In article ,
says...
In article ,
quibbler wrote:

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 realignment of NASA resources is the best thing to happen to NASA in
30 years.



The realignment is a desperate attempt to fix the idiotic reagan
administration priorities of things like a space station and shuttle
misssion. However, manned exploration is not the way to do it and manned
exploration will eat the lion's share of this budget.


Not wasteful, but highly useful.

You are uninformed. Manned exploration is ruinously expensive. We have
known since the inception of the space program that robotic missions
would be the most cost effective ways to produce scientific data and
that's still true today almost universally.

Allowing NASA to drift
about with the lack of focus it's had for the last few decades, now THAT
would be wasteful.

NASA doesn't need a moron like Bush to pretend that he is now an expert
on space, when he's not an expert on anything except maybe smoking crack
or dodging service in vietnam. Bush is not qualified to micromanage NASA
and unfocused hodge podge of manned space stunts will only drop to zero
the amount of real science that NASA will be able to do. Yeah, we needed
to get rid of the shuttle, but Bush is the guy who vowed to keep it
flying after Columbia. Bush is all talk and no action. His proposals
give no serious amount of money to NASA to accomplish the grandiose
flagpole sitting Bush wants them to do. Rather, he is forcing them to
cancel real science in order to engage in an idiotic, completely
unnecessary moonbase boondoggle.


The fact is that real science is far too
expensive with a manned program.

I agree.

Good.

So let's not attempt to do real science.

LOL. You obviously don't understand that it is is the science that
underpins this whole program. We can't just jump in a rocket and go to
mars. We have to understand the science of how to provide life support,
shield from exotic radiations, etc. We won't know where we need to go
on mars or elsewhere without good science leading the way. Mars is a big
place. We can't just lope around it with our thumbs up our asses
pretending that we are Vasco de Gama or Christopher Columbus.



Let's work on
opening the frontier for human habitation instead.


That takes science and real intelligent planning, neither of which Bush's
plan supports. The moon would be a less hospitable place, for example,
than mars or perhaps some asteroids. We can't have a scientific
illiterate like Bush ramming his own ill-conceived politial nonsense,
like a moonbase through NASA. Reagan already ****ed NASA up thoroughly
by commiting their resources to albatrosses like ISS. We don't need Bush
doing that in spades with a moonbase which would have no source of food,
water or essential support. We don't need men on the moon right now. We
need robots to lead the way for another decade or two until we know
enough about the moon to intelligently plan our options. We also need to
spend far more on research and less on putting rocket on a lunar resort.





Robots must lead the way.

Robots have their place, but to get people living in space we really
need to have people living in space.

We've had them in space stations. There are serious health risks at
present. Similar health risks would apply on the moon. More
importantly, it would be far more expensive and difficult to constantly
send servicing and support to a moonbase as opposed to a space station.
The space station was an unnecessary piece of junk. But even sticking
with it would be better than Bush's alternative.



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.

Not if by "exploration" you mean "expanding the range of places people
have visited and experienced firsthand,

That's flagpole sitting. We need to expand the range of places that our
robotic sensors have visited. We need more probes to pretty much every
planet. If Bush wants to do something for the space program then revive
the pluto-kuiper missions. Send more science packages to the outer
planets. Land robots on the moons of mars, rather than rushing to get
humans there. The experience will eventually make it much safer and
easier for humans to go there.


" which is certainly what *I*
mean by it.

Bush is destroying the real science programs because he just doesn't get it.

Or maybe you're clinging to them because YOU don't get it.

No, I get it. Science is the only thing that separates us from the lower
primates. It is more and more critical that we expand our scientific
capabilities. Bush's undermining of space science is reckless and will
only hold us back. We went to the moon and then, when we had our little
adventure fix we sat around for another 35 years doing relatively little.
The same may happen if we make one trip to mars. We'll shoot our wad and
that will be it for mars exploration for another few decades. Bush's
childish ego gratification scheme will make going back to mars the next
time that much harder.

I don't care
about "real science."

I know that because you fail to grasp that we live in a highly technical
world where we are utterly dependent on science. You also fail to grasp
the intense promise and power of science which could answer questions
about issues like whether life existed on Mars.


Real science isn't putting people on the Moon.
And I want people on the Moon. When the next killer asteroid comes our
way

We could do just as well with a space station, or bomb shelters/bunkers.
I bet the saddamesque bunker under Cheney's house would survive .


(or substitute your favorite global catastrophe), having pretty
pictures of distant galaxies and a deep understanding of the cosmos
isn't going to save humanity.

"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.

Heh. More like, you haven't got a leg to stand on,

LOL. No, I have the legs of science, which you have decided to repudiate
in order to desperately support any crazy scheme Bush cooks up. Bush
never said he wanted his looney colony as a way to defend us from a
killer asteroid (or maybe some evil al quaeda bioweapon). Bush is just a
jackass trying to **** with the Chinese when we could be cooperating with
them. Bush doesn't give a damn about the moon or a space program. If he
had then we might have spend $200 billion on it instead of on his lies
about WMDs.


so you're reduced to
swearing and other insults. More pity to you.

Nope. However, in this case those parties deserved insults and they got
it.

rest of your repetitive junk snipped

--
__________________________________________________ ___
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