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acroyearNASA vision not getting funded, experts find - Yahoo! News:
The whole "Mars" thing all been a ruse, a game played to get NASA to cut back on other projects (either to support funds to the "better" project or in fear of losing all their funds to said project), all for this long-range vision that would be underfunded, remain technically unfeasible, and ultimately be abandoned. Meanwhile, all of the knowledge experts are forced out for lack of said funds so that when technology does catch up to vision (or the vision is modified to meet current and near-future technology), there's no expertise to take advantage of it and the project remains dead - it's not anything anybody needs to fund.
In short, this dream vision shared by only a few has permitted the deliberate, systematic destruction of NASA.
And I'm not blaming the Republicans for this exclusively. The Dems could *easily* have fought them on this, both during Clinton and since 2007's new Congress. Reid and Pelosi have no spine, and no real care for the future beyond their next election.
But it's not just our future that suffers.
It's our HOPE for a better future that is destroyed.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An ambitious vision to take people to the moon and Mars may fall apart before it even gets off the ground because of uncertain planning and inadequate funding, several experts said on Thursday.I kinda figured this was going to happen as soon as BOTH Bush's started pushing their "Let's go to Mars" initiative (Bush Sr. tried to clone Kennedy's decade sentiment in 1991 and failed miserably). Yes, I saw this report in my head in 1991.
A congressional report said NASA's replacement for the space shuttle, the Constellation Program, is in jeopardy, and members of Congress as well as at least one former astronaut agreed at a hearing on the issue.
[...]
Earlier this week, U.S. space agency officials told Congress that between 5,800 and 7,300 jobs would go over the next three years as the space shuttles are retired, most at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The shuttles are scheduled to be grounded by 2010.
FALLING SHORT
"From its beginning, NASA's Exploration initiative has suffered from chronic under-funding, with a 'once-in-a-generation' project to develop a new space transportation system 'shoehorned' into a NASA budget that in some years hasn't even kept pace with inflation," said Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat who heads the House of Representatives subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.
The whole "Mars" thing all been a ruse, a game played to get NASA to cut back on other projects (either to support funds to the "better" project or in fear of losing all their funds to said project), all for this long-range vision that would be underfunded, remain technically unfeasible, and ultimately be abandoned. Meanwhile, all of the knowledge experts are forced out for lack of said funds so that when technology does catch up to vision (or the vision is modified to meet current and near-future technology), there's no expertise to take advantage of it and the project remains dead - it's not anything anybody needs to fund.
In short, this dream vision shared by only a few has permitted the deliberate, systematic destruction of NASA.
And I'm not blaming the Republicans for this exclusively. The Dems could *easily* have fought them on this, both during Clinton and since 2007's new Congress. Reid and Pelosi have no spine, and no real care for the future beyond their next election.
But it's not just our future that suffers.
It's our HOPE for a better future that is destroyed.
