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Despite what was posted under this subject heading, the incompetence of
NOAA (a bureaucracy shaped by the Bush administration that Obama
inherited) and this administration's craven coddling of BP do not a "war
on science" make.
The scientists I've had contact with are very pleased with this
administration, specifically in the fields of climate change and the
space program.
Right-wing cowboys like Neil Armstrong (who transformed one step into a
lifetime gravy train) may get all the headlines for his denunciations of
the Obama administration's re-cancellation of the Bush moon-mars
program, but real scientists an engineers are cheering. [Re-cancellation
because the half-baked idiocy Bush the Lesser had some "commission"
endorse was simply the Second Coming of a Bush the Father "Space
Exploration Initiative" (slightly) rebranded as a "Vision for Space
Exploration".]
Basically, it would be a boondoggle even worse than the space shuttle
presented as a "vision" but in reality it is just a mechanism for
endless subsidies to military contractors.
The planetary society and a dozen other science/space/engineering geek
groups --and I mean the really top ones-- have backed Obama's NASA plan,
which supposedly is that the private sector will develop low-earth-orbit
human launch capabilities, and which *really* means the U.S. will
contract from the Russians (and perhaps the Chinese) what it needs.
There's a lot of genuflecting in the plan about going to Mars in some
indefinite future, but no real work on it, apart from basic research
with multiple applications.
That's because there's an unsolved basic problem. Astronauts would need
the same sort of shielding that is used around nuclear reactors. And
that's heavy lifting beyond the capacity of any current technology.
Yet without it, an astronaut outside the earth's magnetic field hit by
a particle stream from a solar flare would be toast. And that's not a
metaphor.
The big plus is that the immediate program to go get *more* useless
moon rocks would be scrapped and funds directed instead to useful
science earth satellites and interplanetary probes.
I know how much people really REALLY hate Obama but making the sorts of
claims that appear on the subject line will only convince those familiar
with the subject that Marxists are not worth taking seriously.
Joaquín
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