Some number of years ago, over twenty as I remember, the late (and IMHO great) Paul Harvey said that for every dollar spent at NASA, the return was seven dollars. So with that quote in my mind, the final Space Shuttle launch a few days ago, and Obama refocusing the NASA budget, I want to examine Obama’s NASA policy, as well as identify/review some of the daily benefits that we all derive from the NASA budget and space exploration.
Obama’s NASA Budget Proposal
Let’s look at what the Obama budget proposes. It ends our manned moon and space exploration, but it proposes a total NASA spending increase by $1 billion. So NASA won’t be totally out of business. His FY2011 budget proposed $19 billion, with emphasis on science, not on manned space flight. He wants to end NASA’s manned space flight program and rent space on Russian spacecraft. He wants to turn space transportation over to private, commercial companies, such as Space X, United Launch Alliance, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Bigelow Aerospace and others. There is only one problem with privatization with space flight – it does not work. Space X is where NASA was in 1960 with Project Mercury. The ability to put humans into orbit exists only on paper.
Here is what Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, said: “Mr. Obama risks blasting American space superiority on a “long downhill slide to mediocrity”. The decision to cancel Constellation, the project to send astronauts to the Moon again by 2020 and Mars by 2030, was “devastating.”
Obama’s decision places us totally at the mercy of the Russians. Armstrong continued, “America’s only path to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station will now be subject to an agreement with Russia to purchase space on their Soyuz – at a price of over $50 million per seat with significant increases expected in the near future – until we have the capacity to provide transportation for ourselves,” he said in his open letter to Obama , which was also signed by Gene Cernan, the last man on the Moon, and Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission.
Obama’s plans for NASA include muslim outreach and making them feed good, and global warming. On the “making muslims feel good” front, here is what (then) NASA director Charles Bolden, a retired United States Marines Corps major-general and former astronaut, said that Obama told him. “… and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
On the “global warming hoax” front, this article by Larry Bell “kills two birds with one stone.” First, it shows that global warming (now referred to as climate change) is, indeed, a hoax. Second, it implicates NASA’s part in starting this hoax.
Says Larry Bell: S. Fred Singer, former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and University of Virginia professor emeritus commented about these sorry circumstances in the foreword of my book, stating in part: “Many would place the beginning of the global warming hoax on the Senate testimony delivered by James Hansen of NASA [director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies] during the summer of 1988. More than anything else, this exhibition of hyped alarm triggered my active skepticism about the man-made global warming scare.”
So now we see that Obama wants to “privatize” low-orbit delivery, while focusing on other areas. Most Americans cannot remember a time when the United States wasn’t the world leader in space exploration. But now Obama wants NASA’s budget to be refocused on global warming and other politically charged projects instead of manned space flight.
Benefits Derived From NASA Budget
For more than 40 years, NASA has facilitated the transfer of its technology to the private sector, benefiting global competition and the economy. Since 1976, Spinoff, NASA’s publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology, has featured between 40 and 50 of these commercial products annually. Spinoff has detailed 1,723 such inventions to date.
“We get better airplanes, or we get better weather forecasting from space stuff, sure,” said Daniel Lockney, program executive in technology transfer and spinoff partnerships at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. “But we also get better-fed children. That kind of stuff, people don’t necessarily associate.”
Here is a long list of commercial benefits derived directly from NASA. Below are some selected specifics that I found interesting.
- Military Benefits: Here is what the Official US Air Force web site has to say about NASA. NASA began operations on Oct. 1, 1958, just before the one-year anniversary of the Soviet Union’s successful Sputnik I launch. Concerned about the race for technological superiority in space, U.S. officials debated long and hard over whether the space program should be placed under military or civilian control. NASA was established as a new civilian agency that borrowed heavily from the Defense Department and other government organizations as it built its own capabilities. One doesn’t have to look hard to see the deep connection between NASA and DOD. Meanwhile, officials at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), another organization Eisenhower created in response to the Sputnik launch, have provided critical expertise that has benefited NASA throughout its 50-year history. Defense Department officials stood up DARPA to find and quickly develop advanced technology for the military so the United States would never again suffer a technological surprise by another nation. DARPA scientists and engineers concentrated on the first surveillance satellites that ensured U.S. presidents had accurate intelligence information on Russian missile program activities, historical records show. But DARPA experts advanced other space projects as well, developing the Saturn V rocket that ultimately enabled the United States to launch the Apollo missions to the moon. DARPA, BTW, developed the first computer network that was eventually to become the Internet. That development has proven to be commercially successful.
- Medical field: it helped enable body-imaging techniques such as CATScans and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). NASA research investigating the nutritional value of algae led to the discovery of a nutrient that had previously only been found in human breast milk. The compound, which is thought to be important to eye and brain development, has since found its way into 95 percent of the infant formula sold in the United States. And thermometers that are inserted in your ear and take your temperature in seconds? The technology was initiated by scientists at NASA.
- Computers: The first integrated circuit was built by Texas Instruments, funded by the Apollo program and the Air Force’s Minuteman Missile Project. TI developed it, but NASA was the customer.
- Television viewing: NASA scientists developed those panoramic views of football plays from all angles, based on robotic gigapan camera technology software used to create images of the Mars landscape from digital photos taken by space probes.
- NASA scientists developed lightweight, portable water filters that are deployed to disaster areas and remote regions of the world where water is scarce.
The list of benefits from NASA’s budget have a real and immediate impact on our daily lives is endless. You probably know about “the space-age technology” used to develop scratch-proof lenses, composite golf clubs, high-density batteries, blue-blocking ultraviolet sunglasses, the computer mouse and freeze-dried food. NASA is constantly collaborating with private companies to share its resources. For example, the space agency builds a wind tunnel, but then allows NASCAR to use it for testing, or loans a zero-gravity aircraft to filmmakers.
Where Does Obama’s NASA Budget Refocus Leave Us?
I think J. Christian Adams at Pajamas Media says it best: “Opponents of NASA’s manned space program crow about the benefits of privatized spaceflight. Of all the other federal functions ripe for privatization – the dinosaur postal service for example – Obama targets the one function that provides both national security benefits and requires massive accumulation of capital to conduct. Too bad Obama’s zeal to wipe out manned space flight through privatization doesn’t extend to other parts of the federal government.”
Great essay, WB.
I was up and out looking at the sky when our first manned spacecraft went up.
And I watched last night on the NASA channel the last few hours as our shuttle came home (even though it kept me up til 3 in the morning).
I can still remember before the first computers, we had men in space who could and did work out quadratic equations in their heads!
I can remember our math teacher in high school trying to help us see how we could do that too.
It was hard, but it wasn’t so hard you couldn’t get the hang of it after a while.
We will lose much more than we realize now by ending our manned space program.
42 years and a day after American men first set foot on the moon, America quit the final frontier.
The socialist left have wanted to gut NASA for decades, because they desired to take their budget and use it for their failed social programs. The same goes for our military budgets. The only thing they really care about is furthering their goal to turn the US into the United Socialist States of America. This is clearly reflected in Obama’s fiscal agenda.
Don’t forget that NASA is in some ways a fairly messed-up, troubled organization, and has been for some time.
The expensive kludge known as the Space Shuttle was the result of political decisions, not engineering decisions. The specific decisions that led to the Shuttle Program fatalities were also political in nature. And there have been people at NASA grinding out bizarre man-made global warming propaganda for years.
That this adminstration is hostile to anything that would make the United States appear exceptional or brilliant goes without saying. It is also true, however, that NASA really needs to be shaken up and reinvigorated because of its own internal problems. Real leadership with real goals would assist in that. Needless to say, not on the agenda until 2013 at the earliest.
I’m really fed up with socialists in conservative clothing. You pretend to believe in capitalism and free-markets and talk the talk, but when it really comes down to it, you want the same Ministry of (fill in your favorite program) just like the Commies.
I look forward to the phasing out of of our cold ware era soviet style Ministry of Space and its replacement by *american* institutions: entrepreneurs, capitalists and free people doing things they want to do just because they want to do them.
The current NASA administration understands this. It is too bad you do not.
Nasa will be used to explore the outer regions of Muslim mosques. Weiner- Wasserman Schultz 2012.
“Dale,” you’re a troll and a fraud.
Can you imagine a reinvigorated NASA spurred with stimulus money? The stimulus went into failed Democrat wet dreams and failed government entities with no return on anything. 6% went into construction and the rest went into pipe dreams.
I viewed futuristic space engineering programs and can’t even envisage anything being done without a motivated USA humming along with a vibrant economy. This space exploration plank could be a winning strategy for the 2012 election winner. NASA should stay out of global warming politics and Muslim reach arounds. Hillary- Holder 2012.
If NASA had in their contracts been included as co designers for the various patents of the technology their programs created, and a share of the licensing, they likely could have done away with the need for government funding.
@Wm T Sherman: you have no idea who Dale is. And since you can’t seem to be bothered to look him up, I’ll help you: http://www.nss.org/about/bios/amon.html
Dale is one of the most distinguished member of the space advocacy community. He’s greatly respected for his work and ideas by most people who care about space development in general and America’s leading role in space in particular. And given his Libertarian credentials, accusing him of being a liberal troll is plain stupid.
So when he talks about this, do us all a favor and apply the Grandmother’s Law: God gave you one mouth and two ears, please use them proportionally.
Great essay! I was watching “from The Earth To The Moon” with my grandkids last night it being the 42nd anniversary of the first step on the moon (something I really didn’t see any mention of by the way!). The chapter about the fire in Apollo 1 reminded me of how extremely perverse these politicians are as to their utter hatred for not only NASA but the accomplishments they made as well as the human spirit . Fritz Mondale wanted the program killed! Numerous politicians since then have gone out of their way to ignore or debase the need of the space program. Now, the Clown in Chief has stabbed and twisted the knife. The Russians of course have now tripled the price to send one of our people up. Worse then that, the President and his leftist scumbag cohorts have given up our leadership. not only in space, but in fact the leadership of the world. We are now a third grade nation and will sit back and watch as the rest of the world dominates space and then the world itself.
This isn’t something to sneeze at. It is fact! What the hell! We have to wast money on things like studying the penis size of gay men as an example! Surely much more important!
@BRT
Maybe Dale should try a different approach if he wants to be given the benefit of the doubt. Starting off with a kick to the crotch is not conducive to further listening.
All the budget does is break the 40-year old federal monopoly on manned space flight. That monopoly is the reason shuttle never flew more than a few tens of flights per year. That monopoly is why the costs have always gone up rather than down. Monopolies don’t work.
Essentially the new budget starts the manned spaceflight side of NASA down the road toward buying tickets for cargo and crew into orbit. If it works, they will never again be owner operators of manned spacecraft. It returns them to the exploration mission they did so well during Apollo and are doing so well on the unmanned side. It starts creating a marketplace for manned spaceflight services. And it was not created by the Obama WH. It came out of the newSpace community.
There is a lot going on out there. All that has to happen is the government get out of our way. It is in our way with generation of new energy. It is in our way with oil and natural gas exploration and production. And it has been in our way for two generations with manned spaceflight.
The marketplace works, guys. And if it works for everything else, it can bloody well work for manned spaceflight. Perhaps it is time to try it. Cheers –
@agimarc:
We had a private space launch platform here in Long Beach, CA.
Read all about it here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch
While it lasted it was fun to watch it take a rocket out of the Port to sea.
But it didn’t last too long, as you can read at the link.
Nan, I read the Wiki link and it seems reasonable that with a catastrophic explosion, a free enterprise launch facility would qualify for a chapter 13 rearrangement.
@Nan –
Familiar with Sea Launch and their bankruptcy. Their web site claims to be out of Chapter 11 3Q 2011. Web site is here: Sea Launch
Yet another example for you: The communications satellite business went commercial decades ago. Today there are hundreds of them. Imagine the same competitive push for manned spaceflight. Cheers –
@Wm T Sherman: Maybe. But jumping down his throat and calling him a troll and a fake is no way get the conversation back on track.
@ogfA: re: SeaLaunch: they went through a Chapter 11 re-org, and are back out of it, hoping to start flying again this year: http://www.sea-launch.com/news_releases/2011/nr_110715.html
Private enterprise is unlikely to spend billions on projects having little or no prospect of producing profits in the foreseeable future. Private enterprise wouldn’t build a Large Hadron Supercollider; that takes CERN. It won’t put a man on Mars, and probably won’t put a colony on the moon. I’m not even sure it would spring for something as significant to the advancement of human knowledge as a Hubble orbital telescope.
On the other hand, private enterprise has profited enormously by building on publicly funded scientific efforts that had no obvious near-term profit potential. The public investment in the space program has paid for itself many times over, if you consider the profits private industry has realized from computer technology, materials innovations, satellite communication systems, GPS navigation, etc.
@Dale Amon:
Can you kindly explain how being supportive of NASA equates with being a “socialist in conservative clothing”?
Thank you so much.
@BRT:
This explains why we saw the Sea Launch back at the Port of Long Beach just the other day.
We were wondering why it was back.
When you cross over the two huge bridges that go over each port it is one of the more magnificent sights to see.
Photo.
@Aye:
Wow, Aye, if ignorance is bliss you’ve one happy liberal shill! Honestly, where does one begin when some “conservative” writes pablum such as this???
I’m curious if you’ve EVER heard of NASA’s involvement in the perpetuation of the Globull Warming hoax?
That ALONE is reason for the Republican House to axe that idiotic administration.
Fold up NASA, let the Pentagon have most of the tax-payer dollars to launches and PRIVATIZE IT.
PS Guess what? No one in the right mind would give private dollars to the degree needed to fund the private launches like NASA has done. They can only exist on the government tit.
@Wm T Sherman:
Dude, you’re full of it. Dale is correct, NASA only exists on the government tit. Yet people such as yourself, pretend to be “conservatives”, yet you sure don’t walk the talk.
You owe Dale an apology.
@Ivan:
Yo… dumbazz… you didn’t answer the question I posed.
Of course, I didn’t expect you to be able to.
@Ivan:
Dale – I apologize. Maybe I was too hasty and have it wrong.
Now it’s Dale’s turn.
1. NASA got taken over by bureaucrats many years ago. It should have been run by engineers. But engineers do not have the time and the political skill to deal with politicians. Engineers want to get stuff done, done fast, and done right. Politicians want to get credit, whether stuff is done or not.
2. The SRB (solid rocket booster) program is a case in point. This is what failed in the Challenger disaster. Politics led to one company getting the contract for the SRB which was a long way from the launch pad. This was a Mormon-owned company, and it was a deal to make some Mormons happy. As a result, the shell had to be segmented and could not be filled as a solid shell. It was the segments which broke apart.
3. The launch of the Challenger was a case of bureaucrats overriding engineers. There was ice on the rocket, but Reagan wanted the First Woman In Space to be there for his speech. So the rocket went, despite the documented correlation between segment seal failure and temperature at launch. Engineers said no, politics said go.
4. Governments are not able to build things. It is against their nature. Government builds more government. Private industry builds things. The old canard is still valid: an elephant is a mouse built by a committee.
5. We don’t need NASA. We need to get into space. Now that NASA is not about getting into space, NASA is a waste of money.
Actually, the Dragon/Mercury comparison doesn’t bother me too much. But then again, I’m looking at it from a different angle.
I’m old enough to remember following Gemini flights, but I’m just a little bit too young to remember Mercury. Nevertheless, I spent hours poring over my parents’ Life magazines covering the Mercury flights, and I still have them. I’ve always been fascinated with the history of Project Mercury.
When the first Dragon was launched last December on its two-orbit flight, I obsessively followed its progress on the internet, hungry for every scrap of information I could find. I was very conscious of the parallel to the early Mercury flights, and it gave me the teensiest taste of what it must have been like on Feb. 20, 1962, when the whole country stopped in its tracks to follow the flight of MA-6.
Dragon was a brand-new spacecraft and Falcon 9 was a brand-new rocket (it had only been launched once before), so naturally the first flight was a short unmanned flight to check out the major systems. The first flights of NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft were also unmanned, and they were all suborbital. At least Dragon went into orbit on the first try. It flew a full mission profile and was successfully recovered. As Elon Musk said afterwards, “If an astronaut had been on board, he would have had a comfortable flight.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_1 (The “popped cork” flight, as Tom Wolfe called it.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_1A
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_1 (OK, it did go into orbit, but that flight was more a test of the Titan II booster than anything. The spacecraft didn’t separate and there was no attempt at recovery.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS-201
As usual our fearless politicians wait till there is a crisis, and or the end till they begin to do something. I remember when a few republicans and democrats back in the mid nineties tried to plan ahead for this day. They were told the same old line that we hear everyday on every issue. “We can do that later!.” But later never comes for some reason. But hey! We can all reminence about the days that we ruled space! And then commiserate together over our leaders failing us again. Its a sad feeling in reality, to look up at all those stars and planets and know that we don’t have any spacefaring ships out there anymore.
Please help Republicans correct their misunderstanding of America’s Free Enterprise space effort. Please watch and forward around this video by Bill Whittle of PJTV:
FIRST< I refuse to allow the ObamaBeast to usurp anything to do with the science and engineering of space exploration. The hyped "Community Organizer" on the southside of Chicago left carnage (black on black killings daily) on the southside. Private ventures into space have been around since Flash Gordon. Thirty years ago PanAm Airways, remember them, sold seat options, $1,000,000, for its first commercial shuttle into space. Never rule out private endeavor and investments, my children will have children then great grandchildren all looking for a job so if it be here or on some platform in outer space wonderful; also, there will be outer space copulation, pregnancy and birth so maybe my DNA will make it there too. Age ole proverb, where there is sex there is profit, where there is profit there is investment.
So where is Dale’s apology, or refusal to apologize, for calling present company a bunch of sold out corrupt statist wimps right off the bat?
It’s almost as if some media consultant contractor working for Dale spammed the thread and never looked back. I know, I know, crazy talk.
Come on Dale. Challenge us on the issues. Teach us a lesson. School us.
Dale?
This truly is one of the most interesting topics around nowadays. On the one hand, you have government funded space exploration. The government has never been all that efficient in any of it’s various programs, and this one is no exception. As mathman pointed out, when the government program becomes political in nature, the original mission, or purpose, of the program becomes lost. At that point it becomes more of a political payback machine than anything else.
Now, on the other hand, you have the private enterprise outfits, doing everything from putting satellites in orbit to working on private manned space flight. Private enterprise, most of the time, is much more efficient at getting things done than government. The only exception is when the private enterprise becomes part of crony capitalism, and starts relying on public governmental funding for part, or all, of it’s operations. Then it is no better than government itself. Hopefully, the private enterprise firms can avoid this.
It is sad to see the end of an era, concerning NASA, but there might be some bright spots in the future if the private enterprises work like I believe they will.
@Wm T Sherman:
Dale should have left open the possibility that idiocy, rather than mendacity, was the explanation.
@Dale Amon
Ridiculous. The space missions of NASA have been no more “socialist” than the building of the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal, interstate highway system, the US postal service or national air traffic control system. In history, there are many programs that only a government would (or could) create, and that no private enterprise would consider due to the fact that it might not be profitable, but that doesn’t make them all “socialist” programs. The fact that there have been “progressive” administrators appointed, does not make automatically everyone in an agency (or those who support) it “socialists.” It is true that that socialist administrators can force an agency to partially operate with a “progressive” agenda, but when you replace the leadership with conservatives, that political agenda can usually be throw out like yesterday’s garbage. When you consider that the general mission of NASA requires millions of dollars to put a few select individuals into space, you can only conclude that it is the least socialist agency of all.
Nor is NASA a “monopoly.” It has always been a cooperative venture between the government and private business that has benefited all of us, NASA has openly encouraged private business and entrepreneurs, and even offers incentive prizes to encourage private businesses and individuals to enter the space race. What “monopoly openly shares most of it’s technology with others like NASA has done? There was little consideration of electronic circuit miniaturization until the space agency required it for weight reduction. Our technology level would be considerably different if not for our space programs. No other government agency has inspired people more than NASA. I agree that since the beginning of the shuttle program Yes, NASA has become politicized and has been mismanaged. But now really, what Federal government agency hasn’t?
Rather than name calling and political posturing, wouldn’t it be more sensible to think creatively and ask ourselves:
(1) What should be done with NASA and it’s assets?
(2) Can NASA serve a useful purpose that will make it worthy of reorganization?
Personally, I think it would be best to refocus NASA’s assets, and turn the agency into the worlds first national public space university system for those interesting in becoming part of a growing space industry. No need to lay off all those NASA workers, we just turn them into educators.
The manned space program was an exercise in the glorification of the State. Unlike the Hoover Dam, it served no objectively useful purpose (and no, it wasn’t necessary for victory in the Cold War, and no, spinoffs don’t save it). Worse, it provided a framework and context for unlimited government expansion (“if they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they…?”) When even frivolous dreams are deemed worthy of the government confiscating and spending 4% of the federal budget (at peak), what limits can there be on what politicians can force us to support? None, obviously.
If you called yourself a conservative, and yet supported the manned space program, you should be ashamed of your hypocrisy.
mathman: Your #25 is pretty close to being correct, but you were mistaken about Reagan pushing for the launch. Were you aware of the environmentalist angle regarding the loss of Challenger? They got the Randolph asbestos-containing joint putty for the SRBs banned and the new “environmentally friendly” putty leaked through. You might also recall there were two expendable Titans lost about the same time for the same reason – one at Vandenberg and one at the Cape.
There was also an environmentalist angle to the loss of Columbia. They got the solvent (Trichloroethylene) used to prep the ET for foaming banned, and also the blowing agent for the foam (freon). That’s why the chunk of foam fell off.
For the record, I helped launch the Challenger that day. I was the lead orbiter instrumentation engineer [CISL] at the C-9 console. Little known fact: Orbiter Test Conductor [OTC] Roberta Wyrick launched both the Challenger and this final mission. She was the best OTC there ever was (and now…ever will be).
Ditto #9: NASA should have sold advertising on the tank and boosters. THAT and your suggestions definitely would have paid for the program.
@John Cooper:
Those are interesting little factoids about the environmentalists and the shuttle disasters. That’s certainly something to remember for future discussions with enviro-whackos.
Hmmm…okay, let’s see what we have here…
Is it your contention that if it wasn’t for NASA’s bloated and inefficient budget that we wouldn’t have seen IC developed??????
Everything that the government “develops” can be done by the free-market more efficiently and cheaper. If you don’t believe that you’re really a big-government Rino and you should move over to Dailiy KOS.
This is an excellent thread as we see people I’d deemed to be, in fact, liberals (Aye, are you listening) defending big government spending!!!
You guys were so easy to expose as hypocrites it’s funny.
@Wm T Sherman:
Wow, the truth hurts, don’t it? ;->
Honestly, he is correct. Many “conservatives” have a special place in their heart for the space program, and I understand why, but this isn’t 1969 guys. NASA-like ALL of the USG-has become a infected with socialists and our tax dollars are being used against us by NASA.
We need to eliminate entire agencies if we’re going to destroy this beast, not just the EPA, HUD, etc.
Have a good weekend.
@Ivan:
Listen dumbazz, I know that you find reading comprehension to be a really, really difficult thing…maybe your better educated, barefoot, pregnant, subservient, cookie-baking wife can assist you in understanding…but I haven’t expressed an opinion one way or the other regarding NASA on this thread.
What I did, in reality, was pose a question to the bombastic Dale Amon regarding his assertion that support for NASA is equivalent to socialism. As of yet, Dale hasn’t been back by to attempt to explain his position. The odd thing is, you’re incapable of explaining it either.
And from my question to Dale you make a quantum leap of logic attempting to assess what my unexpressed thoughts are regarding NASA.
Even when you attempt to argue points that have actually been raised you’ve proven over and over to be an epic failure. When you attempt to argue points that haven’t even been raised well, frankly, you make an even bigger fool of yourself.
Right.
Sort of like the person who railed on and on and on about how every conservative should move out of California while the very person offering that advice was…wait for it…a resident and business owner in California who claims to be a conservative.
This same person claims to be a staunch conservative while openly braggin’ that he takes more from the government than he pays in.
Yet you are now calling us hypocrites? That’s some funny stuff right there.
You sad, silly, pathetic little man. We’re just pointing and laughing at you. Again.
Oh, by the way, you still haven’t cleared up the lies that you told on this thread either.
@Paul & Ivan
The space programs, both manned and unmanned gave us valuable new technology and knowledge that we did not have before:
There have been thousands of important and very lucrative technological spin-offs from the manned space programs, and the shuttle program was no different: (George Musser, space and physics editor at the magazine Scientific American)
The human quest for knowledge, exploration and the inventiveness is not anathema to conservatism. But perhaps to you Paul all of this is frivolousness. You probably would have told the Wright brothers that they needed to stop all that manned flight foolishness and concentrated on running their bike shop. When Columbus went to the king and queen of Spain, your type would have told them that there would be nothing to gain from funding such an endeavor when the money and ships could be better used at home. Your mindset would still have never led to the renaissance period. It is you who should be ashamed to be wasting your time on this newfangled internet when there are more useful things you could be doing with your time and money.
@Ivan
Your hypothetical assumptions are irrelevant as the free market was indeed involved with supplying manufacturing and services for the NASA missions. Perhaps private industry could have eventually, (perhaps 30 or 50 years from now,) and less expensively created the integrated circuit. However in the mid 20th century there was no incentive for it. Nor would any company have ever considered a manned space program on their own, had it not been for the successes of NASA. You have the nerve to bring up the “bloated” budget of NASA yet you neglect to supply numbers and provide a comparison, so I will.
Adjusted for inflation to today’s dollar (I.e. not the actual amount spent, but how much it would have cost today,) the total expenditures for NASA’s entire 53-year lifetime has been $1.0882 trillion. NASA gets less than 1% of the US government’s budget. Comparably the Credit Crisis bailout exceeded $4.6165 trillion dollars. Obama’s stimulus plan cost the nation 3.27 trillion (or 278,000 per job). Considering everything we have gained from the space programs, (technology advances and knowledge of our world and the universe,) NASA was a bargain.
Nor do I believe that you or Paul are “conservatives” considering you are making the same anti-NASA arguments that progressive Democrats have for the last 50 years.
Did risk reduction backfire in space?
By Malcolm Ross
Washington Times January 28, 1996
“Do I dare to eat a peach?” wrote T. S. Eliot in “The Love-Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock.” The corridors of government are crowded with Prufrocks, imagining
dangers on all sides, cautioning against all action. The inability to dare
anything is particularly pronounced in the hazy areas connecting science and
public policy. Suggestions of risk are easily found in the complex technologies
underlying contemporary life. What is not so easy is to make impromptu
technological changes on the basis of fleeting fears.
The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, which stunned the nation in 1986,
and left long tendrils of speculation and second-guessing in its wake, is a
particularly twisted tale of the calculation of risk. Most analysis of the event
has focused on decisions made the day of the launch: should it have been called
off because of cold weather? Who was aware of the risk involved? What
information was known and what was suppressed? A new book by the sociologist
Diane Vaughan (The Challenger Launch Decision, U. Chicago Press) analyzes the
“culture of NASA,” attempting to show that the explosion was not a technological
problem but a symptom of NASA’s style of decision-making.
Like many studies of scientific subjects undertaken by non-scientists, this book
overlooks some very important facts. The shuttle is a machine, not a social
organism, and the technical causes of its failure are readily grasped. The
deeper flaws in the shuttle’s system of protecting the booster rocket’s exterior
casing–the O-rings seals and the putty-filled joints which contained the
ferociously hot gases produced by combustion of the rocket fuel–are clearly
laid out in NASA engineering reports, news reports, and the Report of the
Presidential Commission of June 6, 1986. They lead back to a curious point of
origin: the 1977 Consumer Products Safety Commission ban on retail asbestos
products and the impending ban on all asbestos use by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency.
Simply put, the Challenger exploded because the putty failed to prevent hot
gases from passing through the booster joint and burning the O-rings. This
failure was a direct result of a change in the kind of putty used for sealing
the joints. For the first nine successful shuttle missions, NASA employed a
special asbestos-bearing putty manufactured by the Fuller O’Brien Company of San
Francisco. But in the wake of the developing notoriety of asbestos-bearing
products and the fear of lawsuits, Fuller-O’Brien stopped manufacturing the
putty that had served the shuttle so well.
Early in 1984, having run through their stock of Fuller-O’Brien putty, NASA
engineers turned to another type of asbestos-bearing putty manufactured by
Randolph Products of Carlstadt, NJ. The Fuller-O’Brien putty was also used in
the Titan 34-D booster rocket joint seals, similar in design to those of the
Challenger. However, by 1985 it too had been replaced by a substitute putty. The
result of this substitution, following a string of 50 successful Titan launches,
was a devastating explosion of the next two Titan rockets, one launched in
August of 1985 and the other in April of 1986.
The shuttle engineers became increasingly alarmed about “blowholes” in the
Randolph putty and burned O-rings–defects appearing in the boosters used on the
15 space shuttles launched during 1984 and 1985. Gases as hot as 6000 degrees
Fahrenheit flowed through the blowholes and wrought havoc on the O-rings, whose
debilitated state showed clearly when the discarded rocket boosters were
recovered from the ocean. To quote from an engineering memo of February 28,
1984: “ZCP (type II Randolph zinc chromate putty) failure to provide a thermal
barrier can lead to burning both O-rings and subsequent catastrophic failure.”
The purpose of the putty was clearly explained in NASA review documents. The
putty must prevent the hot gases from impinging on the delicate O-rings and also
must act as a medium to transmit pressure to the O-rings thus enabling them to
seal properly.
In my reexamination of the Fuller-O’Brien and Randolph putties in 1994 it became
clear why one failed and the other did not. The Fuller-O’Brien product is very
sticky, even at temperatures held for 24 hours at 10 degrees Fahrenheit. It
clings tenaciously to the surrounding material: it has something of the same
effect as the ooze in the La Brea tar pits, which does not easily let go if you
stick your foot onto its surface. The Randolph putty, by contrast, is stiff to
the touch. At 10 degrees, it is almost hard: it does not cling. At the
near-freezing launch temperature it is not surprising that the Randolph putty
failed.
The Challenger disaster tells us something more: that measures aimed at
lessening risk can actually increase risk, even create risk. The removal of the
Fuller-O’Brien product and the hasty substitution of the Randolph putty (which,
ironically, also used asbestos) are the single and obvious origin of the tragedy
of January 28, 1986.
Diane Vaughan suggests that there existed a “culture” in the space-shuttle
program that led to the Challenger disaster. If indeed there existed a culture
of failure, then it was part of a larger culture, the regulatory culture devoted
to banning products that are perceived to be associated with even small
environmental or health risks.
The removal of the Fuller-O’Brien putty threw a monkey wrench into the space
shuttle program. How many more monkey wrenches are we to throw into our society
through faulty risk assessments?
__________________
Malcolm Ross is associated with the Science and Environmental Policy Project. He
has 41 years experience as a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
I’m not sure that I have ever seen myself as quite that much of an extinguished elder spokesman for the Libertarian space position, but thank you.
As to kicking goolies, sometimes it is needed. I am left open mouthed in disbelie that ‘conservatives’ have so little belief in the market and in the creativity of free american entrepreneurs. There is a great deal of lobby money out there buying opinion for a few certain large interests and it seems like much of the ‘conservative’ playbook these days comes straight out of the lips of those government contractors lobby-force.
Take some time to research it. We are not at the end of american space, we are at the beginning of the domiance of the Anglosphere in the High Frontier by doing things the way free people do things best.
Look at XCOR Aerospace; Masten Aerospace; Scaled Composites; Virgin Galactic; SpaceX; Armadillo Aerospace; Space Diver; Bigelow Aerospace; Blue Origin… I could go on for a very long time.
More people will fly into space (suborbital) on Virgin Galactic in the next couple years than have been into space in the entire history of the space age. Bigelow is putting up a privately owned space station with about 1/3 the ISS volume in mid decade. It’s not paper, the hardware is being built and the launch contracts have been let. XCOR’s Lynx II will be doing suborbital flights direct from a runway in just a couple years; SpaceX is already flying Falcon 9 and the 7 person capable Dragon capsule. Sierra Nevada is also well along on their vehicle. As is OSC with their cargo only capsule. Elon Musk has publically stated that his goal is Mars, and that is one of the reasons why he is keeping a majority of his company so that he will not get held back by that idiotic Sarbanes-Oxley act. The door to sapce is being kicked down by FREE men. We’d appreciate it if Conservatives would be on our side instead of working for the ‘enemy’, the old socialist state run space enterprise.
@Dale Amon:
Hey Dale… thanks for stopping back by.
I posed a question to you earlier but you may have missed it.
Here it is again for easy reference:
From Federal Register/Vol. 66, No. 221/Thursday, November 15, 2001/Rules and Regulations, Page 57517:
Dale Amon: May I ask what these private space companies use for liability insurance? If a booster launched from…say…Vandenberg AFB lands on Santa Barbara and kills 10,000 people, do they have enough coverage to pay?
Dale Amon: “I’m not sure that I have ever seen myself as quite that much of an extinguished elder spokesman”
(?) I don’t think that’s a typo. I’d let it go, but you just got done calling just about everybody else an idiot, so…
Anyway, I don’t see all the unconditional support for NASA on this thread that you do. It is a Cold War relic in many ways. There are still national security related orbital shots carried out, but those are done by the Air Force and the CIA. The unmanned research flights to the planets are not something the private sector would be interested in – if taxpayer funded private contractors carry them out it’s not clear that they would be done at all. To say we should have no government capability to have things put into space is similar to saying we should have no military. Not going to happen.
The real issue is the present and future commercial market. A legitimate point.
But: You want everyone to agree that any government-funded space program is an evil intolerable abomination, and you resort to insults instantly if you detect any softness on that position. This sort of hair trigger angry response to demonize any perceived deviation is behavior typical of a crank. It is a condescending insult that will convince nobody; you’re intelligent enough to know that, which means you just don’t care.
You are angry for two reasons:
1. A taxpayer-funded competitor inhibits the private launch market.
2. Your giant f*****g ego.
Point 1 is legitimate. Point 2 effectively makes you an irrelevant crank who screeches insults at potential supporters without making any attempt to win them over.
It appears a few of Dale’s accolytes have been stopping by. Perhaps you can enjoy talking to each other, since you don’t much care if anybody else listens.
The issue of the day is our nation’s rush to economic ruin. A government space program is small issue in the scheme of things, ten billion dollars per year vs. a 1.5 trillion dollar annual deficit – except to people who are personally involved in competing with it.
Good luck to the private sector space efforts, which fortunately have numerous effective, non-cranky spokesmen.
John Cooper
Private companies musn’t use Vandenberg. They must build their own private facility. It’s the priciple of the thing.
Wm T: I have to admit that I was baiting our friendly libertarian guest. Having worked for 13+ years (retired now) launching space shuttles and building launch facilities, I think I have a pretty good understanding of what it takes to launch men into space and return them safely. Some of these wild-eyed Paulians (not necessarily our friend) just have no clue.
Take range safety, for example. The government takes care not to kill innocent civilians when launching things. All their launch vehicles carry explosive charges which will disable the vehicles should they veer of course toward a populated area. I wonder if these private launch vehicles have that capability… or if they go off course and make a big fireball in the middle of some football stadium, will they just declare bankruptcy and walk away. That’s why I asked about insurance.
How do they know the vehicle is off course? The government also has radar, optics, ships at see and aircraft to watch the trajectory and also to insure that the launch area is clear of boats and aircraft prior to launch. I wonder if these “on the cheap” private companies will be installing radar installations, photo-tracking sites, and telemetry links to monitor their spacecraft. Or will they be depending upon the government to do all that for them…or just not do it at all.
The first time one of these private vehicles kills people – and they surely will – that’s going to end it for them.
I wish them well – I really do – but they need to get real.
The Eastern and Western Ranges are a problem because they are government run… like all such entities they are insufficiently capitalized and not designed for growth. The capacity will soon filled up by Florida Spaceport private launches and I am not sure how that will be dealt with unless we hand them over to the private sector and get the government out of the range control business. Otherwise we are liable to see the big launches leave the country by necessity. That will not effect the small vehicles or the winged ones, which can take off from Mojave Spaceport, Spaceport America in New Mexico or one of the others (like the old Clinton-Sherman field).
Incidentally, I have a useful definition for New Space versus Old Space. You are Old Space if, when the government stops paying, you stop launching. You are New Space if, when the government stops paying, you slow down some development and keep launching. Is the State your business plan or is it just a bit of spare change on the side? That is what matters. If your business plan won’t fly without the government, I am just as happy if you go bankrupt and get out of the way. As Jerry Pournelle used to say “Lead, Follow or Get out of the way.”
I presume that some people never watched the Bowery Boys movie and are unfamiliar with the Slip Mahoney spoonerisms such as the one I quoted in response to the very kind statement someone made.
Back to NASA: they have a small role to play in the future, but it is best played out as a NACA that develops technology to keep American space business more competitive by helping provide the technology base for new
products rather than being Sugar Daddy to big Aero.
I really do wish Conservatives would back american entrepreneurs and not get all dewy eyed over a few giant defense contractors who have absolutely no need to do anything revolutionary and damn little reason to even be very evolutionary in their glacially slow improvements.
I’m for small government. Defense of the shores at the national level and a fair system of courts, and police that are peacekeepers at the local level. Everything else can go away. In some cases a phased pull out is needed, but the removal of the State from the Economy is a goal worth working towards.