Of course we have been there for 48 years, instrumentally.
Mercury,Gemini,Apollo,Skylab, Shuttle & I.S.S. at the moment.

And yes, cosmic rays etc. do bother me too as well as radiation on Mars.

And I still rail against those at NASA who screwed up on Challenger & Columbia, (may God bless the Challenger & Columbia 7 and their families!)

Yes, there will always be accidents but there is a difference between pure
carelessness and a regular accident.

As I said, it is within our nature to explore and while there will always be a place for robotic spacecraft to pave the way and go where man cannot go to, Man will always want to go to.

And, there is that age old dream of one day, leaving this lovely little planet and heading out to the Stars.

Perhaps, it’s like the way we are all drawn to the Ocean, we are drawn to where we came from, The Oceans first but then The Stars because after all we are made up of ashes; the ashes of Stars.

DrJPHauck wrote, “Drastic cuts would be a shame, but then many other industries besides NASA have had VERY drastic cuts over the years, and many of them are more crucial to our society than NASA.”

Unlike private industry, NASA is not based on return for dollars spent. While every business is subject to belt tightening at times, there is a return on the dollar and profit margin by which to judge the need for “drastic cuts”. Were our government tightening the belt everywhere, your words would have more meaning. But our government is spending like there’s no tomorrow in areas where a select few are benefiting and strangling the budgets elsewhere.

My personal opinion is that we should protest budget cuts in every area we as individuals believe are important. We have a voice. But it takes many of our voices to be heard above the many decibels wielded by the powerful. This is but one of many of the petitions to Congress I have written. I’m glad you also decided to write one as well.

Puddintain didn’t say “don’t try” he said “send your letters to the House and Senate” where they can make a difference.

All of his information on civil servants lobbying and federal agencies supporting the President’s budget is correct. Letters complaining to NASA will have no impact.

Where have you been? You write as though we had not gone into space.

We are already there. We have just used stilts where our legs are weak.

I suppose some politicians and poets will tell you we aren’t there until we have human corporal presence as visualized in early 20th century science fiction. But scientists know that the amount of information returned by the unmanned probes far exceeds that obtained by manned flights, and this will likely be the case in the foreseeable future. In fact, the most interesting data we have derived from the desultory manned missions has been mainly about the human body and its limitations when exposed to the rigors of even a protected spaceflight environment.

You might look at the recent issue of Scientific American for a writeup on the cosmic ray problem facing interplanetary travelers, and some of the heroic (read “expensive”) measures proposed to solve it, still in conceptual stage. This is just one problem among many. You might also look at Bob Park’s book “VooDoo Science” [Oxford 2000], in which he makes a much stronger and more detailed case against manned space flight notions than I can make here. Dr. Park is head of the Washington DC branch of the American Physical Society, and a frequent debunker of romantic nonsense associated with space research. See: http://www.bobpark.org

Let us celebrate the manned space flight pioneers and heroes of the 20th century by not adding any more dead ones in the 21st.

Forcing the “man-in-space” issue now, as Bush and others want to do, will distract considerable energy, time, and money from projects with an enormous scientific and cultural payoff. They will also contribute to an ultimately damaging image of space progress tied to an outdated test pilot bravado atmosphere, when what we need is a generation or two of scientifically and technically proficient people committed to finish the unmanned projects we have undertaken and projected so far. There are storehouses of undigested data already, and more is on the way from projects already launched.

Where our instruments are, there is humankind.

NASA has always been a different kind of agency!

And I am always skeptical of those who say “Don’t Try”

Government employees, every single last one of them, are servants
“Of the people” of the United States. It is therefore not only propler but
required to tell them, including members of Congress and The President, how we feel.

It doesn’t hurt to give them kudos when they are doing something right!

First, federal agencies must be totally supportive of the president’s budget. The heads of those agencies serve at the president’s pleasure and obey his marching orders.

Second, federal agencies are prohibited from lobbying Congress. Forwarding letters from concerned citizens is a pretty clear violation of lobbying restrictions.

So, if you want to send letters protesting NASA budget cuts, send them to the members of the House and Senate that oversee NASA’s budget appropriation.

Think of it this way:

When we are around 10 months or more (and I am thinking back to when my little 12 year old neice was this age) in our lives we learn to walk & talk. And even if we are not asking “what’s there?” we are exploring our own homes, we walk everywhere and we get into everything, much to our parents chagrin.

And then we begin to talk and as my neice would come to my house, she would always say “backyard” and outside she would always ask “what’s that?”

All of us, at this stage of our lives are curious and explore.

It is a part of the human condition, a hallmark of our species.

Scientists tell us that Millions of years ago, we left our ancestral home in Africa and spread out over the entire world.

Why?

To Explore, to hunt for a more hospitable environment, to hunt for food.

Today, even as the entire world is explored, we still carry on our own personal exploration; we call it going on vacation.

And apart from that, we Americans of course are not the only nation involved. Other nations are setting to explore what John F. Kennedy called
“The ocean of Space”

If we choose not to keep exploring, what will happen?

Someone else will get there first and by doing so, create new technologies that will power their economies.

They will make the new strides in society and they will “bring home the bacon”

Not us.

For today, exploration is not a luxury but a necessity.

I do not understand your tendency to anger, perhaps it is due to your youth.

I agree that there is a need to increase NASA funding if it is going to take on manned space exploration to the Moon and Mars. Small cuts (perhaps not in what can be achieved, but rather in the efficiency of acheiving them) to other programs may result. Drastic cuts would be a shame, but then many other industries besides NASA have had VERY drastic cuts over the years, and many of them are more crucial to our society than NASA.

I teach astronomy, and have for over 30 years. The outpouring of new scientific result exceeds my time and ability to absorb them and put them into my courses. I do not thing there is a shortage of discoveries.

Having said all that (as a counter to your anger), I will write to my senators, and tell them that it is time to increase NASA budget to allow for a safe and timely execution of the manned mission.

Thanks for your efforts, Phil, and please keep a cool head. I think you may be more effective.
DrJPH
PS: Are you faculty, staff, post-doc or what at CSUS?

I think the shuttles, space stations, and the other very expensive and failure prone elements of the manned program are at least premature. The direct physical presence of the human organism in space is unnecessary for scientific advance at this time. There is no justification for the risk and expense, let alone the disturbing presence of human activity and life support, that goes along with what are essentially publicity stunts.

I am sorry but I think quite a lot of us who grew up with the space program
disagree vehemently with you.

NASA, for all of it’s recent shortcomings (don’t get me started) still can get things accomplished.

No one else has landed men on the moon and no one else has spacecraft so far out.

As Phil said, just look at Spirit & Opportunity, roving their little hearts out after surpassing their 90 day life!

America today has a lot of problems, we need at least one agency that still has a “Can Do” approach…

If we don’t do it, other nations will and we can not afford to sit back, if we do, we lose one heck of a lot.

You may think you can do without it, but we can’t!

Ditto. Ditto. Ditto.

You’re my hero.

Sticks, letters and emails DO help; I’ve written many and have gotten responses, so I know they are at least being looked at. It helps not to write a template letter, put a bit of “controlled passion” into it, and offer solutions instead of just complaining.

Good letter, Phil.

See for instance http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/oped-06a.html

If that’s true then I hope it doesn’t backfire.

Shall we say you prefer direct results like thousands of FEMA trailers sitting idle on an airstrip where you can see them, or the obvious gains in security we will have from the Iraqi civil war we seem to have seen intensify today?

Or perhaps you believe all government agencies are full of mismanagement and waste and think it should all be left up to private business like Enron and Tyco or perhaps you like the ‘skim it off the top’ style of Haliburton’s business model?

How about we let private industry do all the research, keep the results to themselves, patent anything they find, and recoup all that R&D in the price of products they develop? Who knows? Maybe there’s some nice hair rinse that can be made in zero gravity. Society will surely benefit from such a product.

Currently it’s the military industrial complex that has the benefit of a vast amount of our tax dollars. Perhaps the companies are run very efficiently, but the end results are products the world doesn’t need and a market generated for those products as they are produced.

In light of the alternatives of where our taxes could be spent, or of who could be doing the science, I’ll vote for wasting a bit more at NASA, thank you.

A heck of a lot of folks still use fax machines but don’t buy a Panasonic,
as if you have a problem with it now, you won’t be calling the office in suburban Philly, you will be calling someone in Manila!

Doesn’t make sense, especially when you consider that the high rates of inflation and high interest rates of the mid 1970′s came as a direct result of LBJ’s spending on Guns & Butter but not raising taxes to offset the spending.

Today we seem to be doing that with defecits.

And you might say this President and This Congress, never met a defecit it didn’t like!

Bad for everyone including worthwhile research including science!

Kudos Phil, you deserve it ..more than most people do!

Barbie

Perhaps I missed it, but it seems to me that NASA is still respected worldwide even though it has had some screwups. Its successes outweigh its failures.

“I for one expect much much more for my tax dollars. ”

Considering the small slice of the federal budget that NASA gets, I think the few dollars you spend are paid back manyfold in all their successful projects (Hubble, Cassini, Galileo, Mars missions, Earth science satellites, aeronautics research…). Granted, improvements can be made.

Erm, well, yes. One word : Cassini. The mission was a NASA/ESA/ASI joint venture. Look here:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html

Also, you may not be aware of JET (Joint European Torus), the forerunner of ITER.

And Concorde (Yay for European engineering!).

I wish that the project that was finally funded had been the Jovian Mission. I had high hopes for nuclear reactors and high energy plasma propulsion in space. However, the lunar missions have significant importance. Human exploration is still severely limited. We need man-centuries in space before we can comfortably send people to the other planets.

I hate delaying science more than the average guy, but NASA hasn’t got much of a following. Arguing for more funding is going on. But unless there is a higher blog turn out than I expect (feel free to prove me wrong), it won’t make much impression on Congress. NASA has a good program with sustainable growth and goals, and we came out of the latest budget better than we had hoped.

Yep. With one go, Bush managed to give NASA an objective that completely crippled everything it was doing. Way to kick it to that evil science!