This is my point. Which science/engineering field should get preferential funding? Those that further human exploitation of space or those that enable a better understanding of the cosmos. It’s not an either/or question of course and answering it will give a focus to “our” work but at the expense of breadth.
From a purely scientific point of view, I am glad that this wasn’t an empty promise to look good for the election. It’s great to see that the USA is investing into its space program again.
However, since I’m not exactly a fan of George W. Bush, I have to ask myself what he’s up to. I do hope that the Europeans invest into their space programs as well: I wouldn’t feel good about leaving space to the Bush administration and trusting it to do the right thing. Call it a balance of power kind of wish.
I just can’t be happy about it while our own people suffer from lack of health care.
Back when we didn’t have health care, and my wife had emergency surgery, we got the $32,000 bill.
A state program covered it, and we got the contact information for numerous other programs that would cover her.
It’s my experience that the VAST majority of folks that don’t have insurance qualify for some sort of program, and either don’t know about it, or choose not to use it for other reasons.
And dropping 17 bilion into “Public Health Programs” would not help much. I’d rather see it go into space.
I’m not sure how $1-2 billion dollars being direct to a $502 billion department (Health and Human Service, 2003 budget) would appreciably help. It would only be a ~0.3% increase.
By scrapping the whole thing ($16 billion) you’d increase their available fund by only ~3%.
I have big doubts that this is going to accomplish anything that makes one go “wow.” Bigger bucks and bigger balls will be needed to do something like go to Mars.
But WOW! is a bad way to build a program that can do more than just Mars.
Not adequately funding basic scientific research is like eating your seed corn. You’re fine for the moment, and screwed in the long run.
I feel about the deficit sort of how you feel about health care. And I still want increased funding for NASA.
We lose something fundamentally human in ourselves when we turn our backs to the stars. And some things are more important than our day-to-day needs.
Regards,
Shodan
I am with you Sam Stone except for the shot at the US Dept of Education* –
I think much of the hostility to this program is a hostility to a manned Space program at all. If we see that debate as over, and I think it is, I think Bush has a sensible plan. What I like most is the clear GOAL Return to the Moon by 2020.
I also like that like there is a sensible plan for retiring the Shuttle and controlling the costs on the ISS by declaring a “finish” date. Doing both these things alone changes the whole ball game.
On the CEV: I think it is too early to determine what it will be exactly. Hell, my understanding (when Bush announced it in January) was that it has not been determined whether the craft will be reusable, like the space shuttle, or a spacecraft like those on the Apollo missions, which were used just once. I can still say it is probably a good idea to untie us from the huge infrastructure needed to keep the Shuttle flying (including dreaming up Missions for it) and throwing that talent, time, money and infrastructure into space
Toss in the propulsion stuff and the possible Mars missions, telescopes etc. and I am all for it.
What hasn’t gotten much press at all, and what I expected people to go apesh^t over, was the Nuclear Propulsion tests … we’ll see but it looks like funding for this will continue for a while, which I am all in favor of.
*between Title I helping disadvantaged kids (12B) and the funding (on formula by State) for disabled kids (10B), Vocational grants (1.2B), Head Start (6.8 B), as the big ones - Along with Pell grants and funding Perkins and the Direct Student Loans Program for College. I simply don’t see it all as useless
Since it looks like the design will be Boeing/Northrop, this is the current best guess for what the CEV might look like.
It’s very modular - the basic component is a capsule that looks like a modern Apollo, except quite a bit larger. To that, you can add transhab inflatable habitation modules that are quite large, propulsion modules as needed, lander modules for landing on the moon, autonomous cargo modules, fuel modules, etc. Put the building blocks together any way you want to build the kind of spaceship you need for the mission.
[url=http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/ses/buildingblocks.html]Here’s a better link describing the CEV concept.
It is a singularly distinct pleasure to agree wholeheartedly with Sam Stone, and in a thread in which the OP references President Bush’s policy, of all things!
I think the Fed. Dept. of Education does do a few good things – merely not enough to justify the money. However, everything else Sam said is about what I would have said.
Poly (one of Heinlein’s children)
When humans turn their backs to other humans, well…thats always happened, but that doesn’t mean it’s all right.
I can’t think of a project more important than alliviating human suffering. I recognize that a space program provides a thing of acheivment to rally a country around and leads to scientific development that helps us all- even if our plans for the stars are futile. But it saddens me that our country cannot find a rallying point among it’s own people, much less the suffering people around the world. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our hope for the future was in our people? Or we started trying to fix up our own planet (the Bush administration, I’m told, arn’t big “believers” in things like global warming)?
I know it’s a drop in the bucket, but it bothers me that we are so quick to look at the stars and so slow to look around us. It bothers me that all ends of patrioc ferver can be drummed up to shoot the moon, but people look at hungry kids and shrug that there is nothing that can be done- the problem is too big.
Anyway, I don’t want to put a damper on the party.
Then by all means don’t. At least not until you’ve taken the time to count the numbers.
In Bush’s FY 2005 Budget, the Departments of
Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and Environmental Protection Agency, all agencies with some direct mandate to improve the immediate future of Americans, plan total outlays (bottom of the chart at the bottom of each linked page) of 743.3 billion dollars.
NASA will spend 16.4 billion.
Now you might lament that all the money we spend on space programs ($55.57 per person in this country) could solve the problems of the world. And you might be right, for all I know. But before you go scrapping something I think is very important to the long term future of the people on this planet, you’d better have a really good explanation for why.
How is taking away my $55.57 for space research going to solve the problems that the $2,520.86 currently being spent on them can’t?
And who says NASA isn’t improving the human condition? The Mars Rovers web site has received billions of hits. Clearly, a lot of people care about this stuff.
In my opinion, civilizations that turn inwards and start navel-gazing begin to decline. We need to push our boundaries, to explore, to expand our reach.
I was old enough to remember Apollo, and I remember that people felt better about themselves because of it. I remember going outside with my grandparents, staring at the moon, and hearing them say, “Can you believe there are men standing there right now?” People felt better about themselves just for being part of a nation or a race that could do great things like that.
My comment about the Department of Education was a bit flippant, but frankly, I think NASA has done more for education. How many of our scientists and engineers today were inspired by the grand spectacle of the Apollo missions? How many kids tried harder in school because they wanted to be astronauts, and then later migrated into law, or medicine, or other fields?
This is why human exploration is so important, and it’s something the opponents of human spaceflight just don’t get. Sure, robotic missions can have a great bang for the buck. But they don’t inspire people. They don’t create role models for children. They don’t touch the human soul. They’re cold, dry, clinical. Science is important, but it’s not everything. Human spaceflight reaches right into the soul of who we are and lifts us up.
Here’s an excellent editorial by James Cameron on this subject.
One of the truest things the Master said was, “The poor will always be with you.” If we wait to solve the problem of poverty, we’ll never do space exploration.
We can also have more than one rallying point in society. We can do the poverty thing and the Mars thing at the same time. I just don’t believe that we have the balls to do it right now. Either, actually.
But that’s just a defeatist attitude. The only way you ‘grow the balls to do something’ is to get up and do it, against the cries of those who say it can’t be done. If you think it should be done, why not join those of us who are pushing for it, instead of just standing on the sidelines saying we don’t have the will?
I have every confidence that a renewed space program will provide benefits to all of humanity, and may help ensure its long-term survival.
I have no confidence that George W. Bush, a known anti-intellectual and liar with a track record for setting government policy by the tenets of cronyism, is the person to sincerely lead a renewed space program.
Sigh.
I don’t like Bush any more than you do, but in this one single case, it actually doesn’t matter whether he rejuvinates the human space exploration program for either noble or selfish reasons. Either way, it will receive ample funding while he’s in office.
After all, the bulk of the human spaceflight program is conducted in (and therefore all that government funding is spent in the environs of) the Johnson Space Center.
You know… the one in Texas.