Posted on 02/13/2010 9:40:29 AM PST by Marcus
The Obama space proposal, which seeks to enable a commercial space industry for transportation to and from low Earth orbit while it cancels space exploration beyond LEO, has sparked a kind of civil war among conservatives.
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects. Other conservatives like the commercial space part of the Obama policy and tend to gloss over the cancellation of space exploration or even denigrate the Constellation program as "unworkable" or "unsustainable."
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One guy shouldn’t be able to change us from being the leader in space to nothing in space all by himself. There’s a lot of other things in the budget that cost way more and I’d want cut before we gut NASA.
The stakes are simply too high in this case to drop out of the race now. If we’re going to stop funding NASA efforts to get to Mars we need to start funding somebody or something else, and I mean massively and right now. What I mean is, if even one of those Cydonia megaliths has any sort of an interior and Russian and Chinese astronauts get there while NASA people are sitting around with their ****s in their hands because of Borque Oinquebama.....
Private industry will never be more than taxi drivers and freight haulers to government facilities under government contract.
The outer space treaty prevents claims on natural bodies in space which prevents profits. In other words, private industry isn’t going to waste money going somewhere just to say they’ve been there. Its kinda like prospecting for gold in Antarctica, why bother?
commercial space is joke.. the fed funds it.. or we dont go.. simple.
Too much of defense is tied directly with what NASA does for there to be a ‘conservative’ argument. I’ve seen some libertarian arguments against it, but not conservative ones.
Once the colony is established then there should be a military installation on the moon and a small Government presence.
Then you sell/lease land to private enterprise so they can develop the moon and mines the resources.
But if the government does not establish the colony and thus holds at bay the UN then any Private entity that tries to colonize the moon will get rolled by the UN and get the claim confiscated in the name of ALL the people of the Earth (or whatever bullshit they come up with)
But no more of this namby pamby playing around in low earth orbit letting scientist engage in feel-good experiments that aren't really advancing the move to get off this rock and start exploring our solar system with humans at the helm!
If you look at all the great expiditions of the past they were funded by government with two basic goals in mind. Columbus, Magellan, Balboa, Louis and Clark. All sought trade routes and military advantage.
On the other hand, none of them had the UN standing in the way with stupid treaties.
I think you and I are in total agreement here. See post #10.
The only Zero space plan we want to hear about is the one where he shoots himself up on a one way trip to Mars.
And we’ll happily find it because it will be the only usefull thing he’ll ever do.
We can give him a wisk broom and tell him to brush the dust off the solar panels on the mars rovers.
Perhaps an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator?
Seems obvious enough the normal people built that wall and gave the *******s their own side of the place to live on.
The Obama space proposal Floyd’s used rockets and tire store.
In all seriousness, I wonder how much of the NASA budget is dedicated to studying climate change.
Agreed. For far less than the cost of porkulas we could have built a viable moon project that could have brought vast amounts of H3 back and possibly fueled rockets that could have taken us to Mars.
Simpatico!
1. We are not ready to put humans into either the travel-distance to Mars, or life-support for it, without endangering the health, and possible lives of our astronauts, given what space flights we have already taken have taught us about the ill-affects on the human body of space flight under current conditions that our technology is capable of. That technology needs to be improved and the travel distance to the moon and back and it’s environment is the best place to prove it out.
2. We have gained an immense amount of knowledge from the automated Mars explorations we have already made, at a fraction of the cost of what those same missions would have cost if done by humans on Martial soil.
3. The place to start is to gradually improve technology for long-term residence on the moon. If we can do that, we will have a permanent moon base and gained the technology to make long-haul missions to places like Mars easier and less hazardous to human life and health.
4. To start, how about landing the Hubble onto a new base built for it on the moon, for a permanent home out of Earth’s atmosphere. Can you imagine what it might find? It could be the foundation for a long-term residence moon base.
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