Posted on 02/09/2010 11:21:25 AM PST by a fool in paradise
...In his first public comments since the release of President Barack Obama's proposed NASA budget last week, Mike Coats said the space center will have to find new missions besides the International Space Station to replace the waning space shuttle program and the seemingly doomed Constellation program...
Of the 17,000 civil servants and contractors who are funded through Johnson Space Center's programs, 7,000 work under the shuttle and Constellation programs.
...Obama's proposed wholesale cancellation of Constellation — NASA's next-generation exploration program that entailed development of rockets to carry humans to orbit, the moon and beyond as well as a versatile crew capsule — was not expected...
Originally known as the Manned Spacecraft Center, Johnson's primary tasks are to oversee human spaceflight, manage space operations and train astronauts.
...It's expected that some Houston-based chunks of Constellation, such as efforts to understand the biomedical risks of traveling in space and how to live and work on the moon, will be continued under different names.
Answers will come in months, not years, Bolden said.
“Congress needs some details,” Bolden said. “Neither the president nor the Congress of the United States has any desire to relinquish any of our dominance in space. We all may have different ideas of how we get there.”
...“The good news story is that, if there is anything about which the Congressional delegations are united, it's space exploration. That is not a Republican or a Democratic issue. Space is one unifying element in our society...”
But he acknowledged that stepping back from the Constellation program leaves no timeline on the table for when humans might again fly beyond Earth orbit, and that perhaps it won't happen until the 2030s.
Or at least 60 years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their tentative first steps on a foreign world.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
I think ya’ll are looking at “Funemployment”
Think about that the next time you vote for a Commie.
But Obama has been hypin’ how many jobs he “created or saved”. This is thousands of people he is putting out of work.
The Traitor-In-Chief wants us to take a break, so the Chinese missile program can catch up, and the Russians can get ahead.
And these aren’t fast food jobs. When these critical gatherings of mind and talent scatter, you don’t just put out a cattle call and start it up again later.
I don’t know if he’s shamelessly telling whoppers or is hopelessly delusional about Zero.
Hope & Change suckers. NASA had a purpose when it was run by Germans. We need to give illegal aliens ENDLESS freebies. The Space Station was also a boondoogle.
Obama is conducting a NASAcre.
I was last at Johnson Space Center in 1999 and have to say, it was only a shadow of its former self. I grew up going there on field trips and family trips in the 60s and 70s, when that place was hopping. Was really sad to see grass growing up around some of the buildings.
He wants to hijack NASA’s charter and recast them as the Center For Global Climate Change studies and we’ve already seen at least on Climategate figure working inside NASA.
People voted for this. It is far more important to give illegals endless benefits and give out mortgages to people who cannot pay for them plus make sure union workers get full pay for no work.
Trekkies can get real jobs now.
Probably filled with ACORN “workers” like the Post Office. Von Braun would have never allowed it.
Today the NASA workers probably say things like “don’t axe me bout no damn linear algebra!”
Sad but these things happen in third world countries.
Maybe stupid NASA workers will not vote for Dem idiots like fellow astronaut and jacka*s Sen. Bill Nelson (idiot) or the Kenyan. How is Kenya’s and Indonesia’s space program.
Also blame all these Bible do gooders & Baptist from Idaho too who want more Haitians and illegals into America to bankrupt us even faster. This includes Catholic charities brining in Somalis. Sick watching people destroy America.
That's for sure...although I work mainly with the Air Force which is going to have its own "brain drain" issues soon due to BRAC as no one wants to move from Texas to Ohio, I have also worked with the folks that support NASA for over 20 years. As usual, they will probably entice the older folks to retire, then when they have no one with the actual hands-on experience required, it will be almost impossible to start back up. If they stop it...it is over.
Don’t hook your wagon to the global warming BS either. That will only give you job security temporarily, Hansen and his cohorts are going to go down in flames big-time.
And there's somebody out there that will be willing to pay them a pretty penny (or yuan) for their expertise.
I read and listened to leftists cry about the space program and how we should feed, clothe and house everybody before even thinking about space. A goal that can never be accomplished.
Any society that completely turns inward always rots away from within and now the left has the power to do this.
This is just another shot into the heart of our free country to kill it and make a socialist “utopia.”
Tell all of those people who bemoan putting a monkey in orbit and sending a man on the moon AND back that we have all of our satellite technologies from our space race with the Soviets.
Think of that the next time Google Earth is launched, a cellphone gets your call to you AND permits you to travel while talking on a call, texting too, and GPS navigation systems, and television and radio signals.
But the Chicoms will let us launch updated satellites from their rockets, right? I mean, they won’t put limits on our speech the way they do on Google, would they?
And as they improve their launch technology, they wouldn’t point nuclear warheads at Seattle and San Francisco, would they?
2) They are not "Trekkies", they are distinguished Scientists and Engineers, many with advanced degrees and years of experience. I know some folks who are over 70 years old that are still working for NASA. We tease one of them because he has had 3 retirement parties, but they always manage to talk him into coming back.
3) They already have a "real" job, many of them have devoted their entire lives to the space program. I'd venture to say that they have done more for emerging technology during their time with NASA than you could ever dream of doing in your lifetime.
Workers at Cape Canaveral will also likely get pink slips as there will be no more shuttle launches and nothing major in the near future. Maybe that reality will shake out some of the Florida Democrats the the House.
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