Scuttle the Shuttle! Space Shuttle is a Dangerous Waste of Taxpayer Funds

Space Frontier Foundation ^ | 07/11/05 | Rick Tumlinson

[Paul_Denton]

Ignore the whiners.

We are by far the most space-dependant nation on earth both in civilian AND military terms. We need to keep our dominance. We should already be having manned bases on the moon by now.

There are those that argue that China and the EU and Russia lag behind us by some 40 years in space technology. We need to keep it that way and put as much distance between them and us (preferrably 60 years or more difference) as possible.

All in all, we must never and will never give up manned space flight.

[LibertarianInExile]

"There is a central myth about British science and economic growth, and it goes like this: science breeds wealth, Britain is in economic decline, therefore Britain has not done enough science. Actually, it is easy to show that a key cause of Britain's economic decline has been that the government has funded too much science...Post-war British science policy illustrates the folly of wasting money on research. The government decided, as it surveyed the ruins of war-torn Europe in 1945, that the future lay in computers, nuclear power and jet aircraft, so successive administrations poured money into these projects—to vast technical success. The world's first commercial mainframe computer was British, sold by Ferrranti in 1951; the world's first commercial jet aircraft was British, the Comet, in service in 1952; the first nuclear power station was British, Calder Hall, commissioned in 1956; and the world's first and only supersonic commercial jet aircraft was Anglo-French, Concorde, in service in 1976. Yet these technical advances crippled us economically, because they were so uncommercial. The nuclear generation of electricity, for example, had lost 2.1 billion pounds by 1975 (2.1 billion pounds was a lot then); Concorde had lost us, alone, 2.3 billion pounds by 1976; the Comet crashed and America now dominates computers. Had these vast sums of money not been wasted on research, we would now be a significantly richer country."
- Terence Kealey

[Atlas Sneezed]

Stop the socialist tag -- it's weighs down the rest of your comment with the lead of falsehood.

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Tell me your favorite defintion of "socialist", and we will analyze NASA.

I suspect I have gotten under your skin with more than a bit of truth about NASA.

[bvw]

No, but your either your reading comprehension or verbal expression skills are -- well -- uncertain.

[lame_internet_name]

"I happen to know enough about this one to know that you are profoundly in error, or being deceptive, and thus suspect that your other cites are equally dubious.
This passage relates to the offering of patents and copyrights to individuals who have created things, and does not authorize government to engage in scientific endeavors."

No error and no deception on my part. I did not type the full passages merely because I was very tired after refuting so much folly and false info that has appeared in this thread. I assumed that any reader interested in reading all of Article I, Section 8 could refer in their own copy to the passages I highlighted. You do have a copy of the Constitution handy, don't you?

Now, to the specifics of Article I, Section 8, paragraph 8. Since you claim to know something about this passage but failed to provide an exact quote, I will provide the full and exact paragraph for you: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" I consulted all three copies that I own to get the most accurate quotation. Obviously, 18th century grammar is quite tortured and open to ambiguity in general and in the Constitution in particular. In this case, we are fighting over the meaning of the comma before the word 'by'. It is a reasonable interpretation to say that the comma divides paragraph 8 into two separate but related phrases in which case the it can be said to mean that Congress has the authority to promote "Science and the useful Arts" and that one, but not necessarily the only means of doing so is by the granting of patents and copyrights. Such a jammed together listing of thoughts is not limited to just this paragraph in the Constitution. For example, Amendment II (written by essentially the same authors and ratified only four years later) states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." If we are to limit ourselves to your interpretation of Article 1, Section 8, paragraph 8 and assume that the comma and the word 'by' can only be interpreted to mean that the granting of patents and copyrights is the only method by which it is authorizing Congress to promote 'Science and the useful Arts', then by the same logic Amendment II can only be interpreted as only guaranteeing members of the Militia the right to keep and bear arms. Which is exactly what the gun control crowd wants us to believe, but which is quite clearly contradictory to what just about all of us strict-constructionists believe.

Of course, the above semantic arguments do not definitively answer the original question. If you would actually read your copy of the Constitution before arguing, you would see that there is nothing dubious about my other cites and in fact Article I, Section 8, paragraph 1 does in fact say "The Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imports and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imports and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;". So, all of you folks arguing about the lack of definitive power in the Preamble were wasting your breath. Providing for the general welfare is a specific legal obligation of Congress. Furhtermore, the last paragraph of Section 8, "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." pretty clearly gives Congress carte blanche to define what 'general welfare' specifically means.

From a strict constructionist point of view, what we are left with is determining what the authors of the Constitution meant by 'providing for the general welfare' and 'promoting progress'. There is not a clear cut way to do that, but one of the most direct methods is to look at what the principle author, Thomas Jefferson, did as President. One of his most notable acts in the area of 'general welfare' was to persuade Congress to fund the Louisiana Purchase and the subsequent Corps of Discovery to go learn about it. A highly controversial move at the time, the opposition to which on constitutional grounds helped lead to the political self destruction of Jefferson's opponents. The purchase and exploration are clearly analogous to the present day mission of NASA.

In fact, as I have stated elsewhere in this thread, if you interpret the Constitution to specifically forbid funding NASA, then you are also saying that it specifically forbids the funding of the vast majority of the undertakings of the executive branch, many of which activities where started when Congress was still controlled by the original authors of the Constitution. At no time during our history has a President, Congress, or Supreme Court supported a broad interpretation of the meaning of 'general welfare' that is sufficiently restrictive for you to find a specific prohibition against the existence of NASA. (By the way, including it's predecessor NACA, NASA has been in existence for almost half the age of our present government.) What's more, such an interpretation would be so restrictive as to have limited so much of the activity of the federal government, that with historical hindsight we can say it is nearly certain that the country would have ceased to exist so long ago that nobody alive today would even care.

Ultimately, even if your interpretation were accepted, if Congress wished to continue funding NASA, all they would have to do is authorize it with an Amendment and it would be constitutionally justified by definition. That would be unfortunate though as we would end up with hundreds or thousands of amendments in order to justify all the necessary functions of the federal government in the modern world. Better to keep the Constitution pure and accept the blanket coverage of 'general welfare'.

You are welcome to your opinion on how to interpret the Constitution of course, but keep in mind that you are in a very small minority, even among strict constructionists, and therefore by the rules of the Constitution, your opinion will not prevail.

[lame_internet_name]

"Tell me your favorite defintion of "socialist", and we will analyze NASA. "

Socialist, capitalist, whateverist, call it anything you want. The fact remains it is acceptable by the Constitution and desired a majority of the representatives of the voters, which are the only issues that matter. The labels are just name calling intended to generate an emotional response in the absence of logical argument.

[JeffersonRepublic.com]

I wonder if the author is willing to fly in a commerical airplane? Many more have die during the evolution of fight then the people aboard the Space Shuttle.

I agree that the shuttle shouldn't be flying humans. We separate humans and cargo into specialize spaceships.

Holtz
JeffersonRepublic.com

[commonasdirt]

Private Industry, if given the freedom and possible tax considerations to do so, would have given us a system that could be turned around practically vernight and with much less cost per pound. The space shuttle was built by the congress and senate with each member having pork for heir state or dtrict as the main considertion. A costly,over engineered, limited capability piece of crap.

[SunkenCiv]

BDB, eh?

[RightWhale]

Don't forget that military apps were the primary consideration. Pork is a given.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Socialist, capitalist, whateverist, call it anything you want.

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Sorry, but words mean things.

[lame_internet_name]

"Private Industry, if given the freedom and possible tax considerations to do so, would have given us a system that could be turned around practically vernight and with much less cost per pound."

I am sick and tired of this myth as it gets us nowhere by obscuring the truth. Private industry has all the freedom it needs to develop spaceflight without government funds and always has had. It is an absolute untruth to state that the government has ever prevented the development of privately funded spaceflight anytime in any way.

The things standing in the way of privately funded spaceflight are that it is extremely expensive, difficult, and risky and nobody has yet shown a high enough probability of developing a profitable market to convince investors to put up the necessary money. Over the years, many people have tried to attract investors, often with a bit of initial success, but as soon as they figure out how hard it really is and how much money it is really going to take, they all run away. There are a few out there that are giving it a try right now and I wish them all the luck and hope they have the guts to stick with it. So far nobody has, which is why the spaceflight community has always turned to government funding so far to actually get anything done. Only the government can afford to loose the huge sums of money required on the vague hope of a payoff in the distant future.

It's hardly a unique situation though; government funding has been necessary to jump start many industries, such as railroads, truck and automotive, all forms of telecom from telegraphs to telephones to radio to TV to the internet, air travel, mass production agriculture, computers, inland and ocean water transport, etc. In fact, almost every single industry that exists today was primed in some significant way by government funding.

The real question that everybody in this thread should be asking is why hasn't the government investment in spaceflight to date been more effective at helping private industry to develop a viable market. One big reason has been the history of continuing to pour money into operating the shuttle instead of developing new vehicles that correct for the hard lessons learned so far. That is exactly what the new direction President Bush gave NASA last year is supposed to do.

[Dick Bachert]

As I watched a recent documentary about NASA's billion dollar effort to prevent precisely what happened on this launch, it hit me that virtually EVERYTHING on which NASA was spending that taxpayer money was so the shuttle could return more like a meteor than an airship.

Rutan -- working with far fewer resources than NASA -- recently sent a small ship into space and brought it safely back to earth with a "feather" wing arrangement. His ship reenters the atmosphere floating like a feather until close enough to enable its control surfaces. The benefit? NO HEAT!!

If the shuttle IS retired early and NASA doesn’t put Rutan to work designing the NEXT generation of craft - larger, of course -- heads should roll at NASA.