The Black Vault

This forum hasn;t had a single post yet, so thought I'd start one. Who thinks Obama will scrafice the space program in faver of other programs? The shuttle is set to retire duing 2010, and a solid replacement, is taking us to the Appollo kind of vehicles. The current moon mission is going to be something similar as it will be rockets launching something other than a airplane looking vehicle. Not even sure if the return capsule or whatever they will be called will be designed as reusable. Boosters like the shuttle may return and be reusable. Missions like the moon and mars missions take tremendous amounts of money, when a budget is already in deep trouble. A tempory hold or slow down of the program would probably be its demise. Whats your opinion.

now this was during the campaigning so.....

He seemed pretty passionate about the space programs. Knowing NASA has not been alloted any real money in years, i dont think he will "sacrifice" it. Whether he does or he doesnt ppl will complain. Some will say he is "wasting" money and if he doesnt he is sacrificing an important program.

In a world with spiralling deficits, people losing jobs, industries going bankrupt, would it not be irresponsible to plow billions into getting back to the moon. I don' think he will have the resources to be able to personally.

as long as we have enough money to participate in "wars" (for whatever the reason)

we should have enough money for space exploration

Well...since Bush didn´t support these programs before...maybe Obama won´t either...not now anyway...because of the F-crisis...

Dark-Samus wrote:Well...since Bush didn´t support these programs before...maybe Obama won´t either...not now anyway...because of the F-crisis...

Seems to me that putting money into things like the space program again is EXACTLY what he should be doing, if he was really serious about "fixing" the financial crisis. That would be an investment in rebuilding the foundations of a "real" economy, instead of pouring hundreds of billions into the fake debt based paper economy we've gotten ourselves addicted to (or enslaved by, which is probably more accurate); where the super rich will simply use it to either buy up the rest of the planet, or loan it back to us so that we can pay for the things we cant afford any more because we gave them our money in the first place.

Committing to a viable and sustained human presence in space would require us to solve a huge number of difficult technological problems, most, if not all of which could be applied to life here on Earth.

The kinds of innovations required here, aside from creating entire new industries, their supporting infrastructures and all the jobs that would come with that, could potentially solve our energy problems, be applied to medicine, agriculture, open up new space based resources.... sh*t. The list could go on and on.

It's been estimated that for every dollar the U.S. spends on R and D in the space program, it receives $7 back in the form of corporate and personal income taxes from increased jobs and economic growth. And that's just with our current, cheesy, milk run to low earth orbit and Tonka Toys to Mars program.

Plus, humans in space would just be really cool, wouldn't it?

But, we let our government spend trillions on pointless conflict. We let our government throw our money at the system that has already betrayed us, just for the privilege of borrowing it back again. My understanding is that the huge majority of the recovery package is going to financial institutions. The rest is going into things like filling pot holes and beefing up our ability to collect, store and share medical information. I don't hear much about money going back into the real economy. And space IS being cut back. That should tell us where our governments priorities (and loyalties) are.

India and China, on the other hand, appear to be going into space....

FDR pulled us out of the depression with WPA projects. The return to the moon would employ hundreds of thousands of people.

What is the future of space travel?

They will eventually abandon fuel rockets ,but im wondering what will they use next..any ideas.

fart power!

I'm all for fart power.

then we should get help from our cow sisters