Althouse: Obama squelches the moon mission.

January 27, 2010

Obama squelches the moon mission.

Good!

251 comments:

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traditionalguy said...: Our entry into the war with Germany in 1942 was first for the reason that we needed to stop their nuclear bomb program. We did it, but just barely in time, before their jet aircraft and their guided missiles could have caused a stalemate until the German nuclear program was completed. It was a race. Japan was our excuse, and they even got two nuclear bombs used on them three months after Patton's Army drove into Bavaria, which was one more bomb than we had U-235 to build in May, 1945.; 1/27/10, 1:08 PM
Robert Cook said...: If you can argue that WWII was unneccesary, then you simply prove my point more fully than I did. I can see that WWII was--not a "good" war, as no war is good--but at least justified and probably necessary, even as I assert that no other war we've fought has been even arguably necessary. If you think even WWII was a mere tempest in a teapot, a storm that would blow over--a facile opinion easy to mouth over half a century after Hitler's decisive defeat--then surely you must dismiss all our other wars, including our present several, as being mere shams.

So much for my peaceful sleep being bought with the lives of rough men and all that. As Smedly Butler put it, "War is a Racket!"; 1/27/10, 1:09 PM
MadisonMan said...: Mahal, give up on the global warming. The conspiracy was unmasked.

Yet the 2000-2009 decade was the warmest on record. Link.; 1/27/10, 1:11 PM
Scott M said...: @Robert

I'm not disputing the necessity of WWII or even the manner in which it was fought by the Allies...brutally by today's standards. (as an aside, I believe any time we fight, we should fight as WWII was fought and that was all out, to win).

I'm disagreeing primarily with your claim we fought BOTH Japan and Germany from a defensive posture. That is simply not the case.; 1/27/10, 1:13 PM
Robert Cook said...: "...I don't remember us attacking "Afghanistan." And for that matter, I don't remember us attacking "Iraq" either."

And yet, oddly, we're in both countries, (among others now), dropping bombs and shooting people.

Funny, that.; 1/27/10, 1:13 PM
Nichevo said...: Blogger Ann Althouse said...

Grow up, boys. It's not worth it. In money or in carbon emissions. Don't send people to space. Send robots. The rest is romantic adventure. Not with my tax money.
1/27/10 7:59 AM

Let me speak for those holding it in:

...no, let me also rein it in, but let me just say this:

Where'd they grow you?

I have physical pain from reading this drivel. (BTW guys you generally mean "drivel," not "dribble," when referring to people talking rancid nonsense like this.)

Althouse - Ann - Annie -

please promise us you'll stop voting.

PS JK if she's JK.; 1/27/10, 1:18 PM
Anonymous said...: Apart from limiting NASA's role in commercial or manned space flight, there is another change in emphasis that may have escaped readers. NASA is being directed to turn more of its attention to monitoring climate change. Instead of looking outward to space it will now look downward at earth, merging its mission with that of sister agency NOAA.

I think one can therefore reasonably foresee that with a constrained budget NASA will be able to afford less support for basic space science, including astronomy and astrophysics. Currently, NASA is the major funding source for university space scientists and their graduate students, much more so than is NSF. So, for those of you who enjoy things like the glorious pictures from Hubble, enjoy them while you can, because after the next few missions that are already in the funding pipeline, there may not be any others for a very, very long time.

As for any future graduate students who might be looking for careers in science, if NASA's support for basic space research dries up, you'll just have to go to law school instead. You can never have enough lawyers, right?

WV: typerpho -- write about Vietnamese soup?; 1/27/10, 1:19 PM
Scott M said...: @Madison Man

What would you say to someone that says winter 2008-2009 was one of the warmest on record, only to find out that person was taking the 15 warmest days from November through the end of February and using that data as their average?; 1/27/10, 1:19 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Of course it is. So is "you must travel barefoot and live a mud hut without electricity" if you simply believe the earth is warming, based on thermometer readings and visual evidence.

Well right now garage my thermometer reading says 29 degrees. This morning it was 10. The retention pond in my neighborhood has been frozen over for some time now thus based upon your criteria, the Earth isn't warming.

But I wasn't suggesting you go barefoot or forego electricity. I'm only saying if you believe in man-made global warming, driving a carbon emitting automobile is a bit reckless.; 1/27/10, 1:19 PM
Synova said...: Skyler... I think we had to oppose Japan and I think they would have taken a lot of real estate before they stopped, but they were not a threat to US. They would have expanded and then spent a generation or so digesting the new territory. Their antagonism toward China was far more important than we ever could have been to them. Hawaii wasn't even a state, but we could have held them Hawaii.

It probably would have been the wrong thing to do in the long term, but it would have reduced the carnage significantly, more than significantly, to come to terms and take an *actual* defensive stand in Hawaii and on our own territory.

We had Oceans on both sides of us. We could have built up our defenses and capabilities and defended the home front and quite realistically not faced a threat on our home soil from either Japan or Germany.

Cook's little fantasies disgust me because he's using WW2 as some sort of moral bludgeon to pretend that his view of every war since then, and particularly the Gulf Wars are based on some rational and factual basis, and it's not.

In any case, perhaps you can be our Afghan correspondent when you go there again.

And as for space... the best way to ensure peace is to occupy the high ground, and it doesn't get much higher. ;-); 1/27/10, 1:21 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: If you think even WWII was a mere tempest in a teapot, a storm that would blow over--a facile opinion easy to mouth over half a century after Hitler's decisive defeat--then surely you must dismiss all our other wars, including our present several, as being mere shams.

Never said that at all. Merely pointed out that Hitler wasn't a threat to the United States.

On the other hand, 17 Islamic terrorists, operating from a supporting country, were able to kill more American civilians on American soil than the 3rd Reich and Nazi Germany could. So if going after Islamic terrorists is a sham, then you're pretty much beyond rational thought.; 1/27/10, 1:23 PM
Tibore said...: "Scott M said...
@Tibore

How very un-PC of you to cite Lucifer's Hammer. Niven and Pournelle (the best of the old guard, IMHO), through their characters, pretty much declared the end of feminism which died "about a second after Hammerfall."

Shame, shame..."

Hehe... just call me Anti PC. :D

Thing is, that is the only Niven or Pournelle work I've ever read. I really need to get more books by those ole coots; they make for some interesting reading.; 1/27/10, 1:24 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: I meant to say the 3rd Reich and Imperial Japan.; 1/27/10, 1:24 PM
Nichevo said...: If I said "let's kill all the lawyers," would that be taken as a threat against the President?

This reminds me of the Chinese turning their back on global exploration after the whole triumphant eunuch treasure fleet deal.

PS: 500 years later China was a colonial plaything. 500 years from now, people probably won't believe the US could build a ship as large as an aircraft carrier.; 1/27/10, 1:24 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Yet the 2000-2009 decade was the warmest on record. Link.

MadMan the issue is whether man is causing the warming not whether the planet is warming or cooling.; 1/27/10, 1:26 PM
Scott M said...: @Trooper

Oh I thought it was about Star Trek.

Well, Star Trek Online comes out next Tuesday. We could talk about how underwhelming it is.; 1/27/10, 1:32 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Of course it is. So is "you must travel barefoot and live a mud hut without electricity" if you simply believe the earth is warming, based on thermometer readings and visual evidence.

But I wasn't suggesting you go barefoot or forego electricity. I'm only saying if you believe in man-made global warming you should be driving a Prius like DiCaprio. Or better yet take public transportation.

What are you doing to save the planet?; 1/27/10, 1:35 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Well, Star Trek Online comes out next Tuesday. We could talk about how underwhelming it is.

World of Warcraft is where its at.; 1/27/10, 1:36 PM
Joe said...: The manned space program has been romantic, but otherwise has been a near total flop technologically and scientifically. It has advanced our knowledge of things, but there have been very few usably things that have come out of the program.

Detailed studies of the claims of the manned space program have demolished the claims that the manned space program has significantly improved many technologies. In addition, the ROI of those improvements has been dismal.

The unmanned space programs still don't have a great ROI compared to other sciences, but it's magnitudes higher than that of the manned programs.

The ISS has been a complete waste of money. It has accomplished almost no science and what it has done could have been done much cheaper in other KNOWN ways. It's such a failure that NASA wants to de-orbit it ASAP. Compare that to the Mars rovers which have exceeded every expectation and then some. Hubble has been nothing short of amazing. The Webb telescope will be even more exciting.

For now, until we can get cost to orbit WAY down and find a concrete scientific reason to do anything manned, let's continue the robotic missions.; 1/27/10, 1:38 PM
MadisonMan said...: Hoosier, I'm not commenting on causes. Just the actual data. Don't blame me for other commenter's imprecise words :)

To answer Scott M: that's an interesting metric -- measuring the climate by the extreme temperatures. So are they claiming that that winter's 15 warmest days were the warmest? I'd be curious to see how the 15 warmest days in a season have changed in the past 100 or so years. It's certainly not the standard, but it could show something interesting. I love finding new ways to parse data. Call me geeky.; 1/27/10, 1:39 PM
Skyler said...: Synova wrote: Skyler... I think we had to oppose Japan and I think they would have taken a lot of real estate before they stopped, but they were not a threat to US

Synova, Hawaii was part of the United States. As were Wake Island, Midway Island, and the Aleutians. The Philipines were in some kind of quasi territorial commonwealth status.

These islands were us. A threat to them was a threat to us. Therefore, Japan was a very active threat to us.

Or should we just abandon our fellow Americans and territories whenever someone wants to attack them?

Nichevo, I'm not sure if this is correct, but I believe that B. Hussein never sat for the bar exam, therefore he never was a lawyer. Law professor of sorts, but not a lawyer. I may be wrong.; 1/27/10, 1:41 PM
Scott M said...: @MadisonMan

My point was more to the fact that the researcher unapologetically contended that his data was drawn from the 15 warmest days from November through the end of February for winter data. To my certainly limited knowledge, winter doesn't start until Dec 21.

WV - "idiphope" A mobile 3G devise used primarily by idiots and mispellers.; 1/27/10, 1:47 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Hoosier, I'm not commenting on causes. Just the actual data. Don't blame me for other commenter's imprecise words :)

I'm not. That is the problem with the topic. It's not whether the planet is warming, its whether humans are causing it and need to spend trillions of dollars we don't have in what amounts to a wealth re-distribution scheme in order to 'combat it'.

Considering the technological innovations that have come from the space program, one would think that would be a prime place to find new sources of energy.; 1/27/10, 1:47 PM
Original Mike said...: I love finding new ways to parse data.

Or presenting it, right? Let's see, if I take this snippet of that data set, and insert it into this series right about there ...; 1/27/10, 1:47 PM
Sofa King said...: Hubble has been nothing short of amazing. The Webb telescope will be even more exciting.

Do you understand this means we will not have a crew launch vehicle at all? Don't you know that without the capacity to launch men into space, Hubble would have been a catastrophic disaster?; 1/27/10, 1:51 PM
Trooper York said...: If we drop space exploration, then what will red blooded American men do in the future?; 1/27/10, 1:58 PM
Original Mike said...: "Do you understand this means we will not have a crew launch vehicle at all?"

There was this in the article:

"They also said that the White House plans to extend the life of the International Space Station to at least 2020. One insider said there would be an "attractive sum" of money — to be spent over several years — for private companies to make rockets to carry astronauts there."

Money for private companies to make rockets to carry astronauts there??? The shuttle is being retired when? This year? I don't think these boys have gantt charted this thing out.; 1/27/10, 2:00 PM
Trooper York said...: I mean alien babes are the only chance some of your nerds have. Just sayn'; 1/27/10, 2:02 PM
MadisonMan said...: Meteorological winter is routinely called DJF -- December, January, February. Don't be lead astray by orbital things like solstice and equinox.

It's not standard to include November in that set of three months. I wonder why they would do that. The warmest days will almost certainly be in early December, and late February -- depending on location. If you include November, you're just gonna look at warm days in November. Not very interesting.; 1/27/10, 2:03 PM
MadisonMan said...: Let's see, if I take this snippet of that data set, and insert it into this series right about there ...

Which data set is more accurate?; 1/27/10, 2:04 PM
Original Mike said...: If I'm allowed to cut and splice to my heart's content, I can make it as accurate as you want.; 1/27/10, 2:07 PM
Scott M said...: I think we can all agree on one thing. If we were all liberals and very passionate about space exploration, we would immediately demand congressional legislation declaring war on space exploration.

WV - "annesses" - plural form of a word in the Modern Feminist Dictionary describing the womyn's solid waste orifice.; 1/27/10, 2:07 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: I think we can all agree on one thing. If we were all liberals and very passionate about space exploration, we would immediately demand congressional legislation declaring war on space exploration.

For the children of course.; 1/27/10, 2:15 PM
Anonymous said...: Can't I just drink my Tang?; 1/27/10, 2:36 PM
Trooper York said...: How long is this thread going to go Duran Duran

I mean go on and on. Sorry.; 1/27/10, 2:45 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Trooper York said... "Grow up boys! hippies have always hated space exploration."

Holy Owsley! That hippie reminds me of Meade.; 1/27/10, 2:54 PM
Big Mike said...: I went off to do some work and the thread has not only run away, but stopped being about space exploration.

If this thread ever gets back to outer space (now there's a strange thing to write!) then I'd like to remind everyone that the NASA of today is very different from the one that single-mindedly pursued the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. In the 1950's and 1960's NASA had precisely one goal: get the US into space and thence to the moon. Today's NASA couldn't list all of their goals on a 1 terabyte hard drive, even if they used compression. There are goals for diversity, goals for creating jobs and spending money in the districts and states of the best-connected politicians, goals for this, goals for that, and on and on. And by the time the press and politicians were through, the goal of actually getting human beings on the moon for extended periods of time and safely home again would be down near the very bottom of the list.

Mankind will someday get back to the moon, but it will be done by private individuals with the profit motive -- by people risking their own money and their own lives. Not by the US government.; 1/27/10, 2:57 PM
Trooper York said...: "Holy Owsley! That hippie reminds me of Meade."

Right. Especially his forehead!; 1/27/10, 3:08 PM
X said...: We stand on the edge of No Frontier; 1/27/10, 3:13 PM
Steven said...: I am a major believer in the need for space flight. The threat of asteroids alone means a species either becomes interplanetary or extinct. The possibilities of near-earth asteroid mining and space solar power are resource solutions for effectively forever instead of the next couple centuries. Mars has at least the long-term potential to be a second basket, able to support human life independently from Earth. This is stuff that should be near the top of the priority list, not NEA grants and totally ineffective Head Start bullshit.

But Constellation and Ares are a mess. Hell, U.S. manned spaceflight since the shutdown of Apollo has been a mess. The future is private manned spaceflight, not NASA.; 1/27/10, 3:41 PM
Synova said...: "These islands were us. A threat to them was a threat to us. Therefore, Japan was a very active threat to us."

We got the Philippines from Spain who got them from China (maybe) who got them from someone else who got them from the people of the Philippines. The people in the Philippines would/did vastly prefer us, I'm sure. And we did have obligations to them. But, but, but... the fact that we did not keep them and the Philippines is not now one of the United States (though maybe they'd have preferred that as well) suggests that the Philippines really belonged to itself and not to us.

Our "ownership" of the little islands across the Pacific was a technicality of territory and expansionism. Not wrong, that, and we'll be sorry I'm sure that we've ceded so much of what could be serious strategic positioning (and probably will in Iraq and Afganistan, too, which is a shame).

But that is more or less irrelevant to the fact that our obligations are something different than US soil. We could have withdrawn and not faced a threat on US soil.

That's not the point.

Japan and Germany did pose a threat to us, and certainly, at some point, martial conquest and empire had to be stopped. It *had* to be. It's probably significant that the end of WW2 involved drawing up (often in erratic ways, but that's a different issue) national bounderies for pretty much the entire world... saying *these* are your territories... *these* are your borders. Lines in the sand.

Unfortunately, we made some mistakes since then by thinking we could push back someone like Saddam to his *border* when he strayed and think we were done.

WW2 needed to be fought and it needed to be won and it needed to be fought by us... but not because it was *our* territories being taken over, even if it meant bringing ourselves to those wars instead of waiting for them to come to us, to go on the offensive rather than defend our borders and no more. A fortress mentality would not do. The world had become too connected.

Islamic fundamentalism and regional unrest in the middle east is a threat to us as well. The world is too connected, far more than 70 years ago. Live and let live only works if both sides are cooperating, and the terrorists and extremists in the middle east demonstrated they weren't willing to leave it at threats and posturing.

That's why isolationism doesn't work. And why we had to be certain that a new line was drawn.

And, hate to say it, what will probably get us in space in the end is when someone *else* goes up there and refuses to play nice. The risk is too great to allow it and no number of international treaties about banning the militarization of space will stop one loony with a big rock.

And no, Cook, we do not have to *wait* until after the loony drops the rock on one of *our* cities before we start blowing sh*t up.; 1/27/10, 4:19 PM
MadisonMan said...: The best reason for Space Exploration is the asteroid avoidance one. If that were NASA's sole mission, I think they'd do a great job at it. (I also think that's a logical use of Govt resources).

However, as pointed out, NASA's mission has grown to cover just about everything possible. Typical of a bureaucracy. Obama should restrict NASA's mission to Asteroid Disaster Prevention. Let the climate monies flow from NSF or DOE or ONR.; 1/27/10, 4:51 PM
Jim Howard said...: 'Hitler was never a threat to us.'

Not even after HE declared war on US?; 1/27/10, 4:52 PM
Joe M. said...: Grow up, boys. It's not worth it. In money or in carbon emissions. Don't send people to space. Send robots. The rest is romantic adventure. Not with my tax money.

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, Althouse.; 1/27/10, 6:24 PM
Synova said...: "Not even after HE declared war on US?"

*sigh*

Not by Robert Cook's definition of what it takes to fight a defensive war. A declaration of war is just a piece of paper. In fact, Bin Laden issued a rather lengthy and elaborate declaration of war a few years before 9-11. Hitler probably had less capacity to bring the war to us than Bin Laden proved that he had, which was a considerable ability to strike our country.

But I'm trying to go by Cook's standards here, of what it means to be a "threat" to the US.; 1/27/10, 6:31 PM
Synova said...: I'm going to agree with MadisonMan. Let NASA concentrate on asteroid defense. Though I think it would be okay if the super asteroid detection telescopes could be used occasionally by other scientists, and the lift capabilities used by industry. It would lend a great deal of focus and efficiency... singleness of purpose if the side-line stuff stayed side-line.

But I also think that we'd need to open the gates for non-government exploration and exploitation.; 1/27/10, 6:36 PM
Robert Cook said...: Those who argue here that we had no need to enter WWII while at the same time asserting that bin Laden and Al Qaeda are a greater threat, an existential threat to our existence where Hitler was not, are either paranoid, panicked by hysterical fear, too willing to accept fear-mongering propaganda, or willfully dishonest.

If the threat to us posed by the Axis powers did not require our military response and engagement, then surely NO other war we've ever engaged in was necessary or justified. If this is so, then the endless panegyrics to the "rough men" who buy our peaceful sleep through their sacrifices of life and limb, by their willingness to do violence, are simply lies. (And, they mostly are, which was my point.); 1/28/10, 6:22 AM
Antisocial said...: The dinosaurs would have fared a lot better if they had had an adequate space program.; 1/30/10, 5:37 PM
Brian said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/1/10, 1:37 PM
Brian said...: The Chinese will probably make it to the moon in the next decade, thus making America look weak to the rest of the world.
A new and young generation from every country on the planet that had not witnessed the old moon missions, will then look up with amazement and see China as the stronger and more advanced nation.
The damage to America's image will certainly be great.

So long, America; 2/1/10, 1:56 PM
Term Papers said...: I agree with all the above comments.

Term paper; 2/24/10, 4:56 AM