Politics
Bill Nelson, NASA's Coulda-Been Hero Who Wasn't
Democratic senator never kept Space Coast in President Obama's face
Around the State
Nancy SmithYou could almost feel his lip quiver.
"As we welcome home Atlantis and her crew," he blubbers, "we recognize that though our shuttle program is over, our space program must live on. ... Many of our dedicated space shuttle workers throughout the country face uncertain job prospects ... We owe them for a job well done. ... We owe it to them to continue exploring outer space. ... Click here to sign an online thank-you card to all of NASA's shuttle astronauts and employees who contributed to the success of the program."
Oh, please.
Isn't this all coming a tad late, Senator? Seems to me we "owe" our space shuttle workers more than a smarmy group kiss led by Candidate Disappointment panning for votes.
Yes, Bill Nelson truly is Candidate Disappointment.
The one Floridian close enough to the president of the United States to have kept NASA and the Kennedy Space Center in the president's face and maybe, just maybe, could have persuaded him to rethink his decision ... somehow managed to do just enough yet not enough. Just enough to convince some on the Space Coast he was working to save their jobs. Not enough to sacrifice his president's warm embrace or the pipeline to national-party cash.
That's Sen. Bill Nelson.
Anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000 Florida jobs will evaporate because we're no longer looking to set up science labs on the Moon, we're going to Mars. And by the time we get there, most of the jobs that send up the rockets will have gone to other states. As President Obama said in 2009, "Everybody wants a piece of the action."
Everybody wants a piece of the action. Pretty pathetic, isn't it? Who cares what anybody else wants? It took Florida more than five decades to build this network of know-how. You're looking for aeronautical and space development? The Space Coast has the finest skilled labor in the world. It has bought-and-paid-for infrastructure, hundreds of supporting businesses and industries, and it has communities that understand how to ride out the rough weather that military rigidity and political whim sometimes whip up around them.
Nobody, no region in America or in the world, does space better.
Bill Nelson knows that. He is one of only two members of Congress ever to orbit the Earth, was a payload specialist on space shuttle Columbia's STS-61-C mission from Jan. 12-18, 1986. You would think, wouldn't you, that he would have challenged the proposed dismantling of a Florida icon. Why didn't he take ownership of the shuttle program's plight?
There was a time when I thought this senator was going to come through. A year ago he and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas supported Sen. John Rockefeller's bill to pump more money into the space program and keep the International Space Station open until 2020. But that was it. That was his whole offense. He was shooting a cap pistol when he needed an Uzi.
And in the end Obama never wavered from his decision to end NASA's moon program, turn over space transportation to commercial companies and jump-start technologies needed for future human exploration of Mars.
Nelson apologists kept telling me the senator was on the wrong committees to be of real service to the Space Coast. They told me Florida would have lost more if it hadn't been for their guy. They told me he always fought hard to save the national space program for Florida, but that objections to how much it cost in this worst economy in more than 70 years were a tough nut to crack.
I don't see why.
Comments (10)
the ENTIRE (40-tons-total) payload mass that "should" be carried to the ISS between 2014-16 and 2020 (+delays) by ALL the 20 "commercial space" CRS missions (12 with a cargo-Dragon and 8 with a Cygnus) awarded by NASA to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences (for a total price of $3.5 billion + over $1 billion for the COTS program) can be carried by (just) TWO further Shuttle flights (at 20 tons of payload per flight) and NOW, in late 2011 (then, NOT in 2015, or 2018, or 2020) for a total cost of about $1.5 billion, that is LESS THAN HALF the CRS program!!!
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Cygnus: timeline: 2014-16 to 2020 -- number of flights: 8 -- max cargo per flight: 2.5 tons -- max total payload of all CRS missions: 20 tons
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Dragon: timeline: 2014-16 to 2020 -- number of flights: 12 -- max cargo per flight: 3 tons -- max total payloads of all CRS missions: 36 tons
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costs of the COTS + CRS program: $1 billion for COTS + $3.5 billion for CRS including all 20 missions for a total of 56 tons max carried to the ISS = $80 million per ton of payload
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Shuttle: timeline 2011-12 -- number of flights: 2 -- max cargo per flight: 24 tons (+ 7 astronauts!!!) -- max total payload: 48 tons (or just 40 tons to the ISS)
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total costs of two further Shuttle missions: $1.6 billion for a total of (only) 40 tons of payload (+ 14 astronauts!!!) = $40 million per ton of payload (that's HALF the price of the "cheap" commercial space...)
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SLS: timeline 2017-up -- max cargo per flight: 130 tons -- costs of the program: $10 billion -- price per launch: over $1 billion -- number of cargo flights in 2017-2020: four???
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price per ton of payload of four SLS launches: $10 Bn + $4 Bn = $14 Bn / 520 tons = $27 million per ton of payload (that's 1/3rd the price of the "cheap" commercial space...)
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HAVE A BLESSED DAY
JULIA
Unfortunately, I don't see much of a difference between your take (use of space program as a jobs program) and that of Senator Nelson and the Democrat party as a whole.
If you will review article 1, section 8 of the constitution and consider the 10th amendment to the constitution, you will notice that there is no constitutionally-valid role of the federal government as a jobs program.
This is not to say that the space program is necessarily without merit - but whatever value there would have been to keeping the shuttle going is not to be found in providing employment to employees of NASA or associated contractors. I wish the best for those laid off and I hope that they began looking for follow-on opportunities early-on. Certainly the present state of the economy is a challenge.
As for your claim that the space program "creates more wealth than it consumes" I ask why on earth it should require my tax money then to continue it? Surely such a profitable venture can be funded privately...
Right now this country is headed toward financial collapse as an ever-growing federal government spends and spends wealth we do not have. Even now, the agreement being hammered out by the "Gang of Six" will do largely nothing - taking a decade to address roughly two years of spending at the most. The spending has got to stop. It must end. The national debt that is being amassed in this country will destroy this nation - in my lifetime. We're headed for a cliff and somebody's gotta put on the brakes.
Meanwhile, to balance the budget, why not tackle a real dead beat that gives nothing to America, and others like her. oba's illegal alien aunt in Boston is sucking up an American taxpayer funded retirement that would require her to have 2 or 3 million dollars in the bank. She gets free medical care, free housing, free food, free TV, free shelter and free clothing.
"Why on earth it should require my tax money" as you say to support her lazy rear-- stealing my money and enslaving me with obama's IRS Guns to support her. She gives nothing in return except a large carbon footprint. She has done nothing to help the US. Never worked here. Never contributed a dime nor even an idea. She just sits there and contributes to global warming with the heat and food and a/c I pay for. The space program costs less than it costs to support all the illegal aliens in one state- California. Where in the constitution does it say we have to give illegal aliens money and be enslaved to support them? As you say, "spending has got to stop." We start with stopping feeding parasites. If you give a free lunch, all you get is more people demanding more and more free lunches.
Meanwhile, to balance the budget, why not tackle a real dead beat that gives nothing to America, and others like her. oba's illegal alien aunt in Boston is sucking up an American taxpayer funded retirement that would require her to have 2 or 3 million dollars in the bank. She gets free medical care, free housing, free food, free TV, free shelter and free clothing.
"Why on earth it should require my tax money" as you say to support her lazy rear-- stealing my money and enslaving me with obama's IRS Guns to support her. She gives nothing in return except a large carbon footprint. She has done nothing to help the US. Never worked here. Never contributed a dime nor even an idea. She just sits there and contributes to global warming with the heat and food and a/c I pay for. The space program costs less than it costs to support all the illegal aliens in one state- California. Where in the constitution does it say we have to give illegal aliens money and be enslaved to support them? As you say, "spending has got to stop." We start with stopping feeding parasites. If you give a free lunch, all you get is more people demanding more and more free lunches.
View this youtube video and see how well these illegal immigrants are living on our tax dollars while you lose sleep wondering how to pay your mortgage and feed your family --- Elaborate Housing Welfare Project for Illegal Immigrants:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu6ok5ykyuQ&feature=share
where ordinary germans show their frustration over Jews, how they live nicely, working nothing in concentracion camps on their expenses