Domain: nasa.gov
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nasa.gov.
Comments · 16,365
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Re:High rez my ass
Yeah, it is sorta pathetic, especially compared to NASA's latest from Mars:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/gallery/calibration/R elease_AEB_000001_0000_Color.html
(click on the "full res" link at your own risk!) -
Re:Whoa
I wasn't so taken with the images.
Infact, I expected much better - they "high-rez" looks very grainy, like a bad jpeg.
I hope this first capture isn't going to be indicative of the quality.
Earlier on (when I saw this article) I went looking at the first images from other craft, and one of the more startling comparisons comes from First close-up view of Jupiter from Voyager 1.
Even the Mariner images shown on the linked BBC article appear to have grater clarity and detail. -
Yay Google!
"The Iris hypothesis was published by Richard Lindzen and co-authors in the March 2001 issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society."
Of course...it's from a NASA news release about some observations that counter the Iris effect. -
A train or a space ship
You gotta give the Japan people props about their notorious trains, because they're not trains, they're, I don't know, space ships.
How many G does a passenger feel as the "train" accelerates? I mean, some of them look up side down I wonder if the seats are on the roofs?
Also most of them don't actually touch the rails they fly on a magnetic fields or something, right?
Do passengers have to pass a special training to ride on one of those trains?
Has it happened that a Japanese train can't take a corner and just flies off never to be seen anymore?
Anyhow, I bet they are really proud of their trains, and they have to. Good luck with hydrogen bomb ones as well!
I mean hydrogen fuel cell, sorry. -
Re:Blowing Hot Air
>There really isn't any doubt that the Earth has warmed up over the last 25 years.
>> Uh, yes there is. You just haven't looked up the stats. We only contribute less than 0.5% of greenhouse gases according to official numbers, and global temperature hasn't risen since 1998 according to the official temperature record.
Uh, no there isn't. You just haven't looked up the stats.
go here http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/
and here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
If you look at the graphs, you'll see it takes three steps forward , then two steps back, then 4 forward, etc It's clearly trending up. It's too soon to say it's levelling off. -
Re:Blowing Hot Air
>global temperature hasn't risen since 1998
Why pick 1998?
Because it was the year of a record-for-the-century El Nino and was above the trend line. Pick an exceptionally hot year as a baseline and next few years will have trouble keeping up. It's like starting with 1999 and concluding that the Internet industry is dying.
Here's the temperature data year by year and as a 5-year moving average. -
Re:Blowing Hot Air
How come it has not risen since 1988 ? Where did you take it off ?
2005 was the hottest year on record.
Check out the stats here: http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Temp/2006Te mp_data.htm
You can see graphics here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/
Do you think NASA is making up data ? -
Re:What a bunch of carp
Please Mr. Rhetoric, explain to me the cause for the global warming currently transpiring on Mars.
"...And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress."
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.ht ml -
Re:oh, the jackoffs at OpinionJournal issued anoth
Because people have been griping about all the trolling for the opposing viewpoint when the same or similar article is posted three times in a week. Yeah....sorry,...counter viewpoint. OMG...TROLL!!!
Yes, yes,...anyone who does not worship your sacred god of global warming and accept mankind's sins as the cause is a wicked wicked troll.
Mind you, I am still waiting for those alarmists to explain what is causing the global warming on Mars as well?
"...And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress."
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.ht ml -
Re:Possibly
Think that gives you doubts...try this:
...And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.ht ml -
Re:Stupid nameIIRC, the discussions at the astronomical society have come to the conclusion that most of the good roman names have been used up.
Your recollection has nothing to do why the object is sometimes being called Xena. The discoverer, Brown, named it Xena on a whim. Though he discovered it, it wasn't his perogative to name it. The fact that he issued a press release with a name has caused no end of grief to folks who want a consistent naming scheme.
There are a couple of database maintainers who hand out temporary names like 2004 VD17. If you're conducting research on that particular body, you publish all references to the body as 2004 VD17. That way, if someone wants to followup on what you're talking about, there isn't any ambiguity. Brown flipped the finger to that convention by coming up with Xena.
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Repetitive tasks and tuning...
I used to work at NASA/GSFC, and one of the workstations there sat all day running periodic housekeeping tasks from cron -- parsing telemetry, handling command load updates, etc. The problem was that every once in a while something would stall and the next batch of cron jobs would launch before the first ones completed. Instant snowballing death would ensue as nothing completed and the load average would soar into the hundreds as cron maniacally, stupidly spawned more and more processes into the poor overloaded workstation.
There are several relevant tools available now but then I wrote my own - a perl script called "qproc" that would queue up jobs for execution, kill them if they hung too long, and refrain from launching multiple copies of the same job at the same time.
Until I got hit by that, I never thought about the fact that cron is very dangerous to use on a production server. But it is -- if cron tasks use a non-infinitesimal part of the computer, you have to take steps to prevent the same marching-broomsticks failure mode. -
Re:atomic?
You guys are making this too complicated. NASA's site says: "Located 10 billion miles away, but with a diameter that is a little more than half the width of the United States, Xena is only 1.5 picture elements across in Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys' view."
Think projection in a 3D game. A pixel represents, at a projected distance of 10 billion miles, a width x. Xena is 1.5x.
The final image (as you all have pointed out) would require a minimum of two pixels of information to accurately reproduce the projected image from a distance of 10 billion miles. The second pixel would not have the intensity of the first. But from the image on the site, it looks like a lot more than two pixels of information were recorded; I don't see how they could magnify two pixels and get that. -
What constitutes a "planet"?
First of all, IANAA (an astronomer).
[rant]
It's truly amazing that we can see things so far away with our little technology; but ultimately, humans have made it so far as the moon... with respect to our sandbox in the universe, that's not very far. Jupiter and Mars are completely different things - they probably were created via entirely different processes. Mars is a dusty rock that gets hot & cold a lot. Jupiter is a massive ball of gas that has thunderstorms with its moons; I read somewhere that one of Jupiter's moons has a tidal terrain. Could you imagine the crust of the Earth rising and falling some-odd hundred meters as the moon went by? One (many?) of Jupiters' moons has this property.
We need a name for balls of mass (whether a few km in diameter or an astronomical unit, e.g. 93 million miles, in diameter) that orbit stars for a living. If that's a planet, fine. Sounds like comets, Pluto, Xena, and everything else that orbits a star is a planet. Otherwise, a "planet" is a name for the eight terrestrial entities that astronomers have known about for centuries... and we still need a name/class system for things that orbit parent stars. Many (most?) argue that comets and the like are not planets because they came to be and exist in a different way than our traditional "planets"... but our own (8 or 9) planets are so very different to begin with, that if you think about it long enough, they're all too radically different to be in the same class. We may like to think we know how Jupiter and Mars and Earth and the Moon were created; that crap happened so long ago, it's safe to say that humans have no way of knowing - none of us were there.
I like the second article, which suggests we demote Pluto and Xena (and similar objects) to "dwarf" planets.
We're only human! For a long time we thought matter and energy were two different things; now, the fact that matter is considered "solid" is coming into question. It goes to show how little we really know to begin with, and arguing the definition of a "planet" is as useful to our curiosities as arguing the difference between a rabbit turd and a cow pie.
[/rant]
So as not to only rant, I thought I would try to be informative as well. :)
If anyone would like to see Xena, here's a page with a decent shot. The actual NASA feature about the recent picture is here. -
Re:Illegal in Europe, legal in USA and Asia
In the mean time we can thank the Europeans for reliability of electronics going to hell. It is especially problematic for the more expensive and complex equipment which tends to have a lot of BGA chips with very fine ball spacings. The tin whiskers will cause leads to short out. A good document I found is at http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/background/index.htm
To date it looks like you can have either lead free solder or reliability, but rarely both. -
Finesse
My actual question is why, after decades of neglect, is our first big public attempt at re-invigorating moon exploration something as negative as slamming meteors into it? Yes, there are ways to belittle people who think we should approach scientific discovery with a little more finesse. Belitting critics will just turn people away from science.
Has anyone at NASA noticed that students are systematically rejecting science as a career path? When science is presented as something elegant and beautiful it draws in inquisitive minds. Today, when science is presented with such arrogance and hubris, students and the public at large turn away from science.
Yes, you have an argument that science is not necessarily elegant. Neither is it necessarily arrogant. Slamming celestial bodies into each other might be fun, but it will not result in the same public support as elegant science like the Mars rovers. We have the technology and public support to engage in elegant exploration. Why not chose that over exploring with hubris?
Anyway, have fun belittling all the people who disagree with you. I realize that I am in the minority who believe that both science and math are intrensically beautiful. I am quite certain that this thuggish approach will reinforce world opinion that American science is arrogant. Unlike the Mars Rover, it will turn public sentiment against science.
A campaign where NASA scientists belittle people opposed to the experiment will probably work in selling this project, but it will turn public sentiment against NASA and drain the pool of students thinking of science as a career. -
Spectroscopy
Maybe they can't use emission spectroscopy the way most people think about it, but there are other spectroscopic techniques that can be used by orbiting satellites to study the Moon's composition. Check out this page about the instruments on board the Lunar Prospector mission. This mission was launched in 1998, and crashed into the Moon in 1999.
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Lunar Prospector Mission / Ice at moon's poles
Since the article posted on Slashdot doesn't really explain why scientists think there might be ice on the Moon, I think your questions deserve a decent answer. Some recent unmanned missions like the Lunar Prospector have made spectroscopic measurements that suggest there are higher than normal concentrations of hydrogen near the Moon's poles. This could indicate the presence of water ice, or hydrogen tied up in the molecules of the rocks on the Moon. They did try crashing the Lunar Prospector into the Moon at the end of its mission, but the experiment didn't work out as planned. The reason why they are looking in deep craters, is that parts of the deepest craters near the Moon's poles may be permanently in shadow. Sunlight never reaches the bottoms of these craters, so that water ice might be able to exist there in a sort of permafrost layer. There is some evidence for water ice in deep craters near the poles of the planet Mercury as well. If I understand the new NASA mission correctly, they are basically going to do a more sophisticated version of the Lunar Prospector experiment. Even if this new mission finds evidence for water, it doesn't mean the water is necessarily in a form that could easily be used by astronauts - it could be bound up chemically in the rocks, making it difficult to extract.
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Re:Moons
NASA has a page that you might find of interest. It's entitiled, "Solar wind blows some of Earth's atmosphere into space". The point of the article is that when the atmosphere is made to extend above the Earth's magnetic field, the net result is loss of atmosphere.
You're correct in observing that the atmosphere doesn't extend above the magnetic field... anymore. That part of the atmosphere which used to, is gone now.
Too much atmosphere and the planet cooks in a runaway greenhouse. Too little atmosphere and it dries out. The height of the magnetic field determines the setpoint for atmospheric density. Unless you have some mechanism to drag part of the atmosphere above it, the planet cooks. -
ABC's headline is wrong
On Google news, the first story (that I saw on Google news) was from ABC News: Probe Will Be First to Reach Lunar Surface Since Apollo ABC News - 19 hours ago By NED POTTER. April 10, 2006 -- NASA announced today it will send a rocket to crash into the moon, an early step to delivering the
... I seem to recall we did this before in 1999: http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast03sep 99_1.htm Maybe there's a new conspiracy theory that we never went to the moon (again). -
Re:Will this be visible to the naked eye?
Is this maybe what you're referring to? From the linked article:
There is also a very old historical account that could also be explained by a meteor hitting the Moon. This was recorded by Gervase of Canterbury who, in 1178, along with five other monks, saw a very bright flash on the Moon:
"There was a bright New Moon, and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted towards the east. Suddenly, the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of the division, a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out fire, hot coals and sparks."
Some astronomers believe that the crater Bruno, one of the youngest on the lunar surface, may have been formed in this event.
More information in this article. Hope this helps. -
Original sources are useful too!
Some may also find it useful to link to the actual Deep Impact project page instead of to a Wiki.
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Didn't make it to McCool Hill
It's too bad that they were forced to give up on getting over to McCool hill. If you look at the map referenced in this update, you realize that they just gave up on the farther safe slopes in favor of the slope immediately at hand. But if it survives to survey through another martian summer, I suppose it's worth it.
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Didn't make it to McCool Hill
It's too bad that they were forced to give up on getting over to McCool hill. If you look at the map referenced in this update, you realize that they just gave up on the farther safe slopes in favor of the slope immediately at hand. But if it survives to survey through another martian summer, I suppose it's worth it.
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Re:Better Things to Do?
Hey. I, for one, enjoy marathon gaming sessions. In fact, I am currently addicted to a game which has hours of intense game play, and is difficult to walk away from. When I find Slashdot isn't enough to keep me stimulated, I wander over to this game..
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Re:Kim Stanley Robinson needs a few science courseA mars colony that was recruited from the parking lot at a 'Gratefull Dead' show (4+ hours after the show ended)?
Your mean, like, normal people, like the people who went to the moon?
A mars colony built with robotic equipment sent from earth, plus for bonus, an orbital teather (10^12 dollars or more before I put the book down)?How else would you build it? We are planning a tether on Earth now, which is at least three times as hard.
A frontier society that finally 'gets it together' and makes socialism work dispite evil capitalists (they want something for their 10^12 dollars)?Why not? This is fiction.
The capitalists bothering to take down the teather (why bother, hippies would be eating each other in six months)?I have no idea what you mean by this.
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Re:Terraforming
Where's the love and the dreams for Venus?
right here in this here paper is where it is.
http://powerweb.grc.nasa.gov/pvsee/publications/ve nus/VenusColony_STAIF03.pdf
From the link:
Abstract. Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the
surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earthlike environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system. It is
proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the
atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at
about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus. -
Re:NASA, stop focusing only on elementary school k
They do have something for grades 9-12, and even for 5-8 graders and college kids. Just go to http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html(their homepage) and click on the little thing that says "For Students."
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Re:Does this work?
does anyone know of any studies showing the effectiveness of computer games on learning?
Does anyone know of any studies showing the effectiveness of sitting in rows in a room with a teacher and blackboard at the front of the class on learning?
Hey, thats a hypothesis :)
I was a geek when I was a kid and did not know it, and my dad one day brought home a few of NASA Spinoff publications. They still exist, info here: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/
I believe I had 1976-1979 or so. Its an annual publication, and I learned about the space shuttle before it was ever launched. I learned about the NASA "smart home" which was an experiment where a family lived for a year in an ultra-efficient home that used solar water heating and electricity, semi-recycled the "grey water" into the toilets and whatnot. Those are the only two things I remember from it, but I'm sure it had basic aeronautics and material science in there as well.
I guess the publication was not geared towards 9 or 10 year olds, but I liked sitting up at night reading it. The only downside was that it came out only annually.
Ah, the beginnings of a geek. -
NASA?
Our goal with the Kids' Club is to provide a medium that encourages children's interest in exploring the subjects important to developing early skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,'
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but isn't it the school's job to get kids interested in developing early skills in these things? Why are NASA, an organisation with the mandate to perform aeronautical and space activities, filling in for the education system?
(d) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:
- The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
- The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles;
- The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space;
- The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes;
- The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere;
- The making available to agencies directly concerned with national defense of discoveries that have military value or significance, and the furnishing by such agencies, to the civilian agency established to direct and control nonmilitary aeronautical and space activities, of information as to discoveries which have value or significance to that agency;
- Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations in work done pursuant to this Act and in the peaceful application of the results thereof;
- The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment; and
- The preservation of the United States preeminent position in aeronautics and space through research and technology development related to associated manufacturing processes.
I don't see "10. Make sure American kids aren't dumbasses when the education system drops the ball" on the list.
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Re:Overheard comment by landing gear engineer
The shuttle has no breaks,
Actually, yes it does.The former [the Shuttle] uses parachutes to break and the latter uses a slide instead of a front wheel which doubles up as a friction break.
Actually, the parachute the Shuttle deploys on landing serves mostly to keep the nose landing gear off the ground until the Shuttle slows, it's quite capable of landing without it. (The parachute was added after the Shuttle was flying.) This reduces the loading on the rather fragile nose gear. -
Re:Overheard comment by landing gear engineer
The Shuttle definitely uses brakes as well as a parachute. See this NASA page.
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Re:Please tell me
The Big Bang theory predicts that the early universe was a very hot place and that as it expands, the gas within it cools. Thus the universe should be filled with radiation that is literally the remnant heat left over from the Big Bang, called the "cosmic microwave background radiation", or CMB.
The existence of the CMB radiation was first predicted by George Gamow in 1948, and by Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman in 1950. It was first observed inadvertently in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The radiation was acting as a source of excess noise in a radio receiver they were building. Coincidentally, researchers at nearby Princeton University, led by Robert Dicke and including Dave Wilkinson of the WMAP science team, were devising an experiment to find the CMB. When they heard about the Bell Labs result they immediately realized that the CMB had been found. The result was a pair of papers in the Physical Review: one by Penzias and Wilson detailing the observations, and one by Dicke, Peebles, Roll, and Wilkinson giving the cosmological interpretation. Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 Nobel prize in physics for their discovery.
The rest of the story is at NASA's Cosmolology 100 site.
For a fascinating and very readable book-length account read Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh. -
opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov
Disclaimer: I work at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and I am speaking only for myself.
I'm working on some opensource software released under the NOSA license.
The general opensource website for GSFC is http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/
The software that I am specifically working on is called the OS Abstraction Layer (OSAL). If you code to its API, it will allow you to run code on a VxWorks, RTEMS, Linux, or Mac OS X system. It was designed for embedded flight software use. There will be a new version out in a few months that will employ memory protection. Believe it or not, but memory protection for flight systems has been very hard to do in the past. -
Re:Too bad that satellite crashed on re-entry...
I think you are referring to this:
http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/
The probe crashed because an accelerometer was upside down, but the data was mostly unaffected. It was September 2004, so, not that long ago.
Bre -
Re:Do they run linux?
OK, I'll bite...
Deep Impact, because nothing crashes like Windows.
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Re:Mankind is insignificant, yet doesn't realize i
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Eh, how did you get modded up
Galileo; launched 1989
Cassini;Launched 1997 launched 1989
New Horizons; launched this year
Not every sat has to be nuclear. To be honest, I am quite happy that we are building a lot of solar cell based sats. They will encourage the building of cells for use on the moon and mars. And the sun is plenty good the inner solar system. Nukes are really only need for travel to the outer planets, or perhaps for long-term living on a planet.
Now, what is missed is that we are still using the same technology from the 50's. It would be better if we could create a longer term/higher power system for doing ion thrusters so that it does not take 30 years to hit the edge of the system. -
Eh, how did you get modded up
Galileo; launched 1989
Cassini;Launched 1997 launched 1989
New Horizons; launched this year
Not every sat has to be nuclear. To be honest, I am quite happy that we are building a lot of solar cell based sats. They will encourage the building of cells for use on the moon and mars. And the sun is plenty good the inner solar system. Nukes are really only need for travel to the outer planets, or perhaps for long-term living on a planet.
Now, what is missed is that we are still using the same technology from the 50's. It would be better if we could create a longer term/higher power system for doing ion thrusters so that it does not take 30 years to hit the edge of the system. -
Eh, how did you get modded up
Galileo; launched 1989
Cassini;Launched 1997 launched 1989
New Horizons; launched this year
Not every sat has to be nuclear. To be honest, I am quite happy that we are building a lot of solar cell based sats. They will encourage the building of cells for use on the moon and mars. And the sun is plenty good the inner solar system. Nukes are really only need for travel to the outer planets, or perhaps for long-term living on a planet.
Now, what is missed is that we are still using the same technology from the 50's. It would be better if we could create a longer term/higher power system for doing ion thrusters so that it does not take 30 years to hit the edge of the system. -
Re:Jamie Adds...The counter argument has been that the warming is related to an increase in the solar output and/or a change in the albedo of the earth. Well there is one easy way to check that: put a spacecraft at the L1 point and have it simultaneously measure the radiation from the sun and the earth, which is what the Deep Space Climate Observatory is built to do.
The spacecraft is built and sitting in a clean room waiting to be put on a rocket. The only problem is that the biggest skeptics of climate warming, namely the Bush administration, refuse to launch the spacecraft and make the measurement. In the best light this is political pettiness, and in the worst light this is refusing to make the measurements because you know it will prove you wrong.
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Re:Big Day
a 30-year-old probe that nobody gives a rat's ass about anymore.
Careful, you don't want to look like an ignorant troll. You may not care, but others do. -
Re:Excellent!
One of the motivations behind the voyager "grand tour" missions was to spot interesting places to "hang around". But I agree, stuff like Cassini or the Great Observatories makes a "Buck Rogers" joy ride to mars look like an expensive cold war stunt.
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Re:Don't build 'em like that anymore
It looks like NASA plans for Voyager's powerplant effectivly die around 2020.
Spacecraft Lifetiem -
That's a Lot of Links!
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NASA never was just a bunch of bureaucrats
You claim to be a space scientist, but you seem rather ignorant of how and why NASA was originally formed. Your post sounds as though you believe that NASA originally consisted of a bunch of bureaucrats whose sole purpose was to adminster grants awarded to corporations and educational institutions, and to set government policy on activities in space. This has always been a part of NASA's mission, but it is not the sole reason for NASA's existence. When NASA was formed in 1958, it maintained 3 research laboratories - it now has 10 such laboratories. Scientific research and the development of spacecraft and spacecraft instruments have always been a part of the NASA organization. Some work was contracted out in the past, as it is today, but NASA has always employed its own scientists and engineers.
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Let me lay out the NASA budget for you.
First of all, 13B is ONE YEAR. Next year is paid for by ANOTHER 13B. Second of all, do the math. Let's say we need 10,000 people to manage the probe program (managers, engineers, secretaries, etc). Let's say it costs 100K per employee, just to be generous. That's only a billion dollars. That leaves another 12 billion.
You're very ignorant about where NASA spends its money. Almost all of it goes to multi-year projects, and most of it goes into hardware and fundamental science research. Nothing at NASA gets done in a single year -- period. The scale at which they operate and the technology that they work with cannot be invented, launched, and complete its mission in a single year's time. If you want to look at where NASA spends its money, go straight to their FY2007 budget request. Let's look at some highlights.
Their "Science" budget primarily covers their space probes for $5.3 bil. This is what you would fund exclusively in your proposal. Their "Exploration Systems" budget primarily covers technology development for manned and unmanned exploration of the surface of celestial bodies as well as propulsion and life-support research for $3.9 bil -- most of this goes to next-generation shuttle-replacement development. Running the Shuttle, the ISS, and miscellaneous space flight support goes under "Space Operations" for $6.2 bil. The rest is eaten up in "Cross Agency Support," "Aeronautics Research," and the "Inspector General" for $1.2 bil.
The Science budget goes the operation and development of space probes and telescopes. Probes in development range from $40 million to $443 million per year of development. The James Webb Space Telescope is the most expensive project at $443 mil. in 2007 and will cost a total of $4.5 billion dollars (over 1/4 of this years budget if paid for all at once). Just running the two Mars probes is costing $85 million in operational costs.
The cheapest mission I could find (per this year's budget) is the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, which will send up 4 identical satellites to take 3D images of the magnetospheric boundary. It costs $40 million this year, but it will run $700 million total including $140 million for the actual instrument. NASA projects are not cheap (though they're nothing compared to war and social programs).
Of course they cost $100 million -- NOW. That's because they're designed and custom-built every friggin' time. It's an incredibly wasteful and stupid method of construction. If you made three standardized types that were EXACTLY the same, except that you could plug standardized modules into it, you would save immense amounts of money. It's called "mass production", perhaps you've heard of it.
Sensor development is the majority of the cost of the probe. Power, propulsion, communication, etc. systems are already mostly standardized. You don't see mass manufacturing savings until you start getting above hundreds of units, generally speaking. Now, exactly what kind of missions do you imagine NASA using hundreds of identical space probes for that all carry the same kind of sensory equipment?
There aren't any. Every time we send up a single probe it's because that's the best information we can get with the technology currently available to study an object. If we sent up two probes, then we'd have the exact same quality of information in (for the sake of argument) half the time. However, time isn't our biggest cost here -- it's the launch costs, followed by the sensor costs (both R&D and production), and followed by the personnel costs for R&D and for operating the probe once it's active.
When we send future missions, we want to get better data, so we design new sensors. Space launch is so expensive that there's no point in sending up redundant space craft to accomplish what we could have done with one alone. -
Re:Budget woes?
Chekc out the current budget (summary), it gives you an idea of how nasa needs much more funding and how a lot of it is being squandered on the shuttle and the ISS.
Nasa Budget 2007 proposal:
http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget
Nasa 2003 - 2008 budget request
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/budget /fy2006-nasa/index.html -
from 2002, maybe.
NASA websites are supposed to have a 'last modified' date -- that one didn't. If you check the link, it goes to planning documents from 2002.
From the link they cite as a source, trim off the url down to 'codez' ... it'll then redirect you to the 'NASA Portal' w/ FY2007 Budget & Planning Documents, which includes a PDF with the 2006 Strategic Plan.
(I don't know what they've done to the PDF, but you can't copy/paste from it cleanly ... but searching on the text in it lead me to NASA Strategic Goals, which has the highlights)
I'd still recommend looking that the PDF, as it seems to the only place on the Internet that has the full breakdown of the goals into the sub-goals -- see the Appendix, starting on page 43 (counting by the PDF, not by the document's internal numbering) -
from 2002, maybe.
NASA websites are supposed to have a 'last modified' date -- that one didn't. If you check the link, it goes to planning documents from 2002.
From the link they cite as a source, trim off the url down to 'codez' ... it'll then redirect you to the 'NASA Portal' w/ FY2007 Budget & Planning Documents, which includes a PDF with the 2006 Strategic Plan.
(I don't know what they've done to the PDF, but you can't copy/paste from it cleanly ... but searching on the text in it lead me to NASA Strategic Goals, which has the highlights)
I'd still recommend looking that the PDF, as it seems to the only place on the Internet that has the full breakdown of the goals into the sub-goals -- see the Appendix, starting on page 43 (counting by the PDF, not by the document's internal numbering)