No more man'd US flights to space

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,2770904.story

At one point in my life, i would have agree'd, cut the budget to Nasa.

The over all budget to Build Ares 1, and Ares V (one ship is for cargo) 2 ships that will carry us to the Moon again, to explore moon bases and eventually put people on Mars carries from what I understand originally 28 billion, but has changed due to some engineering problems to 40 billion through 2007-2015, an 8 year program.

Meanwhile, the war in Iraq is totaling 12 billion a MONTH:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23551693/

And about 4 billion a month in Afghanistan.

On, and here it the best part, while we are not even cutting funding, simply eliminating it from our budget all together our good friends China, Russia and India are picking up the pieces for maned space flight:

http://indianspaceweb.blogspot.com/2...es-indias.html

Every great Empire in history that stopped exploring shortly there after vanished. If we invested a trillion plus dollars into getting to mars like we want to do for health care. We would have a New New York on Mars already. Its not all Obama's fault, the space program has been in decline really for many years. Although cutting a relatively small amount of money out of the budget when you figure it vs the GDP it really is literally a drop in the bucket.

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Originally Posted by MuscleScience

Every great Empire in history that stopped exploring shortly there after vanished. If we invested a trillion plus dollars into getting to mars like we want to do for health care. We would a New New York on Mars already. Its not all Obama's fault, the space program has been in decline really for many years. Although cutting a relatively small amount of money out of the budget when you figure it vs the GDP it really is literally a drop in the bucket.

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The US spends 680 BILLION a year per it's BUDGET for our military. This is only the budget for 2010, and when was the last time we were on a accurate budget? Considering manned space flight budgets increased from 28 billion to 40 billion in 2 years.

As an entire world, combined military spending of every country in the world comes in right around 1.5 trillion.

The US in comparison to the rest of the world military budget is 42% of the total spending.

The top 10 (excluding the US) military spending countries in the world sum up a COMBINED percent of 21.1%

China, the country who's economy we fear, and our biggest rival...a simple 5.8%

I'll give you a little history of Canada...

In the 50's, we had the Avro program. They developed the Avro Arrow, the most advanced aircraft in the world at the time. It would still be operational today.

The government decided it should not spend money on this, so they canceled the program. Where did all the scientists go? They went south and joined NASA, and made significant contributions to the space program. That was the beginning of the brain drain in Canada.

Now we have a similar ideological government in Canada today and they want to scrap our Nuclear research because they believe we should not be investing in it. This will only lead to more of our brightest leaving the country looking for work. It's history repeating itself.

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Originally Posted by J-Dogg

The US spends 680 BILLION a year per it's BUDGET for our military. This is only the budget for 2010, and when was the last time we were on a accurate budget? Considering manned space flight budgets increased from 28 billion to 40 billion in 2 years.

As an entire world, combined military spending of every country in the world comes in right around 1.5 trillion.

The US in comparison to the rest of the world military budget is 42% of the total spending.

The top 10 (excluding the US) military spending countries in the world sum up a COMBINED percent of 21.1%

China, the country who's economy we fear, and our biggest rival...a simple 5.8%

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The thing that most people see is the simple dollar and cents for the program. However the space program has returned its moneys worth to humanity in an un-calculable amounts in new scientific knowledge and benefits to humanity including in every single persons daily lives.

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Originally Posted by Hoggage_54

I'll give you a little history of Canada...

In the 50's, we had the Avro program. They developed the Avro Arrow, the most advanced aircraft in the world at the time. It would still be operational today.

The government decided it should not spend money on this, so they canceled the program. Where did all the scientists go? They went south and joined NASA, and made significant contributions to the space program. That was the beginning of the brain drain in Canada.

Now we have a similar ideological government in Canada today and they want to scrap our Nuclear research because they believe we should not be investing in it. This will only lead to more of our brightest leaving the country looking for work. It's history repeating itself.

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Solid point, and valid.

In a time of economic hardships, we need bright minds to create and develop high paying professional jobs.

The times of assembly lines = high paying jobs is over. You cannot expect to bolt mufflers on a GMC and retire a millionaire anymore. We have to quit trying to spend money to compete with over seas labor in these fields.

Yet we cut funding to science, medical and engineering fields with these types of cuts.

Does it not seem like the best way to create high paying professional jobs for US citizens would be to fund these types of projects? To make advancements in these fields?

We could learn a lot from doing this too, we have found earth like planets a mere 20 light years away. While that is a great distance, in terms of what we know now, but with funding of 10 billion a year....then consider what we have done in the past 50 years imagine funding of 400billion (approx half of the military spending).