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In any case, I always was amazed how Nielsen was heralded as this guru of web usability. He may have been early to the game, but I always thought most of his recommendations were bad. Just take a look at his website, http://www.useit.com./ Besides being god-awfully ugly, the lack of any real borders or section boundaries makes it really hard to find information quickly.

Seriously? I hadn't any trouble navigating that page. News is nicely separated from permanent content without using a menu. IMHO menus on webpages severely impact their usability in a bad way. Websites with menus on it are usually the ones where I get lost easily and don't find what I'm looking for. In most cases the search function is broken, too.

And about the page being ugly: it may be styled minimalistic, but that's exactly the way I like it. I don't like sites with much bling-bling like http://www.space.com/ and especially game/movie sites because it distracts me from the actual content. But as both seem to correlate reciprocally, that's not a big problem to me...

a traveler at a velocity 0.9 times the speed of light will make the trip in only a few years

A speck of paint put a nearly quarter inch wide pit in the window of the space shuttle.

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/space_junk.html

Bear in mind as the article mentions orbital velocities are as slow as 17,500 mph. The speed of light is approx. 670,000,000 mph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

If you're going at 0.9c, hitting anything the size of a golf is going to end your trip real quick!

A golf ball has the mass of about 0.046kg.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/ImranArif.shtml

At 0.9c it would have about 5.4*10^15 J of KE.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Relativ/releng.html

In contrast, a 20 kiloton fission bomb has about 8.4*10^13 J.

http://www.chemcases.com/nuclear/nc-09.htm

Another way to look at it is this... you're not going towards Alpha Centauri at 0.9c ... Alpha Centauri is coming towards you at 0.9c.

Granted the space between here and Alpha Centauri is mostly empty, but what are the chances of hitting anything within a couple of orders of magnitude of the mass of a golf ball b/w here and Alpha Centauri? Even hitting something 1/100 its mass at that speed is going to be like a small nuke going off.

The module won't be named after Colbert, because NASA has already found a place for his name: a new commode. As in "back in a few minutes, I need to go and use the Colbert".

The article didn't mention of any space based proposals. I've seen a group argue for a large "solar umbrella" to be placed at the Earth-Sun L1 lagrange point. While the L1 point is unstable, it is possible to make a craft that can stably orbit the L1 point. Just a relatively small umbrella (1-5 miles across) would be enough to block 10% of the incoming solar energy. It'd be expensive, but its doable. I wish I had a link.

A similar group came up with a results to show that 2% of incoming solar energy can be blocked with a *lot* of tiny umbrellas that might fit in a single large rocket (delta IV heavy): http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technovel_sunshade_061111.html

lol... whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean, what does it have to do with space exploration? You're not going to move billions of people into outer space anyways, ever. Not even in 1,000 years. That's just retarded.

lol, you know how the 'world keeps us alive', you see the world is made up of living biological systems, referred to sometimes as a "biosphere". Through the externalities of human activities we been polluting (or poisoning) them so that they are getting to the point of not being able to recover. Some are already beyond that point (i.e. ocean acidification). Will they last another thousand years at this rate of consumption? Unlikely

That's what it has to do with space *infrastucture* programs. Potential options for easing the damage done and a way to maintain living standards for people. Why, is that not an option worth attempting? Too science fiction for you? Here's science fiction for you, what do you think declining population will mean to civilisation?

I never said 'move' billions of people. Thats your retarded strawman not mine. You keep doing that, are you a scientologist or something?

and then whining that you've regressed cause you wouldn't be able to win that same winning contest again today.

What a stupid comparison, if we bought *your* reasoning to the computer industry we'd go from multi-core cpu's back to an abacus. We are talking about industrial capacity, like if we didn't have the ability to build jet aircraft or ships anymore.

The Moon is dull from a scientific point of view. There's no compelling scientific reason to spend hundreds of billions to send people back there.

Well, since you avoided the question again by saying I've missed the point, I'll ask you again, why is the US going back to the moon?

Once again you're talking as a scifi nerd.

Once again you *assumed* where my position comes from. I never claimed *all* the innovative ideas came from science fiction, that's your strawman argument. Did you even look up the names I supplied and who they were, or are you to mentally lazy to cut/paste/search.

You need to understand that space exploration isn't meant to be exciting, it's meant to advance science.

So all those military and communication satellites up there are advancing science are they, or are they space infrastructure?

And having people on the Moon just isn't worth it, no matter how wet it makes your bed sheets.

So I ask you again, why is the US going back to the moon? That is the capacity the Orion capsule is a part off.

-STFU about redundancy already, even if we tried right now we couldn't terraform Mars. There's no redundancy, just fucking face it already.

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH, see OP. Do actually read posts or just launch into a tirade.

There's a reason why space agencies actually test things to deflect eventual such asteroids, thing which must I recall only happens every few hundreds of million years.

I've seen 'concepts' proposed for testing, and perhaps a planned mission but an actual test mission, I don't think so.

The possibility is still very present with the odd's pegged at 1 in 45 . That's pretty close odds for an entire civilisation, I've bet on horses with longer odds than that. That's closer and a lot sooner than the millions of years since the last one especially when the actual ability to deflect an asteroid is still science fiction.

So when were these tests carried out on an asteroid?

"The bat eventually became 'Interim Problem Report 119V-0080' after the [Final Inspection Team] finished their walkdown," the memo said. "Systems Engineering and Integration performed a debris analysis on him and ultimately a Launch Commit Criteria waiver to ICE-01 was written to accept the stowaway."

Poor bat. Can we come up with a better name for him (or her) than 119V-0080? We're talking about the highest- and fastest-flying bat of all time, probably. A real name is definitely in order.

but users are achieving excellent results at that density

This is magical thinking. Making a 1:1 association between megapixels and the perception of "better" results is wrong, wrong, wrong. No amount of jargon helps your case.

"Resolution" is a decades-old optical problem. To prove my point and provide another reference, the Mars rover captured images with a "gigantic" 1 megapixel sensor. http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/pancam_techwed_040114.html

I acknowledge that gear geeks need some way to justify the new gear and I'm not going to change their behavior.

For those that don't know better, disregard the parent's jargon and go take pictures.

While I could have picked other examples, such as Russia's recent debacle with that Iridium satellite, I cite China partly because of one of the last satellites they "decommissioned".
http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2007/01/china_blows_up_.html

I certainly thought there was a more recent incident but it looks like China may be taking measures to mitigate debris:
http://www.space.com/spacenews/070903_businessmonday_china_debris.html

The U.S. certainly has its share of crap that it does but the idea was to ask about who would be responsible. Perhaps a less inflammatory statement or an alternate example country such as the U.S. would have been better.

http://www.space.com/news/090211-satellite-collision.html

Smashy smashy!

The wayward satellite motor part came from an outdated PAM-D rocket engine that was once used to boost a satellite from low-Earth orbit a few hundred miles above Earth out to a geosynchronous position about 22,300 miles (36,000 km) above the planet. The debris was small, just 1/3 of an inch long, and was flying at about 19,800 mph, NASA officials said. The space station orbits the Earth at about 17,500 mph.

Here's a picture of a PAM-D motor.

I think you are confusing actual research with ...

Then sit back down and shut up while you think about it. While you're sitting there, ostensibly thinking, here is some material to consider:

• Real-time cone-beam CT image reconstruction using a mercury's dual cell-based system (DCBS) and a Sony's Playstation 3 (PS3) cluster
• Playstation 3 Consoles Tackle Black Hole Vibrations
• PS3 boosts protein research plan
• Building Supercomputer Using Playstation 3
• PlayStation Cell Speeds Docking Programs
• Researchers Use PlayStation Cluster to Forge a Web Skeleton Key
• Playstation cluster creates cheap supercomputer
• and so on..

Garbage products like xbox have gone down in flames (pun intended) and MS has to make smoke (no pun intended) and noise to distract from the situation. Same crowd is going on attack against OpenOffice.org and other key products. The universal office format, OpenDocument Format, is getting specialized attackers. Repeat lies often enough that people believe them seems to be an ongoing theme from MS.

Whether 1-, 8-. 16, or 32-node clusters, PS3s are useful in computationally intensive tasks. I'd like to see an add-on for Blender or other 3D software that allows adding a PS3 as a single node cluster. If it's there and you're working with a desktop, why not also use the processors of the otherwise idle gaming machine

You're slightly wrong - in fact some rough numbers are available (for those who read space.com, anyway):

http://www.space.com/entertainment/090305-colbert-space-station.html

This marks only the second time that NASA has sought public input for naming a piece of U.S. space station hardware. The Harmony module was named by 2,200 students who entered NASA's naming contest for Node 2. By contrast, 169,000 people have voted online at NASA's naming contest site so far.

The NASA-chosen name Serenity, which shares the name of a spaceship in the cult favorite television series "Firefly", continues to maintain a huge lead with more than 66,000 votes, according to NASA. But a surge of votes has given Colbert 29,000 in just two days, enough for second overall. The trailing vote-getters include Xenu (9,200), Earthrise (4,200), Legacy (3,500) and Venture (3,200).

Jason Chapman in the other reply pretty much nailed it. R&D for five nearly identical probes isn't much more expensive than R&D for one. Historically, R&D has been significant compared to the cost of building the first probe. For example, the cost of building and launching the second Mars Exploration Rover (MER) was about half the cost of building (including R&D) the first. Also as Jason said, there tends to be economies of scale which reduce the cost of additional probes. For example, there is an engineering rule of thumb called the "learning curve effect" (which I gather predates the use of "learning curve" in user interface design). The idea is that with a doubling of the amount of a particular activity, the average cost of performing that activity drops by some amount (commonly 10-15%). There are other effects which can drive up costs. For example, in order to launch 5 probes to Mars around the same time using current technology, they need to all be launched in a few month long window of time that happens once every two years.

There can be other factors as well. For the MER craft, there were two costs which would be resistant to scaling. First, there were two spare Delta II rockets that Boeing offered at reduced price to the mission. They would likely offer more Delta IIs at a much higher price since these would need to be manufactured. Second, the MER craft exploited an unusually low delta v transfer orbit between Earth and Mars. I'm not sure just how rare it is, but I gather there's no more than a few similar opportunities this century. All additional MER craft would have to be launched in this particular launch window.

Improved propulsion design (eg, nuclear powered electric propulsion) can reduce or eliminate some of these bottlenecks, but it still remains that a vigorous program of unmanned (or manned) space exploration can saturate near future space launch capabilities. This might provide a significant obstruction to my economies of scale argument.

I can read between the lines ....

Nasa does not want to fix the Hubble as there budgets have been cut. They want to put the money for fixing the Hubble into something else.

The Hubble is also Obsolete due to new technologies like Adaptive optics that allow ground based telescopes to achieve the same clarity as the Hubble.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/adaptive_optics991006.html

Why spend money and risk peoples lives on technology that is obsolete ?

Try this one instead.

If you just blow up satellites with rockets, it will put debris into its orbit, drastically reducing the usability of the orbit for anyone.

If you build a weapon to simply disable the satellite, or better yet, cause it to drop out of orbit and burn up without hitting anything, then you would have an advantage. I hope that we are keeping tabs on anyone that plans to develop that kind of technology.

I cant imagine that China didn't learn their lesson from blowing up satellites.

Was being lazy...after digging a little

"Two objects from the launch, likely the Omid satellite and part of its booster, are circling Earth in oval-shaped orbits.

The orbits range in altitude from low points of 153 miles to high points of 235 miles and 273 miles. The orbital inclination is 55.5 degrees, according to U.S. military tracking data."

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sfn-090203-iran-satellite-launch.html

LOL. I was trying to avoid that, but realize the my bloody foot is aching. The "golf-ball surface" is annoying too. Surely, someone has a better resolution image somewhere. The so-called Face on Mars (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060921_mars_images.html) was defaced here http://www.space.com/images/060921_mars_faceB_02.jpg. I am sure this "biosphere" must be defaced too, somewhere.

Sex in low gravity. Giggity giggity.

It's been done.

Two unfortunate words: space debris.

"Tiny rocks, paint flecks and other fragments of junk whizzing around the Earth pose the greatest threat to the shuttles and the astronauts on board, according to the preliminary results of a new NASA risk study."

I can't see solar panels of the SPS magnitude being as maintenance-free as you suggest.

This should be the number one objective of ALL space programs on earth:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070919_sps_airforce.html

If it's going to scale out, it should have solar energy collectors in a solar orbit. They should beam the energy to one of three geostationary satellite floating above the Earth. Those satellites should beam the energy to receiving stations in Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, at which point they should be fed into the global power grid.

This would allow us to increase production for hundreds of generations of mankind, simply by adding additional solar energy collectors.

It won't be easy, but it only has to be done once.

*Landing an object on an asteroid is neither cheap nor convenient...even a robotic device is difficult. *

Yes, but it has already been done:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa

In fact, Hayabusa wasn't supposed to actually land, but it did, for about 30 minutes. It may have a sample of the asteroid that it is bringing back in 2010, just in time for a re-issue of the Late Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain.

The asteroid was not destroyed by the landing....just like the comet that was hit by a space probe did not disintegrate either:

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050704_deepimpact_success.html

"Next to impossible": I do not think this means what you think it means.

Also, objects such as Jupiter, Saturn, and the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy let off enormous amounts of radiation. You can read more about problems encountered by the Galileo probes for Jupiter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(spacecraft)#Other_radiation_related_anomalies

And other sources about radiation on Mars:
http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive07/undergroundmars_0205.html

http://www.lip.pt/events/2006/ecrs/proc/ecrs06-s0-141.pdf

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2003-03/a-2003-03-14-11-Mars.cfm

Reading this article http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090115-mars-methane-news.html gives the impression that they're talking months. From the article.

The methane plumes started to show up in the northern hemisphere spring of Mars, gradually building up and peaking in late summer. At one point during the study, the primary plume contained about 19,000 metric tons (21,000 tons) of methane, comparable to the amount produced at the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Pit Point in Santa Barbara, Calif.

...

Short-lived

Outside of the plumes, methane concentrations were very low, showing that the gas didn't get very far or last very long in the atmosphere. In fact, its lifetime was even shorter than expected or could be explained by the usual method of methane destruction, photolysis (reaction with sunlight).

So it sounds seasonal.

But Englishman Thomas Harriot made the first drawing of the moon after looking through a telescope several months before Galileo, in July 1609. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090114-first-moon-map.html

Their intention is to get the Falcon9 and Dragon man-rated. The published development schedule appears to be fairly agressive. In some respects, I believe they are further along than the Ares 1 and Orion CEV programs are. Imagine a COTS program comprised of crew transport to and from the ISS or LEO.

Obama's space transition team seems to be imagining this as well:

http://www.space.com/news/081202-obama-space-spending.html

The transition team also wants information from NASA about accelerating plans for using the agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to fund demonstrations of vehicles capable of carrying crews to the international space station, a proposal Obama supported during his campaign.

Yup, the initial $42 million is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the shuttle: "the average cost per flight has been about $1.3 billion over the life of the program and about $750 million over its most recent five years of operations." (cite). I don't know whether that $1.3 billion is inflation adjusted - a very real consideration when a fair amount of the cost was up front in the late 1970s.

Griffins Reply:

Today, Griffin replied, calling the charges "simply wrong."

"I am appalled by any accusations of intimidation, and encourage a free and open exchange of information with the contractor community," Griffin said. "I would like to reiterate what I have stated in a previous email to all NASA Officials: we must make every effort to 'lean forward,' to answer questions promptly, openly and accurately."

http://www.space.com/news/081211-nasa-obama-transition.html

Are you people really so gullible to believe a BLOG? Sounds to me like someone has an Agenda in that blog...

This article is pure flame bait, Neither Griffin nor the Transition team have stated that any infighting has been occuring.

In fact the transition team has NASA's full attention, read Griffins Response before you make your kneejerk reactions slashdot:

http://www.space.com/news/081211-nasa-obama-transition.html

This was an easy article to find, that's following up this story... Being on Space.com, it was on Slashdot's side bar... ;)

http://www.space.com/news/081211-nasa-obama-transition.html

Tidal Forces, also, it could act as a blocker for rogue material headed Earth's way. Jupiter is also extremely important in deflecting comets and debris also keeping the asteroids at bay. But at the same time, Jupiter is most likely responsible for the belt.

http://www.astronomytoday.com/astronomy/earthmoon.html

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astrobio_jupiter_030122-1.html

If the connotation is "discovered", as it seems in TFA, then TFA is wrong. If instead it implies the more accurate "providing additional data regarding that which is already known" then it'd be correct.

"Final Proof Provided For Milky Ways Central Black Hole", Space.com, 16 October 2002. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/blackhole_milkyway_021016.html

I can't reach his site now that it's on Discover Magazine's site; does Phil Plait ever take astronomers and/or "real" science media to task for doing and/or reporting bad astronomy? What TFA does provide is an improved estimate for the mass: 4 million suns vs. 2.6 million from the 2002 data.

First two paragraphs:

A NASA official has denied a claim made by a book author that blueprints for the mighty Saturn 5 rocket used to push Apollo astronauts to the moon were lost.

The denial came in response to a recent story in SPACE.com that reported on a claim John Lewis made in his 1996 book, Mining the Sky, that he went looking for the Saturn 5 blueprints a few years ago and concluded, incredibly, they had been "lost."

Article about what I just said.

This will be sooooo much fun.

You are slowly being cooked by solar radiation here on Earth. Cosmic radiation is even getting you right now. The reality is that the radiation problem is more of a minor hurdle. But misinformed or non-informed people fear it because Hollywood tells them to.

"Minor hurdle" sure isn't the terminology that NASA seems to be using when they speak about radiation. In fact they seem to be fond of the term "show stopper". Also according to the same article I just cited: "A 2-1/2-year trip to Mars, including six months of travel time each way, would expose an astronaut to nearly the lifetime limit of radiation allowed under NASA guidelines.".

Fact: The earth's (eroding) ozone layer protects us from a number of different types of harmful UV radiation.

Fact: Mars has no ozone layer to speak of, and has absolutely no magnetic field. In 2001 Mars Odyssey detected radiation levels 2.5 times higher than that found on the International Space Station.

DId you know the space station leaks? yet they manage. Again, "Hollywood Science" FTL.

Yes, they manage, and it helps a lot that if worse comes to worse they can always just hop the next shuttle back to good old planet earth for all the air they could ever need. No such option on a 6 month trip. On the trip you'd also have to worry about having enough supplies for repairs.

If you can;'t hack small confines for months at a time, then stay here. Believe it or not, most people who do those things do not go nuts. Some do, and Hollywood capitalizes on that very small subset. Even those who do, tend to do it alone.

I hate to break it to you chief but this issue has been given serious consideration. Just because it was mentioned by Hollywood at some point doesn't mean that it isn't a valid concern. I'm sure the folks who actually go on the first trip will be acutely aware of the dangers of crewmates losing their nerve along the way.

Mars is far less inhospitable than hard vacuum of space. It *has* and atmosphere. A dome with a diameter of a mere 50 meters would take days to weeks to deflate if you fired a 50 caliber bullet into the dome, for example. The atmosphere it does have provides magnitudes more radiation and temperature buffer than you'll find in open space. Plus it actually has resources. Open space is well, just open space.

Yes, Mars *has* an atmosphere, one which is less than 1% of the surface pressure of earth and composed of 95% carbon dioxide. As to your assertion that a 50m dome would "take days to to weeks" to deflate I'd like to see some citation on this. With such a huge difference in air pressure I am much more inclined to believe that there would be rapid, significant air loss, not to mention that the temperature (which averages between -60 and -50 degrees Celsius) would quickly affect any inhabitants and equipment within such a structure.

Seriously, the first people to go to Mars will not have a deathwish. Those types of people make missions of any kind other than suicide ones (and even some of those) a disaster waiting to happen.

Because, you know, astronauts have never been known to lose it.

Columbus couldn't take 99% of what he was going to need, and as a result had serious and fata

If there was any one person singled out to blame for the Columbia disaster, it was Linda Ham:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ham

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_ham_030722.html

(for all you mods who thought that was insightful)

http://www.space.com/news/spaceshuttles/sts101_jetpack_safety.html

The article could be wrong, but it does imply that a space shuttle could chase and retrieve a spacewalker that drifts away.

If the shuttle can do that, I don't see why it can't retrieve a tool bag that has gone adrift at such a slow speed.

while everyone seems to think this is funny or cool, it's actually a very real problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris , and http://www.space.com/spacewatch/space_junk.html Why has none of this stuff plummeted out of orbit and plonked someone on the head?

It's not that morbid, though it probably would give a spacewalker a bit of a scare. But in the event that they lose both tethers and float off, they also have the SAFER packs to get them back.

This says different: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_core_030306.html

"The Earth won't fall into the Sun for 5 billion years or so, and even then, the Sun will have lost enough mass that models predict the Earth may be flung off into deep space rather than falling into the Sun."

Possible, but unlikely.

This is a good article that mentions that theory: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/death_of_earth_000224.html

... that good PR achieves better results in maintaining and increasing funding than providing scientific value does.

NASA's brief is not science -- science is a rare but happy side-effect which they use to justify their budget.*

The reason they exist is to funnel taxdollars to favored companies, largely defense contractors, and congressional districts.

* No intellectually serious person could suggest that the shuttle program is an effective use of R&D dollars. NASA *loves* the shuttle. In terms of press mentions gained per billion dollars spent it is their best investment since going to the moon. Plus if you have the shuttle around you've got to be able to use it, which justifies spending several hundred billion on an equally purposeless space station. Construction began in '98, is projected to complete in 2011, and if things go according to plan they'll be using it until 2016, after which it is "please insert 100 billion to continue".

Oh, and check this out -- NASA is pleading for extra money to keep the Shuttle running so they can actually *visit* the Space Station they built so as to have something to do with the Shuttle!

http://www.space.com/news/080907-nasa-griffin-email.html

And don't forget the insurance premiums.... http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/080922-busmon-satellite-insurance.html

Layne

These are the first direct images ever released. Before this, all evidence was indirect (oscillating plots of star brightness as the planet periodically eclipsed the host star, for instance).

Well, except for HD 189733b, 2M1207 b and GQ Lup b.

BTW, I'll see your article and raise you one: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/09/sunwarm.html

... must just be some crackpots from Duke...

"Study does not discount the suspected contributions of 'greenhouse gases' in elevating surface temperatures"

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html

and Columbia

"That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned."

... and .. well, I could go on with several dozen other links, but who what's the point. Google it yourself if you want. If we're all gonna die, I have better things to do. Come to think if it, I do even if we aren't all gonna die.

And you would still end up with man made global warming.

BTW, I notice that the professor of heliophysics quoted says there is no relation between sunspots and solar output. Goes a long way to make that point.

Okay, but that's not the theory that is argued. It's not whether solar spots are related to output, but whether the sun's total output rises and falls. And in fact, it does. It also coincides nicely with earthside temperature variations. BTW, I'll see your article and raise you one: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/09/sunwarm.html

... must just be some crackpots from Duke... http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html

and Columbia ... and .. well, I could go on with several dozen other links, but who what's the point. Google it yourself if you want. If we're all gonna die, I have better things to do. Come to think if it, I do even if we aren't all gonna die.

Sure it can be. It just tends to be slow. In 5 Earth years, the Mars Exploration Rovers have been superb, but what they have done could have been done by a crew of human geologists in a few weeks or less. We could be doing that, we just chose to put our resources elsewhere.

There are plenty of other places in the solar system where humans are unlikely to go. The surface of Europa, a very interesting place, sits bathed in the Jovian radiation belts, for example, which would be fatal to an unprotected human in a matter of minutes and would fry even a hardened lander in a few weeks. Sounds like a good place for a robot to me.

They might on the successor.

What happened to this organisation that managed to put people on the moon, that managed to build a huge telescope in orbit around the earth, that even built a permanently manned space station? How is it possible they can't even design a rocket to take us to the moon?

IMHO a lot of the problems can be traced back to bad management by current NASA administrator Michael Griffin. Back in 2005, prior to Griffin's arrival, NASA's original plan for a new manned launch vehicle, two competing teams of companies would have been selected, and they would be running unpiloted test launches this year. Based on those test launches and what was learned about their designs, the best vehicle design would have been selected. My suspicion is that at least one of the rockets would have been a modified version of an already-proven design, such as the Boeing Delta IV or Lockheed Martin Atlas V.

Then midway through 2005 Mike Griffin came in. He had his own pet design from a paper he had written, and had the requirements for the US's new manned launcher redone. Coincidentally, under the new requirements Griffin's design was the only one which satisfied. The engineers at NASA have been doing what they can, but it seems that Griffin's design has some pretty severe inherent flaws. The engineers have been trying to issue their concerns, but ignored or silenced by management.

I think this farewell message by one of the engineers working on Ares sums things up well:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2008/08/a_farewell_mess.html

At the highest levels, there seems to be a belief that you can mandate reality, followed by a refusal to accept any information that runs counter to that mandate. I'm sure you can all think of multiple examples (having nothing to do with CAD) without trying very hard. This reminds me of Clark's law: "Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice". I've heard others use terms like "arrogance combined with ignorance". ... Then between us workers and the highest levels of management another problem exists. As one person put it: "Where does the bad news stop going up?" Again, I'm sure you all know of situations where people are trying to raise red flags, but somehow they never get addressed.

The only thing I've ever known NASA to declare is that they don't intend to experiment with human sexuality in space, and they don't intend to comment on any sexual encounters that have or will take place.