[extropy-chat] Bush's Schedule for NASA

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Mike Lorrey wrote:

> --- Harvey Newstrom <mail at harveynewstrom.com> wrote:
> > Here is the schedule for Bush's plan for NASA:
> >
> > 2004-2004	Divert $11B from other funded NASA projects

Harvey -- are you sure?  First they can't use $11B this year.
Second isn't the 2004 budget already approved?  Third isn't
NASA getting some savings until the Shuttles are ready to fly
again?  Is the ...-2004 a typo?

> > 2004-2010	Increase NASA funding by $1B/year for five years
> > 2010-2010	Retire Shuttle Fleet, Finish(abandon?) space station

It looks like he is trying to get people to focus on the fact
that the space station has no useful purpose.  This seems likely
to really annoy the space station partners in Europe, Japan, Russia,
etc.

Questions: Is the space station above/below the radiation belts?
Is it feasible to move it to L4/L5.  What would its lifetime be
in those locations?

> > 2010-2015	Period where US has no vehicles that reach space station

I'm not sure this is true -- I think they are planning on using
European & Russian vehicles to get there and it looked to me like
they were going to start testing the new capsule by ~2008.  Perhaps
not human rated -- but 4 years given the base we have to build on
doesn't seem *that* difficult.

> > 2015-2020	Manned Moon Mission
> > 2020-2030	Manned Moon Base
> > 2030-2045	Manned Mars Mission

And all of these are *long* past the end-point for G.W.B. political
machinations so their probability of remaining "cast in stone"
probably approaches zero as each subsequent president decides
to put his or her stamp on them.

This seems to me to be sound signifying nothing.  Though G.W.B.
does seem to be doing something right with the Prometheus Project.
If that gets enough funding to produce real nuclear rocket engines
then I may be willing to forgive the rest.

> It seems like he wants to spin the space station off to private
> enterprise, perhaps a consortium of universities and high tech
> companies? This would create a market demand for private development of
> manned orbital capability.

I think you are *way* too optimistic Mike.

> Hey, if they want to auction it off, I'll put in a bid... ;)

If it were something we could move to L4/L5 and use for 20-30 years
I think it might be of interest.  But you are going to have to get
a lot of millionaires and billionaires together to privitize it
unless they sell it for less than pennies on the $$.

Robert