endure, simply importing things from China. Not to mention, that doing so leaves America vulnerable to blackmail from China.
We need to manufacture things right here in America.
I’m not against China. In fact I have a very high opinion of the country, but I also recognize they are still a “Peoples Republic of...” and yet we are sending all our jobs there.
Bring jobs back to America.
(on imports only)
Sorry I forgot to mention that.
No taxation on anything made, grown in, or pulled out of the ground right here in America.
IOW, make everything we buy more expensive?
1. we don’t manufacture stuff in American because a lot of don’t want to. We all want to go to college and sit at a desk or a computer, and we don’t want factories in our neighborhoods.
2. Until environmental and labor laws are loosened up, and taxes on business activities lowered, it’s cheaper to manufacture abroad, and in some cases, it’s just not possible to build manufacturing facilities here.
3. a 10% tariff won’t change any of that, it will just increase the cost of living, and give the government more money to either waste, or use to further encroach on our freedom.
4. Scrap the departments of labor, commerce, energy, interior, and the EPA, cut taxes and regulations on business, allow skilled immigrants to legally immigrate, and we may make a start.
4. scrap obamacare.
Repeal Obamacare to cut the deficit, cut taxes permanently to stimulate growth, and mine asteroids for precious metals and rare earth metals. Thanks Cincinatus’ Wife for an extra to the APoD and X-Planets list, and wth, to String Theory as well.
I don’t agree.
It is time to make America an industrial power once again.
Just saying.
I’m against chopping NASA’s budget. However, I do think that shifting more of NASA’s chores to the private sector will reduce costs. NASA would pay private contractors on competite bids rather than do the work itself.
That said, this article shows that the author is not paying attention to what’s going on fiscally. Whether Obama likes it or not the oil/gas industry is right now saving his bacon.
The oil patch is delivering 2% growth to the economy plus 100 billion dollars to federal coffers. The fed’s qe efforts have basically juiced the stockmarket and made the rich richer—but also delivered another 100 billlion annually to federal coffers. Meanwhile the pubbies have actually stopped the growth in the federal budget.
The result is that the federal deficit this year is running at something less than 700 billion dollars. While this is still at historically high levels—the rapid decline in the deficit — if it continues —means that the deficit will return to normal levels within 2 years.
If Obamacare is repealed — then the economy will grow at 4% and the deficit will go to zero.
Essentially the same thing will happen under obama as happened under clinton. the pubbies hold down government spending while the economy grow the federal government out of its deficit.
So the matter of cutting NASA’s budget will be mooted.
NASA’s only mission will soon be Muslim outreach
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