Goodbye, NASA

Only Obama could find a way to both increase funding for a program and then eliminate its primary reason for existing.

The FY10 NASA budget increases funding from $17.3b to $18.69b. In this fiscal year or early in the next, the Space Shuttle fleet will be retired. Effective immediately, the Constellation program, and the programs associated with it, are cancelled (Projects Ares, Orion, and Altair). This effectively neuters our manned flight program. The money that was slated for the Shuttle and the Constellation will be shunted towards keeping the International Space Station (ISS) functional until about 2020, to which I have to now ask, "why"? What is the point if not to create a toe hold in space?

According to their budget notes, funds will be shunted into Government investment in private commercial space enterprises, Climate Research, Aeronautics, and increased use of Robotic Exploration.

The stench of politics is so heavy around this I can barely breathe.

First off, lets start with how long it takes to get infrastructure in place for an Apollo program a Space Shuttle program, or even a Constellation program. When the Mercury astronauts were dipping their big toe into the cosmic ocean, planning for the Gemini and Apollo missions were already in the works. Gemini was on the chalk board, shifting its missions around the discoveries made in Mercury. Apollo was at least on the back of an envelope. What NASA learned in Mercury told them how big the Saturn V rocket would need to be, for instance.

When Gemini was in full swing, Apollo was already a working project. Veterans of Mercury and Gemini, along with new talent, were pouring into the new program. By the time JFK gave his famous speech, NASA was already well down the road to deliver on his promise (bet you don't read that in the history books).

When Apollo was underway, there were a variety of programs that were in the concept phase. The future post-Apollo course was uncertain. When the plug was pulled, the Apollo-Soyuz program was born to use up most of the left-over resources in parallel with the Skylab project.

All of that took time, even in a political environment that almost allowed NASA to write its own budget. Mercury was started in 1959 and we still lost both the race to space and the race to orbit. Yuri Gagarin orbited in 1961, two years after Mercury was announced. Gemini and Apollo were founded at virtually the same time (1961). It was not until 1964 that the Apollo Logistics Office was founded to coordinate all the equipment that was needed to get us to the moon. That didn't happen until July, 1969; eight years after Apollo was started!

Remember, that was done when the political and public will lined up. Apollo sputtered to an end when they ran out of things to do and the public grew bored with what had become almost routine space flight. NASA knew that the next step was to build orbiting stations that could fabricate things (like small factories, smelters, and construction yards) that would then take us back to the moon and beyond. That was going to be far, far more expensive then shots to the moon and low Earth orbit.

The Space Shuttle has been heavily criticized as unneeded and unwarranted. Some said that the shuttle program pulled money and talent away from Apollo at a time when Apollo should have been expanded to develop heavier lift vehicles. The supporters of the Apollo program, argued, perhaps justifiably, that the modern day Constellation Program should have been developed in a straight line, since much of the technology already existed to create bigger and more powerful systems patterned on the Saturn V booster.

The point is Apollo had completed what it was designed to do. The next step was the creation of orbital facilities that would would service, not just craft outbound for the moon, but sub-orbital craft such as Scram-jets (again, you don't hear much about them anymore). To do this, a re-usable craft was needed that could be converted to carry a large amount of cargo AND passengers. You can fit a lot of people into a shuttle, especially if you pack them in the way Northwestern airlines does. Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, it would be far less expensive to shuttle people into orbit on the Space Shuttle then it would have been launching three people at a time on a Saturn V booster (the six used in the moon missions cost $45 billion in 2005 dollars).

I've studied the Constellation program, along with the Ares, Orion, and Altair projects and found them to be insufficient (yes, yes, I know, who am I and why does my opinion count). It is more efficient to use reusable craft to ferry from the surface to orbit and back again. It simply is, think about it.

Just as the shuttle brought up the components for the ISS, doubling the fleet of shuttles could build orbital factories and other needed infrastructure. Asteroids could be captured and returned into orbit for smelting. Think about this. If the environmentalists don't want us mining for iron or copper on Earth, then lets do it in orbit. I know I'm talking about things that will take decades to realize, but it is all very possible. Space has unlimited supplies of everything we could possibly want.

Instead of the United States wading out into the cosmic ocean and setting up platforms for others to climb upon, we have instead relegated ourselves to buying a $51million ticket on a Russian platform that was developed back in the early 1960's!

The voyages to the new world were first funded by governments. Specifically Spain, Portugal, and England. Eventually, commercial enterprises were established, first collectively among the bigger merchants and nobles and then solo ventures by adventurers and those looking for a business score in the exotic corners of the world.

Space will be exactly the same way. Governments will bear the expenses and open up the frontier. Adventurous, risk-taking corporations will create their own programs, likely with the intent to build an orbital factory and develop a low-cost, effective method for capturing near-Earth asteroids. Laboratories and Pharmacies want to develop new materials and medicines for consumption. It will be the corporations that will make space flight cheaper and more accessible to the rest of humanity. The longer that goes on, the cheaper it will become.

I just want to scream out loud about what NASA is doing today. It has been hijacked by political correctness and is led by those that just want a budget, any budget to keep their jobs. The child-like joy and wonder of space that was fanned in me by my mother in Christmas 1980 with the book Cosmos is almost dead. With the time it takes to develop these technologies, others will leap way ahead (not to mention the crushing debt that looms like the Sword of Damocles). Even if we get a President that gives space the attention it deserves.

On a more philosophical level, we must eventually grow up and leave the nest. In a universe that is over 14 billion light years across and trillions of light years in volume, there is only one planet that has humans on it. No where else can one of us be found. All it takes is a large asteroid, comet, or plague and we will go the way of the dinosaurs. We can only make it as a species if we grow and leave this world.

You would think that the Greens would look to the day when the Earth can become one, large, park. Off-limits to permanent residents. A place to visit and remember. They would get what they want, a world without humans messing it up. The only thing is, they don't want us to leave the Earth, since we would just become a plague among the stars, they want us die. Collective mass suicide is the only thing that will make them happy.

We must reverse the short-sighted policies of this President.

I know I must end this soon, but I can't help but to put this into some perspective. The FY10 NASA budget is $18.69b, with some funds coming from stimulus spending (debt). Some of the funds are coming from killing off the aforementioned programs. That money will be spent on climate research (don't we have others working on that?), robots (they are tools, not explorers), and airplane related issues (again, we got that covered already).

The cost to service just the INTEREST on the national debt is $187 Billion. Just the interest. Just this fiscal year. Yep. The entire 14 year Apollo program cost $145 Billion (in 2008 dollars). Think on that. The entire Space Shuttle program, since the project inception in the 1970's (first flight in 1981) has been $145 Billion. How many jobs were/are attached to those programs? How much good has come from that money?

Both programs ran for over a decade and cost less than a SINGLE year's worth of our expenses just to pay the INTEREST on our national debt.

Remember Porkulus, or Stimulus II, I should say? That was $787 billion worth of spending and $180 billion in pork spending with a two year spending window. Almost a trillion dollars just to piss away with no jobs and no new business. For the love of god and humanity, plow that money into the Space industry. The jobs that will come from this as it ripples through will be significant. As it is now, the cancelled projects will put tens of thousands of people out of work. Perhaps hundreds of thousands.

Way to go, Obama.