Taxpayers/Private Sector

NASA is robbing taxpayers to fund bureaucrats and wasteful programs Villacampa 6

Alexander, fellow at the Mises institute, September 20, NASA: Exemplary of Government Waste http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/villacampa2.html It is quickly becoming the natural state of affairs that citizens are no longer working for themselves but areinstead laboring

in order to fill the greedy coffers of the State.Most individuals in the United States have about half of their yearly income taken away by the government and this percentage is steadily growing. A majority of the citizenry may believe that these funds are being funneled into important social projects but in fact most of this wealth is simply wasted by opportunist politicians and bureaucrats.There are an endless number of government programs that would increase the wealthand productivityof the citizenry if they were only dismantled.The National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA), with a requested 2007 budget of almost $17 billion, is a government program that is nothing short of wasteful.

Nasa is NOT an innovator, and they dont promote private investment Villacampa 6
Alexander, fellow at the mises institute, September 20, NASA: Exemplary of Government Waste http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/villacampa2.html

Individuals claim that a majority of NASA's funding is spent on the exploration of new useful technologies. The citizenry views the government as an entity that can fund and perform research in order to uncover technologies that would be beneficial to the market. There is no reason to believe that corporations, with patent laws in place, would not be more than willing to research more efficient ways of creating products. Yet, even if it were the case that government research in technology was necessary or beneficial, NASA is funding scientific studies that are far from useful to the market. Much of NASA's funding is spent directly on extraterrestrial initiatives that study the solar system, space exploration, and methods of improving shuttle performance.It is also a myth that NASA created such technologies as Velcro, Tang and those famous memory-cell mattresses. In reality, the maker of Velcro was a private engineer with a bright idea, Tang was created by the General Foods Corporation, and the Tempur-Pedic company developed those memory-cell mattresses for use on NASA flights. These were all private initiatives and not outcomes of NASAs technological research efforts.

NASA has cost taxpayers BILLIONS more than projected, and with little end results private companies do it better Villacampa 6
Alexander, fellow at the mises institute, September 20, NASA: Exemplary of Government Waste http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/villacampa2.html

NASA dedicates over two-thirds of its budget to space exploration and extraterrestrial research. The government agency has spent close to $150 billion dollars simply on the shuttle program, which calculates to about $1.3 billion per launch.This is a decent sum considering that the space shuttle program was sold to the taxpayers as only costing $5.5 million per launch. The question then arises, should the United States citizens continue to pay for such a costly program? In the end, it is always the citizenry who pays. Nave individuals may believe that the Federal government has an endless spring of wealth from which it draws in order to fund its operations, but this is not the case. NASA has continuously let down the United States citizens and is nothing but a wastebasket into which the government throws our hard-earned wealth. The NASA shuttle tragedies are an outright shame, not only because of the precious lives lost, but also due to the immense cost of these shuttles.The costs of these space ventures are steep and the rewards reaped from these explorations are close to nil.The Mars Observer, that was lost in 1993, cost the taxpayers nearly $1 billion dollars. What the government can not understand is the profit and loss mechanism that is so ingrained into the market. Private entrepreneurs produce goods in a way that minimizes costs in order to obtain a high profit margin. Government programs, such as NASA, continuously spend without giving any benefit to the public. One may say that the simple existence of shuttle programs are a psychological benefit to society but this does not justify the coercive collection of taxes from citizens who may or may not be willing to donate to such a program. When government collects tax revenue, it does not allocate the funds to where citizens demand but instead the funds are spent where politicians desire. Not to mention the fact that much of this funding is lost in the shuffle between citizen and program and wind up in the golden pockets of pork-barrelers.

HEG ADV KILLER

NASA is SOLELY responsible for the death of the American aeronautics industry they completely cut aeronautics from their budget Harris 11
Dr. Roy V, Retired NASA officer for 40 years, recipient of Distinguished Service Medal, January 2011, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, AEROSPACE AMERICA The first A in NASALost in the space debate, http://www.aerospaceamerica.org/Documents/January%202011%20PDFs/Commentary_Jan_2011.pdf

In the recent debate over NASAs future, its aeronautics program was totally ignored. The research program that enabled U.S. global aviation supremacy for over nine decades has been reduced to near oblivion. From the 1960s through the 1990s, annual aeronautics funding averaged about $1.4 billion (all amounts ination adjusted). This period of unprecedented technology progress sustained the nations global leadership in both civil and military aviation. NASA research led this growth and helped establish our aviation products as the largest positive contributor to our trade balance. Then the axe fell and funding plummeted from $1.8 billion in 1998 to $500 million in 2010. Because of the time lag from research to application, we are only now seeing the results of NASA research during the 90s in the F-22 and F-35 and Boeings 787 airliner. How did such a dramatic decline happen? Traditionally, NASAs aero program consisted of basic research coupled with systems technology programs that brought promising technologies to ight demonstration and readiness for low-risk applications. In 1998 NASA began canceling systems technology programs that had producedmany enabling technologies for the 787 and NextGen, eliminating $700 million from the aero budget. In 2001 NASA canceled the classied advanced aircraft military technology program, phasing out NASA-funded military aviation research.The NASADOD partnershipthat began in 1915 with establishment of NACA had a profound impacton almost all military aircraft and is now largely eliminated.

NASAs space programs are what killed US competitiveness and our aeronautics domination turns case Harris 11
Dr. Roy V, Retired NASA officer for 40 years, recipient of Distinguished Service Medal, January 2011, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, AEROSPACE AMERICA The first A in NASALost in the space debate, http://www.aerospaceamerica.org/Documents/January%202011%20PDFs/Commentary_Jan_2011.pdf

The total aero budget is only 76% of what was allocated for basic research alone in 1995 and only 3.0% of todays total NASA budget.This is insufcient to sustain a world-class U.S. research effort and maintain long-term aviation leadership. Research test facilities are no longer well maintained, and many top researchers have moved on to other programs. Without a major change in priority, there is little hope of sustaining U.S. world leadership in aeronautics.All this comes as our nation faces huge new technical challenges to the future of civil and military aviation. NASA should be leading efforts to address these issues with systems technology programs focused on green aviation and developing technologies to follow NextGen. Further,It makes no sense for NASAs expertise and facilities not to help solve military aviation problems.Aviations importance to U.S. competitiveness and defense demands that NASA revitalize its aeronautics program.Uncertainty over the direction of the human spaceight program has overwhelmed all other NASA issues. Federal budget realities andtheprograms low priority do not bode well for aeronautics.Continuingto marginalize this critical national effort will have serious negative consequencesfor our nations global competitiveness, yet there is no seriousdiscussion of this issue in the debate over NASAs future. Shame on us.

Spending on NASA keeps basic funding from other programs Yost 10

Keith, Staff Columnist for The Tech MIT Paper. The Tech. Opinion: Should we cut NASA funding? 4.9.2010. (http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N18/nasap.html) With apologies to Dwight Eisenhower, the cost of one modern space shuttle is this: one and a half million lives lost for wont of antimalarial bed nets. It is electricity to power a U.S. city of two million people for a year. It is nine-hundred billion gallons of fresh drinking water produced by desalination. We pay for a single shuttle launch with fifty million bushels of wheat. We house a handful of men in space with a years worth of housing for more than ten million U.S. citizens. NASA is not just spending money. It is spending the sweat of our laborers, the genius of our scientists, the hopes of our children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the clouds of this space-industrial complex, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. Proponents claim that on its route to the stars, NASA has completed research that has benefited the rest of mankind. It is true, NASA research has led to many discoveries: Besides its many advances in satellites and computing, NASA can also claim credit for a host of more mundane things quartz timing crystals, bar-code scanners, smoke detectors, cordless screwdrivers, and velcro. But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that all of NASAs budget can be recompensed by the occasional spin-offs from its R&D program. Let us not buy into the delusion that all of the low-hanging fruit that NASA has picked over the years would have gone undiscovered forever, or that we would never have achieved satellites without luxuries such as the Apollo missions. Not only is it the case that research is a small component of NASAs activities, but it should also be self-evident that had NASAs budget been applied directly to the betterment of humanity, the direct gains of that spending would have outweighed the tangential gains from the occasional cross-utilization of space technology here on earth. Think about it this way: MIT, from a mixture of tuition, government

funding, and endowment payouts, spends $2.5 billion to keep itself running. NASA costs more than $17 billion. Over the past four decades, instead of NASA, we could have had at least six additional MITs. Consider all of the research that our single MIT has produced during that period, all of the students taught and leadership provided. For all the gains that NASA has made, its opportunity costs are far greater. Something
does not need to be a 100 percent complete and total waste in order to call it wasteful. Even the most hard-hearted of critics must admit that the organization has chalked up many victories in the fight to improve the world. But humanity deserves more than just

the scraps of NASAs occasional research. Humanity deserves better than the continuation of an ill-advised space race
with a geopolitical enemy that disappeared nearly two decades ago. Humanity deserves our full and undivided attention no more playing golf on the moon or entertaining fanciful notions of putting men on Mars. Feeding and clothing people might not be as sexy as space exploration, but in the broader picture it is a just and nobler goal. Mr. Levinger argues that NASA is small potatoes, a mere drop in the bucket compared to, say, spending on the military. But

just because NASA is a small waste, or a waste among many, does not mean it isnt waste, or that it should be ignored. Nothing should be given a free pass. For every dollar spent, we should consider the human cost. That sounds melodramatic, but it is hard not to
sound melodramatic when a billion people live on less than a dollar per day. When you have to make choices between food, water, and shelter, considering the human cost of a dollar isnt melodramatic its routine. Mr. Levinger may not see a direct connection between our society spending resources in one area, and going without in another, but to those who understand the functioning of the free market, the connection is clear. An engineer who works for NASA developing zero-g fluid pumps is not an engineer developing water pumps for rural Africa. A tax dollar taken to purchase a bolt is a dollar not given through charity to buy food for a hungry child. The slightest of upticks in the price of aluminum for a shuttle wing shifts millions of dollars of investment across the world. The fungibility is not perfect, and Mr. Levinger is right to point this out. But a NASA dollar does not come directly out of the worlds budget for candy and cosmetics either. The more poetic among us say that NASA has given millions hope, that it is a symbol of the ingenuity and ambition of the human race. Mr. Levinger himself thinks of it as heroic. I disagree. Why should it be the case that investing in space travel is more inspiring than spending that money on the poorest of our fellow man? Doesnt such an obsession with space imply not that we are an ambitious race, but instead that we doubt the goodness of human nature? Doesnt it suggest that we are so convinced of our inevitable self-destruction that we would rather fling ourselves into the hostile unknown than risk submitting ourselves to the cruelties of our fellow man? Where others see an adventurers spirit, I see existential worry and cowardly desperation. Every thruster that is made, every spaceship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. Rather than gambling on the stars, why not inspire our children by investing in ourselves, by committing to the belief that human life on Earth is sustainable, by devoting new resources to overcome the problems that we face?

NATHAN ^ JEN \/

St. Petersburg Times 3

The St. Petersburg Times. Global Issues In Context. NASAs earthbound problems. 7. 28. 2003. Gale Group. (http://find.galegroup.com/gic/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC) Americans are beginning to see how the nation's vaunted space program managed to lose 14 astronauts in two preventable space shuttle disasters. An independent commission investigating the February breakup of the shuttle Columbia has found a

number of safety, maintenance and management problems that NASA has failed to address ever since the 1986 Challenger explosion. The mechanical cause of the two catastrophes was not the same, but the root problem is - the failure by NASA to grasp the significance of damaged parts, the reluctance of lower-level staffers to red-flag problems and the tendency of shuttle program managers to overstate what they do know and understate what they don't.
The Columbia accident board has released some of its findings in dribs and drabs, which, mercifully for NASA, will blunt the sting of public criticism once a final report is released next month. It was already known that NASA had grown complacent about foam debris at launch striking the shuttle's wings, an event investigators believe caused Columbia's left wing to crack, allowing in superheated gases that broke apart the craft. But investigators found a broader culture of complacency. One senior shuttle manager dismissed the need to request advanced imagery of the Columbia, believing, incorrectly, that satellites could not detect the damage. She also discounted the chance to make repairs or rescue the crew.

Investigators have also revealed that many of NASA's early claims were misleading or outright false. The size of the foam debris that hit the Columbia was much larger than NASA suggested, and it hit with greater severity than the
agency first claimed. The number of engineers who raised safety concerns about the damage and who asked for satellite photos was far more than NASA had indicated. There is also the question of whether NASA leveled with the crew. The agency has tried to blanch the criticism, acknowledging what it calls "communications'' problems, more meaningless NASA vernacular that clouds the search for specifics and solutions. The agency tolerated a history of foam damage without ensuring whether the risks could accrue to catastrophic proportion. NASA

employees disclosed to investigators that safety inspections had been cut, spot checks by quality assurance inspectors had been eliminated and staffers even, in at least one instance, were forced to buy their own equipment because NASA lacked the right tools for certain jobs.

Stern 8
Alan, Assistant Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. New York Times.NASAs black hole budgets. 11.24.2008. Gale Group. (http://find.galegroup.com/gic/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC) As a scientist in charge of space sensors and entire space missions before I was at NASA, I myself was involved in projects that overran. But that's no excuse for remaining silent about this growing problem, or failing to champion reform. And when I articulated this problem as the NASA executive in charge of its science program and consistently curtailed cost increases, I found myself eventually admonished and then neutered by still higher ups, precipitating my resignation earlier this year.

Endemic project cost increases at NASA begin when scientists and engineers (and sometimes Congress) burden missions with features beyond what is affordable in the stated budget. The problem continues with managers and contractors who accept or encourage such assignments, expecting to eventually be bailed out. It is worsened by managers who disguise the size of cost increases that missions incur. Finally, it culminates with scientists who won't cut their costs and members of Congress who accept steep increases to protect local jobs. The result? The costs of badly run NASA projects are paid for with cutbacks or delays in NASA projects that didn't go over budget. Hence the guilty are rewarded and the innocent are punished.