People on this blog and others are deeply confused when they say ” Constellation’s supporters have lost their minds”. I don’t mourn Constellation’s passing, in fact I haven’t read many posters that do. The Augustine committee made a good case that unless Nasa’s budget rose significantly, Constellation would never have a place to go. I mourn the passing of human space exploration by the United States. This President could have gone in a different direction that would have maintained it. Instead he cut the legs out from Nasa in Congress. He’s all but guaranteed that Nasa will be out of the human space program this decade.

GEO may also be on the Grand Tour. The top ticket in space tours: (1) a week or two to warm up and earth-watch at a space station in LEO, (2) a cruise around GEO to see dozens of spacecraft, (3) spend a few days orbiting the moon, look down at the lunar landers, admire the magnificent desolation, and watch the earth from afar, and (4) back home. The ultimate space experience for the tech billionaire who wants to outbid all his peers.

Here’s another: put astronauts on the ISS for durations corresponding to long Mars missions (e.g. 500 days). Test out various proposed methods of keeping them healthy in microgravity. Why hasn’t NASA done this already?

Until NASA is doing this kind of research, the most straightforward and inexpensive of the research it needs to bring about the future it keeps advertising, how wise are we to take NASA grand visions seriously?

Very well said. The biggest mistake of NASA and space activists has been false certainty. Hypothetical markets for example are just that. They usually prove to be chimerae, and even when they do pan out they end up looking radically different than envisioned.

And as we are seeing, politics is especially unpredictable. We are entering an era with the federal budget in which it must deal with increasingly less sustainable amounts of debt. Iceland went bankrupt, and Greece was going to follow until the EU bailed them out. The finances of California and several other states are very shaky and may need a similar bailout to Greece’s. And when the second foreclosure wave hits the banks or homeowners may also may get another budget-busting bailout.

All governments now must keep convincing skeptical taxpayers and creditors that they remain solvent. Anything highly visible that is not of immediate practical use is a prime candidate for the budget axe. Constellation, widely seen as frivolous and repetitive, is the obvious candidate for the budget axe today. Any new major speculative space “infrastructure” project, a bridge to nowhere in space, will be the prime candidate for the axe tomorrow. In other words, if we start a big depot project or HLV project, the chances are very good that it won’t last five years before being cancelled.

Which is just as well, because gigaprojects like Shuttle, Station, and Ares don’t pan out anything like they are advertised. What we need is small-scale NACA- and ARPA- style research that will develop the technologies that will make space industry and travel and living in the second half of this century far cheaper and more effective than it is now. It will require great patience, which alas has not been a virtue of space activists in the past. It will also require advocating the small and effective instead of the large and dramatic. Small research projects can (a) usually fly under the radar of the cut-the-symbolic-waste axe, and (b) aren’t tied to other research projects so that they can keep going when the others are cut. And there is no false certainty — we never pin our hopes on the outcome of any one project.

article 1 – 0 comments
article 2 – 3 comments all negative to shelby.
article 3 – 10 comments 3 for shuttle extension 7 against.
article 4 – 134 comments- pro new budget comments seem to rate higher
article 5 – 9 comments none where pro kesha.

The article that had the highest comments was the chronical article with 134 comments. Those comments that were pro a new direction for NASA tended to rate higher and had more votes than the negative slanted ones.

I keep hearing about all the outrage over shutting down of constellation and how this is President Obama’s waterloo but both the numbers of comments and the number of negative comments to me shows a general public not even in tune or aware of the controversy. Tiger Woods articles get more attention then a NASA “back to the moon” one.

The recent teaparty conventions and the republican one just held did not even show a NASA/shuttle/constellation poster at all that I saw. As far as everything i could find about them online.

Once again I am baffled by those posters here talking about the outrage over the death of constellation. The only “outrage” seems to be from representatives and senators of 4-6 states with vested interests in their state’s job picture and their articles in newspapers do not even get any comments.

He seems to have a more solid grasp of politics than most folks on this board. The claims that a few de-porked representatives will single-handedly revamp NASA’s agenda indicate wishful thinking more than anything else. If that were the case, Ron Paul would have audited the Fed by now! Not that I’m saying that would be a bad thing.

The there the people who just see it a big nothing that will leave NASA and HSF on the chopping block in FY 2012. The Tea Party people are comming and even Obama is looking for places to cut (and tax, tax tax!). Established progams and jobs are a good why to keep the funding coming.