Nasa plans to spend $104 billion to get back to the moon. Basically, the shuttle money will go to the moon program. moon story
Even if it’s part of a mission to Mars, it doesnt seem practical. Seems pretty pointless actually.
Yet, I’m in favor of it. The US blows through so much money that $104B over the span of 15 years probably wont have much impact on the deficit. The space program is fun to follow. Count me in as a supporter, even though manned space exploration is pretty pointless. Although, it is much less pointless than the space shuttle program. Basically the shuttle money will go to the moon program.
Anybody else in favor of it while at the same time recognizing it’s seeming irrelevance?
I’m in favor of it, and I don’t think it’s irrelevant at all. We need frontiers. It’s good for our souls, it helps bind us together and give us a sense of purpose. Countries that no loger have frontiers (or expansion through military conquest) start to turn inward and navel-gaze and decay.
It’s also inspirational for children, and may help kids stay interested in school and help motivate them into careers in math and science. I suspect that a robust space program will do more for education than the same money being spent directly by the Dept of Education would.
And there are practical benefits. We learn new skills, new manufacturing techniques, and we expand our knowledge of the universe. All good stuff.
And it’s entirely possible that the moon will turn out to be very valuable. If we find large deposits of water ice, we will be able to live there.
And even if it’s true that we “need frontiers”, how is the moon a “frontier” anymore? We’ve already been there. Several times.
If “frontier” just means “someplace we’ve already been but still rather remote and difficult to get to”, seems to me we could accomplish the same thing for a lot less money by sending some stout-hearted explorers on a highly publicized dogsled trip to Northern Alaska or somewhere.
Let’s get to where we can **return **to New Orleans, and our guys and gals can **return **from Iraq, then we can think about **returning **to the moon. As nice as it might be to have an uplifting program like space exploration, Bush has simply racked up too many bills here on earth to start spending money that we don’t have in space.
Seriously, he wants to do everything and not worry about how to pay for it. Enough is enough, and I don’t want my taxes raised. Time to tighten up, not throw more money out the window.
It would be especially worth it if the Bush administration would start off by making it a multinational effort, which would relieve pressure on the USA’s already bloated spending habits. Put the UN flag on the ships. Great idea, but of course, not a chance in hell.
Just trying to figure out what yours is. If “frontier” doesn’t mean “unexplored territory”, then why would we have to go off-planet to find one? Just send a bunch of people to a sufficiently remote and unfrequented terrestrial location in a sufficiently laborious and dangerous fashion, and hey, mission accomplished.
Heck, I voyaged to the frontier yesterday myself. It’s a small Dutch town called Culemborg about 20 km away. It’s been inhabited for at least a few hundred years, or more probably a few thousand, but I’d never seen it before. I sweated and bled to get there (went over the handlebars when stopping too fast), I was filled with wonder and fascination at the unfamiliar surroundings, I was uplifted by my achievement, and it gave me a sense of purpose.
Sounds to me like I had an authentic frontier experience, and it only cost me sixty eurocents for the ferry each way (plus band-aids and tire depreciation.)
I’m only half joking, actually—I do in fact empathize with what you’re saying about the human need to explore and wonder, but I think it’s a need that’s probably more fully satisfied on a personal level by individual courage and endeavor than by splashy “spectator-sport” techno-whizbangs.
And I’m definitely on-board with the “expanding our knowledge of the universe” part, but there’s no doubt that we could get much more of that bang bang for our buck with new scientific space projects, instead of just repeating the lunar commute.
In the OP article, Tom Delay is a big supporter. I’m sure that a huge amount of that $104B will be spent in Texas.
Sidenote- I’m surprised that Bush, Delay, Rove & Company have not revived the Super Particle Accelerator that was planned for construction in Texas and killed during the Clinton years.
I am a big supporter of returning to the moon, it is long overdue. We need to figure out how to live there, the least of reasons is if a global disaster happens here, we will have a basis to know how to survive in a hostal place.
Also some have theorized that the He3 on the moon (but basically non-existant on earth) could be used for the long sought after controlled nuke fusion, which if we could figure out would leave a lot of terrorist sitting on a sea of useless oil, and we could then pull out of Iraq.
So we build some new rockets, return to the moon some time before 2018, find a site with a lot of this special form of helium, establish a colony with mining facilities, transport the helium back to Earth in massive quantities using some kind of technology we haven’t developed yet, discover a viable form of nuclear fusion using it, build a lot of Super Helium Fusion Plants, figure out a way to make these plants replace all the things we currently use oil for, like cars, aeroplanes, electricity generation and plastic manufacturing, and then we can start thinking about moving out of Iraq?
A bulletproof plan, but don’t you think setting timetables will only encourage the terrorists?
Some might say that manned space travel is its own point. To me, it’s an end, not a means.
There will alway be more immediate things to spend money on. The world will always throw a natural disaster, war or some other crisis our way. We should deal with that, sure, but it’s strictly short-term stuff. It’s bailing water out of the boat, and while bailing water is certainly important, if you want to get somewhere you’re going to have to raise a sail. The future has to start someday, so why not now?
It’s not as if I’m saying that manned space travel is the ultimate purpose of mankind… actually, I am saying that. So sue me.
No. It’s not even close to worth it. There is precisely zero commercial interest in space exploration at this time beyond LEO tourism, and legitimate science can be done for vastly less money with robotic probes. This obsession with putting men in space is starting to look more and more like a chronic disease of national pride on par with nuclear arms races, and at this point going back to the Moon would be throwing good money after bad. If third world countries want to waste the money on a decades-old been-there-done-that stunt to somehow buck up their own sense of pride (the height of navel-gazing self-consciousness, if you ask me), I say let them. If it’s a rival like China, the more cash they squander on expensive boondoggles, the better, right?
First of all, when NASA says “$104B with a moon landing by 2018,” I make sure my checkbook’s got $200B in it, and pencil in a tentative launch date of 2025. I’m not joking, either. Look me up in 2019, and I’ll buy you a $200 dinner (in 2019 dollars) if the project has either
successfully landed on the moon or
stayed within budget as of 2018
NASA was born into big money, and has never been able to satisfactorily kick the habit of spending a lot more money to get a little more performance. Their engineers are routinely shouted down by scientists, and their project managers are all cultivated from the ranks of the science teams. This makes them excellent scientists, with the unfortunate side-effect of making them completely crap at cost estimation, requirements definition, and systems engineering.
Until the U.S. Government gets a better process in place for space acquisition, we should stay on the ground. A moon mission makes sense only as a test for a manned Mars mission. Until we’ve actually got a solid theoretical foundation for a He-3 fusion plant, there’s no good reason to send people up there.
Less than half the military budget for 1 year.
NASA gets money, there’s no doubt about that.
The Defense Department gets over 20x the budget of NASA.
Health and Human Services gets 4x the outlay/
HUD gets twice the money.
Justice Department gets half again as much money.
If we drop the money from NASA into these organization, or in fact into just one of any of them, the net gain will be minimal, and certainly almost less than the current net gain in jobs alone for NASA.
Please… people who decry that the money can be better used have obviously not looked at where the money goes already.
note: All numbers are from whitehouse.gov budget outlay for 2002, I’m assuming there hasn’t been a lot of change.
How much was the Superconducting Super Collider, which could actually do real science and really break frontiers in understanding the universe and the natural explanation for our existence, again?
$10Bn, that’s what. And it was cancelled for being too expensive.
(By Clinton, lest we start calling anyone an anti-scientific moron.)
It’s a valid question though. "Should the US government be funding humans in space?” While $100 billion over 12 years is peanuts compared to total US government spending over 12 years, it is $100 billion that could be allocated elsewhere.
If nothing else it might help straighten out the whole question of humans in space vs. space science. The point of a human space program is to get humans in space; the science achieved is incidental to the end goal. The advantage the US possesses is that it is rich enough to afford both a space science and a human space flight programs.
This new exploration architecture simply applies the current human space flight budget to placing humans beyond LEO.
The SSC was budgeted at roughly the same as the ISS but it was funded, if I remember right, by the National Science Foundation. The NSF’s budget for 2006 is roughly a third that of NASA’s (~$5 billion). If so, I could see how fitting the expense of the SSC into the NSF’s budget while maintaining other programs could be problematic. The ISS had the advantage of also being linked to foreign policy initiatives to keep Russian rocket scientist out of unsavory nation’s ballistic missile programs and maintain a funding source for the Russian space program.
I would like to refer you to JM’s excellent point above. I don’t think we are that rich any more, quite frankly, if we ever were. Doing real science is a no-brainer as far as returns on investment is concerned, but I don’t think the US is in a position any longer to engage in extravagant displays of technowizardry for its own sake.