Posted on 08/16/2009 12:22:46 AM PDT by Nachum
WASHINGTON -- NASA doesn't have nearly enough money to meet its goal of putting astronauts back on the moon by 2020 -- and it might be the wrong place to go, anyway. That's one of the harsh messages emerging from a sweeping review of NASA's human space flight program.
The Human Space Flight Plans Committee, appointed by President Barack Obama and headed by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, has been trying to stitch together some kind of plausible strategy for America's manned space program. The panel has struggled to find options that stay under the current budget and include missions worthy of the cost and effort.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
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I’m in Oregon, so I have to say Freightliner.
Pure, unadulterated BS. Take an across the board 10% cut of the federal budget and devote it to space. It would be more money that we could even think about spending if we wanted to go to the moon and mars.
Anyone not on the DNC payroll knows that revenue goes up when tax rates are cut (assuming any cut within the realm of political possibility.)
Actually, flight hardware became a mature technology in the 50s and 60s, which is why the air force is still flying so planes built then.
Likewise with internal combustion.
Electronics, including computers are still rapidly advancing, and driving a lot of advancement in a lot of other areas, such as managing internal combustion engines.
All these things were created, financed, and consumed by the private sector.
Space hardware, has never really made it big in the public sector. The reason is simple: It was coopted at the outset by the public sector. Once the big aerospace latched on to that government teat, innovation and progress stagnated with public funding. As a result, every launch vehicle from the fifties to the nineties was essentially a refactored ICBM, just like the first effort.
The only notable exception is the space shuttle, and it represents a failed effort that has been brute forced into operations for nearly thirty years. Private enterprise would have moved on long ago, but 1)bureacracies never admit failure and 2) as a result congress hasn't seen the need to finance a replacement.
You are just now starting to see private enterprise inch up to the water and dip its toe in the launch vehicle business. And the truth is, NASA needs this even if they would never admit it.
You can have a program completely under the Petagon. The Russian space program for decades under the military and it worked. The Chinese space program is exlusively under the military and it works. Why can it work for the United States?
To me, in my humble opinion, NASA would thrive under USAF command.
bump
I claim the moon for the Empire of Impy. And the UN can stuff it. ‘)
.
First, Presidential Candidate OBAMA reaches out to remind the American Electorate about how a President JFK told us “Yes We Can” get to Earth’s Moon before anybody else did.
Second, a now President OBAMA makes sure that things are completely reversed this time around.
NUTS.
.
They decided there was only enough money in NASA’s
budget to reach Detroit...with a trillion dollar
“stimulus” package.
I’m in. Put me on your list.
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