NASA's Constellation gets big boost in Senate

The below article is interesting as are the comments about having to tack what you want passed onto some other proposal. What a tangled web we weave in this game of politics.  Hmmmm, and if we didn't need $58.8 billion for the war in Afghanistan, there would be more available for human space exploration.
- LRK -

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/7004353.html
NASA's Constellation gets big boost in Senate
Order keeping it alive is added to must-pass bill funding the war
By STEWART M. POWELL
WASHINGTON BUREAU
May 13, 2010, 11:38PM

WASHINGTON — Backers of NASA's Constellation program scored a significant victory Thursday by winning the Senate Appropriations Committee's support to block the Obama administration from terminating any part of the $108 billion back-to-the-moon program before October.

And they did it by piggy-backing the restriction onto a must-pass wartime supplemental budget package involving combat dollars for Afghanistan.

Up until Thursday, the battle over NASA has largely been a political war of words — and this is the first time that a congressional committee has responded directly to President Barack Obama's NASA proposal since February, when the president declared the Constellation program should be shelved.

The maneuver was pushed by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Dallas and proposed by Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah.

By including the language in a $58.8 billion budget supplemental to underwrite the costs of combat, Hutchison and her allies virtually assured that the restriction will be adopted by the full Senate and House and signed by Obama — because the costs of the Afghanistan war must be funded.

The language declares that NASA funds “shall be available to fund continued performance of Constellation contracts, and performance of such Constellation contracts may not be terminated for convenience by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Fiscal Year 2010.”

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Wonder how the above affects S. 3068: Human Space Flight Capability Assurance and Enhancement Act of 2010.
- LRK -

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http://tinyurl.com/22rcbpp

Recent Press Releases
Hutchison: “America Demands More From President’s NASA Plan”
Joe Brenckle - Republican Press Office 202-224-3991

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Senator Hutchison recently introduced legislation, the Human Space Flight Capability Assurance and Enhancement Act (S. 3068), to address these concerns by allowing for the extension of the shuttle, if needed for station sustainability, at a reduced rate of two flights per year.  The bill would also authorize the accelerated development of a NASA-owned shuttle replacement, such as a shuttle-derived design using existing systems and capabilities and the current contractor work force.
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http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3068
S. 3068: Human Space Flight Capability Assurance and Enhancement Act of 2010
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Thanks to you who are helping me keep score and watching which court the ball is in.
Keep your eye on the $$$.

Thanks for looking up with me.
- LRK -

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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT REVIEW COMMITTEE CANCELS Aug. 24 CONTINGENCY MEETING

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http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/aug/HQ_M09_160_Committee_Cancels.html
August 20, 2009

Doc Mirelson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-4495
doc.mirelson@nasa.gov

MEDIA ADVISORY: M09-160
HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT REVIEW COMMITTEE CANCELS MEETING

WASHINGTON -- The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee determined the Aug. 24 contingency meeting announced in the Federal Register is not required. The committee has no plans for any additional public meetings.

For committee information, materials, presentations and biographies, visit:
http://hsf.nasa.gov

For information about NASA and agency activities, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov

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http://www.nasa.gov/offices/hsf/home/index.html

You still have ways of contacting the committee. - LRK -
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/hsf/contact_us/index.html

At the rate we are going I may not see the USA on the Moon with humans and probably a lot of you are in the same situation.

What about the kids and grand kids?

How many would elect to live at the South Pole here on Earth?
Not many, but they might like to work for companies that do science at the Poles.

How many would like to live under the ocean permanently?
Probably not all that many, but would they like a job that uses the resources of the ocean?

Some have said that NASA is just a job shop and all the employees want is to protect their jobs.
I certainly found it interesting supporting the work that NASA was doing at Ames and it paid my electric bill for ~20 years.

Some say we should go to the asteroids.
Whether that is with rockets and robots or with humans might be debated.
Just the same it would be rewarding to get paid to find ways to keep asteroids from sneaking up on us unannounced and to find ways to use them as a material resource.

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http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/national/dpg_NASA_Struggles_to_Keep_Up_With_Asteroids_mb_08122009_2920295
or TinyURL for above - http://tinyurl.com/mstr63
NASA Struggles to Keep
Up With Asteroids

Updated: Wednesday, 12 Aug 2009, 3:42 PM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 12 Aug 2009, 3:42 PM EDT

* By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - NASA is charged with seeking out nearly all the asteroids that threaten Earth but doesn't have the money to do the job, a federal report says.

That's because even though Congress assigned the space agency this mission four years ago, it never gave NASA money to build the necessary telescopes, the new National Academy of Sciences report says. Specifically, NASA has been ordered to spot 90 percent of the potentially deadly rocks hurtling through space by 2020.
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Wouldn't the kids like to play with model engines and then find out they could be used to provide electricity for some base on another moon or planet?
http://www.stirlingengine.com/

You don't need to go the the Moon to enjoy the opportunities it might present to you, even if you are not one of the few that might go and set up a base.
- LRK-

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http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23247/
A Lunar Nuclear Reactor
Tests prove the feasibility of using nuclear reactors to provide electricity on the moon and Mars.
By Brittany Sauser

snip
"We are not building a system that needs hundreds of gigawatts of power like those that produce electricity for our cities," says Don Palac, the project manager at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH. The system needs to be cheap, safe, and robust and "our recent tests demonstrated that we can successfully build that," says Palac.

To generate electricity, the researchers used a liquid metal to transfer the heat from the reactor to the Stirling engine, which uses gas pressure to convert heat into the energy needed to generate electricity. For the tests, the researchers used a non-nuclear heat source. The liquid metal was a sodium potassium mixture that has been used in the past to transfer heat from a reactor to a generator, says Palac, but this is the first time this mixture has been used with a
Stirling engine.

"They are very efficient and robust, and we believe [it] can last for eight years unattended," says Lee Mason, the principal investigator of the project at Glenn. The system performed better than expected, Palac says, generating 2.3 kilowatts of power at a steady pace.
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Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lrkellogg
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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