There is no doubt that there should be more spending on Ocean exploration and understanding. However, it should not come out of NASA. The spending on exploration and scientific understanding is a pittance of the budget and especially of the economy. It would be worth finding money from a few pointless or non-working programs to spend more in these areas.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I am totally in agreement that more basic and applied research needs to go toward the oceans. It's interesting to note that the Navy has always had oceanographers supporting their missions, and that the Office of Naval Research is one of the better places to have ocean research funded. There are some interesting swords-into-plowshares projects as the supersecret underwater detection systems such as SOSUS are providing scientific research data.

There's little positive in this Administration. A scientist colleague quit her government job in total frustration, in that White House operatives assigned to her agency were insisting that certain government-funded research was not to be published, because its results might offend the American Association of Retired Persons. That same White House operative demanded a monthly report on how much contract and grant money went to faith-based institutions, without regard to their qualifications.

Still, an idealized model would balance the "big science" projects over multiple disciplines that receive Federal funding. Deep space missions do return fundamental data, but are extremely expensive. High-energy physicists use multibillion dollar research instruments; there are considerable opportunities for international funding in this area. There's certainly research room for a testbed for the "Internet-after-next". NASA is not the only budget to address.

There is also a good deal of mission-directed research, principally in the military but also in the Centers for Disease Control, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, assorted safety groups in Transportation, and NIH-funded clinical research.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

No way it should come out of NASA's budget - NASA is already underfunded. They need a major boost just to get the next generation of orbital vehicles operational because the shuttle is to space exploration what the pony express is to international communications. It is an aging vehicle that becomes more dangerous with each launch. There'll be another shuttle disaster if we keep using it much longer, and when it happens, can we really call it a disaster if it is both foreseen and avoidable? No, it's a tragedy.

Deep ocean exploration is also needed, for all the reasons cited in the article, plus a few that aren't. For example, a stable deep ocean environment would be the ultimate refuge in the event of a global catastrophe. Some have theorized that this is the real drive behind lunar and Martian colonization. I believe it was none other than Stephen Hawking who recently stated that deep space exploration and colonization is vital to the continuation of the human species, as it would only take one big asteroid or comet to wipe us out. The first step to space colonization is ocean colonization, as this is the real-time environment where you learn to deal with the problems inherent in space colonization, and if the asteroid comes sooner rather than later, it would ensure the survival of our species long enough to develop the technologies needed to permanently live in space.

The most obvious place to get the funding is from the defense budget. This is our largest source of wasted spending, eclipsing every other wasteful project in the entire federal budget. But that will require a radical realignment of our political priorities. People will live on the moon and the ocean floor before we divert a dime from the building of new aircraft carriers.

<SNARK ALERT>

See, that's the problem with you egghead peaceniks!

We already have weapons systems strewn about the oceans, so their covered. What we need now is to have the "High Frontier" secured. Didn't you read about the commies in China shooting at a satellite like the one we just put up last week to sniff out missle launches? We have a "High Frontier Gap" and we need more money, not less, into the militarization of space before them commies and mooslims beat us to it!

Just think what would happen if the "Red Hammer" or the "Red Crescent of Jihadi Death" would fall on us from outer space. If we have all our systems up their first, see, then we win and they lose. It's as simple as that.

Henry Kissinger told me so.

</SNARK ALERT>

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

Shouldn't someone ask what that next generation of orbital vehicles is going to be used for? Other than "gee wizz we have some people in space".

I think the combined budget of NASA and NOAA is less than monies the Pentagon has lost track of (small change in military budget terms).

Link

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

I have to agree with others who say it shouldn't be an "either or" choice between NASA and NOAA.  Both are significantly and woefully underfunded.

And I kinda take offense of the belittling of supporters of the space program by insinuating finding life on other planets is about our search for "little green men".  It's a shame that chracterizations of the space program and exploration of our solar system has descended to that level of misrepresentation...even if just in an effort to make a point. :-(

I'm not buying that it's a military motive. I think "manned space exploration" creates a lot of political support even though it doesn't acomplish much useful. That and the inertia of a gcvernment agency.

Just substitute "China" for "Soviet Union" here.

NASA has always been just a hairs-breadth from complete militarization, and with the SDI barely able to hit a barn with a BB, the next orbiter needs to be a little more, ah..."flexible".

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

Because if space exploration is your goal, then continuing use of the aging and dangerous shuttle is contrary to that goal?

They're is going to be a next generation. The question is when. The sooner the better. I'd much rather spend money on space exporation than bombing people back to the stone age so we can steal their natural resources and fulfill the grade-school fantasies of our cowboy politicians.

I don't understand why there needs to be a "deep space vs. deep ocean exploration" trade-off. While we don't necessarily need a manned space station to study space, we do need to study space if only to know when then next big asteroid hit could occur. And while its presently just the realm of bad Bruce Willis movies, there may come a time that we need to protect ourselves, and we may just need some sort of manned presence there to accomplish that.

At the same time, yes we should be studying the deep ocean. However I do have to wonder if our ignorance of what's down there just might be keeping us from messing it up in the name of progress.

-Dave Adams-

I do not disagree with Tsolkiovsky's comment, "The earth is the cradle of mankind, but man cannot live in the cradle forever." If that is taken as the land as the cradle, there are reasons to explore low and high. There is potential crossover, in learning to operate with minimum solar energy applies both at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and in Jovian space. Working under pressure also applies to those environments.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

It would be interesting to find out if more has been learned about the oceans from deep submarines or from satellites. I'd bet on the latter.

Libertine kinda take[s] offense of the belittling of supporters of the space program by insinuating finding life on other planets is about our search for "little green men".

I would have more sympathy for this argument if that were not how NASA marketed its space program. I am pretty tired of the perennial articles on how we have almost found life on Mars and we just need one last push.

JeffC writes that we need a next-generation shuttle [b]ecause if space exploration is your goal, then continuing use of the aging and dangerous shuttle is contrary to that goal?.

The reality is that if space exploration is your goal then the last thing you should do is send people along with the instruments. People just get in the way and make the exploration far more expensive.

Isn't that a surge?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Men in space are and will always be irrelevant when discussing potential asteroid or comet impacts on the earth. Discovering those, determining their paths through space, predicting if and when they might hit the earth, are all activities accomplished on earth, not in space. Any efforts to prevent suct impacts will also be earth based, since enormous amounts of energy are needed no matter what scheme is used to deflect them away from us, and that energy isn't likely to ever be more available in space than on earth.

The discovery of extra-terrestrial life is a very good goal for science. Discovering such life on Mars, or the moon, or the moons of the gaseous planets is also a very good goal for science. The life that might be there is not what we would recognize as life, but that isn't a reason not to look for it. None of that requires men in space, and all are handicapped by the presence of men in space, largely becausse the expense of the research goes up by orders of magnitude when you insist on including men in space along with it.

The space station is there because we wanted to show the nasty commies how great we are compared to them. Now we have international committments to honor, so we have to complete it, even though it is extremely unlikely ever to return anything on the investment.

As far as the oceans are concerned, I can't believe there could even be a rational doubt that it is more important to know our own planet than to know other planets. It is good to know all of them, but the priority should certainly be our own home planet.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Reality Check:

Cost of NASA: 5 weeks in Sunny Iraq

Cost of NOAA: 1 week and late Sunday check-out in Sunny Iraq.

Finding another life form off-world, cracking extremophile energy processes at the bottom of the ocean:

Priceless.

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

The god-awful small affair to the girl with the mousy hair is probably the best hope of finding life on mars.

Of course in BushWorld, it only makes sense to ensure that funding for scientific research goes to religious institutes.

NASA is today and in the past an extension of our military spending. It could be compared to Hughe’s Glomar Explorer. The ship that was built to raise a Russian sub, but we were told it was to mine the ocean floor.

The shuttle Columbia demise was followed by an announcement about the space program going back to capsules like in the beginning. A replacement like the old Saturn rocket is planned also.

The reason is that it takes some heavy lifting for the militarization planned for the future of space. It also takes a large power source for a military laser in space. This is why NASA is pushing a program to use nuclear power in space.

What is unknown about NASA is why a $26.6 million dollar payment to the astronauts' families?

Columbia’s astronauts died Feb. 1, 2003. The astronauts are military officers. The big difference between NASA and the military is when Columbia’s crew was lost the families were given $26.6 million dollars in 2003.

This was just discovered by a freedom of information request. The government cannot be sued for negligence without its approval for the suit. This is a unique payment for NASA.

What were the bases for this payment?

Why did NASA feel obligated to pay this large sum of money and try to keep the payment quiet?

Dare one speculate?

-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking

If I remember correctly, sometime during the early exploration of Mars America landed a robot on that plantet's surface and a TV image began slowly to build up on monitors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Once completly assembled, the stark forbidding picture prompted someone in attendance to lament: "I guess that shows that there is no life on Mars." To which premature remark, I think, Arthur C. Clark or Ray Bradbury responded: "Correction: there is now." The human colonization of another world began on that day. We just haven't gotten far enough along in the process to realize it.

Certainly, we need to explore and understand our oceans more than we now do. Certainly we should spend more money to do that research. But since Jupiter's moon Europa and other of our planetary neighbors possess at least as much, if not more water than our own oceans, then understanding oceans everywhere in the solar system will help us understand much more than just studying ONLY our own planetary bodies of water.

Surely we need to explore more of everything, everywhere; and we need to spend more money doing so. We need to upgrade our science and math curricula in the public schools to help us produce the explorers who will expand our knowledge and physical presence throughout the depths and heights of various planetary environments.

We obviously face a crunch in that we don't have unlimited resources to do all these things, but without a doubt cutting our obese Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism Lunatic Leviathan down to size can at least free up enough resources to expand both our space and oceanographic research programs. We can obviously do a whole lot better than we have to date.

Humanity started leaving this planet to exapand elsewhere decades ago. True, we haven't finished finding out all about this world, for sure, but what remains for us to discover and utilize on other worlds simply dwarfs by orders of magnitude what we could possibly learn about and use from studying only this one. We have a lot here. We have vastly more elsewhere. I would think that such a common-place statement should hardly require repeating 500 years after Gallileo turned his newly discovered telescope not upon any nearby body of water, but upwards and outwards toward the stars.

No, the professor was correct. The reason this is a space vs ocean issue is the absurdly high cost of the space program, caused entirely by the absurdly high cost of men in space being the focus of that program. Minus that cost, the ocean vs space expenditures would be a much more evenly split, and there would be much more money available for both programs. I can see no reason for a manned mission to any planet either. None of the planets offer any return on that investment to justify the mission, and none can ever be used as a "home" for humans. Mars comes the closest, but is actually totally inhospitable to earth life, due to radiation, cold, lack of oxygen, and lack of any possibility for food production. No other planet is even close to equaling Mars for human hospitality.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Purely for earth resources, weather, communications, and other directly applicable satellites, we'll need launch capability at least to geosynchronous orbit, out of direct shuttle range. It's reasonable to probe toward the Sun, since solar phenomena have a direct influence on things here on Earth (e.g., radio communications, probably weather, and definitely satellite survivability).

It may be a slowdown of deep space rather than a shutdown. The same boosters that can lift small payloads to interplanetary trajectories can lift larger ones to near space, and the ion drives and other technologies that work on very long duration interplanetary missions have applications to such things as satellite stationkeeping

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Tom Wright writes:

In this the military is doing its duty when it studies how to maintain dominance in space, and it is not their job to look for defusing tensions.

Arianespace’s final Ariane 5 mission of the year orbits the WildBlue-1 and AMC-18 satellites, bringing total payloads lofted by Ariane 5 in 2006 to 10 primary satellites and one auxiliary passenger – more than all competitors combined.

One must also consider that the US didn't want to stop a Chinese space operation that, I am sure, had every available intelligence sensor pointed at it. It is that sort of information that could give the US the knowledge to try to defend against it, when an old Chinese satellite is not the target.

Remember that Hiroshima revealed the most fundamental secret of nuclear weapons: that one could be built.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

if I had to choose one...

We have all the time in the world to explore the Earth and an eternity to explore the Universe.

On a more serious note we probably should spend more money on scientific research. Given that there are always fiscal constraints we should redirect our space program away from costly, and essentially useless, manned missions and towards unmanned ventures. I have no idea how cost-effective our oceanographic research is. I suspect, however, that if oceanographic research got the marketing treatment NASA gives the space program it is possible that more people would decide to research our oceans rather than those on planets orbiting Gliese 581.