The future of NASA and a "moon shot" at the economy

By JR Dieckmann

One of the victims of Obama's miniscule cuts to his multi-trillion dollar budget is NASA's Constellation program. NASA had big plans to go back to the moon and beyond with the Ares 1 & 5 rockets and the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle which had been under development during the Bush administration, but underfunded when Democrats took over Congress in 2007. Orion was also to replace the aging Space Shuttle program with orbital missions.

The proposed NASA mission has been scrubbed in Obama's proposed 2011 budget which could save the taxpayers an estimated $230 billion over the next two decades. NASA's mission will instead be focused on environmental and global warming research and observations.

If Obama is really interested in reducing the budget, we could save hundreds of millions of dollars while making us more comfortable with this government, by simply investing $30 in a good padlock to be put on a certain hanger door at Langley AFB, and throw away the key. Additional money could then be saved by firing all of the teleprompter technicians and operators who would no longer be needed.

The Air Force could be used for air defense instead of being used to shuttle Nancy Pelosi, her entourage, and her family around the country loaded with party supplies and booze, and taking Obama out every couple of days to read his teleprompter to a selected audience.

Since the Apollo program ended and the shuttle program began, astronauts have been going only on orbital missions, launching and servicing satellites, and building the hugely expensive space station which seems to be used more by the Russians than the U.S. What new innovations, discoveries, or developments have come from the space station program?

Maybe occasionally they use it for something useful but mostly it's just a waste of money and was primarily built for political purposes to give Russia and the U.S. common grounds for working together after the cold war.

What is the mission of the ISS? Does it serve as anything more than a playground for astronauts and cosmonauts and photo opportunities for the space program? We have to ask if we're really getting our money's worth since we are paying the lion's share of the expenses, estimated at $100 billion, while Europe pays only $14 billion and others even less. I, for one, frankly don't think it's worth the money.

The shuttle program was a good investment as it has been a versatile vehicle for launching and servicing satellites. Without the Space Shuttle there would be no Hubble Space Telescope. But the remaining shuttle crafts are old and need to be retired, so the new mission for NASA is to send men back to the moon and on to Mars. That sounds expensive. Can we really afford to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this at a time when our budget deficit and national debt has skyrocketed?

Sure, we have astronauts who want to travel in space. It would be the experience of a lifetime which they consider risking their lives for. But to go to Mars would require 18 months of their lives being dependent on their space craft and the supplies they can take with them. If something goes wrong — anything — they cannot turn around and come back to Earth. They have to stay out there for 18 months until the Earth is in the right proximity to Mars for a return flight, using current rocket technology. We need a new plan.

A new propulsion system must be invented to take men to Mars if that is our intention. One that can travel at not just 25,000 mph, but at 500,000 mph if they are serious about space travel beyond the moon.

We already have ion propulsion engines that can almost do that for unmanned probes but it takes them a long time to get to those speeds. We're talking years here with assists from planetary gravity provided by Earth fly-bys and other planets. To take men to Mars, we need a propulsion system that can accelerate the craft to such speeds in less than a day and has the capability of unlimited speeds. That is what we should be working and spending our money on, not propulsions systems that can do no more than we have already done.

NASA wants to go back to the moon and set up a base there. Who wants to live on the moon? After the initial thrill of it all wears off, they can get real tired of living in a capsule or under a dome that could be hit by a meter and rupture at any time. They would miss the earth and their real homes and all of the things that the Earth provides for people.

I don't mean to discount the idea of building a base on the moon for the purpose of launching long range space vehicles from a low gravity environment, but I can see no need in sending men beyond that point. I think this whole idea comes from NASA trying to imitate Star Trek and other science fiction. We need to ask ourselves if the rewards are worth the costs. In the TV and movie studios they can afford to travel through space to distant planets, but can we afford it in the world of reality?

I don't want to be hearing this nonsense about our civilization moving to another planet if Earth becomes uninhabitable because of global warming or other so-called disasters. If the Earth goes, we go with it. We are a part of the Earth and wouldn't survive as human beings without our planet.

The point I am really trying to make is that NASA should make a change of direction and use all of their resources to develop a new a propulsion system that can deal with the vast distances of space effectively. Put all of this other stuff on hold (except maintenance of satellites) and stop wasting money on everything else until new high speed propulsion is developed and available so that a 15 year space mission can be accomplished in less than a year. That would then be real progress in space travel.

Even more important is balancing the federal budget and paying down our tremendous foreign debt. I suspect Obama is just waiting for the U.S. borrowing credit to be cut off so that he can declare an economic emergency to raise taxes. Why else would he continue to borrow and spend trillions of dollars that we don't have and can never afford to pay back? It's all a part of his plans to redistribute the wealth — which won't even exist after he gets his socialist hands on it.

We can solve the economic debt crisis — and without raising taxes — if we make it a priority. By reducing the size of government and cutting out those non-essential programs not authorized by the Constitution, we could have a balanced budget and save $500 billion a year which could be put toward the national debt. But that will only pay the interest for about two years on the current debt, so all unfunded current and future non essential spending will have to be eliminated as well to reduce the principal.

The consequences of doing nothing and continuing down the path we are currently on is almost unthinkable. There is no doubt at all that if we continue with our deficit spending and borrowing for even another 3 years, our economy will collapse and our money will become worthless. Is this really what Americans want? A majority of voters did put community organizer, Barack Obama, into the White House. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all.

With the current annual federal revenue at about $2.2 trillion, it would not be unreasonable to put $1 trillion a year toward the debt payoff and use the remaining $1.2 trillion to fund the government. This would be about equal to 1983 federal revenue. In 10 years the national debt would be paid off. The money saved from the NASA Constellation program would be a helpful contribution to this end. We should think of it as a "moon shot" at our economic stability.

© JR Dieckmann