America’s space program is at a crossroads. This year, the Space Shuttle fleet is expected to be retired after nearly 30 years of ferrying astronauts and equipment into space. In addition, there have been calls to have its immediate successor — the Ares I launch vehicle which would be topped with an Orion crew capsule — shelved altogether.
A 155-page report issued in November 2009 by the Augustine Panel made a number of recommendations on which direction to steer NASA in the future. The recommendations included 1) hitching rides into space using spacecraft from other nations or private contractors, 2) keeping the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs alive, albeit in more limited roles, and 3) shifting the focus from returning to the moon and instead aiming for Mars.
The Augustine Panel also made it clear that the estimated $145 billion cost to return to the moon by 2020 would not be possible given NASA’s $18.7 billion yearly allowance for all operations.
#19 I think when people are talking about “going to Mars” they would not be satisfied with going to a moon of mars. I’m deeply unconvinced that this would be cheaper.
#20 “Manned space flight is to encourage people to seek the unknown.” Wrong! During the cold war manned missions were to make us feel good about all those rockets we were building. Today it is to help pad the black budgets so we can continue to weaponize space.
If someone can figure out how to make space profitable more power to them. I would rather the gov’t spend money on fixing roads and teaching people to read.
#21 — Yes, manned space flight was used as a status symbol but the astronauts of that era have been role models for scientists and engineers afterwards. It is easier for a human to remember Neal Armstrong than it is to remember Viking. Manned space flight might be worthless but its side benefit of encouraging people to pursue science and engineering might be worth a lot.
So what price can you place on imagination?
What if we took 25 cents of every dollar that we were spending to find better ways to kill people, and invested in into a new space program?
We probably could get someone on Mars in 10 years, AND have fewer wars.
#22 “So what price can you place on imagination?”
I’d call it an opportunity cost. Why not build out high speed rail, or do any number of other things that are useful to people in their everyday lives?
We debate all the time if this or that gov’t program provides benefits in line with costs. It just seems silly to balance a fuzzy generality against the costs of manned space flight. Rather than stoking the pride and imagination of engineers why don’t we put them to work building something useful that is too big for the private sector?
Maybe NASA can sell the idea of going to Pandora
This beats Pandora because it is an actual headline from the NY Times Online:
“January 21, 2010, 4:19 pm
NASA Announces Designs for Personal Flying Suit
By DAN SALTZSTEIN”
I’ve had enough of this crap about living on other planets and the moon. There is NO reason for it, and no way for it to work – NO WAY. Just lookup the meaning of “light years” and do some simple arithmetic.
Boo Hoo, some foreign country is getting ahead of us in space. Space ships do not make a country great.
$18.7 BILLION year for NASA, plus stupid unnecessary wars – yet people complain about money for education, health and jobs. I’d be a much prouder American if we all had decent jobs and there was less homelessness.
Being a great country on a sustainable planet is what we should be concerned with.
Last year, the government spent 5 times NASA’s annual budget on the wars in the middle east. The department of education gets around 3 times NASA’s annual budget per year. The military’s annual budget is 20 times that of NASA’s. Getting rid of NASA would not help when that money would just be funneled into the wars.
In Florida, the public voted no for a high speed rail linking Tampa to Orlando to Miami. It seems some people do not want to spend their tax money on creating jobs.
Obama wanted to funnel money for some high speed rail but nobody liked that idea. I think they called it socialism.
The USA people are not willing to spend money to create jobs or invest in research of future industries. May be everyone is content to work at Walmart or to fight in some foreign land.
There is a deeply held, religious sentiment attached to a rocket launch that speaks powerfully to religious Americans. The specter of a fire from heaven, a bright light moving amongst the clouds, loud booming drum noise from above, astronauts dressed in white. Why else would they put mission control in Texas?
Oh won’t you
Swing down chariot stop and let me ride.
Cause I got a friend on the other side.
Nasaastrianism
#26 You lost me when you said “sustainable planet”. Pity.
Robots are not some magical replacement for the human element in space. Without humans we’d never have had a Hubble space telescope – at least not an operational one, and that just one example of many. There’s no robot that can replace a man’s adaptability.
Fools, how dare you say that the manned trip to the moon was to cheese off the soviets, that gigantic expenditure gave dividends in myriad of patents and a technological edge that made America strong. I watched NASA obsessively since the Gemini program. It always seemed to me to be the noblest of all human endeavors, and it saddens me deeply, to see that we can save failing private industry at enormous cost to the taxpayer, but the manned space program is a waste.
Priorities, 1. Protect the super rich and their interests domestic and foreign, 2. Squeeze the American taxpayer until he can no longer live the American dream with or without credit, 3. Reduce social spending to the point of converting society into a jungle where only the strongest survive, 4 Limit spending on research exclusively to those investigations with military application.
Sounds like a recipe for creating hell on earth if you ask me.
#31 – “It always seemed to me to be the noblest of all human endeavors”
Shooting rockets into space – oh, the nobility of it!
A mere sideshow that’s all it is.
The new inventions would be great if we actually manufactured them in THIS COUNTRY. Our R&D provided profit for foreign manufacturers and American corporations; but very few AMERICAN jobs – just the designers.
Think of all those flat panel screens in NORAD, the Pentagon and the rest of the military. NONE made in the USA. We better stock up on spares before we go to war. China won’t sell us replacements.
#32 Get-a little less-Real
Let’s face it, overcoming limitation, for an individual or the entire race is a noble pursuit.
You’re so poorly documented in your arguments I scarcely know where to begin. To say that private industries didn’t profit from the R&D, that’s just stupid (ever hear of Texas Instruments?). Of course other countries started competing as soon as they could catch up. That’s why the goverment’s investment in R&D is so important. If you want to sell technology you’ve got to have the latest and the best, not just the cheapest.
I guess your first comment sums it up for you. So, in your perfect world we’d be on a tropical beach sipping martini’s served by naked native girls, right?
I never said that “private industries didn’t profit from the R&D”. I said the opposite.
I said, “Our R&D provided profit for foreign manufacturers and American corporations; but very few AMERICAN jobs – just the designers.”
It’s the American jobs. Get it now?
We can’t prosper, as a nation, if most corporate profits are obtained by a few engineers inventing things that other countries manufacture. That produces corporate profits and a few American jobs. The rest of American jobs are at Walmart.
You can’t have a healthy country when the only jobs are Walmart part-timers selling things made in other countries to other Walmart part-timers.
Of course, some people who have jobs cannot bring themselves to care abut that, regardless what they see in the world around them.
There are plenty of limitations we can overcome on this planet that will be of benefit to earthlings without pissing away YOUR tax money on other planets.
Please don’t call me stupid again. It does not add to your argument.
#34 Spot on. Unfortunately, lefty loons will twist your comment somehow.
Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe these companies will do what NASA should have been doing for the last thirty years;developing “cheep” (relatively speaking) ways to get material and people into space and back safely.
In the face of mounting debt and instability, major decreases in science funding seem inevitable, starting with those programs whose ambitious goals and vision mark them as idealistic and frivolous. Space science and exploration will be tempting targets. Deep cuts to science funding would offer meager short-term gains, but in the long run would hasten the decline of America’s global preeminence and reduce our ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world.