Posted on 01/29/2010 6:55:59 AM PST by pabianice
Per a NASA spokesman, Obama has killed the country's manned space program by cutting all funding for it. The Constellation program was to be the next manned space program to send people back to the Moon and build a Moon base, then to send astronauts to Mars. Obama wants the money for increased spending on his constituants. Killing the Constellation Program means the $9B already spent is down the drain and an estimated 4,600 jobs will have been ended.
To be fair to Obama, that $9B will be used to create or save somewhere between 200 and 300 jobs, more than a dozen of which will be in real districts.
“...American Exceptionalism.”
You can’t put a price on that...Obama doesn’t seem to understand...or does he?
“How is that going to affect employment in the Houston area?”
I believe there are some 6000 contractors working on Shuttle and Constellation programs. If this goes through all of them are toast. Probably affect up to several thousand others that support those directly employed on those programs. In other words it will be a space employment massacree that will exceed that which occurred at the end of the Apollo Program.
We will still have ISS, and the JSC Civil Servants can keep themselves occupied doing the “future studies” for the follow-on programs that will replace Constellation, but there will be a lot of unemployed rocket scientists (really engineers, but we have to play to trope).
I understand India is looking to jump-start its manned space program . . .
There's some merit to that, true, but when NASA's funding gets used like a political football every 4-to-8 years, how can they possibly plan for anything when all projects take at least a decade to put together? Once upon a time, they were lauded as innovators. Now it's always "can you do it cheaper?" Of course the answer is "no" since the problems of space seldom appear on terra firma.
So our society has to decide whether it's appropriate to bother at all -- there is little commercial interest due to the obvious enormous costs (risk). If we're 'IN', then we need to stay 'IN'. Otherwise, it's all history.
He understands. His goals are the antithesis of what we stand for.
Yep but now there's no chance Florida will vote for Obama in '12 and that may prove to be crucial.
Doesn’t congress have the final say?
So much for that Aerospace Engineering degree I was working on...... Lol.
Obama would come out to give a speech that he discovered that “space is one cold muthaf***a”
There is going to be a 2012 after Obama is finished?
All in all, what I think this boils down to is punishment of the USA in paying homage to The Planet.
Changey hopey strikes again.
I should have said “...in paying “Obamage” to The Planet.”...After all, it’s HIS money, right?
Good question. Seems he’s assigned himself dictatorial powers and trashed our system of checks and balances.
So any NASA employee who was dumb enough to vote for the guy deserves what they get. The ones who didn't have my since sympathies.
In Obama land, he speaks of higher education, but he fires rocket scientists?
This administration is reducing our Nation to shovel ready jobs.
sw
Sure they will ... that's where most of the new Haitian and tons of other illegals given amnesty and made "insta-citizens" will be ...
While we may have some new immigrants in this country, I don't believe Democrats will be able to pass amnesty. They just do not have the political capital to do pretty much anything until mid-term elections which should be a massive victory for the Republicans.
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