Senators Demand NASA Continue Spending On Ares 152
FleaPlus writes "Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL and ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee handling NASA funding) and Robert Bennett (R-UT) have added an amendment onto an emergency spending bill for military operations in Afghanistan, reiterating that NASA must continue spending its funds on the Constellation program, particularly the medium-lift Ares I rocket. Alabama and Utah have strong ties to Ares/Constellation contractors, and both senators are opposed to the new direction for NASA, with Shelby describing it as a 'death march' for US spaceflight and criticizing the emphasis on commercial rockets."
NASA is Military Spending (Score:3, Interesting)
The focus on commercial spaceflight is right and proper because that's the only way things will move forward. Creating another Apollo craft forty to fifty years on to hop, skip and jump into space simply isn't going to work. We're at a stage in spaceflight right now where the Wright brothers were with flight, and we've been in that position for fifty years.
Spaceflight has not turned into the everyday occurence that everyone thought it would around the time of the moon landing. Hell, 2001 was nine fucking years ago. I still can't get over that. Frankly, progress has been a failure.
Re:Science and Politics (Score:3, Interesting)
You'd get more employment (and "stimulate" the economy more) if that same amount of pork was used simply to pay people at the bottom of the economic ladder to work on various things (perhaps even to go to school). But then you wouldn't be able to direct the money to your favorite political donors.
And I never suggested otherwise. I was describing the full motive. It's not just for corporate welfare. Until we root out corporatism, the majority of the money WILL go to the corporations. Given that, the politician's job is not to fight corporatism (although I'd like to see that, it only works if enough of them are united, and good luck with that) but to steer it towards the benefit of their constituents.
Yes, I find the whole thing alternately angers and depresses me, too.
Re:Pork! Pork! Pork! (Score:5, Interesting)
hahahaha! you certainly drank the "wah on tarrah" kool-aid
you imagine the troops haven't been hostage for the last eight years, using their blood to grease the skids for the defense contracting industry and for a political rallying point? that's ALL they've been bleeding and dying for! That's all this "war" is about.
Here's some reality for you. The "Taliban" that hosted bin Laden is long gone, today the "Taliban" is any disgruntled afghan with a gun. We dropped the ball on Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, put it on the back burner, and instead went for war in Iraq to further defense contractor profit enhancement and gain another neocon agenda rallying point.
We need to drop the budget to zero on these pointless wars now. budget be damned, indeed.
Re:Science and Politics (Score:2, Interesting)
You can take Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh -- and Sarah Palin while you're at it, please -- and shove them up Rosanne Barr's ass.
(Not that I hate Rosanne Barr or anything, I just think there's room / she wouldn't mind.)
Chang'e we can believe in (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is the current direction of the space program ... in China
Chang'e 2 - 2010, second lunar orbiter
Chang'e 3 - 2013, lunar lander
Chang'e 4 - 2017, return lunar sample to earth
Chang'e 5 - 2020-2025 - manned mission
Japan, India and Russia may also be competing for the 2020-2025 moon race.
Admendmen is about spending, nothing else (Score:3, Interesting)
So I almost lost my breakfast over this one. The amendment doesn't say word one about getting anything useful, only that the spending continue. The legislators in question don't seem to care if the money spent returns anything worthwhile, only that we keep spending. Barf! No wonder everyone hates politicians.
Your country is too big (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem is that your country is too big. Really.
I live in a lot smaller [wikipedia.org] country. We do suffer from the same problem to some extent: The Keskusta party [wikipedia.org] has its base of support in the countryside so it tries as hard as it can to "decentralize" resources (people, governmental institutions, services, etc.) away from the cities which we living in the said cities consider quite a nuisance. (Keskusta is one of the three largest parties in Finland yet it only has 3 out of 85 politicians in the city council of the capital)
But even so... It is a lot less of a problem in this scale. People move, have relatives in different cities, often visit different parts of the country on vacations, know a lot of people all around the country... It is never completely "My benefit against theirs" kind of situation. Anything that somehow benefits people 200 miles away might still benefit me somehow. And if it doesn't, there is a pretty good chance that it does benefit someone I know. (And conversely: If unemployment rates would skyrocket in some areas or such, it could well hurt someone I know)
Now, I imagine that this is not the case when a country is the size of a continent. (which is pretty much what EU is turning into) If I lived in the USA, I would probably want to vote for a party that... Hmm. I am a liberal leftist and could never vote a party like the republicans, yet I would want a lot less involvement from the federal government and... Damn. I've never truly realized how fucked up the two party system is. I might just not vote.
Re:!Pork (Score:5, Interesting)
It gives us an American manned launch capability in the near future, versus the complete unknown of relying on the private sector.
Wrong. Constellation was facing huge technical issues, none of which had known fixes. And isn't relying on the private sector what the US should be doing? I mean, it's what I hear from every red-blooded republican.
It's a tiny investment; Nasa needs about $6 billion a year to keep Constellation going.
Is that the current R&D, or is that its projected operating cost? And considering that the NASA budget stands currently at $20B, $6B is anything but a tiny investment. In fact, it is the single largest component of the budget, on par with the current entire Space budget.
The country needs a manned space program.
No, it does not. The space shuttle has stopped being exciting long ago. I got a bigger kick out of the Mars Rover than any Space Shuttle launch in the last 10 years (save the Save the Hubble missions).
We could easily cut a trillion or so dollars from our national budget and not even notice the difference.
Really? I mean, REALLY? You could cut 25% of the Federal Budget without there being riots in the entire country? I'm sorry, that's just delusional. As a matter of fact, you can look at the hubbub that came from just cutting 0.1% of the budget through the nixing of Constellation program, and see that there is never any cut that is going to be unopposed.