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.NASA still wasting ..$1.4 million per DAY..on cancelled Moon Rocket
Maybe because they know that with a new President and a new Congress, they
will or may restore the funding? Hasn't that happened many times before? And besides, your own posting tells you what the problem is, doesn't it? The President has "proposed" to end the program, but the Congress has not followed suit? And they must still have the funding in order to continue spending the money, don't they? "Jonathan" wrote in message ... Even though President Obama /cancelled/ Ares in his 2011 budget proposal submitted over a year ago, the w o r k g o e s o n! $250 million spent on the rocket since just last October. Why, one might ask? Considering the current economic problems? It appears a trifling $10,000 campaign check by...Thiokol (ATK) is all it takes these days to swindle the taxpayers out of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. As published in the Miami Herald 3-27-11 "This senator is lost in space" By CARL HIAASEN "Recent polls show that Americans are already disenchanted with the new Congress, which is so collectively inept that it can't even pass a budget. Public sentiment is not likely to improve with the news that lawmakers are forcing NASA to spend $1.4 million a day on a troubled space program that was officially scrapped last year. It's a lesson in the politics of waste, as practiced by those who pretend to be crusaders for thrift. When President Obama submitted his 2011 budget plan to Congress, he cancelled funding for the space agency's Constellation program, the primary mission of which was to return astronauts to the moon. The decision wasn't a surprise. More than $9 billion had been spent on developing a new space capsule and the Ares series of rockets, but Constellation was plagued bylong delays and hefty cost overruns. An independent panel of experts concluded that 2017 was the earliest that the Ares rockets would be ready for flights, and that a lunar mission wouldn't occur until the mid-2020s, at the soonest. Obama and top NASA officials wanted to scrap the project because it was too costly, and to refocus on deep-space exploration and development of commercial launches. "The truth is, we were not on a sustainable path to get back to the moon's surface," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. Some lawmakers were irate, none more than Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama. This would be the same Richard Shelby who every year introduces a balanced-budget amendment; the same Richard Shelby who piously rails about runaway government spending, and trashes TARP, and frets about the terrible deficit. But wait. Some of the work on the Ares rockets was taking place at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Shelby's home state, which meant that jobs would be lost. Unfortunately, that's what happens when you eliminate a big federal contract . So, as a pre-emptive strike, the senator inserted a sentence in the 2010 federal budget that basically barred NASA from de-funding the Constellation space program until the 2011 budget was approved.. But in October, Congressional leaders agreed on a NASA funding bill that contained the White House proposal to scratch the manned lunar project. That should have been the end, but it wasn't. Since then, the so-called Shelby provision - only 70 words - has remained intact in the temporary spending measures that have been passed to keep government running. Mysteriously, nobody seems able to get the language deleted, which would shut off the $1.4 million a day that's being wasted on a space program that no longer exists. The largest beneficiary is Alliant Techsystems (ATK), a prime contractor on the first phase of the Ares I rocket. You probably won't be shocked to know that last year Sen. Shelby received $10,000 in campaign contributions from ATK's political action committee, and thousands more from company employees. In January, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin called for Congress to take "immediate action" to halt funding on Constellation. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, who chairs the Senate Commerce subcommittee on science and space, promised to get the Shelby provision removed from the budget resolutions because "we can't afford to be wasting money." Last week, a spokesman for Nelson said "partisan politics" had stalled the senator's efforts to fix the spending bill, but he remained confident that he'll be successful. Meanwhile, tax dollars keep flowing to the abandoned moon-shot program - about $250 million since Oct. 1, according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel. Add another $29 million by the time the current budget extension lapses in April. Politicians who go to Washington are expected to fight for local projects, and over the years Shelby has brought loads of federal pork home to Alabama. This time he lost. Yet instead of doing what's best for all American taxpayers (and for NASA, which is scraping for funds), the senator is content to sit back and watch nearly $280 million go down a black hole - and into the hands of major campaign contributors. A few weeks ago, an aide who didn't mean to be humorous asserted that Shelby wasn't "actively trying" to protect the 70-word budget item that's kept the Constellation money flowing. That's not to say he has tried to stop it, either actively or passively. Shelby is fond of bashing Democrats and warning, "We are on the road to financial destruction." Given his own not-so-stellar role in the Constellation debacle, he gives new meaning to the term "space case." " http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/2...-in-space.html |
#2
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*****(5 gold stars): .NASA still wasting ..$1.4 million per DAY..oncancelled Moon Rocket
On Mar 27, 2:13*pm, "Jerry Okamura" wrote:
Maybe because they know that with a new President and a new Congress, they will or may restore the funding? *Hasn't that happened many times before? And besides, your own posting tells you what the problem is, doesn't it? The President has "proposed" to end the program, but the Congress has not followed suit? *And they must still have the funding in order to continue spending the money, don't they? "Jonathan" *wrote in message ... Even though President Obama /cancelled/ Ares in his 2011 budget proposal submitted over a year ago, the * w o r k * *g o e s * o n! $250 million spent on the rocket since just last October. Why, one might ask? Considering the current economic problems? It appears a trifling $10,000 campaign check by...Thiokol (ATK) is all it takes these days to swindle the taxpayers out of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. As published in the Miami Herald 3-27-11 "This senator is lost in space" By CARL HIAASEN "Recent polls show that Americans are already disenchanted with the new Congress, which is so collectively inept that it can't even pass a budget. Public sentiment is not likely to improve with the news that lawmakers are *forcing NASA to spend $1.4 million a day on a troubled space program that *was officially scrapped last year. It's a lesson in the politics of waste, as practiced by those who pretend to be crusaders for thrift. When President Obama submitted his 2011 budget plan to Congress, he *cancelled funding for the space agency's Constellation program, the primary mission of which was to return astronauts to the moon. The decision wasn't a surprise. More than $9 billion had been spent on developing a new space capsule and the Ares series of rockets, but Constellation was plagued bylong delays and *hefty cost overruns. An independent panel of experts concluded that 2017 was the earliest that the Ares rockets would be ready for flights, and that a lunar mission wouldn't occur until the mid-2020s, at the soonest. Obama and top NASA officials wanted to scrap the project because it was too costly, and to refocus on deep-space exploration and development of commercial launches. "The truth is, we were not on a sustainable path to get back to the moon's *surface," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. Some lawmakers were irate, none more than Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama. This would be the same Richard Shelby who every year introduces a balanced-budget amendment; the same Richard Shelby who piously rails about runaway government spending, and trashes TARP, and frets about the terrible deficit. But wait. Some of the work on the Ares rockets was taking place at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Shelby's home state, which meant that jobs would be lost. Unfortunately, that's what happens when you eliminate a big federal contract . So, as a pre-emptive strike, the senator inserted a sentence in the 2010 federal budget that basically barred NASA from de-funding the Constellation *space program until the 2011 budget was approved.. But in October, Congressional leaders agreed on a NASA funding bill that contained the White House proposal to scratch the manned lunar project. That should have been the end, but it wasn't. Since then, the so-called Shelby provision - only 70 words - has remained intact in the temporary spending measures that have been passed to keep government running. Mysteriously, nobody seems able to get the language deleted, which would shut off the $1.4 million a day that's being wasted on a space program that no longer exists. The largest beneficiary is Alliant Techsystems (ATK), a prime contractor on the first phase of the Ares I rocket. You probably won't be shocked to know *that last year Sen. Shelby received $10,000 in campaign contributions from ATK's political action committee, and thousands more from company employees. In January, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin called for Congress to take "immediate action" to halt funding on Constellation. Florida Sen. Bill *Nelson, who chairs the Senate Commerce subcommittee on science and space, promised to get the Shelby provision removed from the budget resolutions *because "we can't afford to be wasting money." Last week, a spokesman for Nelson said "partisan politics" had stalled the senator's efforts to fix the spending bill, but he remained confident that he'll be successful. Meanwhile, tax dollars keep flowing to the abandoned moon-shot program - about $250 million since Oct. 1, according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel. Add another $29 million by the time the current budget extension lapses in April. Politicians who go to Washington are expected to fight for local projects, and over the years Shelby has brought loads of federal pork home to Alabama. This time he lost. Yet instead of doing what's best for all American taxpayers (and for NASA, which is scraping for funds), the senator is content to sit back and watch nearly $280 million go down a black hole - and into the hands of major campaign contributors. A few weeks ago, an aide who didn't mean to be humorous asserted that Shelby wasn't "actively trying" to protect the 70-word budget item that's *kept the Constellation money flowing. That's not to say he has tried to stop it, either actively or passively. Shelby is fond of bashing Democrats and warning, "We are on the road to financial destruction." Given his own not-so-stellar role in the Constellation debacle, he gives new meaning to the term "space case." " http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/2...tor-is-lost-in... Perhaps someone should inform Shelby that it's too late to save the good NASA ship that has already sailed, and its name is Titanic. http://translate.google.com/# Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet” |
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.NASA building ...' A Rocket to Nowhere'!...
Jonathan wrote:
Maybe the stalemate in Congress will last long enough to finish and launch the Ares! And guess what we'll have then? An expensive fireworks display? We should *insist* on a night launch.... :-) Dave |
#4
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.NASA building ...' A Rocket to Nowhere'!...
On Mar 27, 5:14*pm, David Spain wrote:
Jonathan wrote: Maybe the stalemate in Congress will last long enough to finish and launch the Ares! And guess what we'll have then? An expensive fireworks display? We should *insist* on a night launch.... :-) Dave But not until this coming 4th of July, so that at least we'll get some shock and awe eyecandy benefit out of it. http://translate.google.com/# Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet” |
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.NASA still wasting ..$1.4 million per DAY..on cancelled MoonRocket
On 29/03/2011 5:58 AM, Jonathan wrote:
Even though President Obama /cancelled/ Ares in his 2011 budget proposal submitted over a year ago, the w o r k g o e s o n! $250 million spent on the rocket since just last October. Why, one might ask? Considering the current economic problems? It appears a trifling $10,000 campaign check by...Thiokol (ATK) is all it takes these days to swindle the taxpayers out of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Nothing quite so melodramatic as a bribe. It's got to do with something called a 'contract' (can you even spell that, Jonathan?). Contracts were signed long before the cancellation and have to be honoured. I think you'll find, if you haven't already (just 'chose' not to tell us) that all the aerospace companies would have contributed to all the major political organisations in the USA. |
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*****(5 gold stars): .NASA still wasting ..$1.4 million per DAY..oncancelled Moon Rocket
On Mar 27, 5:45*pm, Alan Erskine wrote:
On 29/03/2011 5:58 AM, Jonathan wrote: Even though President Obama /cancelled/ Ares in his 2011 budget proposal submitted over a year ago, the * w o r k * *g o e s * o n! $250 million spent on the rocket since just last October. Why, one might ask? Considering the current economic problems? It appears a trifling $10,000 campaign check by...Thiokol (ATK) is all it takes these days to swindle the taxpayers out of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Nothing quite so melodramatic as a bribe. *It's got to do with something called a 'contract' (can you even spell that, Jonathan?). *Contracts were signed long before the cancellation and have to be honoured. I think you'll find, if you haven't already (just 'chose' not to tell us) that all the aerospace companies would have contributed to all the major political organisations in the USA. All federal contracts can be broken or terminated, just like the ones we broke with OBL that only caused 9/11. Are you suggesting that ATK would go terrorist postal on us, just because we pulled their public funded plug? http://translate.google.com/# Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet” |
#7
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*****(5 gold stars): .NASA still wasting ..$1.4 million perDAY..on cancelled Moon Rocket
On Mar 27, 10:25*pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Brad Guth wrote: All federal contracts can be broken or terminated, ... Yes, and there are COSTS to doing that, you ignorant git. -- "Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar *territory." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * --G. Behn well all new federal contracts should be easy to cancel in the event the money is no longer avalable and congress intentionally wasting money on a dead program is horrible |
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*****(5 gold stars): .NASA still wasting ..$1.4 million per DAY..oncancelled Moon Rocket
On 28/03/2011 11:23 PM, bob haller wrote:
On Mar 27, 10:25 pm, Fred J. wrote: Brad wrote: All federal contracts can be broken or terminated, ... Yes, and there are COSTS to doing that, you ignorant git. -- "Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory." --G. Behn well all new federal contracts should be easy to cancel in the event the money is no longer avalable Regardless, that simply isn't the case. So, as I said, nothing so melodramatic as bribary; just contractual obligations. Now, go away, Brad; the grownups have things to discuss. |
#9
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*****(5 gold stars): .NASA still wasting ..$1.4 million perDAY..on cancelled Moon Rocket
On Mar 28, 9:16*am, Alan Erskine wrote:
On 28/03/2011 11:23 PM, bob haller wrote: On Mar 27, 10:25 pm, Fred J. *wrote: Brad *wrote: All federal contracts can be broken or terminated, ... Yes, and there are COSTS to doing that, you ignorant git. -- "Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar * territory." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *--G. Behn well all new federal contracts should be easy to cancel in the event the money is no longer avalable Regardless, that simply isn't the case. *So, as I said, nothing so melodramatic as bribary; just contractual obligations. Now, go away, Brad; the grownups have things to discuss. So you dont believe campaign contribuitions arent another form of bribery? |
#10
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*****(5 gold stars): .NASA still wasting ..$1.4 million perDAY..on cancelled Moon Rocket
AP IMPACT: Nuclear plant downplayed tsunami risk
AP - Sun Mar 27th, 2011 2:43 PM EDT TOKYO - In planning their defense against a killer tsunami, the people running Japan's now-hobbled nuclear power plant dismissed important scientific evidence and all but disregarded 3,000 years of geological history, an Associated Press investigation shows. The misplaced confidence displayed by Tokyo Electric Power Co. was prompted by a series of overly optimistic assumptions that concluded the Earth couldn't possibly release the level of fury it did two weeks ago, pushing the six-reactor Fukushima Dai-ichi complex to the brink of multiple meltdowns. Instead of the reactors staying dry, as contemplated under the power company's worst-case scenario, the plant was overrun by a torrent of water much higher and stronger than the utility argued could occur, according to an AP analysis of records, documents and statements from researchers, the utility and the Japan's national nuclear safety agency. And while TEPCO and government officials have said no one could have anticipated such a massive tsunami, there is ample evidence that such waves have struck the northeast coast of Japan before — and that it could happen again along the culprit fault line, which runs roughly north to south, offshore, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) east of the plant. TEPCO officials say they had a good system for projecting tsunamis. They declined to provide more detailed explanations, saying they were focused on the ongoing nuclear crisis. What is clear: TEPCO officials discounted important readings from a network of GPS units that showed that the two tectonic plates that create the fault were strongly "coupled," or stuck together, thus storing up extra stress along a line hundreds of miles long. The greater the distance and stickiness of such coupling, experts say, the higher the stress buildup — pressure that can be violently released in an earthquake. That evidence, published in scientific journals starting a decade ago, represented the kind of telltale characteristics of a fault being able to produce the truly overwhelming quake — and therefore tsunami — that it did. On top of that, TEPCO modeled the worst-case tsunami using its own computer program instead of an internationally accepted prediction method. It matters how Japanese calculate risk. In short, they rely heavily on what has happened to figure out what might happen, even if the probability is extremely low. If the view of what has happened isn't accurate, the risk assessment can be faulty. That approach led to TEPCO's disregard of much of Japan's tsunami history. In postulating the maximum-sized earthquake and tsunami that the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex might face, TEPCO's engineers decided not to factor in quakes earlier than 1896. That meant the experts excluded a major quake that occurred more than 1,000 years ago — a tremor followed by a powerful tsunami that hit many of the same locations as the recent disaster. A TEPCO reassessment presented only four months ago concluded that tsunami-driven water would push no higher than 18 feet (5.7 meters) once it hit the shore at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. The reactors sit up a small bluff, between 14 and 23 feet (4.3 and 6.3 meters) above TEPCO's projected high-water mark, according to a presentation at a November seismic safety conference in Japan by TEPCO civil engineer Makoto Takao. "We assessed and confirmed the safety of the nuclear plants," Takao asserted. However, the wall of water that thundered ashore two weeks ago reached about 27 feet (8.2 meters) above TEPCO's prediction. The flooding disabled backup power generators, located in basements or on first floors, imperiling the nuclear reactors and their nearby spent fuel pools. __ The story leading up to the Tsunami of 2011 goes back many, many years — several millennia, in fact. The Jogan tsunami of 869 displayed striking similarities to the events in and around the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors. The importance of that disaster, experts told the AP, is that the most accurate planning for worst-case scenarios is to study the largest events over the longest period of time. In other words, use the most data possible. The evidence shows that plant operators should have known of the dangers — or, if they did know, disregarded them. As early as 2001, a group of scientists published a paper documenting the Jogan tsunami. They estimated waves of nearly 26 feet (8 meters) at Soma, about 25 miles north of the plant. North of there, they concluded that a surge from the sea swept sand more than 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) inland across the Sendai plain. The latest tsunami pushed water at least about 1 1/2 miles (2 kilometers) inland. The scientists also found two additional layers of sand and concluded that two additional "gigantic tsunamis" had hit the region during the past 3,000 years, both presumably comparable to Jogan. Carbon dating couldn't pinpoint exactly when the other two hit, but the study's authors put the range of those layers of sand at between 140 B.C. and A.D. 150, and between 670 B.C. and 910 B.C. In a 2007 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Pure and Applied Geophysics, two TEPCO employees and three outside researchers explained their approach to assessing the tsunami threat to Japan's nuclear reactors, all 54 of which sit near the sea or ocean. To ensure the safety of Japan's coastal power plants, they recommended that facilities be designed to withstand the highest tsunami "at the site among all historical and possible future tsunamis that can be estimated," based on local seismic characteristics. But the authors went on to write that tsunami records before 1896 could be less reliable because of "misreading, misrecording and the low technology available for the measurement itself." The TEPCO employees and their colleagues concluded, "Records that appear unreliable should be excluded." Two years later, in 2009, another set of researchers concluded that the Jogan tsunami had reached 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) inland at Namie, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) north of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. The warning from the 2001 report about the 3,000-year history would prove to be most telling: "The recurrence interval for a large-scale tsunami is 800 to 1,100 years. More than 1,100 years have passed since the Jogan tsunami, and, given the reoccurrence interval, the possibility of a large tsunami striking the Sendai plain is high." __ The fault involved in the Fukushima Dai-ichi tsunami is part of what is known as a subduction zone. In subduction zones, one tectonic plate dives under another. When the fault ruptures, the sea floor snaps upward, pushing up the water above it and potentially creating a tsunami. Subduction zones are common around Japan and throughout the Pacific Ocean region. TEPCO's latest calculations were started after a magnitude-8.8 subduction zone earthquake off the coast of Chile in February 2010. In such zones over the past 50 years, earthquakes of magnitude 9.0 or greater have occurred in Alaska, Chile and Indonesia. All produced large tsunamis. When two plates are locked across a large area of a subduction zone, the potential for a giant earthquake increases. And those are the exact characteristics of where the most recent quake occurred. TEPCO "absolutely should have known better," said Dr. Costas Synolakis, a leading American expert on tsunami modeling and an engineering professor at the University of Southern California. "Common sense," he said, should have produced a larger predicted maximum water level at the plant. TEPCO's tsunami modelers did not judge that, in a worst-case scenario, the strong subduction and coupling conditions present off the coast of Fukushima Dai-ichi could produce the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred. Instead, it figured the maximum at 8.6 magnitude, meaning the March 11 quake was four times as powerful as the presumed maximum. Shogo Fukuda, a TEPCO spokesman, said that 8.6 was the maximum magnitude entered into the TEPCO internal computer modeling for Fukushima Dai-ichi. Another TEPCO spokesman, Motoyasu Tamaki, used a new buzzword, "sotegai," or "outside our imagination," to describe what actually occurred. U.S. tsunami experts said that one reason the estimates for Fukushima Dai-ichi were so low was the way Japan calculates risk. Because of the island nation's long history of killer waves, Japanese experts often will look at what has happened — then project forward what is likely to happen again. Under longstanding U.S. standards that are gaining popularity around the world, risk assessments typically scheme up a worst-case scenario based on what could happen, then design a facility like a nuclear power plant to withstand such a collection of conditions — factoring in just about everything short of an extremely unlikely cataclysm, like a large meteor hitting the ocean and creating a massive wave that kills hundreds of thousands. In the early 1990s, Harry Yeh, now a tsunami expert and engineering professor at Oregon State University, was helping assess potential threats to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the central California coast in the United States. During that exercise, he said, researchers considered a worst-case scenario involving a significantly larger earthquake than had ever been recorded there. And then a tsunami was added. And in that Diablo Canyon model, the quake hit during a monster storm that was already pushing onto the shore higher waves than had ever been measured at the site. In contrast, when TEPCO calculated its high-water mark at 18 feet (5.7 meters), the anticipated maximum earthquake was in the same range as others recorded off the coast of Fukushima Dai-ichi — and the only assumption about the water level was that the tsunami arrived at high tide. Which, as is abundantly clear now, could not have been more wrong. Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. AP writers Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles and AP researcher Barbara Sambrinski in New York contributed to this report |
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