No Privatization of Taxpayer-Owned NASA/Public Space Science!
1. Subordination, Attenuation and Eclipsing of Public Space Science & Defunding of NASA & JPL
President Obama must reconsider his decision to abandon returning the U.S. to a presence on the Moon and extending that presence to Mars and the asteroid belt. For the Obama Administration to abandon the plan and endeavor for the U.S., via its public space science agencies NASA and JPL, to return to the Moon and go to Mars and its two moons as well as the asteroids is for the Obama Administration to forgo the ultimate frontier, for momentary budgetary convenience and narrow political expediency, and to cede U.S. and collaborative EU leadership in space science and exploration to India, China, Japan, Russia, the E.U., on its own, and Iran (don't scoff or laugh, as Iran has a demonstrably quite competent and successful space program that is a military cause for concern to the U.S. Pentagon), that are rapidly advancing as competitors in these regards. Interim limiting of U.S. involvement in outer space to international space station and space shuttle missions and runs, to be contracted out to private space-flight companies, is to retard and stagnate the U.S. space program and not to advance and make progress in technological, navigational or knowledge acquisition or application space science in competitive and meaningful ways. Earth's moon, Mars and its moons, and the mineral-rich nearby asteroids (inevitable extraterrestrial industrial abodes) will be thoroughly explored, studied, incrementally engineered for human, robotic and industrial settlement and resource harnessing, and colonized in the not-very-distant foreseeable future by the space-faring nations with the most space-science and exploration vision, ongoing and advancing education and drive to peacefully extend their frontiers, knowledge, technologies and economies to territories beyond the boundaries of the socially, politically and economically fractious and contentious Earth. Those nations that occupy and control the near-Earth celestial territories will become the richest and, possibly, securest nations on Earth (from a national security telecommunications and military standpoint), whose treasuries and industry will in large measure be insulated from the economic volatility on Earth that is the result of political and labor unrest. Near-Earth space colonization and industrialization will bring or afford unparalleled economic opportunities and benefits, as well as a such higher standard of living (quality of life), to the people of the space colonizing nations. The Obama Administration's unfortunate decision is a commonplace style of decision in the U.S. of short-term gain at the cost of unheeded long-term pain.
I fault most for this bad policy decision the ill-advice given to the President on this matter by the Augustine Report space science committee.
In the murky game and rhetoric of political in-house economics, while the administration is slashing the budget of NASA for NASA-specific space projects, the administration is saying it is increasing the budget for NASA that in turn is slated to outsource fund private spaceflight and space-science companies the phantom 6 billion-dollar NASA budget increase over five years and a good portion of NASA's current and future baseline budget, with the affected NASA projects and personnel associated with these, respectively, to be shutdown and apparently displaced. Is this Orwellian political double speak? Is this equivocation? Are these weasel words? What is the purpose of the seeming calculated muddle in meaning here? How is it rational and not grossly wasteful for NASA to be directed to shutdown a program in which it and the U.S. government and taxpayers have invested 9 billion dollars, at the cost of spending another 2.5 billion dollars to actually shutdown the program and junk the technologies and innovations produced by the program? Why not temporarily scale down and strategically narrow the scope of the program until fiscal good health is restored to the federal government that would allow at such a time for maximal funding for an accelerated and full scoped program, apparently well after the expensive, federal budget-busting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are terminated and our troops are withdrawn from these nations?
Political leaders must comprehend and not overlook or downplay the importance of high-profile public space science, and public science, leadership to the public -- this is science that is funded by taxpayer money and that is owned collectively by the citizenry. Its achievements, discoveries, issues and implications reverberate into the physics, chemistry, math, astronomy, geology, biology, geography, history and current-affairs books, classes and research of our schools at all levels, and into popular literature (most notably science journals and magazines and science fiction short stories and novels) and TV programs, movies and music, as well as impact on planetariums and astronomical observatories, and spill over to telecommunications, aeronautics, nautical and automobile engineering, innovation and manufacturing. The most popular TV and radio scientists have been astrophysicist and astronomy professors (Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Simon Singh, Brian Greene, Michio Kaku, Neil Degrasse Tyson) and the most popular science-related television shows and movies have been programs such as War of the Worlds, Star Trek and the Star Wars series. Another one of the latter, the currently playing Avatar, has broken all movie attendance and revenue records. NASA's activities, and active and media-visible presence is a tremendous and rare positive inspiration and mind and imagination stimulation on our children, youth and young adults and their interest in science and choice of a science education and career, technologically and materially beneficial to our society, as well as a national-spirit buoying force in the social and entertainment background of our nation on the whole. Most Americans, adults and children alike, will not want to view a NASA newly fronted by the operatives and spokespersons of private space companies reporting on, in the near term, multi-hundred-million-dollar, per individual, space tours for profligate-spending, obscenely rich people, advertising such tours, making stock performance reports on a private space company stock market exchange, and presenting space company profiles and investment appraisals.
2. Public Capitalization of Pioneering Space Science & Technology, & Public Benefits Entitlement
Governments (Russia, et. al., the U.S., the European Union, Japan, India, China), which have, from greater to lesser degrees, pioneered space science, space exploration and the surveying and geophysical analysis of the major celestial bodies in our solar system, and which have originated the spacecraft and mass of other technologies for this work, by virtue of their space pioneering technology and work (pioneering, publicly financed investment) have earned and irrevocably hold exclusive rights to the stewardship and hegemony of our beyond-Earth solar system, and all rights of governance of the navigation, exploration, settlement, exploitation, industrialization and all other uses of outer space in our solar system, "not private enterprise and the investor communities of the Earth." Nor may any government nor leader or leadership body of any or all nations of the Earth confer ownership of any part of the solar system beyond Earth to any individual, group of individuals, organization, entity or one government or group of governments, nor exempt any private individual, group, entity or interest from regulation by and accountability to government on and of Earth. Any resources extracted beyond Earth, within our solar system, should be the shared property of the people of the nation from which the extractors originated or ventured, with the peoples' share to be auctioned for sale and the proceeds therefrom to be deposited or invested in trust for the people collectively to defray the costs to providers of otherwise free universal health care, education, and job training and job retraining of those people as well as to fund public space science and all other public science for that nation. The private interests' share should be taxed, with the taxes going for the same public benefits, since it has been the taxpayers' money that has financed the long-time governmental pioneering space science, products and work benefiting private enterprise and investors.
3. The Subsidized Giveaway of Public Space Science to Private Space Enterprise
It appears that the Obama Administration's sidelining of the Constellation Program for human settlement of the Moon (shown to have abundant water molecules to provide for electricity for building infrastructure, water for hygiene, drinking and food production, and vehicle and rocket fuel), Mars and the asteroids, and the diversion of federal money for this to contract with private enterprise, to takeover development and operation of near-Earth spacecraft and technology and the missions of these, is a stealth giveaway, in part, of the ultimate extraterrestrial mining and industrialization of Mars and its moons, and the surface mineral rich asteroids, to private enterprise, at the long-term cumulative tax cost and loss of benefits to the taxpayers of the U.S., with space-related private enterprise's imminent subsidy by the taxpayers of the U.S., to the expense and detriment of pioneering public science, space science and technology (namely, NASA, JPL, MIT and CalTech). Now that the costly foundational inventions, craft and technology for space science and exploration, and their rigorous testing, have been produced and accomplished by public science at the taxpayers' expense, let's give these and the solar-system motherlode to private enterprise and pay it to take it all for free (as the book title and now common saying goes: "The Best Government Money Can Buy"). Maybe Fox News Media, the free-market Libertarians, Wall Street and the investment community of the U.S. might start liking the President, at last? Back in the early or mid 1990s one asteroid alone, of the thousands in the asteroid belt next to Mars, was found to contain tens of thousands of tons each, to the best of my recall, of uranium, copper, iron and gold, with the gold there having had a worth an estimated $3 trillion dollars then, when the price of gold was relatively low. With nano-fiber materials stronger than diamonds and steel and lighter than aluminum, that already have been made, robots and freight spacecraft and vehicles made of these materials would make mineral mining of Mars and the asteroids feasible and extraordinarily profitable as well as socio-politically uncomplicated for private enterprise. Currently it takes 6 months for our spacecraft to get to Mars, using traditional rocket fuel; however, this time can be reduced to between 3 months and 1 month (specifically, 39-days for now) with already invented but expensive plasma-fuel propulsion technology invented by MIT physicist Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former NASA astronaut -- this technology is called VASIMR, the Variable Specific Impluse Magnetoplasma Rocket and is discussed in a COSMOS Online magazine article titled 'To Mars in 39 Days,' Agence France-Presse, 03-02-2010.
Seven-hundred fifty-thousand asteroids are estimated to lie in the asteroid belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter. U.S. and a Japanese spacecraft have examined the largest of these with their on-board scientific instruments and returned their data to the space agency of each's respective home nation. In 2005 Japan landed its spacecraft Hayabusa on an asteroid named Itokawa; this craft obtained a sample of the ground there and is still en route back to Earth to deliver it to Japan. Its flight home has suffered long delays due to a series of malfunctions that appear to have been overcome, and the craft is expected to arrive to Earth in June of 2010.
When industrial colonization of near-Earth extraterrestrial celestial bodies becomes a fact and is under the control of private enterprise, as relates to the U.S., space science and extraterrestrial discoveries and knowledge garnered by private U.S.-based space companies will no longer be publicly reportable and public-domain discoveries and knowledge, but will become the proprietary, and perhaps trade-secret, possessions of private enterprise. However, we can be sure that U.S. enterprises will not have a monopoly or dominate in the industrial colonization of near-Earth extraterrestrial space, but will be in competition with the space programs of our competitor governments and the private space enterprises of the governments of the other space-faring nations. Moreover, given the considerable funding resources of those governments, our competitor nations and their private space enterprises may beat U.S. enterprise to the punch and be the dominant players in the industrial colonization of near-Earth extraterrestrial space. This translates into U.S.-based space-faring private enterprise versus our space-faring government competitor space programs and their space-faring private enterprises, at times partners with competitor government space programs.
If there is to be a relationship or partnership between taxpayer-owned NASA and private space companies, which have not yet been able to put a rocket outside of Earth's orbit, it must be one in which already qualified and proven such companies provide technical support and other support services to NASA, as needed if needed, and follow the lead of NASA, and not one in which NASA follows the lead of these companies and provides support services, knowledge, training and technology transfer to them.
Picking the Pocket of the Public Under Cover of Darkness (in the midst of a general fiscal crisis)
It might not be an extreme stretch of mind for one to expect that the federally contracted private space enterprise personnel working with NASA and JPL personnel during the duties transition period between these will be mentored by NASA and JPL, et. al. (MIT, CalTech?), on all of the details and applications of their public space science technology and that the private space enterprise companies and their scientists and engineers will receive the schemata, diagrams and blueprints relating to these technologies for their private company use, outwardly under contract in the service of the federal government, in a for-free scientific knowledge and technology transfer from the public that will eventually serve the private profit interests of these private commercial space companies.
4. New Vision for Private Enterprise Leadership in Space Technology, Services & Exploitation
The new U.S. space program vision is for space-focused private companies to take the leadership role in near-Earth spacecraft and space-technologies engineering, manufacturing and deployment with NASA providing support services for these companies and with NASA, et. al., continuing its leadership role with its deep-space missions. In the near-Earth outer-space environment, private companies will also be tasked with placing numerous spacecraft fueling stations all over, and unspecified human-spaceflight missions, excluding to our Moon, will remain a federal government goal, suggesting that the U.S. will bypass the Moon for a U.S. human outpost there but will journey instead to Mars, its moons, and the asteroids, explaining the goal of placing spacecraft fueling stations pervasively in the near-Earth outer-space environment. Why even ask the question of the point for all of those coming fueling and refueling stations throughout the near-Earth environment? Presumably they are for eventual commercial journeys to, about and from Mars and the asteroid belt for mining and valuable minerals extractions in these celestial territories and their deliveries to Earth. Space stations in the outer-space environment of Mars and the asteroid belt will probably function as initial human office and housing accommodations, until ground-based such accommodations are built on the surfaces or subsurfaces of Mars, its moons, and the bigger asteroids.
Whereas bureaucratic space scientists uniformly contend that ferrying extracted minerals, by round trip spacecraft, back to Earth from any celestial body in the solar system, including Earth's Moon (on which Japan's orbiter-probe Kaguya detected uranium, as well as thorium, potassium, oxygen, magnesium, silicone, calcium, titanium and iron per Space.com, 06-29-09), is economically impractical at the present time, given the very high cost of carrying freight on board a spacecraft ($10,000.00 lb.), nevertheless other information on this issue suggests to the contrary. However, they do offer that this activity may be practical within the Mars vicinity itself and would likely give rise to a local economy there that could be profitable locally if people would be willing to live and work on Mars, its moons, and the nearby asteroids, where extracted minerals could also be stockpiled until low-cost spacecraft and fuel became available for round-trip spacecraft fleet travel from and to Earth and/or until such spacecraft could be made and fueled locally. The information to the contrary of this point of view refers to the principles of low-gravity celestial bodies and no gravity and object weightlessness in space, which are seized upon herein by the author, a technical know-nothing space-science aficionado, who proposes that removing minerals from particularly the low-gravity asteroids in the asteroid belt and loading them and carrying them to Earth on board solar-sail spaceships (already constructed by NASA/JPL) or even dragging them virtually weightlessly in net mesh or containers, like trailer hauls, from minimal gravity asteroids through zero-gravity space, with tethers, by tugboat spacecraft or by spacecraft pushing them in a bulldozer manner or by sailing them by carrier solar-electronic, aeronautical space balloons (similar to human-carrier aviation or weather balloons), or such space rafts (grin now), may be feasible until the cargo were to reach the magnetic field of Earth's orbit and the powerful pull of Earth's gravity, perhaps requiring that the cargo be outfitted with remote controlled parachutes and somehow made navigable by engineers to orbiting the Earth and for touching down in a large desert or deep body of water on Earth, with safety measures taken to protect animals, from which it could be retrieved, or were it to be intercepted and collected by freight spacecraft from Earth prior to its coming within Earth's orbit.
5. Reject Giveaway Privatization of Public Space Science & Background Role for NASA & JPL
Please write your Congressional representatives and senators to prevail upon President Obama, in bi-partisan action, to reverse his decision and to sustain an all-out, full-throttle involvement and program for a U.S. NASA and JPL return to our Moon and venture, in collaboration with private enterprise (which, along with top universities, has invented, is doing the R&D on, and owns numerous patents on products and technologies indispensable to extraterrestrial geoengineering for on-site self-supporting human habitation and on-site community and industrial self development by humans), to near-Earth celestial bodies for permanent study, terraforming, and human, robotic and industrial colonization and settlement. Demand that all extraterrestrial celestial bodies in our solar system, not occupied by cognitively advanced ET life, be declared the protectorate and good-stewardship properties of the present-time and future space-faring-invested community of democratic and populist governments of the Earth (with gender equality and equal opportunity under the law in practice or in sincere and observably substantive progress), irrespective of their economic systems, and not of private interests. I personally make this declaration in their behalf on my own herein and hereupon.
NASA = National Aeronautics and Space Administration
JPL = Jet Propulsion Laboratory
CalTech = California Institute of Technology
MIT = Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Space-faring Nations (all with one or more moon missions and other spaceflights)
Russia/USSR, Luna 2 to 24 Obiter-Probes & Rovers, 1959-1970 (and more)
USA, Pioneer-4 to Apollo-17 Moon Obiter-Probes & Landers, 1959-1972 (and more)
Japan's Hiten Moon Obiter, 1991-1993 (a redirected, improvised mission); Kaguya Moon Orbiter-Probe, 2007-2009
Europe's SMART-1 Moon Obiter-Probe, 2004-2006
China's (PRC) Chang'e-1 Moon Orbiter-Probe, 2007-2009
India's Chandrayaan 1, Moon Orbiter-Probe, 2008-2009, discovered water on Moon
Satellite Launching Nations (all missile launching nations, that include N. Korea and Pakistan)
Russia/USSR, 1957
USA, 1958
France, 1965
Japan, 1970
China (PRC), 1970
Britain, 1971
Europe, 1979
India, 1980
Israel, 1988
Iraq, 1989
Iran, 2009
AS SOON AS ANOTHER NATION IS THE FIRST TO LAND AN OPERATIONAL GROUND BASE SPACECRAFT ON MOON SOIL THAT THEREWITH STAKES A HOMESTEAD, OR MOON BASE, ON THE MOON WITH DEVELOPMENT OF AN OUTPOST FOR THAT NATION TO BEGIN OR FOLLOW, PRESIDENT OBAMA, NASA CHIEF CHARLES BOLDEN AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY (WHO AND WHICH ARE IN THE PROCESS OF TERMINATING THE NASA MOON-AND-BEYOND HUMAN-SETTLEMENT CONSTELLATION SPACE PROGRAM), WILL BECOME PARIAHS, ESPECIALLY AS AMERICANS WATCH -- WITH REGRET, NATIONAL SELF DISGUST, RESENTMENT, JEALOUSY AND RAGE FOR RETRIBUTION -- THE DEVELOPMENT TO COMPLETION OF EVERY EDIFICE, FEATURE OF INFRASTRUCTURE (INCLUDING A SPACEPORT FOR SPACECRAFT, HELICOPTERS, SPACE PLANES, LAND VEHICLES AND ROBOTS, AND SOLAR ARRAYS FOR SOLAR ENERGY CAPTURE AND ELECTRICAL SUPPLY TO THE MOON AND EARTH, CONDOMINIUMS, TOWNHOUSES AND HOTELS WITH SPECTACULAR VIEWS OF EARTH AND A GYMNASIUM AND RECREATIONAL AND SPORTS CENTER) AND EACH AN ELECTRICAL, LIGHTING, WATER GENERATION, DRIP IRRIGATION, TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND RADAR SYSTEM AND THE INSTALLATION OF AN OBSERVATORY AND ET-SIGNALING RADIO TELESCOPE FOR THAT OTHER SPACE-FARING COMPETITOR NATION. TO JUDICIOUSLY AVERT THIS MISFORTUNE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND DEMOCRATIC PARTY, TAXPAYER-OWNED NASA, REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, MUST STAKE A HOMESTEAD FOR AN AMERICAN MOON OUTPOST, FIRST, THAT INCLUDES MIXED TERRAIN AND HUGE CRATERS (THAT CAN BE DOMED FOR HUMAN HABITATION AND FACILITIES) AND EXCELLENT VIEWING OF EARTH, AND THEN SLACK OFF OR GO SLOW WITH ITS DEVELOPMENT IF NECESSITATED BY THE BROKEN FEDERAL BUDGET.
IF AND ONCE AN AMERICAN MOON BASE WERE ESTABLISHED, A COMPANY OF THE ARMY CORP OF ENGINEERS, WITH PERSONNEL ON ROTATING TOURS OF DUTY ON THE MOON, COULD START BUILDING AN AMERICAN COMMUNITY THERE IN COLLABORATION WITH NASA AND PRIVATE SPACE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING COMPANIES. THE CENTRAL ROLE OF THE ARMY CORP OF ENGINEERS IN THIS PROGRAM WOULD LIKELY BE A MILITARY SERVICE ENLISTMENT DRAW TO SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING HONORS AND COLLEGE-PREP HIGH SCHOOL, AS WELL AS COLLEGE, GRADUATES FOR PRICELESS HANDS-ON SCI-TECH AND ENGINEERING EXTRATERRESTRIAL AND MILITARY SERVICE TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE, AND FURTHER COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION (MILITARY COLLEGE ACADEMIES FOR THE ACADEMICALLY ELITE YOUNG SCIENCE-AND-ENGINEERING EDUCATED HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATES) AND OCCUPATIONS, ATTRACTIVE TO ALL TEMPERAMENTS OF PEOPLE, INCLUDING PACIFISTS AND CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS. A MILITARY PERCH ON THE MOON MIGHT ALSO PERMIT THE LEGITIMATELY DEMOCRATIC NATIONS OF THE WORLD, FROM ON HIGH, TO CONDUCT DRONE AND REMOTE WEAPONS WARFARE AGAINST AL QAEDA AND TALIBAN TERRORIST LEADERS ON A PERMANENT BASIS, THAT WOULD BE FUTILE FOR THEM AND DISPOSE THEM TO EXTINCTION OR SURRENDER, WITHOUT THE NEED FOR AN AMERICAN AND ALLIED TROOPS PRESENCE IN THE TERRITORIES OF THEIR OPERATION.
A PERMANENT HUMAN PRESENCE ON THE MOON MAY ALSO OCCASION EARTH-SERVING TELECOMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE SYSTEMS TO BE GROUND-BASED ON THE ATMOSPHERE AND ELECTROMAGNETIC-INTERFERENCE FREE MOON AND ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR SUCH SATELLITES TO BE IN EARTH'S ORBIT AND ALLOW FOR THE ACTIVE AND DEAD ONES THERE, AS WELL AS ALL ORBITING SPACE DEBRIS, TO BE CLEARED FROM EARTH'S ORBIT.
ALSO, A RAPIDLY ACCESSIBLE AND INEXHAUSTIBLE ELECTRICAL AND BUILDING HEATING ENERGY SOURCE, IN THE FORM OF GEOTHERMAL ENERGY FROM SUBTERRANEAN ICE DEPOSITS, IS ALREADY PRESENT ON MARS, POSSIBLY ON ITS 2 MOONS, AND ON THE ASTEROIDS AND THE MOON (CONFIRMED, ACCORDING TO MAJOR NEWS-MEDIA RELEASES ON 03-02-2010, TO POSSESS A MINIMUM OF 600,000,000 TONS OF WATER ICE AT ITS NORTH POLE ALONE -- ENOUGH, IN THE ABSENCE OF RECYCLING, TO MEET ALL HUMAN HABITATION (PERSONAL, FOOD, APPLIANCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INFRASTRUCTURAL) AND VEHICLE OPERATION AND DAILY MOON-EARTH SPACE-TRAVEL FUELING NEEDS FOR 2,000 YEARS. AN ONLINE POPULAR SCIENCE ARTICLE , ALSO DATED 03-02-2010, IS AVAILABLE ON THIS SUBJECT.
I am not an anti-Christ, a gun grabber or toter, an employee of any public or private space-related agency or enterprise, or a President Obama hater. I am a pan homo sapiens sapiens (modern world human), good-steward communitarian capitalist-system exponent, concerned citizen and strong supporter overall of President Obama. However, I oppose his decision on this matter and realize that he is, like all elected government leaders, a politician and all that entails, good and bad. I make this statement because my link postings of this blog on Twitter have brought email to me in support of my position on the concerned subject from groups of widely differing ideologies, some that are quite wacky and harsh toward liberals and such as well as blatantly virulently racist toward President Obama, whereas I do not identify with or relate to such people nor to bigotry. Rather, I condemn all bigotry.
PUBLIC DOMAIN
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