Back a few months, we debated Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative. The doubters here on the board said that it was just an election gimmick, that Bush wasn’t serious, and that it would quietly die after the election.
Well, not so. Before the election, the House gutted the new NASA funding. The Senate did not. The White House threatened its first-ever veto if the Exploration Initiative were not funded.
After the election, the House compromised, restoring all but 300 million of the new funding for NASA. People expected the White House to accept this as a victory and move on. It didn’t. Bush threatened another veto, saying he would accept nothing less than full funding for the program. The House amended the bill, found the 300 million, and the omnibus spending bill passed, with 100% of the funds NASA and the White House requested. This was done after the election, so no one can claim that this was just a political gimmick.
So… Now that the election is over, and hopefully the partisan rancor can die down a bit, is anyone else happy that at least under Bush, America will have a real space program again?
Well, hopefully it’s privately funded or they’ve found a way to tax Canada to pay for it. I know, the tax cuts that Bush promised should increase inflows and that will pay for it!
I want America to have a good space program, but I am deeply concerned about our giant deficit. I’m afraid our deficit will result in making things worse for a large number of Americans unless it gets straightened up soon, within this administration. So I am torn between “Cool! Send a man to Mars!” and “How much in the hole are we going into to pay for this thing?”
Way back when I cited the space program as one of the things Bush has done a very good job on. Now if they could just fix the Hubble telescope and keep it up there I would be completely happy. I am a bit baffled by those who point to deficits and poverty as reasons we shouldn’t continue to explore space. It’s not like there was a time in our history where these factors didn’t exist. Using this rationale we would never explore space until we had a utopia here on earth.
I hope we do go to Mars, and I hope that in our lifetime we reach outside our solar system to a significant degree. It is human nature to expand and it is better that we use that drive constructively to understand our universe, than destructively by conquest on earth. In the grand scheme of things it isn’t even all that expensive and I think the benefits far outweigh the costs.
NASA’s budget is a drop in the bucket compared to other agencies, and will have no effect on deficits one way or the other. For instance, NASA’s new budget is only around 17 billion dollars. The Dept. of Education, on the other hand, has a budget closer to 80 billion. and for the life of me I can’t see that one nickel of that is well spent money. NASA is barely more than a rounding error in the overall federal budget.
The American Physical Society is biased towards unmanned exploration. But there is a lot more about space travel than simply doing science. Exploration is a big part of the human makeup, and very important for our long-term health. But a lot of scientists have real blinders on when it comes to this.
There are times of surplus, or at least lower deficits. And there are times when the deficit is extremely high and the valuation of currency is threatened. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have NASA, I’m just saying we should square other things away first. Maybe 17 billion isn’t very much, but a few billion here, a few billion there, pretty soon you’re talking some real money. If the current admin showed an inclination to cut spending anywhere I’d feel better about this.
Perhaps, but the NASA budget is not set to increase markedly during the next few years nor will it be significantly larger than it is now ($14 vs. $16 billion). While maintaining a NASA budget of $14 billion would save $2 billon per fiscal year, compared to this years’s deficit of $500 billion it’s insignificant.
As to the APS report, I need to read it but I would guess that they argue the money could better be spent on more remote/robotic space science. The space initiative is a science and technology initiative. For example the Prometheus project will not provide new and exciting science in of itself, but it is significantly advancing nuclear engineering in a new environment. The byproduct is that future Cassini/Mars Observer type projects will be able to provide orders of magnitude greater scientific data. That project’s budget eventually impacts the space science community but indirectly.
I’ve said it then and I’ll say it again; this change will damage basic science and technology research, and puts too much emphasis on Apollo-style flag-and-footstep missions. I’m all for manned space exploration, but I think it should take the form of gradual buildup of flexible, reusable infrastructure such as the development of reusable launchers. I’m all for replacing the Shuttle as well, but only if we can replace it with something better - and I don’t see any such plans right now. The Crew Exploration Vehicle is just a glorified Soyuz, dependent on expendable launchers.
This is probably true for some of the new technologies. But how is the CEV going to help the science community in any way? And don’t forget the many basic development programs that will be cut back to pay for the Mars initiative and related activities. Reusable launcher development, for one.
Well when I look at the budget chart on page 19 of the proposal (Warning PDF) space sciences are currently tagged at $5 billion per year. What percentage of that number will be removed from science projects you agree with? Which ones do you think they’d be
I agree about mankind and exploration, it’s one of the things that we need to drive us on. It may be idealistic but I would like to see more nations involved including my own. It would share the financial load too.
I wonder though if the main reason is more about politics and getting a military advantage.
Perhaps the Chinese showing an interest space travel is beginning to focus American minds?
Have you actually read about the program? Because that last thing it is is a ‘flag and footprints’ program, and the CEV is NOT just a glorified Soyuz. It is a modular spacecraft capable of scaling up and down to do everything from LEO work to moon missions to manned missions to other planets. And CEV is only one part of the initiative. There are also programs for new telescopes, research into new propulsion methods, etc. It IS a ‘flexible, reusable infrastructure’. That’s the whole point to “Moon, then Mars”. If we sunk everything into a grand Mars mission, it WOULD be a ‘flags and footprints’ mission, with everything purpose-built for that one-shot deal. Instead, the new vision is to incrementally create a whole range of new space capabilities, test them in orbit and on the moon, get better at it, and continue exploring indefinitely. Moon, Mars, AND BEYOND. That includes robotic missions, large space telescopes, etc.
And I don’t know that it’s a given that a reusable spacecraft will significantly lower the cost to orbit. The Space Shuttle was supposed to be that, but it didn’t turn out so well. Build in enough quantity, why does a launcher have to be particularly expensive? If we can crank out a Gulfstream IV for 20 million bucks on an assembly line, why does a launcher have to cost that much more?
Also, why not let the private sector handle that? Rutan seems to be doing a pretty good job. I think NASA should get out of the launcher biz entirely. It should focus on deep space exploration, and contract out launch services to private companies. Let the market decide what the best technology is for getting into orbit.
Oh yeah, all that reusable launcher development NASA was doing… Almost nothing, which was going nowhere. Anyway, if you study the new vision, you’ll notice that space sciences don’t get cut. There is a reshuffling of some programs, with some getting cuts while others get increases. But overall, space science will actually get a funding boost over time. The money for the new Exploration program is coming primarly from three places: 1) New funding, 2) retiring the space shuttle and using those funds in the new program, and 3) Cutting funding to the ISS.
You seem to think that without this new program there would be more funding for science. In fact, it’s the opposite. Before this program came along, NASA was expected to see constant funding CUTS, down to 12-14 billion or so within the next couple of years.
The choice wasn’t “you can have CEV or more science,” it was, “you can have CEV or nothing at all”.
I’m all for going to space full-speed-ahead – Mars, the Moon, setting up an L5 colony, whatever – just so long as Bush doesn’t try to piggyback military uses on the program. I just heard on the radio today that the Defense Department is talking about the need to establish “space superiority.” Space superiority. Against enemies who have box-cutters and plastique bombs. Sheesh.
The CEV is just a modular capsule. The Soyuz has similar modular capability, since it was originally developed with a manned lunar mission in mind. I’m sure the CEV will have many modern improvements, but the goal and design philosphy are similar.
What I see is a range of programs designed to lead up to a manned Mars program, with a few high-visibility science missions (e.g. telescopes) for public consumption. Is it really different from the first 5 years of the Apollo program? I agree some fields of science will benefit, namely optical astronomy and planetary science. But the less visible areas of science will suffer.
Perhaps not, but I think it’s even less likely that mass production of the Delta will significantly lower the cost to orbit.
Is there a provision in the new initiative to dramatically increase the number of launches, enough to result in a significant economy of scale? I didn’t see any.
Except he heasn’t launched a single orbital spacecraft yet.
NASA’s origins are in NACA, whose purpose was to aid American aircraft companies by providing advanced research. I don’t see why this still isn’t a good purpose served by NASA.
The SLI was “almost nothing”?? X-33, X-34 and X-38 are “almost nothing”? Granted, they got cut before Bush’s new initiative, but resurrecting this line of apprach would have been far more fruitful than the CEV.
True, but a considerable amount is re-allocated to Mars-related missions to support the new exploration initiative. Did you read the APS report? LISA is delayed. Constellation X is delayed. The entire Explorer program is severely cut back, which would be devastating to many non-mainstream fields of science. In my field (solar physics), the only two American satellites to be launched in the past decade are Small Explorer satellites.
That might be true, and perhaps it’s not constructive to say they should have taken the same amount of money for the new initiative and done something different with it. Nevertheless that is my opnion.
That the US is publicly funding science and technology projects which private enterprise reasonably cannot is encouraging: kudos to Mr. Bush for forcing this through.
However, I share scr’s reservations regarding what this money is to be spent on. Unmanned misions are the way forward given robotics and computation these days - missions involving a fragile sack of water which has to come home are an utter waste of money.
IMHO, the Superconducting Super Synchrotron was by far the most scientifically valueable project promised (and subsequently cancelled). The money would be much better spent thereon.
Which is part of the problem. Is NASA’s role primarily to provide a funding platform for space science or is it to make human exploitation of space possible? I would come down on the latter side of the question since there is no other organization available to pursue that goal.
Well, that that distinction is somewhat more artificial than it seems at first blush. Sending humans to other planets requires a massive amount of preparation and background work, which needs to be funded. To send people to Mars, we’ll need to know the likely weather/temperature conditions, whether they can generate oxygen/water on-site or if they need to carry it all in, which areas have the safest landing sites, they need to pinpoint the exact location of the mysterious and secret radio transmissions…
Oh-- did I say that last one out loud?
Anyhow, all of this requires a lot of money to be spent on science to advance NASA’s goals. If NASA isn’t doing the funding themselves, they need to work in such close coordination with another funding agency that they might as well be doing the funding themselves. And that’s just Mars. The science people are doing now will be necessary for advanced studies of Europa, Titan, and other places that humans may choose to go in the next century.
As a scientist in a field (planetary science) which has benefited greatly from robotic missions and also from the Apollo missions, I’m cautiously optimistic. This could plausibly help advance our science greatly. However, it could also take a path like the space station’s, which would be very bad. How’s that for a hedge?
