Bush to announce new missions to moon

"Alan Figgatt" wrote in message
...
Stephen Souter wrote:
Judging from the fine print, I'm not sure everyone will be happy:

"Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap
all existing programs that do not support the new effort."
--http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040107-123930-1532r

I note the word "all".

Would that be including unmanned programs, both mooted and/or inflight
(eg JIMO, Cassini etc), as well as manned ones?

My reading of other on-line news reports indicate that the "all" refers
to the science
programs for the space station. I would think most of the unmanned
efforts - certainly the
Mars probes, the space telescopes, the Discovery missions - would
continue, but would they
cut the more expensive deep space missions such as Pluto Express or to
Mercury or Jupiter?
I hope not, but we shall see.

I would hate to see Pluto Express get scrapped. I would like to see a
close-up snapshot of Pluto in my lifetime.

On 09 Jan 2004 05:32:14 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank" wrote:

A crash mission to Mars wouldn't come to fruition in any conceivable
Bush administration. At best he has 5 years left; ain't getting there
in that length of time.

But does he have a son?

Two daughters, both too young to run. But he has two brothers, one (Jeb) in
politics (governor of Florida), and Jeb has at least one son.

Three brothers, actually. John (Jeb), Neil and Marvin. He also has a sister-
Dorothy.

Dale

In sci.space.policy Stephen Souter wrote:

Judging from the fine print, I'm not sure everyone will be happy:

"Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap
all existing programs that do not support the new effort."
--http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040107-123930-1532r

I note the word "all".

Would that be including unmanned programs, both mooted and/or inflight
(eg JIMO, Cassini etc), as well as manned ones?


Yes, it sucks. Its another "science, what science?" approach to well,
space science.


--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

In article ,
Scott Lowther wrote:

but would they
cut the more expensive deep space missions such as Pluto Express or to
Mercury or Jupiter?

I'd hope not... but then, I'd gladly trade a robotic camera to the great
beyond for giving mankind a real future in space again...

Yes, me too. Most space science is too expensive to justify its
benefits to society. Learning about the birth and death of the universe
is interesting, but not urgent; it's not going to provide anything we
really need this century like abundant energy, food, or a cure for
mortality.

Space development, however, could provide at least one of those, as well
as insure us against certain other global disasters. It's worth a great
deal more than what we've been spending on it.

I just hope that, if this major change of direction does happen, it
doesn't result in the embryonic commercial space companies being
squeezed out by a giant (yet inefficient) government monopoly.

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In sci.space.policy Mike Rhino wrote:
"Rusty Barton" wrote in message
...
Bush to announce new missions to moon

Posted 1/8/2004 8:43 PM

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) - President Bush will announce plans
next week to send Americans to Mars and back to the moon and to
establish a long-term human presence on the moon, senior
administration officials said Thursday night.
Bush doesn't plan to send Americans to Mars anytime soon; rather, he
envisions preparing for the mission more than a decade from now, one
official said.

The president also wants to build a permanent space station on the
moon.

If a lunar space station precedes a manned Mars mission, then the Mars
mission won't occur until many years after Bush leaves office. He can talk
about a Mars mission, but it will be just talk that has no real meaning.


By the same measure he can't talk about a moon station either.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) ? President Bush will announce plans
next week to send Americans to Mars and back to the moon and to
establish a long-term human presence on the moon, senior
administration officials said Thursday night.

This probably won't show up until the State of the Union address, and
it'll be a paragraph of glittering generalities. Something like what
Bush's dad said about getting back to the Moon by 2019 and Mars 10
years later, if memory serves.

Applause, followed by amnesia.

Manned spaceflight at NASA will remain the Space Shuttle (as something
to fly to the ISS) and the ISS (as something for the Space Shuttle to
fly to) for a *long* time to come.

But hey - maybe it'll affect the Florida swing vote?

In article ,
Sander Vesik wrote:

Would that be including unmanned programs, both mooted and/or inflight
(eg JIMO, Cassini etc), as well as manned ones?

Yes, it sucks. Its another "science, what science?" approach to well,
space science.

So? Since when did space become about science?

Well, I'll answer that: it became about science towards the end of the
Apollo program, when NASA realized that this huge organization it had
built to put a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth needed a
new purpose. Science was chosen as that purpose (and indeed, this was
the outward reason given for the Apollo missions -- mostly lunar
geology). This was a bad choice in retrospect, though perhaps it was
the only choice available. But nothing has come of space science so far
that can justify the huge expenditures involved.

Now, space *development* -- that's another story. That's worth much
more than what we're putting into it, because it addresses real-world
needs in the near term (such as energy production, protection from
asteroids/comets, etc.).

The public intuitively knows this -- when people are out there
developing ways to live and work in space, they're interested, but as
soon as it devolves into taking pretty pictures, we get a giant
collective yawn and change to the sports channel.

Unfortunately, we still have this myth rolling around that space is
supposed to be about science. Engineering is certainly required for
space development, and a small bit of science here and there is needed
to support that engineering. But science is not the *reason* for space
development. Attempting to make it so just undermines the whole
enterprise.

Indeed, to put the cart properly behind the horse: once space
development is further along, then we can build much bigger and better
instruments to answer those cosmology and astronomy questions, much
cheaper than we could today.

Cheers,
- Joe

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| http://www.macwebdir.com |
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In article , Dale wrote:
On 09 Jan 2004 05:32:14 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank" wrote:

But does he have a son?

Two daughters, both too young to run. But he has two brothers, one (Jeb) in
politics (governor of Florida), and Jeb has at least one son.

Three brothers, actually. John (Jeb), Neil and Marvin. He also has a sister-
^----!

Well, there's your answer...

--
-Andrew Gray

Sander Vesik writes:

Yes, it sucks. Its another "science, what science?" approach to well,
space science.

For years, the science community has complained that all the money
spent on manned space travel could be better spent doing science with
unmanned probes.

The Bush administration is rejecting that and turning it on its head.
They are essentially saying that it is unmanned space science that is
holding back the manned exploration of space.

Men have not set foot on any planetoid besides the earth for more than
30 years. The Bush administration is saying that it's time to start
manned exploration again. IMHO, going round and round in LEO isn't
exploring much.

Jeff
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(TVDad Jim) writes:

This probably won't show up until the State of the Union address, and
it'll be a paragraph of glittering generalities. Something like what
Bush's dad said about getting back to the Moon by 2019 and Mars 10
years later, if memory serves.

Applause, followed by amnesia.

Not if Bush does what he proposes and pays for the mission by slashing
all non-manned space budgets. This would be a real change in
direction for NASA.

Manned spaceflight at NASA will remain the Space Shuttle (as something
to fly to the ISS) and the ISS (as something for the Space Shuttle to
fly to) for a *long* time to come.

After Columbia, the shuttle program is living on borrowed time. That
borrowed time is the time it takes to complete the assembly of ISS.
After that, the shuttle is done.

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.