Kerry's position on space *2* - ...continue discussion here (for now)

Josh Cryer · 2004-09-10 12:47:34

Hey guys, locking the other Kerry thread due to 300 post limit, sorry for being a bit late at it.

Please continue discussion here.

deagleninja · 2004-09-10 13:13:20

Oh ok, I thought someone had something horrible hehe. Glad it's just a technical problem. Anyone read that article where Kerry said NASA isn't getting enough funding?

Euler · 2004-09-10 14:12:43

John Kerry has detailed plans for most issues on his website johnkerry.com. However, there is not much about NASA. The most relevant statement that I could find was:

John Kerry will boost support for the physical sciences and engineering by increasing research investments in agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

I get the feeling that while Kerry sees the value of technology development and spinoffs from the space program, he does not seem very excited about space exploration for its own sake.

For NASA's budget, Kerry has said that he wants increases in discretionary government spending(except defense, healthcare and education, which make up most of the discretionary budget anyway) will be limited to inflation. NASA probably falls into this category, so we can expect the budget to keep pace with inflation as it has for the last 30 years. Based on Kerry's statements, I think that he would concentrate more of the budget on R&D and less on actually doing things. I don't think he would support Plan Bush

Euler · 2004-09-11 00:28:53

The latest Discover magazine has an article called "Bush and Kerry on Science." In the Space subsection it says:

KERRY: The senator is a member of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has juristiction over the authorization of NASA's budget. "I'm excited by the potential advances in pharmaceuticals that microgravity could lead to," he told Space News in June. He said that the space program is "an engine of innovation for the entire country," adding that the benefits are enourmous. Although they are difficult to quantify, he says, they are "even harder to discount."
BUT: THe senator's legislative involvement with space issues has been negligible, and he has fewer specific programs for space exploration than his opponent. On the campaign trail, he has sniped at Bush's moon-Mars ambitions, charging that the goals far exceed the funding available, thus compelling such decisions as abandoning the Hubble telescope. "The most critical element of our space program," Kerry told Space News, "should be reducing the costs and increasing the reliability of transportation to and from low Earth orbit," goals he says the president has neglected.

deagleninja · 2004-09-11 01:43:21

Thanks Euler! Well, he does have a point. We are never going to build enough infastructure in space if we don't find a way to 'reduce the cost while increasing the reliability to and from LEO.'

This has been a beef of mine of PlanBush's. If buisness goes as usual, NASA is going to award more money to Boeing or LockMartin to research more rocket options for a CEV.

comstar03 · 2004-09-11 02:49:58

deagleninja,

WOW, I had that same discussion before, in the CEV topic, they are not for low cost reusable vehicle vs continuous throw-away rockets. We need to develop a airline type space program to move people and small cargo to and from space rapidly, easily, and cost effectively.

deagleninja · 2004-09-11 08:59:06

Or just develop cheap disposables like the Falcon

SpaceNut · 2004-09-15 19:51:48

Bush, Kerry Go Head to Head on Science
I have not had a chance to read it yet but it looks like an interview with both.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040 … kerry.html

Commodore · 2004-09-15 20:08:59

Bush, Kerry Go Head to Head on Science
I have not had a chance to read it yet but it looks like an interview with both.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040 … kerry.html

Its a bunch of prepared statments from there campaigns offices.

Kerry has no vision to compete with what Bush has offered. Without a goal, and with the terminal nature of the shuttle, US manned space flight would probably die under Kerry.

deagleninja · 2004-09-16 06:10:02

You could argue that it has died under Bush actually. We haven't had a flight since the Columbia accident and all Bush did was shake his head and say 'tragic'.

Once again, people don't be fooled by republicans using faulty logic. Challengers for the presidency rarely have any position on space becuase they almost always come from a state with no interest in it. Difference is, this election, we also have an incumbent that has no record to stand by....

Cobra Commander · 2004-09-16 06:15:34

Difference is, this election, we also have an incumbent that has no record to stand by....

Well, except for that whole "vision thing" and reorganizing NASA toward a form that might actually get something done. :;):

George Bush is not the Great White Hope of manned space exploration by any stretch, but he has more of a positive record in that regard than we've seen for a long time.

deagleninja · 2004-09-16 06:22:25

Well Good Morning Cobra, that was fast!

Don't get me wrong, a 'vision thing' is better than nothing, but not by much. My beef with Bush is that he couldn't have picked a worse time to share his 'visions'. If he could have made his speech a month after Columbia it would have had much more impact and support than it did two years later.

I will never understand why our soilders need the BEST equipment to safeguard their lives and NASA is using defective out-of-date hardware that no one should be using in their right minds.

Cobra Commander · 2004-09-16 06:38:21

I will never understand why our soilders need the BEST equipment to safeguard their lives and NASA is using defective out-of-date hardware that no one should be using in their right minds.

If we militarized space we wouldn't have this problem now would we? :;): :laugh:

But yes, the Bush "vision" is a long way from a "plan" and further still from a program. But decades of institutional inertia need to be overcome, it takes time. No one can realistically get us out of LEO in the next four years regardless, but it's possible to in that time ground us for the next twenty.

So were I voting solely on space issues (which of course I'm not) I'd be forced to the conclusion that we're faced with "vague vision for Moon and Mars" versus "vague sense of wasting money."

SpaceNut · 2004-09-16 10:32:47

Bush and Kerry battle over science
The leading international science journal Nature has focussed the US presidential election campaign on science by asking both President George Bush and Senator John Kerry for their views on the major issues.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natu … .stm#space

The major questions:
Stem-cell research
Climate change
New nuclear weapons
Missile defence
Manned space exploration
GM crops
US lifestyles

deagleninja · 2004-09-16 23:41:01

Thanks for the link SpaceNut, and quite revealing. Kerry and my own opinions on those 15 questions match up very nicely.

SpaceNut · 2004-09-20 09:14:09

Russian news story on voting machines.

Is there a connection between Bush and the makers of the electronic voting machines?

http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/101 … oting.html
This election is rigged and Bush will win no matter what.

deagleninja · 2004-09-21 22:59:58

Great news for all you Bush backers! Nasa has been approved for 200 million more than Bush requested!!

Now there is no good reason to vote for Bush! Yay!

SpaceNut · 2004-10-01 12:33:12

"Bush Wants To Go To Mars"

An ProjectConstellation.US editorial exclusive, wrote to express frustration about the repeated use of this phrase by pundits, politicians, and the public.

http://www.projectconstellation.us/arti … -mars.html

SpaceNut · 2004-10-01 12:49:59

The bush kerry view on science.
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/000245.html#more

wgc · 2004-10-08 06:23:32

Great news for all you Bush backers! Nasa has been approved for 200 million more than Bush requested!!
Now there is no good reason to vote for Bush! Yay!

Kerry openly opposes the program.

I wasn't going to take a position on the outcome but here it is, try not to flame me to much.

enjoy

http://sol3.typepad.com]A vote for Kerry is a vote against Space?

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-08 08:44:46

I don't think you realize how big a move it was to declare that Shuttle just had to go and the implicit requirement we go back to expendable boosters...

Before Columbia, NASA was talking Shuttle upgrades that would have kept the Golden Goose flying until 2025, maybe longer, to the ISS. Twenty more years! Twenty years of spending every dime NASA has for manned spaceflight on going in circles and trying desperatly to have somthing to show for it at the cost of $80-100 billion dollars on Shuttle flights, and another few tens of billions on ISS support.

And then what? NASA would build Shuttle-II, or try to with money that it doesn't have, so we can keep going in circles... Telling NASA "NO MORE!" has done much more for manned spaceflight then you realize, as NASA seems to have been bent on flying Shuttle or somthing like it forever, maintaining the status quo indefinatly.

wgc · 2004-10-08 09:49:32

I don't think you realize how big a move it was to declare that Shuttle just had to go and the implicit requirement we go back to expendable boosters...
Before Columbia, NASA was talking Shuttle upgrades that would have kept the Golden Goose flying until 2025, maybe longer, to the ISS. Twenty more years! Twenty years of spending every dime NASA has for manned spaceflight on going in circles and trying desperatly to have somthing to show for it at the cost of $80-100 billion dollars on Shuttle flights, and another few tens of billions on ISS support.
And then what? NASA would build Shuttle-II, or try to with money that it doesn't have, so we can keep going in circles... Telling NASA "NO MORE!" has done much more for manned spaceflight then you realize, as NASA seems to have been bent on flying Shuttle or somthing like it forever, maintaining the status quo indefinatly.

This sounds too much like what we did after apollo.

We had a moon program and we scuttled it.

We had a space station , skylab, rather than building on that technology we scuttled it.

We should be building incrementally, taking the shuttle hardware and repurposing it. Instead we are once again moving towards a single route to space, the cev.

The only glimmer of light here is the private space effort..

Now if Kerry gets into office... Ball game over. He'd like to use the money earmarked for space somewhere else.

Maybe he thinks we are referring to the space between his ears. Since there is so much of it.

I hear the flameing already.
enjoy...

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-08 10:51:17

Actually the CEV is a step back in the direction of Apollo, if Apollo hadn't be a money-no-object rush job to beath the Communists at all cost... The original idea to get to the Moon was to launch a lander, TLI stage, associated fuel, and then finally the manned Apollo on the Delta-IV Medium sized Saturn 1B. This would have taken too long though, and there is no way they could have met Kennedy's 1969 deadline, so a faster method was decided on... and we got the horrificly expensive but powerful Saturn-V.

I think that the CEV program combined with a new Lunar lander and updated EELV rockets can get us back to the Moon with the budget that Nasa has, give or take a billion, if we didn't have Shuttle and ISS weighing us down to the tune of $8 billion a year. An Apollo-scale Lunar mission can be accomplished with only four flights of modified Delta-IV (Lithium tanks, regenerative RS-68 mod, RL-60 upper w/ modified Centaur, and quad-pack of standard SRMs). Thats only about one billion per mission worth of rockets not counting modification money.

The CEV is going to be a capsule, able to operate for 2-3 weeks, and able to reenter the atmosphere at Lunar transfer orbit velocities. It is a modernized Apollo capsule really, and is just what we need.

wgc · 2004-10-08 12:10:41

Actually the CEV is a step back in the direction of Apollo, if Apollo hadn't be a money-no-object rush job to beath the Communists at all cost... The original idea to get to the Moon was to launch a lander, TLI stage, associated fuel, and then finally the manned Apollo on the Delta-IV Medium sized Saturn 1B. This would have taken too long though, and there is no way they could have met Kennedy's 1969 deadline, so a faster method was decided on... and we got the horrificly expensive but powerful Saturn-V.
I think that the CEV program combined with a new Lunar lander and updated EELV rockets can get us back to the Moon with the budget that Nasa has, give or take a billion, if we didn't have Shuttle and ISS weighing us down to the tune of $8 billion a year. An Apollo-scale Lunar mission can be accomplished with only four flights of modified Delta-IV (Lithium tanks, regenerative RS-68 mod, RL-60 upper w/ modified Centaur, and quad-pack of standard SRMs). Thats only about one billion per mission worth of rockets not counting modification money.
The CEV is going to be a capsule, able to operate for 2-3 weeks, and able to reenter the atmosphere at Lunar transfer orbit velocities. It is a modernized Apollo capsule really, and is just what we need.

It would still be our only means into space, shortsighted no matter how you look at it.

And not to change the subject, Kerry would go along with ISS completion and shuttle upgrades thats it.

If the international factor with the ISS wasn't their he'd probably take that money and give it to some potato farmer in Iowa.

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-08 12:43:07

"It would still be our only means into space, shortsighted no matter how you look at it."

Really? Why?

ANYTHING has to be better then Shuttle is, an upgraded Delta-IV Medium with a $50-100M CEV would cost roughly a quarter what a Shuttle launch does, maybe less, and be several times safer. And if it does what we need it to do, I see no reason why such a vehicle could not provide for NASA's launch needs with higher reliability and a fraction of the price until it is time to start thinking HLLV. The EELV rockets were designed with modularity in mind you know, a single-core vehicle for light and manned LEO flights, tripple-core for medium payload up to 30MT (ISS cargo?), and tripple-core + SRMs for loads up to 40-45MT for Lunar missions.

And yes, without a project for NASA to "do," then the money will be too tempting and it will probobly go away... that is really why we got Shuttle you know, that NASA wasn't going to have the money to use Saturn-V for any kind of sustained Lunar program, nor build a giant space station with the remaining launchers after Apollo, so NASA needed somthing else to draw in the dollars... NASA has suceeded in almost everything it has ever done, and Shuttle's true purpose - keep engineers employed at any cost - has been perhaps even more sucessful then Apollo...

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