NASA - Not Going to the Moon

[dbasnett]

Apparently the Obama administration has decided that efforts to send men to the Moon and then Mars aren't going to happen, at least not by the USA. How sad, and short sighted, in my opinion.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Why bother. Once Wallace and Grommit had gotten there, we had nothing left to gain.

[demotivater]

One of many sad and short sighted decisions by this administration. More to come, stay tuned.

[dbasnett]

He should have done the opposite, and made it green. Go to the moon in this decade, so long as solar cell output is increased 100 times.

Well, I voted for the man, but unless the opponent is a fool, I won't do it again. Matter of fact, as I have said for some time, incumbent no.

Yahoo's headline was "NASA ditching moon plan", GAG! Spin O'rama for Obama. It should have said President Kills Moon Plan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_sci_nasa_future

[System_Error]

Good. Get rid of centralized development by NASA and create more opportunity for private industry.

[NeedSomeAnswers]

Apparently the Obama administration has decided that efforts to send men to the Moon and then Mars aren't going to happen, at least not by the USA. How sad, and short sighted, in my opinion.

Bloody expensive though, and right now i doubt he could find the money.

Don't worry though presidents come and go, man's desire to see what out there will always remain.

Also you lot have already been to the moon about 6 times, unless you are gonna create a base there what's the point ? and i don't mean that in a flippant way really what would you get out of going to the moon again ?

[dbasnett]

Bloody expensive though, and right now i doubt he could find the money.

Don't worry though presidents come and go, man's desire to see what out there will always remain.

Also you lot have already been to the moon about 6 times, unless you are gonna create a base there what's the point ? and i don't mean that in a flippant way really what would you get out of going to the moon again ?

If they did it like they did in the 60's it would stimulate the economy. What happens when there are lags in the space program is that they lose a lot of "corporate" knowledge.

"...man's desire to see what out there will always remain." Reminds me of "Do or do not…there is no try!"

I thought the point was to build a base, and then go to Mars. I guess we are going to find out how the Russians felt.

The space program is a fond remembrance of my mother. She got me up early to see the launches of Mercury, then Gemini. I remember where I was when Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon, and how proud I felt.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I would say that the moon plan has been dead for quite a few years now. Bush talked it up a bit, but it was like his talk about the hydrogen economy. It's a good idea that he would have no involvement in. NASA has been kind of directionless since getting to the moon. At the time, we were in a technological race that we really needed to win. Now...what are the compelling objectives? The only one that I see is that a permanent moon base would allow for research and development of tools and manufacturing that is currently impossible. Economically, that could be a compelling argument, but only from a theoretical standpoint, and we don't do theoretical on that scale very often. For that reason, I have long felt that any attempt at the moon or mars is nothing more than a dream that will not get funded.

[dbasnett]

I would say that the moon plan has been dead for quite a few years now. Bush talked it up a bit, but it was like his talk about the hydrogen economy. It's a good idea that he would have no involvement in. NASA has been kind of directionless since getting to the moon. At the time, we were in a technological race that we really needed to win. Now...what are the compelling objectives? The only one that I see is that a permanent moon base would allow for research and development of tools and manufacturing that is currently impossible. Economically, that could be a compelling argument, but only from a theoretical standpoint, and we don't do theoretical on that scale very often. For that reason, I have long felt that any attempt at the moon or mars is nothing more than a dream that will not get funded.

Sadly I agree.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." JFK

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." JFK

[NeedSomeAnswers]

If they did it like they did in the 60's it would stimulate the economy.

I am not so sure, in the 60's space travel was completely new, and each innovation that NASA created was completely new, and only really doable by NASA no one else had the technology.

Now we already now how to get to space and how to get to the moon, we are not going to redesign the rockets or landers or materials that much just to get us to the moon again when we already know what it takes to get there.

I thought the point was to build a base, and then go to Mars.

Just to go to the moon seems a bit lame now and unambitious. Visiting another planet, now that's more like it, imagine the guy or girl that gets to be the first human being to step onto another planet.

[dbasnett]

...Now we already now how to get to space and how to get to the moon, we are not going to redesign the rockets or landers or materials that much just to get us to the moon again when we already know what it takes to get there.

Actually we don't. All of the corporate knowledge at NASA, and elsewhere, is gone. The people that were responsible are gone, retired. We know it can be done, and the hurdles won't be the same. Ares / Orion are being tested and built, or should I say were.

[DeanMc]

I reckon Obama has been playing Mass Effect 2 and feels that he doesn't want to give up his seat to a one world alliance or start a costly war with the turians!

[Shaggy Hiker]

Now we hear that the oversight committee that was looking into this project stated that it was pretty well messed up. Over budget, unfocused, etc. It's just more of the same. Without some motivating force to focus attention we end up focusing on iPads rather than the objective.

By the way, did you know that the USSR had a robot in slow descent orbit when we made the first moon landing? It crashed into a mountain the day we lifted off from the moon, and since it was both a failure, and superceded by the manned landing, it just faded away without much notice. At the time, though, NASA had to communicate with the USSR to make sure that the two craft didn't collide. Who knew that moon space was already crowded?

[jazFunk]

Good. Get rid of centralized development by NASA and create more opportunity for private industry.

Absolutely! I can't believe I hadn't considered that. This is just a precursor to Space Vacations. ;-)

Maybe.

[dbasnett]

Good. Get rid of centralized development by NASA and create more opportunity for private industry.

Naive? For private industry to capitalize the effort they would need to know the ROI, which for going to the moon / mars would probably be to long to be considered.

[dilettante]

One reason we'd have trouble duplicating the achievements of the 1940s through 1970s today is that the engineering ecosystem has been polluted.

Efforts from the Manhattan Project to JFK's Mission to the Moon had a negative byproduct: legions of bean-counters and straw bosses ended up taking credit for the successes. They got themselves some PhDs, wrote some books, started offering consulting services, and went on the lecture circuit to promote their snake oil.

In software development we're now plagued by this. It generally comes in one of two flavors. One is the heavily structured, time-managed, wall-papered bureaucracy of what has become known as traditional software engineering. The other is meant to capture the dollars of organizations who have discovered the fact that this particular Emperor has no clothes, and it goes by labels such as Scrum and Agile.

The message of both of these seemingly opposed approaches is that you can reduce software development to an assembly line process which is fueled by cheap labor with thin skillsets. All you need is an army of secretaries and business majors to vacuously micromanage everything. The difference is that the new contender pretends this isn't what it's about.

As the proponents of the older brand of snake oil age they are beginning to make their deathbed confessions:

Tom DeMarco: Software Engineering Is Dead

The "Pepsi Generation" (the Agile crowd) is still young and hopes to continue to capitalize on its brand of software methodology for a while. We can expect them to continue to beat the drum on it for decades yet.


However it isn't just software development that is so encumbered. It is no accident that STS (Space Shuttle) remained the primary platform for manned space flight for almost 30 years. Innovation was destroyed through the 1970s and 1980s by regressive "business minded" administrations who appointed bean-counter leadership to run NASA. The culture is heavily ingrained now, and it may take another generation to expunge it to the point of functionality again.

[dbasnett]

...However it isn't just software development that is so encumbered. It is no accident that STS (Space Shuttle) remained the primary platform for manned space flight for almost 30 years. Innovation was destroyed through the 1970s and 1980s by regressive "business minded" administrations who appointed bean-counter leadership to run NASA. The culture is heavily ingrained now, and it may take another generation to expunge it to the point of functionality again.

I worked at NASA HQ during the 90's. The name of the game was funding, funding, funding. NASA did not have to battle congress while we were in the process of going to the moon. So I don't disagree, but the congress created the environment.

[honeybee]

To all those who are opposing Obama for cancelling the plans to go to moon yet again, surely you wouldn't want to see the US as a handful of people who have money to burn precious fuel to go to moon, while the ordinary citizens line up outside the gas stations or get stuck in traffic jams trying to reach their offices?

I mean assuming a vast majority of the people still have jobs??

Just read in the Eco Times that China has been secretly buying stocks in major US companies. It's already holding a lot of US treasury bonds I guess. So in a way while you people keep looking at the moon day and night, the Chinese will take over the US corporate world and the US economy. I wouldn't be surprised if your next candidate were a Chinese. After all when you have been using most of the things made in China, why not have a president that is made in China too?

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[honeybee]

Tom DeMarco: Software Engineering Is Dead

Can I really be saying that it’s OK to run projects without control or with relatively little control? Almost.

Agile methodology is necessary when clients or development teams are not sure about the features that the product will require. This by itself should be targeted and questioned. Why is it so difficult for people to know what they want?

Within the agile methodology, you are actually following the typical waterfall model for each iteration. You freeze the features to be delivered in the next iteration, do the coding, testing and integration and then deployment.

That's just reducing the size of the deliveries and increasing the frequency. Instead of delivering a single product in one go, you deliver smaller chunks over a period of time.

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[dbasnett]

To all those who are opposing Obama for cancelling the plans to go to moon yet again, surely you wouldn't want to see the US as a handful of people who have money to burn precious fuel to go to moon, while the ordinary citizens line up outside the gas stations or get stuck in traffic jams trying to reach their offices?

I mean assuming a vast majority of the people still have jobs??

Just read in the Eco Times that China has been secretly buying stocks in major US companies. It's already holding a lot of US treasury bonds I guess. So in a way while you people keep looking at the moon day and night, the Chinese will take over the US corporate world and the US economy. I wouldn't be surprised if your next candidate were a Chinese. After all when you have been using most of the things made in China, why not have a president that is made in China too?

.

So you don't think having an aggressive Moon / Mars program would create a lot of jobs, give the country something to have pride in?

[FunkyDexter]

So you don't think having an aggressive Moon / Mars program would create a lot of jobs, give the country something to have pride in?

It's not jobs that are going to save our Western economies, it's productivity. Creating Government jobs is easy, but if they don't add value to your economy in some way then they aren't sustainable.

Whether trips to the moon are productive or not is debatable and I guess that's what this decision comes down to. My view would be that it's expensive in the short term but, possibly, highly productive in the long term. That makes cutting funding during a recession an attractive but possibly short-sighted option.

[honeybee]

So you don't think having an aggressive Moon / Mars program would create a lot of jobs, give the country something to have pride in?

You have a point, namely when you undertake something ambitious as a trip to the moon, it allows you to focus your energies on that goal and be able to guide everyone to achieve it. Sort of inspiring the whole country behind that goal. But doing it again wouldn't inspire anyone. Also I doubt if you have any charismatic leaders who can rally popular opinion behind such projects.

The last time it happened, people weren't so worried about the economy or their own economic survival. If you ask the common people today about a space programme or an economic thrust, I doubt you would find any takers for the space programme. Too many distractions: loss of jobs, insecurity about the future, a perceived sense of losing the world dominance/leadership position. And for the government, they have other things to worry about. If they don't bring the economy back on track, they won't be able to fund the space program anyway. And reaching the moon only to find that the US can no longer fund the return journey wouldn't be so attractive.

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[honeybee]

It's not jobs that are going to save our Western economies, it's productivity. Creating Government jobs is easy, but if they don't add value to your economy in some way then they aren't sustainable.

Whether trips to the moon are productive or not is debatable and I guess that's what this decision comes down to. My view would be that it's expensive in the short term but, possibly, highly productive in the long term. That makes cutting funding during a recession an attractive but possibly short-sighted option.

The economic survival of the US as a country is much more important today. After the whole banking sector fiasco of last year, I am afraid there still may be some skeletons in the closets, which people are more than willing to keep inside, but will come out today or tomorrow. The fat bonuses are back, speculative trading is on the rise and soon you will have the bankers lead you to think the whole downturn of 2008-09 was caused by government policies.

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