Back to the moon!

Now what's the point of this thread? I see at least 4 different topics between the thread title and your 3 comments here.

Yes, they spend like drunken sailors (to quote John McCain), but it would be worse if Gephardt or someone was in office - that's why, even though they are angry, conservatives will stick with Bush, because he's better than the alternative.

Therefore it's okay to spend like a drunken sailor?

Well, at least you can count on a drunken sailor to be dishonest...

No, it's not okay, and it's why you hear conservatives getting angry about all the spending we're doing. We try to work with Bush to get things fixed rather than splitting the party vote and having something worse be the result. Congress is the real problem, with earmarks going out of control because they desperately want to get things passed. This omnibus bill that they've run through is just another example of that, on top of the Medicare, Energy, and Farm bills that have already either gone through or failed in the Senate. Bush, of course, is at fault too because he said in his State of the Union that Congress should hold spending increases to the rate of inflation. That's great, but the problem is that he hasn't backed it up with his veto pen. He's the first president in modern history to not use his veto this far into his term. He needs to take a stand on spending and veto everything that goes beyond what he wants - make Congress either pass it over his head, or make them rework it.

Yes, I have.

The last Administration was notorious for its lack of press conferences too.

Nice rationalization. I assume you have a History Altering Machine that allows you to go back in time, get Gephardt elected, and watch him run the country's deficit into the trillions. Yep, thank God that Bush won so that didn't happen.

Oh, wait a sec...

"No, it's not okay, and it's why you hear conservatives getting angry about all the spending we're doing. We try to work with Bush to get things fixed rather than splitting the party vote and having something worse be the result. Congress is the real problem, with earmarks going out of control because they desperately want to get things passed. This omnibus bill that they've run through is just another example of that, on top of the Medicare, Energy, and Farm bills that have already either gone through or failed in the Senate. Bush, of course, is at fault too because he said in his State of the Union that Congress should hold spending increases to the rate of inflation. That's great, but the problem is that he hasn't backed it up with his veto pen. He's the first president in modern history to not use his veto this far into his term. He needs to take a stand on spending and veto everything that goes beyond what he wants - make Congress either pass it over his head, or make them rework it."

See thats the problem. The reason Bush allows congress get away with all of this spending is to keep them inline when it comes to his bills. Not all of his ideas are very popular (medicare is a good example of this) but the administration seems to be like "We'll pass your bill if you pass ours".

Thank you, have a nice day.

Hey, whatever gets us into outerspace. Much rather the government spend money on space exploration than on more weapons.

Not really, preparations to return to the moon have been on the table for years. IIRC, one particular project was at an advanced stage of planning immediately prior to the Columbia disaster (at a time when the Soviet Union had effectively given up on manned space exploration). Unfortunately, the lengthy hiatus brought about by that disaster pretty much killed off all interest in ‘high-risk’ manned missions and the plan was subsequently put on ice.

The latest blueprint for a moon landing has hovered in and out of ‘political favour’ for almost a decade now, and it was always likely to be ‘green lit’ at some stage.

As for the Chinese, well they really have little need to construct elaborate Machiavellian schemes designed to attenuate the economy of the United States. Even the most conservative estimates suggest that China will, without any more effort than they are currently applying, become the richest nation on the planet by approximately 2040. Some suggest that 2015 is a more realistic date.

I suppose the one crumb of comfort that can be taken from all this is that owing to America’s considerable head start in the ‘space race’, it will no doubt take the Chinese some time to develop rocket-launched weapons that are as effective at killing millions of people as those found situated in the silos of its super-power rival.

That is, of course, if the Chinese are interested in wasting their money on that kind of silliness.

I don't think the money is going to come from the defense budget. Look for programs that actually help people to be cut for this job.

Crap, and I thought we were going to talk about the propose lunar base instead of this nonsense.

I'm all for spending more in space research, specially for a permanet lunar base, but I would like to see what changes are going to be made to NASA to guarantee this money will be well spent.

When I said I'd rather the money be spent on space exploration rather than defense, I was referring to Devin's earlier quote about the similiarity between a space race and an arms race and how I was glad that if we're going to compete with a nation, it won't be like the Cold War in terms of trying to build the most nuclear weapons. I never meant to imply that a conservative would ever take money away from the ever-so-precious defense budget.

And what benefit would there be to have a permanent lunar base? If they are going to spend more money on the space race, then I think it should be spent on better vehicles for space travel. Something maybe a little newer, safer, more versatile, capable of exploring more than just the near vicinity of our space, the list goes on and on.


Edited: because my keyboard sabotaged my spelling yet again.

I think we can make everybody happy if we just take money from the defense budget and put it into space, and claim that we're doing this for exploration and for defense research. After all, the work needed for a lunar base has military applications, in addition to a future Mars mission.

I think a permanent lunar base offers more benefits than the current international space station, and gets us ready for Mars travel.

What's the point? Because we can. Because people are fascinated with the concept, of what is out there. Sure we complain about money being spent, but at the same time any discovery made, any new plateau reached helps fuel our imagination and our basic drive. What do you think has driven most of our civilization? IMO, exploration, exposure to new ideals. Is there room for that here? Sure, but must we exhaust all avenues of exploration here, before we look elsewhere?


Besides, don't we want to beat the Chinese?

I can think of at least five other space projects I'd want to see my money spent on before I backed a manned lunar mission, and they're all cheaper. One of those five is an unmanned lunar mission to find water. No water, no colony.

Aren't there more important things on Earth that need funding? Shelter for the homeless, curing cancer, feeding the hungry, hunting down Tony Danza?

Check how much money's spent on those things already before considering how much cancelling NASA's budget would help.

When you think that in 65 years we went from the first powered flight to landing on the Moon, it's an absolute crime that we just stopped once we got there.

Like Heinlein said, the Earth is far too fragile a basket for us to leave all our eggs in. Had we not simply lost interest after Apollo 17, I firmly believe we could be on Mars right now.

The problem that any Government faces when dealing with this issue is that, at the moment, the cost of manned space exploration simply isn't justifiable when you take into consideration funding shortfalls in critical (vote winning) areas such as healthcare, education etc.

If we can find some way of trimming down the most expensive element of spaceflight (generating the necessary thrust to achieve escape velocity) then manned space exploration suddenly becomes far more appealing to the public and the politicians. Until such a time arrives, we simply cannot afford to throw money around (with a level of profligacy that would make Kublai Khan blush) at projects that can quite easily be performed by robots at a fraction of the cost.

Interesting if confusing progression of conversation in this thread.

I have no problems with a renewed space program getting good funding because indeed, this can be an industry that pays for itself in terms of jobs, practical technology, and tax revenue.

But the focus has to be on exploration and innovation, not missile shields that cost untold billions and yield little in terms of jobs, practical technology, and tax revenue.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

We cannot wage unlimited/ blank check wars under a banner like "We will spend what is neccesary to fight a war on Terror" AND have the proper amount of funding remaining to take America into the 21st century.

Get that under control first. THEN rein in spending. THEN once we have a bit of fiscal discipline THEN set out with moderate, but steadily increasing funding for new initiatives like this, education reform, and renewable fuels.

No, there isn't any altering of history here. I'm looking at the campaign promises that Gephardt has made, and he's promising trillions of dollars of new federal entitlement spending over the next 10 years. With Congress as undisicplined as they are, this would cripple us moreso.

Good plan, Micah!

More expensive than missile defense, prescription cards, blank check wars with no end in sight, a new office of Homeland Security, and nation building obligations that will last decades?

Well we aren't going to find a cheaper method of space travel by spending less. I am not advocating a blank check to NASA, but cutting their budget seems to be a step in the wrong direction.

Micah presents an excellent plan, but I wonder when, if ever, we will ever reach the point when such a plan can be implemented (certainly not under the current administration).

The planet isn't big enough for the different groups of people here that want to live apart. As Prof X said, sharing this rock has never been our defining attribute. We need more space to live on and expand as a species and space is the way to go.

Thank the gods they sent the Chinese to finally get America off its ass and do something. This is why communism fails, without competition, people aren't motivated to do anything. Perhaps this'll end communist rule in china when they go bankrupt trying to compete with us.

I'm sure someone in Europe said the same thing about Columbus.

Is that such a bad thing? So he was looking for one thing, and instead rediscovered something else.

Unless we're living in some fantasy society where NASA monies would magically go to feeding and housing poor people and fighting AIDS, I'm all for a robust (and sensible) space exploration program. There's plenty of fat and pork in our budget that could be trimmed elsewhere.

Costs, Schmosts. Since when was exploration cheap? CC's expedition certainly cost quite a bit in his day. I may be wrong, but wasn't Columbus turned down by a couple different monarchies, because of the cost?

As a side note, I would rather my tax money go into developing better space flight, than sunk into the Black hole of education reform or health care. But that's just me.

Hmmm. If you'd already established some sort of colony? I'd guess there'd be quite a few planetary geologists there. Geneticists and botanists might be figuring out which grasses and mosses will survive and which won't. Or maybe there'd be an asteroid early warning system, and the latest project to start moving them around would just be getting underway.

Or there might be a few footprints and a plastic flag. Who can say?

I was refering more to the colonization that followed. Why mount the risk of sending an colonization expedition when we've got everything we need right here in the Old World? Why send Lewis and Clark out when we've got all we need east of the Appalachians? Just where would that attitude have left us?

Why, as Heinlein implies in the quote I used, keep mankind confined to this fragile ball that we're already over-populating?

Or, as Sam Seabourn says in the "Galileo" episode of The West Wing:

Education reform and health care are BLACK HOLES?

Apparently, the space program in your world will consist of sick, weakly idiots barely fit enough to stand leaving orbit.