Congress should cut off funding to the Orion project because it is vastly more expensive than they imagined. According to astronautical budgeting expert, Jeff Foust, in his article “Audit Finds Cost and Schedule Problems With SLS/Orion Ground Software,” the Orion project is at least 75% over budget and more than a year over budget. Jeff Foust found this information through an audit, which is very concerning for Congress, because they are not getting the whole picture. It is very important that the people giving money to a project be given accurate and honest numbers on their spending. Furthermore, as stated by the senior space editor at Arstechnica.com, Eric Berger’s article titled “A New, Independent Review of the Orion Spacecraft is Pretty
An article on NASA's website shows me a testimony by NASA Administrator, Dan Goldin, who spoke before the U.S. House of Representative's subcommittee after the NASA budget received an eleven-percent reduction in funding. Mr. Goldin feels outrage that the space program would be expected to function on such restricted funding. Goldin states this kind of cut would "gut space exploration." With closures of NASA centers and significant layoffs, Mr. Goldin predicts this budget cut will affect employee morale. Mr. Goldin poignantly states, "Perhaps most sadly, we will lose the opportunity to inspire a future generation of children." (http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/Goldin/2000/testimony) Goldin's issue is the reduction in his budget. In my experience with budgets, reduction of the budget means, Goldin and his team are going to have to cut costs. Reading between the lines of his argument, I presume the eleven-percent are costs he does not want to cut. It must be his beli...
A nebula is a space dust that appears as a hazy bright, colorful patch in the sky. The Orion Nebula goes way back from millions of years ago and is made up of mostly hydrogen, but also helium, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen (Wiley 1). The Orion Nebula is also known as M42, Messier 42, and NGC 1976 (Ivan P. 1). Even though the Orion Nebula may have a giant black hole in the middle of it, The Orion Nebula is still the brightest nebulae because it can be seen with the naked eye during certain times of the year and has the three brightest stars in it.
Project Mercury Project Mercury, the first manned U.S. space project, became an official NASA program on October 7, 1958. The Mercury Program was given two main but broad objectives: 1. to investigate man’s ability to survive and perform in the space environment and 2. to develop basic space technology and hardware for manned space flight programs to come. NASA also had to find astronauts to fly the spacecraft. In 1959 NASA asked the U.S. military for a list of their members who met certain qualifications. All applicants are required to have extensive jet aircraft flight experience and engineering training.
Over the past few years, NASA has been the victim of larger and larger budget cuts. The United States government thinks that money that should be being used for funding NASA is more useful elsewhere. This is a real shame, space travel is the future. One day we will run out of resources,or become over crowded on Earth, and mankind will have to expand to the stars for another place to live. Space travel is our future and needs exploration. NASA should be more highly funded by the United States government, in order to continue research towards future objectives.
The Orion Nebula contains one of the brightest star clusters in the night sky. With a magnitude of 4, this nebula is easily visible from the Northern Hemisphere during the winter months. It is surprising, therefore, that this region was not documented until 1610 by a French lawyer named Nicholas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. On March 4, 1769, Charles Messier inducted the Orion Nebula, M42, into his list of stellar objects. Then, in 1771, Messier released his list of objects for its first publication in Memoires de l’Academie.1
“Space, the final frontier….” These are the words that stirred the imaginations of millions of men, women and children with the debut of “Star Trek” in 1966. The show has arguably one of the most loyal followings of any production, and has inspired scores of people to consider the stars and wonder if we as a people will ever travel outside of our own solar system. The idea of space travel and exploration was not new when “Star Trek” hit the airwaves though. The United States was at odds with the Soviet Union, and both powers were locked in a battle that would come to be known as “The Space Race” during the height of the cold war. It was in 1961 that President John Kennedy made his famous appeal to the American people, challenging us as a nation to put a man on the moon before the decade was out. On July 20, 1969, that challenge was achieved when the astronauts of Apollo 11 made the first manned landing on the moon, and returned safely to earth. This, the highest achievement in the United States space program, will turn 45 years old this year. After 45 years, and a technological explosion over the past 25 years, the greatest achievement in the space program has been a manned lunar landing. Countless billions of American tax payer dollars have been spent on the space program over the decades, and there have been no achievements to match that of the moon landings. Though the budget for NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is but a tiny fraction of the entire annual budget for the country, many of those billions that are allotted in the NASA budget for space exploration would better serve the country if they were re-directed to other areas. De-funding the space exploration portion of the NASA programs could create a “...
As a country we need to start investing more money and research into space technology. Programs currently exist for this effort, but the potential for research and progress is limited by a lack of funding; compared to other government funded programs, aerospace funding is pitiful. Continued research in space technology is a necessary step in our growth and development not just as a country but also as entire human race. If we are to achieve this goal, it is necessary to increase funding for space research and technology and consider the possibility of colonizing outer space. If we limit our existence to the planet Earth, and continue to drain the resources on this planet, we will destroy the only home we have.
I was born with an inherent fascination for all things celestial. Ever since I was young, I have been staring at the night sky trying to find constellations, or using my juvenile imagination to create my own. My efforts to find, view, and mentally catalogue everything the heavenly bodies have to offer has led me to employ some over-the-top measures, but the most extreme of them all might be the night I stayed awake through the wee hours of the morning to catch a glimpse of a meteor shower. Over the course of an entire year, the memory of this stupefying event is still as lucent and vivid as it was that very night so long ago.
NASA is constantly over budget and behind schedule. So how badly is NASA being run? A U.S. Government report states that more than 50% of NASA’s programs over-budget and past-deadline; and some of the others having no deadline at all. The Government Accountability Office looked at 18 separate NASA programs, finding that 5 are running without any deadline at all! In total, there are only 3 that have made their deadline, all of which are over budget. The Mars Science Laboratory is running 25 months behind schedule and 26% over original cost estimates, and the Glory climate satellite is an incredible 53% over budget! (nasa). This constant over-budgeting by NASA results in higher taxes on the American people.
Congress’s duty is to promote the general welfare of Americans, but instead Congress promotes the general welfare of itself. Every year, billions of dollars are allocated towards projects that primarily benefit Congressmen. In 2010, about $16.5 billion were used in pork barrel spending (Investigating Answers). According to Investigating Answers, “[t]his type of spending is inserted into generally non-related bills as either an award or incentive for political support from constituents and cohorts. The Oxford English Dictionary distinguishes pork barrel spending from normal appropriation spending as ‘projects designed to please...and win votes.’” Politicians waste money on projects in order to gain support and votes. Some examples of these projects include $2.5 million in potato research, $4.8 million in wood utilization research, and $250,000 for a wireless network in a city with a population of 13,888 (Investigating Answers). The $16.5 billion used in pork barrel spending in 2010 could have been used to fund the national debt, increase incomes, improve roadways, or enhance the education system, but instead, the government is spending money on unsubstantial
This paper will talk about the Planetary Nebula. The name came from a man called William Herschel. He called the sphere shaped clouds a planetary nebula because it is round just like a planet is. The word Nebula comes from the latin word Nebulae or Nebulas which means cloud. This paper will also consist of different information about the stars and life “cycle” of the stars.
...fe, with the inventions they have produced and by learning what they have done I think the budget should be increased. I am a firm believer in that science holds the answers to our problems in the world. If NASA and other scientific organization continue their research I think issues and problems in the world will fix themselves. For example, if NASA or another organization finds a way to effectively convert salt contaminated water to fresh drinkable water, our problem regarding water shortage will subside. Maybe NASA found a way to have cars or some other found of transportation run on soil, sand, or grass (very unlikely but it is possible). NASA would need workers to build these devices, which would create many low education jobs across the country. Continued funding for NASA and other scientific organizations will fix the social injustice problems of the world.
Cosmos is a program which I consider a great opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and experience new learning environments. In a latino community, many of the people like to be with the people who look like them. It is the same thought I get when I choose the people who I want to be around, but I've decided that there needs to be a change in this way of thinking because learning from people of other race can affect one's perspective of the world. I'm a superior candidate for the cosmos program because I have demonstrated quick comprehension on various complex topics. For this same reason, I'm currently ranked number 1 for the class of 2018. I consider myself to have a growth-midset which implies that I have a personality that is really
It had originally planned a return mission to the Moon, the Constellation Program, but with the forced cancellation of that project, NASA has now turned its attention to two possible exploration missions: The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and a manned mission to Mars. These are the most essential exploration missions that require the most attention and funding. The ARM consists of NASA launching an unmanned probe that will travel to an asteroid “close” to Earth. It will then capture the asteroid and transport it back and place it in orbit around the moon. This will provide NASA an opportunity to essentially “mine” an asteroid and discover exactly what minerals are stored in asteroids. The success of this mission could potentially lead to a new source of materials that may not even exist on Earth. In his book titled “Entering Space,” Aerospace engineer, Robert Zubrin speculates that an asteroid 1 kilometer in diameter would contain $150 billion in platinum alone (Zubrin, 146). Platinum is the rarest metal on our planet and there have been estimates that one-fifth of everything we use or manufacture contains platinum. Furthermore, Zubrin states, “there are over 5,000 asteroids known today” (Zubrin, 147). One asteroid can yield billions in potential resources, if there was a push to mine these asteroids, the U.S. as well as the world’s economy could rise to unimaginable levels. The first step to accomplishing this task is giving NASA the required funding to develop spacecraft that are capable of reaching these objects. With current propulsion systems, the idea of traveling to asteroids is not likely, nor profitable. Zubrin argues “it can safely be said that useful trade between Earth… and any other body in the Main Belt using chemical propulsion is probably impossible” (Zubrin, 149). This means that current rocket technology is not anywhere near
The main argument against space travel is that the money used could be better put on other matters. This is, in fact, very untrue. Looking at NASA’s 2015 budget of $17.5 billion, it may seem like a lot, until you realize that the US military budget for 2014 was $581 billion (5). Furthermore, it was estimated that each dollar in NASA’s budget was equivalent to 8 – 10 dollars of economic benefit (6). If an organization can bring about economic value at 10 folds the original budget, it would be logical to continue funding it, if not increasing the funds.