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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said on Thursday he has sent recommendations from his review of more than two dozen national monuments to President Donald Trump, indicating that some could be scaled back to allow for more hunting and fishing and economic development.
The recommendations follow a 120-day study of 27 national monuments across the country, created by presidents since 1996, that Trump ordered in April as part of his broader effort to increase development on federal lands.
The review has cheered energy, mining, ranching and timber advocates but has drawn widespread criticism and threats of lawsuits from conservation groups and the outdoor recreation industry.
There were fears that Zinke would recommend the outright elimination of some of the monuments on the list, but on Thursday, speaking to the Associated Press in Billings, Montana, he said he will not recommend eliminating any.
Zinke said in a statement that the recommendations would "provide a much needed change for the local communities who border and rely on these lands for hunting and fishing, economic development, traditional uses, and recreation." He did not specify which monuments he plans to recommend be scaled back.
The Associated Press reported that Zinke said he would recommend changing the boundaries for a "handful" of sites.
If you're taking millions of acres off the table for one site, you fail at knowing the definition of a monument.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-monuments-idUSKCN1B41YA
Also at RT, CNN, The Washington Post and The Hill.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:41PM (3 children)
Your ignoring the how, why, and what of the spending of the space program. This actually fits quite tidily into the overall debate. NASA's budget today is mostly used to enrich various individuals in groups. For instance the SLS (think Space Shuttle 2.0) program is little more than a hamstrung pork project. That project alone consumes about 20% of NASA's budget. And this is typical. NASA is a tool to be manipulated for profit and personal (or group) gain. And if NASA dares raise this issue publicly they will face severe reprimands from congress which equates to destroying what little token amount of the freedom they still have.
Take for instance the Hubble. This was (and remains) NASA's most sophisticated satellite as I think most know. What you probably didn't know is that the National Reconnaissance Office (space spying agency) casually gave [wikipedia.org] NASA two 'old' telescopes they built but decided they didn't need. Far from old hand me downs, these satellites actually dwarf even Hubble in capability. Nonetheless they're gathering dust in a warehouse somewhere since NASA does not have the money to put them into space. That was in 2012... When you speak of NASA during the space race nearly 100% of their budget was dedicated towards achieving a genuine space-focused goal. It wasn't about some senator getting some more jobs in his district, or another senator getting his buddy's company some sweet contracts - it was about achieving something big in space. That NASA is, for all intents and purposes, is dead - replaced by them being little more than a tool for individuals to exploit for profit.
It's interesting to consider something. When Columbus returned from the New World. He lied through his teeth. He saw absolutely nothing of particular interest - there were some natives, he presumed Indians. But there were no amazing riches or wonders. Regardless he said there was. And these lies are largely why a much larger return trip was granted and why genuine riches and wonders were eventually discovered. What if he had not lied? What if Europe had simply chosen to turn away from the New World and focus on more "practical" or "immediate" challenges. Our development, technological/economic/social, would have undoubtedly been retarded. The question is by how much? Decades? It could have even been centuries. The point I'm getting at here is that suggesting that NASA's grand visions including things like Mars/space bases would have had no application is, given what we know now, plainly false. Had NASA not been abandoned after the space race there's every reason to believe we could have been mining asteroids decades ago. As you may know one asteroid [wikipedia.org], we've already landed on, has contained within its relatively small surface more rare and precious minerals than have been mined in all of Earth's history. And it's only about twice the distance to Mars.
Anyhow, I wonder what sort of evidence or data your opinions are based on, they do not seem cogent. As this is only scratching the surface of why I said the things I did about NASA alone, I'd rather not enter the gamut of going for academia and other topics at the same time as well. Suffice to say, I'm not shooting from the hip there either.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:04AM (2 children)
Let's start with the weakness of your argument. We should go to space because a con man found America 500+ years ago and we got lucky that there were continents there? We should go to space because you can recite a litany of reasons NASA has failed so far? Your pep talk needs some work.
As I noted earlier, the US has already spent a trillion dollars on space exploration and development via NASA. We got some nice pictures and the knowledge that we can land a Volkswagen Bug on a variety of planets, asteroids, and moons in the Solar System. We have a nice space telescope which apparently wasn't valuable enough to launch two more. And over the decades a fair number of one-off missions to do moderately interesting things in space. And we have a patronage system just like most of the other space programs on Earth. These are symptoms of a culture for which space exploration and development just isn't immensely valuable.
And a huge part of the reason that's the case is because space exploration and development doesn't pay for itself - the "profit" of the original poster. Thus, NASA has fallen to baser forces because there's just not much return in what it does. For me, I can see space development beyond Earth orbit potentially being of immense value, but you'll need to develop a lot of infrastructure (and more economic approaches to deep space activities) to do that. I don't think it'll really happen till private enterprise builds most of the near Earth infrastructure like cheap heavy lift rockets or orbital propellant storage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @06:11AM (1 child)
So all you can come up with is straw men and repeating yourself?
If you're not interested in the issues, and/or have not engaged in any meaningful research, then why comment in the first place?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:39PM
If you can't honestly evaluate other peoples' opinions then what's the point of having an opinion yourself? First, where's the straw man? I'll note in the AC I replied to earlier, there was a lot of rambling about Columbus and NASA's misspent youth. for the former, the poster felt the need to speak of Columbus's lies after his first expedition - like he'd tell a head of state and his chief sponsor something they didn't want to hear. That's a typical con activity, though understandable under the circumstances. I suppose we could ask what would happen if NASA tried the same thing (after all they faked the Moon landings in the first place /sarc)? The answer is "spinoffs" [wikipedia.org] where NASA claims anything and everything with even the slightest taint of NASA funding as a product of the space program. Doesn't seem to help their situation.
Then there's the complaints about NASA. Most of the post is about how NASA is a political tool. The obvious question here is if space is so important, then how could that happen? Answer: the initial assumption is wrong - space isn't so important to us collectively. Sure, it's immensely important to you, but you're not giving NASA 20 billion a year to do the stuff you want it to do.
NASA didn't bother to return to the Moon because they had the attitude of "Been there. Done that." (Lunar exploration has been remarkably paltry since Apollo) They didn't bother to make two more Hubble-equivalent telescopes because they already had one up there and a replacement coming (James Webb Space Telescope) for which these telescopes would have threatened the viability of the new telescope. So to the people holding the purse strings (and probably a good portion of NASA's workforce), those two extra space telescopes had negative value! Of course, they're not going to fly them.
SLS is just funding to keep the former Shuttle supply chain happy and campaign donations flowing - they don't have an interest in doing anything beyond spending that money. It'll probably fly at least once, just to save face, but it'll be vastly more expensive than Falcon Heavy without much additional capabilities or missions to rationalize its existence. And no, you don't know that NASA's "grand visions" will result in a thing on Mars - hasn't yet and any plan for a serious ramp up is conveniently far in the future, many political cycles away from reality.
Bottom line is that NASA is a dead end with the present approach and it's been that way for almost 50 years because space isn't important to enough of us on Earth and unlikely to ever be. The solution is not propaganda; it's not lies; it's not some sort of manifest destiny ideology. The solution is more, lower cost infrastructure - things like lower cost launch to orbit (the key to "cheap access to space"), orbital propellant depots, space tugs, etc. Build the infrastructure so that the private world can give it a spin. Once the size of the problem has been reduced to the point where a relatively small private group can do credible development in space, then it won't matter that space isn't immensely valuable to the rest of the world. Similarly, even for the NASA-obsessed, lower thresholds and costs to viable missions means a greater chance that real work gets done in space rather the continued token, status stuff that NASA has done for most of its existence.
In the case of Columbus, his exploration wasn't the culmination of some massive state project, it was just a three ship trip which could be easily funded by a few rich patrons. Further exploration and eventual colonization/conquest was just as well done by small groups as it was by state-backed efforts. We need to get past the current state of massive efforts for paltry gains just like the Europeans did back during the exploration of the New World.