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I'll take Griffin's assertions of context at face value and assume he thinks it's the right thing to replace the STS with Constellation.

He did, however, say the retirement of the STS was not based on engineering. I can see why he might say that.

The most incredible thing about the STS is the main engine, both incredibly amazing and incredibly problematic. The development of those machines as been long and winding. Here is a nice summary of the problems they had just up to first flight.

The thing is, work on improving those engines has continued non-stop since 1972, and finally their performance and reliability is in the ballpark of where is was originally spec'd to be.

Mainly due to new fuel and oxidizer turbopumps.

And now they throw it all away. I just don't get it. It's too Arrow-esque for me.

Why not re-do the STS instead of re-doing Apollo?

I'll take Griffin's assertions of context at face value and assume he thinks it's the right thing to replace the STS with Constellation.

He did, however, say the retirement of the STS was not based on engineering. I can see why he might say that.

The most incredible thing about the STS is the main engine, both incredibly amazing and incredibly problematic. The development of those machines as been long and winding. Here is a nice summary of the problems they had just up to first flight.

The thing is, work on improving those engines has continued non-stop since 1972, and finally their performance and reliability is in the ballpark of where is was originally spec'd to be.

Mainly due to new fuel and oxidizer turbopumps.

And now they throw it all away. I just don't get it. It's too Arrow-esque for me.

Why not re-do the STS instead of re-doing Apollo?

I did some more digging on these topics last night but it took be a while because I got side-tracked reading the Columbia accident report which I stumbled across.

According to Robert Biggs, ex Rocketdyne engineer, the original (pdf, page 6 footnote 1) target life of the SSME was 100 missions with occasional thrust excursions to full power level (FPL) which was 109% of rated power level (RPL). That was cut down to 55 missions to allow constant operation at FPL. I think FPL is now 104% with 109% being available in abort situations.

I mis-remembered the original SSME target removal and overhaul frequency, it was 10 missions not 100.

The relatively new block II high pressure fuel and oxidizer turbopumps are advertised (by P&W) to last 10 missions between overhaul with a total life of 30 missions. As far as I know the engines are still being removed every flight.

I did some more digging on these topics last night but it took be a while because I got side-tracked reading the Columbia accident report which I stumbled across.

According to Robert Biggs, ex Rocketdyne engineer, the original (pdf, page 6 footnote 1) target life of the SSME was 100 missions with occasional thrust excursions to full power level (FPL) which was 109% of rated power level (RPL). That was cut down to 55 missions to allow constant operation at FPL. I think FPL is now 104% with 109% being available in abort situations.

I mis-remembered the original SSME target removal and overhaul frequency, it was 10 missions not 100.

The relatively new block II high pressure fuel and oxidizer turbopumps are advertised (by P&W) to last 10 missions between overhaul with a total life of 30 missions. As far as I know the engines are still being removed every flight.

I'm not sure how much knowledge you have in this area, to speak authoritatively on it?

I don't. All I know is what the trickle-down affects were to the projects I worked on. Although I did go to a meeting (more auditorium style than personal) when Griffin explained to our center what his views were on the NASA advisory council, I had very little to do with any management other than my immediate ATRs.

But my big question would be; Why does NASA expect they *deserve* more federal funding, when it appears they've been making too many mistakes and mis-steps in recent years?

I don't think you read my comment, or at least, didn't understand what I'm saying. My issue is that NASA was told to do more things, and wasn't given the funding to cover it. I'm not going to say that all NASA projects deserve funding, but they're tied in certain regards due to congressional earmarks and the executive branch's "Vision for Space Exploration" that force funding into specific projects that may not be well justified in the context of NASA's published strategic goals. (I don't know that there are ones that should specifically be cut, but it seems that if the projects were worthwhile on their own, they wouldn't need congressional earmarks)

As for the problems you cite -- not all of them were engineering. Some were administrative, and some were on NASA projects, but not by NASA personnel. In the case of the satellite bolts issue, one of the teams took the bolts from another group's satellite. I've heard rumors that the "failed to follow procedures" came from someone checking off tasks as they were started, and not completed, right as a shift change occurred, so the bolts weren't verified before the satellite was moved. But this didn't happen at NASA -- this happened at Lockheed Martin. Were the contractors held accountable for their actions? I have no idea -- it's well outside of my scope of work. But I do know that it got mentioned quite a bit, so hopefully, others have learned from it.

And would the problems have occurred if there were adequate funding for oversight? I have no idea, but doing things on the cheap and/or rushed can lead to mistakes. If a job's worth doing, it's worth spending money on. (Okay, some things are worth doing at price $X, but not at $X+Y ... it's that whole benefit-cost analysis thing). Now, some projects are intentionally risky -- they spend less money on something that's not yet proven, because the potential payoff is quite high, but they can't dedicate the full funding. And there's a whole 'TRL' (tech readiness level) system and different classes of missions as a result. But if a delay from a contractor results in the delay of a satellite launch (because it costs money to store the satellite in a clean room before launch, etc.), then money is taken from the project's later years ... ie, the satellite's up, but there's less money to actually 'do science' with the data from it.

So in effect, I'm agreeing to a certain degree with your final analysis, but I'd argue that many of the problems aren't all NASA's fault, but the situations that they're put into by the other areas of government and the contractors they go through. I'd personally like to see more focus on the 'advance knowledge of (X)' aspects of the strategic goals, but Griffin is right -- the scientists and contractors all want more money spent on their area, so they might not be the best advisors, even if they do work for other scientific agencies.

The actual text of the Obama policy has been posted here

Here's an interesting if a bit outdated article that might make the issue a little clearer: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=15775
as well as this: http://opencrs.com/document/RL34477

It appears that the Iran Non-Proliferation Act "bans U.S. payments to Russia in connection with the International Space Station unless the U.S. President determines that Russia is taking steps to prevent [the proliferation of weapons and weapons technology to Iran]." An amendment was made to this in 2005 that exempted Soyuz flights from the payment ban through 2011.

Actually, it appears that you can get quite a bit of mass up pretty high - a LOT more than I'd thought, and it seems I wasn't alone in my previous understanding.

There is a company in Texas that's been actually doing it for a number of years with Air Force and Commercial and scientific and advertising payloads. Now, I'll grant you that it seems mighty crazy because we've all just grown up *knowing* that the only way to orbit is with a modified ICBM... but, fact is, that it may not be all that crazy after all.

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/07/22/floating-to-space is see a book review related to that company.

And/or, search google video for "Space Balloons" to see the Discovery network show about the lauching of the huge BLAST telescope launch.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=21557

It's actually pretty interesting... if we read a little before we post about how it "just can't be done"

Here's the thing that gets me the most (even if this exact way of doing it is not the way)... Getting Commercial volume cargo *back down to earth" is directly addressed with this technology whereas it elsewhere that little missing part of Space Business is directly avoided and all of our excitement tends to be over payload launch discussions instead.

I'd really like someone to read that little book "floating to space" about a company that is doing it instead of just talking about it and, after reading the short & fast book, come back and talk about the potentials of airship style payloading.

Robert Smith
Kirkland, WA
www.smithvoice.com

You're overstating things a bit. The initial plan was simply to attach a reboost module to be flown on an early (2nd, later 5th) STS flight. Martin Marietta was awarded a contract for studying development of such a module with a goal of building it in less than 2 years. But then STS got delayed because of SSME problems, and then the atmosphere changed quicker than expected.

By your strict definition, during the same time frame, there were no "actual plans" for anything past STS-4... but we all knew what sorts of plans were in the works. If Skylab had still been up there are the time, "actual plans" would have materialized for at least reboost. Refurbishment would have been contingent upon necessary funding.

http://www.spaceref.com/iss/skylab.deorbit.html

http://www.astronautix.com/flights/sts2a.htm

"This article was barely substantial enough to describe how to screw in a lightbulb"

You seem to overlook the link to the raw report: http://images.spaceref.com/news/2008/cxp.charts.pdf

Oh, dude, you've gotten me started. I worked on Space Station in the early 1990s and still haven't recovered from the bad taste that experience has left in my mouth. Political boondoggle white elephant doesn't even begin to cover what a stupid mess the ISS is. The only thing worse than setting it up in its shuttle-payload-upmass-hostile 57 degree inclined orbit to allow Russian participation is totally cutting off Shuttle participation in 2010. ISS was DESIGNED for Shuttle resupply during its lifetime and that resupply was first strangled and then totally cut off. Soyuz and Orion taking astronauts to this thing is a joke, and doing resupply by Jules Verne is a criminal waste. The dirty little secret about ISS is that at full mass and max solar array deployment upon completion, this thing is going to deorbit even faster from atmospheric drag than it is now and no way can Progress or Jules Verne is keep the completed assembly reboosted - only the Shuttle could. Do your homework about how far that thing fell during the years following Columbia when no shuttle visited, and that's without the full solar arrays. Once the Shuttle stops going, ISS is heading straight for the Pacific even if it takes a few years to deorbit and get there. And secretly if not in public, NASA will breathe a sigh of relief when it splashes. But I digress. Nobody even knows anymore how much ISS costs anymore because of crooked accounting hiding the drawing of funds from everywhere within NASA, but nobody argues it's at least $100 billion dollars. I cannot prove an absence of good science. Instead, YOU tell ME what the top three discoveries on ISS have been. Hell, just tell me one thing we have learned on ISS that we didn't already know. "Bones decalcify in zero G"? This was new info worth $100 billion?

Agreed; in this instance, Bush is not at fault.

Congress is pretty much divided between the two parties. There is a slight Democratic lead, but not enough to say that Democrats "control" the congress. Neither party carries the fault for this situation.

Biotechnology is currently more used in industry than in consumer products. Consider though, that evolution is indispensable to modern biology, which certainly does have an effect on the everyday life of anyone in a modern country. Pharmaceuticals? Antibacterial soaps? Modern medicine?

I'm assuming that you're referring to the works of Mr. Dembski. If you'd like to debate the merits of his ideas (or lack thereof, many of us would say), I'm sure that the many /.ers who know more than I about information theory would be happy to respond. The question that I would pose to you is this: How precisely can information theory "provide a foundation for biology"? It's certainly useful to analyze elements of various models, but it has no specific relation to biology, whilst evolution provides a framework in which seemingly disparate observations make sense and make tested predictions. Even the familiar taxonomic tree, for example, is explicitly a model of the evolutionary "tree of life".

Yes, the left is more socialistic. I'd be glad to respond to an argument as to why that might be a bad thing, but I'm afraid that "goofy" doesn't quite suffice.

I think that you'll find that most of us aren't luddites. Especially here.

I wasn't aware that (D)ARPA ever considered their work on the ARPANET particularly partisan. By the time something is a contender to be a consumer product, its funding has been taken over by corporations. More importantly, would you be so kind as to cite the source for your "numbers"?

Why, thank you for fostering the modern culture of unbridled academic greed and exploitation of research done on my dollar.

Obama has stated his intention to reduce spending on manned flights, but has stated a commitment to unmanned missions, which have a much higher ROI. Compare that to Bush, who has proposed abandoning one of the Voyager spacecraft (which is still producing incredible discoveries that you can't make without data from the edge of the solar system) in favor of a manned mission to Mars.

See here for details.

As a final remark, you seem to be bitten by that terrible partisan bug. Different Republicans and Democrats have both varied widely in pretty much everything, including their views on national support of science.

This was actually developed by Carlos Lange from the University of Alberta. It was constructed in Denmark at the University of Aarhus. And of course the project is run from the University of Arizona.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=5de7e220-b9d3-4540-8c02-f9369339c52c
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=25509
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=9360
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/620268/The-Telltale-Wind-Experiment-for-the-NASA-Phoenix-Mars-Lander-2008

One thing for certain.. it's definitely a U of A project.

Oh really? Wow no mention of that on spaceref.com.

In fact, it seems he wants to explicitly *continue* the important programs.

But don't let a little thing like facts get in the way of your FUD campaign.

Hillary is a lying sh*thead. Obama is a well reasoned smart guy. Get over it.

Well.... http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14529 They kind of already do that. It's not necessarily a boat, and they test parts, and not the whole shuttle (that I know of) but it's close.

Anyone have any idea how these kind of social interaction problems are being dealt with at NASA?

From several articles (granted, somewhat mainstream), it doesn't seem like there is much publicly-available research on human psychological reactions to sexual issues in long-term spaceflight. I would be surprised if there isn't a more robust body of serious literature in sociology & human behavior journals, and inside NASA, ESA and others.

---

These links are more about alleged events, and short-term issues (mechanical & biological). I remember reading the first when Lisa Nowak was news:

"Do Astronauts Have Sex? In space, no one can hear you moan." - article from Slate.com "Slate's The Explainer thanks Bob Jacobs of NASA and Laura Woodmansee, author of 'Sex in Space.'"

Other Links:

Outer-space sex carries complications
Article about book 'Sex in Space'
ISS On-Orbit Pregnancy Test procedures

---

Off-topic - I recommend the column "The Explainer" on Slate.com. Answers to questions that relate to current news (often with a basic or off-beat slant)

Example footer from the space sex article with related links to other Slate articles:

"Felix Gillette explained how space shuttles fly home. Daniel Engber revealed what exactly space tourists do. Dan Kois also wondered where the atmosphere ends and space begins. Chris Suellentrop argued that astronauts shouldn't be considered heroes. Gregg Easterbrook called the space program a big ol' waste of money. After the Columbia disaster in 2003, David Owen pointed out it's a waste of life, too."

Anyone have any idea how these kind of social interaction problems are being dealt with at NASA?

From several articles (granted, somewhat mainstream), it doesn't seem like there is much publicly-available research on human psychological reactions to sexual issues in long-term spaceflight. I would be surprised if there isn't a more robust body of serious literature in sociology & human behavior journals, and inside NASA, ESA and others.

---

These links are more about alleged events, and short-term issues (mechanical & biological). I remember reading the first when Lisa Nowak was news:

"Do Astronauts Have Sex? In space, no one can hear you moan." - article from Slate.com "Slate's The Explainer thanks Bob Jacobs of NASA and Laura Woodmansee, author of 'Sex in Space.'"

Other Links:

Outer-space sex carries complications
Article about book 'Sex in Space'
ISS On-Orbit Pregnancy Test procedures

---

Off-topic - I recommend the column "The Explainer" on Slate.com. Answers to questions that relate to current news (often with a basic or off-beat slant)

Example footer from the space sex article with related links to other Slate articles:

"Felix Gillette explained how space shuttles fly home. Daniel Engber revealed what exactly space tourists do. Dan Kois also wondered where the atmosphere ends and space begins. Chris Suellentrop argued that astronauts shouldn't be considered heroes. Gregg Easterbrook called the space program a big ol' waste of money. After the Columbia disaster in 2003, David Owen pointed out it's a waste of life, too."

I wonder if taco bell will set up another target

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=4152

The Planetary Society published this (pdf) in collaboration with Griffin (he's listed as one of nine members of the 'study team') before he became head of NASA. The Planetary Society got their guy in and he's following the plan they sold to the administration and Congress. What the fuck is going on here?

If the peanut gallery over at the Planetary Society start jerking the Government's chain over settled NASA policy they're going to get stuff defunded. Most of our leading presidential candidates will take any excuse they can find to snatch away the funding and use it to buy votes some other way.

I should add that I'm only criticizing SS1/SS2. I have nothing against WK1 or WK2; they're quite nice carrier aircraft. But SS1 and SS2 are completely meaningless. If you want small companies doing meaningful rocketry, check out SpaceX. Their Falcon 9, a rocket whose heavy version will carry as much payload as NASA's beleagured (and possibly dead in the water) Ares, including its own spacecraft that can dock with the ISS, will be launching this June. The typical launch cost of payloads in the west is $10k/kg. In Russia, China, and India, $7k/kg is the standard. Sometimes you can get discounts down toi as low as $4-5k/kg. The Falcon 9 is $2-3k/kg. And looking over its construction, design, stats, etc, these numbers definitely appear credible.

Cheer for the rocketry not matters, not the irrelevant joyrides.

I think Taco Bell should capitalize on this opportunity. Similar to the target they placed in the ocean when Mir was falling back to earth. Free tacos for the all Earthlings if it actually hits.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=4152

I think that these can still be ordered, if you want a really unique geek Christmas gift.

You can't even buy a launch for $30 million, never mind develop and manufacture a lander.

I beg to differ. You can buy a human-safe launch, stay on the ISS, and return to Earth for $30m. You can get a lift to LEO with an LM-2C for $20m.

If you're sending up space shuttle Discovery, I doubt there's a lot of wasted costs on putting a lightsabre in there. :-p

The average cost per pound to send to Low Earth Orbit is $3632 - $4587. [1]

[1] Source: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301

This article explains how nicely http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=427

Just because they take manual control, doesn't mean they have to. I worked on the shuttle GN&C software. Software for landing the shuttle already existed before i joined that team --- except lowering the landing gear --- years and years ago. It just has never been fully tested, but it was tested down to 125 feet. Here's a few links: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=10518 and here http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/release/1992/1- 92.htm

Heck, I wrote code that makes all the landings soft and almost perfect since around 1992. I don't recall when it flew the first time. There's usually a 1 or more delay from when code is finished and it makes a first flight. Why was that needed? The astronauts were blowing tires on landing, especially with payloads, so software was designed to prevent that.

Astronauts drinking? You bet. They get lots of practice and everyone I've met knew when to stop and knew their limits. I can imagine they might get drunk only among close friends and family. They know they are being watched, always.

Scientists just recently learned new things about our closest star that are changing the way they study/view it. How is possible that we can create a reliable simulation based on information that's changing?

I'm no astrophysicist, but it seems sketchy. So they made a movie. So what?

Quite a few clouds, in fact! http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/08.11.04.oppo rtunity.jpg

I think this is news now since one node of the future IPN is scheduled to be functional by 2008. The article doesn't specify in what way though; albeit a new orbiting satellite (gateway) around Mars, or just reprogramming some existing Mars mission device already deployed (to test the IPN protocol).

I like pretty pictures and diagrams. So, I found a good presentation by Cerf back in 2000 which outlined these challenges and why we need the IPN.

I think this is news now since one node of the future IPN is scheduled to be functional by 2008. The article doesn't specify in what way though; albeit a new orbiting satellite (gateway) around Mars, or just reprogramming some existing Mars mission device already deployed (to test the IPN protocol).

I like pretty pictures and diagrams. So, I found a good presentation by Cerf back in 2000 which outlined these challenges and why we need the IPN.

just so long as I get the free taco I could care less!

If it is possible to teleport a proton, and it's possible also to store information in a proton, it is possible to communicate information faster than light.

This means it's possible for us to create quantum computers which transfer information instantly, I'm not even sure we know what this means yet but discovering this is like discovering atomic technology in the 1930s.

If protons can be teleported due to non locality of the quantum, it changes everything. What we really have to consider is the fact that nuclear elements can be teleported to.

First Quantum Teleportation Experiments

What is basically says is that everything in the universe is connected, as if we are on a 2d river, and if you mess with something over here, it messes with something over there, as if there is no here or there, and no distance at all.

If there is no distance at all, that changes the world. Right now we have only managed to make it so there is no distance with photons, and maybe atoms, but just by doing this we allow for there to be no distance for communication. When there is no distance for communication it means we could communicate with aliens accross the universe using this method and actually recieve a response.

It also means we can communicate with each other instantly.

WE have quantumly teleported atoms

It's proven that we have teleported atoms. As we can see, we are on the edge of a breakthrough, which will either be very good or very bad for our species.

If it weren't for the DNA raining down on us, we'd still be a "dead" planet. We have already been 'colonized'. See the wikpd entry for Panspermia.

The existence of amino acids in interstellar space has already been established. See the article.

"Indeed," noted Dr. Scott Sandford of Ames, "these findings are particularly intriguing because the amino acids found in meteorites do show some signatures that suggest an interstellar connection. This connection, combined with our finding that amino acids can be made in interstellar clouds suggests that the Earth may have been seeded with amino acids from space in its earliest days."

"The infall of these materials on the early Earth may have facilitated the origin of life on our planet," said Dr. Jason Dworkin of the SETI Institute and Ames. "Furthermore, since new stars and planets are formed within the same clouds in which new amino acids are being created, this probably increases the odds that life has evolved elsewhere."

Also note Terence McKenna's theory of the "magic mushrooms from outer space" that colonized Earth. See this article. The relevant quote:

HT: From your writings I have gleaned that you subscribe to the notion that psilocybin mushrooms are a species of high intelligence -- that they arrived on this planet as spores that migrated through outer space, and are attempting to establish a symbiotic relationship with human beings. In a more holistic perspective, how do you see this notion fitting into the context of Francis Crick's theory of directed panspermia, the hypothesis that all life on this planet and its directed evolution has been seeded, or perhaps fertilized, by spores designed by a higher intelligence?

TM: As I understand the Crick theory of panspermia, it's a theory of how life spread through the universe...

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

---Arthur Stanley Eddington

If you've ever seen TV coverage of a Progress or Soyuz docking to the International Space Station, you've probably seen the ubiquitous black and white docking camera video with data overlayed on it as the vehicle approached the docking target.

Unfortunately, this television signal was only within the Russian Segment, and could only be downlinked through Russian communication assets over Russian ground sites. That limited the video to around 10 minutes each orbit, and required the docking to physically occur over Russia.

The US segment downlinks television via the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS), which have more or less worldwide coverage. But the US segment and Russian Segment systems used incompatible video standards and weren't physically connected.

Yup, two video systems that cost tens of millions to develop, and they can't talk to each other. Classic "square peg, round hole" problem.

So we devised a setup where the crew ran a cable from the Russian Segment TV system into an IBM A31p laptop which converts the Russian SECAM signal to US NTSC video. The output from the laptop is connected to another cable strung down the stack into the US video system and downlinked via TDRS. Voila, greatly increased video coverage thanks to a lowly Thinkpad.

Details of this being tested can be found here: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=18791

This is a government document. It's purpose is to amend the US Code. You'll never find a summary but if you want to see the new section that was added, pull up the document and do a text search for "PART 460--HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT REQUIREMENTS."

Funny, you can find this "article" here, here, and here. Since so many places cover this, it must be true, but for some reason, I can't find any reference to the source of this rumor here. Thanks for supporting web spammers. It's people like you that really help lower the signal to noise ratio.

After RTFA, I found out Ted Bryant is the Tsunami expert in this group of researchers. While researching for my thesis, I was confronted with his book, "Tsunami: the underrated hazard". This work, while being quite easy to understand, can hardly be called scientific based on his way of making citations (grouping all references at the beginning of a chapter which leaves you without the possibility to look up where he drew his conclusions from).

Reviews of his book can be found here: http://hol.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/5/637 and here http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0025-3227(03)00086-0 and here: Synolakis, C.E., and G.J. Fryer, 2001. Book Review: Tsunami: the underrated hazard by Edward Bryant, Eos, Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 82, 588 (can't find a quick link right now).

The existence of so-called megatsunamis is hardly scientifically proven, especially not by the work of Bryant (he classified sedimentary features embedded in sandstone somewhere in Australia as relics of an ancient megatsunami when in a nearby graveyard the same sandstone wouldn't resist local climate and erosion for more than a few centuries).

The propagation of tsunamis with huge waveheights seems to be limited due to dispersion effects and the so-called "Van-Dorn-Effect" should cause these huge waves to break as soon as they reach the continental shelf (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL02191 8.shtml and http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~jmelosh/ImpactTsunami. pdf , but also http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=10986 ).

After working some time in the field of megatsunamis (my thesis concentrated on the Cumbre Vieja Scenario postulated by Ward&Day back in 2001 (http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl. pdf) and, based on scientific grounds, I had to "debunk" it as several researchers have done before me), I have learned to take these reports with a grain (or better, a big portion) of salt.

NASA has responded to this rumor over a week ago BTW.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=22553

Its basically a bunch of bullshit, shame on Slashdot for posting about a story that was a non-issue weeks ago.

I wouldn't cry if someone dropped a space station on it.

I work for NASA supporting the Space Station, and the irony of a Microsoft guy going up is pretty amusing.

The crew has a network of laptops running WinXP to do non-critical support tasks, chiefly email. While they work pretty well and generally can be maintained from Houston, the crew does spend a fair amount of time keeping them working. You can often hear tales of woe with the network interspersed with operational discussions on the space to ground audio.

For example, this is from the September 8, 2006 ISS status report posted at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=21998

Jeff's attempts yesterday to set up an Outlook email account for Soyuz taxi crewmember Anousheh Ansari were not successful. This is a repeat of a problem seen with previous email accounts for Soyuz taxi crewmembers. Plans are in work to give the SFP (Space Flight Participant) a regular ISS email account.

I have the feeling that he is going to be jokingly dubbed the "new on-site IT support" by the commander as soon as he arrives.

It's always nice to see national space agencies working together, it almost gives me hope that the world might one day be united in space exploration."

More bullshit whiney rhetoric from the left.

Apollo-Soyuz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo-Soyuz
Shuttle-Mir http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope http://eu.spaceref.com/
NASA/Brazilian Space Agency http://asia.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=1257

It's always nice to see national space agencies working together, it almost gives me hope that the world might one day be united in space exploration."

More bullshit whiney rhetoric from the left.

Apollo-Soyuz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo-Soyuz
Shuttle-Mir http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope http://eu.spaceref.com/
NASA/Brazilian Space Agency http://asia.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=1257

You do realize that the entire Constellation effort is for moon landings by 2020 and is driven by a Bush mandate right? You seem to be implying that the Ares I and CEV are somehow not a part of the lunar architecture. That's about the most ignorant thing I have heard in a while. I am sure you just couldn't resist a chance to take a swipe at Bush - if you did some research you would see that Bush is actually rebuilding NASA after Clinton neglected throughout his presidency. Please read up on NASA's strategic plan, and program implementation before posting further on the subject.

The "intended" launch rate for the Atlas V and Delta IV was 20 vehicles per year. They are right now flying 5/year. The cost of the metal in the machines is not the issue. The Atlas V especially is a very simple machine with far fewer elements and components than an equivalent Falcon. Costs are in the people to support the missions and keep the machine alive through years.

I see you're not counting the development costs for the early ICBM days of the Atlas series. Encyclopedia Astronautica claims that part is another $2.23 billion in 1965 dollars. Using the GDP deflator, that becomes more than $10 billion in today's dollars. So total development cost is around $12 billion, assuming you're right about the Atlas I through V costs and those costs are in current dollars.

And while an Atlas V doesn't have as many engines as the Falcon V design would have, visual inspection of pictures indicates that the Atlas's engines are far more complex than the proposed Falcon 9 engine (or here for a CAD drawing). There's a lot less plumbing associated with SpaceX's Merlin engine meaning if SpaceX can maintain that level of complexity, they'll have an engine that is far easier to assemble than the RD-180 that the Atlas V uses.

I'm curious as to just how low the launch cost will be, compared to other options. From the article, it seems that SpaceX is targetting 6M$ per launch, but that is surely not for the same weight a shuttle can lift.

I realize I mixed up arguments that should have remained separate, which led me to some poor reasoning. As you and another poster note, the "let's do it when it becomes affordable" argument is a false argument. However, I am in a "let's focus on making it affordable so we can do more of it" mindset.

What I should have said is this. First, if the taxpayers are prepared to set aside a fixed amount of money for spaceflight, then you have to take the economic point of view in order to make the most of what you have; the "we should do it anyway" attitude comes down to convincing the government to increase the budget, which is separate from the best way of using it. If the stated goal is to do science, and robots give you more science on a given budget than people, then you should send robots--possibly many robots. However, if you believe that someday it will be cheaper to send people (more on that below), you may invest some of the money on manned spaceflight--but not to have people do the same kind of science as the robots could do! Fly them to find a way to bring down manned spaceflight costs.

Second, if the stated goal includes colonization, then sending only robots does not make much sense. You have to send people, taking a long-term approach. While this may interest more taxpayers so that they give you a higher budget, you still have to find a way to make it as economical as possible, so as to minimize your dependence on changing political whims--as happened with the Apollo program. And if you make manned spaceflight economical, then you may as well send scientists along to do science. So this also means bringing down manned spaceflight costs.

Third, it seems that the biggest government space agency worldwide, NASA, isn't focused on either goal. It is not pursuing science, since it is cutting both space probes and human spaceflight science, to cover the expense of developing the CEV and new launchers. And it is not trying to make spaceflight economical: one, after they retire the Shuttle, they aim for the same operations budget (not including Moon missions) for a lesser LEO capability (can't find a reference, sorry); two, the GAO believes that the project isn't soundly managed and there will be cost overruns; three, the SFF believes that they're making the same mistakes as with the Shuttle, with a one-vehicle-fits-all approch and an artificial urgency to minimize the "gap" during which the USA won't have an operational manned spaceflight capability.

Meanwhile, several companies are trying to lower launch costs and leverage the space tourism market, but their business case is harder to make as long as NASA is a possible competitor--and a subsidized one, at that. If NASA were a customer instead, then the private sector would have an easier job and they want to bring down the cost of manned spaceflight. So one can't rely exclusively on them to do exploration, all right, but government-sponsored space organizations have been at it for decades and haven't made a significant advance in over thirty years. Perhaps the profit-seekers should be given a chance then?

Now, to answer some of your points:

it will always be far more expensive to send humans then robots, nomatter how cheap things get.

I'm not sure about that. Is it now cheaper to send a person or a robot to do some work in Antarctica? After all, an autonomous robot has to be very sophisticated; it may well become cheaper to send a man, including his life support equipment, than to build and test a robot on the complexity level e.g. of the current Mars rovers.

Probably there will be some kind of expanding frontier: when tourists can buy cheap tickets to space hotels in Earth orbit, big entities (be it NASA, National Geographic or Bill Gates) will be able to afford to go to the Moon or Mars, though se

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=20665