Posted on 12/15/2004 4:04:53 AM PST by SmithPatterson
No inspiration in space-based socialism Terence Jeffrey
December 15, 2004
When NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, the father of three nearly college-age children, announced his resignation last week, he gave a reason many parents could understand: He wants to make more money to pay college tuition.
"I owe (my children) the opportunity my parents provided for me to pursue higher education without the crushing burden of debt thereafter," O'Keefe wrote President Bush.
Someone ought to apply this logic to the internationalist agency our space program has become. NASA will cost taxpayers $16.2 billion in fiscal 2005, up $822 million from 2004. That is an astronomical sum, considering not only the less-than-stellar returns NASA has yielded Americans recently, but also this year's projected deficit of $348 billion (to be piled atop a $7.4 trillion national debt).
Were it not for this great expense -- and the risks run by astronauts -- you could laugh at what Russian officials have been saying about the crisis situation on the International Space Station (ISS), reputedly a joint project between the United States, Russia and 14 other countries, ranging from Brazil to France.
When NASA announced on Dec. 9 that there was a food shortage on the space station that required the station's crew of one Russian and one American to cut back on their food intake and might require the station to be evacuated if a Russian resupply rocket failed to complete a scheduled Christmas Day mission, the Russians initially denied it.
On Dec. 10, RIA-Novosti, Russia's state-run news agency, issued a report headlined: "Mission Control Centre Sees No Need of ISS Crew Emergency Return; No Food Problem Exists -- Blagov."
"I phoned the Americans yesterday, and we've agreed there'll be no talk of cutting the food ration," Russian space bureaucrat Victor Blagov said in the article. "The crew's menu is OK, and there's enough food in the ISS."
But that same day -- in an Associated Press story headlined, "Russian space agency: Space station crew could be forced to return to Earth if supply flight goes awry" -- Russian Space Agency Spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko said: "I don't want to discuss this possibility, and I won't call it emergency evacuation. I'd rather call it termination of the international mission ahead of time."
So, where are our French partners when we need them? Why aren't they loading up rockets with Camembert to come to the aid of the space station?
The answer, of course, is the French are not truly our partners. They are free riders. And even though -- with the space shuttle grounded -- the Russians have the only rockets that can resupply the station, they, too, are subsidized participants.
When the Clinton administration signed a deal in 1993 to include the Russians in the station, Aerospace Daily reported that the program would bring Russia's "cash-strapped aerospace industry some $1 billion in U.S. funds over the life of the project."
Clintonites pitched the project as transnational jobs program. "Officials said it has the added benefit of helping forestall unemployment for workers at Russia's Baikonur space-launch site," reported The Washington Post.
The International Space Station is international socialism, and it exemplifies why many have fallen out of love with NASA.
NASA caught hold of the American heart with a space race. When President Kennedy called for Americans to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s -- before the Soviets -- he was appealing equally to our patriotic passions and individualistic virtues. The moon race was the perfect cross between a war and an Olympic competition. Men competed peacefully for their country. But they didn't compete for little medals. They competed for great national interests.
It's the stars and stripes of a free republic planted on the moon, not the hammer and sickle of an extinct, totalitarian empire.
In January, President Bush announced a bold plan to build a permanent base on the moon as a stepping-stone to Mars. But he didn't pitch it like Kennedy's moon shot. "The vision I outlined today is a journey, not a race," said Bush, "and I call on other nations to join us on this journey in a spirit of cooperation and friendship."
It cost $100 billion in today's dollars to put an American on the moon in 1969. How many U.S. tax dollars will it take to put a Russian on a moon base?
NASA outgoing director didn't believe his NASA job was worth the sacrifice his children might face if they incurred a great debt for college. How many taxpayers want their children to incur a great national debt to put an international station on the moon?
If they wpuld put something on the moon that would be great, but I have the strong feeling that nothing is going on on that ISS but eating too much and watching the world go round.
ping
We went down the wrong path when Nixon gave the Russians our docking technology. We have traveled that road ever since with its cash drain and no benefits to the US taxpayer.
The resulting failures of socialist policy in NASA bear witness to the fact that socialism doesn't work.
The moon race gave the space program a goal and direction. When the Apollo program ended, NASA couldn't figure out where to go. Some wanted to build a space station; others wanted to focus on the reusable shuttle; other were interested in deep space probes. The result is that NASA et al became a conglomerate of separate programs that don't have much to do with each other.
In steps private enterprise. The true success of the space program is the telecom revolution. It has transformed our society from bottom to top. There's a lesson in that.
Agreed.....The moon race did give the program a goal and direction. We were supposed to have "space colonies" on the moon by 1975. A Mars mission was to be attempted around 1974. I agree too that NASA became a conglomerate of space programs without much direction from the top. Also, Congress wouldn't give NASA the money to continue the space program. We also had Presidents who were cool to it as well. I wish the United States would go to the moon again...on our own and with no help from other countries. I remember all too well when the NBC Correspondent John Chancellor said the astronauts should put a "United Nations flag" on the moon in 1969 instead of an American one. He didn't realize we spent about $28 billion to get up there.
When any meaningful space strategy is, by neccessity, a long-term plan, it is hard to formulate anything that will stay around through multiple administrations and turnover in Congress. Kennedy's Moon committment actually beat some of that curse: we had the prodding of the Russians keeping us moving, the tragic death of the young president who committed to it, and a crash-course of less than ten years to get it done.
NASA Budget, 2005 - $16.2 Billion
Homeland Security 2005 - $33.8 Billion
Housing / Urban Development - $31.3 Billion
State Dept. International Assistance - $10.3 Billion
Dept. of Transportation - $57.4 Billion
Veterans Affairs - $29.7 billion; ($32.1 billion with collections)
Health & Human Services - $66.8 Billion
( 2004 Medicare Trust Funds financial assets: $275.9 billion )
Dept. of Energy - $24.3 Billion
Dept. of Education - $57.3 Billion
Dept. of Agriculture - $19.1 Billion
Office of Management & Budget..
International partnerships involving the U.S. should not be considered lightly anymore, especially when our investments are a stake and the process is not equal. Basically, they are all 100% freeloaders, and we are bribing them further to continue.
This is insane!
I had great hopes for the ISS as it was originally conceived. The pared down concept that emerged has little value anymore, except in dollars wasted.
I think we made a huge mistake in the implementation, but a space based construction platform with science as a secondary purpose would be very valuable.
Unfortunately, that is not what happened, but it could still be done. We need to get that thing back under our 100% control. The ISS is absolutely useless as it is. The politico's have made a joke out of it. I am afraid the shuttle program is also in the crap tank for short sighted reasoning.
One wonders if perhaps just scrapping the entire thing is in order, or selling it to private industry to enable a new paradigm of space exploration to flourish and get government out of the loop except as a nonvoting investor.
Author's brain is on dark side of moon. Perhaps eating too much green cheese. Author's attempt to reconstruct code convention is failure.
Dump the 1967 Treaty and establish private property rights. And, uh, give me Alcoa for 20 years.
Excellent observations. I agree with all of it.
Thanks!
To add to what I suggested, the financial power of good ideas in technology has increased in the past ten years to a level I never thought possible, and could well make the publicly traded company on the NASDAQ market, the answer to the future of space.
Look at the large number of technology based startups that went public and garnered billions of dollars from investors who are quite willing to wait years for the business to even turn a profit.
This would mean that only the interested and willing would have a stake in the future of space and the whiners, naysayers and complainers would either put up or shut up, or become customers for the new technology and products developed.
There would be a initial requirement of some government funding perhaps, but that can be in the form of grants for specific interests and research that the government needs. The military would certainly be a huge customer, no longer calling the shots.
The NASDAC trades stock all over the planet and foreign investors would be involved but they won't have a vote or access to the operations, any more than China or Russia has access to it's U.S. investments now as this would be a U.S. based corporation.
Financial regulations should be sufficient to ensure transparency and creation of competition is a given as this new business becomes more popular. Current regulations on technology transfers should be strengthened to prevent foreign interests from obtaining our hard earned technology as a result of the foreign investments. It seems to work well as long as the government stays out of it,but penalties should be increased to prevent this more effectively.
I can think of so many ways to make money with something like this. Lot's and lots of money. And these potential profits will go hand in hand with the high risk involved.
Can it be done?
I think it may be the only way do do it.
China's government is getting into space as are others, but the investments always are tied to politics, and the desire of lawmakers and of the public that cannot always justify spending money on space and cannot tolerate the risk.
Getting government completely out, except as a customer is the only possible way we can get this to work, assume the risks, and provide capital for more and expansive investments.
This is my line of thinking for the 21st century space endeavor. My 20th century dreams were never realized, and I don't see us getting much better at it if we do not do something entirely different and plow some new ground.
Amen. Scrap it.
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