

NASA unveils sweeping new programs - manned rockets, deep space exploration - suprgeek
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-20002088-239.html

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kadavy
An interesting comment on this story, about NASA:

"They have been one of the big fuelers of my dreams for most of my life. I
grew up in the Apollo years where we broke through one boundary after another
and celebrated the early years of the Shuttle program where we created a
system that is still unrivaled after 3 decades for it's ability to deliver
_and_ return payload to Earth.

Then Challenger blew up and along with it the spirit that was NASA. Instead,
it was replaced by bureaucrats and risk managers. Everything involving manned
exploration became so risk adverse that it amazing we have even managed to
keep the program running today. If you have any doubt, look at Constellation,
where we were going to basically replicate the accomplishments of Apollo, and
take twice as long to do it and burn huge sums of money in the process. We can
dream bigger and I am glad the current administration killed the program."

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ck2
If we weren't constantly waging war on multiple fronts, we could give NASA a
massive budget.

But when you are gushing $4+ billion a month, everything else has to be cut.

What they are giving NASA over the next five years, will be spent in just
April+May in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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waterlesscloud
Yeah, it's too bad we had to abandon those lunar bases we built in all those
years we didn't fight war.

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rbanffy
It's more like those bases were never built because the money went to Vietnam.

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tjic
We went to the moon at the same time that we were in Vietnam.

We stopped going to the moon at the same time that we withdrew from Vietnam.

The only thing that correlates with the end of any interesting manned space
program is the growth of government entitlements.

Social Security and Medicaid suck up FAR more of the federal budget than the
Department of Defense does.

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gnosis
_"Social Security and Medicaid suck up FAR more of the federal budget than the
Department of Defense does."_

This is false. Actually, it's the other way around. See here:

<http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm>

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waterlesscloud
That chart specifically says it excludes social security and other "trust
funds".

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ANH
The Administration has also given NASA the go ahead to start reorganizing and
reprioritizing Earth science missions in a sane manner. I happen to work on
one, and the proposed changes we're seeing at the program level are like a
breath of fresh air. They might actually _decrease_ the amount of bureaucracy.
Here's hoping Congress doesn't put the kibosh on them.

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tjic
> They might actually decrease the amount of bureaucracy.

Bureacracy grows, inexhorably.

Care to formulate some sort of bet on how much delta you see in bureaucracy
over the next few years?

