.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

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”

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

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”

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.

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”

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

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.

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?

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