8 ms·

U.S. President to sign space policy directive Monday

41 points by daegloe 9y ago

shkkmo 9y ago
I don't see any mention of funding in this article. Any such directive is ineffective without a commitment towards increasing funding for NASA over the short and long term.
- zeveb 9y ago
  The President doesn't fund things; the Congress does (which is part of the reason that the way Americans look at their president as a kind of elected king is just so weird: he's simply the guy charged with executing the laws as they are written, not the guy charged with writing them).
  - shkkmo 9y ago
    The President's ability to veto and the vice-president's tie breaking vote on the Senate give the President a great deal of potential to affect the legislation that Congress passes. The President could certainly make a commitment to increased funding for NASA by threatening to veto any spending bill that doesn't boost NASA's funding.
- asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago
  Stop trying to politicize this.
- valuearb 9y ago
  NASA already has enough funding to do lunar and mars manned missions now. Instead they've decided to build the SLS, which is a huge pork filled gift to the state of Alabama and contractors like Boeing. The SLS will cost over $10,000 per lb of cargo to lift things into orbit, and that doesn't count it's $20B+ in development costs. With development and annual infrastructure operating costs, the first 10 launches of the SLS are going to cost well over $30B. The Falcon Heavy's first launch is January, two years ahead of the SLS. It's cost per pound of cargo is going to be close to $500/lb. And it's just the first of a series of privately developed heavy lift launch vehicles under development (Falcon Heavy, Blue Origin New Glenn, BFR, etc), all of which will be at least 10x less expensive than the SLS because none of them are going to be burned up and tossed in the ocean after every flight!
vermontdevil 9y ago
Third president in a row to offer something like this related to the Moon. Obama: He endorses the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020, as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars. Bush: President Bush has unveiled a new vision for space exploration, calling on NASA to "gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own." In other words - same old unless $ is put in the budget and approved.
- azemetre 9y ago
  Seems like the issue is that Washington changes the mission directive every voting cycle. Hardly sustainable. Is there a reason why we can't let NASA be NASA and pursue objectives they want without a butting President or Congress?
  - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
    My more cynical belief is that the issue is intent - specifically that these moves are not intended to create functioning space programs, but to move money to interested parties and look good in the news.
  - dmode 9y ago
    I am curious how other countries operate their space programs that gives them some autonomy from voting cycles. You cannot run a space program with budgets and priorities changes every 4 years.
    - garmaine 9y ago
      The Russian space agency is semi-commercial at this point. The Chinese space agency is run by the military. Not that election cycles would be a problem in either case regardless. But he real answer as pointed out by the sibling is to use a more academic model like NSF and NIH does, rather than flagship missions. Look at how the Discovery program authorizes planetary probes, for example. That approach could be done for flagship and human missions too.
    - 9y ago
polyfractal 9y ago
If anyone is into Space and Politics/Policy, the Planetary Society has semi-recently started doing monthly "Space Policy Edition" episodes. Here's the most recent: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2017/space-policy-edition-19.html http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/201... They dig deep into the current political landscape and how that affects current and future funding of various projects at NASA. Recently they started doing interviews with people which is usually quite interesting too.
azurezyq 9y ago
Politics aside. American people need a new dream to strive for. Without major infrastructure construction going on, people will soon find them living in the past in a few year. Whether to go back to "Moon" is not important but we need to go to "Somewhere".
- vkou 9y ago
  Something to strive for? Perhaps eliminating poverty, or malnutrition? We don't need to go to the moon for that, we just need to go south of Market Street. If those goals are too pedestrian, we could also aim for shifting our economy to a closed-loop ecologically-sensitive system. It would be far more useful then going to the moon - it would pay farm more technological, and social dividends, and it is the best ROI step that we could take to ensure our continued survival as a civilized species. But perhaps these goals are beyond our capabilities...
- bb88 9y ago
  There are other ways to keep people from living in the past other than say, going to the moon. * High speed internet service everywhere in the country. * Cheap access to telemedicine to help those that can't get to a doctor. * High speed rail (etc)
  - gozur88 9y ago
    I'd love to see a usable intercity passenger rail system of any kind. We could build out a low speed network for a fraction of the HSR cost and then up the speed on routes where it makes sense on a piecemeal basis.
    - mikepurvis 9y ago
      High speed rail doesn't work that way. You have to build it as high speed from the get-go, as there are dozens of non-trivial requirements which must be met around the infrastructure in order for it to work. It would be like building four lane arterial road through your city and thinking you could just "up the speed" later on and suddenly have an interchange-access highway.
antaviana 9y ago
Given the highly controversial nature of Trump's executive orders, often escalating into violence, I thought that this was a tabs-versus-spaces thing.
JustAnotherPat 9y ago
Baby Boomers giving up on space exploration will be one of their many, great embarrassments.
- berbec 9y ago
  This generation's list isn't short, either. While progress continues to be made on many fronts, quite a few things stick out like a sore thumb over the last 40 years: tax cuts that pay for themselves, Clinton's impeachment (from either side's viewpoint), dot-com bubble, tax cuts that pay for themselves, Iraq, massive deficits, great recession, insane partisan gridlock, tax cuts that pay for themselves.
DubiousPusher 9y ago
I think our money might be better spent on multiple machine only missions that accomplish some difficult task through automation on the surface of the moon. For the cost of sending a few people we could probably pay for machine only missions that build structures, drill functional water wells and grow food. Those kind of things would prepare us for future colonies off this planet wherever they might be. And we'd gain a lot of value in important emerging industries that could be quickly applied to great benefit here.

41 points by daegloe 9y ago

I don't see any mention of funding in this article. Any such directive is ineffective without a commitment towards increasing funding for NASA over the short and long term.

zeveb 9y ago
The President doesn't fund things; the Congress does (which is part of the reason that the way Americans look at their president as a kind of elected king is just so weird: he's simply the guy charged with executing the laws as they are written, not the guy charged with writing them).
- shkkmo 9y ago
  The President's ability to veto and the vice-president's tie breaking vote on the Senate give the President a great deal of potential to affect the legislation that Congress passes. The President could certainly make a commitment to increased funding for NASA by threatening to veto any spending bill that doesn't boost NASA's funding.
asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago
Stop trying to politicize this.
valuearb 9y ago
NASA already has enough funding to do lunar and mars manned missions now. Instead they've decided to build the SLS, which is a huge pork filled gift to the state of Alabama and contractors like Boeing. The SLS will cost over $10,000 per lb of cargo to lift things into orbit, and that doesn't count it's $20B+ in development costs. With development and annual infrastructure operating costs, the first 10 launches of the SLS are going to cost well over $30B. The Falcon Heavy's first launch is January, two years ahead of the SLS. It's cost per pound of cargo is going to be close to $500/lb. And it's just the first of a series of privately developed heavy lift launch vehicles under development (Falcon Heavy, Blue Origin New Glenn, BFR, etc), all of which will be at least 10x less expensive than the SLS because none of them are going to be burned up and tossed in the ocean after every flight!

vermontdevil 9y ago

Third president in a row to offer something like this related to the Moon. Obama: He endorses the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020, as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars. Bush: President Bush has unveiled a new vision for space exploration, calling on NASA to "gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own." In other words - same old unless $ is put in the budget and approved.

azemetre 9y ago
Seems like the issue is that Washington changes the mission directive every voting cycle. Hardly sustainable. Is there a reason why we can't let NASA be NASA and pursue objectives they want without a butting President or Congress?
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  My more cynical belief is that the issue is intent - specifically that these moves are not intended to create functioning space programs, but to move money to interested parties and look good in the news.
- dmode 9y ago
  I am curious how other countries operate their space programs that gives them some autonomy from voting cycles. You cannot run a space program with budgets and priorities changes every 4 years.
  - garmaine 9y ago
    The Russian space agency is semi-commercial at this point. The Chinese space agency is run by the military. Not that election cycles would be a problem in either case regardless. But he real answer as pointed out by the sibling is to use a more academic model like NSF and NIH does, rather than flagship missions. Look at how the Discovery program authorizes planetary probes, for example. That approach could be done for flagship and human missions too.
  - 9y ago

polyfractal 9y ago

If anyone is into Space and Politics/Policy, the Planetary Society has semi-recently started doing monthly "Space Policy Edition" episodes. Here's the most recent: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2017/space-policy-edition-19.html http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/201... They dig deep into the current political landscape and how that affects current and future funding of various projects at NASA. Recently they started doing interviews with people which is usually quite interesting too.

azurezyq 9y ago

Politics aside. American people need a new dream to strive for. Without major infrastructure construction going on, people will soon find them living in the past in a few year. Whether to go back to "Moon" is not important but we need to go to "Somewhere".

vkou 9y ago
Something to strive for? Perhaps eliminating poverty, or malnutrition? We don't need to go to the moon for that, we just need to go south of Market Street. If those goals are too pedestrian, we could also aim for shifting our economy to a closed-loop ecologically-sensitive system. It would be far more useful then going to the moon - it would pay farm more technological, and social dividends, and it is the best ROI step that we could take to ensure our continued survival as a civilized species. But perhaps these goals are beyond our capabilities...
bb88 9y ago
There are other ways to keep people from living in the past other than say, going to the moon. * High speed internet service everywhere in the country. * Cheap access to telemedicine to help those that can't get to a doctor. * High speed rail (etc)
- gozur88 9y ago
  I'd love to see a usable intercity passenger rail system of any kind. We could build out a low speed network for a fraction of the HSR cost and then up the speed on routes where it makes sense on a piecemeal basis.
  - mikepurvis 9y ago
    High speed rail doesn't work that way. You have to build it as high speed from the get-go, as there are dozens of non-trivial requirements which must be met around the infrastructure in order for it to work. It would be like building four lane arterial road through your city and thinking you could just "up the speed" later on and suddenly have an interchange-access highway.

antaviana 9y ago

Given the highly controversial nature of Trump's executive orders, often escalating into violence, I thought that this was a tabs-versus-spaces thing.

JustAnotherPat 9y ago

Baby Boomers giving up on space exploration will be one of their many, great embarrassments.

berbec 9y ago
This generation's list isn't short, either. While progress continues to be made on many fronts, quite a few things stick out like a sore thumb over the last 40 years: tax cuts that pay for themselves, Clinton's impeachment (from either side's viewpoint), dot-com bubble, tax cuts that pay for themselves, Iraq, massive deficits, great recession, insane partisan gridlock, tax cuts that pay for themselves.

DubiousPusher 9y ago

I think our money might be better spent on multiple machine only missions that accomplish some difficult task through automation on the surface of the moon. For the cost of sending a few people we could probably pay for machine only missions that build structures, drill functional water wells and grow food. Those kind of things would prepare us for future colonies off this planet wherever they might be. And we'd gain a lot of value in important emerging industries that could be quickly applied to great benefit here.