Obama on Space (Update)

"to reach out and include international partners and engage the private sector to increase NASA's reach and provide real public economic benefits for the nation."

*SIGH*... yet another 'educated' person who thinks NASA has provided no economic benefits to society. This is getting incredibly tiresome. Mr. Obama, JFK you are not.

I think we should forget about ever going back to the moon let alone Mars. It looks like Obama is going to be the next President and he doesn't care anything about space exploration. If we ever do get the moxie to go back to the moon it will be up to the private sector. I'm afraid Obama is a visionless leader when it comes to space exploration and the American people are too fickle to care one way or another. They just want to be pampered and tucked in at night and to have lard stuffed down thier throats in the form of housing bailouts, government provided healthcare and to basically have their butts wiped by the "giverment" at every turn. Amercians don't have the guts for space explroation so why belabor the point? We're a washed up country hopelessly in debt and our glory days are way behind us.

Not much change here that I can see. Obama and his people have had a little more to figure the costs of his educational initiatives, that's all, and concluded that even gutting the manned space program won't pay for all the new programs -- which was pretty clear to most of us some months ago.

What _is_ kind of interesting is the sort of link which Obama seems determined to establish, which I'd summarize as EDUCATION GOOD - MANNED SPACE BAD. Evidentaly, Obama believes this. Evidently, he and his people expect his backers believe this. Which is a tad strange, since fifty years of polling data generally show that younger, better educated, more affluent, more liberal voters are more apt to approve of expanded space programs than older, less educated, poorer, conservative voters.

From which I conclude that Obama's apparent disdain for ambitious manned space programs is not politically driven but reflects the man's personal beliefs. I'm not expecting good things to happen for NASA, or COTS, or space tourism or much else that might lead to "extending the human presence across the solar system" during the next ten years. Well, phooey.

-ms

I have said it before and I'll say it again. The man is bad for space, both manned and unmanned. It is obvious that neither he nor anybody on his campaign team knows anything about anything NASA does at all.

"enhance NASA's role "in confronting the challenges we face here on Earth, including global climate change" and "to reach out and include international partners and engage the private sector to increase NASA's reach and provide real public economic benefits for the nation.

While I respect confronting challenges we face here on earth and global climate change, why does this have to be NASAs goal. What about NAtional Aeronautics and Space Administration says "global climate change"? Shouldn't these goals lie more adequately in the goals of NOAA, the EPA, and the Department of Energy?

As for reaching out and engaging international partners - has he heard of the International Space Station? Is this not engaging international partners? Was this not a reaching out to international partners including our cold war enemy, to help defray the cost of building the station? What has happened in reality? We have a whole slew of International Partners who want their names and explorers on the station but for the most part we have funded the bulk of the station anyway, including keeping the Russian Space Program afloat with cash infusions and paid rides.

The private sector is engaged, but it is a long way from achieving the goals of the moon or even orbital manned flight.

It puzzles me, but I know a ton of CS employees who will be voting for Obama. They simply have no interest in self-preservation.

Benefitting Space and Earth is NASA's charter, and NASA is the epitome of science and the best minds. So it's robbing from Peter to pay Paul to take money away from NASA to educate the next generation of scientist and best minds. There will no longer be a pinnacle to inspire the next generation with this sort of thought process. Ref the article that Google Alerts sent me about NASA right before this blirb. I see at least 5 a day about NASA's contribution to earth and society.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/Space-Weather-The-New-Frontier/

Barak Obama has become the new Walter Mondale with a shade of William Proxmire and Ralph Abernathy thrown in for good measure. And what's worse, it seems like he will become our next president. Thanks a helluva lot Oprah...

We should stop pointing the finger at those outside NASA who do not send us the budgets we wish we had. Over decades we inside NASA have allowed inter-center rivalry to kill cooperation and single-mindedness of purpose. We have allowed individual careerism, micro-management and a near fanatical information control to be the norm, stifling the flow of information upwards and around, good news or bad news, a flow necessary for effective leadership. We have come to blame others expectations as too high, or others understanding of the challenges of our job as too low, to justify submitting plans, budgets and in general promises that border on lies. We should take responsibility for what we have done, yet we won’t. Where is the Space Station that should have been of low enough maintenance and operations such that when it was done it would free up funds for experiments and payloads? Where is the space transport that once operating would fly often, safely, and at low enough cost so the development dollars could be moved to pay for even more payloads, probes, satellites, experiments, and scientific advances? Do we blame the lack of funds or time from back when these systems were designed and built? There comes a time when passing the buck must stop and we have only ourselves to blame.

NASA’s problem is not lack of funding. Never has been. NASA or contractors, we either go forward to do great things with the funds we have because we push ourselves, our efficiencies, our understanding of how to get things done, or we can bemoan that funds this year are barely enough to keep up with inflation, or look back and complain about the years when even that was not the case. We can’t just wipe our hands of the situation, the dysfunctional dynamic we NASA have created for ourselves. I am optimistic that the finger pointing is just a phase, like denial, a step along the way to a reformation and re-awakening. Let's hope it's a short lived phase.

2008 Dept. of Education Budget: $62.6 Billion
2008 NASA Budget: $17.3 Billion

But that's not all...

"Federal funding makes up about 8.9 percent of the estimated $584 billion that America is spending on elementary and secondary education during the 2006-07 school year."
Source: http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget08/summary/edlite-section1.html

Imagine what NASA and their industry partners could do with $584 Billion.

I'm not sure why people are voting for Obama. He has no plans just speeches. You're going to see this in the debates.

@Lost Moon - I don't see where Obama should be chalked up as a danger to unmanned space exploration when he specifically separates robotic missions from Constellation and holds them up as an example of what should be continued.

@cw
CS employees who vote for Obama may well not be single issue (e.g. space) voters. I'm in this sector as well, and space policy is definitely one of the areas I disagree with the candidate. I'm personally ambivalent about Constellation to begin with, but equally ambivalent that it's on the chopping (or "delay") block for educational programs.

Frankly, space is a low priority for both candidates. McCain being on-board for Bush's "Vision" is meaningless to me, since Bush has not been on board since he gave the speech introducing it, and McCain, like Bush, has no way (and I bet no real desire) to fund it. I'd rather have open and vociferous debate than empty promises.

Despite the fact that neither candidate was first on my list, I guess I'll be pulling for McCain this November. At least he understands the importance of flying past our skies and "into the black" (even if he desires to reduce NASA's budget even further).

@RA

Because his support of unmanned exploration is nothing more then empty promises. His complete disregard of manned space flight shows his complete lack of understanding of space exploration and those who wholeheartedly support manned exploration. Killing the manned space program does not open up unmanned exploration's budget to the full 17.3 billion of NASA. It would just kill the manned budget period. The budget would not get reassigned to unmanned exploration and anybody who thinks it would is fooling themselves. That budget has been congressionally approved to pay for shuttle, ISS and Constellation. If those program all go away, that budget goes away with it.

... under Obama manned spaceflight wouldn't "go away". It would be significantly slowed, however, and clearly he has specific plans for the money he would be diverting from NASA. I don't support that. But to call his proposal "disregard" or "killing manned spaceflight" is disingenuous. And, I repeat, he is not threatening unmanned exploration - your assertion he is is unfounded. It is _our_ job as members of the community to point out the value and return of NASA manned programs, something we have made very difficult for ourselves with the waste and mismanagement in manned spaceflight over the past couple decades.

As a member of this community, if I were a "one issue" voter, I would see the temptation in McCain's claimed support of Bush's "Vision". But even if I were that narrow with my litmus test, McCain's promise of support is more nebulous - and potentially more threatening to NASA overall because it promises everything with no plan for delivering anything. Looking at the two candidates proposals for space it is McCain's that comes up empty for me.