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Kennedy was a learned man. Surprised that he didn't know that all you have to do is show the terrorism/national security card. Presto...unlimited funding.
Why would he? Beyond the V2 and it's use by the Nazi vs the Brits the military uses of rocketry were generally not appreciated as nobody thought they could be used to cross the North pole.
Furthermore, the threat of terrorism didn't exist then. It was communism. Rocketry wasn't in the public mindset until 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik 1. It terrorized the the American population during the height of the Cold War because if the Soviets could do that, they could also use the rockets to deliver nuclear bombs to the USA with no warning. We had no way to respond.
So yeah, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were all military projects as much as they were a trip to the Moon. By the time they got there however The Cold War had thawed out a great deal. The last Apollo mission wasn't a trip to the Moon, but rather a joint space mission with the Soviets in 1975.
The weirdly pathological and petty need to partisanize everything, no matter how completely divorced from partisan politics a subject is, is fascinating. Not to mention the virulent dislike some can muster for others just because those others are related to a politician with whom they disagree.
You address the messenger rather than the message. But this is par for the course for something said you don't like, yet can't argue with logic and fact.
Simply not true. Constellation would not have been been flying earlier than 2017, and no decision made during the Obama presidency would have changed that.
Nope. First planned mission of launch system was 2009. First manned mission was scheduled for this year. Obama killed all of that, and we currently have no idea when the USA can send manned missions back to space.
So meantime, Obama political friends are getting billions from the taxpayers simply to re-invent, and rather badly at that, what we already had 50 years ago.
Nope. First planned mission of launch system was 2009.
Operative word being "planned". The program was way behind schedule. It ran with allocated funding until 2010 - so where's the "planned" 2009 launch?
The only thing Constellation actually had ready to launch in October 2009 was Ares I-X, the dog-and-pony show listed above that demonstrated that yes, a Shuttle SRB can fly and is also a pretty bad choice for a first stage.
Remember that the Augustine Commission didn't even publish their findings until October 2009, and the administration didn't change funding for the program until the 2010 budget year. Constellation had every chance to live up their 2009 launch promise, and they didn't.
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First manned mission was scheduled for this year.
If you listened to the people running Constellation, that is - the people who until 2009 hadn't met one single milestone. Nobody outside the program's PR department believed in a 2015 date.
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Obama killed all of that,
I rather doubt a change to the 2010 budget "killed" a 2009 launch date. But the program needed killing. It was a horrible project, incredibly expensive, overly complex (2 rockets?) and completely underperforming. It seemed like a good idea, I'm sure - using tested technology - but they pursued that idea long after it had proven itself impractical.
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and we currently have no idea when the USA can send manned missions back to space.
<shrug> Orion, CST-100 and Dragon 2 are all making great strides. Did you miss the CCtCap announcement? 2017 is the goal date.
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So meantime, Obama political friends are getting billions from the taxpayers simply to re-invent, and rather badly at that, what we already had 50 years ago.
You did miss the CCtCap announcement. Also, that's no way to talk about Boeing.
As for pork, well - Constellation was the pork project to end all pork projects. The program manager stated up front that his intent was to keep the Shuttle supply chain rolling. Call me Mr. Traditional, but I would have thought getting the best spacecraft at the best price would have been a loftier goal. And the bit about 50 years ago - Constellation were redoing the Apollo-era J-2. Having spent a few hundred million of our money realizing that the SSME that they'd much rather use (keeping the Shuttle supply chain rolling, remember?) was remarkably unsuited.
Finally, "rather badly"? Seriously? SpaceX is doing quite well from where I am sitting. Certainly commercial space enterprises are quite happy to put their payloads on Falcons. They've had one serious failure in 19 Falcon-9 launches. Challenger was the 25th launch - in terms of risk analysis, that's extraordinarily close. (And Dragon 2, of course, is fitted with a Launch Abort System. Something NASA found unnecessary in the Shuttle.)
Boeing is planning on initially using a ULA LV - the Atlas V - but are designing with Delta IV and Falcon-9 in mind.
The United States is a welfare state & no longer a serious country....sort of a Brazil with nukes; so forget about a future space program.
If America is Brazil with nukes that's America's choice. They could be Germany with nukes if they wanted. But they don't want. Germany does not have a space program but people don't have to pull their own teeth because they can't afford a dentist. America never had a space program, America's military had a space program. 85% of Shuttle missions were classified military operations. If you think the curtailment of the vast expenses of past space programs means a better standard of living for Americans you would be wrong.
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