America: Lost In Space

Investors.com ^ | January 28, 2010 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Achievement: The nation that put the first man on the moon may have put its last as budget cuts slash NASA's plans to return. Men will return to the moon, but they will likely speak Chinese.

On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced in front of a joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of that decade. It was a clarion call to the American spirit and technology to rise up and prove that America's best days were still ahead.

Forty-one years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969, rather than continuing on to Mars and beyond, we will soon be hitching rides on Russian spacecraft to fix toilets and conduct science-fair-level experiments on the International Space Station. Our aging space shuttle fleet is about to be retired, and no money is around to replace it.

According to a report in the Orlando Sentinel, when the White House releases its official budget proposal on Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return Americans to the moon by 2020. The American-manned space program that galvanized a nation and made manned space flight a reality will be officially dead.

An administration that complains about the outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing capacity to foreign countries has decided to outsource manned space flight. NASA will buy rides for its astronauts, no longer pioneers but rather space tourists, from the Russians at $51 million a seat on their Soyuz space vehicles. Last May, NASA announced a new contract with the Russians allowing it to buy six seats on Soyuz craft in 2012 and 2013 at a cost of $306 million.

[PIF]

Just one more lie from the Lyer in Chief - sorry you fell for it, but his real postion was obvious since beore his nomination - he’s just has the power to realize the Democrate Dream begun in the 70s. Kerry and Edwards ran on the no NASA plank.

[Spktyr]

NASA’s position has been “If we can’t go, nobody can go’ and they use FUD and other techniques to screw private ventures.

I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

[magellan]

I had been thinking of making a pilgrimage to Cape Canaveral to watch the last Shuttle launch. I felt it may be the last American manned spaceflight, and therefore, historic.

My pessimism of lost American greatness appears to have been realized.

[guitarplayer1953]

Take all the foreign aid we give away each year and pump it into NASA and we could be back on the moon before 2020.

[Favor Center]

“Take all the foreign aid we give away each year and pump it into NASA and we could be back on the moon before 2020.”

The billion given to ACORN is the billion not employing thousands of engineers on Constellation.

[M. Espinola]

"Obamaism does not compute!"

[leakinInTheBlueSea]

I had the pleasure of attending a brainstorming session hosted by NASA HQ during Sean O'Keefe's tenure as NASA administrator. The keynote speakers for this smallish group were Newt and Bob Walker (former House Science Committee Chair). Newt, Bob and O'Keefe all spoke at length about space commercialization and privatization of near earth operations. The view held during the bush terms was that 1) NASA was a budgetary mess (which is why they brought in a bean counter), 2) that the larger federal budget issues were not going away anytime soon, so there would be no BIG increase in NASA funding like during Apollo, and 3) that NASA's innovation was hamstrung by the budgetary realities of shuttle operations.

The solution they were advocating and asking for ideas on how to make a reality, was to commercialize your everyday manned space flight, and leave the high risk/no profit stuff to NASA. That is, privatize heavy lift and LEO activities and let NASA buy these services for the routine stuff like ISS supply/maintenance.

It was a very good time to have this meeting as Spaceship One had just completed its first of two qualifying flights for its x-prixe. They were throwing around ideas for growing the x-prize concept to spur heavy lift commercialization. I recommended that they take advantage of the second Spaceship One flight... be there when SS1 lands and present the big rubber check. Make a big PR event out of it and announce a large prize for the first U.S. company to land a craft on the surface of the moon and return it to earth (ignored of course).

The shuttle operations budget is the 800lb gorilla of the NASA budget... the expense of the routine manned spaceflight in the NASA budget will not change this no matter what vehicle NASA uses. To illustrate this point, Newt talked about what would have happened if the Spaceship One flight would have failed (it almost did, BTW if you remember that underdamped roll). He said they would mourn for a week, get to work figuring out what went wrong and try again as soon as they could build another vehicle. The public would shrug, pat them on the bacj and say "good try!" He contrasted that with what happens when after NASA loss of life... national mourning, congressional committees, multiyear delays. His point was that NASA is too risk averse to manage routine manned spaceflight that in itself is inherently risky... that NASA needed to save its money and its risk tolerance for the grand vision missions (e.g. manned mars mission).

I walked into the meeting a skeptic, but walked away convinced there was significant merit to this approach. The difference this time around is that the grand vision is not a mission to Mars, but rather a mission to earth (earth science). I'm not sure if it is a death sentence for NASA or not, but thinking is certainly not new. Kind of like Dubya's vision for Mars... I remember a book I used to own that detailed von Braun's plan for man on Mars... nearly verbatim... then again, that von Braun guy was pretty smart :)

[higgmeister]

But it seems to me that space travel is far enough along that it might actually be beneficial for the private sector to take over.

Two factors will not allow this to happen.

Environmental Nazis already blame the exhaust from High Boost Rocket engines for causing Anthropological Global Warming. I have no doubt that one of Obama's private goals for his Presidency was to shutdown Space Exploration.

Secondly, Obama's intentional destruction of our economy in order to instigate social shackles on our Capitalist way of life will prevent the private sector from funding Space efforts.

[ravingnutter]

Get real...you could not survive one day without the technologies invented, developed and tested by NASA for the space program or spin-offs from the program that went commercial.

[Eaker]

You get real.

We are talking about the ISS and the International Space station is a damn joke.

Tang is beyond NASA’a capabilities now days.

[ravingnutter]

You just proved your ignorance of the facts...Tang was invented in 1957 by General Foods and wasn't used by NASA until 1962.

Here is some of the research being done on the ISS:

Biomedical Research and Countermeasures

Researchers seek to understand and control the effects of the space environment on space travelers (e.g., muscle atrophy, bone loss, fluid shifts).

Long-term Benefits: Enhance the safety of short-term as well as long-term space travel, develop methods to keep humans healthy in low-gravity environments, advance new fields of research in the treatment of diseases.

Fundamental Biology

Scientists study gravitational effects on the evolution, development, growth, and internal processes of plants and animals. Their results expand fundamental knowledge that will benefit medical, agricultural, and other industries.

Long-term Benefits: Advance understanding of cell, tissue, and animal behavior; use of plants as sources of food and oxygen for exploration; improve plants for agriculture and forestry. Understanding the biological effects of extended exposure to gravity levels found on other planets.

Biotechnology

Current technology indicates that a microgravity environment has enabled researchers to grow three-dimensional tissues that have characteristics similar to body tissues and to produce protein crystals to aid in novel pharmaceutical development.

Long-term Benefits: Assemble and propagate three dimensional tissue with form and function of native tissue (e.g. malignant tumors, functional and/or secreting tissue constructs); provide information to design new classes of drugs to target specific proteins and cure specific diseases.

Fluid Physics

The behavior of fluids is profoundly influenced by gravity. Researchers use gravity as an experimental variable to explain and model fluid behavior in systems on Earth and in space.

Long-term Benefits: Improved spacecraft systems designs for safety and efficiency; better under-standing of soil behavior in Earthquake conditions; improved mathematical models for designing fluid handling systems for powerplants, refineries, and innumerable other industrial applications.

Advanced Human Support Technology

Researchers develop technologies, systems, and procedures to enable safe and efficient human exploration and development of space.

Long-term Benefits: Reduce the cost of space travel while enhancing safety; develop small, low-power monitoring and sensing technologies with applications in environmental monitoring in space and on Earth; develop advanced waste processing and agricultural technologies with applications in space and on Earth.

Materials Science

Researchers use low gravity to advance our understanding of the relationships among the structure, processing and properties of materials. In low gravity, differences in weight of liquids used to form materials do not interfere with the ability to mix these materials opening the door to a whole new world of composite materials.

Long-term Benefits: Advance understanding of processes for manufacturing semiconductors, collids, metals, ceramics, polymers, and other materials; determine fundamental physical properties of molten metal, semiconductors, and other materials with precision impossible on Earth.

Combustion Science

The reduction of gravity allows scientists to simplify the study of complex combustion (burning) processes. Since combustion is used to produce 85 percent of Earth's energy, even small improvements in efficiency and reduction of soot production (a major source of pollution on earth) will have large economic and environmental benefits.

Long-term Benefits: Enhance efficiency of combustion processes, enhance fire detection and safety on Earth and in space, improve control of combustion emissions and pollutants.

Fundamental Physics

Scientists use the low gravity and low temperature environment to slow down reactions allowing them to test fundamental theories of physics with degrees of accuracy that far exceed the capacity of Earthbound science.

Long-term Benefits: Challenge and expand theories of how matter organizes as it changes state (important in understanding superconductivity); test fundamental theories in physics with precision beyond the capacity of Earth-bound science.

Earth Science and Space Science

The International Space Station will be a unique platform with multiple exterior attach points from which to observe the Earth and the universe. Long-term Benefits: Space scientists will use the location above the atmosphere to collect and search for cosmic rays, cosmic dust, anti-matter and "dark" matter. Earth scientists can obtain global profiles of aerosols, ozone, water vapor, and oxides in order to determine their role in climatological processes and take advantage of the longevity of ISS to observe global changes over many years.

Now you are informed...this is in no way a mere "science fair".

[Eaker]

In other words, Tang was always beyond NASA’s capacity.

Further how many of the “benefits” listed will affect MY life more than Tang?

Maybe they can teach ants to sort tiny nuts and bolts in space. Or make a better diaper for longer car trips to Florida.

Nothing you listed even comes close to the telephone or peanut butter in value and all for a measly million bucks a pound.

Finally we are going to have to depend on the Russians for trips into space?

Really? Really?

[Solitar]

I had been thinking of making a pilgrimage to Cape Canaveral to watch the last Shuttle launch. I felt it may be the last American manned spaceflight, and therefore, historic. My pessimism of lost American greatness appears to have been realized.

I'm afraid you are right. America is committing suicide by socialism.

[ravingnutter]

Further how many of the “benefits” listed will affect MY life more than Tang?

The benefits affect your life more than you realize, especially if you value human life. God forbid you should get a disease or develop a malignant tumor, then you would be praying hard for the technology that they provide. We won't have to depend on the Russians if we have our own spacecraft to get to the ISS, so I don't know where you are coming from on that one.

Gotta run, it is hubby's birthday. Have a good weekend, see you on the other side ; )

[Eaker]

We won't have to depend on the Russians if we have our own spacecraft to get to the ISS, so I don't know where you are coming from on that one.

From the article and the fact that the shuttle program is ending.

Any research for future spaceflight will only benefit the country that is going into space so we are doing it for the Chinese for free?

Happy birthday to your hubby and see ya next time.

[stevie_d_64]

Well, that’s another big fat lie, with lots of others to back this one up...

[ravingnutter]

Any research for future spaceflight will only benefit the country that is going into space so we are doing it for the Chinese for free?

Any future research for space flight should benefit us if we want to keep up with the Chinese in space and we really should, by continuing the shuttle program. It is actually a matter of national security, as the Chinese could use the technology they develop to attack us from space. The program has also strengthened our ties with Russia, due to the joint efforts on the ISS. However, they too will gain an advantage militarily if we don't continue the space program.

But of course, it is clear by now to all of us that national security is not a priority of the Obama administration. They are more interested in perpetuating the hoax that is global warming.