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NASA delays Hubble repair mission due to weather
Sep 7, 2008, 22:39 GMT
Washington - Uneasy about ongoing tropical storms, the US space agency NASA Sunday announced a two-day delay in launching the Atlantis shuttle mission to repair the Hubble telescope.
Atlantis will launch on October 10 instead of October 8 from the Kennedy Space Center on the Florida Atlantic coast, NASA said.
The mission is complicated because a second shuttle must be ready on the launch pad immediately after Atlantis takes off to serve as a back-up in case of problems with the mission.
Normal shuttle missions to the International Space Station do not require such measures because the station is equipped with rescue capsules.
After the Hubble mission, the shuttle Endeavour will take off on November 10 instead of November 8, as previously planned.
NASA is rushing to finish space station construction and the Hubble repair mission so it can retire the ageing spacecraft by 2010. Russia's Soyuz programme will then be the only launch vehicles traveling to the ISS.
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Obama Pits Human Space Exploration Against Education (abridged)
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama released a new $18 billion education plan yesterday that he proposes to pay for by delaying the NASA Constellation program (to return humans to the moon) five years.
'We're not going to have the engineers and the scientists to continue space exploration if we don't have kids who are able to read, write and compute,' Obama said.[...]
Obama's proposal to slip NASA's Constellation program to pay for education puts education and space in direct competition for tax dollars. Space Exploration historically has not competed with education for federal dollars because most educational programs are funded at the state level. The Department of Education and NASA are also traditionally in separate funding bills going through Congress and thus are not competing for the funds within a given appropriation bill.
Given that that Space Shuttle is retiring in 2010 and there is already a four year gap before the Ares I vehicle will be ready to launch crews to Space Station, a five year delay of the Constellation program would leave the United States government without its own human launch capability for nearly ten years.
Such a delay would result is a loss of capability as the workforce with the knowledge to build spacecraft will not be around when you want to hire them in 2020 and there will be few to train any students coming out of the education pipeline.
blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/11/obama-pits-huma.html
..does this have to do with the election?
'NASA delays Hubble repair mission due to weather'
...NASA...
Obama wants to gut NASA.
That's what the f--k it has to do with the election...
f--k nasa and f--k the republicans as well including sp4.
oh and f--k america while were at it.
f--k nasa and f--k the republicans as well including sp4.
oh and f--k america while were at it.
Don't be jealous 'bev'.
page: 1
Obama will gut NASA, hand out money to crackheadsSep 8th, 2008 - 03:20:17
The Space Shuttle program will end in 2010. The Constellation program is not scheduled to begin manned flights until 2015. Meanwhile, NASA faces dramatic job reductions among its 21,000 labor force at the close of the Shuttle Program. For example, the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, FL faces a cut of 8,000 contractor jobs. The Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans could lose 1,300 of its 1,900 jobs.
The Constellation Program is the follow-on to the Shuttle program. NASA is in the early development stage of the new Ares 1 rocket and the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). The plan is for them to take astronauts to the moon which will become a staging area for the eventual exploration of Mars.
That is unless Barack Obama becomes our 44th president.
The last paragraph in his 15-page 'Plan For Lifetime Success Through Education' reads:
'Barack Obama's early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year. He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent an increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government. The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years, using purchase cards and negotiating power of the government to reduce costs of standardized procurement, auctioning surplus federal property, and reducing the erroneous payments identified by the Government Accountability Office, and closing the CEO pay deductibility loophole. The rest of the plan will be funded using a small portion of the savings associated with fighting the war in Iraq.'
Something interesting happens in the Obama campaign document entitled 'Barack Obama's Plan For American Leadership in Space.' The 'something' is that there's nothing in there about 'American leadership in space.' It states,
'As president, Obama will support the development of this vital new platform [CEV] to ensure that the United States' reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period.'
Translated into English, that means that he'll maintain the Constellation project at a minimum $500 million per year budget as the band takes an extended break between sets, taking their instruments with them. And for how long does the U.S. postpone a new space transport capability? Obama's answer is the 'minimum possible time period.' (Now is that in human or dog years?)
www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/obamas_plan_for_nasa.html
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