Fairly good news. Obama seems to have positive responses as well, but with a wariness toward budget concerns, which is understandable in a recession, but I wish folks would remember the nobler reasons to

what NASA does, and the positive technological side effects it’s always had.

But now, we’re just waiting for Congress to get "excited" ?! Riddle me this: Will the European, Indian, Japanese, Chinese and Russian programs fly right by ours, whereby instead of being the leaders of the new space race, we are hitch-hiking on non-American crafts to reach LEO or the ISS? Will Congress be excited then, y’think?

Robert: "it is like everything else Bush did in his tenure...screwed up"

Obviously, your a bush hater.

Wish you take your personal hatred opinions somewhere else and let the intelligent ones have a professional discussion here on this blog.

Some of us want to learn from the educated, and fair minded. Obviously your not.

I happen to believe a moon habitat would be an excellent way to leverage our investment in low pressure, low gravity research into methods, materials, and techniques we will need on long missions. Robert, your BDS rabid comments are not helpful. We need rational scientific analysis to point the way forward. We have the means to begin on the moon. The space station is a good waypoint for logistics.

NASA does need to send a bunch of people to financial training. They need to be forced to think like a business and analyze what they are doing. Don't let the vendors run amok!

Marc

Looks like Dennis Wingo is correct concerning what President Bush intended with the VSE. Develop lunar resources so we can go beyond.

"And the purpose there is to eventually settle in and develop enough facility in the Moon to then be able to go beyond."

Okay, so now what?

@Bill White:
re: "Okay, so now what?"

so, now we do it... and see what is over the hill, hopefully doing it in a way that develops infrastructure and a continuing capability.

By the way, Bill, you were a great first baseman for the Cards when I was a kid...

Bill White,
Hi Mayor, Thanks for your interest. (Jes Kidding)

Seriously, a good long term plan has not been thought out by anyone in NASA. Presidential decrees have gotten us to where we are, but we need more forward thinking technical folks. I am talking about a plan that looks at where we are now, and where we want to go in 100 or 200 years. Then plan the baby steps to get us there. What we are doing now is not long term. To successfully fund a long term project, you have to set the intermediate goals in a cohesive manner to reach the end goal...what?...leaving the solar system? Perhaps in 100 years. Your call.

We may never get very far past our solar system's bounds in that time, but with the exponential rate of advances in our technical abilities I may be wrong.

The steps of orbital flight, computed trajectories, landing on the moon, Mars successes and the great telescope in the sky are done deals. Let's keep it going!

Commercialism of space has only taken the first baby step recently with the FAA approval of our first space port. I am so danged old that I can't go.

Robert, I truly am flabbergasted:

50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan are free; they were not when he took office. Of course the situation is still messy and it has not been easy, but they have functioning governments and the opportunity to make them really work. It may not, but they get to try. Without the actions of this administration, those people would still be living in a pre-medieval theocracy on the one hand and under the jackboot on the other. Have you ever talked with an Iraqi or with an Afghan woman? Do so with a good statistical sample and then come back and ask what this administration has done well.

I will answer for him. Your fing butt is still alive. You are a real liberal nut bag, since you don't recognize that we have not been hit again since 9?11/01. What is your explanation???

Obviously, your a bush hater.

Wish you take your personal hatred opinions somewhere else and let the intelligent ones have a professional discussion here on this blog.

Some of us want to learn from the educated, and fair minded. Obviously your not.

Ok, let's talk about education in general, and in particular, science education in America, or the lack or failure thereof.

I have no intention of starting a dialogue with you regarding the politics of this Administration when you clearly know that this is not the right avenue for such discussions.

I rather be informed about Bush’s tenure by highly qualified historians that use scientific means than commentators.

So, spare me your feeble attempt to entice me with your crude observations of the President.

Here is what the VSE boils down to.

1. NASA's new mission is to go to the Moon whenever we can.

2. The ISS is irrelevant to that mission.

3. The Shuttle is thus rendered also irrelevant since it can only go to LEO and the ISS.

4. The so-called gap in launch capabilities is therefore not an issue because the two missions have nothing in common.

A new Moon exploration inititative could be exactly what the US needs right now. Aside from a peaceful goal to strive for, the education reform needed to bring forth a new generation of scientists and engineers would be a major shot in the arm for the country as a whole. Not a simple, short-term publicity stunt, but a fundamental shift in the country's direction back towards intellectual excellence.

Having a permenant presence on the moon, as Bill Stone highlighted in his superb TED talk on the subject (IANYSE) would drop the price of on-orbit operations as well as opening the way up to Mars, the asteroids and the outer planets.

Theoretically, those are goals which should transcend politics. Not that I'm holding my breath.

It is sad to me that even a President pushing a $100 Billion lunar program doesn't see the Moon as an important destination for its self.

I think NASA needs to focus on putting men on the Moon and Mars as well as explore for Earth-like planets in other solar systems with orbiting telescopes capable of resolving them.


NASA also needs to spend more money in advanced plama research to develop new propusion systems.


Personally, I think exploring the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and projects like that are a waste of time and money which could be better spent learning to travel to and live on the Moon, Mars and Earth-like planets in other solar systems.


Even if it takes another 500 years or so to understand physics enough to understand how to build fast interstellar drives, it must be done as there is no natural redundancy built into the human race. One huge asteroid clobbers Earth and we are done.


Going to the Moon and Mars are first steps to insuring the survival of the human race on other Earth-like planets in other solar systems.


Ron Carlson

Hey Robert you wanted one thing Bush has done well? How about calling the bluff on the democrats scam to weaken America. I think if you read the papers he has gone after terrorists in their holes in a variety of countries as opposed to his predecesor who was fiddling with his zipper while the World Trade Center burned.

Can you name the 3 terror camps busted in Iraq? You sir need to stop believing a biased news media that advertises opinionated journalism as news. You may also have read about the Constellation program. If not see www.nasa.gov.
Let's see this messiah obama in action next week, he has gone on record as wanting to cancel our Lunar program, no doubt to give away the money to those who do not know how to work.

You overlooked one possibility. If he was saying "Orion-launching vehicle," then Bush is technically correct. That is what Ares I is. If such was the case, it's still much easier for the critics to ignore a missing piece of punctuation and make the obvious bash-the-idjit-Bush comment.

/b

Because of budget constraints NASA unilaterally eliminated most all microgravity research that is essential for the development of self-sustaining technologies and closed-looplife support systems that are vital for human exploration beyond low-earth-orbit and, thereby, precluded the US from achieving the Space Exploration Initiative and removed it from being a spacefaring nation. The "new" crew vehicle has no uplift capability for research equipment or much else. This is the legacy of the Bush/Griffin policies.

Editor's note: and with this loss of capability went the ground and institutional infrastructure which, in many cases, is totally gone and will have to be recreated. This will not be an instantaneous process and will require many years - just to get back to where we were- while others surged ahead in the interim.

I too am appalled by President Bush's performance, not from any hatred I feel for him but just from the facts. He turned a $3 trillion federal deficit into $10.7 trillion and initiated a totally unnecessary PAIR of wars as only a small part of that red ink while leaving the real nuclear threats of Iran and North Korea still standing. Then when the crap hits the fan we get a $700B bait and switch program run by a former Wall Street CEO turned SecTres. Heckofajob, Henry. Dismal, dismal performance by W. Anybody else in any other position of authority would have been fired long ago for such foreign and domestic incompetence.

The cost per head of the free Iraqi and Afghans just is not worth it from a factual standpoint, and they were freed not by humanitarianism of which Americans can be proud but instead by hatred directed towards just one more dime-a-dozen tinpot dictator the neocons wanted to take down in the name of oil. If we wanted to get a much better feel-good bang per buck freeing people, we should have gone to Dafur and rolled the TV cameras non-stop there when the US Army went in. Oops, just sand there, no oil...

Now W has squandered American potential and we face trillion dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see. Anybody that thinks America is going back to the Moon in the mess that W has left behind can go make the Ares V contract award announcement in a downtown Detroit press conference and enjoy the reception of a proud America.

It is people such as the above listed "Robert" who led the effort to shut down Apollo, turn the Saturn V and Saturn IB into museum pieces and abandon the moon in the first place. Robert- you really don't belong here, you belong in the late 60s with the other flower fossils. The United States needs a heavy lift booster and a new effort to reach beyond LEO more than we need another Great Society look-alike program. And who cares what it's called by the vote grubs in DC.

To all you "Why no commercial involvement, why no spending to stimulate commercial growth" people out there: the vast majority of the money spent on space programs does stimulate the commercial sector! It all ends up there anyway. Unless you can show me NASA mining its own raw materials form mother nature (with mining equipment it built itself) you can not claim that the commercial sector is being left out!

And big government spending programs are what we need to fix this economic depression anyways. The real cure to the Great Depression was the huge sums of money spent in fighting WWII. And guess what- the spending on space primarily goes to the same kind of companies- companies with highly paid and highly skilled scientists and engineers who then spend their salaries in every corner of the economy. And the high technology products that these companies provide are at the end of a huge chain of suppliers and producers spread all over the economy as well. A pound of spacecraft is not like a pound of lumber. Its the kind of big spending we should be doing- not bailing out financial institutions and the kind of people who just manipulate money and contribute nothing of real value to society.

[Pointless personal insults removed]

We now have a functionally safer spacecraft in work using an existing infrastructure at lower cost. We have nearly completed orbital an international Space research facility to do the OTHER THINGS JFK once talked about.

[Pointless personal insults removed]

Spacelift is relegated to its rightful place, a boring transportation system.



It should be apparent from President Bush's answer that what he is most interested in Orion and what Orion will accomplish and inspire. He doesn't even know the launch vehicle is called.

I rather be informed about Bush’s tenure by highly qualified historians that use scientific means than commentators.

As far as I know, free and open discussions and commentary are among several of the well accepted scientific methods used by qualified historians to develop their historical commentary.

Every American living in America these last eight years is a qualified historian on this administration during this period.

In fact, that's why we have developed blog comment software, in order to extend scientific methods to the public domain.

Scientists and historians have embraced change, so can you. Blog comments and posts are regularly cited nowadays.

The objective of going to the moon received by-partisan support in Congress. Obama stated that he would continue this objective during the campaign (when he went to Florida). I doubt he will go back on his decision. The fact that the economy has worsened since then, is not an argument for canceling the moon objective. Cutting back on NASA spending would obviously not stimulate the economy. It would have the opposite effect. I can't see him cutting back on NASA funding.

Nevertheless, some difficult decision will need to be made concerning the ISS and the shuttle in the next few months. Will the United States continue to fund the ISS until 2020? This seems more and more likely. As far as the Shuttle is concerned, it seems likely that it will fly at least one more flight to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (see H.R. 6063 and link below). However, the tougher question is where do you get the money for doing this? Do you need to postpone or cancel other missions?

http://www.aip.org/fyi/2008/101.html

The journey to the moon is flown with political energy. In light of the current financial situation, that means finding a way to link going to the moon with "infrastructure". Maybe we can find some scientifically intelligent and creative ways to make that nexus. If we do,there may be the political energy to make it to the lunar surface before the rest of the pack.

It seems to me that we were attacked on 9/11 and President Bush did what he said in going after the evil. The enemy within, opposition party, however has created huge financial debts that pale in comparasion with these great govt. programs giving away huge amounts of money for free to the amount 8 times the war costs in 1/10th the time! Now we have this party in charge? Are we nuts? I fear our space program will be a casualty before it is all over.

Are you kidding me? "And so I've been a believer in NASA and space exploration since I've been the President, and I'm excited about the new mission."

I'm embarrassed that I voted for this guy, TWICE.

He's a believer in NASA...and yet he NEVER requested the extra money that he promised us for Constellation development ($1B extra/year for 5 years), claiming - many times - that the country just couldn't afford the cost. And yet he found $850B extra for Wall Street with no conditions on how it was spent OR KEPT. His Administration won't even tell us to whom they gave the money.

He changes NASA's mission and cancels the Shuttle program -the US's only means of domestic spaceflight - because of dwindling enthusiasm. And yet no one can explain Constellation or tell us why we should go back to the Moon. Instead of changing the mission, he should have installed a Administrator who could explain to the public why NASA was doing what it was doing.

George W. Bush: one of the most destructive forces to ever hit NASA. Go away. Far, far away. You, sir, are a walking Katrina. And, no George, this is not a compliment.

@RJR re: "The cost per head of the free Iraqi and Afghans just is not worth it from a factual standpoint, .."

I am flabbergasted by this comment and there probably is no point in writing this, but here goes...

Perhaps you can tell us just what is an economical cost "per head" to free Iraqis and Afghans? What if it were to free Americans or others?

As to whether it was done for humanitarian reasons or not (in your opinion), I simply don't care. The fact is, it was done and those folks have their chance. I hope they succeed; time will tell. As to whether they finance it by selling us (or the Chinese or someone else) their oil, I could care less - it's their oil...

Some may be flabbergasted to try and place a "cost per head" on free people but it is absolutely necessary and must be considered becasue of the current mess we're in. Of course freedom is priceless, no argument there. However, buying freedom for others via war has to be put on a Mastercard - or in our case, a trillion dollars of Chinese-bought T-Bills. The economy of this country is dangerously close to total collapse, and we haven't even hit the full fury of the Social Security and Medicare deficits that will hit during Obama's term(s). It is time to do some serious budgetary triage. Boots and flags on moondust just isn't on the list of what needs to be done right now and W knew this all along - VSE was just another sound-bite half-baked project that has been starved for funding since its inception.

Actually, just like the Afghan war - even the commander there says quote "we are not winning" and its OBAMA, not W, that's talking a surge to turn things around. Under the Taliban, poppy production was ZERO. Under US / NATO "control" it has exploded a vast number of so-called "free" Afghanis are now producing almost 90% of the world' heroin. Do the research, Google is only a click away. This is destroying the lives of millions and we are not stopping it. Perhaps sending an Afghani astronaut up on an Aries in ten years will help.

George Bush is a kind and decent man, he inhereted a pig sty of problems and brought the NASA budget up to the $20 billion range. Some of the previous knucklehead comments lack intelligence. If we wanted the NASA and Constellation budget to increase we shouldn't have picked obama. He comes from the party of drunken sailor spending on other nonsense.

Wow! A lot of very constructive debate here. And a lot of fact based sstatements too. Really impressive. I hope we can elevate the debate somehow because at this pace... I know I am starry-eyed as someone else put it before but come on!

I am sure when you go and ask the "enemy within" Congress some budget they will be very happy to refer you to the "evil" president for support.

Pathetic.

Wake up and move on! Or all this will soon be irrelevant.

Jill is right, we need less folks in our government trying to make a quick buck with our money, they are the enemy within. How we could have used that bail out money for Fannie and Freddie to build a nice colony on the moon to mine helium 3. We'd have the green energy thing solved really quick. When are they going to root out these clowns like Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, Chris Dodd and Franklin Raines and fire them before they do it again!

Jack is wrong. Let's pretend we've got a pressurized gas tank containing one ton of helium 3 sitting on the White House lawn right now, today. What is the plan for fusing it, how much will it cost, how long will it take? C'mon, let's hear a good fantasy story...

In 1961 when we started Apollo, we had a net federal surplus. Apollo was a jobs program to help soak up extra tax revenue generated by the boom years of the 1950s.

Now we're halfway thru building the 21st Century equivalent of a Saturn 1B in the Ares 1, we're talking about starting on Ares V and Anteres, yet the federal deficit is $10.7 trillion and growing, with additional trillion dollar annual deficits and the Social Security / Medicare Ponzi scheme collapse ahead of us in just the next few years. Communist China literally holds over a trillion dollars of our T-Bills and we're begging them and other foreign countries to buy trillions more while the Fed holds their interest rate at 0.25 to 0.00 percent return just so we can keep our banks and car industry going for a few more months.

This is crazy. Talking about going to the Moon at this time is crazier. Worst of all, foreign investors aren't crazy enough to bail us out at 0.25 percent return. America could support Apollo in the 1960s because then we were in high cotton. We aren't in high cotton now - more like wandering in the wilderness.

062009

The best thing that could happen to NASA is that the Indian, Japanese, Chinese and Russian programs fly right by ours.

We in the US don't get interested and anxious UNTIL there's competition in the room.

Best regards.