Maybe Send Congress There: Who Needs to Go to The Moon?

Fred Wolferman

Friday, February 5, 2010

It would be difficult to find a better example of why Washington cannot control federal spending than an item missing from President Obama's new proposed budget - moon money.

The president has eliminated funding for NASA's planned mission to the moon from next year's budget. Good for him. It's about time. We've been there already. It's full of rocks and no atmosphere. The golf is not good. It costs billions of dollars to go there. It has no economic or strategic value. Scientists want to do lots of neat stuff there. Too bad. Let them do neat stuff on earth.

If the Chinese and Russians want to pour money into blasting people into space, let them. Maybe we can fix some roads or trains, or build better windmills and solar panels instead.

If we are going to be even remotely serious about controlling the budget, where better to start than keeping more money right here on earth?

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Nothing is in the nation's capital. Putting men back on the moon, you see, has little to do with science or national pride; it has to do with money. The billions it would cost could be spread liberally and inefficiently across the country, making many congresspersons happy and presumably buying them votes.

They are already lining up to put the money back into the budget, and, in what may be the only example of bipartisanship currently extant, the line is full of both Democrats and Republicans.

From Florida, home of the Kennedy Space Center, we have Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who said, "We're going to have to get the president to do more for NASA. America's global leadership in science and technology is at stake if we don't maintain a more robust space exploration program."

From the same state, Republican Rep. Bill Posey said, "This issue is far from over"; and Democratic Rep. Suzanne Kosmas said the White House plan "threatens to turn the [moon exploration] gap into an abyss with no end in sight." Moon exploration gap?

Kosmas further suggested that, should this cut occur, the current shuttle program, well known for its 40-year-old technology and stellar safety record, should be extended. That's one way to take care of your constituents.

There were also plenty of comments from members of both parties from Texas, Arizona, California, Alabama and Ohio, with more certain to turn up as the idea percolates through Congress.

The president's plan isn't quite as Draconian as it sounds. He proposes to fund (give? stimulate?) $6 billion to private enterprise to develop commercial space travel for future astronauts and the lunatic ultra-rich, though it is not put in exactly that way. There is also money for developing technologies to go Mars, another useful endeavor.

Perhaps when congresspersons realize they will have that money to spew around, they will become somewhat more amenable to the president's plan, though if I were to wager, I'd bet that all these programs get just enough money to be ineffective in their respective missions, except, of course, the one to buy votes.

If Congress will not accept a reduction in funding at such a bloated sacred cow as NASA, how will it ever address the endless other discretionary expenditures, let alone the "nondiscretionary" ones, that presently have us staring into a fiscal abyss far deeper than the one Kosmas was worried about?

The president's proposed freeze on discretionary spending, of which the moon money cut is a part, is at best minuscule and realistically irrelevant. It is a pathetic stab at symbolism; and yet you may be sure it will be picked over, protested and overridden by congresspersons of both parties unwilling to cut even a penny from their districts' federal largesse.

Maybe we should leave the moon money in the budget after all. It may be just the place to send Congress. Perhaps the hot air would stop if there were no air at all.

Fred Wolferman lives in Southern Pines. Contact him by e-mail at fwolferman@sbcglobal.net.

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ladylane 3 years, 3 months ago

MAYBE WE CAN CREATE JOBS AND BUILD SOME HOMES.

None 3 years, 3 months ago

In response to Fred Wolferman's article. Very well written! How about those remote airports receiving millions to serve - maybe - 22 people a day.

Readers who are interested in how PIGFOOT invests in our country, here's your link: http://www.cagw.org/

Citizens Against Government Waste

JimSpellman 3 years, 3 months ago

The best thing the space program bought us was not a thing! The greatest benefit of both "man-in-space" and unmanned exploration of space were the hundreds of thousands of kids in the '60s and '70s who studied science.

Every single dollar spent on the space program was also spent right here on the ground, where it's needed.

That money gave us reliable weather satellites so we can see when storms are going to hit and batten down the hatches, better bearings and seals to make our cars more powerful and use less gas.

That money gave us dozens of advances in computing, hardware and software. That money gave us sunglasses, smoke detectors, cordless drills. That money gave us pacemakers, much of medical imaging, helped us know how to make things both light and strong, and took air travel from being unsafe and noisy through to the smooth safe cheap comfort of the jet age.

Those hundreds of thousands of kids are now hard at work, making our lives more enjoyable, safer and longer; curing cancer; working to understand and repair our environment; hard at work in the automotive industry inventing the next kind of engine that we'll use in our cars when the oil runs out.

What does going back to the Moon or Mars buy us? Do you want the long list or the very long list?

How about better ways to keep our homes warm in winter and cool in summer while paying less for every power bill?

Better protective clothing for all those hardworking men and women who do the tough jobs to keep this country running. Smart fabrics that have the potential to revolutionize the clothes we wear. Further advances in solar power, batteries, power transmission systems. And, of course, the big one, the search for tiny microbial life on Mars, perhaps hidden in subsurface water, that has the potential to rewrite the book of life, and give us medical insights we can't even begin to imagine.

And it's cheap, folks. NASA gets $60 dollars from the average taxpayer, which works out to $1.25 a week or $0.18 cents per day.

In fact, the total sum spent funding NASA over the past 52 years to date ($458.197 Billon; divided by 52 years, it spreads out to $8.811 billion per year) is less than the $752 billion "stimulus" bill for the Banking, Mortgage and Automotive industries.

It's also less than the $196 billion we flush down the toilet each year in beer consumption (200 million gallons, or 50 billion pints a year at the going Pub rate of $3.87 plus tax per pint).

It's also less than the $100 billion worth of food that we as a nation throw away each year while millions of our fellow countrymen go hungry. Is that NASA's fault? No, but poor thinking and consumeristic spending for the sake of spending is.

We get all the above for $0.18 cents a day that every American spends, through their taxes, on the space program. And that money is spent right here on Earth.

The investment's all here, but the returns are, literally, out of this world.

None 3 years, 3 months ago

And ironically, we have companies like Microsoft, Intel, Apple and the lists goes on and on with new technological advances in the field of micro-technology engineering. Innovative entrepreneur's developed most of the products used today.

The Space Shuttle's large External Tank is loaded with more than 500,000 gallons of super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen costing hundreds of millions for just one launch.

The amount of fuel used in just one launch of the space shuttle could provide health care, food, and housing to the thousands of Americans who by no fault of their own - have lost jobs ~ some are NASA engineers.

We have technology for "solar power, batteries, power transmission systems"! I'm sure Toyota could use a transmission system in their Prius comparable to those systems adapted to lunar landers. Millions wasted on a Mars Probe that does provide pictures of the universe; can't eat those though. At least the Chinese are making inroads to advancing wind and solar technology and have never visited the moon or any other planet.

$8.811 billion a year can provide jobs, health care, and educational opportunities for Americans as opposed to directing limited revenue resources for a wild goose chase in outer space....I'm sure those who are hungry could use a bite of Micro organisms...if they even exist!

JimSpellman 3 years, 3 months ago

Perhaps a comment I recently saw posted elsewhere can answer more eloquently:

". . .Some individuals will continue to see no value in manned or unmanned space exploration. They are the type that history "dragged," kicking and screaming into the modern world, carried forward on the shoulders and labors of giants, complaining at the time ad nausea of the "waste" in exploring new horizons.

They were the "flat-earthers" of Europe and China, uninterested in a round world that opined, "Of what value is this to us if it is round?"

They are the "technologists" of the 19th century protesting steam engines and modern conveniences, bemoaning the "waste" of a nation's capital in building "the Iron Horse," frothing at the mouth and with conviction, crying "Why spend so much when we have perfectly good mules?"

They are the slack-jawed half wits of the early 20th century, protesting government funding for a smallpox cure. "What waste, what hubris," they decried.

This listlessness, this genetic DNA of disinterest, is showcased today, still scratching out a subsistence living in the bush of Africa, in the jungles of Borneo, or in the highlands of Southeast Asia -- the less curious minds, happy in the lethargic complacency of ritual. If it’s not in front of them, or a tasty treat to fill their belly, it’s unimportant.

There are three paths available to all cultures equally on this planet: forward, standing still, and backward. You have only to look around the world to see the current leaders in modernity or the laggards in hunter-gatherer. Every culture has dullards, has the moronic or euphemistically the "uninspired." The question is if this is the majority or super-majority of the culture at hand.

I never thought America would be on the path of ignorance by default for standing still. But perhaps this lack of vision is just in the DNA of our current "uninspired" leader. Luckily for this particular culture, this Republic, we can choose to change our leaders.

2012 is on this nation's calendar and that is change that I can believe in..."

MCM101st 3 years, 3 months ago

It is a wonder how people forget the important things of life. The cell phone you carry, the laptop or blackberry or personal computer you use, the many computerized medical equipment used to keep you and your loved ones alive. So many of these came to be because of the American space program. The government through the program reached out to companies and helped them produce smaller and faster computers. They offered them money to develop the medical equipment needed to know the heart beat of an astronaut while millions of miles away. All these has become common day items because the space program needed them first. Faster, smaller and more powerful.

This world is becoming smaller and depleted of what humans need. It is only through exploration and possible colonization that humans will continue to grow.