Comments on: Obama considers linking Defense Dept. with NASA

President-elect is reportedly considering tearing down some of the walls between the two groups to make the U.S. more competitive with China in space exploration.

[ppgreat]

Let the "we need to take care of everything on Earth first" posts begin.

[Commander_Spock]

Hey "ppgreat! Happy New Year to ya... Re: "Let the "we need to take care of everything on Earth first" posts begin." You are quite right in a sense; as, "THE CONCORDE" is still grounded from COMMERCIAL FLIGHTS for want of a "QUIETER ENGINE"....!

[zclayton2]

Nah, the Concorde died becuase it developed the bad habit of inhaling its own tires. And the fact that not enough people were interested in the cost premium sealed the coffin.

[globalview99]

That's what the moon is all about: taking care of one essential thing on earth - energy.

The moon has almost unlimited supplies of helium which is used in nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion (the opposite of current technology - nuclear fission) consume all of the helium in the process of creating energy with no radioactive wastes or any other toxic waste.

Helium is not available on earth in any quantity. It is estimated that one boxcar of helium could power all of the electric generating plants of the US for one year. Nuclear fusion on a large scale is currently a project in France being funded by a consortium of countries including the US, Japan, the EU and China. The deployment of this technology is still decades away. But it is the future of energy and it will shift the strategic military focus from the Middle East to Space. So it is totally appropriate that the DoD and NASA get linked up formally and that the US get back to the moon before anyone else to be the first to colonize, establish bases and create a defensive bubble.

[lmasanti]

Wasn't "that" collaboration what turned on to become the Space Shuttle?
Wasn't it designed to carry "also" military payloads?

[ddgreater]

We need to take care of everything on Earth first, don't we?

[Penguinisto]

Problem is, we never will (take care of everything on Earth first), even if we focused everything we had on doing so.

Sorry, but curing hunger, war, and disease? We'd all be extinct as a species before any one of these conditions were 'taken care of'.

[ranpha]

We will be extinct as a species if we do not solve those problems like hunger, war and disease first.

[D3vildog699]

Hunger, war a disease will always be part of our society, its far to late for that. For the last couple thousand years we have been fighting over land and for freedom, what's new? War is what humans do.. i don't like it, nobody does, but we justify that it has to be done, and it always will be justified that way.

The problem is that we as a species will have a hard time going any farther in the universe if we don't look to space... all we do now days is accept that reality is what we see and can touch, nobody has an imagination anymore, to try and find the things that are amazing in life. Everyone is so concerned with finding a good job, so they can make money, get married and have kids and that just perpetuates the cycle. We as a species need to learn to Live not Survive, otherwise we will get no closer to solving Hunger, war or disease.

[lkrupp]

More people have been fed and cured from disease by space technology than all of the humanitarian efforts ever made in history. Think of all the advancements in agriculture, medicine, weather prediction...the list goes on and on, brought about by the space program.

Even Jesus Christ admitted that the poor will always be with us.

[jefffjackson]

WE NEED TO TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING ON EARTH FIRST!!!!111

[jlm429]

?An automated rendezvous does all sorts of things for your missile accuracy and anti-satellite programs,? said John Sheldon, a visiting professor of advanced air and space studies at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. ?The manned effort is about prestige, but it?s also a good way of testing technologies that have defense applications.?
China?s investments in anti-satellite warfare and in ?cyberwarfare,? ballistic missiles and other weaponry ?could threaten the United States? primary means to project its power and help its allies in the Pacific: bases, air and sea assets, and the networks that support them,? Defense Secretary Gates wrote in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

[jefffjackson]

Just kidding, I believe there are many advantages that can come from investing money into these types of things. I'm glad we'll have a visionary back in the executive office.

[jabberwolf]

Um yes because we need a defense against those pesky aliens.... cause Obama said so right?
Or is this a scheme to socialize NASA now ??

Hell what else is he going to try to socialize and how much is this going to cost us?

[the_ricochet]

Wow. How predictable. You're just parodying a shrill, knee-jerk Obama hater right? I sure hope so.

[dissent3125]

What do you even mean by "socialize NASA". Its a government organization to begin with and he is making changes to increase efficiency and end redundancy.

[Spartan_458]

@ricochet

Just because he disagrees with something Obama is planning to do automatically makes him an "Obama hater?" God forbid we have people who disagree with the Messiah.

[trd1282]

When did social become a dirty word?

[D3vildog699]

by trd1282 January 3, 2009 11:12 PM PST
When did social become a dirty word?

Re: about the time myspace was invented...

[trd1282]

AHA! Good point.

[pmfjoe]

How about we just design a new reusable launch vehicle to replace the shuttle. This single use design Orion is going to be a costly shuttle replacement which won't be able to do half what the shuttle can do.

[LunaticSX]

The "reusable" aspect of the shuttle has turned out not to significantly lower costs, since all the refurbishment after each flight makes it cost about as much to fly as anything non-reusable.

Orion, the crew module, *is* designed to be resuable, BTW.

The other major uses of the shuttle, as heavy lift launcher and orbiting laboratory, are going to be filled by the Ares V launcher and the existing space station.

[clamenza]

One asteroid and you can say goodbye to civilization, or even **** sapiens. Certainly will take care of all your earthly concerns.

[ddgv]

mmm my question is... is it really the best alternative to turn everything to the military?
in my opinion the US military has too many things over their wings, why give them now the power to "control" scientific research in the space ... not that the military isn't involved with it already

[42istheanswer]

we need to take care of everything on Earth first

[gerrrg]

All I have to say, is that despite the flaws of the Space Shuttle, it is forever linked to the imagination of space ships going into space and coming back, as space travel is probably meant to be.

With the Orion/Ares system, we're going backwards in terms of visionary design, and hardly seems to spark the imagination of what space travel should be like. You know what visionary design is like; it's the stuff that came out of Skunkworks and Area 51, the ideas of what supersonic flight would look like with the SR-71, the SRAM jet and stealth planes.

All it takes is one look at Space Ship One, to understand that our dreams of space travel lie not in pods sitting atop rockets, but in space ships that look like space ships.

Maybe NASA needs to farm out engineering to DARPA.

[neilparikh]

Interesting article! I think you might want to check your facts though--

You said that the Department of Defense "spent about $22 billion in the last fiscal year".

Whitehouse.gov reports that "The President?s 2008 Budget: "Provides $481.4 billion for the Department of Defense?s base budget".

Perhaps they spent $22 billion on a specific sector?

[BigGuns149]

If you read the whole article that CNET is referring to it is clear that they are referring to DoD's spending on space launch vehicles. You are correct that the DoD budget is obviously much larger because there are far more things to the military than launching spy satellites, but I think CNET missed the primary reason that Obama wants to do this: cost savings. He figures that if NASA can somehow modify existing military launch systems that NASA could do the same things that they plan on doing now with less money.

[Commander_Spock]

This article in part stated; re: "[...If history is any indicator, delays are likely if not guaranteed...]" What must have been left out is - "And, it (history) always is"!

To Boldly Go - At "Warp" Speed! Long Live (Elvis) and "OS/2 Warp" from 2010.....

Happy New Year To All!

Live Long And Prosper!

[Commander_Spock]

Wow! Re: "[...So if Orion launches with Ares as planned in 2015, this leaves a five-year period of time in which the U.S. will have to pay Russia to fly astronauts to and from the ISS....]" This must be great news for OS/2 Programmers; as, the Russian Space Federation relies of the "IBM's" OS/2 Warp Operating System for the operations of their Carrier Rockets....

http://en.ecomstation.ru/solutions/?action=solutions

Go IBM!

[kojacked]

I can total see a Monster Garage-esq show on the Russian space program? as they list the costs of operations and get to OS/2 ? FREEBIE!!!!

[Commander_Spock]

Re: "I can total see a Monster Garage-esq show on the Russian space program? as they list the costs of operations and get to OS/2 ? FREEBIE!!!!"

Commander_Spock and Crew keep telling folks that what ever operations are being conducted anywhere in the world it will eventually boil down to a few questions - those with regards to "INTERNATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS". Now, let's get down to the "INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC AND TECHNICAL EVALUATIONS"! regardless of the - "FREEBIE!!!!"

[HeavyJim]

"a government organization to begin with and he is making changes to increase efficiency and end redundancy." Increase efficiency and redundancy.........the government doing this? I needed a good laugh.

[Tantrist]

@neilparikh The Department of Defense has a Space Budget of $22 Billion dollars or 0.0075 cents for every tax dollar, while NASA has $17 Billion dollars which is 0.0058 cents for every tax dollar. My tax bill last year was about $20,000 to the Feds so I gave about $116 to NASA and then another $150 to the DOD to do secret space activities.

It is really sad to see the United States become a second class nation, we have lost the ability to produce the engineers and scientists that have enabled us to be the envy of the world. We have to import our engineers these days from Russia, India and China and pay Russia to access space. Sad.

[Commander_Spock]

Re: "[...It is really sad to see the United States become a second class nation, we have lost the ability to produce the engineers and scientists that have enabled us to be the envy of the world. We have to import our engineers these days from Russia, India and China and pay Russia to access space. Sad...} You may have left out the word "indeed"!

[TogetherinParis]

Do NOT give NASA an incentive to go to war. Linking NASA and the Defense Department would link their budgets, too, giving vast new legions to enter military service or face dismissal.

Farm NASA out to private control first, so they can get a better handle on costs. The shuttles have never been economical because of defense department requirements.

[scdecade]

If we need to take of everything in space as well as take care of everything on earth, then funding NASA is a terrible idea and linking it to DoD is an even worse notion. NASA is among the worst bureaucracies ever. They're completely hapless. They can't reliably launch stuff into space after 50 years of trying. They've spent mountain avalanches of money and it's been largely wasted. It's always the NEXT launch system that's going to make NASA useful. Isn't that ironic? Cancel NASA it's just welfare for scientists.

[D3vildog699]

And i assumer you can do so much better at trying to get a reliable vehicle into space while holding people in it? Oh and life support systems... and the ability to do research up there, while being able to get it back down...

[mpotter9]

Kennedy's space race was to a certain degree a way to design and build ICBM without the defense budget going crazy. Has anything really changed except that the machinery of cooperation has gotten old and needs to be greased

[Bernardo Ortiz]

What is being missed in all of this is why NASA was formed. The defense department fialed to keep pace on the space race with the Germans, having to bring in Warrner Von Braun after the end of the war, and later to keep pace with the Russians. The DOD does not have the focus to succeed with any space race. If there are problems with NASA then their plate should be cleared from "other" projects to improve it's focus. This is if you really think that the space race, as defined, is a good idea.

I think we should focus on commercialization of space and unmanned exploration. Putting a man on mars, in my mind, is a stupid waste of money! Make a business case for it first.

[mathcreative]

I agree