Houston–We Have A Funding Problem: Are Human Space Flights Doomed Under Obama’s Socialist Agenda?

LuckyBogey's Blog ^ | September 12, 2009 | LuckyBogey

[luckybogey]

As America prepares to embark upon a new era of human space exploration, President Obama has commissioned a review of the nation’s human space flight plans. Known as the Augustine Committee, this panel has the important charter of evaluating the current NASA plan...

Exploration must be recognized as a national imperative that sustains U.S. leadership in space; a significant increase in human space-flight safety should be accomplished under government leadership; we must leave low Earth orbit and explore destinations beyond; and sustaining robust funding and staying the course are imperative...

...Members of the committee presented their preliminary findings to NASA chief Charlie Bolden and White House officials. Initial reports indicated the group agreed to retire the space shuttle in 2011, extend the space station until 2020 and use more commercial rockets. They also liked the idea of exploring deep space — rather than landing on the moon.

On Wednesday, the panel said that Constellation, NASA’s current back-to-the-moon program, is running $50 billion over the current budget through 2020. But the alternatives presented Friday are almost as expensive, requiring $20-to-$30 billion more than the current budget through 2020...

Norm Augustine, the retired Lockheed Martin CEO who leads the 10-member panel, said he was shocked at its inability to find an option that would fit within NASA’s current manned-space budget that the committee put at roughly $100 billion through 2020.

“I certainly didn’t think it would miss by as much as it did,” Augustine said. “One of the things that have troubled NASA the most in recent years is having objectives that they don’t the resources to match.”

That leaves the White House with a tough decision: back billions more for human space exploration, or support an emasculated program that critics will call pointless...]

[hopespringseternal]

Personally, I want to see man in space however I believe unmanned exploration is the best economical and most practical solution.

Each has its place, but you get what you pay for.

Really, we need launcher technology to mature, and private industry has to do that. And I don't mean the quasi-governmental entities that the big aerospace companies have become.

Once going to orbit is cheaper and more available, the cost of manned exploration will drop drastically.

Unmanned will always be cheaper, but you get a lot more from true manned exploration.

[StormEye]

"We are going to have to look at some of these sacred cows."

Yeah like the "bailouts", the WIC program, AFDC, foodstamps, welfare checks for having children the poor can't afford to support, the student aid program, housing programs and all of the other giva-a-way programs that Americans are getting ripped off to pay for. And then there is the eight billion bucks to the ACORN, the Democrat Party's favorite organized crime group.