Bush's Moon Mission Called Bold, Wasteful

For the Nay Sayers: Three things

1). Without a renewed space program, Aerospace in America is dead. Without Aerospace, we don't have defence. Without Defense, we don't have sovereignty. How much is that worth to us?

2). The Space Shuttle was never intened to work, it was a sneaky way of keeping Nixon and the Democraps from killing our lauch capability. The Bush plan only increases Nasa's budget by %5 a year. It won't break the bank. Tax Payers pay more than this to keep Ted Kennedy in Scotch.

3) This post is from CNN and is merely a Vehicle for this Greenstein cat to spew his anti-bush invective

"Greenstein said President Bush must explain where the money for his space initiative will come from: "Will he agree to scale back some of the munificent and very costly tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans?" Greenstein asked. "

The above lets you know exactly which side Greenstein is playing for.

Right on. People should realize that our military is so powerful based largely on our space assets. The Chinese know this, and it is a reason for their sudden interest in space (helped by all the technology bubba and co. sold to them). We absolutely should see China's space program as a grave threat to this nation, and we should act to counterbalance it.

Thirty years is a long time away. And the only way we stay on top year-after-year is by doing the right thing from a military standpoint each year. The moon has no credible military value for decades to come. Orbital weaponry is where its at. Even laser weapons on the surface of the moon are at a disadvantage to orbital lasers because of the distance/lightspeed factor. Especially considering that the moon is --- half the time --- on the wrong side of the earth (regardless of what the "right side" happens to be in any particular engagement). On the wrong side and very far away. Orbitals are where you want them, 100% of the time, 100% ready, and a mere hundred miles or so above the ground. Sure there's anti-orbital technology, just as there's anti-aircraft technology. But how many aircraft have been shot down in recent decades. Besides helicopters (which are particularly vulnerable) very very few.

The fact is, the only value of the moon is astronomy and tourism. Astronomy can be done by robots and tourism should be funded by private industry.

Want to go to the moon? Form a corporation dedicated to that purpose. Get investors. Do it your way. On your dime. In the long run, your corporation will get very very rich.

In the meantime, leave the taxpayers alone.

This thread is over a year old, for a minute there when I read Bush was getting to announce a major space initiative, I was thinking 'again'? The first one was pretty good.
Anyway, I think it's pretty silly for people to carp about "wasting money in space" if we didn't spend it towards NASA, it would be spent somewhere else, likely funding all kinds of stupidity.
At the very least, it forces a lot of congress critters to back off on a lot of their little pork programs to free up money for space exploration.
I'd much rather have a mission to the moon rather than another community swimming pool in Robert Byrd's district.

Quite right. For one thing, the rockets aren't carrying into orbit a payload of the money spent on them. For that matter, our soldiers aren't rolling up five dollar bills and pumping them into the terrorists around the world.

...oh yeah... and we now have the re-election in retrospect... looks like the voters really had their underwear in a bunch about these terrible deficits. Oh, no, whatever shall we do? Every cent will have to be paid back, with interest, within thirty years!

Just as every deficit dollar ever has been.

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