Cafferty File on NASA Changes

I always wish when these type questions are asked by major media outlets that for the folks who say "we should stop and put the money to better use here on Earth", someone follows it up with a question to them on how much money is actually spent. My belief is that many of these people believe NASA in general has a much larger budget than it actually does and they may be surprised to hear NASA only gets 0.5% of the federal budget and the moon/exploration program only equates to 0.2% of the federal budget.

If that doesn't surprise them, then I would ask what social ill would be cured for that amount of money and if it is worth the negative effect it would have on the general economy since it's fairly well known, although the numbers don't always agree, that every dollar spent on space is placed back into the economy by some factor.

I would just add that NASA does wonderful things and inspires people to reach for the stars for less than HALF of what is spent on just food stamps in this country...and now we need to think hard about what is happening here...do we just hand over our future in science and technology for a few more welfare cases?...I have no idea where the can-do spirit of America has gone...but if we don't fix the general malaise that has descended upon us we will fade into history...yes we can?!?!?!?...YES WE WILL!!!

It's instructive to note how well informed and visionary the responses that support human exploration are compared to how dull and hackneyed the "noes" are.

The amount the US spends on Constellation is a little over 1¢/person per month. We will always have problems on Earth so long as Humans are present, so waiting for them to be corrected before exploring is Unobtainium. Which makes me recall during the hey day of the late '90s when the economy was booming and we had surpluses I don't remember the government saying "well lets explore since we have the funds". Don't expect that when the economy is better that it will translate into a larger NASA budget, we have evidence that it doesn't work that way. People that believe commercial space is the way to beyond LEO are delusional. Partly because most are engineer wanna be and are clueless about what is required. They don't understand that they don't understand, not only the technical expertise required but the organizational skills of the industrial space complex. Oh how I wish I could be so naive. Commercial space is barely achieving what was accomplished 50 years ago (not to mention they have the benefit of the written word that chronicles how it was done), so with the demise of Constellation we will be in for an extended wait before leaving LEO with humans. What we need at this time is a song to the tune of "bye bye Miss American" pie" with the theme of "The day HSF died". Good night