Would you FAVOR or OPPOSE cutting funding for space program/mission-to-nowhere to cut spending/use $ elsewhere?

[lorrysda]

Originally Posted by Fun2Day

Would you FAVOR or OPPOSE cutting funding for space program/mission-to-nowhere to cut spending/use $ elsewhere?

If a Presidential candidate said they'd cut that enormously WASTEFUL space program, like investing in crap like the "International Space Station", which have absolutely NO PURPOSE OR USE WHATSOEVER, would you be more favorable or un-favorable towards that candidate?

Why?

What would you use the funds for?? Energy development? Education? Lower taxes? Or just save the taxpayers money??

No, I am absolutely opposed to cutting $'s for the Space Program.

1. It is all the various pursuits that the Space Program have researched, pursued and perfected that have also gone out to America in general...all people have had the benefit of those tax $'s. The Internet, communications, medical/health and on and on.

2. This is one of the few if not the only funded Agency that has benefited everyone...not just a targeted group. The benefits have been unbelievably fantastic and benificial for everyone, especially in communications and health areas.

Almost all the rest of the Federal-Government programs are targeted to small groups at the expense of the many. Our space program has contributed to all, not just small, targeted groups. I do not believe these "targeted" programs are 1) Constitutional and 2) helpful in that they tend to destroy those who take from those who work, earn and actually contribute to our American way of life...free economy.

[lorrysda]

Originally Posted by cb at sea

I favor cutting MANY programs, but not the space program. I am, however, in favor of sending our corrupt politicians on a space trip! One way ticket is all they need.

I'm still chuckling out loud from reading your post above. Love your sense of humor and solution!

[mm4]

How can anybody look at New Horizons--Pluto (!); Hubble can't even resolve it--and have cuts to a public-facing space program even cross their minds? On a rocket so fast that the thing crossed the orbit of the Moon from here in only 9 hours.

I am in favor of cutting funding to making documentaries where anybody at JPL or Johns Hopkins or SwRI is on camera responding to a space mission event inside the control facility by clapping, or is wearing a badge lanyard as a habit.

[cccdan]

The space program is one the greatest things the US has given to humankind.

Funds should be cut from:
- "defense" (I mean, the pointless wars in the middle of nowhere, not research or actual defense)
- law enforcement (things have gone way overboard... using helicopters at night for assisting with "disturbance" calls? ... using SWAT teams for tackling domestic violence... this is insane!)

[Dane_in_LA]

Originally Posted by Tobiashen

I wish a candidate for the 2016 election would announce a plan to cut the space program/NASA or privatize it.

Ehm - the mainstay of the US side of ISS resupply missions is handled by private companies operating under fixed-cost contracts, and it damn well works. We have SpaceX forcing ULA to actually compete instead of just writing bills to the government.

As for NASA, its purpose is to do sh.t that private enterprise won't. Long-shot X-craft that blow up until the principle being tested is known, that kind of thing.

We use massive funds to build rocket after rocket only to watch them malfunction or crash and some of which have killed brilliant-minded astronauts.

The only manned missions to kill astronauts were due to the Shuttle - a craft that was essentially a flawed design, but kept flying because it was all we had. You can count the loss of AS-204/Apollo 1 as well, I guess.

Originally Posted by The Dark Enlightenment

Do we build any rockets for the manned space program now? Obama already killed the main program that was intended to take us to Mars in the next decade.

Constellation was a boondoggle that needed killing - it was a job program for Shuttle contractors that might have had the side effect of developing some flying hardware. It might have had a first launch in 2017, if everything suddenly started going according to plan, and nothing had gone to plan so far. The workable part - Orion - is still being developed.

SpaceX just tested the launch abort system on Dragon 2, another step to make it man-rated. Unmanned Dragon 1 missions to the ISS are so common now, they hardly make headlines. And the Dragon 1 is pressurized and climate controlled, you could mount jumpseats and have a perfectly nice ride. (Not much in the way of options if something went wrong, though.)

We're dealing with decisions made decades ago - the Shuttle being allowed to consume too much of NASAs attention and manpower, the delay in getting a successor program started etc. etc. Oh, and with a pork-barrel Congress.