Nixon (cancelled NERVA & Saturn)
Saturn rocket was way too expensive to be sustainable, NERVA was cancelled because only need for it is to go to Mars (and no money for that so need for such a rocket).
Reagan (Cancelled the Space Tug crippling the Shuttle)
problem with space tug is amount of energy to change orbits is more than sending a spacecraft to the moon. Gemini, Apollo, Shuttle can change orbit inclinations but these were very small.
Bush W (cancelled the Shuttle replacement - without replacing it)
Most certain intent was to "scuttle the fleet" to motivate a development of a new vehicle much like Cortez scuttling his fleet to motivate his troops to take down the Aztec Empire. Silly analogy but according to Paul Spudis there was this kind of thinking.
WTF is the problem?
no money for a lander. That's why Moon is off limits (human landings that is). Until NASA is given money for a lander, the moon is simply not discussed. Mars is discussed even though no money for lander or habitat module while getting there, but that's far off into the future (much like fusion power plants, flying cars, etc.).
BH complaining about wasting time.
but sure has a lot of time to write this article.
Presumably, this discovery would be accompanied by some facts about the nature of the organisms that lived on Mars,
I recall one of those 1950s sci-fi comics of a manned Mars mission exploring surface, come across some ruins (there really was a cilivization here millions of years ago). They find this one place of various apparatus and documents (maybe it's advanced mathematical studies and high technology). After spending some time analyzing the numbers, one concludes it doesn't seem much more than just a balance sheet for a business. Another finds the equipment some kind of holographic projector and manages to get it operating. It shows a person under attack by a tenacle monster. Among other evidence they realize Martians were very humanoid and what they stumbled on was a movie theatre with feature film, "Invasion From The Third Planet."
Is it me, or does NASA seem scared to get the answer to the question of is/was there life on Mars?
Viking’s results where ambiguous, so we decided – NO LIFE – no need to go back for over 20 years.
that's why mission is not to ask "is there life?" Because if answer is no, then we ain't going back for another 20 years because that is exactly what happened with Viking (ok maybe I'm stretching it). But then I feel the same way, the next big thing is even a bigger rover. I've read stories of the "Mars Mafia" to keep the money rolling to JPL by continuing easy missions (but talk to people that worked on Curiosity and they'll tell you it is ***NOT*** easy). Now for a mission of big leap is a Europa lander and submarine (imagine it taking pictures of the little fishies if any).
How much is it worth to this country to make sure we won’t find the Luftwaffe our superiors when we start that “Second Front”? We spend in one night over Berlin more than $20,000,000. The NACA requires—now—$17,546,700 for this year’s work. These raids are prime factors in winning the War. How can we do more towards Victory than by spending the price of one air raid in research which will keep our Air Forces in the position which the NACA has made possible?
But the real issue in Launius's article is NACA did not consider importance of the jet engine.
http://launiusr.wordpress.com/...
"...the public, when surveyed, thinks that NASA gets something like a quarter to a third of the US budget. Perhaps we should show the world what we could accomplish if we really had that level of funding?"
No. We need to educate the public what percentage of federal budget is spent on NASA. We first need to show the brutal truth of what's going on, and those who closely follow space activities have shown misinformation among themselves (not that it is all their fault, it seems federal policies are delibrietly made confusing).
IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's got to be a better way. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.