One cheer for the President's space plan

> After having read the full text of his speech, I belive that the
> question that the President was trying to answer is "Why are we spending
> $15 Billion a year on NASA?". He wasn't trying to start a new national
> crash priority program. NASA was between projects which is a very bad
> time for NASA. It is difficult to justify their spending when there is
> not a current project underway. (The International Space Station
> development is winding down or is complete and it was dreamed up during
> the last between project period.) So I see this as nothing more than
> providing a reason for NASA's existence. Nothing to get excited about.
> It was mostly to keep the congress from cutting the current budget.
> The most interesting part of the address was the reference to using
> lunar resources. It maybe that all the organizations pushing this are
> having some effect.
> Mitchell James

I think you are right in terms of asking that question, but as with many
other programs Bush praises and then cuts, maybe this is very bad news
for NASA. See for example:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/11/ma_559_01.html
"But then, in what is becoming a recurring, almost nightmare-type
scenario, the minute he visits some constructive program and praises it
(AmeriCorps, the Boys and Girls Club, job training), he turns around and
cuts the budget for it. It's the kiss of death if the president comes to
praise your program. During the presidential debate in Boston in 2000,
Bush said, "First and foremost, we've got to make sure we fully fund
LIHEAP [the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program], which is a way
to help low-income folks, particularly here in the East, pay their high
fuel bills." He then sliced $300 million out of that sucker, even as
people were dying of hypothermia, or, to put it bluntly, freezing to
death. Sometimes he even cuts your program before he comes to praise it.
In August 2002, Bush held a photo op with the Quecreek coal miners, the
nine men whose rescue had thrilled the country. By then he had already
cut the coal-safety budget at the Mine Safety and Health Administration,
which engineered the rescue, by 6 percent, and had named a coal-industry
executive to run the agency."

Some people are suggesting this new space proposal is a trojan horse
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61937,00.html%3Ftw%3Dwn_tophead_3
(see second page in the article)
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61937-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
"Pike said he was skeptical of the administration's motives in
articulating the moon-Mars plan. He noted that a new moon landing would
not take place until at least 11 years after the end of a possible
second Bush term. He went so far as to indicate that the plan is a
Trojan Horse for killing the shuttle and station -- and that the
moon-Mars initiative will never materialize beyond "paying contractors
for artwork. ... They've looked at the manned space program and come to
the conclusion that they don't understand why we have a manned space
program," Pike said. "So they're going to wind it down, and Bush gets
credit for launching a bold new adventure."

So, NASA can now kill the shuttle and ISS (good riddance I'd say in some
respects compared to expendable rockets or other old/new launch ideas
and true habitats or at least experiments on rotating structures) and
shut down various other NASA centers as part of a reorganization -- but
in the end nothing will replace them (and a chunk of NASA's budget then
can get reduced or reallocated to other government agencies). [The one
really good thing about the ISS is as a forum for international
cooperation, but I think the costs is much higher than other
alternatives...]

By the way, it is just so frustrating to me that so many people are
talking about spending so much money to land on Mars when the same
amount of money spent on realizing self-replicating space habitats etc.
could give us them plus then Mars on the cheap as an afterthought. There
is such a disconnect between whim and practicality here in all these
space activity advocates. Why have we [meaning anyone ever connected
with SSI in any way etc.] so failed to educate scientists and the public
about the future of humanity in space [too busy fighting over SSPS?] --
why has Zubrin etc. so captivated mindshare with comparatively
impoverished goals of flags and footprints? Yes, I guess Zubrin builds
on sci-fi novels which are mostly based on planets, particularly pulp
sci-fi about Mars, but it is so sad. Get real, a few people spend years
in a tiny capsule to Mars and back for one trip for a trillion dollars?
When we could have that for cheap if we already had habitats (starting
with near Earth asteroid materials)? Even just look at the stupid
physics -- everyone going on now about how it is cheaper in terms of
less gravity to overcome to launch to Mars from the Moon than from the
Earth -- when it is cheapest to start such a mission from being in space
apart from on any surface. In high orbit (or L5), you are half way to
anywhere. What a difficult planet-centered mindset to deal with. [Having
said that, I can probably still see value in a lunar mass driver and
related operations as essentially a mining operation, although I think
launches of raw material [not people!] from Earth by mass drivers or
equivalent are also possible substitutes (essentially, streams of BBs
launched into space as 100Gs from a mountain top mass driver or cannon
and collected in space somehow [electrostatics?]).]

By the way, this I think is one reason the US can't afford space
exploration -- obsolete technology such as poorly insulated housing
wasting money:
http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzoil0116,0,6779804.story?coll=ny-business-headlines
"Dealers say many homeowners are finding burners simply cannot keep up
with the heat loss that occurs in single digit temperatures, either
because of underinsulated walls, leaky windows and doors or the heating
plant is not powerful enough for the home's size. "Many houses aren't
built for this type of cold," said Mike Mahlstedt, of Advance Fuel
Service in Wantagh."

Many other US processes are wasteful as well -- especially inefficient
cars, but also a heavily subsidized fossil fuel dependent non-"organic"
agriculture. So I'd say, help people rebuild their homes, cars, farms,
etc., and then use the hundreds of billions in annual cost savings
(after a decade to recoup the investment) of avoided energy use to fund
space settlement.

The point overall -- as a society we need to look at our investment
strategies in new technologies. Given the long time scales of space
exploration and huge costs to do things in an ass-backwards way (Mars
mission before thinking about self-replicating space settlements), it
makes more sense to make things work here on Earth first, and then use
the surplus in a decade or so to have ventures in space. I think it more
likely that many trillions spent on Earth on advancing consumer
technologies (like nanotech insulation) will provide a big boost to
technology that can be used in space as opposed to hoping a few tens of
billions on space technology will provide a big boost to on Earth
systems. After all, we didn't get *really* fancy portable computers like
the Zaurus from NASA, but from incremental commercial research aimed at
cutting costs and increasing quality. Maybe the whole "NASA spinoffs"
thing is a lot of hype, covering up a lack of R&D in basic research by
the rest of society? Perhaps NASA would be better doing what it can
using more off the shelf technology (like the IBM ThinkPads used on the
shuttle)? Of course IMHO the government should fund more open source /
freely non-patented consumer oriented R&D such as in insulation, PV,
nanotech, home food production, etc. and I guess the fear is that
without NASA or DARPA the US government won't fund much technology R&D
at all (outside of NIST, who I think do really cool stuff!). It doesn't
help that NASA tries to sell many of its innovations (patents and
copyrights) to businesses, forcing the public to pay twice for them.

Personally I do think NASA can be innovative when it operates the right
way -- and the 1980 summer study on "Advanced Automation for Space
Missions" was an example
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
It is too bad NASA always seems hobbled from moving forward with that
1980 idea -- although from talking with NASA people around NASA's
automation program at the SSI conferences, I think the "mars bug" is
helping keep innovation down as NASA (as well as an ill-informed
Congress and misguided "golden fleece" awards). So, I might suggest a
"Mars Flu" (as opposed to "Mars Bug") is one of the things consistently
keeping the US space effort on the wrong path. It is sometimes a hard
message to get across; see for example my 1996/11/16 usenet post "Is
Zubrin's Mars & space science correct and complete?" and related comments:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&th4310d7c921cc14&rnum=1

To be clear -- this is not to say I think visiting Mars or living there
if you are so inclined is wrong -- just that it is a very expensive
hobby which should happen after a core self-replicating industry exists
in space based on asteroids or lunar materials and sunlight (and that
space industry might best flow out of being able to use similar
technology already on Earth to resolve potential resource conflicts).

--Paul Fernhout