OK, hands up anyone who didn’t see this coming…
But the launch came amid major worries about NASA’s future, as the agency has been told by the White House to consider cutting its 2011 budget by as much as 10 percent. Based on the agency’s proposed 2009-2010 budget of $18.7 billion, that would equal roughly $1.87 billion.
That kind of cut would end human spaceflight for at least the next decade — and likely longer — according to a presidential space panel that recommended last month a $3 billion-a-year spending increase so NASA could run a “meaningful” manned-space program.
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On Monday, NASA associate administrator Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters that he does not expect to know what the White House will do until February. But he said the uncertainty has made it difficult for NASA as it flies out the remaining missions.
“How do we keep our workforce and ourselves focused on what we are doing and don’t get too distracted by all the ‘what if’ scenarios?” he said.
I’ve seen what budget cuts can do to operations in an aerospace firm. I’ve seen what rumors of bugest cuts can do. Back around late 2002, when things started going screwy at United Tech in California, many people could see that the company was facing troubles. And as the troubles mounted, those who could began to split. And “those who could” were, often enough, “those the company really needed to help them pull through.” So as Obama dithers on whether or not to end America’s role as a modern nation, expect to see a lot of the more qualified people at NASA decide that Now Is The Time, and either retire or go into the private sector. And this does not mean that they will simply transfer to other aerospace programs, ready and able to help the private sector take over after NASA is reduced to a shell… many of those who left United Tech went into Dot Coms, fiber optic cables, computer manufacturing, etc.
And so come 2013, if we have a new President determined to try to reverse the numerous bad decisions made by Obama, returning the United States to space might prove difficult. In the best of times you can’t simply pick up where you left off with a program that was cancelled just a few years before. And history, especially the history of science and spaceflight, is unlikely to view the Obama years as “the best of times.”
More discussion from Examiner.com:
The problem is that having spent eight hundred billion dollars on a “stimulus package” that has failed spectacularly to stimulate the economy and having been attacked without mercy for proposing to spend trillions of dollars on “health care reform” that would raise health care costs, cut services, and ration care, the Obama administration is contemplating an election year conversion to fiscal frugality.
There is as yet no confirmation that the proposed ten percent cut will take place nor how Congress might react. But should such occur, it would prove devastating to areas of the country dependent on aerospace already reeling from the impending end of the space shuttle program. It can also be suggested that cutting NASA would constitute a breaking of faith, not only with Obama campaign promises, but with the future. Yet another cancellation of human space exploration would more than ever mean that the Obama administration is just not serious about doing space. As someone once suggested, every Obama promise has an expiration date and the one for NASA may have just about come due.
12 Responses to “The end of NASA Manned Spaceflight”
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But hey we NEED that money to buy more low income votes.
I was afraid of this. I would comment further, but there is nothing I would like to say that is fit to put in print.
NASA’s biggest problem was P.R. and the general lack of interest in Space Exploration in general. To do something like Apollo we needed a clear mission, beat the Russians to the Moon” and with huge public support we did that.
The ISS was the biggest mistake NASA ever made, $100+ billion for something with no clear mission designed to be serviced by the most expensive way to get there that statistically has a 1 in 50 chance of catastrophic failure.
Going back to the Moon would only work if money could be made, maybe by mining Helium 3 or greating lunar concrete that could be rail-gunned to LEO for creating a big station over a long period of time.
I think if NASA’s new mission could be “Save the earth” by turning it’s research and resourses towards the Earth, then support could understand and get behind it.
We’ll never get to Mars unless there’s a good reason. If NASA would be able to pull off the big lie of finding life on mars, that might build public interest. Or better yet, say they found evidence of an ancient yet advanced Islamic society! Mars could be the new Mecca!!! with millions of pilgrims going to visit the temple a top mount Olympus!
With the development of commercial rockets, we could send small robots in large numbers to set up stations near the frozen water, then mining of the Moon and underground structures could be built.
We should sell all our manned equipment to India and let them race to the Moon, while we seed LEO communication and defense satelittes so there’s always one overhead of them pesky terrerists! A little lightning bolt from on high might change their minds, or at least vaporize them!
It seems to me that the time has come for American spacefolk to get out of the U.S. If this country will not support the effort at a level that has meaning, let’s export our talent and skill to Russia.
We had a mission in 1970: to stay on the Moon. We also had riots and destruction at home and the Vietman War, neither of which this country faced honestly. Some focus on something other than individual personal pain and/or social arrogance would have done this country some good.
For me, the biggest error was not continuing Saturn and Apollo production. NASA’s mistake was not developing better PR (geeks never quite do that well) to promote the real goal — landing elsewhere — instead of meekly accepting their diminished mission of LEO, and hoping that things might change at some point in the future. Compromise kills, sometimes.
If we could trade all our manned infrastructure to Russia in trade for a trillion dollars worth of oil that’d be a great deal, as long as we could keep the Russian mafia out of it, or in it to whip things into shape to make things profitable.
We’ll be relying on them after the shuttles retired anyway, so making the Russians our new best friends could work on lots of different levels. They’d probably be open to making a whole bunch of fast-breeders too.
My stepfather just returned from khazistan and he said its a completely modern clean city thats all been built within the last 20 years.. shows what petrodollars can do.
One of the things that has angered me throughout my life is the failure to get us OFF the surface of this planet in any significant fashion. Coming out of high school at the end of the ’70s I could already see it was dead. Really pisses me off. My generation should have been the one building the initial orbital infrastructure need to expand off this planet. By this point we should be well established, and all we have is ISS, and the Shuttle.
Pisses me right the hell off.
Yet another problem is that the esteemed Augustine Commission didn’t make any recommendations — they only presented options to the White House. Yet another meaningless study that only justifies a lack of action and decisions. The so-called “Flexible Path” will kill the program just as sure as not making a decision because it does not carry any timetables. All it espouses are some vague goals. Without deadlines, it’s too easy to stretch out a program in the name of political expediency. Lunar orbital missions, Mars fly-bys? Why bother with a crew for such limited missions? Without the lunar landing goal, much of the rationale for Orion goes away. Under the most optimistic conditions, Orion won’t fly until 2015. Without the lunar landing goal, then that means we will deploy a manned spacecraft that will be used for 5 years, at best, if the ISS is extended until 2020. Even a congressman could see it would be cheaper and easier to simply continue buying launches from the Russians. It’s a sad time for the American space program.
I once heard a great speech given by Steve Squyres (Spirit/Opportunity PI, great guy) about how a space program project had four main criterion: requirements, deadline, budget, goals. Up to 3 could be rigid, the fourth had to be flexible.
Far more succinct was the sign I saw in someone’s cubicle at JPL a few days later. “Better, faster, cheaper. Pick any two.”
Popularized by the movie “The Right Stuff” was the notion of “No Bucks, No Buck Rogers.” Which is of course true… if the space program doesn;t get funding, then they don’t get to go do neato stuff. But perhaps more importantly is the converse:
No Buck Rogers, No Bucks.
In other words, if your space program isn’t interesting, then the public doesn’t care and funding dries up.
A lesson NASA has forgotten.
I don’t think that’s quite fair Scott… funding was starting to go down the tubes even during Apollo, and it wasn’t like the space program wasn’t doing cool stuff then. I simply don’t think government has the ability to fund sustainable, long-range projects like that. Research such as what our robotic programs have been doing, maybe, but not the ability to expand the human frontier in the way that a manned program is supposed to.
> I simply don’t think government has the ability to fund sustainable, long-range projects like that.
Two words: Social Security
Three words: War on Drugs
Three more words: War on Poverty
Yeah, but those programs can play on fear and pity. NASA has only achievement to work with, and frankly nobody gives a damn about that these days, not with so many starving children in the world.