According to Obama:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news...ed_of_w_s.html

From another article:

http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/oba...s_little_p.php

Gee, maybe NASA would be inspired if they didn't have to continually worry about their budget.

Agreed with Obama.

NASA has no real clear mission, just space exploration and a reduced budget will create more efficiently funded programs and a better space program in the long run.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

Host of Seraphim

The Planetary Society has taken the position that a return to the moon is a step in the wrong direction, and would much rather see a manned mission to a near-Earth astroid, then perhaps a moon of Mars and finally Mars.

In any case, it is hard to make a case that space exploration has been a high priority for the last eight years.

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

Honestly I'm not so sure it's been a high priority for even longer than that. True, Clinton was a big fan of the space program, but not enough other important people (and the electorate) really cared about it.

Are you serious? Clinton cut NASA budget 7 out of the 8 years he was office. His cuts in shuttle safety were listed (in the CAIB report) as one of the causes for the Columbia failure.

How much of that was him and how much of it was congress? He did support the X-33, although it unfortunately didn't pan out.

There is nothing "just" about space exploration. And NASA is about a lot more than space exploration.

Let's see... It took about 30 seconds to find this at http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights...s_nasa_do.html

NASA conducts its work in four principle organizations, called mission directorates:

Aeronautics: pioneers and proves new flight technologies that improve our ability to explore and which have practical applications on Earth.

Exploration Systems: creates new capabilities and spacecraft for affordable, sustainable human and robotic exploration.

Science: explores the Earth, moon, Mars and beyond; charts the best route of discovery; and reaps the benefits of Earth and space exploration for society.

Space Operations: provides critical enabling technologies for much of the rest of NASA through the space shuttle, the International Space Station and flight support.

A lot more than "just" exploration and a whole series of well defined missions.

Since when did reduced budgets lead to greater efficiencies and better anything? Rather they produce the opposite.

Jon

I agree NASA has lost its focus and people do see shuttle missions as routine (I recall in the '80s someone saying that was actually the goal--that the shuttle made missions to space routine). I don't believe the solution is to cut it back--of all the things that can be cut, why the one government program that (at least in the Apollo days) (and, at least according to Heinlein) paid for itself and then some? NASA does need to redefine itself--faster,cheaper,better was a lofty but impossible goal (as some said, pick any two and the third will be sacrificed). I'd personally like to see permanent moon bases, like the Antarctica bases, and a man on Mars--and would think, say, an under water colony run by NASA would be a good proof of concept for several reasons (people living essentially isolated from society with re-supplying being expensive and thus uncommon--and you need to bring or make air), not to mention the added bonus of undersea science.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

Having read his books, I think Obama has a very clear idea of how to conduct the space program, and science affairs in general. I think most people will agree that NASA has lost focus and the space program needs an overhauling. Fair enough.

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"As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
Inside out, outside in - Perpetual change." - A British rock band

How can an organisation with clearly defined roles for earth observation, space science, humaa missions, astronomy, unmanned exploration, and aeronautics be described as having lost focus?

NASA is not autonomous. It can only follow the goals given it by the government. If there are issues with set goals, that is not the fault of NASA but of its political masters. Cutting funds is a way of reducing goals and narrowing focus, not improving either.

Jon

Clinton cut, or at least managed, all federal spending. As the budget came into focus, additional margins for space were identified.

It isn't clear what the next presidential mandate is or should be. It is politically hacky to headline a thread 'cut' when the emphasis of the quote was 'redirect' or 'refocus'. Ambiguous. <political commentary about character of person removed>

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

Yes, but overhauling doesn't work so well when you cut the budget. Take Obama's idea of using some of the money destined for the Constellation program for educational purposes instead keeping the program on track and replacing the shuttle. We're told that the delay will "only" be five years (into Obama's second term). Sounds reasonable if you don't understand what's involved with that. First, and foremost, is that what this means is that at the end of the five years, much of the entire program will have to be redesigned because of the leaps in technology made during those five years. So, this will have the result of delaying the replacement of the shuttle even longer and raising the price even higher. (And at the higher price, the program will become an even primer target for those with an ax to grind against NASA.) Second, NASA's already admitted that they won't be able to complete the ISS if the shuttle launches are shutdown as currently scheduled. The ESA doesn't have the lift capacity to put those modules up, and the Russians can't do it either (as the modules were designed to be carried by the shuttle), so here's the calls which Obama will have to make if he's elected and decides to go through with this plan:

Pull a craft capable of doing this out of the depths of his anatomy.
I don't think I need to point out that this isn't going to happen.

Tell the nations that built the modules, they're going to have to wait until sometime in the unspecified future for us to be able to get them up there (if at all).
Given that those modules have been sold by the nations who've built them as symbols of national prestige, for the US to tell those folks "Sorry, Charlie." is not going to do very much to repair the relations we have which are in the toilet with so many nations. He could offer to pay to have new modules built which could be hauled up by either the Russians or ESA, but where is he going to get that money?

Keep the shuttles flying longer and thus drive the odds us losing another crew towards certainty.
From a visibility standpoint, this is the "safest" option since 99% of Americans won't notice that the shuttles are flying after they should have been retired. If, however, one of those shuttles goes kerblewie (as seems likely) then we've got a pretty big mess on our hands. The debris fields will have to be cleaned up ($$$), people on the ground will have to be compensated for loss of life and property ($$$), the anti-NASA folks will start calling for the entire agency to be closed again, and Obama's capabilities as a national leader will be questioned (he being the guy in charge, people are going to ask these questions).

Now, in the wildly optimistic projection category, we have private industry coming along and making the need for the Constellation program obsolete. This would enable NASA to simply hire a private contractor to launch things. I put this as being just slightly more likely than Obama being able to pull a rocket out of his nether regions.

The one factor that no one wants to talk about are the Chinese. They've made it plain that they intend to go to the Moon at about the same time we'd be returning if we followed the timetable laid out by the Bush Administration (a timetable not possible with the amount of money NASA's been getting of late, much less after the cuts Obama's proposed), Obama's current plans make that impossible. Will Americans be upset if the Chinese beat them to the Moon? I don't know. I do know that before that ever happens, the world's economic focus will center on China. Once the average Chinese annual salary reaches around $8K/yr, they will have the largest economy in the world (and they'll be consuming the entire global production of oil just to keep their economy from collapsing). The US will be an also-ran at that point, with the rest of the world only paying attention to us because we have nuclear weapons, and not because we'd might like to buy their products.

Probably at around that point, if not a bit before, the amount of military tension between the developed nations and the Chinese will have increased significantly. There's worry about the Chinese building a "blue water" navy and that secret sub base which was just discovered is getting people antsy. If the US wants to stay relevant and have people listen to it without waving nuclear weapons around, its going to have to do some pretty remarkable things and a lot of them. That means keeping on the bleeding edge of technology, and that means a real space program, which we haven't had since the Sixties.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04
Tuckers! Science! Automotive Oddities! Boycott Trek XI! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither.

Perhaps this halfwit bleeding heart missed the point of what the space shuttle was intended to be. Regular spaceflight service, to the point where a shuttle launch made as much of a headline as a jetliner taking off, WAS THE WHOLE FRAKKING POINT OF THE THING!!!

What a moron...

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

But this ended up working against the program. He is right when he says it isn't inspiring the youth, and many people in the US are questioning its value. If a program is popular amoung voters, it is almost garunteed never to get axed no matter how much it costs (such as social security). Space isn't popular anymore.


What we really lack is a national goal, something to work towards (such as industrializing space or something difficult like that).

People were questioning the value of Apollo right after Armstrong and Aldrin lifted off from the Moon, if not before. One of the reasons we were told that the shuttle was going to make spaceflight cheap was because Walter Mondale wanted to cancel the whole manned program and the Nixon Administration came up with the idea to sell the shuttle to Congress.NASA could have easily continued using the Apollo hardware (which would have gotten cheaper to use with every mission), but because Nixon didn't like that JFK had such a big feather in his cap, he decided to kill it and give us the space shuttle. End result has been an orbiting white elephant and 14 dead astronauts.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04
Tuckers! Science! Automotive Oddities! Boycott Trek XI! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither.

I partly agree with Doodler: there's nothing wrong with boredom. In fact, I think it's unavoidable, as nothing will keep people worked up for long; endlessly chasing inspiration is a lost cause. If we woke up tomorrow to stampeding herds of unicorns and cinnamon roll thunderstorms, in a week we'd be back to talking about gas prices and the latest episode of House.

Though I'm full tilt for space exploration, we should be less worried about boredom and more about convincing people of its practical benefits in spite of it. I doubt many people care about the (significant) federal funds spent on radiosondes, but if doubters confront the issue couched in terms of terms of forecasting, they will probably support it.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

I am so sick of adults who have never met me tarring all kids with that brush, and similar ones. "Kids don't eat healthy, kids don't read, kids are lazy..." It really hurts!

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Try being a white male perfectly capable of doing the shopping, fixing a meal, fixing something around the house, and dealing with kids, and then watch commercials on TV. You'll quickly come away with the impression that you're a freak of nature.

I remember when I was a little kid and one of the broadcast networks (this was in the pre-cable paleolithic era) came up with a "kids news" program, "by kids, for kids." I watched about 10 seconds of it before I realized that it was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. Not only was I not interested in a "kid's perspective" on the "news" (they didn't cover any of the burning issues of the day, either), but I could quickly tell that the kids had very little to do with the program, other than standing in front of the camera. I couldn't even stand anything on any program where it was blatently obvious that they stuck a kid in there to appeal to the "childrens demographic." When they interviewed kids on news programs to get "their perspective on things," it drove me up the wall. I thought perhaps when I got older I'd find them interesting, now that I'm pushing 40, I find that I still can't stand them. Nothing wrong with kids, but lets face it, they have zero influence on world affairs, and putting them on TV isn't going to change that.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04
Tuckers! Science! Automotive Oddities! Boycott Trek XI! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither.