I have mixed feelings about this. We need to cut federal spending in a massive way, and to do that, truly discretionary projects like this one have to be open for cost cutting consideration. My first gut response to reading this story was that this is a big mistake. And it may very well be. But the main thing the United States is foregoing here is the ability of NASA to ferry humans into space. If the commercial sector (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc.) is ready to take on that responsibility, then this might not be so bad. President Obama appears to be making a beat that the commercial is ready. But many others are not so sure.... [RQUOTER]NASA Budget for 2011 Eliminates Funds for Manned Lunar Missions NASA's grand plan to return to the moon, built on President George W. Bush's vision of an ambitious new chapter in space exploration, is about to vanish with hardly a whimper. With the release Monday of President Obama's budget request, NASA will finally get the new administration's marching orders, and there won't be anything in there about flying to the moon. The budget numbers will show that the administration effectively plans to kill the Constellation program that called for a return to the moon by 2020. The budget, expected to increase slightly over the current $18.7 billion, is also a death knell for the Ares 1 rocket, NASA's planned successor to the space shuttle. The agency has spent billions developing the rocket, which is still years from its first scheduled crew flight. It remains to be seen whether Congress will accede to Obama's change in direction. Industry insiders expect a brutal fight in Congress. The early reaction to media reports about the budget request has been filled with howls of protest from lawmakers in districts that would be most affected by a sharp change in strategy. Obama's budget, according to a background briefing by an administration official on Sunday, will call for spending $6 billion over five years to develop a commercial spacecraft that could taxi astronauts into low Earth orbit. Going commercial with a human crew would represent a dramatic change in the way NASA does business. Instead of NASA owning the spacecraft and overseeing every nut and bolt of its design and construction, a private company would design and build the spacecraft with NASA looking over its shoulder. Former NASA administrator Michael Griffin, who championed the Constellation program, views the Obama budget as disastrous for human space flight. "It means that essentially the U.S. has decided that they're not going to be a significant player in human space flight for the foreseeable future. The path that they're on with this budget is a path that can't work," Griffin said, anticipating the Monday announcement. He said that, although he pushed for seed money for commercial cargo flights to space, he doesn't believe that the commercial firms, such as SpaceX and Dulles-based Orbital Sciences, are ready to take over the risky and difficult job of ferrying human beings to orbit. "One day it will be like commercial airline travel, just not yet," Griffin said. "It's like 1920. Lindbergh hasn't flown the Atlantic, and they're trying to sell 747s to Pan Am." John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said the critics underestimate the maturity of the commercial sector. "The Defense Department began using commercial rockets a long time ago to launch priceless national security satellites, that our troops' lives depend on. If the Pentagon can trust private industry with this responsibility, we think NASA can, too," Gedmark said. ....[/RQUOTER]
Exactly. Manned exploration is nothing but posturing. We can send devices that can get exactly what we need much cheaper and more easily.
Actualy what's scary is that despite billions of dollars lavished upon it, the most notable achievement of the manned spaceflight program of the last 25 years has been the crazy stalker astronaut chick.
While manned space exploration should not be a priority given the state of economy, is this true in general? I've always gotten the impression that NASA projects really expanded our technological frontier and actually do pay for itself down the line. Or is that a myth? Regardless, I do think NASA should be getting big budget cuts for now. But it really does suck that we're only doing this because of unnecessary wars and horribly run conglomerates.
for one, we wouldn't be having this discussion on computers right now if it wasn't for the technology that NASA helped create/sped up
I would pick the spacewalk repair of the Hubble Space Telescope along with a 6-person crew living aboard an assembled space station (13 people on the station during shuttle missions) the size of a full soccer field, performing science experiments etc.
Could it be possible that nothing is more important than our species advancing to other planets? I think we are doomed If we don't figure out how to colonize somewhere other than earth...
That's so true, in the 1960's NASA. Then they shifted to largely "off the shelf" crap, like that which went into the ISS, instead of requiring innovation to get to their goals, as they did in the Apollo series most notably. Setting safe little goals that could win ongoing congressional funding turned NASA into just another sloth like branch of the federal government. It truly did.
For those of you opposed, where would you prefer cuts come from? Everyone wants smaller government, but no one actually likes it when you actually start cutting stuff.
^^^ I agree. But I still feel that the price of NASA is a drop in the bucket and worth the investment. I've heard that for every $1 spent we receive back $7. there are plenty of other places to add the money from. Start with the stimulus checks to people that don't even pay taxes. Use that money on actually creating technology/high paying jobs instead of adding to entitlements
I'm far from unbiased on this subject (I'm an astrophysicist), but I really don't think we should be cutting NASA's budget. I just think that spending on manned space exploration is a waste when we can learn as much at a small fraction of the cost with unmanned satellites/probes.
When you arrived on the moon, was the people who lived there very friendly, or was they scared of you?
Of course, given that each repair mission costs about a billion dollars we probably could have put several more satellites in orbit to do the same thing. Yes, here are the valuable experiments being performed by humans on Columbia's last flight:
I continue to champion continued space exploration by man and machine -- financed and managed by the private sector under strong space junk regulations.
