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Well, this author has a rather pessimistic view of things. In fact, we are a couple of years away from a major change of government in the U.S. and whoever suc

Well, this author has a rather pessimistic view of things. In fact, we are a couple of years away from a major change of government in the U.S. and whoever succeeds the Obama Administration will have an opportunity to address the shortcomings of the space program. The Obama Administration has focused on domestic social issues like jobs, education, and health care, and deemphasized longer term programs like Nasa. Typically, the pendulum swings back and forth with space and science allocations, and I would expect an adjustment upward in the next couple of years even as the social spending is inevitably cut. Also, as the U.S. economy comes out of the 2008-2010 recession and starts to generate more government revenue, it will become politically easier to re-fund some of these mothballed or back-burnered programs and get Big Space back on the front page. Americans love cool space stuff. The entire Baby Boomer generation grew up with the 1960s-70s manned programs and these things are near and dear to their hearts. I was a 10-year-old boy when men first walked on the moon, and my friends and I all had model rockets, Nasa posters on the wall, and dreamed of becoming astronauts some day. We all assumed that the country would just keep on funding more exploration until we had a massive rotating space station in orbit, a permanent base on the Moon, and probes reaching to every corner of the star system and beyond. Very little of that has come to pass, and we are a poorer and less accomplished nation because of it. Nasa indeed should be getting more than $18.5B, in my opinion more like $50B or $60B. It's a great investment. Sure, let private companies try to jump into the satellite launching business, more power to them. But the heavy lifting has got to come from Nasa, that great organization that has been neglected for too long.

7952 12y ago
I wonder if the love of cool space stuff is enough to sustain things in the long term. Maybe it is more like funding for the arts. People who love opera understand that arts funding is hugely important. But it is a niche that most will never really get excited about. We need to look beyond the mass appeal of the Apollo era and be supportive of things for more intellectual and even artistic reasons. Just think how many people support Nasa just because they love the Hubble images. It has to be more than just "because its there" to be sustained.
justin66 12y ago
> The Obama Administration has focused on domestic social issues like jobs, education, and health care, and deemphasized longer term programs like Nasa. Which might be true in a touchy-feely subjective way, but the annual budget figures don't reflect that at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget.2C_1958-2015 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget.2C... > Americans love cool space stuff. The entire Baby Boomer generation grew up with the 1960s-70s manned programs and these things are near and dear to their hearts. The trouble is that people in the United States have literally no idea how much anything costs. People really think things like space and foreign aid are currently significant chunks of the budget. News that the military spent more moving fuel into Afghanistan in a year than NASA's entire budget is met with very strong disbelief in some quarters. It's very easy to sell such people on some very strange ideas, which is where we are now.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  NASA's budget is one half of one percent of the US budget. Most people do not know this. I work on outreach programs through the Planetary Society to get people interested and informed about space research. Most people have not heard of Europa and most people are absolutely clueless about how much of our budget goes to space research.
rayiner 12y ago
> Americans love cool space stuff. So I'd like to believe that. But my conclusion based on studying the relevant history is that it was fear which motivated Americans to spend the money for space exploration. When Sputnik launched in 1957, it threw Americans into a panic. Here was a Soviet god-knows-what that you could see from your house in Kansas. The Soviets beat us to nearly every milestone: first satellite, first animal in space, first man in space, first EVA, first probe on the moon. The Soviets' first manned lunar landing was scheduled for 1968, but the architect of the program died at an inopportune time in 1966. The need to keep up with or beat the Soviets is what drove the space program until 1969. I don't think we would've gone to all that trouble if we didn't have the Red Empire breathing down our necks.
- ProAm 12y ago
  > if we didn't have the Red Empire breathing down our necks So you are saying the terrorists need to start building space probes? /s
  - fapjacks 12y ago
    I think the Chinese and their promise of extracting The Next Cheap Fuel (Helium-3) from moon dirt will do just fine.
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  Obviously, it was international politics and Cold War thinking that woke a fire under the Americans in the late 1950s. But that has little to do with what I'm talking about. The Boomers, who are the predominant generation today, grew up on Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, Star Trek and 2001 and model rocketry. We lived and breathed space exploration. There is a huge ready-made audience for more great achievements in space. We need national leaders who can inspire the voters to allocate the funding. The last few presidents haven't been very enthusiastic. G.W.Bush actually did have a vision of replacing the Shuttle, but unfortunately he didn't lock in the funding for the replacement Orion/Constellation systems before his term ended, so the U.S. ended up with no means to get humans into orbit, a rather embarrassing predicament for the world's erstwhile leader in space travel.

7952 12y ago

I wonder if the love of cool space stuff is enough to sustain things in the long term. Maybe it is more like funding for the arts. People who love opera understand that arts funding is hugely important. But it is a niche that most will never really get excited about. We need to look beyond the mass appeal of the Apollo era and be supportive of things for more intellectual and even artistic reasons. Just think how many people support Nasa just because they love the Hubble images. It has to be more than just "because its there" to be sustained.

justin66 12y ago

> The Obama Administration has focused on domestic social issues like jobs, education, and health care, and deemphasized longer term programs like Nasa. Which might be true in a touchy-feely subjective way, but the annual budget figures don't reflect that at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget.2C_1958-2015 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget.2C... > Americans love cool space stuff. The entire Baby Boomer generation grew up with the 1960s-70s manned programs and these things are near and dear to their hearts. The trouble is that people in the United States have literally no idea how much anything costs. People really think things like space and foreign aid are currently significant chunks of the budget. News that the military spent more moving fuel into Afghanistan in a year than NASA's entire budget is met with very strong disbelief in some quarters. It's very easy to sell such people on some very strange ideas, which is where we are now.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago
NASA's budget is one half of one percent of the US budget. Most people do not know this. I work on outreach programs through the Planetary Society to get people interested and informed about space research. Most people have not heard of Europa and most people are absolutely clueless about how much of our budget goes to space research.

rayiner 12y ago

> Americans love cool space stuff. So I'd like to believe that. But my conclusion based on studying the relevant history is that it was fear which motivated Americans to spend the money for space exploration. When Sputnik launched in 1957, it threw Americans into a panic. Here was a Soviet god-knows-what that you could see from your house in Kansas. The Soviets beat us to nearly every milestone: first satellite, first animal in space, first man in space, first EVA, first probe on the moon. The Soviets' first manned lunar landing was scheduled for 1968, but the architect of the program died at an inopportune time in 1966. The need to keep up with or beat the Soviets is what drove the space program until 1969. I don't think we would've gone to all that trouble if we didn't have the Red Empire breathing down our necks.

ProAm 12y ago
> if we didn't have the Red Empire breathing down our necks So you are saying the terrorists need to start building space probes? /s
- fapjacks 12y ago
  I think the Chinese and their promise of extracting The Next Cheap Fuel (Helium-3) from moon dirt will do just fine.
blisterpeanuts 12y ago
Obviously, it was international politics and Cold War thinking that woke a fire under the Americans in the late 1950s. But that has little to do with what I'm talking about. The Boomers, who are the predominant generation today, grew up on Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, Star Trek and 2001 and model rocketry. We lived and breathed space exploration. There is a huge ready-made audience for more great achievements in space. We need national leaders who can inspire the voters to allocate the funding. The last few presidents haven't been very enthusiastic. G.W.Bush actually did have a vision of replacing the Shuttle, but unfortunately he didn't lock in the funding for the replacement Orion/Constellation systems before his term ended, so the U.S. ended up with no means to get humans into orbit, a rather embarrassing predicament for the world's erstwhile leader in space travel.