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2005-09-29 Home Front: Politix

Republican Plan To Cut $1Tr Over 10 Years

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Posted by Anonymoose 2005-09-29 10:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 $1T over 10 years is only $100B a year, not that much (<4%) out of a $2.6T annual budget. No step for a stepper.

Posted by RWV 2005-09-29 10:17|| 2005-09-29 10:17|| Front Page Top

#2 Remember that cuts are only half the equation. If the tax income of the government was constant, then cuts would be "dollar for dollar". But since the economy is on the upturn, tax revenues will increase, and "out of the blue" the deficit will disappear and the government will be very "in the black".

That is why Reagan's "slowing the rate of growth" accomplished so much.

I will add that the only thing in this proposal I didn't much care for was cutting the Moon and Mars missions. If the Moon mission alone was a success, and we could set up an H3 mining operation, it would pay for itself a hundred times over. If private enterprise can do it, more power to them. But government will probably have to trailblaze.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-09-29 11:08|| 2005-09-29 11:08|| Front Page Top

#3 100B ain't bad... that's about $1400 for every family in the US. I'll take it.

Posted by Damn_Proud_American 2005-09-29 11:13|| 2005-09-29 11:13|| Front Page Top

#4 Oh come on. The moon and mars mission are a complete waste of money. Let private industry get us there for a fraction the cost and at a profit which increases standards of living as opposed to decreases on wasted spending. If we want to spend gov't money on a far out project let it be on research of carbon nanotube composites to build a space elevator.

Btw... you need fusion for h3... cart before the horse?

Posted by Damn_Proud_American 2005-09-29 11:15|| 2005-09-29 11:15|| Front Page Top

#5 DPA: Oh come on. The moon and mars mission are a complete waste of money. Let private industry get us there for a fraction the cost and at a profit which increases standards of living as opposed to decreases on wasted spending.

Not going to happen. Columbus found the Americas only because of government funding. Space is way too expensive for a private firm to even think about doing. A big part of this is transportation costs - just as Columbus's expeditions were extremely expensive, so are space missions. Columbus at least had the prospect of a shorter trade route to Asia, which turned out to be illusory, but was more than compensated for by the discovery of two continents ripe for the plucking. Space is pretty barren. No way private enterprise will come up with the funds for such a project.

Fact is that man will eventually have to make his way into space. At the moment, we are at the mercy of macro acts of nature, such as asteroid impacts, the sun going supernova and a bunch of other things. Gaia's not a maternal figure - she's a petulant and murderous bitch continually coming up with new ways to kill mankind. We will eventually need to figure out how to adapt to other environments. The only way to do so is to have the government fund an ambitious space program. We shouldn't spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year, but we should at least match the amount of funding devoted to an expensive weapons program, say $10B a year.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2005-09-29 15:14|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2005-09-29 15:14|| Front Page Top

#6 Space is way too expensive for a private firm to even think about doing.

And as long as the government dominates it in this country, it'll stay that way...

Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-09-29 15:20|| 2005-09-29 15:20|| Front Page Top

#7 PF: And as long as the government dominates it in this country, it'll stay that way...

Government dominates defense spending, too. Without government cost-plus guarantees for defense research, none would be carried out. Forget ICBM's, stealth warplanes, composite armor, guided missiles, atomic bombs, etc. Some things can be done by government alone - no one else is big enough to pay the freight - if private sector research were such a panacea, why haven't private companies been able to take over satellite launches? Note that government is typically the high cost provider, and that there are no prohibitions against private companies launching satellites for non-government entities. And yet the average launch cost of a satellite is about $250m per mission. Private companies do compete successfully with the government. FedEx, UPS and DHL aren't exactly losing share to the Postal Service. But in areas where the cost is prohibitive, there are no defined markets and the need appears remote, there is no substitute for government - it's a classic case of market failure.

We recently got a private space plane with essentially no payload - almost forty years after the moon landings, many decades after the problems of going into space were investigated and understood - by the people who carried out the original space missions. And this space plane wasn't a for-profit enterprise - like NASA, the money was spent just for the sake of finding out if something was possible. It took over forty years since the Soviet space missions for this privately funded space plane to get off the ground, and it doesn't even do anything useful like loft satellites into space.

As far as I'm concerned, the Federal government needs to shut down all the agencies except Defense, Treasury, NASA and the crime-fighting units. That's where we'll find the real savings.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2005-09-29 15:57|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2005-09-29 15:57|| Front Page Top

#8 Columbus found the Americas only because of government funding.

Yep, 20,000 years after Homer.

Posted by Here Try The Tobacco 2005-09-29 16:34|| 2005-09-29 16:34|| Front Page Top

#9 Government dominates defense spending, too. Without government cost-plus guarantees for defense research, none would be carried out. Forget ICBM's, stealth warplanes, composite armor, guided missiles, atomic bombs, etc. Some things can be done by government alone - no one else is big enough to pay the freight - if private sector research were such a panacea, why haven't private companies been able to take over satellite launches? Note that government is typically the high cost provider, and that there are no prohibitions against private companies launching satellites for non-government entities. And yet the average launch cost of a satellite is about $250m per mission. Private companies do compete successfully with the government. FedEx, UPS and DHL aren't exactly losing share to the Postal Service. But in areas where the cost is prohibitive, there are no defined markets and the need appears remote, there is no substitute for government - it's a classic case of market failure.

And as long as the government's idea of a decent booster is "The Stick" (an expendable put together out of a shuttle SRB and a yet-to-be-determined cryogenic engine) the costs will remain prohibitive.

Did you know you could buy a commercial space booster from Boeing? It's called a "Sea Launch," and it's made in the Ukraine; it's basically a relabeled Zenit. Lockheed's "commercial" booster is basically a resold Proton for several times the actual estimated cost of what it takes to build and launch a Proton.

You might have been able to make a decent commercial launcher (in terms of competing with Proton and Sea Launch/Zenit) out of one of the Delta series, if you threw out a lot of the paperwork... and if you actually did what the Russians did and built an assembly line and ran it as such. BUT since NASA's great scheme involves building small numbers of their own boosters by hand (literally) in-house and the AF (rightfully so, IMHO) doesn't want to get stuck with The Stick, the situation's going to remain expensive.

Unless, of course, you fly Russian or Chinese... maybe the next time you go to China, you should ask them what it is about the laws of physics there or Russia that make space launch relatively cheaper, even with expendables?

Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-09-29 17:59|| 2005-09-29 17:59|| Front Page Top

#10 The gov't should invest in projects where there is no hope for profit in the forseeable future but in the very long term could prove hugely beneficial. Space is already profitable (satellites and soon travel & tourism). Gov't spending on space is not contributing to its success anymore. We are past that point and now it's a waste of our money.

What the hell do we gain by sending a few guys to the moon or mars? Makes no sense at all... just a ridiculous waste of money. Invest that money in ways to make it cheaper to get into space not sending one off missions with no benefit just to say we did it.

http://www.spacex.com is what happens when private industry comes in and replaces wasteful gov't spending... launch costs drop by almost an order of magnitude.

Posted by Damn_Proud_American 2005-09-29 18:11|| 2005-09-29 18:11|| Front Page Top

#11 _IF_ SpaceX works. The government is providing them (and several other alternate launch companies) with seed money and/or contracts. But it's the military branch of the government, not NASA.

Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-09-29 18:41|| 2005-09-29 18:41|| Front Page Top

#12 There's nothing wrong with the gov't providing contracts... that's exactly what's supposed to happen. What's inefficient is the gov't in the rocket design business. Why shouldn't the gov't use the rockets to launch payloads that they need launched... btw I have nothing against the gov't doing pure science for science's sake. My problem is with wasted spending on ridiculously small returns (i.e. sending men to mars).

Btw, they didn't provide funding. Only the launch contracts. From what I understand the first spacex payload launches in 1 month... fingers crossed.

Posted by Damn_Proud_American 2005-09-29 18:59|| 2005-09-29 18:59|| Front Page Top

#13 Get the government out of civilian space activity now, or it will be just like train travel...and NASA will become National Amtrack Space Agency.

Can you imagine if NACA had run the airlines?

Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-09-29 19:44|| 2005-09-29 19:44|| Front Page Top

#14 20,000 years after Homer

Well, more like 2300, but we take your point LOL.

Posted by Omerens Omaigum2983 2005-09-29 20:06|| 2005-09-29 20:06|| Front Page Top

#15 The way I got it figured,if NASA wants to send and expedition to the Moon/Mars,fine.Do it right start of by sending unmanned supply ships and equipment over a period of years(ballpark say 10years).Send enough for an expedition of aprox.6 months,anything less is just a propaganda junket and of no real scientific/reasearch value.
Send the exployers in a ship dedicated for thier trip and the equipment and supplies needed for immediate use.
In the mean time in partnrtship with private industry begin researching,developing and deploying a relable,reusable cargo spaceplane,with a fast turnaround time(figure a target of 1 month turnaround).As well as a real working spacebase for reasearch,development of new tech as well as a base of operations for further exporation flights.This base has to be at least 60% or better self sustainable.
These one shot expeditions are great feel good propaganda,but without the ability for a longterm,sustained and repetative/repeatable effort it is a huge colosal waste of time,money, and effort.

Posted by raptor 2005-09-29 23:30|| 2005-09-29 23:30|| Front Page Top

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