Peak Oil and Population reduction

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Yeah, Obama has been holding us back for 40 years. It's amazing how powerful he is.

Republican or Democrat, neither has space exploration as a priority. They're more interested in catering to their loudest majorities then to their most forward thinking minorities (there are left and right space advocates, obviously)

Hey, as long as people will continue to blame Bush for everything they don't like in the universe, why should I not blame Obama for cutting NASA's budget near to nil?

But he didnt do that. So you shouldnt do it because you'd be a liar. The NASA budget is freely available.

I didnt like Bush but had no problem with his space policy in general. The problem was the he didnt really care about it, never mentioned it again, and didnt fund it properly. But he also didnt slash funding. So things hobbled along.

The real enemy of the space program was Nixon. Nixon was presented many great options for the post-Apollo years and chose the cheapest option. That was the year to have a pro-NASA president. Then his administration made it cheaper still. The result was a low flight rate space shuttle which had no destination for a very long time.

Of course there are advocates for space on both sides of economic and moral politics. Space is a rather neutral subject, except to anyone who would make a doctrine against it. Personally, and yes this would be from the Bible so I hope I don't offend you, I consider the expansion into space to be an extension of the intent of the mandate in Genesis of "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth". I consider the intent of that command would be to allow people to have breathing room (as in, who really loves cities all that much anyhow?) as well as to allow more resources per person. By spreading out into space, which in and of itself would just plain be awesome, it would also allow for lower population densities overall and for more resources to be utilized.

Wait, didn't Obama cut funding on most of the new projects and left only enough for shipments up to the ISS? That's what I've read anyhow. If you're going to call me a liar, meaning that I'm providing false statements, that is just plain rude as I'm not intentionally providing false statements. I've heard this on the youtube channel spaceflightnow as well as on the Wii's news channel, but I suppose they may not necessarily be the most reliable sources if what you are saying is correct.

That's something I rather like about it. It is one of the few things I feel strongly about

I may be atheist but I'm not offended by religion


That is a good way of looking at it. It is basically the same as mine, though you have a divine mandate, while mine is evolutionary, the end result would be the same - take life out into the universe and spread it. I'm of the opinion that like life moving from water to land, from island to island, eventually it can evolve to such a point that through technological (or maybe even non-technological means) it will spread to the other clumps of matter with tenuous gases surrounding them


Yeah, I would love that. If there was tech available that made it possible for any small group to pick up and go anywhere in the solar system and have an equal quality of life to where they left, I think we could finally see the end of war. I also think there would likely be a lot of experimental communities, or religiously chartered colonies


I'm not ready to criticize his policy yet. He did this supposedly to allow the private industry room for growth and to allow NASA to commit entirely to exploration and not have to be a freight company. It might be that later on this decision will have turned out to be wise, or a total failure. But I have read about most of the private companies and I am suitably impressed with their plans and vision

The top-line budget is the same, and was due to be raised by $6 billion over 5 years. But that's very unlikely to happen in Congress with the deficit fighting mood. NASA will likely be holding in the ~18 billion range for the near future.

What they did was end the Moon program and try to follow one of the suggestions of the Augustine Commission for space travel. That's a pretty detailed topic so I wont discuss it. Congress then modified the WH plan. But everyone was using the same pool of dollars to pursue their favorite strategy for space.

If you read that NASA's budget was slashed, that was wrong.

You mean like every republican blamed Clinton for everything from 9-11 to Iraq to the economic collapse?

No, I mean like how some people continue to blame Bush for everything the fall of the Roman Empire to the existence of bacterial colonies upon armpits.

By the time they were assembling in space you'd be 10-15 years behind. That warning sign would come too little, too late. At that point they are only 2-5 years away from planting a flag.

If China did want to race to the Moon and Mars, that would be great for us as it would get the nationalists on board with boosting NASA funding. I just don't see it happening any time soon.

In the early 70s Nixon was offered a Mars plan by NASA. He rejected it and a moon base. When he arrived funding was at $21 billion/year. When he left it was $11 billion/year (2007 dollars) Wernher von Braun quit when he saw the writing on the wall. Maybe if the Soviets had still been racing us we might have continued.

I know you are saying this tongue in cheek but is one of my favorite ploys.
admit that a tactic is bad, dishonorable or dishonest and then defend its use by say the other side does it. Turn about is fair play

very powerful when coupled with strawmen.
-Jake

Maybe this question has been covered earlier in the thread but what are the potential benefits to the human race of space exploration relative to the economic cost?

Do you blame the sky for the rain? This sort of thing has been going on since God invented dirt.

ruveyn

In terms of this thread, space exploration - and more importantly emigration into space - would allow for there to be more resources per capita. The infrastructure in space would need to be in place before such emigrating could begin, but once the space industry is finally self sufficient it would be able to enable its own further expansion to the not-completely-lethal planets and moons of this solar system as well as the construction of more and more vast space stations. Being able to produce agriculture aboard centrifugal stations is a prerequisite to the further development of the space industry, but once that hurdle has been surpassed I think the rest would follow soon after.