|
NASA, the Aerospace Welfare Queen
May 1, 2008 The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a textbook example
of how to quash free scientific inquiry. It also is a lesson in
transforming potentially useful citizens into high-speed drains on the
U.S. Treasury. Instead of perpetuating its gold-plated make-work projects
and revering its state-sponsored “official heroes,” we should
recognize NASA for what it is—a resuscitated Roman coliseum that stages
useless spectacles that hypnotize taxpayers while bleeding them dry. Or is
it just a vampire with a bad case of hemophilia? Take your pick. Populus optat panem et circenses. The Race to Bankruptcy Free-market
businesses are ethically sound because they are funded voluntarily
by willing customers. In contrast, NASA is a coercive shakedown. First,
there is no market for what it sells. There are no eager buyers spending
their own money on NASA’s goods and services. Instead, NASA’s annual
budget of $16.8 billion (2007) is taken from taxpayers—under threat of
violence—by the government’s hold-up men, the IRS. It is a case of
naked exploitation that benefits politically connected companies and a
government bureaucracy that exists for its own sake. It
should not surprise us that NASA is the Cold War stepchild of the
military-industrial complex—an offshoot of the arms race between the
U.S. and U.S.S.R. Rather than the achievement of a free people, it is the
collectivist response of the U.S. government to the Soviet launch of
Sputnik 1 in 1957. At the same time, it is an example of chest-thumping
worthy of juvenile delinquents playing a game of “mine is better than
yours.” Even President Kennedy’s decision to go to the Moon was a
public-relations stunt that mortgaged In
essence, the “space race” is part of a nationalistic race toward
bankruptcy. While the The Original Sub-Prime Mortgage
Scam In
contrast to desirable market-based companies, NASA’s value to taxpayers
compares poorly with even the casualties of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
After all, who wouldn’t be happy to pay money to
shut down NASA—if only to prevent another round of orbiting
money-pits from being launched into oblivion? For example, the Mercury,
Gemini, and Apollo programs were obscenely wasteful. Nearly all of the
spacecraft used in these missions (everything but the manned capsules)
ended up as waste at the end of each trip—either burned up in the
atmosphere, sunk beneath the waves, or floating as debris in space. Even
the capsules were not re-used; instead, they are displayed at the
tax-subsidized Smithsonian National Air and How
long would even the most soft-headed parent continue to provide a son or
daughter with a string of new automobiles if they were driven off a cliff
each time they were taken out for a spin? In contrast to NASA, privately
financed aerospace engineer Burt Rutan developed energy efficient aircraft
and spacecraft. In June 2004, his SpaceShipOne was the first privately
built craft to reach space. In so doing, he reused more than 80% of the
vehicle hardware and did not cost taxpayers a dime. Along with his
investors, he plans to commercialize space flight. Even more important, he
eliminated coercion and the entitlement mentality of government programs
from the concept of space exploration. Lost in Space NASA’s
space missions burn tax dollars faster than the IRS can pluck them from
our wallets. But as quickly as our dollars disappear, so do the
spacecraft. Remember the Mars Observer? It was lost in 1993. And this was
followed by the Mars Climate Orbiter (1999) and the Mars Polar Lander
(1999). And what about the two Deep Space probes also lost in 1999 or the
infrared telescope lost in that year as well? Just as sobering, the Hubble
telescope yields its own brand of budget madness. After an original total
cost estimate of $400 million, the construction bill alone came to $2.5
billion. The cumulative cost ranges between $4.5 and $6 billion.
Similarly, Time reported (Feb.
2003) that the space station was originally slated to cost $14 billion,
but the tally reached $35 billion back in 2003. The
space station, however, was just an appetizer for the Space Shuttle
program. For that program, NASA initially hoodwinked us with a low-ball
figure of $5.5 million per launch. Later NASA admitted a cost of $450
million per launch and $1.7 billion for the cost of the shuttle Endeavor
alone (only one of the vehicles used). The true cost is much higher. Roger
Pielke, Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy
Research at the University of Colorado, claims that the total cost of the
program will reach $173 billion by 2010—a cost per flight of $1.3
billion. Since it will cost taxpayers more than 200 times the original
estimate, the Space Shuttle program makes Operation Iraqi Freedom look
like a significant—if bloodier—bargain. After all, unless you factor
in the carnage and future blowback terrorism caused by the war in But
Roger Pielke’s estimate for the Space Shuttle program may be too
pessimistic. He assumed that NASA will continue to find human guinea pigs
reckless enough to board the shuttles. After all, they fall apart so
regularly that newspaper headline writers are forever seeking new ways to
say “Astronauts to Repair Shuttle.” With each foray, there is the
implicit threat that debris from a disintegrating craft will rain down
upon Earth-bound civilians. When will the Department of Homeland Security
be asked to protect us from NASA? …And All I Got Was This Dumb
T-Shirt In
contrast to privately funded scientific efforts such as Edison’s
(electricity), Bayer’s (aspirin), or Gutenberg’s (printing), has NASA
discovered anything that justifies the fabulous expense? According to
Wesley Ward, chief space geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey (Feb.
2003): “The international space station, like the shuttle, is an
instrument in search of a purpose . . . . (We) are doing a variety of
piddley experiments with little larger application to anything.” NASA
Chief Administrator Michael Griffin concurs. He recently suggested that
the decision to develop the space shuttle and International Space Station
was a mistake: “It is now commonly accepted that (it) was not the right
path. We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as
we can.” He also added that “the shuttle is fundamentally flawed.”
James Van Allen, considered the father of nuclear physics in space
(remember the Van Allen radiation belts?), has been a long-term critic of
the space shuttle. To the Associated Press, he described the program as
“. . . too expensive and dangerous . . . It’s a vastly difficult
effort with almost no significant purpose.” Taxpayers
also should consider this: how were they possibly being served when
astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery carried a souvenir T-shirt into space as a favor for the
school children of Golden Hill Elementary School in Haverhill,
Massachusetts (Feb. 2007)? At a cost of $1.3 billion per shuttle launch,
surely that T-shirt was the most overpriced in the history of informal
apparel. The political payload on shuttle trips has included Luke
Skywalker’s light saber, American flags, a teddy bear, and other cheesy
memorabilia—sometimes counted by the dozen! Instead of being ashamed,
NASA is proud of this imperial waste. It even hosts a web page called Items
Taken into Space. Just think: average citizens will go to jail for
refusing to subsidize this nonsense. As examples of in-your-face waste and
insensitivity, these outrages are worthy of Marie Antoinette before she
lost her head in the French Revolution. Why are no heads rolling at NASA? Of
course, NASA’s supporters claim that we enjoy countless benefits from
the space program. Some are mythical, and most have no application beyond
outer space; All of them, however, fail to answer the following questions:
(1) at what cost? and (2) instead of what? In other words, they do not
tell us what Americans could have achieved with this great pile of cash if
NASA had not incinerated it without leaving as much as a toasted
marshmallow. The problem is that NASA has failed to meet the only test
that matters among people who do not use loaded guns to enforce a
decision: the market test. Only when buyers and sellers engage in
peaceful, voluntary exchange can products and services be judged as
successes or failures. Only then are they subject to a true cost-benefit
analysis instead of the arbitrary judgment of self-interested bureaucrats,
which is the trademark of all socialist ventures such as NASA’s. Self-Justification, Anyone? Oddly
enough, NASA tacitly admits there is no good reason to flush away billions
of dollars on its projects. For example, a visit to NASA’s Moon,
Mars & Beyond web page includes the link Why
the Moon? There we are told why NASA will be allowed to squander
untold billions on an Apollo re-run—a return to the Moon by 2020.
Let’s take a closer look: “Over
the past year, NASA posed this question not just to 100 people, but to
more than 1,000 from around the world . . . . Starting with just their
responses, NASA worked with 13 of the world's space agencies to develop a
Global Exploration Strategy. The strategy explains why the global
community believes we should explore space, how space exploration can
benefit life on Earth, and how the Moon can play a critical role in our
exploration of the solar system.” Those
of us who sell products to real customers know why we do it before
we ask for cold, hard cash. NASA does not work this way. First they take
our money; then they ask why. Just as scary, however, are NASA’s
answers: ·
Extend human
settlement to the Moon. Most of us believe that terrestrial real
estate is expensive enough without having to commute nearly 240,000 miles
to find a quiet half acre next to a total vacuum in a bad neighborhood
with toasty daytime temperatures of 212 °F and frosty evenings of -233 °F. ·
Obtain scientific
knowledge. Privately funded scientists do this better without as much
waste. Imagine how cost-effective and user-friendly personal computers
would be if NASA had manufactured them. ·
Prepare for future
space trips. This circular argument is simply embarrassing. It’s
like saying, “Let’s have dinner at the most expensive restaurant in
town so that we can learn how to dine at another expensive restaurant in
the future!” Self-justification anyone? ·
Develop shared,
peaceful global partnerships. Doesn’t worldwide free trade
accomplish this goal even better and at no cost to the taxpayer? Besides,
forcing taxpayers to cough up the cash isn’t very peaceful or
partner-like. ·
Provide economic
expansion. NASA actually reduces
economic expansion by bleeding funds from peaceful, profitable projects
that people engage in willingly and diverting them to politically
determined pork-barrel spending sprees at the point of a gun. ·
Promotes public
engagement. For NASA, engagement means disseminating propaganda for
the special interests that benefit from its programs. Most of us would
rather not pay for this excruciating pleasure.
As you can see, NASA’s justifications are self-serving, evasive, or just
plain silly. Maybe that’s why Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW)
criticized plans to move forward with President Decider’s “Vision for
Space Exploration,” which includes NASA’s Moon re-run and the mission
to Mars. Perhaps CAGW was thinking of the $34 million in government
property that NASA has simply “lost” since 1997. Meanwhile, NASA’s
Michael Griffin referred to the new Moon mission as “Apollo on
steroids.” Was he referring to the new mission or to the bulked-up
pork-barrel spending? NASA’s Role in Preemptive War and
Arms Escalation NASA
represents something more ominous than mere waste on a galactic scale.
Although its space technologies were developed for overtly peaceful and
scientific purposes, government programs typically yield results that are
contrary to their stated purpose. In this case, NASA has become a stalking
horse for the Department of Defense and for the Department of Homeland
Security’s surveillance technologies (CBS News, In
his book, Sorrows of Empire,
Chalmers Johnson described how space technologies are being used in offensive
war-making. In that role, they generate the same kind of international
resentment that led to the retaliatory attacks of September 11. Johnson
pointed out, for example, that these systems were employed in the
bombardment of Johnson
also quoted high military officials as they openly declared the role of
space-based weapons in wars of choice. For example, Jeff Harris, former
director of the National Reconnaissance Office (now executive of
Lockheed’s Space Systems Company), told the National Space Symposium in
Colorado Springs in 2002: “The U.S. must now act regularly in a
preemptive and proactive way around the globe, using space-based resources
for local skirmishes . . . .” Similarly: “. . . Undersecretary Teets
derided any talk of cooperation with NATO or the United Nations or other
forms of ‘burden sharing’ or ‘multilateralism.’ The Chalmers
Johnson also explained that military dependence on “killer satellites”
and other space-based weapons systems is fueling additional waves of
militarism and imperialism in an out-of-control spiral that will
eventually bankrupt our nation. Because these systems rely exclusively on
satellite-based global positioning systems (GPS) and other forms of
space-based communication, they have led to shrill demands for dominance
of the Earth’s entire stratosphere so that the technologies themselves
will not be threatened by foes. In essence, the vulnerabilities of these
technologies are generating their own rationale to dominate more and more of the planet. Where
will it end? Johnson
also shows that these systems’ inborn tendencies to malfunction are
likely to trigger an unnecessary military conflict, a scenario that the
president has attempted to cover up: “.
. . the Bush administration has done everything in its power to classify
and so hide official information on the high probability that the system
will malfunction. For example, the Pentagon suppressed a report written in
August 2000 by Philip E. Coyle, its own director of operational testing
and evaluation, despite six different congressional requests for it. Among
other things, Coyle documented how the command and control system for BMD
(ballistic missile defense) is easily confused and has in the past caused
a simulated launch of multiple interceptors against missiles that did not
exist. As Representative John Tierney (D-Massachusetts) commented, ‘One
immediate danger in these types of situations is that adversaries may
interpret these (mistaken) launches as a hostile first strike and respond
accordingly.’ Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has said that he wants a
ballistic missile defense even if it has not been thoroughly tested and is
admittedly not able to perform to specifications.” For
those who are not swayed by the possibility of human devastation caused by
malfunctioning space-based defense systems, perhaps the loss of satellite
communications ( To
highlight the severity of this threat, Nemesis
contains the following warning from the first woman in space: “Astronaut
Sally Ride . . . has been adamant that the use of anti-satellite weapons
would be ‘disastrous’ because of the debris they would be likely to
create. On her inaugural mission in June 1983, an incident fixed her
opinion on this subject: ‘About halfway through the flight there was a
small pit in the window of the space shuttle and we didn’t know what it
was. An awful lot of analysis was done while we were in orbit to make sure
that the strength of the window would sustain reentry. It did. We were all
fine. But the analysis afterward showed that our window had been hit by an
orbiting fleck of paint, and the relative velocities were enough that the
paint actually made a small but visible gouge in the window. Well a fleck
of paint is not the same as a small piece of metal traveling at the same
speed. So, as soon as you start increasing the amount of junk in a low
Earth orbit, you have an unintended by-product that starts putting some of
your own quite valuable satellites at possible risk.’” Abolish NASA Now The
products and services of NASA are provided at high cost and in an
irresponsible fashion (remember the T-shirts and disintegrating space
shuttles?). Even worse, the military applications are endangering American
lives and security because of their incorporation into the |
Exclusive
to STR
