Obama: 8 Billion For High-Speed Rail, 0 for NASA & JSC

Did Bush have a plan to replace the space shuttle and get to the ISS?

 

To quote a famous Dutch stand-up comedian (Theo Maassen):

"I do not know why they spend so much money on finding out if there is alien life.
There are only two options:
Either there is alien life or there isn’t.
If there isn’t alien life I think it is kind of a waste of money.

And if there is alien life there are still only two option:

Either they are smarter then us or they are dumber than us.
If they are dumber: I don’t want anything to do with them
If they are Smarter: They will find us much faster than we will find them"

I think it is good to improve the public transportation.

 

What if the aliens think the same way?

 

That was the Orion program.

 

Bush was a fool who "trusted Putin" and failed to ramp up a shuttle replacement until it assured the United States and our friends and allies would be dependent Putin's Russia for years to get to the ISS, unless the shuttle program was extended to cover the period, when the replacement would have completed testing, been built, and ready to use. We have gone through years of not having manned spaceflight before, to the sorrow of many. What Obama is doing is killing the actual replacement program so we don't have that in train, and depending on a nebulous "civilian low earth orbit" spacecraft to replace it.

Obama made promises during the campaign in regards to NASA that he is breaking. He is choosing to cut the shuttle replacement spacecraft for a spacecraft provided by civilian industry, which has no track record of building a spacecraft capable of servicing the ISS. He decided to extend the life of the ISS until at least 2020, something I support, without providing the means to get back and forth from the thing, unless we depend on Putin's Russia. The ISS has cost us a huge amount of treasure and no little blood, yet we are to depend on Mr. Putin to get there, without a viable alternative?

Words fail me.

I'll add this... if these threads had been started by other people than the two members involved, would the reaction had been the same? I think not. Sure, the reaction would be similar from some here, but the overall tone would be completely different. Many of you are attacking the messengers to defend the President. It has less to do with the space program and more to do with politics and Mr. Obama. A large part of the international identity of the City of Houston is being tossed into a dumpster, and I'm reading slams at a couple of members with a history of attacking the President, my party, and a host of other things. Something that has nothing to do with this issue.

 

He could have dumped more money into it and it still would not be ready by now.

am 100% with you on the rest of your post though.

 

That's ironic, because that's generally the same response that occurs when pro-NASA people try to explain why the multibillion $$$ ISS was ever built or needs to be maintained in the first place.

Time to grow up guys...it is not the 1800's anymore, we are long past the phase where somebody going somewhere qualifies as, or is necessary for, science. And we're certainly way past the point where the cost curve makes any sense.

 

You know what's ironic? That the ISS is almost completed and people are complaining about the fact that it was built and that we have to trouble with getting people to and from the station. Sam, like it or not, it has been built. We do need to be able to use it, or we may as well toss it into a gravity well and wave bye bye. The vast bulk of the money has been spent, whether it made sense to some of you, or not. That isn't the issue here, because that train has already left the "station."

 

Use it for what?

As B-Bob posted earlier on this thread - there is no real non-circular scientific research being performed on it that hasn't been either performed before or can't be performed elsewhere for far cheaper

How many times do we need to keep doing the same thing over and over again to prove it can be done?

The frontier of low earth orbit has been conquered.

It's like the French in 1939 saying "Hey, we built this expensive Maginot Line - the Germans are simply going to go around it, but we might as well keep manning up and building the Maginot Line, since hell, it's paid for!"

 

NASA's plan (or threat) was to do exactly that.

 

So now that we have built it, we should toss it. Brilliant.

 

the cost curve makes sense now for exploration, unlike in the 1960's where it was done at a cost that was stupid expensive.

 

That just isn't true. I am not a big fan of the ISS but once they sent it up, the upkeep is 100% worth the cost.

 

have you ever acquired anything that was more trouble than it was worth and serves no useful purpose? Why would you spend $5,000 every year trying to keep your $ 5000 1983 Yugo running if you have a new Honda Accord in the garage that never breaks down?

 

Hmm...why don't you tell us some of the vital research being performed there then? Hint: I wouldn't start with microgravity manufacturing....

Given the advances in computers and robotics - that answer is patently false.

It's infinitely more expensive to send a man to mars (and quite likely impossible, given physiological limits) than it is to send a robot - tell me, aside from waving a flag around and posing for pictures, what the incremental research value is in sending a man?

 

Fantasy.

 

You seriously want to have a science argument with me? Will it end with "Dark matter? Who gives a crap about that?"

 

No one cares which strip club you will go to tonight to drink your self pity away.