Will Constellation/Onion survive the recession?

[inconceivable]

Will they cancel the program with the recession and the economy being so bad? The projected cost for this program of going to the moon and on to Jupiter is $217 BIllion dollars. Can we afford this? Will this provide jobs to help boost the economy?

[lionking]

They will be criminals if they chose to go with that project, while ppl are getting kicked out of their jobs. I have relatives living in America and they are all worried to lose their jobs, and so are millions of ppl I guess, it is just totally insensitive to do so..

[gillianren]

Hey, deficit spending brought us out of the Depression, be it the New Deal or World War II. (Both were financed with money the country didn't actually have.) Have you considered that such a major program might create jobs?

[LunarOrbit]

How many people are employed (directly or indirectly) by NASA, lionking? How many more unemployed people would there be if NASA was shut down? Where will they go for new jobs? Wal-Mart and McDonalds?

NASA's budget is something like $17 billion. It sounds like a huge amount of money, but it's just 0.57% of the total US budget. If you took NASA's budget and divided it up among every American citizen you'd only be giving them $56.

The people who work for NASA spend money on cars, houses, groceries, computers, televisions, etc. If they lost their jobs other people and businesses would also suffer.

[echnaton]

They will be criminals if they chose to go with that project, while ppl are getting kicked out of their jobs.They will be criminals if they chose to go with that project, while ppl are getting kicked out of their jobs.

NASA, like many other government agencies, is a jobs program. It is there to employ people to do work that cannot be funded in the private sector. work that primarily produces knowledge whose tangible benefits that can be captured inside one organization.

The vast majority of the budget for NASA pays salaries. There certainly is an argument to be made that the money budgeted to NASA could be better spent if left in the taxpayers who earned it, but that is a broader argument. The fact is that the US rarely cuts programs these days, they simply borrow more money, which is what is occurring right now. As a practical matter, there is little reason to believe that cutting the Orion program would result in any increase in aid for the unemployed. In terms of the US government operations during a recession, there is no need for it to happen.

Your "criminal" comment is simply unfounded and exhibits your bias.

[lionking]

Dec 11, 2008 14:31:19 GMT -4 echnaton said:

They will be criminals if they chose to go with that project, while ppl are getting kicked out of their jobs.They will be criminals if they chose to go with that project, while ppl are getting kicked out of their jobs.

NASA, like many other government agencies, is a jobs program. It is there to employ people to do work that cannot be funded in the private sector. work that primarily produces knowledge whose tangible benefits that can be captured inside one organization.

The vast majority of the budget for NASA pays salaries. There certainly is an argument to be made that the money budgeted to NASA could be better spent if left in the taxpayers who earned it, but that is a broader argument.


The fact is that the US rarely cuts programs these days, they simply borrow more money, which is what is occurring right now. As a practical matter, there is little reason to believe that cutting the Orion program would result in any increase in aid for the unemployed. In terms of the US government operations during a recession, there is no need for it to happen.

Your "criminal" comment is simply unfounded and exhibits your bias.

if the government spends those money on more ppl than the NASA employees, and on the food for the starving, especially in this deteriorating economic situation, life would be better and you can see, away from your bias, how indifferent the government can be if they don't do so and help the others. It is a matter of dividing fortune among those needed, not a limited number of persons taking what others need desperately...

in times of crisis, one should think of any possible chance to surrvive and certainly the best ways that can gather money for the most needy... how biased one should be so that he/she can't find out this..

[lionking]

Dec 11, 2008 14:12:11 GMT -4 LunarOrbit said:

How many people are employed (directly or indirectly) by NASA, lionking? How many more unemployed people would there be if NASA was shut down? Where will they go for new jobs? Wal-Mart and McDonalds?

NASA's budget is something like $17 billion. It sounds like a huge amount of money, but it's just 0.57% of the total US budget. If you took NASA's budget and divided it up among every American citizen you'd only be giving them $56.

The people who work for NASA spend money on cars, houses, groceries, computers, televisions, etc. If they lost their jobs other people and businesses would also suffer.

it can be more efficient, and not dividing them on every citizen. The government can make a health project to give part of the money of a cost of a surgical operation... for example..


Nasa employees don't need to get out of job, rather the budget should be decreased and redistributed, like the socialist point of view suggests

[gillianren]

Actually, a socialist system would create more government jobs.

[lionking]

explain what do you mean?

[laurel]

Excuse me Inconceivable, sorry to be picky, but the program is not called Onion.

[inconceivable]

Oops, spacecraft Orion. With it's ablative heat coating maybe layered like onion. Also. the trip to red planet is one-way trip? Do we really want to send people to die on another planet?

[laurel]

I assume you mean Mars, not Jupiter like you said in the opening post. Who said it would definitely be a one-way trip and that they would be sending people there to die? I know Buzz Aldrin has talked about this subject, but that was just one person's opinion.

www.universetoday.com/2008/10/23/aldrin-mars-pioneers-should-not-return-to-earth/

[echnaton]

It is a matter of dividing fortune among those needed, not a limited number of persons taking what others need desperately...

There is no common fortune to be divided. It is a mater of taking money (under the threat of imprisonment) from people who earn it and distributing it to those who haven't. The need for this and the amounts that should be redistributed are a matter of opinion.

how biased one should be so that he/she can't find out this..

I should have put a smiley after my "bias" comment. It was really just a reference back to comments about bias in another thread. Everyone has opinions on these issues and they are matters in which reasonable people can disagree. Sorry for being unnecessarily confrontational.

[Jason]

NASA only has a budget of around $17 billion. Congress is giving $25 billion to the "big three" auto manufacturers.

What you don't seem to understand, Lionking, is that the money spent on the Orion project isn't going to be just shot out into space. It will be paid to people here on the ground. Those people, similarly, are not going to bury it in a coffee can in their back yard - they are going to spend it in the economy. So we get a cool aerospace program and more of our tax dollars go back into the general economy. It's win-win.

[PhantomWolf]

Dec 11, 2008 14:51:35 GMT -4 @lionking said:

it can be more efficient, and not dividing them on every citizen. The government can make a health project to give part of the money of a cost of a surgical operation... for example..


Nasa employees don't need to get out of job, rather the budget should be decreased and redistributed, like the socialist point of view suggests

The US already speads 100x more on Health and Welfare than it does on NASA, over half it's annual budget is spend in the areas of Health and Welfare. NASA gets a drop in the bucket that wouldn't make a difference if directed to Welfare and I really hope that Obama figures that out before he does what he seemed to think he would pre-election. He thinks that by delaying the programme by five years he can channel the money elsewhere into health, but the reality is that it'd be like taking a cup of water and throwing it into a paddling pool in the pretense that it'll visibly increase the level.