NASA Chief sees mandate for Bush's Moon/Mars program

From the New York Times:

NASA Chief Sees Mandate for Bush Space Program
By WARREN E. LEARY

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 - The budget increase Congress just voted for NASA is a clear endorsement of President Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon and later Mars, the head of the space agency said Tuesday.

Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, said the budget victory over the weekend was "as strong an endorsement as anyone could have hoped" for the national space policy outlined by the president in January, which involves finishing the space station, retiring the shuttle fleet and refocusing the program on exploration.

(snip)

In wrangling over the spending bill Congress approved over the weekend, lawmakers approved a $16.2 billion budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a 5 percent increase at a time most agencies took cuts. While the $822 million increase for the space program in the 2005 fiscal year, which began in October was $44 million less than the president requested, NASA was a clear winner in a year when discretionary spending increased only about 1 percent.

The legislation requires Mr. O'Keefe to report within 60 days on the agency's plans, including what programs might be delayed, deferred or canceled because of the new initiative.

(snip)

The president's program was sharply criticized on Tuesday by the American Physical Society, the leading independent organization of physicists. In a report, a committee of the society concluded that shifting the agency's priorities to the moon and Mars would mean neglecting the most promising space science, including new space telescopes that go beyond the Hubble; unpiloted Mars rover missions; and Explorer astrophysics missions.

"The scope of the moon-Mars initiative has not been well defined, its long-term cost has not been adequately addressed and no budgetary mechanisms have been established to avoid causing major irreparable damage to the agency's scientific program," the report said.

(snip)

A NASA chief. Who'da thought?

What a He-Man!

I completely support the Moon/Mars initiative. I don't particularly want to get into another argument here about the relative merits of the space program, but it makes me sad that we have allowed a jerk like Bush to pick up John Kennedy's mantle on this point, but there you have it.

Or do you really think a 5% increase in NASA's budget, which has a hard enough time even flying a 30-yr-old space shuttle program to low earth orbit, is going to get us to the Moon and Mars anytime in our lifetimes?

:shrug:

Peter

I have alot of skepticism that Bush is competent enough to actually pull this off. However, I support the general policy and I think alot more money should be poured into NASA, which as it stands now has a yearly budget approximetely equal to one week of the Pentagons.

Look at those budget deficits Bush is racking up. This is just another of Bush's sideshows to distract people from the mess he is making of everything else.

I fell for the same BS hype when I was young and Reagan did it with the space station. That has pretty much come to nothing due to lack of sufficient money. The space station we ended up with was late, way over budget, and a useless shell compared to the original concept. And that was a lot cheaper than this Moon/Mars initiative.

I'm not falling for the same trick again, and I hope you don't either.

Peter

I do not trust that this President will be able to follow through on his promise (though his entire NASA budget was just approved). I hope I am wrong. But I am not going to say I don't agree with the policy because I do agree with it.

As to the Space Station, while not where it should be now, it has still been a successful venture giving us valuable information regarding living and more importantly, working in space. There has been no space related program that has not gone through this kind of roller coaster. When you have a congress that must approve every screw and bolt you use along the way it does make it difficult, but progress is being made.

Bush has not promised anything other than vague goals. He has not promised actual money. All the large outlays of money, under his plan, come several years down the line---after he is long gone. Typical Bush double-speak.

If you agree with the goals, you should be holding his feet to the fire about money---vocally decrying his funding proposals as vastly insufficient. Otherwise, I see nothing but disappointment ahead for both manned spaceflight and all of space science.

As for the space station, calling it "successful" is really setting low standards. Compare what was promised in the early 80s to what we have twenty years later and it is extremely hard to label it as anything but a travesty. It has not been a roller coaster, but rather a steady downhill ride, as the costs grew, budgets shrank, goals lowered, and the space shuttle crashed.

The capabilities of we have now are hard to distinguish from those of Skylab from thirty years ago.

I would hope that any true supporter of manned spaceflight would hold new and future programs to much, much higher standards, and would be extremely wary of going down a similar road again.

Peter

EDIT: added Skylab reference

Although at this time, it's nice to have robots on Mars, they're really almost completely useless and amount to a camera mounted on a remote control car with some other gadgets here and there.

An ameteur geologist with a rock hammer and 3 or 4 hours could get more information from Mars' geology than every robot we've sent or will send.

Most of the arguments are not against the merits of space exploration, but of the way Bush wants NASA to handle it. The physicists' refutations are aimed at the implementation, not the value of space exploration.

Now, If I Ruled The World, I'd cut the military budget by 75%, and dedicate half of the savings to a New, Improved Space Program. We could build five of those space-reaching skyhook towers on less money than the Chimperor has already spent destroying Iraq. And for $200 billion, I think we could build a casino on Mars, not just explore the place.

--p!

the Mission to Mars crap.

It's not the 5 percent increase in NASA's budget...

it's totally about reprogramming budgets throughout the agency to
eliminate anything related to Global Warming or other environmental
studies and to significantly reduce any "pure science" type activity.

NASA is to go back to being "rocket scientists" and spend a boatload
of money (on major defense contractors) to engineer ways to send
people to Mars (or the moon).

Retire the shuttle fleet (good) and replace it with ??? (A new
Saturn program? yuck) (A new shuttle? yuck again) (Other?)

So much for the remote sensing programs, the MTPE, and the space
telescopes, and the robotic missions (cheap and highly successful).