Space Station Funding Safe - For Now. 113
SRMoore writes "Some good news from Congress today. Looks like the International Space Station will get its funding this year. (At least from Congress)" Well, there are plenty of bloody battles to be fought before next year's budget is finally passed, but according to the CNN article SRMoore pointed us to, the House vote in favor of funding the space station was 298 to 121, so construction will probably continue for at least another year.
Not Quite Safe Yet... (Score:1)
[And now for my rant]
I see some very differing opinions out there on the usefulness/worthieness of the space station. I have to say that personally I think it's worth the cost. With the science advances made in space and the research potential of the station it's well worth the cost. Not to mention that it will provide experience for the eventual move off the planet.
Yes I know that sounds really far fetched, and I'm not saying it's going to happen today, tomorrow, or even this century. But at the rate that we are destroying the environment, Earth won' tbe habitable for much longer.
Re:Finaly ! (Score:1)
Re:Pork Barrel Bullshit! (Score:1)
If they had to spend more time talking about and working on each spending measure, they would have less time to spend our money. With that reduced amount if time they'd have to concentrate only on what is important.
"Whoops, we didn't have time this year to pass the funding measure for the Hatian clog dancing lesbian thesbian educational fund, well maybe next year."
LK
Re:Kill the station. (Score:1)
Actually, you have a good point in the sense that space-based research is important. Probably the solution is to form a University-based consortium to handle space research. Perhaps tear off the research part of NASA into that, and send the other part into the military.
A university consortium wouldn't be perfect, but it would (probably) be far more efficient than the pure political entity that NASA has become. While Universities have a lot of politics, they wouldn't nearly be as subject to the pork-barrel pressures.
As far as exploration goes, that probably should be left to private enterprise. It's very difficult to make the case that the added benefits research-wise outweight the costs. The only way human exploration is going to be cost effective is if their is a profit-motive involved (probably through manufacturing; tourism probably won't pay enough).
Re:shafting NASA to pay for college (Score:1)
Okay, educated public is one thing. But colleges aren't the place to do it for most people. How many people do you remember from your school days who just drifted through school, not really caring about learning, just because their parents told them they need a college degree to get anywhere in life?
Colleges right now are full of students that can be broken down into three categories
For group 1, I really wish the US could develop respectable vocational schools. The american public has too much of a derogatory opinion of these schools for it to ever happen, but it's a nice idea. In this category I include everything from doctors to programmers, electricians to pilots. This group should constitute the bulk of society who simply want to learn a skill and get a job.
For group 2, I include those people who are interested in pushing the boundaries of the fields they are interested in. I would also include some poeple who would like to eventually work, but want a really thorough understanding of their entire field. This group would include most of the full-time grad students and professors across the country.
For group 3, let them get a job and take night classes until they know what they want to do. Hell, let them sign up for something in one of the other two, and switch if they don't like it. Most of the people in this group would likely end up in group 1.
And as for needing an educated public, that's what reading is for. There's no need to have people going full-time to school if all they want to do is broaden their horizons by reading a few good books. Let them take night classes. Let them read the newspaper. Let them get together to discuss the issues that affect their daily lives.
The cold war is over, ditch the space station. (Score:2)
Here goes the Mir all over again.
Re:Such a delightfully simplistic solution (Score:1)
--
Matt Singerman
Space Station? Hmph. (Score:2)
Space station secure to begin with (Score:1)
The space station is pretty much secure right now, partly because of the enourmous sunk costs we've already spent on it. Congress is demonstrating its dissatisfaction with NASA over the station by cutting new programs, such as the unmanned ones, even though they're much less costly and more efficient.
In a way, I'd rather they'd cut station instead of all the science programs. Or maybe cut X-33 instead; it's going massively over budget by about the required amount...
Yeah, like we worry about other aircraft (Score:1)
We don't need more expensive planes, we need more efficient, more omnipresent planes.
Wake up and smell the defense cuts
;-)
Re:Kill the space station and NASA (Score:1)
Because if there is value to space exploration for mankind beyond basic science, then corporations will fund space research to gain an edge in future space industries. But even if corporations don't fund any research, they would still pick up the R & D for more efficient means of getting into space, simply because they need satellites. That's a large part of what NASA does anyway, so much of the current money could be gotten just as easily from private sources.
The difference would be that the businesses would be paying the full cost, and so they would have much more incentive to cut costs. And there would likely be a couple of different space carriers, and competition would therefore drive down prices. The space market is no different from any other market: private organizations and free markets will find ways to get the job done more efficiently than the government could hope to accomplish.
As for basic research, this could probably be funded to some extent by universities and private organizations. Keep in mind that I'd cut a lot of other government programs as well, so there would be more money available for private charity.
I also question the notion that space exploration is so important that we should force people to pay for it. If no one is willing to pay for it voluntarily, what right do we have to force them to pay for it on the threat of going to jail? There is an infinite number of good causes, and the fact that many
As much as you deride "profit margins," they are the best device yet discovered for comparing the relative desires of people in an economy and giving them what they want most. If people like space exploration, they are free to form organizations and start missions of their own. If no one is willing to do this, then I question whether space exploration is really so important.
One of the reasons that private entities are not exploring space right now is that the government is subsidizing NASA. Space enthusiasts and companies would be silly to set up an alternative space program when they can get the same service at reduced price due to government subsidies. If the government didn't provide subsidized rides into orbit at taxpayer expense, we very well might see private alternatives arise. But why start a competing service when your competitor has billions of dollars in government funds to allow it to sell its services for less than their full cost?
In any event, I don't see how any of this relates to the space shuttle and space station. I didn't say that the government should not fund *any* basic research (although I'm inclined to think so.) Even if the government is going to fund space exploration, my point is that a private space industry with shuttle space purchased by the government is better than a government program that sells space to private entities, since in the long run the private carriers will develop cheaper, more efficient space program. There have been billions of dollars spent servicing the space shuttle, and for that money, private firms could have probably developed better and cheaper alternatives. But instead we are still stuck with 70's technology, and that looks like it won't change for another decade. Like all government agencies, NASA is bloated and inefficient, and I'd like to see it dismantled.
Re:Kill the station. (Score:1)
Re:Hooray... I think (Score:1)
shafting NASA to pay for college (Score:1)
So we should cut funding even further to an already severely underfunded NASA in order to try to put more people who don't belong there through college?
You can't be serious. The amount of money NASA receives is a piddling amount compared to the national budget as a whole. And because we're already committed to putting $X towards the ISS, any cuts in NASA's budgets mean that some other project has to suffer. As for not "needing" to be able to live in space in the next 50 years, what does that have to do with anything? The space race was a good way to spur us on, but we shouldn't be stopping just because we don't have any competitors any more.
And as for putting NASA's budget towards education, maybe we should first look at reforming a system that says everyone needs to go to college to get a decent job, and instead look at bolstering the quality of elementary and high school educations, as well as that of vocational schools. College isn't for everyone, and it sure as hell isn't necessary for a lot of fields we seem to think require it.
Re:Great! (Score:1)
Re:Hooray... I think (Score:1)
Re:Set high goals, shoot for the stars (Score:1)
Re:Kill the space station and NASA (Score:1)
Furthermore, there is nothing stopping business from exploring space RIGHT NOW... and they obviously aren't doing it, except for sending up a few satellites now and then.. which sort of proves my point. We need a government space program if we want any research to take place that is concerned with things beyond profit margins.
Space is cool (Score:1)
Space is cool. But that doesn't mean we should support NASA and the ISS. The net effect of government spending on space programs is to inhibit private sector spending on alternatives.
Want space elevators, interplanetary human exploration, and permanent space settlements? Do you want these to be available to ordinary people in our lifetime? Do you believe that they will be, if the government is the primary source of space research and exploration dollars?
No private entrepreneur wants to compete with NASA. It would be foolhardy in the extreme. Furthermore, the ISS is just bad science. No fundamental new principles of physics or engineering are really being derived, just recycled old technology from the 60s and 70s.
Finally, and while it may seem an archaic point, where in the Constitution is it provided for government to spend money on space programs? Apart from the "provide for a national defense" argument, there is none. Thus, it is not merely a misguided program on pragmatic grounds, but as a matter of principle should be ceased at once.
Re:NASA has nearly stopped progress in space..Bah! (Score:1)
Re:It should be our decision (Score:2)
And if I do spend that time, there's a vanishingly small chance that my vote will affect the result. Moreover, the candidates that do appear by the time I vote (given that I don't live in New Hampshire or Iowa, and even the ones who show up there are the ones with big money orgs behind them) will be Tweedledee and Tweedledum as far as I'm concerned.
Read David Freidman's "Hidden Costs" for his analysis of why voter turnout is as small as it is here.
Re:Kill the station. (Score:1)
WASTE of MONEY (Score:2)
A few weeks ago the VA-HUD appropriations subcommittee slashed most of the good projects NASA is working on. It cancelled all Mars missions past 2001 or so, cut funding to the Deep Space missions that were SO great for science, and cancelled several future astronomy missions. Further, recent deliberations have failed to restore any of this fundin.
But it left two programs virtually unscathed: the ISS and the Space Shuttle, the two bloated NASA programs that matter the least.
I have a great fear that within a couple of years we will have a (so-called) space program consisting of only these two projects, and none of the bargain-basement science missions that give us so much gain for the buck.
I also have a fear that two years from now the taxpayers are going to be outraged by the failure of the ISS and the waste of BILLIONS and BILLIONS of their dollars.
My wish: NASA would cancel the ISS, free up 2.something billion dollars, and spend all that money on science missions and a manned mission to Mars. Yes, a manned mission to Mars--we could afford it without the ISS.
It's a sad time.
Re:Kill the station. (Score:1)
Re:Such a delightfully simplistic solution (Score:1)
Oh, by the way, don't confuse "poor" and "poverty"... "poor" is having trouble making ends meet; "poverty" is legally defined as a family of four surviving on less than $16,000 per year. So while you sit in your nice suburban living room, or your trendy urban loft apartment, arguing why we need to hand that much more money over to the aeospace industry, please try not to think too much about the chronically undernourished children in the US. Did you chronic undernourishment kills almost twice as many children worldwide than famine does? Oh, I forgot, we're so much better off here.
--
Matt Singerman
Re:*sigh* (Score:3)
Now, I don't happen to think the fact that the world is not a utopian paradise is sufficient reason to scuttle the space program. Europe was no utopian paradise when the "voyages of exploration" began in the sixteenth century. Even so, I think we should be looking for ways to profit from manned space flight, otherwise we should leave space to the robots.
I've heard the argument about "machines can't think," and true as this is, you should take a look at what it costs to make a long space flight survivable for a human being. You can put a lot of brains in a robot for what that costs.
I laughed out loud at the scene at the beginning of the movie Apollo 13 when Lovell calls to his kids and they were all sitting on the stairs. I was a kid on the stairs those July nights in 1969, pretending I was down in my room, listening to everything as it happened on the TV. I will never forget it.
Apollo was lousy science (in space exploration terms, not in technological development terms), but it sure had me dreaming of the stars and dying to be a scientist/engineer.
I see the future of man in space in the very long term. It took almost 100 years for Europeans to follow the explorers into the "new world." The distances and difficulties and costs of this expansion are so much greater that I do no think 1000 years out of line for the length of time it will take to have interplanetary trade and civilization, but I think we should continue to try.
"A man's reach should always exceed his grasp." Help the poor, yes. But don't put everything on hold until poverty is gone. Society doesn't act. Individuals act. Select your priorties and put your effort in there. Give others the freedom to do the same. The world can and will become better if you do.
New 21st Century tech is cheap and accurate (Score:1)
Seriously, why should we blow money on F-22s when we can just take Stealth Fighters and equip them with JATO strap-ons (late 90s) for the dumb bombs? Cost is $2000 strap on to a $500 bomb, accuracy is 95+% (way better than those 75% smart bombs) and it works in cloud cover.
Fast and cheap, just like the space program. Sure, let's send people to Mars, but why not send robots to collect fuel for the return trip, establish the Mars base, and set up the solar collectors first? Way cheaper and we can send more people in the long run.
The GOP approach is throw money at it. Like buying Windows NT boxen when you could get Linux boxen that actually work and cost less. The Demos, because they're the party of fiscal prudence, insist on Linux boxen.
Me, I think the Demos have the right tack, but then, I'm biased.
And I sure don't trust my privacy to the GOP.
Re:Such a delightfully simplistic solution (Score:1)
Re:WASTE of MONEY (Score:1)
If you haven't already, check out Robert Zubrin's ideas on "Mars Direct." He has written a book, called The Case for Mars. He has given a *bunch* of talks on his plan and is involved in the Mars Arctic Research Station, which will test in-situ fuel generation for return trips back to Earth.
Check out The Mars Society [marssociety.org] for all kinds of Mars info.
Space station = Jobs program (Score:1)
Let machines do the work.
Hooray... I think (Score:2)
If I were Dan Goldin, I'd do my damdest to get together the $50 billion needed to establish a permanent base on Mars [colorado.edu]
*sigh* (Score:4)
During the Space Race, no qualm was made about going to the Moon. Politicians kept underlining how important the Space Program is for Humanity: it is an expression of our innermost desires for exploration, and a trait of curiosity that marks the entire race. In truth, they just wanted to win the pissing contest with the Soviets.
Is the Space Program important? You betcha. It's an inalienable right of Mankind to pursue it. In the long run, it can have a dramatic influence on the survival of Humanity itself as a species.
But the results don't come during a single mandate, so it keeps getting cut and cut again... Fortunately, it has also forced NASA and other agencies throughout the world to innovate and become more creative. We're far from sending another billion-dollar Viking when we can send a little robot that'll do just fine.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
space research = "well being" (Score:1)
Finaly ! (Score:2)
Murphy(c) 4 3l33t pReZi
Good to see it safe (Score:1)
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:
Re:Hooray... I think not. (Score:1)
God bless America; the richest country in the world, and it can't even feed all its own children.
--
Matt Singerman
Get A Clue (Score:1)
Anyway, they will probably dump it next year after putting wads of cash into the project.
mixed feelings for me too (Score:3)
The ISS is years late, billions over budget, and will only have a fraction of the capabilities originally intended.
It's tragic to think that we have seen no significant advance in our space capabilities since the late 70s.
BTW, for a great novel that harps on the same theme, read Homer Hickham's Back to the Moon. It's a great story and it is very strong in the technical details (Hickham is a retired NASA engineer; his childhood was the subject of the movie October Sky - the absolute best geek movie ever).
Re:space research = "well being" (Score:1)
Crazy. (Score:1)
Re:Space station = Jobs program (Score:1)
Pork Barrel Bullshit! (Score:1)
If we're going to open the wallet for the space station, let's just do that. I support environmental protection and veterans benefits, but they should be handled on seperate bills and not riders on the space station's funding bills.
It's exactly this practice that gives people like this asshole Roemer the ammunition to attack the funding bill.
"My district isn't getting enough out of this, so I'm going to kill it." Screw that and screw him.
LK
Re:Space station = Jobs program (Score:1)
beg to differ (Score:2)
It's easy to diss the potential value of the pure research projects that will go on up there but I think just the technical achievements involved in getting the station up and running & supporting life will have all kinds of useful applications down on earth.
just my $.02
It should be our decision (Score:2)
And you have the right to make a donation to your favorite private space exploration organization. Alas, you don't have as much to give, thanks to taxes. We've settled into a situation where each of us pays money the government without getting to tell the government how to spend our money. Instead, we only have the crudest methods for influencing how it will be spent: we vote every few years among a tiny pool of candidates (with very little information about those candidates other than whatever can be gleamed from mud-slinging ads) for the one we hope will use our political and economic power the most wisely.
I say abolish NASA and most of the rest of the government, along with the taxes that support it. Let people choose directly for themselves how their own resources are spent (i.e. feeding the hungry, educating kids, exploring space, subsidizing tobacco farmers, etc) according to their own values.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
Re:Hooray... I think (Score:1)
Re:The role of government (Score:1)
Just my 2 cents.
Re:WASTE of MONEY (Score:1)
Re:Such a delightfully simplistic solution (Score:1)
So if this bustling economy is such a great solution, then why do 25% of children live at or below poverty, and 20% of all Americans
overall?
Maybe because we define "poverty" as "the poorest 25%"? Most of these people are living much better than a fairly wealthy person 100 years ago. Why? Investements that society made (one way or the other) in progress
Oh, by the way, don't confuse "poor" and "poverty"... "poor" is having trouble making ends meet; "poverty" is legally defined as a family of four surviving on less than $16,000 per year.
Spending or not spending $$ on creating a better future world has nothing to do with this. Maybe if we build a better world (a key ingredient to which is getting off this one limited planet) we can do better for these people's kids/grandkids. Face it, the fact is that there is no longer enough appropriate work for the 25% least intelligent/motivated/educated/responsible fraction of the population. There are not enough floors that need sweeping or fries that need selling to keep them all employed.
I think this poster is probably a pseudonym for Dr. Laura. Or at least a luddite, vegan, peta, Dr. Laura lover. There's goes a few points of karma,but these people really annoy me.
garyr
American science is suffering badly in Congress. (Score:1)
The real embarrassment in terms of scientific spending is how NASA, the DOE, and NSF must compete with the VA, HUD, and Americorps this fiscal year in a zero-sum-game for appropriations. The latter three have highly vocal constituencies, and will almost certainly gain significant amounts of revenue which would otherwise be used for R&D spending. Given that 50 percent of the US's GDP since the end of World War II has been the result of scientific and technical innovation (70 percent over the past few years), it seems ill-advised to accept such massive cuts in scientific spending.
Federal support of R&D is now only about 45% of what it was 30 years ago. This trend is unlikely to reverse itself anytime soon without the involvement of the (largely apathetic) scientific and technical constituencies.
Perhaps we could all devote 1% of the time we spend bashing Microsoft, Apple Co., intellectual property and patent law, GNOME/KDE, RHS, the NSA, AOL, the DOJ, and Sun Co., and instead write an informed letter to a congressperson or two in support of scientific and technical spending in this country. This would do much to give the impression that some are indeed concerned about these issues.
A Wash ington Post editorial [washingtonpost.com] by Allan Bromley, a former president of the American Physical Society, makes a compelling case for increasing science appropriations.
(My apologies for the non-USA readers for this USA-centric post).
Re:*sigh* (Score:1)
The space station may be a way to explore future residence in space, but I really don't think that we will come to need that in the next 50 years.
Spend the money on education and schools. We have enough under educated people that need a college education. Stop the bullshit and get kids in school!
Set high goals, shoot for the stars (Score:1)
The research knowledge gained during the construction of the station could be gained through other research. *IF* people could remain focused on doing research for the sake of research.
Spending money on something like a Mars base, or the ISS is valid, because it gives us some high mark that is defined, and reachable. There are plenty of other ways to adjust the budget and our government programs which would make more sense.
Re:*sigh* (Score:1)
You're more or less co-operating scientifically with any country capabale of making use of the space station at this point, including those who don't currently embrace democracy. Things have changed a lot in thirty years. Because of this similar tactics won't work.
I feel that getting into space, both manned and unmanned, is an admirable goal. Exploration was a part of the human spirit and experience and we need to go that way again. Now anything that doesn't have immediate commercial or military application is considered a waste of money. Exploration is too fraught with danger to risk human life on and so on. The community at large imposes there own biases on people who would be willing to take risks to explore.
If the europeans in the 15th century felt the way we currently do North America would still be populated by aboriginals.
Republican Majority (Score:1)
the space station is holding humanity back (Score:1)
Consider this hypothesis:
The fastest way to truly colonize space is not to fund ridiculously expensive and mostly useless corporate welfare projects like the space station, but to spend that money on education and growing the economy. In 20 or 30 years the Space Station will be just another sad reminder of the impotent wastefulness of governments, like the moon landings and Mir, but by that same time, a wealthy and educated Earth will be ready to begin actual colonization.
I haven't done the necessary research to actually convince myself of this hypothesis, but it seems more plausible to me than the viewpoint promulgated by NASA -- that we should give them half a trillion dollars and not worry about the fact that we're not actually getting any closer to space by it.
Zooko
Such a delightfully simplistic solution (Score:1)
Couple things that can be said about this nonsense.
First, you do know that the US has transferred around 5 TRILLION dollars to the poor since the sixties? Clearly dumping more money into a corrupt welfare system isn't the solution.
Second, how many children actually die in the U.S. of starvation? Oh, zero? Not to say that some people couldn't live better, but the poorest person in the U.S. lives better than the average person in a lot of other countries.
The solution to poverty is 1) a growing economy, and 2) encouragement of people to get a job and support themselves (and sometimes this has to be "tough love"). Dumping more money has not been and never will be the solution.
But I'm sure screaming "more money!" impresses your friends with your "caring"."
Space Station Funding Never in Jeopardy (Score:2)
Re:NASA' budget: ~$13billion, Cost of Kosovo ~$12 (Score:2)
But when a historic project with plenty of scientific and economic spinoffs for the US costs a lot there is a lot of complaining and threatening to cut off funding.
OH MY GOD!!! (Score:1)
More taxes, you say? You'll need to use the budget surplus? Well, for a worthwhile project, I guess it's oaky. But only for space and the american dream.
(Meanwhile...)
Alright, you can have that defense contract for your home town. I'll take this education grant. Where will we get the money? Ah, just cut the nasa program. The people will always approve more spending for it. We do it every year, and they always write these "We do these things not because they are hard, blah, blah, blah" speeches urging us to please take more of their monye. Yes, it's funny. Yes, we'll play golf on friday. See you.
Space: Missed potential (Score:3)
The Apollo program ran efficiently, made progress remarkably quickly, and truly pushed hard on the technology envelope of the time, all reasonably close to budget.
Had the congress not eviscerated NASA in the mid 70's, and NASA continued progressing at the pace and efficiency that it showed during the Apollo program, I'm convinced we would now have the following things:
to and from the moon.
station there.
even with landings on one of their moons.
Those who say that space research is a waste are just plain ignorant. The benefits to humankind that fall out of space research far outweigh any reasonable cost, if the research could be done as efficiently as the Apollo program was.
It is sad that NASA is now so under funded and that NASA along with the rest of government is so burocratic and lumbering that it can just barely manage to keep moving on a space station that is puny and unimpressive even compared to what we were accomplishing in space in the 60's!
And even the funding of the space station is a constant source of political fighting.
It is true that the space station is being handled so inefficiently and is such a token effort that the benefits if this particular station might not outweigh the costs.
This is a true pity, since it need not be that way.
Re:Who said anything about space-based R&D (Score:1)
The point that I was making is companies are not even looking at utilizing space, in any extent other than communications and military.
But why would a company put up Hubble?
Who is going to pay them to do that?
Sure it would be nice, but it isn't going to happen any time soon.
Re:Engineering problems (Score:1)
George
NASA has nearly stopped progress in space (Score:3)
NASA likes everything gold-lated, large, late, over-budget, under-performing.
If we want space stations, abolish NASA and give the taxes back to ordinary people. Repeal the Treaty on Space/Moon, let people homestead the moon and mars the way they did Oklahoma.
Then we will have space travel.
Until then, don't hold your breath. The laws of bureaucracy are just as binding as the law of gravity.
Lew
good idea (Score:1)
geeks in space a look to the future!
Kill the space station and NASA (Score:1)
The future of space exploration would be much better off if the government stopped pouring money at failed space programs rather than let free markets and competition work their magic. There are enough private companies needing satellites that had the government not subsidized their travel on the shuttle we would doubtless have a private space industry putting satellites into orbit. And the government could then purchase space on those privatge carriers for their legitimate research and military needs, and at reduced cost due to competition and innovation. Only the massive subsidies of the space shuttle and other pork barrel projects (and regulation of private rocket launches) have prevented private firms from finding better, cheaper ways of getting into space. And only a private space market will help us realize the dream of cheap, reliable space flight as soon as possible.
So I say can the space station, and NASA with it. Yes, there will be a period of reduced space exploration while private companies gear up to start taking cargo. But in the long run both space exploration and the space industry will be dramatically improved.
Great! (Score:1)
Mars (Score:1)
The ISS is more of a political boondoggle than anything else, it doesn't seem to have a purpose (research or otherwise) important enough to justify its existance, the money could have been spent on other, more important, space exploration purposes.
On the other hand I think its important to establish a permenant human presence in Space, and in the near term thats not going to happen with out a LEO space station.
In the long run it might make more sense to establish a moon base to exploit the polar ics (if its really there) to produce fuel and maybe other material for trips to Mars and the outer solar system. It would be alot easier to boost the fuel into lunar orbit than to have to boost it into Earth orbit