The world still has too many scientists;
It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.
Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.
“We don’t even have a space program anymore”
“Exhibit A:
Obama shuts down NASA’s space program to save money but wants to blow money the U.S. doesn’t have on alternative energy projects.”
Just one cottonpickin second. This is bull puckey.
On January 14th, 2004, in the wake of the Columbia tragedy and the report from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, President George W. Bush unveiled a new direction for NASA, called the Vision for Space Exploration or VSE. The plan called for the retirement of the Shuttle fleet in 2010 after the completion of the International Space Station. In its stead was to be a single new NASA vehicle, a Crew Exploration Vehicle, and goals of the moon and Mars. Nowhere in the speech did he mention NASA designing new rockets to lift the CEV. He appointed the Aldridge commission to develop a policy implementation report. That report’s first recommendation was that the President appoint a permanent Space Exploration Steering Council, chaired by the Vice President and reporting to the President. The second recommendation was:
Soon after Mike Griffin took over from Sean O’Keefe as NASA administrator, he forced through the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, which basically ignored the Aldridge report and instead put NASA on a path to developing not one but two completely new rockets utilizing elements of the shuttle stack and employing the whole shuttle workforce, with pork spread in the existing shuttle support areas of Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida. The ESAS plan just happened to coincide with a plan that Griffin himself put forth long before taking over as NASA administrator, back when he was with the Planetary Society.
What Obama did was end the Constellation program, the offshoot of ESAS, killing Griffin’s two rockets, the Ares-I and Ares-V. Development over 5 years was $9 billion dollars, and all NASA had to show for it was one suborbital launch of a Potemkin rocket: a mock-up of an Ares-1.
(The Ares was supposed to use a 5-segment solid rocket booster, unlike the 4-segment boosters on the shuttle. The Ares 1-x demonstration launch had a 4-segment booster with a dummy 5th segment and a dummy second stage. It was launched to get something – anything – launched. The existing 4 segment booster has only superficial external commonality with a 5-segment solid rocket booster, as the grain mixture and burn rate is completely different.)
Obama appointed the Augustine commission to review the US human spaceflight plans. Their recommendations included (under the “Flexible Path” option, easily the most workable) “…operates the Shuttle
into FY 2011, extends the ISS until 2020, funds technology advancement and develops commercial services to transport crew to low-Earth orbit.”
So Obama had nothing to do with the retirement schedule of the shuttle, that took 6 years and was extended to a seventh year. Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin ignored the direction given him by the Bush White House and instead followed (literally) his own pet project, designed to create pork but no space activity. Obama instead, in one of those stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day moments, directed NASA to use the US commercial sector for transport services to Low Earth Orbit rather than building its own rockets.
NASA will instead concentrate on technologies that extend our reach into the solar system, orbital propellant depots being the most logical starting point for technology development.
The sound and fury from opponents to the Obama (and Augustine, and Aldridge, and Bush) recommendations is largely being directed by pork-driven inertia on one hand, and by well-respected but hidebound commentators such as Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan, who simply cannot imagine changing the way NASA does business.
Obama didn’t kill the space program. The private businesses involved in the commercial crew orbital services competition include not just plucky startups like SpaceX, but also industry veterans like Boeing, Lockheed, SNC, and Orbital Sciences. The difference now is that companies are being paid for services rendered (or milestones met) at a fixed price, rather than under the old cost-plus accounting system (which gave a perverse incentive to drive up costs).
Another difference is that Utah-based ATK, the solid rocket booster manufacturer, simply cannot compete in the manned launch market – hence the squawking from the Utah congressional delegation.
And the enormous standing army required for shuttle operations is not required for operations by the commercial providers – SpaceX has a goal of two hours between opening the hangar doors and launching the Falcon 9 Heavy, an operation that took months with Shuttle. All those very highly paid tile inspector jobs are gone, and so are the jobs of thousands of others concentrated in just a few congressional districts, hence the protestations of Hutchison and Nelson in the Senate.
/rant
What this article suggests to me is that we will shortly achieve time travel. A future scientist wrote this article as an April fools joke but his calibration was off and instead of coming back to 1/4/2011, arrived on 19/8/2011. Such problems plague early time travel devices and were fixed by 2050.
If the time travel hypothesis is incorrect, then there are some severely deluded people out there. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear material like this from one of my schizophrenic patients. It appears that the precautionary principle might make people schizophrenic and, as a precaution, we should give up the precautionary principle before the whole world becomes one gigantic psychiatric ward.
Ed Minchau, EXCELLENT post man! That was extremely informative.
BTW don’t you love it that SpaceX is going for a two-hour launch where NASA takes a month? If that’s not the poster child for private vs. gummint, I don’t know what is.
Yeah civilian space development is just great.
Really.
The main purpose of the various space programs is and always has been military.
China has a space program because their interest is ___________?