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White House Insiders, "Obama aims to Ax Moon Mission"
- Thread starter bachikarn
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Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
Meanwhile, the armed forces have a budget of several hundred billions per year to spend on redtaped projects whos only auditing is done by congressmen the military suppliers hand over piles of money.
All is good in the land of the free.
All is good in the land of the free.
Escape Goat
Member
Fix America, then the moon.
Incognito said:
That cash/debt is only a small part of the total GM bailout. Like your link mentioned, 13%. The rest was spent buying ownership of the company. It'll take a miracle to get much of that money back. Plus, those are plans to pay it back. Who knows if they will be able to.
I usually criticize Obama, but i'm not going to here. I would love for us to go to the moon, i want us to, but if we can't afford it then we can't.
Though he could have tried to take some of that 700 billion from the stimulus and put it towards this, it would have only been a fraction of the stimulus bill.
Though he could have tried to take some of that 700 billion from the stimulus and put it towards this, it would have only been a fraction of the stimulus bill.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Sad that a president has chosen to preside over the end of American Manned Space Flight. NASA's budget is nothing int eh grand scheme of things, and the creation of new technology produced thousands of jobs. People also need to stop saying "We can't afford it" NASA's budget is nothing in the grand scheme of things. The entire Apollo program which developed everything needed to go to the moon from scratch cost about $130 billion AFTER inflation.
Also why does he want to develop a new rocket instead of the Ares, which as already had a successful space flight. THAT makes no sense to me. Lets trash the rocket to get us to the moon we have in development and start from scratch?
Thankfully there's a chance this part of the budget won't be approved. Many states have large stakes in NASA and rocket building in the form of jobs, and those congressmen and senators probably wont let them go without a fight.
And I'll say it again, using private companies at this time is useless. No private company is anywhere close to getting people in orbit. Space tourism is a glorified ballistic flight.
Also why does he want to develop a new rocket instead of the Ares, which as already had a successful space flight. THAT makes no sense to me. Lets trash the rocket to get us to the moon we have in development and start from scratch?
Thankfully there's a chance this part of the budget won't be approved. Many states have large stakes in NASA and rocket building in the form of jobs, and those congressmen and senators probably wont let them go without a fight.
And I'll say it again, using private companies at this time is useless. No private company is anywhere close to getting people in orbit. Space tourism is a glorified ballistic flight.
All nations waste money to a certain degree. If a nation is going to waste money anyway, then space exploration is indeed the best way to waste it. Pure science and technology without a corporate bottom line in sight for consideration. Great things happen in such a working environment. For a brief, beautiful slice of time America was known the NASA nation first and foremost and perhaps coincidentally it was a great time for your country. Now the States are known for military projection and your domestic difficulties loom everywhere.
That's the real waste.
That's the real waste.
Baki
Member
bachikarn said:
That is smart. Save loads of moolah for more important stuff like free health.
jett said:
Actually, they HAD to bail out the banks or EVERYONE would have been screwed. The common joe still has not come to grips with this.
Did you think they liked giving out that money! They had to do it to save the economy which affects everyone!
Escape Goat
Member
Baki said:
Oh dear.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
bachikarn said:
Was Ares ever intended to bring men to the ISS? ISS was supposed to come down in a few years not 2020 as obama is now hoping.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
My mistake then, I thought the plan was to take the ISS down before ares was ready for manned flgihts. Oh well.
It would still be more effective than starting from scratch I imagine. and any priority on the ISS is a waste, the thing is just a big floating PR platform. Experiments could have been performed on other space flights, or a much smaller station. Only meaningful thing that the ISS gave us is info on how to build stuff in space.
It would still be more effective than starting from scratch I imagine. and any priority on the ISS is a waste, the thing is just a big floating PR platform. Experiments could have been performed on other space flights, or a much smaller station. Only meaningful thing that the ISS gave us is info on how to build stuff in space.
akachan ningen
Member
Fuck the moon.
Dosia said:
landing on that "big ass rock" and possibly setting up a base, would be one of the biggest moments in the history of mankind, and save the country billions upon billions of dollars in the long term future (if the base is made).
Obama seems to not be thinking about the future, and only thinking about re-election.
Don't really understand some of the sentiments here. Why are some here considering this the "end of manned space flight"? The article in the OP clearly says this is not the case(assuming the rumors they report are true).
Also, what is with this false dichotomy that gets thrown around every time space exploration is discussed? "Spend money here!" That isn't the choice being made! Overall NASA accounts for one half of one percent of the federal budget. The impact of completely eliminating NASA and spending every last penny of its budget on whatever else would be minimal. Stop doing this. The money spent on any NASA project benefits us as they employ thousands and thousands of people.
Also, what is with this false dichotomy that gets thrown around every time space exploration is discussed? "Spend money here!" That isn't the choice being made! Overall NASA accounts for one half of one percent of the federal budget. The impact of completely eliminating NASA and spending every last penny of its budget on whatever else would be minimal. Stop doing this. The money spent on any NASA project benefits us as they employ thousands and thousands of people.
"We choose not to go to the moon. We choose not to go to the moon in this decade and not do the other things, not because they are hard, but because not doing so is easy."
It seems like we're unwilling to take some risk with space exploration, especially when the NASA budget is so small. Outside of the space station, it seems very little has been accomplished with space exploration in the past 30 years, and I feel we have yet to surpass the accomplishment of the original moon landings.
It seems like we're unwilling to take some risk with space exploration, especially when the NASA budget is so small. Outside of the space station, it seems very little has been accomplished with space exploration in the past 30 years, and I feel we have yet to surpass the accomplishment of the original moon landings.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
scurker said:
It's not that a lot hasn't been accomplished on the space station its that very very little was accomplished just because it was done on the ISS. A smaller, cheaper station could have been made for the purpose of long term experiments and other experiments could have been done on the space shuttle.
Ideally a space station would be made to work as a launching platform to get to the moon and maybe even mars. it would save on a lot of fuel since you would not need to launch the vehicle every time from earth.
Would they even get that far?teddyboi said:
If one nation looked like they had a viable chance of colonising another planet, I reckon the other nations would put the kaibosh on it. It'd need to be a global incentive to avoid serious bickering and fighting before they even broke ground on the moon.
The Orange
Member
Obama just wanted to ask about the Moon Mission.
wayward archer
Member
If you really want to go to the moon, have congress pass a bill that creates a space branch of the military and start the bidding on setting up a giant moon cannon pointed at the earth. We'll be on the moon within 12 months of that bill being signed.
A larger space station supporting a few dozen people is a lot more feasible (and profitable... space tourism, satellite maintenance and recycling, etc), we can use the ISS to help construct it (while it's still up), and multiple countries as well as private companies would likely want to help foot that bill. Not to mention would serve as a perfect launch point for moon missions or deeper space exploration.
A larger space station supporting a few dozen people is a lot more feasible (and profitable... space tourism, satellite maintenance and recycling, etc), we can use the ISS to help construct it (while it's still up), and multiple countries as well as private companies would likely want to help foot that bill. Not to mention would serve as a perfect launch point for moon missions or deeper space exploration.
Mr. B Natural
Member
If we go to the moon again, nobody would really care. We're too wrapped up in crap like avatar and video games to appreciate the dull reality of reality. It's not gonna boost our patriotism or unite the union like the last moon launch did, either. The only thing that does that now-a-days is a common enemy.
This would be an acceptable compromise at any other time, but when we're running over a trillion dollar annual deficit (over 1,000 billions, to put it in perspective), we could fund this NASA project 300 times over. This is penny-pinching for no good reason IMO. So much for the push for science. 
PEACE.
PEACE.WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Yeah, everybody agrees the government spends too much money, but nobody wants THEIR favorite industry/project's funding cut.
Bunch of fucking hypocrites.
Bunch of fucking hypocrites.
It depresses me sometimes to think that our generation will never see any major milestones in space exploration. At this rate, we'll never live to see man on Mars. Our parents, unless you were born in the 90s, got to see man walk on the moon (allegedly). We're not even going to get that much.
B.K. said:
Plenty of awesome things will happen in our lifetime (and already have), they just won't be through manned space flight. We're constantly building new telescopes and making great leaps in how far and what we can see in our universe. Crazy, cool shit is discovered every day and major milestones will be set, it'll just be done with robotics and technology instead of costly and dangerous manned missions.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
scurker said:
fixed
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
KHarvey16 said:
That's possibly the worst analogy I've ever heard in my life.
You make it seem like the 5 billion dollars is a trivial amount of money. Is is substantially less than the money 700 billion paid to banks by Bush/Obama? Yes, but it is still no small amount of money.
That money is better allocated elsewhere.
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