Posted on 07/23/2005 4:14:04 AM PDT by demlosers
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House Friday overwhelmingly endorsed President Bush's vision to send man back to the moon and eventually on to Mars as it passed a bill to set NASA policy for the next two years.
The bill passed 383-15 after a collegial debate in which lawmakers stressed their commitment to not just Bush's ambitious space exploration plans but also to traditional NASA programs such as science and aeronautics.
There is some tension between Congress and the White House over the balance between Bush's vision for space exploration and other NASA initiatives. Originally, the measure would have shifted $1.3 billion in funds from exploration to other NASA programs. But after administration objections lawmakers added the money back to the budget for exploration during floor debate. That was done by adding to the bill's bottom line -- now at $34.7 billion -- not at the expense of science and aeronautics.
Democratic Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee said Bush's ambitious moon and Mars missions "should not be done by cannibalizing other NASA missions.''
The bill is the first NASA policy measure -- its budget is funded by a separate bill -- to pass the House in five years. It advanced as the space agency tries to rebound from the Columbia disaster in February 2003 with the launch of the space shuttle Discovery next Tuesday.
The measure permits but does not explicitly endorse retiring the space shuttle fleet by 2010, as the administration would like to do. It directs the agency to launch a new crew exploration vehicle -- which would lack the full capabilities of the shuttle but could travel to the International Space Station -- as close to 2010 as feasible.
NASA's plans call for a new vehicle to be ready by 2014, which unnerves lawmakers who do not want the United States to have to rely on other countries to catch a lift to the space station.
A companion Senate measure approved by the Commerce, Science and Transportation panel last month would bar NASA from retiring the shuttle before a replacement vehicle is ready.
Both House and Senate bills also endorse a servicing and repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Without such a mission, the Hubble will fail when its gyroscopes and batteries wear out in the next few years, but the agency has not announced whether to let the telescope fail or whether it will undertake a costly manned repair mission.
"Congress endorses the President's Vision for Space Exploration,'' said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y. "The United States will work to return to the moon by 2020, and then will move on to other destinations.''
The full Senate has yet to act on the NASA measure.
Regardless of the ringing endorsement Friday, NASA must still compete with other agencies for its budget in the annual appropriations process, which moves on a separate track. That promises to make it difficult to fulfill all of the policy recommendations made by the House on Friday.
Still, there was one lone voice against the bill. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., questioned spending billions to go to Mars when "day after day ... we're told we can't do enough for housing and we can't do enough for health care.''
"This is a fundamental debate the country ought to have ... about whether or not to commit these untold billions ... at the expense of other important programs,'' he said.
I don't know, that's why I mentioned it. Will they use EDT or Universal Time? Zulu?
Looks like the initial knee-jerk opposition is starting to fade, maybe this will have some momentum after bush leaves office.
That sounds like a good possibility. Sci Fi writers are concerned with such things. Marstime is already determined by the mere fact of the Rovers. Moontime hasn't been necessary, but will be when rovers and scientists start spending significant time there. Then we ought to settle on what to do in deep space and asteroids and other planets. It might be that the first expedition that needs to decide on the time scheme for a particular planet will determine the time scheme there from then on. Sci Fi writers will have to guess how the determinations will be made.
Most asteroid locations will use Zulu, Greenwich Mean Time.
Anything without an inherent diurnal cycle will have an artificial one imposed. We can adjust to different time frequencies, but our internal clocks need something.
On my fictional world, I had the clocks adjusted to have seven extra seconds in every minute, but still kept a twenty-four hour day.
The full French metric system included time. Decimal days, decimal hours, decimal minutes. What will we do on Venus. Mercury?
Venus will not have surface colonies in the foreseeable future. Mercury and Venus will follow Lunar time-keeping rules. Basically, Zulu time again. It's useful for communications.
NASCAR drivers are too modest and humble to be astronauts. You need a bigger ego to be an astronaut. Race drivers buy their own rides, and astronauts expect other people to pay for their thrills. Race drivers provide entertainment. Astronauts are dead bores.
Maybe this is the way we must structure Lunar and other colonies since we will be bound by our circadian rhythms!
The Lunar Day is 14 Earth Days as is the Lunar Night. No Earthling or Lunartic, (pardon the pun) would be able to work the day or night shift let alone overtime! With no weekends Jack would certainly be an overworked individual. A Lunar year would be 13 Lunar Days or 12 Earth Months. Are we getting confused yet?
BTW the only person who will not be confused is women since they already mark time by their Lunar Cycles. Maybe that's why women are Lunatics. And we bear the brunt of this Moon madness!
For the foreseeable future, manned expeditions will use ships time. If there is ever a self-sufficient settlement on a celestial body, they might make up their own time plan as a statement of local autonomy.
My point is that military or GMT will be the basis for all off planet activities. Whether it is a three day duration trip to the Moon or 8 months to Mars the base time must be such that we can be on the same page.
Of course, if you're a farmer on Ganymede, you may not care what time it is in London.
There will be local time, and coordinated time, just as there is now.
Ships are by nature autonomous vehicles. They have their own systems, such as ships power, ships voltage, ships frequency. Ships time can remain independent of local time such that day and night remain that of the home port. They might choose Greenwich time in outer space, or they might choose the local time of Houston or Kennedy. What is ships time for Space Shuttle Discovery during the present countdown?
You might also ask, " Has Free Republic become socialist"? This is statism with all the bark on: agreed national goals, huge pointless expenditures, crackpot visionary schemes, playing to a minority cadre with an agenda, and ignoring the emerging private sector in this field.
This is NOT what made America great; it is what kept Mussolini small.
What kind of fool thinks we need intergalactic weapons to deal with raggeddy ass bedouins?
Yes, it is. The myth of the yoeman farmer, self-reliant and all, has been a myth since the mid-fifties. 1850s that is. The Populist Party lost in 1896 and hasn't been heard from since, although several of its programs were subsequently adopted. The business of America is business, and that is the concern of gov't in the federal system.
The kind of fool on a hill who sees the sun going down, and the eyes in his head see the world spinning round.
Besides, I didn't say they should be ignored completely, just that we could face bigger problems.
Intergalactic? You exaggerate.
Are you a Republican congressional pork nut by any chance?
Turn over an FDR dime and what is on the flip side? A fasces.
Well said!
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