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

Fair enough. There's no real way for me to prove otherwise. But I can pretty much say that 5 years from now when we don't have a manned space program other than maybe taking a few rich folks to space to float for a few minutes, I will be here again :grin: .

Thanks, and I apologize to anyone I seem to have angered. I am not bitter about this at all. But I think that too many folks here are only looking at one side of the coin (and even worse, refuse to even glance at the other side). And I am sorry to have sited quotes correctly from Dan B and Bob as I couldn't keep up with the amount of responses I tried to address.

I will say that if I was president, my initiative would be to HEAVILY invest into propulsion technology. Conventional methods today require a vehicle to have 80% to 90% of its weight to be either burned up to tossed aside. Horribly inefficient. Today, the shuttle system weighs 4.5 million lbs but takes up only about 65k lbs of payload (pretty good in conventional terms but not realistic for longterm space exploration). Even unmanned missions have this problem. There are some private companies that are working on nuclear propulsion and ion propulsion but funding is the current issue not to mention environmental concerns. This would definately put to rest the who "it's not worth it" argument. One mission would be able to do what 100 apollo missions or shuttle missions would have done. BUT at the same time I would continue flying the shuttle (or shuttle derived) at a minimal pace in order to continue practice and improvement of our current space operations processes and training (crew, ground ops, space ops, safety, software, etc). All this will probably happen anyway, with or without involvement by the United States.

 

I don't think you need to apologize to anyone. I'm impressed you hung in as long as you did.

I don't come around d&d too often and judging by some of the posters I know why. Some people on here need to chill out, damn. you guys are like a pack of pitbulls on differing views.

I agree with a lot you said, especially newer propulsion systems. That should be a huge priority to focus on if we are ending these others.

 

Umm that's exactly my point. The tests we are wasting manpower on can be accomplished without the men there. You are saying that we don't need to send a full crew of highly trained astronauts into space in order to test scents there? I think I may have heard that before somewhere....

I am not degrading all of the work NASA does. I believe that they could accomplish much more if we funded the missions that have given us results in the last few decades. This is why I took pains to compliment their Martian rover and Hubble missions in my earlier posts. Of course, when that is thrown aside in favor of a "you just google 'Why NASA blows,' you ignorant tool" type of argument, I tend to bristle a bit.

Criticizing the Space Shuttle System or the ISS is not the same as saying that we shouldn't perform tests in space. I never once suggested we shouldn't.

And Qazi I do apologize if I personally offended you with my responses to your jabs. In my defense however calling me ignorant and a jerk doesn't exactly result in a positive response. Think of me as a mirror. You post an insult, you get one back.

 

Ya, it does get tense a lot of the times. The issue of space exploration is near and dear to me. The thread completely started off on the wrong foot. It turned into a lib vs cons/dem vs rep type of thing. I just didn't want people dogpiling on the supporters out of spite (mainly to spite Shovel Face). Too many replies contained "did you support the bailout of [insert here]?". I just don't see it that way. It's not a jobs program to me and not about the bottom line. I just hate to see NASA being used for political points and using the manned space program as a scape goat.

The administration has emphasized new technology and I hope that most of it does go to research of better propulsions systems. Heck, even a space elevator (which I consider completely being over-looked atm). But I can't believe it when people say "oh well robots could do it". Reminds me of a Simpson's episode...
Marge: This is terrible! How will the kids get home?
Homer: I dunno. Internet?

 

Love the concept of a space elevator, but how are we going to fund it if we are still funding derelict decades past their prime programs?

Gotta have priorities.

I honestly don't see how I am scapegoating manned exploration by asking for results. We have gained so much more through unmanned probes that I really don't see why it's even a question for those truly wanting to break new frontiers. We can and have gone places in probes that man could never dream of visiting. We would know so much more if funding for the Viking probes hadn't been yanked. I don't see the point in going to the same place repeatedly to do the same things repeatedly. I'd rather keep looking.

It's really a fundamental error for some to assume that because I don't agree with manned travel, I don't like NASA. NASA continues to produce technology that has changed all of us. Their programmers basically invented streaming data on the fly to send and receive data from a Galileo probe of Jupiter that malfunctioned. The main antenna failed, and they had to find a way to get the data through the low gain antenna. They were on the ground, however, when they did it. It wasn't necessary that they be launched into space for them to change our world forever.

I don't think everything can be done via robotics. But I certainly think they can explore Mars, and man cannot. They can reach other stars and other galaxies. Man cannot. Also, we will never know what humans can expect in these worlds unless we send probes first, no?

I do not understand why prioritizing these missions deserves such scorn.

 

NASA's emerging exploration plan will call for safely sending humans to Mars, possibly by the 2030s, and de-emphasize exploration of the moon, the agency's leader said Tuesday.

“That is my personal vision,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “I am confident that, when I say humans on Mars is a goal for the nation, not just NASA, I'm saying that because I believe the president will back me up.”

Bolden cited appearances set before congressional committees on Feb. 24 and 25 as a deadline for creating the “beginnings of a plan” for human exploration.

At those hearings, Bolden said, he will be able only to give a range of dates for a Mars trip because scientific questions, such as mitigating radiation exposure and bone loss, remain unanswered.

But he confidently said the 2030s, even the early 2030s, were viable if given a reasonable and sustained budget.

Bolden was in Houston this week making his first visit to Johnson Space Center since the release of President Barack Obama's budget on Feb. 1. Obama has been on the defense as the budget, while adding $6 billion in new money over five years, calls for the cancellation of the Constellation program that the Houston space center manages.

Bolden's expansiveness on the attractiveness of Mars as a clear goal for NASA may blunt some of the criticism Obama has received for not addressing space policy since taking office, nor clearly outlining what will replace Constellation.

Under Constellation, NASA was to build two new rockets to fly astronauts to the International Space Station and, by the early 2020s, back to the moon where a lunar base would be built. Researching and living on the moon would be a steppingstone to exploring outward to destinations like Mars, perhaps by 2040.
‘Fight, fight, fight' vowed

Congressional critics have said NASA should not be asked to change plans when $9 billion has already been spent on Constellation and that by canceling the space agency's next-generation exploration program, Obama is turning his back on human spaceflight.

“The president's plan is not what our country needs at this time,” said Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land. “We have been the world's leader for 50 years, and I can't accept that we're going to fall behind. We are going to fight, fight, fight to ensure that the next person who steps on the moon is an American.”

Olson said the right thing to do is add $3 billion to NASA's budget annually for the next five years to ensure Constellation is fully funded.

But Bolden's comments Tuesday, made at a Houston Chronicle editorial board meeting, indicate the president hopes to reach Mars before the timeline envisioned by the Constellation program.

Bolden said this could be accomplished by sending robotic or possibly human missions to the lunar surface, but to skip the costly and timely step of building a permanent lunar base.

“I don't see us colonizing the moon as some people do,” he said. “That's not NASA's job. Our job is to explore.”

And if someone beats NASA back to the moon while it is conducting research on rockets that can blast humans to Mars?

“When the Chinese or the Japanese or the Russians, or anybody else that people are worried about, get back to the moon before we do, I'm not worried about that,” said Bolden, a former astronaut. “Because when they land they're going to be walking in the footsteps of 12 Americans who have already been there.”
Planetary Society likes it

Some pro-space exploration organizations have embraced Obama's plan because it has the potential to get humans beyond the moon more quickly than Constellation.

“The proof will be in what they do with this new plan, but I have great hopes for it,” said Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society.

Friedman noted Constellation budget's is largely focused at present on developing the Ares I rocket, to carry astronauts to Earth orbit, and the Orion crew capsule that would house them both in orbit and on longer journeys.

The president's proposed budget spends more, about $3.1 billion over the next five years, on the design of a heavy-lift rocket that can carry the fuel and supplies needed to propel and sustain astronauts on long journeys, Friedman said.
Hard sell ahead?

Bolden said he would like to use some of the money previously earmarked for Constellation's Ares I rocket to fund newer technologies that might get humans to Mars more quickly.

“I think the path that (Obama) has asked us to go down now gives us a better chance of getting to some destinations, if not as fast, maybe even faster in some cases because there are technologies that we overlooked, or just pushed aside, because we couldn't afford them for the last several years we've been developing the Constellation program,” Bolden said.

His task during the next two weeks will be to flesh out more details for the Mars vision, and then sell the plan to a skeptical Congress that ultimately will have to approve funding.

chron

 

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I saw shovelface/meowgi today on the way home and got a picture from the bus:



Yes, that is a beat up old Ford ranger with a "SAVE NASA IMPEACH OBAMA" sign on the back and a similar homemade sign on either side of the truck, complete with a homemade shuttle drawing.

Strangely, the message is to vote for a democrat in district 22, Kesha Rogers .


Naturally, this came to mind:

 

I thought from the beginning that this thread would turn out like it has, due to being started by Shovel Fish. I'm a liberal Democrat who supports manned space flight, so sue me. One of the things that really bothers me is that after spending an ungodly amount of money constructing the ISS, we're going to be dependent for the forseeable future on Putin's Russia in order to use it. I have yet to read a good enough reason to believe that is a good idea.

 

Nobody ever gave us a good reason to build ISS in the first place.

You can't even come up with a good reason to keep sending people up there.

So come up with the first two, and then we can discuss why the multi-jillion dollar space bus is a great idea.

 

I can give two reasons. One, it is built. Two, we need to get mankind off this planet. Getting mankind off this rolling gravity well is the best reason I can think of. I realize that it is trendy now to dismiss that, but I have felt that way since the 1950's, and I will feel the same way when I'm on my death bed, assuming I'm on a bed. You and B-Bob and anyone else that I respect here will not convince me otherwise. What concerns me, as well, is that we still have no way to even attempt to stop an asteroid or a comet from striking the Earth, and we seem to be going backwards. I ardently hope we stay lucky. We've been lucky now for a very long time. I'll add this... if the Chinese end up landing on the Moon while we're still talking about how we're going to get men and women back into space without depending on them, or the Russians, this place is going to become insufferable. You won't enjoy it, and neither will I.

 

Not true. It is the only fully-functional research outpost in microgravity - if you want to pull off a manned flight to Mars this is the only way to understand what the effects of such a long flight would be. Unfortunately, the political winds at the time required international partnership to make the budget appealing, which demanded a lousy inclination and a low altitude to accommodate the Soyuz - effectively handicapping the whole idea.

Struggling with this now that the science is rather well established. Much of what the humans on board do is maintenance that could be avoided with robotics.

 

I am sympathetic to your post, Deckard, in the following way.

If you are suggesting that ISS could be put in the way of an asteroid, that might be a good use.

Just kidding!

Seriously, can you imagine asking China for help when an asteroid is headed straight for, I dunno, Salt Lake City. Or, um, bad example.

 

Yeah so was the Maginot Line....If it is pointless and expensive to use it what does it matter?

Even if this goal is laudable or legitimate in the short term - putting people up in low earth orbit at great cost to snap photos and study spider webs in space is not really going to get us there.

And again why is having a bunch of human-inhabited cannisters in LEO the key to this? In fact many of NASA's critics have leveled the charge that it has ignored researching this area in order to focus on manned spaceflight program.

If the Chinese land on the moon, they will find the same thing we knew nearly a century prior to their achieving it - an empty rock without a whole lot going on. They can wave their flag but ultimately it's irrelevant.

Remember, back when this was halfway relevant, the US "won" a massive prestige victory in cold War in 1969 by landing on the moon.

What did that matter in the grand scheme? Back on planet earth, Kids from the same country that just put neil armstrong on the moon were getting blown up in Vietnam by villagers wearing rubber tire shoes and eating a handful of rice a day and the Cold War itself dragged on for 20 more years.

 

Actually, the problem with the Maginot line was that they gave up half way through building it.

 

Sam, you just don't get it, and probably never will. I doubt if you were cognizant when we landed on the Moon with Apollo 11, so you just don't know what it was like. I could attempt to describe how the entire world watched in wonder, but why bother? You'll make a comment about Vietnam again, a war I was active in protesting at the time. The Maginot Line line? At least you went back to WWII, for which I give you credit for creativity. It doesn't matter if China lands on the Moon and we are quite possibly still figuring out what the hell we're going to do with manned space flight? If you, of all people, can't grasp the political ramifications of that, I simply don't know what to say. I don't believe it will take them as long as you seem to think, but one can only hope you are right, because it will, in all likelyhood, be a political disaster for this country.

Clearly, you would be quite happy to see the ISS tossed into the Pacific in a controlled descent. If the President announced tomorrow that we were pulling out entirely from the whole project, I suspect you would be pleased and would post about what a great idea it was. Thank goodness, as best I can tell, he doesn't share that desire with you. I've heard arguments in favor of abandoning manned space flight altogether and having NASA stick to robotic exploration, leaving the field to whoever else has an interest, while expecting private enterprise to come up with a manned space flight program of their own. I hope something comes from that, I really do, but without the ISS, where are they going to go? To a Chinese or Indian space station? I've read about potential orbiting habitats that might be developed by private enterprise and I hope that works out, but forgive me if I find the idea of keeping in space what we've spent so much blood and treasure contructing for as long as we can, as well as having a healthy scepticism about their ability to build their own.

Should we leave low earth orbit? Of course. How are we realistically going to do that without a way station in low earth orbit? I hope private enterprise can figure this all out and also figure out how to make a profit at it, because if they find the profits aren't there in the short term, and don't have amazingly deep pockets, it is going to be largely talk and little else. Meanwhile, I'll attempt to remain optimistic about manned space flight. Someone has to.

 

The political ramifications would be the similar when the Chinese claimed to have summited the North Ridge of Everest in 1960, or in 2003 when Yang Liwei orbited in the Shenzou 5.

Those dates live etched in your memory, right?

 

It's not the same, Sam.

 

You're right, it's not the same as it was in 1969, that's the point I'm trying to make.