Ad Astra!
Posted on 04/15/2010 5:49:49 AM PDT by Schnucki
President Barack Obama will on Thursday unveil a "bold and daring" new space mission to send astronauts to Mars months after he scrapped a project to return to the Moon.
The president promised that the programme would pursue trips to "a sequence of deep-space destinations", buoyed by a Nasa budget that will be increased by $6 billion (£4 billion) over the next five years.
By 2015, the agency will determine "the specific heavy-lift rocket" needed to send astronauts to asteroids, the moons of Mars and eventually to Mars itself, details of the proposal published on the White House website said. It also allocates $3 billion (£2 billion) more to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, a 60 per cent increase over previous plans.
The proposals also give private industry the role of building new "space taxis" to take humans to the international Space Station, after the space shuttle project ends this year.
But while the White House promoted the plans as "bold and daring", many retired astronauts and Nasa officials viewed it as just the opposite.
Mr Obama has faced fierce criticism from lawmakers and space enthusiasts since budget proposals in February revealed plans to axe the expensive and under-funded Constellation rocket project designed to return US astronauts to the Moon by 2020. The last manned trip there was in 1972.
A panel of experts appointed by Mr Obama decided that the scheme had been so poorly funded by the Bush administration that its goals had become unrealistic.
But in an open letter to the President, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, and other pioneering astronauts criticised the "devastating" decision to axe Constellation, saying the US space programme risked becoming "third rate" as a result.
With the demise of shuttle
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The absolute PRIMARY requirement before any of those lesser, frivolous considerations like research, funding and qualifications:
DIVERSITY
The White House promised that the new proposal would create more than 2,500 jobs in Florida, but this assertion came after Suzanne Kosmas, a Democratic congressman from the state, warned that some 9,000 highly skilled professionals working in Florida's space industry faced losing their jobs after February's cuts.
I prayed for beautiful green skin Orion/Martian girls - they gave us red dust and rocks.
The White House should let NASA do what NASA does best, and butt out. We have a Shuttle program to replace so we don't have to rely on Russian Soyuz for a whole generation.
See #22
If only there WAS less. The taxpayers are broke. We can’t afford it. Besides, why the heck do we want extend the reach of the federal government to another planet! A better solution is to let private enteprise handle space exploration.
A better way to "butt out" is to abolish NASA and return the money to the taxpayers. Let private enterprise do handle this. Do we really want our oppressive federal government to extend its reach to space! At one time conservatives, like Buckley, were against the government space program. They were right.
Put me down for $100 towards the cause.....
Maybe the astronauts can bring back the American flag from Mars that Sheila Jackson Lee thinks is there. Duh!
On a more serious note, we should not abdicate space to private industries (which 0 will run into the ground) or foreign powers. We should maintain the "high ground" for defense purposes. NASA is one way to visibly show that we have the high ground, since it is not in our best interest to show how the military has the high ground.
If we spend anything on national defense (and such expenditure is constitutionally authorized), protecting and maintaining cislunar space capabilities falls into the sphere of legitimate federal activity.
I am not so ready to give our president a blank check just because it is, by some loose constructionist Hamiltonian theory, necessary for "national defense." This just gives IMHO, the founders would be rolling in their graves if they knew our military was devoted to maintaining a world empire even bigger than the one they revolted against. They would certainly not see such an empire (and the attempt to extend it, courtesy of our socialist commander in chief, to new planets as "constitutionally authorized" in any meaningfuly sense.
Why do so many conservatives sound like our business hating president when it comes to talking about the role of "private industry" in space? It seems that all the rhetoric about the benefits of the market, and the destructiveness of government, only applies to comparatively trial issues such as health care. When it comes to the infinity of space, however, it is federal government uber alles! Do you really want to give Obama and his socialist successors a monopoly on space? Think again.
Oh....btw, by and large, the foreign powers are too smart to waste resources on space boondogles and collecting more rocks. Let's leave space to the freedom and enterprise of individuals rather than dead hand of bureaucrats.
First, all of NASA's main hardware is made by private industry, not NASA, so I am not bashing private industry. However, there is some basic research that needs to be undertaken by someone, and no private company has (or will have, if 0 has his way) the financial ability to undertake it, since there is limited return on initial investment. Also, as I pointed out, space is of strategic importance to the defense of the country.
In the undertaking of this endeavor for basic research, new technologies have come into fruition, improving the lives of all.
For example, the military's GPS system was initially a system without a mission. It is now the backbone of several industries that could not have built it.
As for wasting resources on space boondoggles, it is not like we are shooting suitcases of money into space. It used to be that we were insuring our technological lead over our competitors by funding innovation. I may be blasphemous for saying this on FR, but not all the government does is bad. And if we do not continue to improve our tech, I'm sure our enemies will.
More Obama lies.
He wants to gut NASA human spaceflight.
The man is poison to our nation in all ways.
“bold and daring” = stupid and dangerous just like all of his ideas.
Ah....the spillover effect. That's the same argument that Obama uses for his big government programs. It relies more on asssertion than statistical evidence. Business, in general sense, can make a lot more money in the long term if it invests in R and D directly rather than rely on government to socialize these costs. In the end, all government does is shift money from certain private interests at the expense of others. Unfortunaely, the "others" don't have the same lobbying clout as the big contractors. It was alway thus and NASA isn't an exception. BTW, could you actually provide a study the demonstrates that NASA has provided NET benefits for the private economy?>
As you to your point about contractors, I suspect that a lot of private contractors are getting rich on Obama's stimulus project but that is hardly an argument demonstrating that he is helping "private industry" as a whole.
Yes, and our Department of Defense has been handling that mission nicely for many years.
And we don't need a wasteful, politically-corrupt, feel-good, civilian job-creation agency like NASA to do it.
NASA has provided some interesting knowledge and entertainment (admit it, that's the attraction) over the years, but its time has come and gone.
.
Ad Astra!
The spillover effect from NASA has been touted long before Obama came on the scene. Linking it to Obama's plan weakens your argument because it is guilt by association. There is a big difference between NASA and entitlement programs; at least with NASA, you expect people to produce something, and they have.
As for net economic benefit, I don't have anything right in front of me. However, here are a list of spin-offs from NASA work.
Also, I hate where NASA is going since 0 took office. NASA in the 1960's was something that made America proud (and ticked off the communists both foreign and domestic).
Perhaps we should chuck the whole thing, since there is not immediate economic benefit. Let's make sure space is militarized by the likes of China and Russia.
However, at the end of the day, the country that colonizes the Moon first that will be remember more highly than the country that got there first, but left (c.f. Leif Ericson vs. Christopher Columbus).
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