Throwing NASA Under the Bus

In direct contradiction to his many claims to make objective decisions based on sound science, and in particular, space science, President Obama intends to deliver a budget request to Congress that eliminates public funding of manned space missions, and that limits manned space flight to a mere 'taxi service' to the International Space Station. The Ares rocket is to be cancelled with no replacement program, essentially throwing the money already spent on R&D down the drain. Given the current economy and deficit, one might expect to the have the program delayed or curtailed to some degree, but to completely cancel it with no plan except private funding it ludicrous. Given his earlier stated aversion to using private contractors, and insistence that replacing them would save money, this seems an odd way for him to change his mind.

40th Anniversary of the Most-Watched Walk

Today is the fortieth anniversary since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their famous walk on the moon. Newly restored, high-definition video from NASA can be seen here.

Most of the media is covering this anniversary to some extent or another, but there seems to be a major question being asked in that coverage along the lines of: 'should we have bothered to go, and should we cancel future plans?' It's a disturbing question. Apart from the push forty years ago to be the best in the world (a drive the West in general seems to be losing on many different fronts), the question assumes that we can not or should not value endeavor. In a deep recession, it's easy to see why we wouldn't want to expend the funds right now, but in ten years? It's hard to see how we're going to accomplish anything further in space with the budget for NASA taking the brunt of science-spending cutbacks (over a decade). At a certain point, programs and personnel are cut to the point where the programs can not be easily restarted and important institutional knowledge is lost.

40th Anniversary of Apollo 11

From Fox News:
'Forty years ago Thursday, Apollo 11 blasted off on its 280,000-mile journey, fulfilling President Kennedy's 1961 call to reach the moon by the end of the decade. To commemorate the anniversary, NASA released newly restored video footage of the Apollo 11 moon landings — but the fabled "lost" moon tapes weren't among them. Those tapes, alas, which preserved the highest-quality raw feed from the moon in July 1969, appear to have been accidentally erased. Instead, what NASA officials unveiled at a press conference at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., were partially restored versions of the compressed signal sent to Mission Control in Houston from three ground receiving stations in California and Australia.'

You can hear radio feed from Mission Control here, and the video library is here.

A great event to remember and celebrate.