Scientists to Hold Bake Sale for NASA Saturday
Source: space.com
Scientists are trading telescopes for aprons this week to sell Milky Way cupcakes, Saturn cake, and chocolate chip Opportunity cookies in an effort to salvage U.S. planetary science projects.
The 2013 budget proposal submitted by the Obama administration earlier this year would cut funding for NASA's planetary science projects by about USD 300 million. While Congress is still deliberating over the federal budget, groups of scientists are planning a series of demonstrations in the form of bake sales, car washes and other events for Saturday (June 9) to plead their case.
Though planet-studying spacecraft usually cost millions, or even billions, of dollars, every penny helps. That's the reasoning behind the Planetary Exploration Car Wash and Bake Sale to be held by University of Central Florida students and professors who hope to sway lawmakers into providing more money for studying the solar system. It is one of nearly 20 planned demonstrations for Saturday at sites across the country, organizers said.
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Read more: http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/scientists-hold-bake-sale-nasa-saturday-221048232.html
aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)now that he's at the end of his political career? He supports the idea of lunar colonies and many people associate him with the idea. Why doesn't he dedicate the rest of his life to hitting up his rich fat fuck friends in the Republican party for donations for the advancement of space science instead of continuing to be a lobbying parasite, or shall I say an historian? If he did something like that, I might have an ounce of respect for the evil toad.
When I was a kid in the 60s seeing our country's first manned space efforts on TV, I never would have guessed that our scientists would have had to go begging for funds through bake sales and car washes. I honestly thought we would have been to Mars and beyond by now.
red dog 1
(27,575 posts)joshcryer
(62,265 posts)Obama cancelled Cx (which was going to be a meager lunar colony), and the Space Coast is bitter at Obama over it. Too bad for them that commercial space is making waves, because in the end Obama's move to cancel that crony project is going to open up space in a big way.
Heather4
(20 posts)Confusious
(8,317 posts)Lets have a bake sale for NASA, for schools, for the fire and police dept so they can buy things that are not optional, but necessary.
It's an embarrassment.
Beartracks
(12,754 posts)... #1.
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Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)Confusious
(8,317 posts)Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)It's just G**Damn Sad.
joshcryer
(62,265 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)tclambert
(11,077 posts)Where do you want America to be in 20 to 30 years? The nation with the best roads, best schools, best space program, best health care; or a nation of people sitting in their recliners reminiscing about how great our nation used to be?
"Why, we sent men to the Moon! 70 years ago. We don't even launch weather satellites any more, but back in the day we were sumpthin'. Hey, get off my lawn! Hippies!"
boppers
(16,588 posts)Space is what makes a nation great!
Mz Pip
(27,396 posts)We should be able to do both - have a good quality of life and a wonderful space program.
boppers
(16,588 posts)What correlations are there?
PavePusher
(15,374 posts)directly from the space program.
boppers
(16,588 posts)What technologies would those be? Most space programs made use of pre-existing technologies. Like Tang, Velcro, etc.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)We should also compare budget allocations for NASA vs. the social net programs...
baldguy
(36,649 posts)And 10 Ford-class carriers at upwards of $10B each.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)I still feel that is good idea...
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)may3rd
(593 posts)Thats the only way to 'make jobs' happen.
A bake sale?
aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)Because there's no immediate profit to be made. There are some things private enterprise isn't equipped to do, such as taking on enormous long-term risk where the returns may or may not come for quite some time. What shareholders are going to fund that? There are very few like billionaire Elon Musk who risked hundreds of millions of his own money to build a space rocket. Most investors are more like Romney and prefer to risk someone else's money. Private enterprise is ready to collect taxpayer money by landing government contracts but they're not willing to go it completely alone, with no certainly of payoff. I'm all for private enterprise getting involved but the government has to prime the pump and establish an infrastructure in outer space by the mass shared effort of the taxpayers. It's the same as when European governments, the monarchies funded the first efforts to colonize the new world in the 1500s - 1600s.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)Legal restrictions against spaceflight that didn't go through NASA or the Air Force didn't go away until shortly before the X-Prize shot, at which point a bunch of companies immediately started work on trying to get themselves up there.
aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)If a multinational corporation felt they could reap big profits by going into space, they would have rented a portion of a third world country to try it. In fact, I vaguely recall a German company having leased many square miles of an African country back in the 70s to try that very thing and their financing never went anywhere. And the X-Prize does not represent an example of private enterprise completely going it alone. It's a competition to win a NASA contract.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)The list of candidate countries that are stable, open to that sort of thing, and have access to good launch sites close to the equator with easy overland access to the facilities where much of the pretty large and often fragile hardware is getting built isn't exactly a huge one.
You can't just launch from anywhere; you need a safe location as close as you can get to the equator. There's a reason NASA tends to launch from Florida, and Russia launches from southern Kazakhstan, and the ESA launches from Kourou. If you're casting a wider net you end up in places with much more problematic weather, or no useful infrastructure, or currently-insurmountable security problems, or where you have to deal with airspace issues for several countries (which often themselves have additional security problems, mind).
There's a reason that German attempt never went anywhere - if I had the resources to try to set up a spaceport somewhere I'd need to take a whole load of stupid pills to try to do so in central Africa.
The initial X-prize was not a competition to win a NASA contract; it was the initial attempts for private enterprise to try to get something with a person in it outside of the atmosphere, and that attempt could not be made on US soil until doing so was legalized around '04 or so.
aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)Last edited Sat Jun 9, 2012, 04:24 PM - Edit history (1)
and in the same latitude. The area is politically stable and sparsely populated. Florida is far from the equator and there are many countries located closer to it, with weather that is no more unreliable. The fact is, no corporations have been scrambling to step forward and partner with governments to start a space program from scratch because it would be too risky and investors don't like extreme risk. If it's not a good risk with a reasonably certain and quick return, they won't go for it. They'll put their money in better risks. There are certain things governments do best and those are the big risky things, like Rachel Maddow says in that MSNBC spot with the Hoover dam in the background: development of outer space, basic scientific research, the Internet, the interstate highway system. Privatization is not the solution to every endeavor. Private companies are good at cherry-picking the profitable activities once the infrastructure has been established. And the the reason I mentioned Elon Musk is that he's an unusual capitalist. He's a believer who isn't in it just for the profit. He couldn't find investors willing to risk their money in the development of a rocket. He was almost universally called a fool by the business community when he dumped several hundred million of his own fortune into the research and development of his rocket. And 'yes' he was trying to win a NASA contract. Once the rocket worked, the plan was to get funding.
24601
(3,938 posts)launch site latitude isn't relevant. If you need a retrograde orbit, and sun-synchronous orbits are slightly retrograde, you should get as far away from the equator as possible.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Commercial flights to the space station, mining asteroids....
Private Spaceflight's Rise Gives NASA a Boost
http://www.space.com/16064-private-spaceflight-nasa-exploration-goals.html
As NASA scales back, commercial adventurers look to new horizons
http://triblive.com/news/1827623-74/nasa-space-million-commercial-projects-station-private-science-shift-astrobotic
Tech Billionaires Plan Audacious Mission to Mine Asteroids
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/planetary-resources-asteroid-mining/
Response to woo me with science (Reply #30)
woo me with science This message was self-deleted by its author.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)and if it is then certainly not in the lengths of time most companies are willing to invest in it.
Not everything has to be run for a profit.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)Last edited Sat Jun 9, 2012, 10:18 AM - Edit history (1)
Relative who works in research for NOAA sent us info about the cuts and the state he's in doesn't allow Bake Sales or Car Washes (because of water restrictions)...so they are going to the malls and offer to shine people shoes...
I kid you not! This relative has a Ph.D. he worked hard for and does statistics for our weather monitoring. Now he's going to be shining shoes (to call attention to the cuts) with his fellow NOAA employees because the country can't afford NOAA statisticians?
What have we come to?
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)padruig
(133 posts)On average about 1/4 of one penny of your tax dollars go to the funding of NASA
Imagine what would happen if we increased that from 1/4 of on penny to 1/2 of one penny
Space is not the Final Frontier, it is the Next Frontier and your tax pennies spent on NASA, NOAA, USGS (and National Forest Service, National Park Service, United States Coast Guard) is some of the best things tax monies can buy.
People like to say we know more about the moon than we do the bottom of the ocean, then lets increase the funding for NOAA and oceanographic research
This nation went up against 34 other nations in terms of the character and quality of its math and science education ... funny thing, we put men on the moon but scored 14th internationally in math and 17th in science
In the meantime China who likes to play the 'developing nation' card when accused of not paying attention to its environmental policy (the air quality in Beijing is one of the worst in the world) has developed its own launch capability, has a manned program well in operation, is planning a manned landing on the lunar surface, their own space station and lunar base
(as a point of reference we outspend China in military expenditures by over 5 to 1)
As to the recent success of SpaceX and their launch of the Dragon capsule it should be noted that they are not really doing anything differently than has been done before by our space program.
SpaceX is operating under contract, a 2 billion dollar, multi-year contract, to provide launch, supply and transport capability.
So while some may crow about the "commercialization" of space, its always been a commercial venture, with Federal Contract guarantees.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)NASA spends less on its budget than Canada does on its military, and that's after the prime minister decided we need to vastly expand the armed forces up here, but a lot of people guess its costs in the hundreds of billions.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)assuming we were spending that all along.
Sigh.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)Such an impressive feat, unparalleled in the history of the world and with such amazing potential.
Ultimately burned in the docks when it went out of favor.
But hey, think of all the money China saved by turning inward and becoming a stagnant, failed culture that was ultimately enslaved by foreigners who looked outward?
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)I think from under Reagan:
OrwellwasRight
(5,170 posts)is that we now have the bake sales for NASA, but we still never got the schools right (no matter what the Republicans say about greedy teachers making too much money).
Schools still don't have money for field trips, science labs, awesome libraries, and such. Many kids go to school in inesct-infested nasty old buildings that leak.
NorthCarolina
(11,197 posts)But we still have American Exceptionalism!
boppers
(16,588 posts)Not impressed.
Unite2DefeatGOP
(25 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,029 posts)banana nut, chocolate chip muffin.
Thanks for the thread, bananas.