Obama's defunding of NASA points to the agency's true intent.

[arcadian]

The space exploration mission was a tangent. The true mission of NASA was and always has been the militarization of space. Reconnaissance satellites, more improved delivery platforms for nuclear weapons, this has always been NASA's primary mission. It's hard to hide a Space Shuttle launch delivering a satellite that the NSA is going to use to pull phone conversations from the ether, but if the civilian missions become so humdrum and day to day then such clandestine missions can be hidden in plain sight and nobody takes notice. It was also a huge propaganda campaign to put a positive spin on the nuclear arms race with the Soviets. It's been claimed that the space race is what helped bankrupt the Soviets. So, you can see, the space mission for the US has really been about an elaborate public relations campaign, to let the world know that the US was first in science, first on the moon, first in technology, but our true intentions remained hidden, which was space dominance. Yeah, putting a human on the moon is really neat but everything we can do in space can be done with unmanned drones and robots.

[Hippo_Tron]

1. Obama defunding NASA = right wing lie

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/buzz-aldrin/president-obamas-jfk-mome_b_448667.html

[arcadian]

2. Retiring the Shuttle fleet. With no replacement.

I hope he does defund NASA. It's a hole in space that neverending amounts of money are poured into.

[neverforget]

10. Hopefully all those communication, GPS and weather satellites will just

fall to Earth because we certainly don't need them anymore. :sarcasm:

[ecstatic]

11. Aren't the shuttles at least 20 years old?

Not safe, if you ask me. It turned into a sideshow with MSNBC and other networks carefully monitoring takeoffs and landings in case an explosion occurred.

[Johonny]

14. no it's 30-40+ year old technology

The shuttle started development in the 1970s. Some of the material in the shuttle has heritage back into 60s (heritage is a BIG word in space industry:))
Even unmanned vehicles are monitored on takeoffs (they don't "land") for explosion too. Your propellants are hazardous and safety of the ground crew is extremely important on the shuttle or any space vehicle.


The shuttle is all in all a pretty "safe" launch vehicle. Only one launch failure over 130 launches is a pretty good record. It is however horribly expensive and very limited in operational usage. Mostly due to all the dead weight you need to lift on the vehicle. All the infrastructure that is need to land it, is simply dead weight come launch time. And weight is the single biggest cost factor in launches. The more you need to lift the more expensive the launch vehicle. So the fact you can somewhat use it again really doesn't save a lot of money. Worse the turn around on the stuff that you use again is much worse than was projected.

[Extend a Hand]

9. thanks for that article. n/t

[Richardo]

3. You just figured that out?

Military missions have been common knowledge since the beginning. The shuttle program announced its 10 classified DOD missions as they launched.

But was it also about public relations? Sure. Geopolitical gamesmanship? Yes. Scientific experimentation? Absolutely. Technological innovation? You got it. The very computer on which you posted your astounding insight can trace its roots to the space program, and the thousands of people who are now scratching their heads at your naivete and deep-thinking skills are able to read of them as a direct result of a military application of science we like to call the internet.

So shut down your computer, don't get any weather updates from the NWS, and for god's sake keep you hands off that GPS if you want to remain pure of heart.

[tularetom]

4. I remember thinking the same thing back in the day

Maybe I just lacked imagination but at the time we were sending people into space I was pretty sure our purpose was to gain a strategic advantage over the USSR. I'm not even sure there was much pretense about it until after the demise of the Soviet Union. Remember SDI?

BTW, this post made me think about this:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Bill-Murray-as-the-lounge-singer-Nick-Winters-from-SNL

[Johonny]

5. This is crap

The USAF handles military missions. The reason the shuttle stop launching these missions was the fact it could not be launched at a fast enough schedule and at a cheap enough cost to keep civil and military space infrastructure intact. If it was launch GPS you'd still be waiting for that service.

The part about the main product of manned space missions being public interest is mostly true. But NASA does launch it's own unmanned scientific missions and has so since the beginning of the space race. NASA has always had internal conflicts between the publics love of manned space launches and the practicality of unmanned missions. Bu it's issue are nearly completely separate than the issues the other agencies have because they are and have been handled by the USAF SMC. NASA's true mission isn't militarization of space because it doesn't even handle these missions.

[Neurotica]

13. An accurate analysis

My spouse works in aerospace, and I used to. You've captured the key issues.

NASA did try to shorten its mission schedules, but its attempt at "better, faster, cheaper" has been problematic because the public is not generally willing to accept the risk inherent in this type of approach.

[Johonny]

15. Faster, better and cheaper came out of "acquisition reform".

the dirtiest two words you can use in the space industry. :D

[theoldman]

6. We could save money by teaming up with China.

How about a 60/40 deal? That way we could keep on eye on each other.

[exboyfil]

8. Sounds like another clusterf***

just like the ISS. Given the dollars spent we could have done so much more with unmanned probes etc.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. Obama's increasing NASA funding.

Which I'm sure you'll find a way to explain as Obama's mission to militarize space.

:crazy:

[metapunditedgy]

12. NASA funds a lot of science and scientists. The Constellation project was cut because it was

a poorly-designed, expensive, politicized mess. (Nothing against lots of fine people whom I'm sure worked on the project and couldn't fix it.)

In the Bush admin, NASA developed the nasty habit (sometimes called the "vision for space exploration") of stealing budget money from its other projects (science) to feed the Constellation monster.

It's sad news for a lot of NASA employees, and there are a lot of NASA contractors who are having to pay more $$ to their lobbyists over all this, too.