Congress to dump Obama NASA plan

Flight Global ^ | 2-25-10 | Rob Coppinger

[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."

[potlatch]

I’m all for retaining nuke research and not cutting down our defense. Space exploration though, isn’t at vital with the economy so bad.

But I know we can’t let other countries beat us to certain things.

[eater-of-toast]

Good for Congress. We need to be a pioneering people. 0’s cutbacks threatened to stunt our imagination. Of course, I’m sure our congresscritters are largely motivated by desire to keep projects for their districts and states, but if the result is good, so be it.

[dr_who]

Pity. This is the one fiscally sane thing Obama wanted done. Makes him look pretty week though if his own congress is overriding him.

[Chode]

and 0bama takes another one in the.................................HA ha!!!

[diverteach]

acts it

[America2012]

Space Program = Demand For Parts = Factories = Jobs = Money = Great Economy = Captialism

No wonder Barry hates NASA.

[America2012]

NASA’s Apollo program created a demand for integrated circuits and magnetic core memories(hard drives).

Without the technological advances from the space program, you wouldn’t have a computer, the web or FreeRepublic.

[leakinInTheBlueSea]

already being done... program in place specifically for students from UAE... called arab education something or another. I’d be shocked if there were any federal agency that does not have an outreach or education program to every ethnicity. and it certainly did not start with obama.

[Cobra64]

Reinstate the F22 as well.

[Brytani]

Rubio and Crist are running for the seat currently occupied by former Crist Chief of Staff George LeMieux after being appointed when Mel Martinez retired.

McCollum is running for Governor not Senate.

Bill Nelson is not up for election until 2012 at which time we have every intention of throwing him out on his rear-end.

US Senate Candidates can be found here http://election.dos.state.fl.us/candidate/canlist.asp

Bill McCollum for Governor, here http://www.billmccollum.com/

[ntnychik]

I think they’ll use NASA to try to “prove” global warming.

[skr]

Thanks for the correction.

[Brytani]

No problem.

I see you’re in Florida. We’re an extremely active State (especially the S. Florida area) with FR and other groups many of us belong too. We always need boots on the ground.

Check out the Florida message board, it seems we have something going on almost daily!!

[ari-freedom]

I have to say that the one benefit of the ‘global warming’ craze is that it spurred the computer industry to build even more powerful supercomputers.

[athelass]

Thank God! One of the worst ideas Obama has had that nobody was talking about. Brain drain, unemployment, advantage to our enemies who will snatch up those scientists in a heart beat, set us back a generation, directly contradicting his campaign promise to “put science back in it's proper place”,the miserable lying hypocrite. It's also our livelihood, hubby works for NASA contractor, as do thousands of people in our area. Seeing this takes a huge weight off my mind, Species. Thanks!

[athelass]

"You are not going to go down the street and find the engineers and rocket scientist just anywhere"

Good point. But Russia, China, and India will when we fire all of ours. They'll be picking up Ph.D's on street corners. I'm amazed to see people here saying it's a good idea to defund NASA. There would be far more than 7k jobs lost. The trickle down would be the auto industry on steroids.

I guess folks don't understand how much of our national security, business, banking, communication, military operations, EVERYTHING WE DO in this country depends on satellites.

Do people think it's a good idea to turn our satellites over to India, China or France? And think of this. The scientists that we now employ represent three generations of technical knowledge, not just about classified stuff but about WHAT DOESN'T WORK.

A country like India being able to hire people who can start them with proven technology and skip the decades of financial drain it has taken us to figure it out is an advantage we absolutely do not want another country to have. Isn't that exactly what we are trying to prevent N.Korea and Iran from getting?

Think about it, folks. Obama stops the space program now, the people will be lost. The knowledge, the equipment, the necessary supporting manufacturing, computer technology, all lost. We would never recover. We'd be stealing from the Chinese the way they are now stealing from us.

[seekthetruth]

“Rubio, McCollum and Crist are running for Nelson’s seat on the Republican side.”

Rubio and Crist are running for the Martinez senate seat, and McCullum is running for Governor. We will make sure we work together to send Nelson packing when his seat comes up in 2012. :)

[seekthetruth]

Hi, I also had heard that Nelson was going to retire, but maybe it is that he won’t run in 2012. We can hope so!

[seekthetruth]

“This will probably be the only time I'll ever agree with Nelson. Bill, that is! Thousands and thousands of direct and ancillary jobs would be lost. I'm wondering why ole “kiss Bowrama’s ass” Charlie Crist hasn't said anything?”

Might be that Charlie has been extra busy the past two days trying to come up with a few more lies to tell about Rubio. On the other hand he is probably VERY busy getting his tan just right to get on over to Orlando this evening to give Barney Frank a big Florida welcome hug! :)

[cva66snipe]

Good point. But Russia, China, and India will when we fire all of ours. They'll be picking up Ph.D's on street corners. I'm amazed to see people here saying it's a good idea to defund NASA. There would be far more than 7k jobs lost. The trickle down would be the auto industry on steroids.

One other point also. Russia merely shutters her factories when funds are tight, Even in our good economic times we shut ours down, sold the land, and tore down the base, factory, or facility. In the case of the F-14 fighter project we also destroyed all related tooling and cast.