In article 0Y1Qb.235603$ts4.56758@pd7tw3no, says...
The media and this group should stop calling the new NASA directive a 'moon
plan'. It seems that the belief is that Bush is cancelling everything NASA
does and moving all the money into a manned moon base. This isn't the case
at all.

No, that is quite the case. You're just in the early stages of denial
and haven't faced budget realities. The fact is that Bush has demanded a
wasteful realignment of NASA resources toward a manned mission which will
be ruinously expensive. The fact is that real science is far to
expensive with a manned program. Robots must lead the way.




It would be more accurate to call this an 'exploration plan'.

No it wouldn't you republican shill. We can explore without manned
missions or a permanent moon base. Bush is destroying the real science
programs because he just doesn't get it. "Exploration" is just a
bull**** buzzword. You apparently weren't smart enough to figure that
out, so I'm afraid I've got to break it to you bluntly. The Bush
administration only wants diversionary stunts. They don't give a rat's
ass about science. They are theocratic cretins who know that if we do
eventually find evidence of past life on mars that it will be devatating
to their religious world view.


What's really
happening is that NASA's focus is changing from LEO cargo flights and ISS

That focus was instituted under the moronic Reagan adminstration. They
demanded "space station freedom" to keep up with the Ruskies. Bush
happily continued that program and even vowed to keep flying the shuttles
in the aftermath of columbia.


maintenance, and towards more exploration and science.

Bull****. We do science and exploration with unmanned probes. Period.
It would be inordinately dangerous with present technology to do any kind
of detailed science with manned missions. Instead of a robot like spirit
failing, our whole crew would die. People are too fragile to explore
most places. Even if we sent men to mars we would probably use them to
drive robots around remotely in real time. What we need to do is invest
in research and develop our technology. It's obvious that our present
technology is not quite up to the task of serious "exploration" as it is.
Relying upon it for a manned program is crazy.

It's not even clear
at this point that the main focus will be a moon base - that was just the
hook for the public.

What a ridiculous excuse. A politician directly states something as
policy and you're so in thrall to your right wing ideology that you now
say, "That's not what he really meant. That's just what he was telling
the plebes". If that was his idea of PR then it backfired bigtime. Most
people thought that a manned return to the moon would be a hugely
wasteful stunt. Now the Bushies are spinning like mad trying to back
pedal and soft pedal and do damage control.


NASA has distributed its Vision under the new initiative to its employees.
Here's what it says:

That's nice. But the idiot emperor Bush has demonstrated that he's gonna
micromanage and control the program for his own political ends. These
"vision" statements are never worth the paper they are printed on,
especially when coming at the behest of the bush administration.


(courtesy http://www.astrobiology.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=11605)

Guiding Principles for Exploration


a.. Pursue Compelling Questions


Only that has nothing to do with manned exploration.



a.. Exploration of the solar system will be guided by compelling questions
of scientific and societal importance.

The only compelling question the Bush admin wants answered is "Can we
beat the chinese back to the moon and waste hundreds of billion in the
process?"


b.. Consistent with the NASA Vision and Mission, NASA exploration programs
will seek profound answers

LOL. Yeah, profound answers to how many astronauts we can sardine into a
mars capsule and get killed in a futile bid to get them to Mars -- so
they can sit around and do nothing. This so-called vision statement
contains all the usual moronic drivel, just as I predicted.


to questions of our origins,

This from a president who claims a literal belief in the bible and the
genesis account. Not likely.


whether life exists
beyond Earth, and how we could live on other worlds.

We know what it takes to life on other worlds. We need to spend the
money developing the survival technology, rather than wasting 1.5
trillion on manned stunts.




a.. Across Multiple Worlds


a.. NASA will make progress across a broad front of destinations.
b.. Consistent with recent discoveries, NASA will focus on likely
habitable environments at the planet Mars, the moons of Jupiter, and in
other solar systems.


Yep, whatever you say.


c.. Where advantageous, NASA will also make use of destinations likethe
Moon and near-Earth asteroids to test and demonstrate new exploration
capabilities.


a.. Employ Human and Robotic Capabilities


a.. NASA will send human and robotic explorers as partners, leveraging the
capabilities of each where most useful.

Only they know without question that the robotic missions are superior in
just about every respect. Perhaps in 1969 we didn't have the robotic
technology to land on the moon, grab some rocks and return. However, we
certainly have that technology today. The best role for humans is as
mission controllers back on earth. Perhaps if we developed a better,
more reliable, deep space communication infrastructure then we'd actually
be making a prudent investment that would pay dividends on future
exploratory missions.


b.. Robotic explorers will visit new worlds first, to obtain scientific
data, demonstrate breakthrough technologies, identify space resources, and
send tantalizing imagery back to Earth.
c.. Human explorers will follow to conduct in-depth research,

Sorry, but any research that a human could do, "in-depth" could be done
by a robot as well or better, especially if there is a human controlling
it. At worst, the robot will be a litle slower and I know our
hyperactive president can't stand that. Fortunately, it looks like he
will be kicked out on his ass by next year and then he can do whatever
hyperactive nonsense he wants.
Getting back to the whole robot and human thing, we can't expect to just
send one or two probes and then humans. We need to send probe after
probe to look at things in depth. The money that we spend on the robotics
program will have important spin offs here on earth. Not so with a great
deal of manned space technology, which would primarily be useful only
off-world.



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__________________________________________________ ___
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins