Comments on: Is Obama going to gut NASA?

By: ccaudi

ccaudi — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 14:19:21 +0000

For the past 20 years, poor management has bloated NASA. It shall soon be free of the horribly expensive and ridiculously ancient and inefficient Shuttle program. Unfortunately it will still be shackled to the Space Station. Until the Station is de-orbited, NASA should focus its space efforts on its only space asset. Future exploration programs should consist of operations that lead to a future goal, say perhaps landing a man on Mars. Going back to the Moon is simply a sideshow. Beyond these efforts, NASA should slim down, leverage it’s personnel for muliple missions, and rely on academic resources to for research and development.

By: From Distant Planets to the Deep Blue Sea | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine « Bigmikeh1965’s Weblog

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:05:47 +0000

[...] research, we should demand it do so. I need not go into details — you can find my arguments here and here and here and especially here — but let me just say that science always pays off in the [...]

By: From Distant Planets to the Deep Blue Sea | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:41:09 +0000

By: Whoa, three more interviews | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Whoa, three more interviews | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:00:58 +0000

[...] The Takeaway. We talked about Obama’s mixed signals for NASA (they contacted me after reading what I wrote on the subject). That was a fun interview; I had to drive to a local radio station to use their ISDN line, so it [...]

By: The Distributed Republic

The Distributed Republic — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 09:03:40 +0000

New Administration, New NASA?

Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy wonders if the new administration will gut NASA. Philosophically I’d rather NASA did not exist (that classical liberal desire for less government). On the other hand between the public goods problem of basic scientific…

By: John

John — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:26:00 +0000

People like Mark are short sighted and ignorant.

Cut the “Manned” space program and focus all efforts back on Earth bound science only? Maintain the ISS, but drop all efforts to get to the Moon and Mars because they’re not exciting???

Instead of listening to the people who cannot see past their own noses, we should quadruple the NASA budget and start building bases on the Moon ASAP. We should get a base of a minimum of 10,000 people on the Moon and 1000 people to Mars by 2025.

You see, it’s not science that inspires the next generation, it’s extraordinary science that inspires them. It’s making fantasies come true that inspires children to work all that much harder, because they finally realize that they might have a chance to take part in the mission to space.

Mark’s vision is what was wrong with NASA. Mark wants NASA to become another political propaganda machine that does dull Earth-Science-Only studies for purely political purposes.

What do you think inspired the next generation more? Hubble or Apollo? And which science has helped us understand how to conserve more? Human space flight has many challenges that once solved, will help us here on Earth with those same challenges. Like, recycling our waste water back into drinking water. The science for that would never have been done in the way it was done if it were not for the human need. Remember, necessity is the mother of invention, and human space flight creates more necessity than robotic Earth-Centric Earth orbit only science.

If we did what Mark wanted, we might as well just shut NASA down.

By: News Briefs 22-12-2008 | Psychics Services|Psychics Members Site|Psychics City|Course

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:00:52 +0000

[...] Obama going to gut NASA? Some blame NASA’s Michael Griffin for bumpy transition from Bush to [...]