Bush's New Space Program Criticized Over Costs & Nuclear Fears

Bush's New Space Program Criticized Over Costs & Nuclear Fears

The Washington Post estimated the project will cost at least $170 billion over the next 16 years. The Pentagon and private companies will also collaborate with NASA on the venture. The final cost is unknown. President George H.W. Bush also proposed an ambitious expansion of the space program but the idea went nowhere in part because of the estimated $500 billion pricetag.

But now fiscal conservatives are expected to back this plan because it will expand U.S. military supremacy in space. It remains unclear what role the military will have on the Moon if a permanent base is created. The Pentagon has been discussing a military base as far back as 1959 when it proposed to put 150 rockets on the moon.

The Global Resource Action Center for the Environment warned on Wednesday that the Bush initiative "will create a new arms race to the heavens."

Among the private companies that will benefit from the space program may include Halliburton and Shell Oil. According to a 2001 article in Petroleum News, NASA has been working with Halliburton, Shell, Baker-Hughes and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in identifying drilling technologies on Mars.

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... that behind all the mealy-mouthed rhetoric of the scientific benefits of space lies yet another transfer of funds from the public treasury to Halliburton and Shell oil?

:grr:

The Arms Trade Resource Center, reported that 80% of Lockheed's business is with the Department of Defense and other federal government agencies. It is also the largest provider of information technology services, systems integration, and training to the U.S. government. Such business has grown substantially during the Bush tenure, especially in fiscal year 2002 as plans for war were formulated.

The ATRC report calculates that Lockheed was awarded $17 billion in defense contracts in 2002, up from $14.7 billion in 2001. First quarter sales for 2003 were $7.1 billion, an 18% increase from the corresponding quarter in 2002.

Lockheed leads the defense industry in lobbying expenditures. Lockheed Martin made over $10.6 million in campaign contributions to candidates and party committees from 1990 to 2000, including $3.4 million in donations in the run-up to the year 2000 elections.

With a share of 24% of U.S. arms exports, Lockheed-Martin is the world's largest arms exporting company. Lockheed leads the pack of defense contractors who do business with the U.S. with valuable Pentagon contracts worth a total of nearly $30 billion and an advertised $70 billion backlog.

Congressional contributors such as Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics Hughes, Raytheon, TRW, Madison Research, Texas Instruments, Teledyne, Northrop-Grumman and Rockwell all have ongoing co-mingled defense and missile projects that requires them to work together on a contractor/subcontractor basis to develop their military projects.

There is no question that in this incestuous weapons production pyramid, the shareholder's bottom line dictates the amount of support and funding an individual project would receive, especially when so many of the principles in and out of government have large amounts of money and prestige invested in the success of these weapon's deals.

Today the Lockheed Space Systems website describes the corporation's ambitions in "space-based telecommunications; remote-sensing; missile systems; and the capability to integrate these complex elements into a total "system of systems," as an enterprise built by heritage aerospace companies including Lockheed, Martin Marietta, RCA, GE and Loral.

It should be remembered that there is no pot of money sitting around unneeded to dip into for these space projects. No starry-eyed mission to the moons of Jupiter can be sustained without the military bonanza of nervous cash; and you can't easily turn this industry off once you've given them the money and licence to fiddle.

Of what use would it be, other than to bankrupt whatever country tries to build and maintain it?

This program of Bush's has nothing to do with militarizing space. It has everything to do with politics and distraction, and that's about it.

--Peter

to Mars and Jupiter, are intended to prove these new technologies for the eventual application in space-based nuclear reactors which are intended to power space-based lasers on permanent or floating platforms. This is outlined in NASA's Nuclear Systems Inituative.
http://eos.gsfc.nasa.gov/eos-ll/docs/nuclear_syst_init.pdf

NASA, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy are currently working together to develop the technology base for what they term, Space Nuclear Reactor Power.

This program will develop and demonstrate in ground tests the technology required for space reactor power systems from tens of kilowatts to hundreds of kilowatts. The SP-100 nuclear reactor system is to be launched ‘radioactively cold.' When the mission is done, the reactor is intended to be stored in space for hundreds of years.

The reactor would would utilize new blends of "recycled" uranium fuel.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science. Additional science partners are located at the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project to develop and build the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and JPL.

Included in NASA plans for the nuclear rocket to Mars; a new generation of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) for interplanetary missions; nuclear-powered robotic Mars rovers to be launched in 2003 and 2009. NASA touts future mining colonies on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids that would be powered by nuclear reactors.

To develop and demonstrate these new nuclear power and propulsion technologies, President Bush's budget proposes $279 million; ($3 billion over five years) for Project Prometheus, which builds on the Nuclear Systems Initiative started last year.

Project Prometheus includes the development of the first nuclear-electric space mission, called the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. This mission will conduct extensive, in-depth studies of the moons of Jupiter that may harbor subsurface oceans. Only advanced nuclear reactors could provide the hundreds of kilowatts of power the craft would need.

Despite the administration and industry talk of Moon bases, Mars exploration, and Europa's moons, the Prometheus Project will pave the way for the original Pentagon plan to mount nuclear reactors on space-based platforms to power their nuclear lasers.

And of course, as the Space Command also asserts, ". . . the United States must also have the capability to deny America's adversaries the use of commercial space platforms, for military purposes"

Mission Fact Sheet:
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/JIMO.pdf

How will the system be used?:
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/fissiontech.pdf

Claims of nuclear space saftey:
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/fissiontechsafety.pdf

The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space maintains that just like missile defense is a Trojan horse for the Pentagon's real agenda for control and domination of space, NASA's nuclear rocket is a Trojan horse for the militarization of space.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-03b.html

NASA To Boost Nuclear Space Science With Project Prometheus
Los Angeles - Jan 20, 2003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03c.html

Project Prometheus
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/nasa.html

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/

http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/prometheus.htm

U.S. Likely to Put Arms in Space - Air Force Chief
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/space_weapons_010802.html

Space Laser Project Heats Up
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_laser_001127.html

What's a Tactical High-Energy Laser?
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launches/laser_sidebar_000926.html

That the best candy on earth comes from Mars! Maybe the little slug thought they meant Nose Candy! Bush needs to talk to Rush, the Repub 'Candy Testing Czar', to get the real skinny on the goody situation! Rush knows Dope!

to divert attention from O'Neill's blasting of bush,and the media streetwalkers are going along as usual,protecting that fraud in the white house.