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NASA Still Ordered To Waste $1.4M Per Day
Chicago Tribune ^ | February 24th, 2011 | Mark Matthews

Posted on 03/24/2011 11:21:45 AM PDT by NonZeroSum

WASHINGTON — Congress has again failed to rid a temporary spending bill of language forcing NASA to waste $1.4 million a day on its defunct Constellation moon program.

Though Congress passed a new stopgap spending bill last week, the measure retained a leftover provision from the 2010 budget that bars the agency from shutting down Constellation, which Congress and the White House agreed to cancel last October.

This so-called "Shelby provision" — named for U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, who inserted it into the 2010 budget — is expected to cost NASA roughly $29 million during the three-week budget extension through April 8. It has already cost the agency nearly $250 million since Oct. 1.

Equally galling to budget hawks is that Congress has known about the mistake for months and has done nothing to correct it.

(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: congress; constellation; nasa; waste
Thank you, Senator Shelby.
1 posted on 03/24/2011 11:21:51 AM PDT by NonZeroSum
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To: KevinDavis

Ping.


2 posted on 03/24/2011 11:22:51 AM PDT by Army Air Corps (Four fried chickens and a coke)
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To: NonZeroSum

Time these critters realized that they need to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.


3 posted on 03/24/2011 11:30:35 AM PDT by bkepley
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To: NonZeroSum

Just give me two days’ worth please. I won’t waste it.


4 posted on 03/24/2011 11:47:44 AM PDT by swain_forkbeard (Rationality may not be sufficient, but it is necessary.)
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To: NonZeroSum

NASA has been a defense contractor “stimulus” for decades. The waste and fraud from the Shuttle program are incalculable. But jobs as well as many small businesses were created.


5 posted on 03/24/2011 12:00:08 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee (A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.)
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To: NonZeroSum
“waste” “defunct”

Sound like a “proxmire” article to me.

Once you stop work on the lunar lander and the earth departure stage you still have the light booster (Ares 1, personnel lift), the heavy booster (Ares 2, Cargo lift), and the crew module. There are potential commercial equivalents, but only the Ares 1 has been launched yet.

The shuttle is going, what do you replace it with?

Personally I prefer the SSTO design for personnel.

6 posted on 03/24/2011 12:40:06 PM PDT by fireforeffect (A kind word and a 2x4, gets you more than just a kind word.)
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To: fireforeffect

Ares would have been outrageously expensive to both develop and operate, and not been available until almost the end of the decade. In terms of “replacing Shuttle” for crew access to space, we could have both Dragon/Falcon 9 and a Boeing CST-100 on an Atlas V within four years or so for a tiny fraction of the cost.


7 posted on 03/24/2011 1:17:00 PM PDT by NonZeroSum
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To: fireforeffect

And Ares I never launched. All that launched was a four-segment lower stage with a dummy fifth segment and dummy upper stage. It was just for show.


8 posted on 03/24/2011 1:18:24 PM PDT by NonZeroSum
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To: NonZeroSum

Privatize NASA. Space X, Lockheed, Boeing... Let the private markets work.


9 posted on 03/24/2011 1:33:36 PM PDT by Dead Corpse (explosive bolts, ten thousand volts at a million miles an hour)
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