If approved, Obama will sever NASA’s partnership with European Space Agency to send probes to Mars Washington Post February 9, 2012 The budget coming Monday from the Obama administration will send the NASA division that launches rovers to Mars and probes to Jupiter crashing back to Earth. Scientists briefed on the proposed budget said that the president’s plan drops funding for planetary science at NASA from $1.5 billion this year to $1.2 billion next year, with further cuts continuing through 2017.It would eat at NASA’s Mars exploration program, which, after two high-profile failures in 1999, has successfully sent three probes into Martian orbit and landed three more on the planet’s surface. “We’re doing all this great science and taking the public along with us,” said Jim Bell, an Arizona State University scientist and president of the Planetary Society who works on NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity. “ Read more here; http://www.washingtonpost.com/national We need to go to mars on so many levels, and for so many reasons!. I am so tired of seeing our huge mega science cut by truly ignorant Nearanderallistic knuckle dragging public officials that I am gonna’ throw up on their wig tip shoes . That our elected officials are soft headed simpletons is bad enough. However, the reason that ignorance prevails in those halls is even worse,. What is the reason? Sadly, majority of our voting public is even more ignorant in the areas of science and math etc than our elected officials. It may be too late to change our inextricable slide into a nation of hard working but underpaid service personnel, who think a moon shot is a hunting trip for green cheese. Reva
Okay, this steams me. It is one thing to not bother with sending men into space anymore. We've pretty much done all that can be done for the most part in Low Earth Orbit. But when you start cutting into the budget that sends Robotic probes out I get upset. Robot probes are cheap science. Continue the funding!! From 1.5 to 1.2 billion. that's what? around 300 million? Wheres it gonna go? Into Union pockets somehow I bet. Obama has to hit that 1 billion reelection fund mark anyway he can I suppose.
I agree but also think manned missions are imperative. NASA is saying that that 300M or whatever is the creme that was to provide a goodly part of the Mars manned mission funding with the other part coming from our partners the EU etc. I yunderstand why some people dont know why we have to have a manned mission as well as robot craft. I suppose that they would have to have been raised in the moon shot era to really know what its like to live at a time when our entire country was pulling together for not a goal but a dream, not just any dream but the mother of ALL dreams!!!. I was a little kid during the moon shot but I still remember the excitement and how it captured my imagination like nothing else has ever come close to. As a little child with a big imagination I really believed that in 2001 we would have space stations like in the movie 2001 a space odyssey, and that we would be on Mars by 1985, which if the Gaddammed politicians would have kept their greedy hands off our national dreams we would have that and more. Science has a way of leap frogging over goals when the time and money is right. The thievery and deception was nearly criminal (NASA was really a military organization first and a propaganda generator second, last was science) , and to this day I am very angry at being lied to. Its not only the space science that Politicians have thieved from us. They also killed the super conducting supercollider in Texas after it was over 50 % done! It was the kind that Europe just is getting running ie CERN. And some people wonder why took up religion and abandoned science for my lifes work..seeesh~ Yes I am somewhat bitter but what the hell, its time to fight for what we must! Links to the Texas atom smasher....(below) The Abandoned Remains of the Superconducting Super Collider ... Dec 14, 2010 ... Construction on the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), as it was named, began on 1991 in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas. Its planned ... www.amusingplanet.com/.../abandoned-remains-of-superconducting.html - Cached - SimilarWho's afraid of the Superconducting Super Collider? | Summer of ... Oct 29, 2009 ... The site of the abandoned Superconducting Super Collider. ... Slated to begin operations in 1999 in Waxahachie, Texas, the SSC would have ... summerofscience.wordpress.com/.../whos-afraid-of-the-superconducting-super-collider/ - reva
I'd be interested in hearing some of those reasons, because for the life of me I can't see a reason why that ought to be a priority right now. I like space exploration too, but what's the rush? Mars will still be there twenty years from now.
I am highly skeptical that attention like that devoted to the Apollo program would be directed towards a manned mission to Mars. It would make front page news for a few days when they land, but I think you are vastly overestimating the public imagination for space travel. I am personally not particularly enthusiastic about a proposal to send people to a worthless barren rock like Mars. I would personally rather see more work done to explore places where humans might actually be able to maintain long-term habitation. Mars simply lacks a compelling reason to go. Venus is far more interesting from a manned mission standpoint. What's the point in going, only to go back home again, never to have anyone follow?
Are you f-ing kidding me? We can't even get a payload to LEO reliably in all-weather, we haven't done even the most basic experiments in sustainable artificial gravity, and you think we've "done all that can be done" in Low Earth Orbit?
Uncle Ferd thinks mebbe we should go to Venus an' check out the ladies there... Rotation of Venus Might Be Slowing February 13, 2012 - The European Space Agency, ESA, says Venus appears to be rotating on its axis slightly slower than it did in the early 1990s, adding 6.5 minutes to the length of the planet’s day.
It's all just a big waste of money. We all know god already created it all 5,000 years ago. just kidding. We should be puting rovers on jupiter and saturns moons.
Obama hates NASA. If I was President I'd make it a mandate to go MArs like Kennedy did to go to the moon. We do have the resources for it, but i'd still triple NASA's budget just to do that. Fraking politics who can't see the value of the space agency.
Didn't the head of NASA, say one if his stated directives was to improve on Islamic Relations??? http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims/
What exactly would we get out of going to Mars? More debt for nothing but propaganda. As for Obama hating NASA, who was it that cancelled the Shuttle and its replacement again?
