Yes We Can ... Space Flight
As the Obamanation and its cavalcade of pomp and arrogance are selling this country out with an UN CONSTITUTIONAL treaty signing and agreement with the reemerging Soviet Union limiting nuclear arms. President Obama is looking at cutting the NASA budget even more and limiting American maned space flight to hitch hiking on Soviet and Chinese space launches.
With yet another "lets stop Bush" initiatives. This time the goal of putting America back on the moon by 2020. President Obamanation looks hard at cutting the space flight budget even further sighting budgetary restraints and not enough money. Yet let us not forget that this is the man who lead, sponsored and pushed through the World Poverty act, at a cost of 845 Billion dollars. A cost that they are conveniently forgetting in their spend , spend, spending of tax payers money.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.6b4a67fb3d7a29663fb318e2356bb0de.a51&show_article=1
US manned space flight in doubt 40 years after moon walk
After the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003, former president George W. Bush decided to phase out the shuttle flights by 2003 and set a more ambitious mandate for America in space.
Launched in 2004, the so-called Constellation program aims to take Americans back to the moon by 2020 to use as a launch pad for manned voyages to Mars.
President Barack Obama has named a commission of experts to review the US manned space flight program and make recommendations by the end of August.
The space shuttles, which have carried crews of astronauts into space since 1981, were conceived as reusable vehicles to transport heavy, bulky equipment into Earth's orbit, primarily for the construction of the International Space Station.
But the shuttle has kept the United States stuck in a low orbit for too long at a time when other countries like China are emerging as rivals in space, argues Michael Griffin, the former NASA chief who championed the Constellation program.
NASA's budget is not big enough to cover the cost of Constellation's Orion capsule, a more advanced and spacious version of the Apollo lunar module, and the Ares 1 and Ares V launchers needed to put it in orbit.
Constellation is projected to cost about 150 billion dollars, but estimates for the Ares 1 have skyrocketed from 26 billion dollars in 2006 to 44 billion dollars last year.
With a space exploration budget of six billion dollars in 2009, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said: "NASA simply can't do the job it's been given -- the president's goal of being on the moon by 2020."
Nelson, a former astronaut, deplored that between 2020 and 2015 the United States will have no way of transporting its astronauts to the ISS except aboard Russian Soyuz space craft.
The commission chairman, respected former Lockheed Martin chief executive Norman Augustine, said it comes down to money.
"With a few exceptions, we have the technology or the knowledge that we could go to Mars if we wanted with humans. We could put a telescope on the moon if we wanted," he said.
"The technology is by and large there. It boils down to what can we afford?"
So if it is only a matter of money, how about thinking it out. Weighing the benefits of new tech versus not having the new tech. It was after all the space program that lead to the standard of living today. The transistor, home computers, cell phones, flat screen television. All products from the space program.
If we had responsibile and fiscal reality in Washington, then there would be no problem with finding the money for NASA.
With yet another "lets stop Bush" initiatives. This time the goal of putting America back on the moon by 2020. President Obamanation looks hard at cutting the space flight budget even further sighting budgetary restraints and not enough money. Yet let us not forget that this is the man who lead, sponsored and pushed through the World Poverty act, at a cost of 845 Billion dollars. A cost that they are conveniently forgetting in their spend , spend, spending of tax payers money.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.6b4a67fb3d7a29663fb318e2356bb0de.a51&show_article=1
US manned space flight in doubt 40 years after moon walk
After the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003, former president George W. Bush decided to phase out the shuttle flights by 2003 and set a more ambitious mandate for America in space.
Launched in 2004, the so-called Constellation program aims to take Americans back to the moon by 2020 to use as a launch pad for manned voyages to Mars.
President Barack Obama has named a commission of experts to review the US manned space flight program and make recommendations by the end of August.
The space shuttles, which have carried crews of astronauts into space since 1981, were conceived as reusable vehicles to transport heavy, bulky equipment into Earth's orbit, primarily for the construction of the International Space Station.
But the shuttle has kept the United States stuck in a low orbit for too long at a time when other countries like China are emerging as rivals in space, argues Michael Griffin, the former NASA chief who championed the Constellation program.
NASA's budget is not big enough to cover the cost of Constellation's Orion capsule, a more advanced and spacious version of the Apollo lunar module, and the Ares 1 and Ares V launchers needed to put it in orbit.
Constellation is projected to cost about 150 billion dollars, but estimates for the Ares 1 have skyrocketed from 26 billion dollars in 2006 to 44 billion dollars last year.
With a space exploration budget of six billion dollars in 2009, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said: "NASA simply can't do the job it's been given -- the president's goal of being on the moon by 2020."
Nelson, a former astronaut, deplored that between 2020 and 2015 the United States will have no way of transporting its astronauts to the ISS except aboard Russian Soyuz space craft.
The commission chairman, respected former Lockheed Martin chief executive Norman Augustine, said it comes down to money.
"With a few exceptions, we have the technology or the knowledge that we could go to Mars if we wanted with humans. We could put a telescope on the moon if we wanted," he said.
"The technology is by and large there. It boils down to what can we afford?"
So if it is only a matter of money, how about thinking it out. Weighing the benefits of new tech versus not having the new tech. It was after all the space program that lead to the standard of living today. The transistor, home computers, cell phones, flat screen television. All products from the space program.
If we had responsibile and fiscal reality in Washington, then there would be no problem with finding the money for NASA.
