.NASA still wasting ..$1.4 million per DAY..on cancelled Moon Rocket

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

On Mar 28, 7:16*am, bob haller wrote:
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?

Loot paid to or on behalf of public servants is exempt from being
called bribery, because that could be interpreted as treasonous.
Instead the Skull and Bones cabal/mafia calls it grease.

http://translate.google.com/#
Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet”

"Jerry Okamura" wrote in message
...
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?

Maybe the stalemate in Congress will last long enough to finish
and launch the Ares! And guess what we'll have then?



s

Banner day for US taxpayers

Maybe the $300 million spent on the Constellation program since
it was cancelled is helping the ...Europeans compete!
And the second paragraph below is just priceless~


Alliant, EADS Unit Set Sights on Rocket Venture

""Solid-rocket manufacturer Alliant Techsystems Inc. and a unit
of European Aeronautic Space & Defense Co. are teaming up to
propose development of a 300-foot rocket-dubbed Liberty-
that both companies envision as a potential game-changer
for the U.S. government's space ambitions."

~snipped

"If the doors are opened" and NASA agrees to partially underwrite
work on the planned launcher, said Alain Charmeau, chief executive
of the space-transportation business of EADS' Astrium unit,
"then we clearly have a strategy to enter this market."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...=MKTW&mod=MKTW