END OF NASA BY OBAMA
Will the Statistics be Matched by the Facts?
On January 27, 2010, Fox News indicated that President Obama would end the Ares Rocket Program that is designed to replace U.S. Space Shuttles, which retire this year. Doing so would put NASA out of manned spaced flight. Farming out our space program to the Russians means that the U.S. is effectively surrendering keys of the International Space Station to the Russians, even though the U.S. built and delivered most of it. Along with those keys go U.S. pride and the dreams of many of America’s science-minded youth – unless America has a secret space program like the legendary TR-3B or Project Aurora.
On the matrix above, the axis term is only 6 letters, shorter than I normally accept, but it is the 3rd shorter ELS of END NASA (or END OF NASA). To show it with the man who supposedly wants to do away with NASA, OBAMA, requires 198 letters. A larger matrix (with the yellow background) is required to include the words SPACECRAFT and ARES. But to incorporate these two extra terms, the matrix had to grow by another 202 letters to 400 letters.
There was about 1 chance in 41 (p = .0245) that OBAMA would be in the 198 letters with END NASA. Going to the larger matrix reduces the value of OBAMA there to about one chance in 8 (p = .124). There the word SPACECRAFT is more significant (p = .0194, about one chance in 51). The words ARES is only 3 letters, and my protocal is stricter in accepting such short words. All letters of them must be 3 or fewer letters apart from each other. Here that equates to a p value of .285, which is about one chance in 3.5 to be there. The combined value of these three terms OBAMA, SPACECRAFT and ARES is then downgraded by a factor of 3 because the axis term is only the 3rd shortest ELS of END NASA. The final p value is thus calculated to be .00207 which is about one chance in 482. While this matrix appears to be statistically significant, it remains to be seen if Congress would go along with killing NASA. One thing is fairly sure - such a plan would be political suicide in Florida. It would be hard for Obama to win re-election in 2012 without this state.
WHAT OUR ASTRONAUTS THINK OF PRESIDENT OBAMA:
"The United States entered into the challenge of space exploration under President Eisenhower’s first term, however, it was the Soviet Union who excelled in those early years," the letter begins."Under the bold vision of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and with the overwhelming approval of the American people, we rapidly closed the gap in the final third of the 20th century, and became the world leader in space exploration. ...
"When President Obama recently released his budget for NASA, he proposed a slight increase in total funding, substantial research and technology development, an extension of the International Space Station operation until 2020, long range planning for a new but undefined heavy lift rocket and significant funding for the development of commercial access to low earth orbit.
"Although some of these proposals have merit, the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating.
"America’s only path to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station will now be subject to an agreement with Russia to purchase space on their Soyuz (at a price of over 50 million dollars per seat with significant increases expected in the near future) until we have the capacity to provide transportation for ourselves. The availability of a commercial transport to orbit as envisioned in the President’s proposal cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope.
"It appears that we will have wasted our current ten plus billion dollar investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded.
For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the President's plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years.
Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity. America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal.
Neil Armstrong
Commander, Apollo 11James Lovell
Commander, Apollo 13Eugene Cernan
Commander, Apollo 17
