Featured Was Obama Wrong to Cut Back NASA?

I just can't believe that if the US govt could go from the conception of a lunar landing to having a man on the moon in eight years in the 60s free enterprise can't get a man to the space station in six years today.

 

The decision to mothball the shuttles was made by George W. Bush after the Columbia disaster back in 2004. There is now a contest between several competing private companies to develop a new style of shuttle. (I was at Kennedy Space Center in December.)

 

Seriously? You can't understand why the U.S. government's full set of resources and a national mission articulated by the President of the United States could accomplish something that private investors can't? Free enterprise is currently trying to develop a new style of space shuttle that is being overseen by NASA. I believe there is a deliberate slowdown of the schedule to develop this vehicle.

 

I think that everyone in Europe realizes that the USA is in decline with little hope of reversal before 2016. The space disaster with Russia in charge of American lives is just one example of the stupidity of underestimating Putin, who has the free world in retreat at the moment.

 

I am well aware of the competition. SpaceX is probably the leader in the race.

Bush may have proposed the retirement of the shuttles in 2004, but the formal decision didn't take place until 2010, and that was long before the shuttles had reached their life expectancy.

 

Once again you are mistaken in your allegations.

1. Bush, not Obama, canceled the space shuttle program after the Columbia disaster.

2. Obama actually increased NASA's budget compared to Bush's budget and it's holding steady.

3. Obama didn't end manned space exploration, he changed the mission. Bush wanted to go back to the moon and then go to Mars. Obama wants to go to an asteroid, then go to Mars. The vendor for the supplier of the heavy-lift rocket for this vehicle to carry men to Mars is supposed to be selected by 2015. Private enterprise will develop low orbit vehicles. This is area of the manned spacecraft missions that the U.S. has quit.

4. Obama actually extended the life of the ISS by funding it from its scheduled end of 2016 to 2020.

 

Bush proposed the retirement of the shuttle program and NASA implemented his plan. It was a done deal in 2004.

 

Those doggone facts - always getting in the way of good discussion.

I doubt seriously the shuttle fleet could have flown till 2050. Two of the original fleet were lost in the first 30 years in only 130 some flights.

It was already unreliable.

 

And as I said in the post prior to this, it is you who are mistaken. In 2004, Bush did propose canceling the shuttle program in 2010, yes, but with the caveat that a replacement program be put in place. He outlined the HLV (heavy launch vehicle) program and the Constellation program, a return to the Moon venture. On April 15, 2010, it was the Little Marxist Dictator who canceled the shuttle program without having a replacement program in place, or even on the drawing board. He converted the Orion moon vehicle to a "rescue vehicle" for the ISS, which still has not been done. In fact, no work has been done on Orion since that day. He lied.

That last paragraph pretty much negates this view, that ...

... which is so much horse hockey. Technically, he increased the budget. In the process he changed NASA from a space exploration agency to a foreign policy agency.

That isn't a space mission, and it does not belong in the NASA budget.

The Little Marxist Dictator is an idiot. The Moon provides a much less expensive launch platform, once a base is established there. Escape velocity from the Moon is 5,324 mph, compared to 25,000 mph from Earth. None of his "proposals" are going to happen because he wasn't serious about them anyway, as evidence by NASA's failure to meet numerous deadlines in reporting to Congress progress on the missions, despite hoopla revealing "design drawings" of the rocket supposedly going to Mars. "Design drawings" are garbage. They provide no engineering design information and are just pie-in-the-sky propaganda that doesn't have to meet any criteria or even be safe. In other words, its fantasy.

That was the initial designed obsolescence date anyway.

Here what veteran astronaut John Glenn said about the LMD's "budget increase" for NASA (from The New York Times News Service article above):

Obviously every single one of those concerns expressed by Glenn four years ago are now coming to pass. The LMD has no intention of using NASA as Kennedy designed it and every U.S. president and Congress have since. He doesn't want to "waste" money on space, even if means letting Russia put a military base 238 miles over our heads ever 100 minutes.

 

And the American people want him to leave right away.

 

That was a far better remonstrance than mine. :thumbsup: :laugh: :applause:

 

Okay - this deserved a chuckle

 

I guess the original question should have been 'Was Obama wrong not to reverse Bush's NASA cutbacks?'

 

:BangHead:​

Bush proposed expanding space exploration. As I detailed in that lengthy post yesterday, the Little Marxist Dictator titularly expanded NASA's budget, but did everything he could to curb the agency's mission so that space exploration is no longer viable, or a priority.