President-Elect Obama and NASA

... and they actually were privately owned but taken away from the original owners by the Spanish Crown. (And more than half of the money Columbus got came from private Italian investors.)

and Obama isn't a queen...

Space programs haven't been cancelled much during the past few years, at least not that I've been aware of. I argued this point bitterly and frequently in the 70s. However, I do defend the space program:

http://able2know.org/topic/121356-1#post-3371328

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Wrong with what? Being Obama or being a Queen?

Oh . . . so you're one of those sorts of people, huh, Joe? I always suspected that there was something profoundly wrong with you.

For Brandon's information, referring to "Spain" in the late 15th century is somewhat anachronistic, and referring to "domestic problems" is laughably absurd from an historical point of view. Rolling on the floor in helpless laughter, in fact.

Spain did not in fact exist until 1492 or later. Isabella I of Castile and Léon was the half-sister of King Henry of Navarre, who became the King of France. He would have preferred to have her marry the King of Portugal, but she was more attracted to the rather impoverished and politically insignificant King of Aragon, Ferdinand. They were secretly married, but Henry forgave them, and continued to recognize the claim of Isabella to the throne of Castile and Léon, despite the claims of her brother Alfonso.

The royal and aristocratic families of the Iberian peninsula were descended from German tribesmen, principally from the Vandals and Visigoths. When Muslims from North Africa invaded what we call Spain in 711 CE, they were intervening in a civil war between different bands of Visigoths and Vandals. That is why they called the peninsula Al Andalus--Andalusia--from a corruption of the name Vandal. Quickly assessing the chaos which was the political reality of Iberia, they sent stronger forces, overran most of the peninsula and marched over the mountains into what is today France (which didn't exit then, either) and were defeated by Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer) at the battle of Tours in 732.

Isabella was a true child of her Germanic ancestors, being considered quite a beauty, especially because of her fair complexion and her blonde hair. Her husband Ferdinand was more the dark complected, dark haired type we would associate with the idea of a Spaniard. Together, they united the majority, but not all of the territory which would one day be Spain. For example, the small but politically important and relatively wealthy kingdom of Navarre in northeast Spain was still a part of the patrimony of King Henry of France--and the southern half of what is now Spain was still in the hands of the Muslims of Andalusia.

Ferdinand and Isabella eloped in 1469. Their two kingdoms were for all practical purposes one unit, although they continued to be separately administered if jointly ruled until well into the 18th century. The great project of their joint monarchy was to drive the Muslims from Spain, and the concept of a single political entity called Spain only came into being with their marriage and the launching of their campaign to run the Muslims out of the peninsula.

The year 1492 was the year that the Reconquista was accomplished. Joe says that the monarchy could have afforded better support for Columbus, and that is certainly true, but such matters are never determined by how much money is actually in the treasury. In fact, there was very little cash in the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella, and like almost all European monarchs of their day, they lived on credit extended to them based on their future revenues. This would have worked well enough to have funded Columbus better than they did, but neither of them was a fool (at least in that regard). Three generations earlier, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal had begun funding exploratory voyages along the coast of Africa, and his initial object had been to set up trading posts on the northwest coast of Africa in the attempt to horn in on the lucrative slave trade there. The Moors of North Africa basically handed him his military ass, and he abandoned military operations thereafter in order to continue to fund exploration of the African coast. Ferdinand and Isabella would have known this, and would have well known that none of the Portuguese voyages funded by Prince Henry had ever come even close to returning his investment. Vasco da Gama did not reach the coast of India until 1498, six years after Columbus sailed to the west, and almost 40 years after Prince Henry had died.

So if Isabella was being rather cheap when she funded Columbus' first expedition, it is little wonder. On a return on investment basis, there was little precedent to expect that she would get back any money she spent, and as i have pointed out, she and her husband operated on advances of credit against future revenues as did just about every other ruler in Europe in those days (the Kings of Denmark were pig rich, but that's another story). There was no reason for her to risk good money on Columbus until he produced some results, and she and Ferdinand dealt with the situation in a canny and thoroughly reasonable manner.

It was only after he came back from his first voyage that they lost their heads and began throwing good money after bad. On his second voyage, Columbus left in September, 1493, with seventeen ships and 1200 men. His third and fourth voyages were similarly well supported. None of his voyages produced any appreciable return on investment, and i suspect that by the time Isabella died in 1504, she may well have regretted her support for Columbus, although by then, the revenues of the new Spanish kingdom were richer and more secure than had been the separate revenues of Castile and Aragon at the time she and her husband had eloped.

There is a lesson in all of this, although i wonder if Brandon will take it. Voyages of exploration, whether on "the Ocean Sea" or in "outer space," are not going to ever rate very high on the list of priorities of the political agendas of the movers and shakers of the nations the space cadets hope will fund them. Columbus' first voyage was done on a shoestring because the newly created Spain, in the persons of her monarchs, had no good reason to spend very much on an unproven proposition. Their subsequent generosity yielded them nothing but a place to dump excess population and to lure away young and obnoxious adventurers who were without useful employment now that the Reconquista was accomplished. They were far more interesting in ridding Spain of Jews and Muslims than they were in the theretofore unproven promises Columbus made of the vast riches of the Indies which could be theirs.

The truly lucrative voyages and discoveries which Spain would make were made in the reign of their pig-headed (even pig-headed by Isabella's high standard) grandson, Carlos, whom the Germans in a wild fit of stupidity abetted by shameless bribery had elected Holy Roman Emperor. This Carlos, now the Emperor Charles V, had other fish to fry himself. There was Martin Luther to be dealt with, Italy to be invaded, France to be fought and the Wars of the Reformation to be undertaken. He had little time or interest in the "new world" other than as a source of capital to fund his obsessive religious bigotry and his almost constant wars with France in Italy, and his failed attempts to bring the German Protestants to heel through the use of his formidable army.

The lesson, Brandon, whether you will like it or not, and whether you will admit it or not, is that not you, not i and not Joe will ever decide how much money will be spent on exploration. That will be decided by politicians, and they will be motivated by their re-election prospects, which will be measured against their sense of what the voters want, and what they will tolerate. There is little prospect of a good return on investment at any time in the near future in the exploration of "outer space," and therefore there is little prospect that Obama or any other politician is going to cough up significant amounts of cash, nor that private capitalists will fund such efforts. In a perfect world, there would be no one richer than anyone else, and the government would take from us in taxes all the cash we did not absolutely need to live decently, so that they could fund your dreams of exploration. We don't live in a perfect world, Brandon.

Obama seems like a guy who appreciates science. He's said as much before. I don't know how you can be more concerned about Obama than you should have been about Bush (who has demonstrated a consistent lack of respect for scientific research on a number of fronts).


I'm not surprised his position has changed since the campaign started, because the overall economic condition has changed. It seems reasonable to me that any president would base his economic priorities on changing economic conditions. I don't want a guy who blindly sticks to a path no matter what's going on around him.

I'm sure we'll find out over the next year or so. But I elected a guy that I thought was smart enough to make good strategic decisions based on complex socio-economic conditions, and I still believe we've got the best guy for the job in there (or soon to be in there). I certainly feel more comfortable with Obama's views on science than I do with Bush's views.

With Bush, politics ruled science. O has promised to reverse this, and his appointments reflect this.

politics will always rule science.
If a scientist gets govt money to do his work, then politicians will be able to dictate what they want discovered.
It may not be as overt with the Obama admin as it was with Bush, but it will always be there.

Its simple economics.
Whoever has the dollars makes the rules.
If the govt has the dollars, they will be able to decide what scientists get the money and what results they want.

Both.

Oh, 'tis a glorious thing, I ween,
To be a regular Royal Queen!
No half-and-half affair, I mean,
No half-and-half affair,
But a right-down regular, regular, regular, regular Royal Queen!

I am reminded of the time when a cashier in Windsor, Ontario responded to my question about Elizabeth in her coronation regalia on an old twenty dollar bill by saying: "Oh . . . that's the Queen." I said: "You're kiddin' me . . . that guy looks just like a woman!" She was not amused . . . i made myself scarce . . .

Suppe's Queen ['Pik Dame' ("Queen of Spades")] might add some Viennoise delight to this thread

Obama Moves to Counter China in Space With Pentagon-NASA Link
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By Demian McLean

Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China.

Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team.

The potential change comes as Pentagon concerns are rising over China’s space ambitions because of what is perceived as an eventual threat to U.S. defense satellites, the lofty battlefield eyes of the military.

“The Obama administration will have all those issues on the table,” said Neal Lane, who served as President Bill Clinton’s science adviser and wrote recently that Obama must make early decisions critical to retaining U.S. space dominance. “The foreign affairs and national security implications have to be considered.”

China, which destroyed one of its aging satellites in a surprise missile test in 2007, is making strides in its spaceflight program. The military-run effort carried out a first spacewalk in September and aims to land a robotic rover on the moon in 2012, with a human mission several years later.

A Level of Proficiency

“If China puts a man on the moon, that in itself isn’t necessarily a threat to the U.S.,” said Dean Cheng, a senior Asia analyst with CNA Corp., an Alexandria, Virginia-based national-security research firm. “But it would suggest that China had reached a level of proficiency in space comparable to that of the United States.”

Obama has said the Pentagon’s space program -- which spent about $22 billion in fiscal year 2008, almost a third more than NASA’s budget -- could be tapped to speed the civilian agency toward its goals as the recession pressures federal spending.

NASA faces a five-year gap between the retirement of the space shuttle in 2010 and the first launch of Orion, the six- person craft that will carry astronauts to the International Space Station and eventually the moon. Obama has said he would like to narrow that gap, during which the U.S. will pay Russia to ferry astronauts to the station.

NASA Resistance

The Obama team has asked NASA officials about the costs and savings of scrapping the agency’s new Ares I rocket, which is being developed by Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Minneapolis-based Alliant Techsystems Inc.

NASA chief Michael Griffin opposes the idea and told Obama’s transition team leader, Lori Garver, that her colleagues lack the engineering background to evaluate rocket options, agency spokesman Chris Shank said. Garver and other advisers declined to comment.

At the Pentagon, there may be support for Obama’s vision. While NASA hasn’t recently approached the Pentagon about using its Delta IV and Atlas V rockets, building them for manned missions could allow for cost sharing, said Steven Huybrechts, the director of space programs and policy in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is staying on into the new administration.

The Delta IV and Atlas V are built by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp., and typically are used to carry satellites.

Already Developed

“No one really has a firm idea what NASA’s cost savings might be, but the military’s launch vehicles are basically developed,” said John Logsdon, a policy expert at Washington’s National Air and Space Museum who has conferred with Obama’s transition advisers. “You don’t have to build them from scratch.”

Meanwhile, Chinese state-owned companies already are assembling heavy-lift rockets that could reach the moon, with a first launch scheduled for 2013. All that would be left to build for a manned mission is an Apollo-style lunar lander, said Griffin, who visited the Chinese space program in 2006.

Griffin said in July that he believes China will be able to put people on the moon before the U.S. goes back in 2020. The last Apollo mission left the lunar surface in 1972.

“The moon landing is an extremely challenging and sophisticated task, and it is also a strategically important technological field,” Wang Zhaoyao, a spokesman for China’s space program, said in September, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Docking

China plans to dock two spacecraft in orbit in 2010, a skill required for a lunar mission.

“An automated rendezvous does all sorts of things for your missile accuracy and anti-satellite programs,” said John Sheldon, a visiting professor of advanced air and space studies at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. “The manned effort is about prestige, but it’s also a good way of testing technologies that have defense applications.”

China’s investments in anti-satellite warfare and in “cyberwarfare,” ballistic missiles and other weaponry “could threaten the United States’ primary means to project its power and help its allies in the Pacific: bases, air and sea assets, and the networks that support them,” Gates wrote in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

China is designing satellites that, once launched, could catch up with and destroy U.S. spy and communication satellites, said a Nov. 20 report to Congress from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. China’s State Council Information Office declined to comment on the nation’s anti-satellite or manned programs.

To boost cooperation between NASA and the Pentagon, Obama has promised to revive the National Aeronautics and Space Council, which oversaw the entire space arena for four presidents, most actively from 1958 to 1973.

The move would build ties between agencies with different cultures and agendas.

“Whether such cooperation would succeed remains to be seen,” said Scott Pace, a former NASA official who heads the Washington-based Space Policy Institute. “But the questions are exactly the ones the Obama team needs to ask.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Demian McLean in Washington at [email protected].

If China wants to blow a lot of money on landing people on the moon, that is great.

I think that any cost/benefit analysis would clearly show that such manned space projects are a joke, especially for the USA, which is broke.

You still don't get it, I see. For this cost/benefit analysis, how do we calculate the benefit of advancing space travel, for those of us who have the idea that advancing space travel is in and of itself valuable?

Since you're incredibly stupid, let me make it clearer. You spend $100 to buy your kid a Christmas present. The cost is $100. Since it didn't result in any money earned, the benefit is zero. Therefore, the decision is that buying your kid the present was a mistake. What's wrong with this analysis? Could it be that the very real and significant benefit wasn't measurable in dollars?

Brandon, it is silly for me to debate an unarmed opponent. Asshole that you are, all you put out is crap. Comparing NASA spending to an Xmas present is a good example.

You are obviously dense, unable to comprehend or think beyond predetermined views.

Full report at Bloomberg

News flash - comparing two things isn't equivalent to saying that they're identical. I was comparing them only in the sense of both containing examples of benefits that would be invisible to your cost/benefit analysis, which is a perfectly valid comparison. If you don't think that exploring and colonizing space is inherently good, as I do, then I guess you'll be opposed to it. I admit that we may not make an immediate profit from moving into space.

I guess every board has at least one genuine ignoramus. It is pretty clear that you are ours.

Perhaps. But one thing you or any other who opposes the flight to space cannot disagree with is that the technology that was used has more than paid off in the uses that it has given to our economy. If we continue to learn and invent the technology needed to go to space it can only be a help to us as a people. In the long run it will pay.