Space enthusiasts ALERT! (mild dial-up warning - two images)

[Subdivisions]

President Obama will be calling the crew of the combined Endeavour and ISS to congratulate them on the successful installation of the Cupola Module of the International Space Station. The President will be calling at 4:14pm CST today, about 15 minutes from now. You can see/hear the call at the NASA TV website at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv or at the White House website at http://www.whitehouse.gov/live

President Obama Scheduled to Speak to Orbiting Astronauts

The Cupola Module

President Obama, congressional leaders and middle school students will speak with the astronaut crews of the International Space Station and the space shuttle Endeavour today at 5:14 p.m. EST to congratulate them on their successful ongoing mission. The call will take place from the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

The White House and NASA Television will stream live video of the event online. The online video also can be embedded into sites using the embed code accessible by clicking "share" next to the event video at:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/live

Joining the president are 12 students from Birney Middle School of Detroit, Elkhorn Middle School of Omaha, Neb., St. Thomas the Apostle of Miami and Davidson IB Middle School of Davidson, N.C. These students are in Washington as leaders of four of 39 teams participating in the "Future City" engineering competition hosted by National Engineers Week.

Building on the president's "Educate to Innovate" campaign and his emphasis on inspiring young adults to pursue excellence in science, technology, engineering and math, the students are all leaders of teams that are finalists. The competition included 34,000 seventh and eighth graders from across the nation who produced innovative ideas and designs for a city of tomorrow. The Davidson IB Middle School team was the overall winner of the national competition.

[Subdivisions]

1. Kick. No one interested? n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

2. Great. The man who just junked the US commitment to manned space exploration.

You'll excuse me if I'm not more "enthused".

[Subdivisions]

3. I was going to mention that in my OP but decided against it. No one

asked you to be "enthused". Hell, I'm not enthused with his decision to cut NASA's nut's either.

[Warren DeMontague]

26. Yeah. I'm pissed about it. The new window on the ISS looks cool, though.

Imagine that view.

[quiet.american]

20. Actually, that's not true. Take a look at the first subject line of NASA's budget summary - link:

In fact, reading through all the initiatives makes it clear that Obama actually seems to be setting the stage to make Star Trek-type exploration a reality. Here's the link:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/factsheet_department_nasa/

[Warren DeMontague]

27. It's doubletalk and obfuscation with no actual commitment. Translation: Our astronauts will need to

hitch a ride with someone else to get off the ground for the forseeable future. We're theoretically going to "research" heavy lift rockets while abandoning the Ares V, which would be a... guess what.. heavy lift rocket.

Because of this "new direction" (cough) we will have absolutely zero manned space capability until at least 2040, if ever.

[quiet.american]

29. Hundreds of millions committed is not what I would term "double talk."

And why in the world would someone like Obama, who is well-known for his advocacy of education, especially advancement of the sciences, look to stall or shut down NASA's progress.

Your premise simply doesn't make sense on it's face, and the numbers invested in the budget don't lie.

Edited to add: I've just found the WaPo article that a lot of the "no manned flights" stuff seems to be based on, and saw that Michael Griffin, of the failed "Constellation" program is the main source of the "no manned flights." His name sounded familiar and I remembered reading an article in 2008 that showed he was very resistant to Obama from the get-go, even to the point of calling up companies who worked with NASA and demanding that they tell Obama they supported his program, and not talk about alternatives. I'm not surprised he is leading the "Obama's cut off NASA's knees" charge. From where I sit, Obama is doing a "cash for clunkers" move with regard to NASA. Griffin's program wasn't working and wasn't projected to work even by its completion date of 2020. How could anything move forward with funds tied up in an ineptly-run program that was bleeding cash?

[Warren DeMontague]

30. Please explain to me what is 'failed' about Constellation?

Like I said, it's ridiculous to talk about "r&d for a heavy lift vehicle" when a perfectly reasonable program to develop a serious one- the Ares V- was already underway. And is now being abandoned, for what reason I can't even fucking fathom.

The Augustine commission said that there wasn't funding to fulfill the goal of getting back to the moon under the Constellation mandate; that does NOT mean, however, that junking the rockets, the manned craft (the orion) and the entire apparatus towards which a great deal of progress has already been made, makes any sense.

And again, it IS double talk, because there is nothing in there- NOTHING- which is going to keep our astronauts from having to hitch a ride with someone else to get into space for pretty much the next couple decades. Hey, I'm as big a fan of Elon Musk and SpaceX as anyone; but outsourcing our entire manned LEO program seems a bit premature. The reality is, without a decent craft to get people up and bring them down (i.e. the orion capsule, part of that "failed" Constellation program) we're going to be sticking astronauts in Soyuz craft until at least 2025. Embarrassing.

As for $$$ numbers, ('hundreds of millions'? We spend more on fucking "abstinence only education") ...the DEA got more of an increase to continue locking up pot smokers than NASA did for human exploration and vision. You'll also note that the trillion dollar Military-Industrial budget was never seriously called into question. That's simply pathetic.

Here's more of that "failed" :eyes: constellation program, the much hated Ares I, as of last October:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB9gf5hGGMg

If you honestly believe that scrapping a working NASA program with goals in progress, in favor of NO goals, NO vision, and most importantly NO architecture, you must think the post-Apollo 1970s were NASA's manned space exploration heyday. That's where we're headed; as in, nowhere. For a long time. Just watch.

[quiet.american]

31. How one can read the NASA budget and conclude there are "no goals," "no vision" is beyond me.

You're asking me to take your angry assumptions over what the actual budget states, and from what I can tell, Griffin didn't do himself any favors. Even a perfunctory Google search reveals Constellation was already regarded to be in trouble before Obama was even sworn in. My main point is though, that it's a stretch to say Obama has doomed manned exploration for decades, when, in reading the budget with my own eyes, it's clear there is an emphasis on human exploration, just not on using over-budget approaches left over from the 20th Century.

NASA BUDGET OVERVIEW:

Adds $6 billion to NASA’s budget over five years and draws upon American ingenuity to
enable us to embark on an ambitious 21st Century program of human space exploration.

Initiates flagship exploration technology development and demonstration programs of “gamechanging”
technologies that will increase the reach and reduce the costs of future human space exploration as
well as other NASA, government, and commercial space activities.

Embraces the commercial space industry and the thousands of new jobs that it can create
by contracting with American companies to provide astronaut transportation to the Space
Station—thus reducing the risk of relying exclusively on foreign crew transport capabilities.

Ends NASA’s Constellation program, which was planning to use an approach similar to the
Apollo program to return astronauts back to the Moon 50 years after that program’s triumphs.
An independent panel found that Constellation was years behind schedule and would require
large budget increases to land even a handful of astronauts back on the Moon before 2030.
Instead, we are launching a bold new effort that invests in American ingenuity for developing
more capable and innovative technologies for future space exploration.

Extends the International Space Station and enhances its utilization, bringing nations together
in a common pursuit of knowledge and excellence in space.

Enhances the Nation’s global climate change research and monitoring system, including reflight
of a satellite that will help identify global carbon sources and sinks.

Provides for a robust program of robotic solar system exploration and new astronomical
observatories, including a probe that will fly through the Sun’s atmosphere and an expanded
effort to detect potentially hazardous asteroids.

Revitalizes and realigns NASA to put in place the right workforce and facilities to function as
an efficient 21st Century research and development agency.

[Warren DeMontague]

32. Presumably, you and I want the same thing. Unfortunately, if this "bold vision" is ok'd by congress

We will be watching a repeat of the 1970s when it comes to manned space exploration, with NO capability, "game changing" or otherwise.

("Over-budget approaches"? ...You mean rockets?)

You still haven't explained, exactly, what is "failed" about Constellation. Just because Rahm Emmanuel or some other administration flack called it "failed" doesn't make it so.

Oh well, it'll be exciting when people go back to the moon- and plant the Chinese flag.

[quiet.american]

33. Yes, we do. I guess the main difference is, I see the glass as half full. :)

As far as my comments about the Constellation program, I was referring to the report to Congress by the GAO, amongst other things:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09844.pdf

I'll concede "failed" may have been too strong a word to use, but, after reading this report, it doesn't seem Constellation was considered an actual "success" either.

The Chinese may plant the flag on the moon before we do, but I simply don't believe it's Obama's intent to deliberately set things in motion that would lead to that result. I would be interested to see a GAO report on the NASA intiatives he's put in place to see how they measure up.

[Warren DeMontague]

34. I'd like to see a concrete plan with some real direction. Hopefully one will be forthcoming soon.

Constellation didn't fail so much as fail to ever be adequately funded. Bush put it out there but never committed the cash, even as $9 Billion dollars went completely missing (again, as per the gao) in Iraq.

In the meantime, I still think it's insanity to completely abandon projects like the Orion capsule (when we are going to need not just LEO capability but also some way to bring down astronauts returning at Moon-Mars travel velocities -- the old Apollo engineers got it right on that account) and certainly the Ares V, when they're simultaneously talking about the need for a heavy lift vehicle.

Hopefully -if they're really ditching all of the constellation architecture- they will at least put to good use the work that's been done up to this point, not just throw it all away;

if they did throw it all away, it would be another unfortunate echo of the immediate post-apollo era, when literally mountains of hard work was just tossed in the garbage.

[ddeclue]

25. +1 or should I say +$10B/yr if he wants to start doing NASA Photo Ops..

:P

[Swamp Rat]

4. k&r

[Subdivisions]

8. Thanks for the K&R, Swampy! Good to see you! =)

[gmoney]

5. Obama will be telling them they need to find another ride home?

"Uh, yeah... about that shuttle. Seems it's out of gas. Can you catch a ride back with the Russians?"

[Subdivisions]

6. Ha-ha! Funny...

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Subdivisions]

9. 5 minutes. How's about some kind soul giving this one more rec so

the rest of DU who might be interested can tune in? Thanks.

[cbdo2007]

10. wait, what is "dial up"?

[Subdivisions]

11. Some people in rural areas still have to access the Internet from a telephone. Imagine that...

in the United States of America, where WE'RE NUMBER ONE!, people still have to connect by telephone line.

Shameful.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. We don't want that Yankee frenchified homo broadband around our parts.

Nosiree.

[Subdivisions]

19. Ooohhhh...!

[RedCappedBandit]

12. We appreciate them so much..

We'll replace their jobs with robots!

[Subdivisions]

13. That's why I'm interested to see what he has to say. UPDATE: The President

is going to be behind schedule about 9 mins. moving his call to 4:25pm CST. Meanwhile, the broadcast has begun with students tuning in from Russia who will be asking the astronauts questions about their mission. Their will also be students who are participating in an engineering contest.

[Subdivisions]

14. Thank you to the Rec-ers. n/t

[Subdivisions]

15. UPDATE: The President has arrived and will be speaking in a moment. You can hear

audio of the President speaking to the students in the White House.

[Uncle Joe]

17. This is cool in and of it self, nice photo through The Cupola Module Window.

Thanks for the thread, Subdivisions.:thumbsup:

[Subdivisions]

18. That thing is pretty amazing. I've been watching all day and they were showing

clips and in one clip an astronaut had taken a seat inside the module in a reclining position and was just quietly sitting there taking in the view of the rest of the station and of the Earth.

I wish that had been me!

[Uncle Joe]

21. If you're young and determined enough, one day it might be.

:)

[Confusious]

22. Is the second picture the inside of a TIE Fighter?

Cool!

[Subdivisions]

23. That's what it reminded me of at first! lol. n/t

[Statistical]

24. Nice shot of the inside of the new cupola.

[unc70]

28. Enjoy the NASA iPhone app; current political decisions, not so much

I find the NASA iPhone app a pleasant way to spend some time, when not here at DU. Convenient way to keep up with stuff I might otherwise miss. After being around this stuff professionally for over 40 years, sometimes still feel like I did as a kid over 50 years ago.

The thing I most notice now about the NASA programs is that the people I deal with a Johnson are mostly older than I am and many of the ones holding things together have institutional knowledge that will go with them when they retire or die.

This is not just a problem for NASA, but is true for large segments of the technology infrastructure.