“curious what do you think such a reason would be?”

For space related stuff? I think people saw the value of rescuing and improving Hubble, even though it was pretty expensive. It had easy to digest ROI in the form of a steady stream of beautiful pictures.

I think the science community understands the need for the ISS, and the average taxpayer can understand that it is an international effort to “help us learn how to live and work in space” (my definition).

The Mars rovers (Sojourner, Spirit & Opportunity) I think have been very popular too.

Overall I think it’s not an easy thing to predict, as it boils down to what the public is perceiving, and whether they perceive it as worthwhile. Many of the conversations about what the next space exploration effort should be echo that, with huge chasms between Moon First, Mars First, Flexible Path, robot vs human and such. Yes, we all want to explore further out into space, but what goal is worth the money, and what approach is worth the money?

I think about the only thing I could say with any confidence is not too far too fast, as that implies too much money and too little ROI.

“Then you’re in a very small group.”

You haven’t been listening to the Republican themes over the past few years, have you?

“War is a very big government program- very, very, big– good for business, too, and you don’t see that being ridiculed by Republicans at all.”

Regardless of their obvious disconnect between wanting to spend ever increasing amounts on “defense”, the party as a whole has a “less spending” mantra. Romney was able to reframe the Gingrich Moon idea into a choice between big government (i.e. Newt) or less government (i.e. Mitt). Gingrich fumbled the roll-out and defense of his idea, and he was perceived as advocating a big government program. Very bad thing to do in Republican primaries.

“No, the Republican Party has managed to make talk of space a punchline in the minds of the electorate.”

In this case everyone is attacking the messenger, not the message per se. The other candidates could care less if Newt was talking about building a government-run base on an island, the Moon, or somewhere in fantasy-land. It was politically expedient fodder.

And actually, as others have pointed out the other candidates, when they do mention space issues, are for a commercial based approach. Most of us see that as good, so this discussion hasn’t hurt the future of space from our perspective.

Hey Prez. That’s Congress spending the money, not the ‘American people’.

Voters, as opposed to the Tooth Fairy, send folks to Congress.

RGO’s right, there is no imperative in terms of a value case, for spending billions on HSF.

Americans do anyway, and they spend considerably more money on even less useful space-related pursuits. That seems to be the point everyone here is missing.

NASA’s lost that battle long ago by staying stuck in the past as a recent government report noted.

Still trying to remember the last time some unnamed government report made or break a candidate.

RGO’s right, there is no imperative in terms of a value case, for spending billions on HSF. NASA’s lost that battle long ago by staying stuck in the past as a recent government report noted.

A story in The Washington Post prior to the election, called Brevard County a likely Gingrich stronghold in Tuesday’s primary. Saying Brevard was “fueled by conservative anger over cuts to NASA,” the article included Brevard among the five Florida counties to watch. The other counties were Duval, Miami-Dade, Orange and Pinellas.

Romney, however, came out on top this time, collecting 43 percent of the vote in Brevard compared to Gingrich’s 33 percent.

I hope that you are correct but my theory is that there is NOTHING that will sell the American people on another large expensive goal oriented human spaceflight program.

So sell’em on one that won’t cost a single extra dime.

We finally have NASA’s “next logical step” the space station and 200 billion later…few can see any reason for it. And almost everything you mention was used to keep it alive.

And yet Congress still pays to keep it running. Well, if you want to actually use it for something, and if you’re going to go ahead and build something like SLS and launch it once every two years or so, then use it as a supply depot and motel for reusable cislunar vehicles and crews and start dropping payloads on the Moon. Hell, maybe the notion that the system can be evolved into something considerably cheaper might even catch Congress’ attention.

I think we are at this bad place where until something becomes of economic value in human spaceflight and/ore the price of it plummets well the American people dont see any reason to spend a lot of money on it RGO

The American people already see fit to spend just shy of $20 billion a year on a space program that has nothing to do with DirecTV. You’ll be fine.

Why the hell is NASA delivering freakin’ food for christ’s sake after 50 years. A Visitor center would have a cafeteria and astronauts use food chits… the list is endless how different it would be if commercial would have went with on the ISS and brought NASA’s costs down and increased activity all at a lower cost to the taxpayer.

A second tier country or group of them will sooner or later realize how expensive NASA has made space operations look just because of all the layers of pork.

America can trade on it’s reputation only as long as a new player(s) don’t jump in and get established first.

I do not advocate that NASA gets huge increases to fund more pork, my prefrence is like Bill White’s, whenever possible, go around NASA if possible. I just want the country’s investment in space, tax dollars, are done in a way that makes economic sense on how you use mutipler effects to increase investment, if you truely do want a commercial market to develope. NASA is more times a roadblock rather than a help.

I hope that you are correct but my theory is that there is NOTHING that will sell the American people on another large expensive goal oriented human spaceflight program.

We finally have NASA’s “next logical step” the space station and 200 billion later…few can see any reason for it. And almost everything you mention was used to keep it alive.

I think we are at this bad place where until something becomes of economic value in human spaceflight and/ore the price of it plummets well the American people dont see any reason to spend a lot of money on it RGO

curious what do you think such a reason would be? RGO”

I would attack it as America, banking on it’s reputation for putting humans in space, dominate new potential global markets, industries and sectors in Aerospace and offworld commercial enterprises. Founded on the idea of increasing STEM students looking for careers in commercial space by the creation of commercial, high tech, longterm jobs for the 21st Century. These markets will emerge over the next century with or without us, do we want the Nation to get in early and be a market maker or not.

Contracting changes to more SAA’s v.s. FAR’s, less costplus-fixed fee, more fixed cost, milestone based, make contractors more invested up front.

Creative space prizes.

Creative tax incentives, like Zero G – Zero Tax.

Promote the dual use concept.

Minimize costs to the taxpayer by choosing items that have the highest multiplier effect and cross over use by government and commercial.

Have the government act more as an anchor tenant and user of commercial services rather than doing those services inhouse.

Move the governments efforts more into space based ships like Nautilus X and infrastructure like fuel supply contracts from commercial fuel stations.

Government would lease ships from commercial companies and supply their own crew, commercial companies own the design and build the ships that both the government and other commercial firms can lease.

Just some thoughts.

When I first heard Teller et al. going on about the impact hazard, I thought it was just nuclear physicists looking for work. I was wrong.

Your statement that that hazard is minimal is just flat out wrong. What you don’t know about the impact hazard would fill four to five books; I finished the manuscript for one of them, but then was hit by a stroke.

Your statements about the necessary requirements for impactor detectors is just flat out wrong as well.

Its nearly impossible now to conduct an educational campaign among the general public. That the mammoth were extincted by impact along with about 95% of the human population 13,000 years ago has been nearly completely obfuscated.

Their representatives do take notice when their own electoral districts were “recently” hit, though.

Note carefully all of the specious rationalizations DL came up with when I told him that all of Hubble’s observing time was needed now to track the debris stream of Comet 73P.