Republicans and Democrats agree about one thing: very expensive space flight [View all]

[1step]

Boer Deng, writing in Slate...

Rockets, satellites, and spaceships on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., are a testament to American achievements in space. But in an exhibit on the heady days of the 1960s and ’70s, one note on a timeline placard stands out. In 1969, it explains, a government task force suggested that NASA should build a permanently manned space station, and perhaps go to Mars. This did not happen. Political support for the ideas evaporated while people worried about the Vietnam War, social upheavals, and the money already spent on the Apollo program. The country must “define new goals which make sense for the seventies,” President Richard Nixon declared. A year after the moon landing, 56 percent of the public said it hadn’t been worth the price.

You would think that funding Orion, NASA’s first new type of crewed spaceship in three decades, and the Space Launch System, the powerful rocket Orion will eventually be attached to, would give politicians pause. The projects are meant to finally fulfill grand ambitions to go to Mars, but launching SLS would cost $17 billion, NASA has estimated. (And that’s an estimate for a 2017 launch; the launch date has since been pushed back to 2018, with costs that presumably have mounted apace.) The Government Accountability Office says that the total to develop and run Orion and SLS through 2021 will be $22 billion and that NASA is already several million dollars short on what it needs. President Obama’s entire proposed budget for NASA in 2015 was $17.46 billion, and space exploration is only supposed to be 22 percent of all projects. But on Tuesday, Dec. 9, Congress cut a new deal that would boost NASA spending to $18 billion.

This might seem odd, given an environment of tight-fistedness and frequent fretting over “wasteful spending.” But politicians of all stripes are keen on the project. Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican crusader against “ill-spent” public science funds, says SLS and Orion exemplify “our greatest breakthroughs and demonstrate American ingenuity.” A Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, sponsored the legislation that created SLS. It “has the distinction of being the first rocket designed by a committee of politicians,” quips the Economist. The 2010 bill specifies that the SLS must be capable of “lifting payloads weighing between 70 tons and 100 tons into low-Earth orbit” and that it is robust “in areas as related to solid and liquid engines.” When did senators and representatives become so well versed in rocketry?

Full article http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/space_20/2014/12/politics_of_space_flight_funding_republicans_and_democrats_agree_on_orion.html

I'm a total space nerd, so I don't have a problem with this. Hey, it's a helluva lot better than bank bailouts!