Television companies and more including cox. Over can be hard but squatting at an internet diner can be hard. Host washington journal for august 29, nasa will launch its artemis 1 rocket, a test flight that could start the process of sending astronauts back to the moon. The nasa led project has suffered delays and excessive cost overruns. Some question if Space Exploration is worth the cost. Thats what we will ask you when it comes to u. S. Space exploration. Is it worth the cost. If you say yes, call 202 7488000. If you say no it is not, 202 7488001. If you are not sure, give us a call at 8002. You can text us at 202 7488003. You can also follow the show on instagram. Yahoo news takes a look at the cost of the Artemis Program, which will launch at 833 a. M. Today. When it comes to comparisons, the james Webb Telescope cost less than 10 billion. The Artemis Program is expected to be 90 billion by 2025. The mission will be the first and only rigorous test of the rocket and space capsule that takes astronauts around the moon. They will begin building a research station. More stories about that launch window at 8 33 a. M. When it comes to exploration and your thoughts on whether its worth the cost that we spend on these programs, you can give us a call. If you say yes, 202 7488000. If you say no 202 7488001. If you are not sure, 8002. If you go to the website, they are asking people if space is a good investment. This is a recent poll. When it comes to the rate down, for those under 30 who responded , it was 29 said space is a very good investment. A good deal saint it was a somewhat good investment. And it comes to 3044, that drops to 26 saying it was a good investment. 4564, 35 . Last year, they asked americans about sending people back to the moon. And also to mars, which is the emphasis of the artemis mission. When it comes to sending people to the moon it, it was 52 in a poll taken last year it saying they approved of that. Even when it comes to political breakdowns, it was 53 of democrats and 59 of republicans and 54 of independents. Those increase when you talk about sending people to mars. 53 of adults said exploring mars was worth the cost there was a tie of those when it comes to. You can tell us in this first 45 minutes of the program what you think about the money that is spent exploring space and if you think its worth the cost. You can post on our twitter feed. If you want to, you can start watching the coverage of the launch on our regular network. You can watch it on cspan. You can also watch it on our cspan app. If you wish, you can follow along on the website. The administrator told nelson is leading up to the test today. They were talking about various aspects. It was saturday when administrator nelson talked about deep Space Exploration and why he thinks it benefits people in general. We are explorers and adventurers as a species. That basically is the fulfillment of our destiny. But, in then exploration, we will learn new things and develop new things that are going to improve as its been under our Space Program. Last week, i was in kansas. I was with a corn farmer. We are giving him real time information on the moisture content of the soil in this crop and to it. He knows what to plant. Those instruments obviously can pick up disease. They can pick up disease and forest, which become susceptible to fire. That is certainly going to help our life here on earth. Those are things that have come out of the Space Program, things we cant even think of. Host the numbers will be on the screen if you want to call. 202 7488000 if you think Space Exploration is worth it. 202 7488001 if you think it is not. Our first color is from washington is on the yes line. Caller i think space travel is worth it. If you compare the amount to what we spend on the military, we spend almost nothing on space travel. The annual defense expenditure far outpaces and exceeds what we spend on at nasa. If the nations beliefs are expressed in what they spend their money on, like peoples beliefs are expressed, we really care more about the Defense Industry and other things. Host what do you think we get back in return . Caller i think we learn about how we integrate into the universe. Things outside this planet affect us. Host that is our caller from tacoma washington. When it comes to spending, the General Accountability Office took a look at spending my nasa. The Washington Post except that. In 2019, a report found that nasa continued to pay tens of millions of dollars in awards fees to boeing for scoring high on the performance evaluations. Delays mounted after the significant schedule delays caused nasa to restructure flight manifests for the space launch system earlier this year. The Inspector General told congress the office it calculated three flights. That is 4 billion each. Nasa and boeing pushed back on that. It included all sorts of unrelated costs. The person calculated that the per launch cost would be between 876 billy 876 million. When it comes to the actual cost of the program own it comes to the costs involved, is it worth it in the end . Don in michigan says no. Caller i dont see if we cant even take care of error seniors and are so security that is about to end, we cant afford that. That is going to run out. The seniors are getting piss port for a check. We can still spend 90 billion to go to space. What are we going to gain by spending that money going to space . I am against it. I think we need to put it in the economy and help out the people, especially the seniors which nobody seems to talk about anymore. Try living on that kind of money. I have no 401 k . I have no additional savings. I am trying to get by on that. It is very hard, especially with todays prices. Host that was don in michigan. Some of the responding through texts and tweets. This is ray in Colorado Senate essay text. He says this is larry from new jersey. Some of you are sending texts this morning. This is from steve. This is from mark, given us his thoughts this morning. If you want to text of morning, you can do that at 202 7488003. You can also tweet us if you wish at our twitter feed. The wall street journal looks at some of the businesses behind the launch. This is from their business section, same boeing had struggled recently, including management problems. This also includes a chart, looking at the contractors involved with nasa currently. At the top of the list, the California Institute of tech algae with their dollars obligated for 2021 in billions. 1. 6 billion from boeing. Spacex, 1. 63 billion. Lockheed martin, 1. 3 and change. You can see that list on the website for the wall street journal. We will hear next from one to. Wanda is in texas. Good morning. Caller good morning. We have people homeless living on the streets. We spend more money on prisons than we spend on education. We want to spend theyre just printing money. It makes no sense to me. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Boeing is going to make money. When we going to take care of Climate Change . We dont believe in that science. Its just crazy. Everybody is getting rich. Host that was wanda in texas. Lets go to jay in nebraska. Go ahead. Caller i will say this, the reason why i think we are in favor of it is part of the reason why sls has taken so long to get built is it wasnt funded like it was back in the glory days of apollo where it was about nasa getting 4 of the National Budget yeartoyear. These days, nasa funding is only about 0. 4 . As a result, everything has to be stretched out and go on longer. By doing that, you cant necessarily fund the building of rockets in parallel to where we could get a Flight Program done relatively quickly. After this goes up, we are 2. 5 years away from the next one. We still dont even have a lander designed yet. Were still trying to iron out the spacecraft as well. As to why we should do it, during the Apollo Program there were a lot of take logical spinoffs. 10 years after apollo, when i was growing up, i remember the pc computer revolution where everybody had a home computer. Part of that was down to the investment in the infrastructure were nobody knew quite what spinoffs we were going to get. A lot of hardware was built. The price eventually went down. We had Home Computers by the 80s. When i was going through high school, i started out touch typing in class like everybody else. By the time i got to my junior in senior year, i was writing papers with word processing software. Thats how quick things can happen. Host that was jay in nebraska making the case for nasa. 26 billion dollars was their request when it comes to that. 7. 5 is slated for deeps place deep Space Exploration. Just to give you a sense of the budget when it comes to nasa, when you come to that kind of spending, what you think about the worth of it . Is there value for the taxpayer . If you say it is worth it, 202 7488000 is the number to call. 202 7488001 if you say no it is not. This is New Hampshire. Go ahead. Caller good morning. I feel the priorities are misplaced. The lady a couple of colors back indicated problems we have, Mental Health problems that arent being addressed, we have homelessness thats not being addressed. So many issues that our world has so many problems. I just dont understand the policy, the director was on talking about farms and knowing what to plant. It seems Like Technology has replaced our brain. We have cars you dont need to know how to Parallel Park anymore. You dont have to turn your headlights on or off. I dont know. As you age, more use your brain the better. With technology, we are heading in a different direction. Have a great day. Host will is in South Carolina also on the no line. Caller i have one main question i want to ask. I am a guy that digs into facts and looks up certain things. My main issue is if you take it back, why are we so concerned with antarctica first . Me personally, there is no such thing as space in my opinion. Weve never been there. Basically, milking the taxpayers for their money to do mindless experiments and tell yo something that is not true. We cant prove it ourselves. I think its not fair that american taxpayers have to pay for somebody elses experiment. Weve already seen that doesnt workforce. We have mental illness, veterans who fought for this country, who died for this country. I see them again for change. Host what do you base that on scientifically . Caller you want to go biblically, if you want to go back before the round globe that was put before us in the late 60s. Lets be for real. Host what do you base it on specifically . Caller there isbecause the land is cumbered in a firmament. Host ok. Thomas is in pennsylvania on the gas line. Hello. Thomas in pennsylvania . One more time for thomas. Ok. We will go on. We will hear from joe. Joe in washington dc, also on the gas line. Go ahead. Caller good morning. Flat earth, thats tough. Im going to say its worth it. I do agree with a lot of the collars that are saying we have so many problems here on earth, whether its Mental Health or homelessness or seniors that are losing benefits. I just dont know why those conversations are only had when the conversations around Something LikeSpace Exploration, which does have benefits. Our military spending is what the caller from tacoma product. Exponentially larger that we spend on space right now. There are other areas of mismanaged money in the government that could be diverted to those causes. The idea that Space Exploration and nasa are a waste of money completely is ludicrous. This could be our last shop of when we run out of resources here on earth. I dont see us turning back the wave of earth warming and human induced Climate Change next few years. It gives it a new meeting. Thats where we are going to have to go if we survive as a species. Host the rest of you can call if you are interested in the artemis launch. Give us a call on the lines if you think the exploration of spaces worth it. We have shots from florida as the rocket is getting prepared for its launch later on this morning. That is the space launch system, the or ryan spacecraft. The Associated Press when it comes to that capsule, the flight of the space capsule is supposed to last six weeks until the pacific splashed down, twice as long as astronaut trips. It will take nearly one week to reach the moon. The capsule will enter a distant orbit with the farpoint of 38,000 miles. It is farther than apollo. The big test comes at the mission and as it hits the atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour. The heat shield uses the same material as the apollo capsule to withstand reentry temperatures of 5000 degrees. That is some of the reporting today when it comes to the launch. Stay close to cspan for coverage we will show you throughout the morning. More of you responding this morning. This is from our twitter feed. We dont need to go to space right now. Another viewer saying that will this be spewing carbon into the atmosphere . Another viewer, this is peter. From jr again, that are some of you responding to this idea of Space Exploration, what it offers the taxpayer. Hello. Caller good morning. I believe that its a waste. As a commercial driver, it takes 36 hours to take amtrak from upstate new york to mississippi. I can drive it in my car in 19 hours. That makes no sense to have highspeed trains in italy and china and singapore. How about we solve some of the terrestrial problems here first. Have a good day. Host sean in chicago on the yes line. Caller good morning. I hope youre doing well there today. My father was an engineer at the university of chicago. He worked on all the projects that made this country great. It seems like the level of disinformation, the lack of education and the lack of vision being heard by some of our viewers is seeping from our politics into our mental state. The Space Program is the append me of everything great in this country, everything that we strive for. Im an environmentalist. There are tons of things in this country that need to have high priority. The Space Program breaks ground on all scientific yields. Short of being a science denier, there is no way we should shut off the Space Program. It breaks down terriers in science that cannot be addressed in any other. Medical. Medical research that happened on the Space Shuttle that could not be done here in our atmosphere. Plus, all the science that is developed specifically for these purposes. I agree with the collar that said waste needs to be reined in. We need to appropriate logically. Cutting the Space Program is not the pronghorn how about we cuss the politicians who are science and covid deniers. Now they are coming after nasa . Its insanity to hear whats happening. We are going backwards. Host mike is in florida. It go ahead. Go ahead. Caller first of all, i like to go to the moon or mars. We have a lot of problems here. We should solve our problems here. Then we can think about going to the moon to find life there. We have a lot of problems. With the full host go ahead. Ok. That was mike in florida. Those are pictures from nasa that we are showing you of the artemis rocket. This is expected to launch later today. Its an Unmanned Mission. It was built by several contractors who make the journey around the moon. It starts the process of eventually going back to the moon with a manned mission, with hopes to go even further with the destination of mars. That starts with todays launch. You can follow along on cspan now. You can give us your thoughts on the spending of this project and whether you think Space Exploration is an overall pursuit. Various people are calling. This is harold in pennsylvania on the yes line. Hello. Caller good morning. Im a 66yearold retired navy veteran. I was actually on 18 can and we used to watch the space launches off the florida coast. I really believe that we waited too long to do this again. We have put so much time and effort into the space station. I think we need to go to the moon and we need to put people on the moon just to keep our lifestyle going. Host what do you mean by that . Caller im thinking that in the future, this planet may have to expand its population someplace else. Host as far as the argument that weve been to the moon it, why go back, mars is the destination. Is that a worthwhile argument . Caller i think the moon is more pliable. I think that would be the best plate to place to start. Lets go to the moon and make sure we can set up first. Host that was harold in pennsylvania. Earlier this year, the nasa administrator was before congress, he was asked about the cost of various programs. He was asked about that. Nasa projects are experiencing the largest collective cost and schedule overruns since they began reporting in 2009. The overruns cant be attributed covid alone. Many projects have design changes that led to modifications and schedule slippage. The budget pressure is delaying launch dates. Can you help us understand what you are working on to improve these projects . What do you see improvement anytime soon and our ability to manage those . There had better be. You are exactly right. There is no excuse for cost overruns. The old way of doing things was always costplus. Because of the competition weve been talking about, weve been moving to the fixed price. Under procurement law, those that we cant do costplus, we are moving to really crack down on them. Host there are some detailed graphics about the artemis want rocket. This is from the Washington Post. This is the upper stage, the orion spacecraft. It sits on the core stage of the r