Obama's Space Plan — a Conservative Argument 433
MarkWhittington writes "The Obama space proposal, which seeks to enable a commercial space industry for transportation to and from low Earth orbit while it cancels space exploration beyond LEO, has sparked a kind of civil war among conservatives. Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects. Other conservatives like the commercial space part of the Obama policy and tend to gloss over the cancellation of space exploration or even denigrate the Constellation program as 'unworkable' or 'unsustainable.'"
libertarian (Score:5, Interesting)
Coming from a different point than conservative or liberal - NASA has always been a huge waste of money and ought to be deprecated. Getting private industry into the act is a good thing, in my opinion, although I'm not so sanguine about government subsidies. Also, while low Earth orbit may not be as grand a vision as going to the Moon, or Mars, or the asteroid belt, it's a good starting place of all of the above; let's get some infrastructure up there and we'll be able to go wherever we want.
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
well that's one thing where, even though I'd say I'm mostly libertarian, I'd disagree. getting infrastructure in place is one of the things that government can do easier and (if you can eliminate most of the pork and other bureaucratic shit) should be doing since it is one thing that most definitely does benefit all citizens equally, just imagine if the roads were done by private companies, there might be more that are very well maintained but something like the interstate highway system would be near impossible to create because you'd be so hard pressed to get the companies to actually cooperate in any reasonable manner. Funding NASA helps fund the research and development that allows for the possibility of creating that infrastructure we so desperately need up in space in order to do any of it. There are so few people that seem to realize that we are so incredibly far away from being able to mine the asteroid belts and things like that. And even so many years after the space program has started, there is not one company that can go into LEO to do the things NASA can do, simply because the returns aren't there in LEO to be profitable in the short or even medium term. Government does not have any business in morality but infrastructure is one place that it can really do a huge amount of good for the citizens and possibly the world (and our own economy if we get the infrastructure up there and charge others to use it)
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize Boeing and ULA (a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed) are two of the primary contractors under CCDev, the precursor to a larger 'commercial' manned operation. Furthermore, SpaceX, Blue Origin, et. al. employ a large number of people who used to work at more traditional companies -- Boeing and Lockheed do not have experience, the people working for them do.
The difference in the game isn't that the money is going to different people, its how its being managed. Before, we were operating in the same way we did in Apollo, by telling companies what we wanted built, and paying significantly more when things didn't work out as cheaply as we hoped. This made sense in the 60s, since we didn't really know what it took to complete the task. However, after we have been launching people into orbit for 50 years, we should no longer be able to claim to not be able to predict the costs. So the difference here is that instead of funding development of vehicles, NASA is instead saying they'll be a guaranteed customer, and purchase rides at a fixed price from these companies. While this may seem like a fine distinction, it changes the incentive structure significantly so that programs are more likely to stay on time and on budget, proposals are more likely to be accurate, and congress is less able to meddle.
Costs for missions beyond LEO are harder to predict, so government directed cost-plus contracts may make sense in this regime -- however, they will be far more successful if there is a robust, reliable, multi-vendor infrastructure for getting people to and from LEO.
Re:libertarian (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd have to agree. The environment of sending people to and from Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) should be considered a solved engineering problem. It was a tough nut to crack and certainly is a challenge for any group of engineers who want to tackle the problem. A graduate aerospace engineering student who successfully launches something, anything, into orbit on their design likely deserves the graduate degree (especially if they can do it cheaply), but it isn't something their professors ought to be congratulated for as ground breaking or Nobel Prize winners by accomplishing.
There might be room to try and drive down the cost of getting into space. That is something that isn't even on the agenda for NASA and hasn't been for some time. The DC-X program was promising, and hopefully the guys at Blue Origin might take some of the ideas from the project and make them worthwhile and practical. There have been some other ideas on how to lower costs, including the efforts by SpaceX to make a vehicle that worked even if it wasn't at the top peak of performance.
The engineering mantra can be best described as the following:
What ever you want, it can be made:
Please pick only two of the above options!
I've had bosses insist on all three at the same time, and what they get is none of them happening or the "reliable" aspect gets thrown out the window. Apollo selected the Sooner and Reliable options, and paid dearly for it (4% of the U.S. Federal budget I should note). Not many companies have bosses that are patient to wait for results that may be cheaper in the long run but take some time to happen.
Some of the newer companies getting into commercial spaceflight are now trying to see if it can be made for cheaper instead of sooner. Unfortunately, there are always critics who complain because they are expecting the program to be operated with the mentality that the Apollo program was built. This includes the Constellation program and its supporters.
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I believe both SpaceX and Blue Origin uses IAMAW workers. It would be foolish of them not to, since they tend to be better at their jobs. I wouldn't so much as fly on a plane that wasn't made by union workers, nor would I ever buy a car that was built by scabs (which means my car didn't get just get recalled, by the way).
Having union workers does not necessarily make costs greater. That only happens if management signs stupid and greedy contra
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I agree with wanting infrastructure up there. I also agree that business doesn't do well putting its own money into infrastructure, and this IS something that government can do well.
But launching stuff to LEO ought to be Business As Usual by now. NASA and the government shouldn't need to be in the business of developing LEO launch vehicles. OTOH, they should be one of several customers of private enterprise LEO launch capacity. Putting infrastructure into LEO is certainly a good thing for government to
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"[J]ust imagine if the roads were done by private companies, there might be more that are very well maintained but something like the interstate highway system would be near impossible to create because you'd be so hard pressed to get the companies to actually cooperate in any reasonable manner."
We don't have to imagine. The U.S. railroads were an amalgam of private companies when the industry first emerged in the 19th Century. Early paved roads were also done by private companies as well.
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Private industry will continue to be in, not get into, space related projects when there's money to be made. Communication satellites are a good example, billions of dollars in private investment [cnet.com] are being spent on building and launching them. Of course that industry wouldn't have ever been possible if the USA and other governments hadn't developed the technology first.
But exploration and development of new technology are risky with too little chance of ever recovering the investment for private industry.
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I get the feeling that if instead of throwing 15-20 billion at NASA on a yearly basis, we set up a few X-prize style incentives, we'd have done a lot more than NASA has. Set concrete goals for various prizes and only hand them out when the goal is reached. Leave the competition open to *anyone* American, Chinese whatever with the condition that the technology used to acheive the goal is to be put in the public domain.
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Informative)
yah, the private banks do so well at giving us a future.
to go where ever we want, we need high-energy "rockets". Otherwise serious colonization does not work. In the 70s we were ready to go with nuclear drives. Now the russians are going to finally do it. I do not see a lot of private investment in anything really different. Pooh, we now all hear about the virtues of innovation, and as far as I can tell, this is something marketing is especially good at.
if you are a conservative type, something to consider is that India will be in LEO with men in 2012 and on rhe moon, with people, in 2020. oh, India is involved deeply with the russians on the nuclear drive.
on a more earthly thing, China currently has 64 high speed rail projects. 1000's of miles. The usa has 64 miles of medium high speed rail. Some people talk about high speed rail in the usa as capable of causing a 15% overall productivity increase.
and last I looked, 54 nuclear power plants were being built, almost all in asia. the usa has one, an old mothballed tva plant being brought up.
so who has the potential for a future?
anyway, here is a video entitled "the destruction of nasa" which is supposed to be very good
http://larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=13392 [larouchepac.com]
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Interesting)
http://reason.org/news/show/california-voters-were-railroa [reason.org]
Okay, okay, that's the Reason Foundation talking, and we know they're a bunch of libertarian loonies. But what about someone more sympathetic?
http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2484870.html [sacbee.com]
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we know they're a bunch of libertarian loonies
By that definition, anyone who opposes the government holding them upside down and shaking until every cent falls out of their pockets is a loony. California needs another 50+ billion of debt for high speed rail (which btw most people will not be able to afford to ride without subsidies and more debt) like it needs a hole in the head.
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The reason that Amtrak has such low ridership is a few things, all things where it should have the advantages over air, but we've managed to break it:
Amtrak has to inexplicably wait for freight to get out of the way, resulting in random delays. Freight often has priority thanks to idiotic railway agreements. With planes, passenger planes have priority, and there actually isn't that much air freight.
They've managed to turn it into airport style security and hassle, resulting in you having to get there earl
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and last I looked, 54 nuclear power plants were being built, almost all in asia. the usa has one, an old mothballed tva plant being brought up.
Heh, even if the USA had the political/public will to build more nuclear plants, we couldn't.
Why? Because all the companies that manufacture the heavy steel reactor components are in Asia (plus one in Russia) and have their output already spoken for. To highlight the point, the largest manufacturer is planning to triple production by 2012... and all that output is spoken for too. The USA doesn't even begin to have the manufacturing or infrastructure necessary to produce/handle the enormous ingots and then f
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been saying for 10 years or more: America is over. The image of America is really just the image of being the only large country that didn't suffer massive infrastructural damage in WWII. We were the only man standing afterward, and as a result, got to call a lot of the shots and also attract the best talent from around the world, and had a lot more money than others.
However, that "USA! USA!" image has ultimately undone us. Americans feel they are great because they are the USA, not that they should strive to be great because they are the USA. It's a bit like the student in the honors program at an American university I taught at, who was getting a solid B in my Japanese language class. He came to my office and with a straight face told me that because he was an honors student he needed me to change his grade to an A, because if he didn't get an A, he'd be out of the honors program. I suggested to him that the honors program was for people who got As, not that getting As was for people in the honors program. He didn't like that and stormed off. Then his advisor called me and chewed me out, saying "this kid is an A student!" "Um, not in my class he's not. He's doing pretty well, but not great. That's a B." This, I think, is the same confused thinking that holds the USA back. For a few decades it was able to skid along on the momentum of that head start in 1945, but without ever getting serious about any innovation or development, we're fading into irrelevance.
I'm pretty lefty (well, for the US--I live in Japan and here the same views make me right-of-center, as they do in most of the world--I consider myself a moderate conservative, but the US is so red-tinted that I look totally blue by comparison), so I have to point out that all of the projects you have pointed to are large-scale, publicly-funded projects. Most of the heavy R&D lifting anywhere has to be done with government funds, because you never know when the thing will be able to turn a profit. But if you do it right, it ends up creating lots of opportunities for the private sector to innovate around what the people have paid for, and that benefits everyone. Americans, with their (sorry) idiotic Ayn Rand Reaganite Libertarian mindset continually pat themselves on the back for their rugged individualism and individual responsibility for things that were gifts to them by the intelligent use of collective funds. That isn't to say that the private-sector doesn't innovate and doesn't sometimes do things that the govt. heavyweights can't, but, as an academic, I can tell you that virtually all fundamental research is paid for by governments. If you dig into virtually any invention or product, you'll be hard pressed not to find some concept, technique, or technology that wasn't at least partly paid for by government funds.
What am I saying? With the education system we have, all innovation is thanks to public funding.
I read a great quote, but I don't know who first said it, about Libertarians: "A libertarian is someone who looks out from the Empire State Building and thinks he's 1600 feet tall." --He totally ignores the blood, sweat, and tears shed by a multitude of forbears that put him up there and thinks it's all about him being so great and tall.
Unless we can get over our libertarian, anarchist fetishes, we can expect the future to be something that happens somewhere else, while we go back to just growing a bunch of corn for everyone, like we used to do.
I don't actually, however, think we can get over that, though. Americans are just too ignorant to even know that there's a problem. They are told they are great, so they're great. Even in the face of ever-mounting evidence that the US is mediocre at best in just about anything you care to measure, it will forever be the greatest country in the world in the minds of its citizens.
And that's why I live in Japan.
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting private industry into the act is a good thing, in my opinion, although I'm not so sanguine about government subsidies.
Like the nuclear industry, who do you think is going to end up insuring private space flight?
Getting rid of government subsidies isn't nearly as easy as we'd like to think.
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
What private company do you expect to fund the GPL and send probes to the outer solar system? Or Hubble, for that matter?
Yes, reasonable people can argue that LEO launches are so routine these days that they should be turned over to private industry. Fine. But there are tons of other NASA programs that have no profit potential whatsoever, yet tremendously enrich humanity culturally and scientifically. Because private industry [nytimes.com] would never fund these programs, NASA must. And we're better off for it.
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Err, the JPL, not the GPL.
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The rest of your post is just cliches, not practical arguments. Your life expectancy in a
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Re:libertarian (Score:4, Interesting)
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Sen. Shelby (R-AL) (Score:3, Informative)
Don't forget how Sen. Shelby (R-AL) behaved like a spoiled brat by placing holds on all Obama's appointees trying to extort $40B in pork. Any redirection of resources away from Alabama right now will help reduce pork long term.
Yay, mindless idealism! (Score:5, Insightful)
Libertarians are often ignorant of the fact that they effectively lobby against civilization. In terms of GDP per capita, life expectancy, innovation, and quality of life, the middle of the road socialist countries dominate worldwide. That's because if you shackle your society with continuous relearning of generational lessons, you can never move beyond basic progress.
If you'd like to refute the massive progress introduced by the Apollo program in the sixties, go ahead and make your case for a private corporation in the same time frame spending a good portion of the US GDP for pure research. Bell Labs is the only thing that even comes close.
A world of self regulation is just as absurd as a world with complete government control of production. Use the market for easily duplicated services that are not necessary. For everything else, try and use your brain. Mindless idealism nets nothing of value.
Summarized in economic terms by Adam Smith:
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
Who also believed
The legal rate... ought not be much above the lowest market rate. If the legal rate of interest in Great Britain, for example, was fixed so high as eight or ten per cent, the greater part of the money which was to be lent would be lent to prodigals and projectors [promoters of fraudulent schemes], who alone would be willing to give this high interest.A great part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it.
When the legal rate of interest, on the contrary is fixed but a very little above the lowest market rate, sober people are universally preferred, as borrowers, to prodigals and projectors. The person who lends money gets nearly as much interest from the former as he dares to take from the latter, and his money is much safer in the hands of the one set of people than in those of the other. A great part of the capital of the country is thus thrown in the hands in which it is most likely to be employed with advantage.
(from naked capitalism [nakedcapitalism.com])
GDP Per Capita [wikipedia.org]
Life Expectancy [wikipedia.org]
Quality of Life [wikipedia.org]
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OK ... here's my problem. It's OK, to say that morally the government should not do this. It's OK to say that private industry would do a better job. What bothers me is saying these two things right next to each other as if they were logically equivalent.
I'm not saying you're doing this here, it's just that these two kinds of positions are so often marshaled with each other without comment that I think it's important to note that one does not necessarily follow from the other. It might be morally wrong for
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Rather than run NASA like a public company and expecting returns all the time instantly we should look at the bigger picture. We rely a lot on space as it is with satellites and it was NASA we can thank for that. Yes, Russia did it first and it would have
Re:libertarian (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, because there is a shitload of private developed launchers that can bring cargo into LEO and beyond. Go libertarian!
SpaceX and Orbital immediately come to mind. Not to mention the Atlas rocket family.
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Informative)
Atlas doesn't count, it was designed by the US Air Force.
It was designed by Lockheed Martin.
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
It was designed by Lockheed Martin.
I don't know the specifics of this case, but if it was designed by Lockheed Martin on a government contract, that's not an indication that it would have been feasible to do so in the private sector.
Re:libertarian (Score:5, Interesting)
Why don't government contracts count as private sector?
What is missing here is the source of the R&D and how the rockets are being paid for. Most, nearly all of the rockets that NASA uses have been built and designed on what is called a cost-plus contract. In other words, all of the risk, all of the effort, and nearly all of the hard decisions were made by government employees. This is why government projects can go hugely over budget (including the Constellation program I might add) as the companies involved already have their profit in place. That is the "plus". Any costs that occur are held by the taxpayers, including performing major redesigns along the way.
I should add one more issue to consider with a pure "government contract": Any design is exclusive to the government and simply may not be used for any private citizen... at least not without a significant Act of Congress that explicitly permits its use elsewhere. In the past, there were investors who wanted to buy a couple complete Space Shuttles and had even found financing to build their own vehicle assembly building and launch pad facilities. They were simply told "No", they couldn't have them regardless of the price. It was exclusively the domain of NASA and NASA alone in terms of people going into space.
For something in the "private sector" to be genuinely in the private sector, the private company bears all of the R&D risk, all of the cost considerations, and the "government" is merely one of several different customers. That is the huge difference here, where these companies are quoting a figure, and are paid for delivery of goods. This is the huge difference between what has been offered in the past and what is offered now.
Under cost-plus contracts, there is absolutely no necessity to lower the cost of getting into space. Performance is the only driving issue, and if the project can be completed before the end of the current presidential administration. The Apollo mantra was "waste anything but time". That still, unfortunately, holds true even today including on the Constellation program, at least that is how it was operated.
Companies now have a legitimate reason to drive down costs with flat cost transportation services. A price is set, and companies can either make a bid to offer services or pass on the idea if they think it is to expensive. Competitive bidding may even start happening here, but more specifically if a company can drive down operations and development costs, that brings in extra profit to that company. The incentive to drive down costs is much more pronounced in this kind of purchasing environment.
That is the difference. If you or those supporting Constellation can't figure that one out, I can't help you any further.
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So don't use multi-stage and only use Orion in deep space?
The I remember talking around a plan for a Saturn rocket in the late 60s had several redundant steam-rockets. I don't know if that was actually what NASA was talking about. It appeared that by the late 70's we could have had a vertical takeoff and landing single stage to orbit Saturn class space craft with just water as an emission. Fully re-usable. It would have had the power and fuel to leave orbit with a vehicle which could return intact. If o
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They were just worried about having Nazis on the moon :) Considering the Sci-Fi stories they would have been reading as kids, can you really blame them?
Please, let's be real here. The even though ORTAG was a German effort, there was substantial diplomatic pressure brought to bear upon the government of Zaire strongly suggesting that some other diplomatic favors would be granted if they would not be buying such launch services.
Yes, you can really blame these guys. If you are talking Nazis on the Moon, it would be Von Braun, the SS officer in charge of the Saturn V program. He held the rank of Colonel in the SS too.
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without people trying for powered flight for 300 years, NASA COULD NOT put a man on the moon.
Out source space too... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the US will be exporting space exploration to China now as well.
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Don't confuse "putting humans in space to the deprecation or exclusion of other methods" with "exploring" it.
We need to perfect robots for terrestrial and off-world use far more than we need to send meat tourists (who still need physical barrier protection and robotic assistance to function) into space.
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China benefitted from US and European tech in its rise to power.
Should the US not do the same thing? It did during the Industrial Revolution.
We don't need to be ahead of China in everything, because we don't need to fight China now that EUSian colonialism in Asia is dead.
My private sector asteroid. (Score:2, Funny)
All I gotta say is the if I ever had my own private sector asteroid, and the liberals wanted to tax it after killing manned space flight and wrecking the future of America so some morons can gobble down their welfare government cheese, than I'm dropping the dino-killer right on their fricking heads.
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. . . I'm dropping the dino-killer right on their fricking heads.
Dr Evil . . . ? Is that you . . . ?
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an interesting moral position
I guess when you look at whatever you are using for currency, you see an intrinsic value in it. So much so, it justifies genocide.
On the other hand, our current economic problems, including apparently expensive entitlement programs, stems ultimately from the silly view that currency has intrinsic value. as far as I can tell, this, when argued competently, is some sort of psychological value thing, and I suspect is based on a rejection of the idea that the universe is lawful an
Types of conservatives (Score:5, Funny)
Conservative: n. 1) A person who holds to conservative principles or beliefs. 2) A person who agrees with other people who call themselves Conservatives, without regard to their actions, statements, beliefs, or principles. 3) A person who opposes anything that a non-Conservative (as defined by the first two definitions) says, does, or believes in.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Wrong! Conservatives of all types constantly debate and fight among inner circles.
There are conservatives that do that. They'd be among those that have retained my respect. Sometimes they even manage to change my lefty-liberal mind about things.
Then there are those conservatives who only know how to attack anybody who disagrees with them. They do not concede that anybody can honestly and intelligently hold contrary views: people with opinions they don't like are liars, stupid, or both. And they will never allow such a person the label "conservative", no matter how many conservative opini
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Then there are those conservatives who only know how to attack anybody who disagrees with them. They do not concede that anybody can honestly and intelligently hold contrary views: people with opinions they don't like are liars, stupid, or both.
You appear to be confusing conservatives with liberals.
Huge mistake. (Score:3, Insightful)
WSJ Debates the Pros and Cons of Private Space (Score:3, Informative)
Over at the WSJ, Peter Diamandis makes a case for private space [wsj.com], while naysayer Taylor Dinerman says he's seen this movie before, and argues the private sector simply is not up for the job [wsj.com].
that's not why they hate it (Score:5, Insightful)
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects.
Uh, no- all congresscritters hate it because NASA is giant cash-cow for the defense industry- companies like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. Hell hath no fury like a congresscritter who wants to stand on a platform in front of a defense factory in his or her district, come election time, and talk about how important the makers of the A43 Latrine Servicing Truck are to the defense and security of our great nation.
All those probes, satellites, etc? Built by defense contractors, carried up on rockets built by defense contractors, and very often launched from launch facilities owned by defense contractors.
The shuttle costs half a billion dollars per launch [nasa.gov], for example...and almost everything NASA does is outsourced to government contractors.
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Hell hath no fury like a congresscritter who wants to stand on a platform in front of a defense factory in his or her district, come election time, and talk about how important the makers of the A43 Latrine Servicing Truck are to the defense and security of our great nation.
Election ad: "Our current Representative, John Wilkes Booth, allowed our Military Slide Whistle factory to be closed, and jobs in our district to be lost. Our military is now dependent on slide whistles made in China.
This election, vote for Jack D. Ripper. He will make sure that cuts are made elsewhere, not here!"
Rational decision based on irrational constraints (Score:5, Insightful)
If conservatives want to have a civil war over the space program, then fine. The simple fact is that the new space program is the most rational allocation of the woefully inadequate NASA funds that politicians are willing to throw at them. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a NASA engineer, I agree that it is a shame we are shutting down all our manned launch programs for the time being, but completing the Ares project would have meant shuttering just about every other research & development effort. NASA's most valuable resource is their innovative scientists and engineers--it really is a waste to have most of NASA's budget going to routine space flight tasks.
The new budget cuts manned launches but redirects those funds to long-term research that will make future manned launches both more productive and less expensive. Extensive research into propulsion, navigation, life support, and self-sustainability will be carried out using inexpensive robotic missions and the International Space Station.
If the Republicans want someone to blame, then they should blame nearly every politician since the end of the Cold War for not pushing for more NASA funding and relevant priorities. And no, pork barrel projects don't count, only money that can be distributed based on scientific merit and technological feasibility really makes a difference.
The bottom line is the political climate makes it impossible to properly fund anything, including space travel. If you want to change that, tell your congresspeople to increase funding and support the scientific priorities--not pork projects--we need to make real and tangible progress in the quest to explore the universe
Re:Rational decision based on irrational constrain (Score:4, Insightful)
The other priority should be a campaign to combat superstition and promote naturalistic views of the world. Turn on TV you get talk shows promoting psychics and alternative medicines. Open up a phone book and it's full of Chiropractors and Acupuncturists.
How can you expect to make an investment in sciences and develop a sound technological basis for the future of mankind when only 40% of the population believes in a naturalistic explanation of it's own existence?
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Uhm... no. The US government should not be in the business of propaganda (for whatever the reason). The idea is good - but many ideas with good intentions (like this) ends up really bad.
PS, there are a lot of other silliness that people should stop. One example of this is 30+ guys dressed up like nancies in kevlar suits chasing an eggy-ball while 50,000 people have nothing better to do than to w
Space is critical (Score:5, Insightful)
I always love debates on the space program. Lots of big ideas, but what is missing is leadership. What made NASA so successful in the 1960s and 1970s was that there was a clear objective: put a man on the moon. Build a reusable launch system. Put up a space station. The problem is that there are no real national goals with space, so it is exceedingly difficult to sell, say a heavy launch vehicle. Put some goals in, and suddenly money becomes easy because people buy into the grand plan. Say the goal is to put a permanent colony on the moon - or to put a man on Mars. Suddenly there is context and justification for spending, inventions to invent, and what is science suddenly turns into applied science.
Our politicians need to lead, not look for the people to lead them when it comes to space. An ambitious space program is just what is needed.
Re:Space is critical (Score:4, Interesting)
Space exploration has been largely aimless since then because it is largely pointless, except as a matter of pure scientific curiosity, and a more-palatable way of keeping aerospace corporations and engineers on welfare. The one slice of space work that isn't largely pointless, near-earth satellites of various sorts, has been humming right along. Everything else has sort of meandered; because it is competing for funds and focus with less pointless projects. There is a virtually infinite supply of projects that satisfy pure scientific curiosity(not that the public has much of that), and a very long list of projects with more plausible payoffs in the short and medium(and arguably even long) term. It's frankly surprising that NASA gets as much as they do.
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What made NASA so successful in the 1960s and 1970s was that there was a clear objective: put a man on the moon.
I disagree. That 'clear objective' led to a system totally designed to meet that objective which was cancelled even before the last man walked on the Moon... the objective was achieved, but nothing lasting was left behind.
NASA's work in the aeronautical realm doesn't seem to have many 'clear objectives', but it's almost certainly been far more beneficial in the long term than anything they've done in manned spaceflight. If government has any role in manned spaceflight it should be in researching new technol
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I'll say it again (Score:2, Insightful)
American Manned Space Program is dead, dead, dead (Score:3, Insightful)
No two ways about it. The shuttle is on its last legs, Orion/Ares is mis-begotten, and anyone who thinks that private enterprise can deliver a man-rated system in the near future is delusional.
Give it up...we're in this position because of lack of intelligent investment over the Clinton and Bush administrations.
'Man rating' is bullcrap (Score:4, Informative)
anyone who thinks that private enterprise can deliver a man-rated system in the near future is delusional.
So you're seriously claiming that a private company can't build a system which kills its crew less often than every fifty flights? Because based on the shuttle's record, 'only' killing the crew 2% of the time is what 'man rating' means to NASA.
And before you respond, you might like to consider that Delta already has about a 98% success rate over the last twenty years and so far capsules with escape rockets have a 100% success rate in saving the crew. Stick a capsule on a Delta with an escape rocket and you're already more 'man-rated' than the shuttle (and yes, I do know you would need some minor mods to ensure that the capsule could escape safely at all points during the flight).
whatever (Score:2, Offtopic)
I think it is naive to suggest that Obama's space plan started this "civil war". In case you have been living under a rock, there has been an ongoing disagreement between conservatives and the virtuous neoconservatives and their ambitions for national greatness.
It's easy to spot the *real* conservatives (Score:4, Insightful)
They're the ones cheering at the cancellation of Pork In Space.
I'd certainly like to see a viable human spaceflight program, building our way out to Luna, Mars, and beyond. Problem is, Constellation wasn't it. Constellation was treated as an excuse to pay aerospace giants megatons of money to develop a new launcher which would - at best - just barely achieve its aims. NASA appears to no longer be capable of serious launcher development, because the industry lobbyists own the politicians, and the politicians own the engineers specifying how the industry's products must perform. I am dead certain NASA engineers can do fine, fine work, but they haven't been free to do what they do best.
With the new approach, this counterproductive cycle is at least interrupted and hopefully broken.
It Could (Have) Work(ed) (Score:2)
The only real positive reconfiguration of the space program would be as a stair-step program, each step dependent on those before. As some criticisms of Obama's plans state, this would take quite a while to accomplish. But as time goes on, the program design becomes more necessary to maintain and it's continued future more assured. Twenty to thirty years is a long time? Only to those unfamiliar with planning for the future of the species in the context of the universe. Even for them, a comparison of 40 year
Conservatives? Who cares? (Score:4, Informative)
Why are we even talking about what conservatives think? The GOP has amply demonstrated that it has no interest in governing the country in good faith. Their entire program is:
Any conservative argument needs to be critically examined in light of the question, "how does this allow the GOP to continue its looting?" Just look at Chicago economics, Reagan tax cuts, Bush's imperialism, and flagrant anti-union rhetoric. It's not made in good faith.
Conservatives have no interest in the real welfare of the country. This little spat about NASA is merely a disagreement among the foxes about whether to go through the front or the back of the hen-house. It should be an awfully strong hint that the rest of the world is governed by parties to the left of even the left here, and is going better for it.
Can we please stop wasting our time and giving attention to these right-wing lunatics and their pernicious ideas?
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This is exactly why the country has become so polarized as of late: rather than simply disagreeing with the viewpoints of others and then discussing ways to find common ground, people who hold to strict left- or right-wing tenets simply dismiss members of the opposition as being "lunatics" and having "pernicious" ideas.
This has the short-term benefit of not having to address real problems with one's favored agenda (e.g., trying to provide health care for everyone or trying to overthrow unfavorable foreign
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This is exactly why the country has become so polarized as of late: rather than simply disagreeing with the viewpoints of others and then discussing ways to find common ground
As far as I can see, the reason why America has become so polarized is that conservatives have finally realised that if you compromise with liberals they just come back with the same demands for greater state control a few years later and continue until you've compromised yourself into giving them everything they originally wanted.
When your opponent sees compromise as a sign of weakness, no compromise is the only rational solution.
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Re:Conservatives? Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.thefreespeechzone.net/images/charts/bush_deficit_graphic.gif now makes sense
Disclaimer: I don't believe that the GOP's incompetence is intentional.
Re:Conservatives? Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're confusing individual liberty with social justice.
It's not possible to enjoy personal liberty when you are worked to the bone, discarded at a whim, and can't afford medical care for your children. It's not possible to appreciate persona liberty when you're not educated, and it's not possible to rise out of those circumstances when economic opportunity is inherited. Without regulation, capitalism reverts to its natural state: liberty for the very wealthy and feudalism for everyone else, and Republicans have opposed regulation of markets for over a century.
If you really care about maximizing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you'll support policies that give everyone a chance to achieve these things. In the process, you'll be amazed by how much people "contribute" in return.
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Are you really equating progressive social policies with slavery?
Unsustainable (Score:2)
They complain about spending (Score:4, Insightful)
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects.
They complain one day about out of control government spending, so when Obama cuts an expensive program that isn't working, they complain about that. Those fiscal conservatives in the Alabama congressional delegation are having a collective heart attack trying to hang on to their pork projects.
Going back to the moon was a stupid idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Going back to the moon on chemical rockets was a stupid idea. If we had a better technology that allowed, say, a permanent base with a hundred people, it might be worth doing. But just repeating Apollo is pointless.
Worse, it would probably fail. Apollo had top people, including many experienced aircraft engineers who'd designed many successful aircraft, and, of course, the best German rocket engineers. That pool of people is gone. As Ben Rich, once head of Lockheed's "Skunk Works" (SR-71, stealth aircraft, etc.), wrote, "I worked on 22 airplanes in my career. Today's engineer is lucky to work on one."
The choice? (Score:2)
From what I understand, the choice is that we can either keep flying the Space Shuttle, past its design lifetime and with its two fatal crashes in its history, or we can use someone else's rocket and work on developing a superior replacement. Is this even a choice? Who in their right mind would choose the former?
Too late (Score:2)
I
Very misleading summary (Score:4, Informative)
"The Obama space proposal, which seeks to enable a commercial space industry for transportation to and from low Earth orbit
So far true, although there are other parts of the proposal.
while it cancels space exploration beyond LEO,
This is just plain incorrect. It cancels one particular program, which was widely regarded as badly mismanaged and possessing many inherent problems. The Constellation/Ares program also suppressed any research into technologies which weren't seen as immediately relevant to the specific lunar return scheme the former NASA administrator had in mind, with several perfectly good programs getting canceled to pay for the increasingly overbudget and behind schedule Constellation program. It replaces it with a plan initially focused on developing the technologies critical for sustainable exploration of Mars and the rest of the inner solar system.
has sparked a kind of civil war among conservatives.
Well, it's sparked a civil war between those conservative who either have a financial interest in the status quo or are stuck in a cold war-style lust for repeating Apollo. Other conservatives though, such as former House speaker (and National Space Society board member) Newt Gringrich, and former House Science & Technology committee chair Robert S. Walker, have enthusiastically endorsed NASA's new plan [washingtontimes.com], and consider it one of the few positive things to come out of the Obama administration.
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects.
Uh, strawman much? This isn't a "retreat from the high frontier" -- NASA's getting a significant budget increase, and the new plan is much better suited for engaging in meaningful space exploration than the old one could ever have, even if it hadn't been going drastically overbudget.
Other conservatives like the commercial space part of the Obama policy and tend to gloss over the cancellation of space exploration or even denigrate the Constellation program as 'unworkable' or 'unsustainable.'"
They denigrate it as 'unworkable' and 'unsustainable' because it quite simply was. It had already spent $9 billion just to try to produce yet another medium-lift rocket (the US has had at least two medium-lift rockets already in regular operation for many years now), which only passed its preliminary design review several years late through some fairly blatant bending of the readiness/safety criteria. Independent analysis by the Augustine Committee found that the current program wouldn't even produce its medium-lift booster until 2017-2019, and wouldn't produce a lunar landing until sometime in the late 2030s. At that point all you'd have is an Apollo repeat without any new technological capabilities, since the plan was specifically devised to avoid any new tech development. That seems pretty much by definition 'unworkable' and 'unsustainable.' NASA's new plan is far superior by pretty much any possible metric, with the possible exception of not delivering as much money in the short-term to Alabama.
No plan = never get there (Score:2)
I love the idea of doing research that needs to be done for deep space exploration, but having NO plan except "do more research until we think we can get there cheaper and faster" with no specific timeline, no specific goals and no inspiration will NOT get us into deep space. What it WILL do is make NASA a big bloated funding agency with no direct expertise in putting people into space.
Also, let's not forget that you can make plans and test all you want but if you really want to go someplace in space you ne
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
killing of manned space flight
When did this happen? Last I heard, a NASA project that was even more horrendously delayed and over-budget than usual got canned. There's nothing to stop another, better, project from taking it's place.
Or for, you know, any other country with manned craft from launching them.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh please.
Eisenhower was a centrist, and for that matter so was Nixon. If either of them were alive today running for office, they'd have teabaggers screaming "you lie" at every event and fabricating evidence that they are actually communist spies born in foreign countries who hate "the troops" almost as much as they hate apple pie.
Furthermore, liberals and the Democrats (NOT the same thing) are all for building and maintaining roads... perhaps you've noticed that a huge chunk of the previous stimulus packa
Re:Space exploration is conservative. (Score:5, Informative)
perhaps you've noticed that a huge chunk of the previous stimulus package went into just that
No, I haven't noticed that unless by "huge chunk" you mean 3%. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJAoR5GECKWo [bloomberg.com]
Re:Space exploration is conservative. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice job of selecting the denominator to give you the result you wanted to report.
The total set aside for highway improvements: 30 billion.
Amount of that to be spent in 2009-2010 : 5 billion.
Now I don't know who thinks that five billion dollars on top of the huge amount being spent for showcase infrastructure projects (pork) isn't a lot of money, but I sure wouldn't call them "fiscally conservative".
Now the thirty billion could be spent faster, but I've seen what happens when government is spending money like it's burning a hole in its pocket. It stinks. It's an invitation to corruption and boondoggle and crony capitalism.
After 9/11, and after the anthrax attacks, I was working in a field that could be related (in a very tenuous way) to bioterrorism security. The Feds wanted lot of money spent, and *fast*. Nobody even *knew* how to spend that much money that fast on the problems they were supposed to be solving. But certain operators sure knew how to build a machine to consume money. You set up a subsidiary or company, hire lobbyists, hire cheap contractors (often outsourced after a layer or two to really cheap labor) and throw together some total BS project that you expected to disappear as soon as the mania subsided. It was the bottom feeders who were ready and willing with "shovel ready" projects.
What did we get for all that money spent so quickly? Nothing. The only people who could absorb money that fast were the dishonest ones who were specialized in sucking up money when it had to be spent faster than anybody could manage responsibly. People who were working in fields for years who just needed *little* things, a couple thousand dollars or maybe even ten thousand dollars were frozen out while consultants with no actual domain knowledge absorbed hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions for BS projects.
Spending the money more slowly makes sense for several reasons. From the good government standpoint, it discourages the most rapacious freebooter contractors. It encourages people with sustainable projects to take the time to compete with the bottom feeders. If anything less jam today and more tomorrow would have been better.
Re:Space exploration is conservative. (Score:5, Insightful)
Our federal budget is 4.5 trillion this year. Why is NASA's ~20 billion so hard to pay for when we seem to have little trouble finding enough to spend about 2.5 trillion on entitlements yearly? Tell ya what; end the agricultural subsidies and we'd free up more than enough to pay for NASA. Maybe then we'd see more actual sugar used instead of that HFCS crap.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree... the one thing we do need free trade on is sugar. We can't produce enough of it in the US for our demand so we should be importing it.
Re:Space exploration is conservative. (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore, liberals and the Democrats (NOT the same thing)
For someone who demands such a nuanced interpretation of liberal/democrat, you sure seem ignorant of what the tea party actually is. The tea party is a group of people, some crazy and some not, who are united by a desire for a sound fiscal policy. They are not happy with the Bush era policies (the people who are happy with that are the die hard Republicans, not the tea partiers; not the same thing) They also like dressing up in costume, which, if you live in San Francisco at least, shouldn't be too foreign to a liberal. In fact, your very next quote sounds exactly like it could come from a tea party:
The bottom line is that the current budget has far too many massive mandatory expenditures (read: interest on the debt accrued during the past 8 years, Medicare [especially Part D], Social Security), two very expensive foreign wars (which just this past year went onto the books rather than being funded with supplementals... we're a lot more in debt because now we're actually counting ALL of the money we spend, not just half of it), and an enormous revenue shortfall.
Now, I am not a tea-partier, I am just someone who enjoys observing politics, which brings me to my next point, has anyone else noticed that liberals and conservatives are sounding more and more like each other? Not just this guy, but if you ignore the partisan fighting of congress in the last year, for example, and go back to the election, both McCain and Obama (and Clinton) had healthcare plans that were very similar. Same with Bush's and Obama's stimulus plans and auto company bailouts. I think it's also safe to say that almost everyone in the US resented being deceived about Iraq's WMD, and also that nearly everyone wants to stop terrorists from attacking the US if we can.
I have a theory that both parties have a strong motivation to emphasize our differences and divide us (they have to, why would you vote for one if you can't see any difference between him and the other), but in reality there is more similarity between Americans than there are differences between liberals and conservatives.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then where were they during the Bush era?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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I was under the impression that unemployment was paid for by the "employers" (i.e. the employees don't see this part of their compensation on their paycheck), though i'll confess I don't really understand the system.
Where are you getting these savings from, though? It's well and good to slash everything by 20%, but since you're not proposing canceling those programs for idealogical reasons, you must have some reason why you believe they can accomplish the same goals with less funding.
Re: (Score:2)
School lunches and SSI Disability... so you want kids who's parents are too poor to get food for lunch to suffer more in school than they are due to their social problems, increasing the number of poor in teh country due to lack of education and you want people that are disabled to not be able to survive?
Unemployment should be modified some... people just need to get more Entrepreneurial IMHO, as for food stamps... I think they are necessary but welfare in general needs to be redesigned to transition people
USA! USA! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, please ignore the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war industry.
And hey, let's throw out every social service program and see how our society looks when kids are starving in the streets. I get fucking ill every time some blowhard claims to be patriotic while they lobby to throw their countrymen in the street so they can continue to have their war toys.
How about we just return tax levels - literally 4 to 5 points higher at incomes above 90,000 a year - to the Clinton days, and balance the
Re:Easy enough to balance the budget (Score:4, Insightful)
See, the conservative mindset is that lack of success is a moral failure on the part of the failed. If someone is down on his luck, he must have done something wrong, and therefore must be punished. It's really a modern breed of Calvinism, the religion tenant that God has pre-destinated certain people for heaven and others for hell, and that he demonstrates His grace toward the chosen by handing them with worldly success.
It's a wicked, wicked idea. Society should be built around the idea of helping everyone succeed, not rewarding an arbitrarily-chosen lucky few while punishing everyone else for things that aren't their fault.
"Whatever is, is right [blupete.com]" is an evil idea.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cutting 20% from disability when you already don't have a health care system in place sentences a lot of the disabled to death. Often times there isn't much they can do about their situation, so putting pressure on them won't be helpful. Same with many of the welfare programs.
Cu
Re: (Score:2)
Also, his "they were in charge" cry is tiresome since congress has been in democratic control since 2006. I saw one poll just after the 2008 election asking people which party controlled congress. Around 80% of those who voted democratic responded "the republicans."
Of course, if the tables were turned, I'm not sure those who vote republican would have any clearer idea of how the government operates. It just demonstrates how people craft reality to meet their own beliefs.
Re: (Score:2)
The idea that manned missions (don't call sending humans "exploration" we can do that longer, better, and more often with remotely operated systems) are what to do before perfecting machines that man will _require_ anyway is silly.
Let's compare space exploration to the other high-tech human pastime, which is war. It is cheaper and safer to remove humans to safe operating locations and send UAVs on air missions. UAVs have long loiter time, and no big deal if one is destroyed. Operators can swap out at home s
You just described Keynesian economics (Score:2)
Here is a bunch of money, more than you usually get. I want you to spend it, but I don't want you to do anything with it.
Go build a statue, a pyramid, anything, as long as it's not useful. Classical Keynesian economics.
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I don't know which conservatives you've been talking to, but I'll bet you haven't taken a look at Jerry Pournelle. [jerrypournelle.com] He not only wants to see us back in space ("Growing up, I always knew I'd live to see the first man on the Moon. I didn't know I'd also live to see the last one.") he wants to see the US offer an X Prize of about $10 billion or so fo
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Why the sudden love for private industry?
Because when they want to cut NASA's budget again, cancelling contracts with private companies is much easier than laying off tens of thousands of government employees.
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I honestly can't tell whether you're being sincere or ironic.