Monday, February 1, 2010

Irony, The Space Edition.

On the anniversary of the Challenger disaster Obama kills the Return to the Moon Program. Ah the irony.

Of course the big plus is in the second to last paragraph. A proposed 6 billion over 5 years to promote private space vehicles that NASA could rent. Aside from the fact that the 1.2 billion per year, hell the entire 6 billion, is not even a drop in the bucket compared to the 3.8 Trillion proposed budget just for 2011. That's 3,800 billion compared to 6 billion, or 0.03 % for one years spending and if you did it lump sum, 0.15%.

And that's not even my biggest hang up. I like imagine that if we'd gone private from the beginning of the space program back in the 40's and 50's, we'd have orbiting casinos at all 5 Lagrange points and yearly junkets to Mars by now.

But it's all really just a pipe dream anyway. Even if a privatized space industry was selected, the .gov would just regulate it out of existence or the green meanies would ban it for fears it would destroy the ecology of space or something.

1 comment:

Crucis said...

A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article about a private company lofting an orbital station. Basically, it was a balloon attached to a docking station.

Part of the problem with getting commercial enterprises "off the ground" is the cost of the basic launch infrastructure. The Single Stage to Orbit and Rutan's projects are a good start but sadly, to get tons into orbit still requires massive launch vehicles and massive launch facilities.