Obama education and space priorities [Update]

Of course, it would help if Griffin hadn't just come out saying that they didn't intend, want, or need to hire many new engineers for Constellation. Right now the signal kids are getting from NASA is that even if they do study math and science, they're not going to get a chance to participate in Constellation. So what exactly is the difference as far as kids are concerned?

I have no intention of voting for Obama, and personally think the federal government shouldn't be involved in education. But I do have to say that I don't see a huge conflict between cutting back on the most backwards and anachronistic part of NASA while simultaneously promoting science and math education.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at 11/21/07 02:31:53

It would be fine if Obama's cutback on Constellation were linked to measures encouraging a 'New Space' solution to the skills needed for practical spaceflight, exploration included.

As it stands however, it's comes from the standard issue liberal cant about how space eats money we could use to help people on Earth.

Somebody really ought to educate his aides on the smarter alerternative. But of course, space is too unimportant to them to do anything out of the usual phrase book.

Not to mention that his lack of touch with reality on so many other subjects would be a national, and likely world, catastrophe anyway.

Posted by Charles Lurio at 11/21/07 09:11:46

Hi Jon,
As I indicate, I'm conflicted about all this since I don't support the specific program implementation but do support federal spending at the current level for civilian spaceflight development.

Most kids will never hear directly about particular space projects or policies. But over time they do pick up signals from society as to what is important and what isn't. As Charles indicates, the general message endorsed by Obama is that spaceflight and space exploration are luxuries that must be sacrificed to solve problem ___ (fill in the blank). I don't agree with that for many reasons and I especially believe it will be counter-productive to the goal of getting kids in the US to pursue technical careers.

- C.

Posted by TopSpacer at 11/21/07 10:20:29

Cutting constellation means a few things:
a) essentially ban NASA from toying with their own launch vehicles
b) letting go of the STS workforce, which is the most significant obstacle to adopting sensible strategies for exploration.

thats fairly radical, but similar stuff has been promoted by lots of people around the web, regardless of where the money left over is poured to.
how come its now seen as bad move ?

Posted by kert at 11/21/07 10:34:24

Kert - NASA is the only institution right in this country now that can develop a launch system that can take people beyond LEO. Also, the shuttle work force is going away soon any way, by attrition. Obama would do it sooner, wrecking havok to the economies of certain communities, pissing people (some of whom are his fellow Senators) off.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at 11/21/07 10:43:12

launch systems that could take people beyond LEO already exist in this and other countries.
pissing off people : cant make an omlette without breaking any eggs. both Direct and ESAS suffer from too much egg preservation.

Posted by kert at 11/21/07 11:50:27

"launch systems that could take people beyond LEO already exist in this and other countries."

Expand on this please.

"pissing off people : cant make an omlette without breaking any eggs. both Direct and ESAS suffer from too much egg preservation."

Even taking that at face value, Obama is targeting constituancies with a lot of support in the Congress.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at 11/21/07 12:44:13

I'd rather see the lions share of NASA's budget go to compelling unmanned missions that do actual science than the resource sucking prestige projects. I'd vote for Obama over the candidates. If manned spaceflight is so important let the private sector figure it out.

Posted by anon at 11/21/07 12:48:01

Mark,
NASA doesn't have launch vehicles that can take people beyond LEO any more than any other group on earth does right now. They don't have any actual lunar specific hardware, and the only piece of exo-LEO hardware they even have in the works is Orion...which is really just an LEO capsule with a thicker heat shield and a bloated service module...

In other words, the only thing that puts NASA anywhere closer to doing stuff outside of LEO than LM or Boeing or the Russians is that it has the luxury of spending vast amounts of taxpayer money with little real accountability to the American public.

Most of the people at NASA who have any experience sending people outside of LEO are either a) contractors or b) retired. There's still some of the old hands left, but the reality is is that most of the dinospace companies have just as much relevant experience.

All that said, I'm not a fan at all of the excuse that's being used for cutting NASA human spaceflight funding. Shifting a bunch of money from one bloated, underwhelming federal bureaucracy to another is hardly going to improve things.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at 11/21/07 12:52:33

"Expand on this please."
Hm, lets see. No reason why Gemini capsule couldnt be rebuilt right now to exact same specs. No development needed. There are quite a few launchers in the world and in US, that could lift it to LEO.
And LEO, as we all know, is halfway to anywhere.
So LAUNCH SYSTEMS to take humans beyond LEO, definitely exist. Hell, they could get to HEO ( that is, beyond LEO ) with just a single launch.

As to your assertion that Obama will face huge opposition from congress .. well the representatives of these constituencies grilled the daddy of Constellation, mr. Griffin, over its prospects just a few days ago and they seemed none too happy about how things are going and with options that are left.

I guess this wide "support" in congress could turn out to be knee deep as well.

Posted by kert at 11/21/07 13:10:29

Anon,
"... rather see the lions share of NASA's budget go to compelling unmanned missions ... If manned spaceflight is so important let the private sector figure it out."

There are some problems with this.

- As Carl Sagan pointed out years ago, the only reason the US unmanned program is so large is because the US manned program is so large. He would show graphs showing how the budget of one followed that of the other.

- There is no cost/benefit analysis that can explain why NASA's science budget should be nearly as large as the entire NSF budget or 20 times fusion or ten times the high energy physics budget, etc. There have been few if any direct commercial payoffs from deep space unmanned missions.

- Last year a panel of well respected scientists in the UK recommended that Britain get involved in manned spaceflight. The bottom line reason was that this would raise the visibility of and interest in space and science in general. Recent indications are that the government will do so.

- I think that beggaring the other guy's science/R&D to pay for your own is only going to end up hurting both. The post Sputnik period saw everybody's science/engineering budgets skyrocket and this has paid off big time for everyone ever since.

- Clark

Posted by TopSpacer at 11/21/07 13:15:29

Hi Kert,
"Cutting constellation means a few things: ... how come its now seen as bad move ?"

I'm all for cutting Constellation but only if the money goes into a more effective space development program. If the money simply disappears (I agree with Jon, putting it into the Education Department is equivalent to throwing cash into a giant paper shredder) then the money going into the general space industry infrastructure, especially the R&D part of it, will shrink. That means a smaller space infrastructure.

Maybe that is a good thing but I worry that it is not. I think of the space industry (or any industry) as like a big iceberg with subcontractors, sub-sub-contractors, etc., that are below the visibility line and individually small but in bulk holding up the whole thing.

When the NASA budget shrank drastically after the peak Apollo years, thousands of such small companies either disappeared or moved into other markets.

If NASA's budget is whacked, for the NewSpace industry in particular it likely means
- fewer subcontracting jobs and SBIR grants
- shelves with cheap-on-the-shelf (COTS) stuff for private projects to pick from are less full or empty.
- fewer companies with space related experience for private space firms to subcontract work out to.
- the pool of workers to recruit from will be smaller.
- fewer students coming out of aerospace programs since they know the job market is bad

I certainly hate the idea of serious amounts of money going to NASA just to do "busy work" like Ares/Orion to maintain the space industry. Maybe drastic budget cuts for NASA are ultimately the right thing to do. There will be unpleasant consequences, though, that will effect everyone including the NewSpace companies.

- Clark

Posted by TopSpacer at 11/21/07 13:49:23

I think the fundamental issue here is that we don't have any clear idea what Obama intends for his space policy - we know he plans to cut Constellation, and use the money for education, but what is the long term plan an Obama administration would take with regards to manned spaceflight - Perhaps we would see much more of a push for CCs, or an expanded COTS situation - we really are operating in way to much of an information vacuum

Posted by Ferris Valyn at 11/21/07 14:11:28

"Maybe drastic budget cuts for NASA are ultimately the right thing to do."

I see it as a good way out of the engineer welfare mindset. Of course anything drastic is going to have collateral damage, but again, no omlette without breaking eggs.
As you said yourself, NASA is so big because its so big. As employing the big NASA for some useful purpose seems to be insurmountable challenge, the only option left is downsizing.

If Obama, or anyone would propose splitting NASA up into separate organizations, and tasking the Consellation part with something useful .. oh , like actually developing technologies needed to live off earth .. i'd wholeheartedly cheer for that. But that is just not happening.
Several people have stated, and undoubtedly many more think so, that with X-33, its failure and later announcements how RLVs are not possible with todays technology did more harm than good for our overall progress in space. I think Constellation belongs in the harmful category as well. History will tell, of course.

Posted by kert at 11/21/07 14:13:27

"I agree with Jon, putting it into the Education Department is equivalent to throwing cash into a giant paper shredder..."

Would that the effect were so benign as that, Clark.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11/21/07 14:17:03

Clark,

The Obama and Clinton space policy squabble has a positive --- the issue is now on the presidential agenda in 2008. This is an opportunity to force the issue with other Democratic and Republican presidential candidates in the days and weeks ahead.

If those in the space movement actually got involved in a caucus or primary in a semi-organized fashion, it could have political impact. Participation in party process is low leaving a small faction of registered voters making the decisions as to the actual nominees.

Therefore, if pro-space advocates resolved to be involved in their state caucus or primary (either Democratic or Republican) in the first few weeks of the New Year, the impact could be meaningful.

For me, Obama is crossed-off my list. I await hearing others to determine if they adopt some VSE similar to Clinton or better.

Posted by Jack Kennedy at 11/23/07 18:56:55

Jack,
I don't think its quite fair to cross Obama of your list yet. Yes, it does cut Constellation, but if in the process, serious changes were offered to the plan, that make it a better plan, I'd be more than willing to accept them (for instance, a plan that makes greater use of NewSpace, or moves towards something like Direct and/or EELV, or something other than the current plan)

What we really need is a space policy, from Obama (and all the other candidates). Trying to tweeze it out from something like this really isn't the best way to go. However, your comments about involvement hold true.

Posted by Ferris Valyn at 11/24/07 03:42:13

I think spaceflight is very important for inspiring kids to choose technical careers .
Obama seems to lack a basic understanding of issues and budgets a sign of inexperience.
If he wanted to get money to fund his education plan the DHS and the DEA would be far better targets then NASA and other government science projects.
There's 10 Billion setting unused in DHS that was once to be used for domestic surveillance programs which congress fortunately killed this money can be put to use for something good instead now.
Then there's the DEA and the failed war on drugs this experiment has been a complete failure proven wrong headed again and again by alternative programs in other countries that do work and actually put an end to the cycle of violence.
Also his plan has many flaws as it's mostly a hand out to teachers to grab votes and does little to increase the quality of education and address any real issues.
Length of the school day or year has nothing to do with present low scores. These experiments with a 240 day school years have been tried before and they were complete failures with negligible changes in scores though they did increase the absentee rate.
The money would have been better spent on better text books and hiring better teachers yes some teachers don't do their job.
I'm young enough to still remember my HS school years in detail and my first high school calc teacher was terrible. She did her job poorly ,never showed examples and rarely if ever helped students .
Fortunately I was able to transfer out of her class and my next instructor was great.
He would offer to help students if they were having trouble always showed examples vs just saying do pages 112 though 115.

Posted by Ruri at 11/25/07 10:29:48

The most disturbing thing about Obama's plan to me is his maintenance funding approach. Reliable, affordable, safe (all of which will lead to it being regular) access to space is a complex technical/operational problem; with huge payoffs. It will be solved but not by courntries or organizations marking time while others are testing, flying, and learning. We may not agree with the current Constellation approach, but it's great to (finally) see discussion about actual hardware. Killing that without proposing a better plan is not leadership; it just shows that your staff doesn't understand technology issues very well. Students intelligent enough to pursue a technical or scientific education will get the message that an administration like this does not support innovation and respond accordingly. That wasn't the message I was looking for in school and not the one I wish to send as a taxpayer.

Posted by X-Obama-Supporter at 11/26/07 23:00:17

Um, newsflash: space exploration is WORTHLESS. All we can do is get out to places that people can't live (without ridiculously fancy technological means, which have to get there somehow). And there is no chance of us encountering life in our lifetimes, either. Space exploration is a waste of good money that could go to more important things. (We're not even meant to go up there; zero-g wreaks havoc on the human body.)

As for the claim that the aerospace workforce will dwindle, I seem to recall that the private sector is picking up NASA's slack. Somehow I doubt there is going to be a lack of aerospace jobs out there, especially seeing as a large portion of NASA's budget isn't going anywhere. No, we won't have as many experienced astronauts, but those guys have weakened bones anyway. We started the space program from scratch in the 60s and we can do it again. Right now, though, education is the higher priority. Without it, the US will lose economic dominance and become more like a lesser Western European country: not weak or completely without influence, but not a major world player either.

Posted by Steve at 11/27/07 10:22:03

Steve,
Newsflash: Using capital letters to express your opinion doesn't make it more true. It's still just your opinion and nothing more.

With respect to your opinion, space exploration may be worthless to you but it is worthwhile to me and to a majority of the US public according to most polls.

WRT education, if students are not excited by exploration (of whatever) in and of itself, then you can put as much money as you want into schools and teaching materials and it won't help a bit to expand the technology workforce.

Students know that engineering and the basic sciences are really, really hard and that you have to study them like crazy for years and years. And they know, that despite all that time and effort, the career opportunities are far less lucrative than in business, law, medicine, etc. And, of course, engineering and science are a whole lot less sexy than sports and entertainment.

The only reason for most kids in the US to go into a difficult technical field is because they are excited about that field. They want to explore its unknowns and solve the tough challenges that it presents.

Space is one of the few technical areas today that does excite lots of young people, though most don't actually end up working in space related fields. I'm sure, for example, that many of the engineers building Boeing airliners, were first attracted into their fields by the allure of spaceflight when they were kids. I know that many of the young people attracted into technical careers by the excitement of Sputnik and the Space Race ended up in fields outside of aerospace entirely.

The attitude that you display, i.e. that the worth of something has to be 100% in-your-face-obvious, is exactly the one that most kids will celebrate. It means there is no reason they should put a lot of work and time into something as hard as science and engineering if they don't see instant gratification.

BTW: There is also more to space than exploration. There is also development. People are going to live and work in space in greater and greater numbers. Get use to it. (Please go educate yourself about such things as artificial gravity via rotating structures.)

Yes, I think the private sector will continue human exploration and development of space even if the government program is zeroed out. However, just as the growth of the auto industry would have slowed significantly if the auto firms had been forced to pave all the roads, the private commercial spaceflight industry will be slowed if it has to do everything by itself. Similarly, all the benefits to society will be greatly slowed as well.

- Clark

Posted by TopSpacer at 11/27/07 21:50:16

Your comment: Name: Website: E-mail:

Enter the string of characters appearing in the picture: Remember Me