News Obama readies to blast NASA [UnTrue]

[Wally]

Word has leaked out that in its new budget, the Obama administration intends to terminate NASA’s planetary exploration program. The Mars Science Lab Curiosity, being readied on the pad, will be launched, as will the nearly completed small MAVEN orbiter scheduled for 2013, but that will be it. No further missions to anywhere are planned.

After 2013, America’s amazing career of planetary exploration, which ran from the Mariner probes in the 1960s through the great Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, Pathfinder, MarsGlobalSurveyor, MarsOdyssey, Spirit, Opportunity, MarsReconnaissanceOrbiter, Galileo and Cassini missions, will simply end.

Read the rest of the article here.

WTF.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

WTF is right. I hope the relatively smart people (there are a few) in congress can keep the NASA programs that work, well, working. Thankfully Pres. Obama can only submit a budget, that doesn't mean that that's what the final budget will be.

How much good stuff could be saved if the Senate Launch System were scrapped?

 

[Yoda]

Why do Space Exploration (Manned or Robotic) if the world is coming to an end in 2012 anyway ???

:rofl::rofl:

Seriously, if this is proven to be true ( which I doubt) it's a very sad day indeed and this bozzo definatively doesn't have my vote anymore.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Yeah, I'm all for getting rid of something that isn't working, but to take the departments that work best (perhaps arguably) and close them down? That's just crazy. He stood at a podium at KSC and talked about how important it was that the U.S. maintain a lead in space and space technology.

Hope he's out of work after next year. I'm really surprised that the Dems didn't find another candidate to challenge him.

 

[Jarvitä]

Have they considered cancelling the new powerpoint rocket instead, or will we have to wait for a new administration before that goes?

 

[insanity]

Care to source your claims a bit further? I don't know who Zurbin is or who he has talked to. Congress passes a budget, not the President.

 

[Ark]

I don't really trust leaks that much, it seems funny that he was just talking about how important space exploration apparently is, then decides to gut the planetary probe program. Obama isn't stupid, JPL's probes and the rest of the space astronomy and planetary programs have provided the most scientific bang for the buck of anything NASA's done. Plus, Congress sets the budget, the administration proposes. I seem to remember Congress recently deciding to gut the commercial funding program and build a powerpoint jobs rocket that wasn't in the administration's plans.

I'll be sad if this turns out to be what the administration really wants to do. JWST is already as good as cancelled, which is going to set us back decades in astronomy. Kepler is still searching for planets and costs next to nothing to operate.

 

[RisingFury]

This reads kind of the same as the articles like "Obama is a Muslim!", "Obama's birth certificate is fake!" and "Obama will kill your grandma!"...

 

[Codz]

If this is true WTF is right...

 

[Ark]

This reads kind of the same as the articles like "Obama is a Muslim!", "Obama's birth certificate is fake!" and "Obama will kill your grandma!"...

Indeed, read the whole thing to stumble upon the obligatory "Cut the regulators that strangle American jobs!" line.

Funny how someone can support NASA and hate the EPA, whose existence is validated by NASA observation...

 

[Krikkit]

I don't know who Zurbin is or who he has talked to.

Dr. Robert Zubrin is actually a pretty famous space advocate (specifically for manned missions to Mars)

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zubrin"]Robert Zubrin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

He is a former NASA contractor and has appeared in front of congress many times. So he is not a nutter, and knows his space politics pretty well.

However, he is a huge exaggerator, and everything he says, while probably technically true has to be taken with a skeptical grain of salt.

 

[SandroSalgueiro]

Seriously hoping this isn't true...

 

[Cras]

This raging idiot of a President seems that he has to make one more muck up that will screw the country and the world one last time before he gets voted out of office.

I cannot remember when a President showed such utter lack of leadership when it came to science and space. He pays lip service to his liberal base by making fun of the wack job hard liner conservatives and creationism and global warming, but offers absolutely no leadership to back up the talk.

There has never been such a coward in the White House before this man. From day one, everything he has done screams "Please re-elect me, Please don't let me be a one term president." If you are unwilling to do anything, or to lead, why run for the job in the first place?

And all this talk about Congress, yes Congress has fiscal power, but the President has the bully pulpit, the President sets the national agenda, and this President, going back to the health care debacle, has always given ground where his predecessors showed leadership, pushed through the agenda. This idiot has allowed Congress to become such a road block to anything, not even George W Bush and his polarizing policies could conjure up the sort of resentment that is now seen in Congress.

But hey, he withdrew from Iraq, nicely timed right before the election cycle kicks into high gear. And he is spouting his horrid jobs bill and college loan program (never mind canning all those jobs at NASA, apparently if you dig ditches and pave roads, you should get work, but if you have degrees in engineering and astrophysics, you are too smart to be supported by the Federal Government of these United States.)

 

[Gerdih]

What?! I hope this to not be true!

 

[RisingFury]

This raging idiot of a President seems that he has to make one more muck up that will screw the country and the world one last time before he gets voted out of office.

I cannot remember when a President showed such utter lack of leadership when it came to science and space. He pays lip service to his liberal base by making fun of the wack job hard liner conservatives and creationism and global warming, but offers absolutely no leadership to back up the talk.

There has never been such a coward in the White House before this man. From day one, everything he has done screams "Please re-elect me, Please don't let me be a one term president." If you are unwilling to do anything, or to lead, why run for the job in the first place?

And all this talk about Congress, yes Congress has fiscal power, but the President has the bully pulpit, the President sets the national agenda, and this President, going back to the health care debacle, has always given ground where his predecessors showed leadership, pushed through the agenda. This idiot has allowed Congress to become such a road block to anything, not even George W Bush and his polarizing policies could conjure up the sort of resentment that is now seen in Congress.

But hey, he withdrew from Iraq, nicely timed right before the election cycle kicks into high gear. And he is spouting his horrid jobs bill and college loan program (never mind canning all those jobs at NASA, apparently if you dig ditches and pave roads, you should get work, but if you have degrees in engineering and astrophysics, you are too smart to be supported by the Federal Government of these United States.)

Yet another thread ruined.


Let me get this straight. You get an un-sourced, opinion article that basically states that NASA is over, you believe it 100% and then the president is an idiot?

Yup, makes sense.

 

[N_Molson]

Uncertain rumors that seem pretty absurd... really nothing to argue about...

 

[FADEC]

He stood at a podium at KSC and talked about how important it was that the U.S. maintain a lead in space and space technology.

I've seen this on NASA TV. He also said he wants to see humans on Mars in the first half of this century, and he expects to be around then to see that happen.

He did what he only can do: present good rhetoric, but which consists of empty words.

 

[Urwumpe]

He did what he only can do: present good rhetoric, but which consists of empty words.

I am the president,
I drive with escort,
I will hold a speech tonight,
I have the power of the warm words.

 

[FADEC]

I am the president,
I drive with escort,
I will hold a speech tonight,
I have the power of the warm words.

This was my impression when I only saw him arrive at the KSC with his Air Force One and escort.

 

[Urwumpe]

This was my impression when I only saw him arrive at the KSC with his Air Force One and escort.

Yes, but it is a song about the German president in general, not a specific person. Applies approximately to all figureheads.