Quote:One of the tasks that President Donald Trump has before him, along with revamping immigration and trade, repealing and replacing ObamaCare, and rebuilding the military, is restoring America’s space exploration program to its former glory. Press reports suggest that the administration is looking at an early return to the moon, using commercial partnerships.

To understand the task that the president and whomever he chooses as NASA administrator have before them, it is useful to look back on how profoundly and adroitly President Barack Obama crippled the space agency’s efforts to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. When Obama came into office, he did what a number of other presidents have done to determine their goals for NASA: he formed a presidential commission to study the space agency and come up with some recommendations.

The Augustine Commission, so named after its chairman former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, returned with a set of recommendations some months later. The commission found that the program then in existence, Project Constellation, was not executable under any reasonable budget. The program, started by President George W. Bush, had been underfunded and had faced technical challenges for years. The commissions offered two alternatives. The first was Moon First, which would have focused America’s efforts on a return to the moon. The second was Flexible Path, which would have sent American astronauts to every destination besides the moon—the asteroids, the moons of Mars, and so on. Both options would lead to the holy grail of space exploration enthusiasts, a mission to Mars.

The kicker was that both options would cost an extra $3 billion a year for NASA to execute. For the Obama administration, which was not shy about spending money in areas that it cared about, this price tag was too dear to bear.

The government’s response was formulated in secret. The results of these private deliberations were rolled out in the 2011 budget request that was released in February 2010. Project Constellation would be canceled, root and branch. Instead, NASA would conduct studies of heavy-lift rockets, deep-space propulsion, and other technologies that it was said, in the fullness of time, would make exploring space cheaper and easier.

Congress, which had not been consulted, reacted with bipartisan fury. The Obama administration made two critical errors. It had not consulted with Congress or anyone else when it developed its plans to kill Constellation. The White House also blatantly pulled a bureaucratic dodge that was apparent even to a first-term member of the House from the sticks. To kill a popular program, one studies it to death. Nowhere in the Obama plan was there a commitment to send astronauts anywhere. Clearly, the White House had no intention of doing space exploration. President Obama had expressed an antipathy to American exceptionalism, and nothing speaks to that quality than American astronauts exploring other worlds.

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I thought Obama wanted NASA to do Muslim outreach, not kidding

Well he did send a lot of money to the Russians by failing to develop a launch alternative in a timely manner. Mr. Putin has found the relationship profitable.

(03-08-2017 05:43 PM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  I thought Obama wanted NASA to do Muslim outreach, not kidding

Yes they did

Your obsession with Obama is showing.

To be conservatives, you guys sure like to waste a lot of money. Can't wait for you guys to all move to the moon so the regular people can have their planet back.

(03-08-2017 05:55 PM)cb4029 Wrote:  Your obsession with Obama is showing.

To be conservatives, you guys sure like to waste a lot of money. Can't wait for you guys to all move to the moon so the regular people can have their planet back.

You mean the 3rd World folks, nah I like my First World privilege.

(03-08-2017 05:55 PM)cb4029 Wrote:  Your obsession with Obama is showing.

To be conservatives, you guys sure like to waste a lot of money. Can't wait for you guys to all move to the moon so the regular people can have their planet back.

Then we can fire rocks at the earth, which by the time they hit the earth will have the power of 100's of nuclear bombs. California would be my first target.

(03-08-2017 06:03 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  

(03-08-2017 05:55 PM)cb4029 Wrote:  Your obsession with Obama is showing.

To be conservatives, you guys sure like to waste a lot of money. Can't wait for you guys to all move to the moon so the regular people can have their planet back.

Then we can fire rocks at the earth, which by the time they hit the earth will have the power of 100's of nuclear bombs. California would be my first target.

Dam that was hilarious

(03-08-2017 05:55 PM)cb4029 Wrote:  Your obsession with Obama is showing.

To be conservatives, you guys sure like to waste a lot of money. Can't wait for you guys to all move to the moon so the regular people can have their planet back.

No obsession, it's just the wound is still raw after 8 years of infection. Wait until history gets done looking back on his tenure - it won't be kind. This guy mucked up a lot of things all for his precious, massively expensive health care act.

(03-08-2017 06:29 PM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

(03-08-2017 05:55 PM)cb4029 Wrote:  Your obsession with Obama is showing.

To be conservatives, you guys sure like to waste a lot of money. Can't wait for you guys to all move to the moon so the regular people can have their planet back.

No obsession, it's just the wound is still raw after 8 years of infection. Wait until history gets done looking back on his tenure - it won't be kind. This guy mucked up a lot of things all for his precious, massively expensive health care act.

And don't forget, he was in bed with the Russians, paying off Putin big time to use his launchers. We can't forget how cozy he was with mean ol' Putin.

(03-08-2017 05:55 PM)cb4029 Wrote:  Your obsession with Obama is showing.

TO be fair, it would need to age another 4-5 years before it's as ..... ripe ..... as the Left's obsession with Bush was under the previous administration.

I'm far from an Obama fan, but considering how the likes of SpaceX made some of their biggest advances under his administration, I can't say that he ruined it. It's not like those successes was his doing, but given his administration's lack of hesitance to regulate pretty much everything else in America, at least he didn't mess up private space travel.

Let it be privatized, focus the money elsewhere.

(03-08-2017 10:52 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  I'm far from an Obama fan, but considering how the likes of SpaceX made some of their biggest advances under his administration, I can't say that he ruined it. It's not like those successes was his doing, but given his administration's lack of hesitance to regulate pretty much everything else in America, at least he didn't mess up private space travel.

Talking about NASA, not private space companies.

(03-08-2017 06:03 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  

(03-08-2017 05:55 PM)cb4029 Wrote:  Your obsession with Obama is showing.

To be conservatives, you guys sure like to waste a lot of money. Can't wait for you guys to all move to the moon so the regular people can have their planet back.

Then we can fire rocks at the earth, which by the time they hit the earth will have the power of 100's of nuclear bombs. California would be my first target.

(03-09-2017 02:19 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(03-08-2017 06:03 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  

(03-08-2017 05:55 PM)cb4029 Wrote:  Your obsession with Obama is showing.

To be conservatives, you guys sure like to waste a lot of money. Can't wait for you guys to all move to the moon so the regular people can have their planet back.

Then we can fire rocks at the earth, which by the time they hit the earth will have the power of 100's of nuclear bombs. California would be my first target.

You guys think that's funny. It is a very, very real possibility once the moon is settled.

If the moon is commercialized, there will be plenty of launch mechanisms able to leave the moon. Once in moon orbit you just shove stuff out the window and it will hit Earth. They have lots of rocks.

(03-09-2017 01:18 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  

(03-08-2017 10:52 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  I'm far from an Obama fan, but considering how the likes of SpaceX made some of their biggest advances under his administration, I can't say that he ruined it. It's not like those successes was his doing, but given his administration's lack of hesitance to regulate pretty much everything else in America, at least he didn't mess up private space travel.

Talking about NASA, not private space companies.

An industry is more than one company or entity. I'm not saying that he actively helped space exploration in the private sector and it appears that he didn't do very many favors for NASA, but his inaction on the issue was probably better for mankind's space travel efforts than whatever 'solutions' he would've tried. If Obama wanted, he could've had the FAA put the kibosh on the whole thing like the feds did with Lysander Spooner's American Mail Letter Company, but fortunately he didn't.

Here's a phenomenal reading about SpaceX by the way:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-wh...-mars.html

So an anti-science president like Trump is going to improve space exploration? Sure.

(03-10-2017 01:48 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  So an anti-science president like Trump is going to improve space exploration? Sure.

Going to the moon again will unite the people and stick it to those commie Russians again.

(03-10-2017 01:48 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  So an anti-science president like Trump is going to improve space exploration? Sure.

I seriously doubt his global warming views have any effect on his NASA views or a million other science related issues.

I know I myself am a Bible believing born again Christian, and skeptical of supposed looming global disasters of global warming.

But at the same time science has always been one of my favorite subjects. I am fascinated with many different aspects and fields of science, including space exploration/astronomy.

I've never actually met anyone who was "anti-science".