Couldn’t you equally make the argument that we’re going to go to Mars someday anyway, with or without Kerry? Why not vote for the candidate who has the greatest overall merits?
Because sooner is better than later, and if we don’t beat the Chinese, then we’re all going to be in a world of hurt.
My personal take on it is that a Democrat will do much less damage to the proles than just about any Republican. But even without that, what’s the choice between a former combat wounded vet versus a formerdraft dogding cokehead?
Why does it matter which country goes to Mars first? Shouldn’t the important thing be that the human race has accomplished this feat?
Because then it would be the Red Planet! And furthermore… oh.
Bush’s space plan is not about ‘going to mars’. It’s much more sweeping than that. It’s a program that completely re-invents NASA. The new NASA will focus on what it does best - explore space robotically, telescopically, and with men. Commercial activities like satellite launch and ISS maintenance will be farmed out. NASA’s new mandate is to get the hell out of low earth orbit, stop wasting billions of dollars a year on Shuttle and ISS, and take that money and build new deep-space craft and advanced robotic and telscopic missions.
I’m getting tired of hearing this whole thing characterized as a ‘Mars boondoggle’. Mars may not even turn out to be a destination - it depends on what we learn in the interim. We’re going back to the moon because it’s the next logical place to go, and because it gives us a chance to develop a new generation of interplanetary craft and techniques for living on another world. It will be the proving ground for new space suits, rovers, robotic tools, mining, etc. Once we are comfortable in space, we’ll take the next step. To that end, the new vision demands modular spacecraft that can be re-configured for missions to the Moon, to Mars, to Jupiter, or anywhere else in the Solar System we want to go.
And I am totally convinced that John Kerry will be Clinton II when it comes to space exploration. He’ll pay lip service to it, but look at what happened under Clinton - NASA saw constant budget erosions, a lack of focus, no vision, and the only mandate that came out of 8 years of the Clinton administration was, “Faster, Better, Cheaper”. And we all know how that worked out.
And this is not just electioneering on Bush’s part. The Bush family has always been nuts about space. Bush and his Dad are both pilots. Jeb governs Florida, home to the Cape. Go back and look at NASA funding in the last 30 years. If you do, you’ll notice two times when it received larger than average budget increases - during the first Bush administration, and during the second. Bush I tried to kick off an ambitious program to go to Mars. He failed. Now the son is taking a whack at re-invigorating NASA. And the word is that in the new budget, every agency in the government is being held to rate-of-inflation growth - except NASA, which is getting the full injection of funds that Bush promised.
John Kerry cannot say two sentences about NASA without managing to work in the idea that there are ‘other priorities’ that must be addressed first. That should tell you just what he thinks of space exploration, and what kind of emphasis it would get in a Kerry administration.
How badly would Bush have to screw things up before you’d be willing to compromise on your Mars hopes? Surely there has to be some limit to how bad he is that it will outweigh this? Can you at least say that if he advocated throwing Jews in concentration camps, you’d have the courage to say “I don’t care how much I want to go to Mars, throwing Jews into concentration camps is bullshit and I won’t stand for it!” is Mars the be all and end all of human existance?
Could you at least admit that if this wild, completely outrageous hypothetical occurred, would it change your vote? For the sake of my sanity, please say yes.
And, by asking this, are you seriously considering George “Let Them Eat Cake” Bush? Haven’t the Republicans done enough damage by (a) ignoring ALL domestic issues and (b) tearing down our global image??? What will be left of this country which they claim to love so much? It must be nice to live your life in a dream…
I only wish I were a dog at the White House so I could piss on the Bushes! 
- Jinx
NASA did okay under Clinton. The unmanned space program had lots of great successes…And the manned program just threw money down a black hole as it pretty much always had. Maybe the reasons there was no vision on the manned program is that there is no good vision to be had!
Once again, facts elude you. Please provide a cite for “constant budget erosions.”
It was not easy to find the budget for NASA over the past 30 years.
This site (http://www.richardb.us/nasa.html) claims that these were the amounts for the relevant years for Bush I and Clinton, in millions of dollars.
1989 1990 12,429
11,036
1991 13,878
1992 13,961
1993 14,305
1994 13,695
1995 13,377
1996 13,882
1997 14,358
1998 14,206
1999 13,664
A definite increase during Bush I, but hardly a “constant erosion” during the Clinton years.
The only other cite I could find focused on the R& D outlays (from http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/hist05p2.pdf).
1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996
8,103 9,386 10,335 10,603 10,696 11,172 11,004 10,767
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004**
10,492 10,808 10,631 10,182 10,361 10,528 10,822 10,909
Well, as I was working on formatting those figures, I must have hit the wrong button. Anyways, it appears that friend Samwise has once again had a bit of a tangle with the truth. Unless, of course, he has other data to suggest that there was some notable difference in funding for NASA between Bush I, Clinton and w. Bush I appears to have increased the NASA budget markedly, but that appears to be more of an indictment of Reagan’s lack of investment in NASA than Clinton’s. In fact, if you graph the numbers from the latter site, which you can do by cutting an pasting them into Excel, the primary feature you will see is a pretty consistent line (the numbers are in constant dollars) around 10 - 11K, with a marked nadir around 4,000 in 1983.
“And we all know how that worked out.” - Sam Stone, 2004
What kinda message board is this, you can’t post spreadsheets and Power Point presentations? You’d think with all the money, they wouldn’t buy servers at Radio Shack, or at least buy the hamsters some uppers.
Did you know John Kerry invented the broadband?
If a democratic nation like France, Germany, England, or any you care to name (yeah, I know the Russians have a proposal, but it’s gotten laughed at by everyone, so no hope there) were to be putting the effort towards going to space that the Chinese are, I’d be all for it. If the Chinese throw out their totalitarian form of government (they’re not really communist anymore), then I’ll be all for them. There are technological advantages gained by being a spacefaring nation (think communication satellites, spy satellites, weather satellites, and more). The Chinese ferverently want to be seen as great a world power as the US, Britain, or Russia. If they match our greatest technological feat, then they will have gained that stature in the eyes of the world. Do you really want a nation which is reported to execute prisoners so that they can harvest their organs for transplant to be seen as a world power on par with the US? A nation which frequently arrests and jails people simply for speaking harshly of the government? Which actively encourages the use of slave labor? A nation where something like only five religions are legal? You really want them to be seen by the rest of the world as an equal to the US? I don’t.
And yeah, there are things that Bush could do, unrelated to the space program, which would cause me to vote against him. (Lobbing a nuke at Iraq, for starters, would do it.)
Oh, and Hentor, if you’ll go here you can download an official US Gov’t document (in Excel format) which shows that NASA didn’t get a significant boost in funding until 1990. (Just thought I’d throw that out there since the site you linked to is a pro-Kerry site, and if we’re going to discuss such things, it’s better to use a government site and not one which is obviously biased in favor of one Presidential candidate or the other.)
Look at your data again. Under Bush I, NASA’s budget went from 11,036 to 14,305 (Bush’s four budget years). At the end of Clinton’s 8 years, his last Budget’s authority for NASA was 13.6 billion. A decrease over 8 years, during which the rest of the government budget pretty much doubled. NASA must have been the most neglected agency in the entire government. Under George Bush II, NASA’s budget has increased from 13.6 billion to almost 16 billion in next year’s budget.
I said that NASA’s budget took a big jump under Bush I, declined under Clinton, and took another big jump under Bush II. And you are calling me a liar? Your own data backs up what I said.
BTW, if you want the accurate data, it’s here: GPO Access
Um, well, I thought that one of the points I was making was exactly that NASA didn’t get a boost until 1990, following slashes by Reagan. Subsequently it was maintained at approximately the same level throughout the 1990’s to today.
As for the sites: Pro-Kerry?? Which one, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or Richard Braastad’s?
Samwise, thanks for the real numbers. They reveal that in 1993, outlays for NASA were $14,305,000,000, and in 2001 they were … $14,095,000,000. The “constant erosion” is what, exactly? Between 1993-2001 outlays increased 4 times and decreased 5. How do you define “constant”? How do you define “erosion”? How do you define “liar.”
And if you really want to start talking about the amount relative to the overall budget, things don’t look too good for w in that regard. His funding of NASA relative to total outlays decreases every year! Not that great a reason to vote for him, huh?
I tried to warn you. He doesn’t care if we mere mortals here on earth are poisoned to death by contaminated water from hazardous waste seeping into the ground caused by an unused NASA launch pad, why would you think he cares if our children can read, write and perform the science that makes his precious space program even work in the first place? Why would you think he cared if people were dying because they didn’t have healthcare coverage, since he’s more than willing to see them poisoned for the sake of keeping his childhood dream alive. Pissing away billions of dollars to go to an uninhabitable planet for og knows what possible, potential, maybe scientific benefit is more important to him than anything else in the world. He is a fanatic and you are never going to change his mind:
Give it up, dude, this one is lost to us.
“if”??? There is no if kerry is running. He’s won the nomination. Unless he dies he’ll run and he’ll lose. He’s not going to win with the excommunication business and the medal throwing.
Richard Braastad’s. Note at about the bottom of the page there’s a “Kerry for President” banner. Not saying that the information he’s posting about NASA’s budget is incorrect, mind you, but it’s better to just leave such sites alone for this part of the discussion, since it opens up an avenue for folks to start screaming about biased data.
“Faster, Better, Cheaper” - Aren’t these sought-after qualities? Should we strive for the opposite instead?
by Tuckerfan
Tuckerfan, can you please explain why you feel the president has any more power over NASA than it does all the other issues that you feel he does not?
I’ll grant you that the president is fairly limited when it comes to creating jobs, but he certainly is in a position to influence the job market. He can also make some life and death decisions when it comes to starting multi-billion dollar wars. Maybe you don’t think that’s important, but I’m sure 9 out of 10 casualties in Iraq disagree. And even if the president himself doesn’t hold a lot of influence in some areas, his appointees most certainly pick up the slack. I’m as much for kicking Bush out of office as I am of kicking out Ashcroft, Rumsfield, and evil-incarnate Cheney. It’s kind of short-sighted to look at it as if it is just the president who will be decided in November. It’s a whole freakin’ administration.
BTW, I view Bush’s pledge to get us to the Moon and Mars as being in the same camp as his idea of spending billions of dollars to “promote marriage”. Empty rhetoric to get America’s attention away from what looks like a clusterfuck more and more each day.