Posted on 02/25/2010 11:16:41 AM PST by Species8472
White House plans to axe NASA's return-to-the-Moon Constellation programme and ground the Space Shuttle have sparked unified opposition from Congress, which looks determined to preserve a full spectrum of US manned spaceflight activities.
A draft Congressional bill leaked to Flight International sets out the politicians' alternate plan. It involves possibly extending Shuttle life to 2015, running competitive commercial crew and cargo programmes and continuing development of Constellation's vehicles including a heavylift rocket designed to get astronauts to the Moon in the 2020s and then Mars.
senator Bill Nelson of Florida says of the opposition to the Obama plan: "I have never seen [Congress] as unified as we are now."
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
You are not going to go down the street and find the engineers and rocket scientist just anywhere.
As for Navy carrier production facilities One can build them now and only two can give an extensive overhaul. Both are within 10 air miles of each other. Only one can do the actual reactor work as well including reactor refueling.
In the same way you won't just walk out and find engineers and rocket scientist you just don't walk out and find ship builders either especially for a nuclear propulsion system. When ones such as these are let go the future ones are discouraged from even trying due to a ever decreasing field.
Although I think that NASA should be funded, this may be more of a display to get us to not vote them out of office in the next election. They need to be kept afraid of being voted out of office, then we need to make it happen anyway.
See Post 34
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2458714/posts
As another anti-NASA troll, you need to discover some other talking point becaue the ‘can’t afford it’ line has gotten very old and stale.
Exactly. Why study engineering in university when there are no engineering jobs. So the kids become lawyers and liberal art majors instead.....shutter.
Yeah yeah I know - NASA gave us Tang.
A smart man once said "Always fight from the high ground."
Space is the ultimate high ground. Would you hand that over to the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Indians, Japanese, Koreans and French because the US is too poor to produce a new launch vehicle to replace our older systems?
Apparently none of those countries are "too poor" to produce new launch vehicles. I guess the poor old broke US should just bend over and kiss it.
Poor us.
NASA’s purpose should not be to fix toilets on the International Space Station or monitoring the earth for climate change. Soon we will be watching Chinse astronauts romping on the moon while we hitch rides with the Russkies. Houston, we have a problem and his name is Barack Hussein Obama. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2439720/posts
I must admit i am revealed. I mean i understand the need to cut the budget, but Obama was not even trying to cut the budget he just wanted the money spent on more wacko environmental study.
None of that will do 1/100th the good to inspire the American economy and technology then the moon colony.
What we are doing on the moon is what Spain did in discovery a new world and what our forefather did in establishing the first colony on that new world.
I saw a documentary on the plans we have and we REALLY can do this! By 2050 we can have a self-sustaining human colony on the moon! A new Jamestown! or Plimim.
We have the technology, and we have a lot more technology being developed from this process.
including a ways to cheaply modify the moon with a robot that turns the Luner dust(dirt) into solar-panels, the moon wold acutely be able to beam energy back to earth using microwaves!
Also on the moon is a large quantity of Helium 3, something that doesn’t exist on earth cause of our atmosphere but has been collecting on the moon for the last 4.5 billion years from the sun.
This stuff can be used to fuel fusion reactor, and is so valuable for its weight its actually economically viable to mine it on the moon and ship it back to earth for energy production!
We could build a full lunar colony with a compete lunar economy.
A simple solution would be to transfer the funds from ACORN/SEIU to NASA. We will be on the Moon again in five, and Mars in ten.
We are not building a colony on Mars, we are building a colony on the moon, and thats way more exciting then mars, if we can live on the moon we can live most anywhere.
This is the first step to permanent humans settlement outside of Earth. This is a VERY very important moment in our history if we go thou with this.
Anyone can visit not anyone can put down roots on anther world.
Once we have a colony running on the moon we should be able to go just about anywhere we want in the solar system for relativity cheap.
Pllleeeaaaasseeee let this be true. Best news I’ve heard all YEAR if this happens.
Good. This is one of the few govt. programs worth saving. Why we would want to cut this type of research is beyond me. I know some here may have differing views but being a space junkie I just would not want to see it stopped.
I couldn’t agree more with you !!
You must be from Florida !!
...to study global warming???
I guess all the “NASA killers” in this, and other armchair astronauts forums, would love to use that to justify NASA’s existance...
That would be ok, but everything else is just a waste...yeah...This would be the smart play...
/sarc
He's probably planning on increasing the Department of Energy's budget too, so he can farm out his proposed nuclear energy push to the Iranians and North Koreans.
Interesting news.
hey, the heck with the moon,..unless it is a launching pad for Mars.
And i mean,...whats up with the space station?..what are we doing with that trailer house in the sky, anyway? Making Tang?..the upside down Pen?....borrrrrrring. I say we create the orbital elevator and sell lottery tickets with Powerball.....”going up?”
.
Yup
NASA is needed
But Hussein Junior is dead set on blocking any USA defensive space gizmos - and also in killing all nuke research - giving our enemies a clear and open target
An even playing field
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