NASA Budget Likely to Remain In Limbo Until After Election Day, Lawmakers Say

Notice, Popular Science, that when the Democrats finally get into the white house and after all of your hailing Obama as the saviour of science, they do LESS than the Bush administration...

Chris

golferguy eat one.
Thats not the point. If you already forgot the shit hole the bush adminstration put us in you need to look up two iraq wars, panama, afgan and a very sketchy terror attack that somehow missed all our defenses. And yes im talking both Bush presidents.

Its sad that most adminstrations have been pushing funding back sicne kennedy was in office. If only government officials would realize space is the only way to go.

Imagine the benefits of mining in space. That alone would open the door to new materials and incredible job oppurtunitys. Its dangerous yes but many people would stil go for the adventure and there would be many oppurtunitys for engeneering jobs to open up as we would need new tools.

@golferguy - How this Obama's fault?

NASA should be shut down. We can't afford to explore space when were 13 trillion in debt and counting. We need to focus on HERE on Earth which 95% of the deep ocean is still unexplored. Man will never colonize Mars as it can not hold an atmosphere. It's a waste of time and money.

@gizmowiz
I can agree with you one some of that. Not saying it makes me the least bit happy. I love the idea of being a space based species. I think it is also very important to finish discovering everything the Earth has to offer, which mostly is under water. I do have family working at NASA and would hate to see them lose their jobs like the rest of us are

"NASA should be shut down. We can't afford to explore space when were 13 trillion in debt and counting. We need to focus on HERE on Earth which 95% of the deep ocean is still unexplored. Man will never colonize Mars as it can not hold an atmosphere. It's a waste of time and money."

NASA should be funded properly. We can't afford not to explore space regardless of our current fiscal crisis. We need to focus on colonizing outer-space. Man will colonize Mars as it will the Moon and other destinations in our solar system and beyond, it will take time, determination and a dream. It's not a waste of time and certainly not a waste of money.

^ I thought I'd translate your glorious paragraph of pessimism into what the majority of the people in this country want and believe in. The Final Frontier awaits us. Those who wish to hold us back should move aside.

@DZROM

Amen!!!

@Cuishi14

You and I are on the same wavelength. A future without expansion from Earth will only see the end of mankind here on this planet. The only way we can expand our industrial empire and continue to advance as a race would be to explore beyond this world for material that is not native to this planet but possibly within our reach (right in this solar system).

@golferguy

Yeah yeah yeah. We get it. You're further to the right than the left. Big deal. You're not unique in the universe. Here's something that would be new; middle ground. Multiple sides of the political spectrum does not serve human development (at least not in the United States). If anything it holds us back. If you payed attention, you'd know they said that Congress overturned Obama's proposal for a solution that would allow NASA and the commercial space industry to flourish.

@gizmowiz

That is STILL the stupidest excuse for burying our heads in the sand if there ever was one. Focusing here on Earth can and is being done right now. Using this as a reason to shy away from exploring the only thing truly worthwhile in the universe (it's the universe itself if you didn't get it the first time) is illegitimate. We will never have everything completely figured out and together on this planet. "Terrestrial matters of importance" is an excuse some politicians use to downgrade space exploration because they're feeble primitive minds can not conceptualize anything other than the small worlds upon which they reside. You know what's in the ocean? WATER. Animal and marine plant life. Mountain ranges, ships, airplanes. That's about it. You know how we know this? We have aerospace technology in the form of satellites orbiting this planet with sophisticated instruments that scan the surface of this planet 24/7 made possible by the Administration you wish to see demolished. That technology that has made oceanographers' jobs much easier and more exciting because they can observe a lot more than one person in a boat on the water with gadgets that can scan a small fraction of a grid. It's talk like that which will send us back to the stone age. Guess what. Europe and Asia do not share your sentiments. The rest of the world's eyes are turned to space, because everyone else has figured out what Americans just don't get anymore or just don't get yet. Space is bigger than anything that we could have going on right here on this small blue pebble. To turn your focus away from something so big is akin to burying your head in the sand.

"Welcome! to the Federation Starship SS Buttcrack!!!"

I think shuangyan makes a good point

1) NASA should NOT be fully funded. Fully funded leads to excess and stifles creative thinking. They need to be cost conscious at every step in order to work cheaper and harder.

2) Bush did not ruin the world. He lost some of his MASSIVE post 9/11 popularity for not getting into the second Iraq was as quickly as people wanted - but instead waiting for justification (justification which later turned out to be false, but which we all believed going in).

3) Bush did not cause 9/11. The towers were bombed during the Clinton administration and Clinton responded by shooting cruise missiles (an act of war) into terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. You might as well blame 9/11 on Kennedy for escallating the cold war, which lead to our involvement in the Iran/Iraq war, which lead to Ollie North, which lead to the first Gulf War, which lead to 9/11.

4) Bush did not ruin the economy. Americans were the ones putting themselves into unsustainable debt. If EVER your net assets, if sold, did not exceed your net debts - then the crashed economy is YOUR FAULT. Note that when it came to the crisis, the response of both Bush and Obama were EXACTLY the same - stimulus based on Chinese debt. Obama even voted for Bush's stimulus before passing two of his own (#3 is in the works - but in small packages tied to other bills to hide it from a stimulus hating public).

5) NASA should wean itself away from shuttle launches. It has proven that space is dangerous no matter how much you spend. It is cheaper and just as safe to buy seats on Russian rockets. NASA should be pushing the envelope of explloration - not just conducting experiement in close orbit. It should be building habitations in space capable of generational habitation, it should be shooting sensors at other stars (300 years travel is only 290 years from ten years ago - but is 310 years from ten year from now). You don't get microwave ovens, tang, zero grav toilets, and all the other cool advances NASA has made from watching worms mate in zero gravity. You get those from going to the moon in a tinfoil cup.

@gizmowiz
so you're saying that the reason we shouldn't explore space is because mars doesn't have an atmosphere? *stoke/aneurysm*. As phoenix102 pointed out, that is the stupidest excuse for burying our heads in the sand there's ever been. As for that other, equally horrible excuse, 'problems on earth'... Do you realize that there are upwards of 1 trillion USD in recoverable resources per-asteroid in the belt? Do you realize that an atmosphere could be manufactured on mars and sustained? Do you realize that problems we're causing on earth are insignificant compared to a large comet, asteroid or nuclear warfare wiping out the human species because we didn't have a backup world? Do you realize that we wouldn't even have to colonize mars (as you so obviously hate the idea of being on another planet), we could manufacture an artificial cylindrical world in space with an earth type environment with materials from the asteroid belt? I could go on for days... that said, the aforementioned quadrillions of dollars worth of recoverable resources should be incentive enough for the privatization of space, we'll just have to wait a few years... well, we'll see who's smiling in 2067.

@Dustin2127

Good to know someone else really gets it.

@Oakspar77777

Amen!! On all counts.

"Welcome! to the Federation Starship SS Buttcrack!!!"

Just think of all the NASA technologies have benefited U.S. industry, improved the quality of life, and created jobs.

I have a thought. If China, Russia, India, Japan, and others all live, manufacture, fight, and work in space while America is stuck on Earth, then national security will be greatly compromised. If we need to be at the forefront of space exploration to ensure the safety of me and mine, then I support space exploration a thousand per cent. We just need to find the right way to do it.

The Right Way:

1] American heavy lift systems.
I know this is not the best way, but we will not figure out a better way if we outsource our complete national spacecraft development to the Russians. We need to learn from the space shuttle program and move on.

2] Privatization of Space.
If outer space was handed over to the desiring population, then progress would move at least a little bit faster. This is because of competition, which has shown to accelerate technological growth in the past. My examples are both of the world wars.

3] A Clear and Definate Mission.
NASA has been floating around in limbo for an unacceptable ammount of time. If the national space program is only a duck in the water, then the best American example is pethetic. NASA should be at the fore, supported by an army of private cooporations.

Space is just waiting to be explored, there's so much out there. It matters not how difficult it is to harness, only what we are willing to give up to assume our rightful place in the stars.