President-Elect Obama and NASA

..It was a political move, by a weak president working in a broken political system, NASA was used as a pawn. What this means now that the few of you who actually cared about the program, to include how ever many at NASA came to belief that the program might actually happen, are upset and demoralized.

Dont take it out on Obama though.

Budget redirection, whatever. Until they learn to run the economy equitably and fairly and have a surplus, I am no longer favoring space travel.

The Bush haters take all sorts of things out on Bush which he didn't even do at all, so I think I can blame Obama for his own god damned actions.

Not saying it can be perfect. We were moving in a good direction, at least in part, under Eisenhower and Truman.

...We have not had a use for NASA since Apollo, it should be killed, but I doubt that it will be.

the purpose of NASA was to get us to the moon, and the reason we went was not for science or out of wonderment, it was psychological. It was to prove to ourselves that were were still the baddest asses on the planet. Once we got to the moon the mission was over, no one cared about space anymore outside of a few geeks here and there.

We cant recapture the spirit for a run at Mars because we have changed. Being macho, swinging the dick and conducting pissing matches in now considered to be damn near a crime. We have become a nation of pansies.

Which goes far in explaining why America can no longer compete with the rest of the world in almost any arena.

Your statement is false.

The Ipsos-Reid poll points out:

"Few say a mission sending people to Mars should be NASA's first or second priority - a human Mars mission ranks last on America's list of priorities for the agency. Even those who support the concept of a manned mission to Mars (36 percent) place little priority on developing a plan to send people there. Instead, when asked with the top two priorities of NASA should be, those who support a manned mission to Mars still give top priority to conducting research on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (55 percent) or conducting research for U.S. industry (52 percent). Forty-seven percent would select exploring the universe with unmanned probes, while only 38 percent would support sending people to Mars."

"The public is no longer buying a romantic 'human-in-space' mission for NASA. Three-in-five Americans oppose a mission to send people to Mars," the Ipsos-Reid survey said

The end missions of Apollo were aborted

Skylab was done in place of the rest of apollo, and then promply destroyed

The shuttle was done not for a mission but rather to give nasa something to do

The space station was done not for a mission, but to give the shuttle something to do....

Like Skylab it is scheduled to be abandoned within three years of completion, and has to date done almost no science because almost all of the work hours have been used up on housekeeping.

Where is your evidence that America cares about manned flight, and why then for 40 years has it not been translated into NASA accomplishments?

Quote:

The Ipsos-Reid poll points out:

"Few say a mission sending people to Mars should be NASA's first or second priority - a human Mars mission ranks last on America's list of priorities for the agency. Even those who support the concept of a manned mission to Mars (36 percent) place little priority on developing a plan to send people there. Instead, when asked with the top two priorities of NASA should be, those who support a manned mission to Mars still give top priority to conducting research on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (55 percent) or conducting research for U.S. industry (52 percent). Forty-seven percent would select exploring the universe with unmanned probes, while only 38 percent would support sending people to Mars."

"The public is no longer buying a romantic 'human-in-space' mission for NASA. Three-in-five Americans oppose a mission to send people to Mars," the Ipsos-Reid survey said

http://www.space.com/news/nasa_poll_020510.html

"The most recent data show 45 percent of the public agreeing that the benefits of space exploration outweigh the costs..."
Absolute proof that your statement was wrong that no one cares about space but a few geeks, since 45% is a lot more than almost no one. ..."

In 1989, President George Bush set new goals to rouse the space program out of its enforced lethargy. A fleet of heavy-lift rockets would be developed for both robotic and human missions beyond low orbit. Astronauts would return to the Moon to establish permanent outposts and then fly to Mars, perhaps by 2019. The response, almost immediately, was inaction.

President George W. Bush made a similar appeal. After the shuttle Columbia’s disaster in 2003, he introduced a “new vision” to revive the floundering space program. It included post-shuttle propulsion systems and crew-carrying vehicles. The goal was a return of astronauts to the Moon by 2020. Sometime after, to Mars.

But the costs of fighting wars while cutting taxes left little money to support the undertaking. Although several billion dollars have already been invested in advanced hardware, the goals seem illusory, and public support seems thin.

Once again, experience brought reminders, so often overlooked, that Apollo was not a realistic model for future endeavors in space exploration. Going to the Moon had been, above all, a campaign in the cold war. The Soviet Union was the feared adversary, even more so after the Sputnik surprise and after Yuri Gagarin’s flight made him the first man in space, in spring 1961.

Early on, the political scientist John M. Logsdon at George Washington University made a study of the decision-making process leading to Apollo. Dr. Logsdon concluded that Apollo was “a product of a specific time in history” and a singular crash program responding to a perceived threat to the country. It did not represent a firm commitment by society to open-ended space exploration