Thursday, February 04, 2010
Buzz Aldrin Backs Obama in Scrapping Moon Program
The famous Apollo 11 astronaut says NASA's sights should be on Mars.
By Brittany Sauser
On
Monday, the Obama administration
announced its 2010 budget for NASA. It cancels plans to return to
the moon by 2020 and focuses on using commercial companies to ferry astronauts
to and from orbit.
While
some are up in arms over the future of human spaceflight, Buzz Aldrin is backing
the president in an editorial in The
Huffington Post.
Aldrin
calls Obama's decision his "JFK moment." He praises the president for
deciding "to redirect our nation's space policy away from the foolish and
underfunded Moon race that has consumed NASA for more than six years, aiming
instead at boosting the agency's budget by more than $1 billion more per year
over the next five years, topping off at $100 billion for NASA between now and
2015."
Aldrin
has been far from shy about criticizing the Constellation program, previously calling
the launch of its prototype rocket, Ares I-X, "fake" and
"a little more than a half-a-billion dollar political show." He
thinks that NASA should be spending taxpayer dollars on developing technology
for trips to Mars, and he backs a "flexible path" plan that would
"redirect NASA towards developing the capability of voyaging to more
distant locations in space, such as rendezvous with possibly threatening
asteroids, or comets, or even flying by Mars to land on its moons."
NASA's
administrator, Charles Bolden, said in a press
conference Tuesday that he
and senior White House officials will spend the next few months devising a new
overarching goal for NASA, and a schedule for developing technologies to send
astronauts to destinations as yet unknown.
But
Obama's budget proposal still has to be approved by congress. "My biggest
fear is that this amounts to a slow death of our nation's human space flight
program," Representative Bill Posey, Republican of Florida, said in a
statement.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
Matthew Putm...
02/04/2010
Posts:35
electric_mot...
02/04/2010
Posts:1
How can we be a world leader in beyond LEO space exploration when we have no specific destinations or deadlines? How can NASA ever succeed without any goals?
How can we ever land exploration teams on the surface of Mars if we claim that the cost of touching down on the Moon is prohibitive?
What is it about lunar exploration that requires totally new technologies, if it was already successfully accomplished by us 40 years ago?
Certainly, there is merit in funding plasma engine research and stimulating the commercial LEO launch market, but isn't killing off the Vision for Space Exploration without providing a meaningful alternative totally irresponsible? Can NASA afford to be stalled for yet another year?
If NASA does not commit to any Congressionally-mandated deadlines or destinations, what is to prevent it from becoming an even more tempting multi-billion dollar target for future budget cutbacks?
Sincerely,
Nelson Bridwell
NelsonBridwe...
02/04/2010
Posts:8
and space flight.
But guess what?
The US is beyond broke and this is an expensive
luxury that we simply can not afford at the moment.
We have squandered our national treasure over the years by making too many bad decisions.
The argument that a dollar spent on space returns
x amount of dollars just doesn't wash any more.
Maybe if this country gets its financial house in
order we can go forward with programs like this; just not now.
devassocx
02/05/2010
Posts:76
Conversely, the budget argument that we cannot afford NASA also falls over entirely when you realize that NASA's total budget amounts to 1/200th of our Federal budget. In the 1960s it was 1/20th of the federal budget, 10 times larger.
It is expensive, but we can easily continue to afford it as long as it remains at this level. Totally eliminating NASA will not significantly change the solvency of the federal government.
NelsonBridwe...
02/05/2010
Posts:8
DJTal
02/05/2010
Posts:154
I agree--the US is not broke and can afford a multi-decade Mars program.
But it's not money that's the problem, it's political paralysis.
Fortunately China has a strong central government, ability to make long-term investments, growing technology prowess, huge financial reserves, and interest in space.
If China were to start surpassing American achievements, then the impasse here could break, out of national pride.
Go CNSA!
Red Brixton
02/05/2010
Posts:1
That brings up the only economically valid reason that I ever saw for going to the moon, which was to mine Helium-3. What ever happened to that idea? Is it just another one of those political ballons that turn out to be filled with hot air?
boblemay
02/05/2010
Posts:1
I respect Buzz Aldrin greatly and agree that scrapping a stillborn program is good management. However, "flexible" is not exactly a rally cry, much less a pushpin on the cosmic map. We still have no where to go, no way to get there, and been given no compelling reason to make the trip. Yes, many reasons exist. But no one inside the Beltway wants to bet a term on them. As a spacefaring nation, we've lost our way, our leadership, and our stones. God help us...
mctoms
02/09/2010
Posts:1
I have seen very little published science coming from IIS so unless someone can prove otherwise, America would have been better off to cancel IIS/Shuttle while continuing to develop Constellation. According to the Augustine Commission, the previous administration used the OMB to raid NASA's budget to the tune of $12B so it was no wonder that Constellation/Ares experienced delays and cost overruns.
Today, totally private space ventures still have not made it into orbit. This makes space travel much like the 1490s when Spain's monarchs funded Columbus's ventures into the new world. Europe only sent government-funded trips for the next 100 years. (there was no private funding model that worked). At this time I do not see private companies doing as good a job as defense contractors (who should be kept busy with a constructive space program rather than destructive technology of war).
The only way forward, is to get out of those two wars, get the US debt (currently $14 trillion) under control with "tax increases" and "benefit reductions".
With respect to Buzz's comments, we can do a lot of science on the moon if we only had a permanent base there. While there are financial benefits to mining the asteroids, it will be more profitable to do this with automation than people (and profit is what the private companies will be all about). The energy required to get to-from Mars is so great, I don't think we'll ever send people there except to colonize it (one-way missions only: Earth to Mars)
neilrieck
02/12/2010
Posts:44