Posted by
emmett
on from the one-small-step-for-an-accountant dept.
Spudley writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA are likely to scrap a number of planned missions, due to increasing mission costs. The cost rise is attributed to more failsafes being used, after the recent failures of a number of 'cheap' missions."
that the increased costs are due to the new Win2k software being implemented into the space missions. NASA now expects 'clear sailing' as a result of their new expensive purchase."
You are a unique individual, just like everyone else.
Well. I guess this puts the whole "better, faster, cheaper" idiocy to rest. Spouting plattitudes that sound nice is no substitute for doing things the right way. Heh, can't wait to show our clue-deficit management this one. We've been extolled to do things BFC, with the added clause "if NASA can find a way, for crissakes, so can you!"
HA!
--
There is much cruelty in the universe, John. Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Well, putting up fewer missions in order to increase the chances of having safe (and successful) missions would be sensible, but sensible behavior and bureaucratic behavior don't always coincide.
NASA has always been in the uncomfortable position of having to put itself and its missions in the spotlight enough to maintain public interest enough to maintain anything approximating a decent budget. Missions that sound important and interesting tend to get people on NASA's side. Publicizing the boring stuff tends not to be good public relations.
These highly-publicized, big, important missions also have to go up often enough to maintain interest. More successful missions leads to more publicity leads to greater approval.
This all tends to backfire when the missions aren't successful, of course. But, you know, people get antsy.
NASA went to the "better, faster, cheaper" approach after they were threatened with cuts. Basically the public is impatient and therefore wants NASA to do stuff NOW. Due to this pressure NASA moved from building huge monolithic projects that had a very high chance of success but launched very rarely, to smaller cheaper projects with a smaller chance of success and launched more often.
Although I agree that it is a better idea to be somewhere in the middle, we shall see what the general public thinks. They are in sort of a bind here, if they take too long between missions then the public gets bored and cuts their funding, but if their mission fails then the public get angry and their funding gets cut.
<rant>
Until the public realizes the importance of the space program reason has not won. There is even a split in the slashdot readers over whether it should be publicly or privately funded. I personally believe that the government should fund pure scientific research for the sake of science, and that if we leave it up to private organizations we will lose the research that is conducted for the sake of science and only get science for the sake of profit.
If NASA were to receive more money so that it could hire more scientists and engineers, especially in the QA side, we would be able to pull off faster/better instead of faster/cheaper.
</rant>
Yeah.. I guess nasa missions are expendable compared to social security, welfare, international bailouts, congressional expense accounts, environmental protection, anti-smoking campaigns, anti-trust propaganda, elian gonzalus, carnivore, and secret deffense spending... who needs to discover anything about the universe? Not me! I'd rather rot right here on earth...
--
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast
http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
Space.com is reporting that NASA are likely to scrap a number of planned missions, <p>No they aren't - if you look at the article it says that they'll be putting some of the missions back, but they haven't cancelled ny planned missions.
If we look at NASA's recent history, we find a lot of distressing items (the Mars observer being lost comes to mind). The fact that they had all of the shuttles at the Cape when Floyd was about to hit wasn't a great idea (who in the world thought to have all of the shuttles in one place...).
HOWEVER, if we look a little farther back, we find the Apollo missions. This is quite possibly the United States' crowning achievement. We reached the moon. No one else has ever done anything like this before or since (from our planet ). What has changed?
What has changed is that the fire has gone away at NASA. People are treating it as their jobs, not as "I'm so lucky to be here. I'm going to do the best I can." Maybe by taking the space program private would help in this regard. But, I'm not entirely sure. If people really, really truly love space, they will work for any amount of money to be close to their dream. One thing privatization achieves is the fact that they could lure "better" people with their better pools of money.
OTOH, if the private companies find people who want to work in space-related fields for about what NASA is paying them, with their high financial resources, they could very well spend more on the actual missions (i.e. state-of-the-art equipment).
IMHO, our government needs to boost funding to NASA so that they can return to their peak. Private industry is shaky in this aspect. A unified space project is the only way to go.
It's not so much that the fire has gone away, but the success of the Apollo missions was largely due to the fact that there was a race going on between USA and USSR. That race fired the imagination and enthousiasm of a whole nation, creating a larger support for space missions. I think that it isn't NASA's fire that's extinguished, but the fire of the people and the nation How to make a sig without having an idea
Problems with probability...
by
laborit
·
· Score: 4
It's actually kind of unfortunate that NASA has chosen this time to implement extra safety features, since it makes it more difficult to tell if they work. Statisticians are familiar with the concept of regression to the mean (or just regression): after an extraordinary period, you're most likely to have an ordinary one.
This simply reflects the fact that most of the things you do are going to have an average outcome, due to the definition of average. So if you have a string of great victories, your ordinary, expected performance will look like you're going into decline. If you have a string of failures, it will look like you're improving.
The textbook regression foulup is an experiment in which people are punished for failure and rewarded for success. Since failure naturally leads to improvement, it ends up looking like punishment helps and reward hurts.
So... NASA will implement a lot of safety features. And the missions will be more successful even if the features do nothing at all, just because they're going to have to come out of their slump sometime.
Then it will look like space missions have to be expensive to succeed, and we'll be locked into this paradigm...
- MC
--
----- Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Re:Problems with probability...
by
wafath
·
· Score: 4
1) Repeat after me: "Lady Luck has no memory." Now write it on the chalk board 1000 times. If I am flipping a fair coin, and I get 4 heads in a row, what is the probability that the next flip will be a head? 50%. Believing anything else will get you into gambler's anonymous.
2) These are not random events. Your spacecraft getting hit by a mico-meteorite en-route is a random event. Your spacecraft digging a hole in the surface of mars because some asshole company decided to do english units is not a random event. NASA knows and is willing to live with the random. What NASA is trying to do is prevent the FUBAR's that throw away very expensive spacecraft.
W
Re:Problems with probability...
by
heatdeath
·
· Score: 2
1) Repeat after me: "Lady Luck has no memory." Now write it on the chalk board 1000 times. If I am flipping a fair coin, and I get 4 heads in a row, what is the probability that the next flip will be a head? 50%. Believing anything else will get you into gambler's anonymous.
That's not what his point was. Here's a probability question for you:
You go to a restraunt and the you find that the service and food are excellent. The second time you come back, will you
A)Find the service worse
B)Find the service the same
C)Find the service better
surprisingly, the answer is A. Worse. Why is this?
When you have something that's on the high end of the bell curve, you see this phenomenon of 'regression toward the mean'. When you rate something from one event that is above the mean, it's more likely that you were experiencing a high point from a lower quality experience than a low point from a high quality one.
As space operations go, (look at the MIR, for example), NASA has their act together; they're on the high end of the bellcurve. So, it's more likely that they'll suck *more* after a while.
so you're both wrong. NASA's tendancy will be to 'regress toward the mean', not get better or say the same.
--
-- I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
Re:Problems with probability...
by
schporto
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· Score: 2
OK only resonding to point 1)
But what's the probability of flipping a coin 100 times and only getting heads? I doubt it's 50/50. I'm very bad with probabilities though. Yes I agree with the base statement that previous history has no influence on future events (in truely random events). If I have five heads in a row though, and the probability of me getting another head is still 50%, what was the probability at the begining that I'd get 6 heads in a row? Wouldn't it be like 1/12? I honestly am not real sure on any of this. Anyone know?
-cpd
Re:Problems with probability...
by
stubob
·
· Score: 3
Your spacecraft digging a hole in the surface of mars because some asshole company decided to do english units is not a random event.
Um, minor corrections needed here. 1. The problem with the units was not Lockheed Martin Astronautics using english units. The problem was LMCO and JPL not both not noticing that they were using different units during unit testing and integration. The problem was that JPL issued a course correction using x units of thrust, which happened to be the wrong amount.
2. You have the Mars Polar Lander confused with the Mars Climate Orbiter. The english/metric units problem was not on the mission that "dug a hole into the surface." That was the landing legs problem. Which, btw, was seen in testing but not corrected (unexcusable). The english/metric units problem was on one of the mapping satellites that burned up into the atmosphere because of the thrust problem.
fwiw, I worked at LMCO during all this but not on those projects (I got to work with the TLA's in DC. That's why I left.)
Space isn't going to get cheaper until we make more scientific advances. Unfortunately that means staying here in earth orbit (yes I mean ISS) and developing these technologies, like maybe some Ion engines or some other way of relying on electricity more, and making fuel cells more effieient. That alone would cut costs immensely since we don't have to worry about the bulk or expense of propellent.
However do we really have that kind of time here? That could take as long as a decade. How long will it be until all interest in space dies out and is no longer a New and Cool Thing, and instead something to be taken for granted like every other technological advance?
I think it may be better in the end, ideally, to let our space program mature before we try any new stunts, but I think we also have a lot of important missions to follow up on before the interest runs out, like the possibility of life on Mars and Europa. I eagerly await their outcomes, but many people may lose interest before long.
It sounds like somebody is trying to Save Money Through Confusing Statistics. The reason they originally decreased the price of each mission was to save money. So then they increase the price of each mission (through additional safety measures to keep from losing so many) to save money. Now they are decreasing the NUMBER of missions to save money.
NASA needs to stop asking Congress for money and start asking US for money. A very simple ad:
Scene: A war field, guns going off, bloody soldiers, etc.
Voiceover: The "Defense" Department got $750 billion this year.
Montage: Doctors working in labs, smiling children in hospitals, people working on computers, Mars Rover
Voiceover: Scientific research got $2 billion.
Caption and voiceover: Invest in Knowledge, Not War.
NASA is so focussed on science/engineering that they don't understand How To Make Friends and Influence People. --
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I'm sorry, but once I heard about the "cheaper and faster" space missions, I knew it was a disaster from the start.
Yes... cheap missions that fail is a bad thing and
expensive missions that succeed is a good thing.
I think we are so excited about how fast technology is going today we are moving blindly. I have had debates with people not so technically incline about how the speed of processors will not be doubling every two years unless some new break through is found. They have this blind notion that "No! technology will never slow down". I agree that technology will always advance, but it will slow down until something new is discovered. You can only improve on a single method so much.
Now back to the space program. I think it's good that things are being taken more seriously, and we should slow down and do things right the first time. Prototypes are ok, but the final product should work.
Unfortunately, this means things like that Pluto mission may be axed. But I'm optimistic that programs canceled today will be the programs of tomorrow.
Steven Rostedt
-- Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Re:Well what did you expect?
by
styopa
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· Score: 2
Yes... cheap missions that fail is a bad thing and expensive missions that succeed is a good thing.
...
I think it's good that things are being taken more seriously, and we should slow down and do things right the first time.
Been there, done that. The public is impatient, and if they don't see NASA releasing things at a steady pace they get bored and cut their funding. That is the reason why the moved to the faster/better/cheaper approach. NASA is in a bind, if they take too long to send out a mission the public loses interest and cuts their funding, on the other hand if their mission fails then the public gets mad and cuts their funding. Fun little game isn't it.
-- Disclamer - Opinion of Person
the dispair banner ad says it all
by
omarius
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· Score: 4
Yet another blow to the star-filled hopes of my generation; a generation that grew up on the tail end of the Space Race, who still have their copies of TIME magazine from when Viking landed on Mars. At age 10 I fully expected to get to ride on a Space Shuttle one day. At age 26 I am sad that the US seems more interested in immediacy and BS politics than expanding the role of humanity in a universe which happens to be larger than the Republican convention, no matter how it looks on TV.
-Omar
Perhaps they will reconsider...
by
HEbGb
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· Score: 3
Perhaps they, as well as the public as represented through congress, will reconsider the enormous amount of our hard-earned money we're giving to NASA for missions that are of little value beyond simple entertainment. And that's when things work - the streak of dismal failures they're building is a tremendous and expensive embarassment.
Yes, there have been a few commercially viable innovations which came out of the space prgram. But at what cost? Are those inventions really worth the billions spent? To whom?
If NASA cannot provide enough value to the world to pay it's/own/ bills, it shouldn't exist. I'm tired of being forced to fork over money I work hard for in the interests of supporting an ill-defined pseudoscience entertainment legion.
Re:Perhaps they will reconsider...
by
MegaGremlin
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· Score: 2
Perhaps, but it seems to me (IMHO, of course) that NASA is a very convenient bitch to kick around Capitol Hill. NASA has no real tool to strike fear into the hearts of the common man. (Except perhaps Hollywood.)
Try to cut the military and you'll suddenly find us in a potential war we couldn't possibly be ready for. Try to cut the social programs (which, admittedly, I'm not a fan of.) and you'll be inundated with pictures of all the "normal Americans" starved to death by your faithful elected officials...
The only real option your average spineless politico has to "cut the budget" and save you...the hard-working American man/woman a few bucks is to cut programs that can't defend themselves. I submit (IMHO) that perhaps NASA has done a bit more for the average American than the National Endowment for the Arts has (the NEA having a much more vocal and retaliatory group of supporters than any group of scientists could ever be.)
Yes, the NEA has a MUCH smaller budget so it's definitely not a fair comparison, but it's the best I could do this morning. Sue me. I promise to try to think of a better one after I have my coffee.
They're not really in a comfortable place after all. Their funding relies on both their public image and intensive politicking (is that a word? Ah well, you know what I mean) in Congress. Every time something goes wrong with a mission it makes them look bad, no matter whose fault it really was.
This is a shame since NASA is a worthwhile endeavour and deserves a better deal than it gets from the American government. But we can do without a few minor missions in the name of getting the more important ones working - I don't think anyone would deny that money would be better spent on a Mars mission than say a Pluto one.
In the long run though it may well be that NASA fall behind other agencies and corporate interests. The public is simply not up for a huge space program with its attendant costs. NASA are trying to make space flight cheaper, but it costs money to save money in this case, and at they rate things are going, that'll be money they don't get.
Bad for Pluto-Kuiper express
by
patreides
·
· Score: 2
Some of these missions are very time-dependent.
Right now a mission to Pluto is the most convenient time it's going to get; as I recall Pluto is currently closer to the sun than Neptune, meaning a mission 10 years from now (when it was planned, about) would be much better than a mission 30 or 40 years from now. We also want to rendezvous with Pluto along the plane of the solar system (Pluto's orbit is askew) so the best time to launch a probe would be within the next 10 years or so, so that it can meet up with Pluto close to where it intersects with the Solar system, then travel on to the Kuiper belts. Otherwise it will have to travel up and over (direct diagonal would be disaster; no gravity slingshots). Too bad the article doesn't say which missions will be cancelled. Or did I miss it?
Perhaps NASA is considering new propulsion techniques we've heard so much about on slashdot, lie solar sails. This would be great for several of the missions to the outer planets. Maybe this "delay" is just a way to experiment with using these technologies.
This planet may be the slums, but the rest of the local places are just burned out wrecks.
I mean there is nothing decent until you get *past* the asteroid belt. and that used to be a cool party planet until that one weekend blast that got out of hand...
and let's face it, for the most part, we are way out in the middle of nowhere. sort of like the interstellar equivalent of Las Vegas in the desert before there were hotels, etc.... No-one visits except for the equivalent of UFO teenagers out on a road trip stoned out of their gourds, and playing mind games with the local natives.
"hey man, watch them freak out when I turn on the flashing lights!"
Talk about annoying....
-- "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The truth is our elected officials have decided that there are other things here on earth which have priority over the space program.
In light of some previous comments both here and in the media, please consider the following.
The military gave birth to the space program. For the first 30 years, nearly all of our astronauts were active duty military persons.
The military initially trained most of our astronauts.
The military financed most of the early space program and continues to pay for several missions today.
(see
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/factsh eet.htm )
The military needs satellites launched. That requires some NASA folks to get in that shuttle and get some flying time. That is better than playing with models in Florida.
(see
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/schedule/mixf leet.htm )
Therefore, I believe that the military has been useful to our space program and hope thier interest will continue as it benefits the program as a whole.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the host of other social programs do not require a space program. These *combined* programs eat more of the federal budget than the defense budget does.
(see http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2001/guidetoc. html )
Does that mean these programs are not neccessary or not as important? Nonsense. However, truth is the success of these programs is not dependent upon a strong space program and these programs' needs will not diminish, on the contrary, they will grow in the future.
So what is the answer? That is up to the individuals which make up our country. I have posted here before that I will only vote for candidates who represent my ideas, which includes, an agressive, yet affective, space program. To that end, I am researching the candidates in order to choose who will best make a working, successful space program a reality. A working space program, however, has to be tempered with meeting the needs of our growing society including assisting our elderly and less fortunate, education, urban problems, committments and cleaning up the planet we were on first.
The military gave birth to the space program. For the first 30 years, nearly all of our astronauts were active duty military persons. The military initially trained most of our astronauts. The military financed most of the early space program and continues to pay for several missions today. (see http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/factshee t.htm )
This is true up to a point. NASA and the military always had a close relationship, but this was also in many ways superficial. The scientists wanted space programs to do research; the military wanted space programs to focus on defense. Congress, above all, wanted them to cooperate and "cut costs". The early development of the space shuttle was closely tied to Air Force requirements; allegedly the size was doubled in order to accomodate the Keyhole (KH-10, KH-11) series of spy satellites. So, the scientific missions have been compromised by military involvement, but you could equally say that the missions wouldn't have occurred at all without Congress funding it as a quasi-military program.
The military needs satellites launched. That requires some NASA folks to get in that shuttle and get some flying time. That is better than playing with models in Florida. (see http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/schedule/mixfle et.htm)
Actually, this has not been true since Challenger. The schedule you point to shows no military space shuttle launches, because the Air Force quit its involvement in the shuttle program after 1986; the last DOD "classified" space shuttle mission was STS-53 in 1992. They restarted expendable launch vehicle production lines for rockets like Titan and Pegasus. At this time the military is actually forbidden from depending on a single launch vehicle. Military pilots and others who become astronauts are no longer DOD employees (although they retain rank, seniority, and certain benefits under longstanding policies).
So, no astronauts "fly" to launch military satellites anymore. The only astronaut flights now are NASA science flights and space station construction flights (and soon, crew delivery). The Air Force has even gone so far as to launch its own lunar satellite mission with virtually no NASA involvement.
Therefore, I believe that the military has been useful to our space program and hope thier interest will continue as it benefits the program as a whole.
You're about ten years too late. ----
-- lake effect weblog {Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
"Actually, this has not been true since Challenger. The schedule you point to shows no military space shuttle launches, "
Correction, you are right that the shuttle is not used for military satellite launches. My apologies.
However, there is still a direct relationship between the military and NASA which I believe to be beneficial.
Exclusive land grants and mining rights.
by
Moderation+abuser
·
· Score: 3
Greed man.
You want to get into space in 5 years?
Hand out exclusive land grants on Mars and the Moon to the 1st private individuals who can get there. Give exclusive mining rights to people who can get to an asteroid and stake a claim.
You're dreaming if you think it'll happen any other way.
--
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I wrote a letter to Sen. Kaye Bailey Hutchison (Tx). I expressed my support for the continued and if possible increasing funding for NASA, because of the wide variety of missions that they perform.
Her response back was focused exclusively on the space station. It's like she had little blinders on, thinking that's all NASA did.
I wrote her back and told her that I was NOT talking about the space station, but about other projects such as the Pluto/Kuiper Express.
When you write your congressperson, make it clear that you support projects *besides* the space station. Write them every year. Repeat yourself. That's how we get funding passed for the cool science.
Congress approved funding for the continued war on drugs a few months ago. It was a 12 billion dollar package. 12 billion dollars is roughly the ballpark figure of NASA's annual budget. Imagine what could happen if the war on drugs was limited a bit - NASA could get more cash. There's plenty of money, but the allocation is what sucks. Write the congress and help them to decide how to allocate the money.
Weiler cautioned any shakedown might not occur until late January or early February. He stressed that NASA has not cancelled a single mission, including plans for a first-ever visit to Pluto. Recent media reports, including a story by SPACE.com, have put Pluto-Kuiper Express at the top of the endangered mission list. (The probe may also lose its radioactive power source to a planned mission to Jupiter's moon Europa.)
This sounds to me more like elimination for political and special interest group reasons. --
Nah. Sell the rights and watch space explode.
by
Moderation+abuser
·
· Score: 2
Seriously. All this 'space is for everybody' and no comerciallisation of space stuff has held everything back hugely.
Start selling excusive land rights and mining rights and you'll see a massive takeoff.
--
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Re:And what twit moderated this insightful?
by
Daniel+Dvorkin
·
· Score: 2
"Having been said often" =/= "redundancy". I'd say the original post _is_ an insight, and obviously it's one NASA (along with many other large tech-heavy organizations, public and private) needs to hear. Over and over again, if necessary, because that's the only way they're going to get the point.
OTOH... Modern technological advances, including _but not limited to_ the explosion of computational power, have made faster, better, _and cheaper_ possible for many products. Computers, obviously, but also cars, telephones, houses, furniture, medical equipment, airplanes, clothing -- you name it. We live in an age of historically unparalleled plenty, where high-quality products are available to all but the most poverty-stricken. This is "faster, better, cheaper" in action.
So, why doesn't it work for NASA? With the current model, of incredibly expensive one-off missions, it can't. When complex machines are hand-crafted, it really is "pick two of three." The key, IMO, is therefore to start seeing spacecraft as _products_ rather than _items_. We need to pick designs that work well (the Shuttle is actually a good example, despite its well-publicized problems) and build them the way we do computers and telephones, or at least the way we build houses and airliners.
A spacecraft capable of carrying an unmanned payload into orbit, or even out into the solar system at large, need not be nearly as complex as a 747; even spacecraft capable of taking up humans and returning them safely to Earth need be only slightly more complex than that. We _could_ be turning out Shuttles or their descendants in assembly-line fashion, and if we were doing so, costs would drop even as speed and quality rose.
Turn space into a matter of logistics. _Then_ we'll have all three of the "faster, better, cheaper" triad. Not before.
-- The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Re: ISS is the problem, not the solution
by
code_rage
·
· Score: 2
While I concur that new technology is required, I strongly disagree that ISS is the way to get there. ISS and its predecessors are the reason there is little money for basic technology R+D and for science missions.
My proposal: it is time for NASA to return to its roots (a la NACA) as an engine of technological R+D. ISS is developing very little new technology outside of things needed for ISS and little else. The technology that is being developed is self-serving. E.g. analysis methods for controls/structures interactions, great for all sorts of big floppy space structures which are based on many DoF (degrees of freedom) with few inputs and outputs.
In the days of NACA, the role of govt was a technology-agnostic R+D lab, performing in the role of a technology creator, not a consumer.
As a nation, we have let 'The Space Program' become a self-serving extrapolation from the past without examining what we want our space program to achieve. (Actually there have been various commissions whose reports have been ignored).
The fundamental barrier to space is the difficulty in getting there. NASA should be working on the basic technology needed to dramatically lower the barriers to space. This means high-strength structures (buckytubes?), high-temperature materials, manufacturing techniques, propulsion, etc.
For too long, NASA has convinced the US taxpayers that they ought to have a monopoly on space. Time for them to become the enablers instead of the sole operators.
Cancelled mission, failed mission = same result
by
hpa
·
· Score: 2
I think this is very sad. Having very cheap missions that fail is not a good thing, but it's not an inherently bad thing either. Let's say you can 200 missions with a 50% success rate, or 100 missions with a 95% success rate. Which is better? The former will still give you more successful missions. Unfortunately, it is politically impossible for NASA -- politicians seem fundamentally incapable of distinguish between robotic and manned missions, it seems (for manned missions, "once you put a person on the spaceship, the primary mission of that spaceship becomes the safety of the human", and a high accident rate is intolerable.)
Slashdot Mirror
that the increased costs are due to the new Win2k software being implemented into the space missions. NASA now expects 'clear sailing' as a result of their new expensive purchase." You are a unique individual, just like everyone else.
Sig it.
If they cannot afford as many missions in a safe way asthey have planned, they should put up less missions. Thats all.
Kiwaiti
Member of the Legion Of Microsoft Haters
Yeah.. I guess nasa missions are expendable compared to social security, welfare, international bailouts, congressional expense accounts, environmental protection, anti-smoking campaigns, anti-trust propaganda, elian gonzalus, carnivore, and secret deffense spending... who needs to discover anything about the universe? Not me! I'd rather rot right here on earth.. .
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
Space.com is reporting that NASA are likely to scrap a number of planned missions,
<p>No they aren't - if you look at the article it says that they'll be putting some of the missions back, but they haven't cancelled ny planned missions.
If we look at NASA's recent history, we find a lot of distressing items (the Mars observer being lost comes to mind). The fact that they had all of the shuttles at the Cape when Floyd was about to hit wasn't a great idea (who in the world thought to have all of the shuttles in one place...).
HOWEVER, if we look a little farther back, we find the Apollo missions. This is quite possibly the United States' crowning achievement. We reached the moon. No one else has ever done anything like this before or since (from our planet ). What has changed?
What has changed is that the fire has gone away at NASA. People are treating it as their jobs, not as "I'm so lucky to be here. I'm going to do the best I can." Maybe by taking the space program private would help in this regard. But, I'm not entirely sure. If people really, really truly love space, they will work for any amount of money to be close to their dream. One thing privatization achieves is the fact that they could lure "better" people with their better pools of money.
OTOH, if the private companies find people who want to work in space-related fields for about what NASA is paying them, with their high financial resources, they could very well spend more on the actual missions (i.e. state-of-the-art equipment).
IMHO, our government needs to boost funding to NASA so that they can return to their peak. Private industry is shaky in this aspect. A unified space project is the only way to go.
--
You are a fucking moron.
It's actually kind of unfortunate that NASA has chosen this time to implement extra safety features, since it makes it more difficult to tell if they work. Statisticians are familiar with the concept of regression to the mean (or just regression): after an extraordinary period, you're most likely to have an ordinary one.
This simply reflects the fact that most of the things you do are going to have an average outcome, due to the definition of average. So if you have a string of great victories, your ordinary, expected performance will look like you're going into decline. If you have a string of failures, it will look like you're improving.
The textbook regression foulup is an experiment in which people are punished for failure and rewarded for success. Since failure naturally leads to improvement, it ends up looking like punishment helps and reward hurts.
So... NASA will implement a lot of safety features. And the missions will be more successful even if the features do nothing at all, just because they're going to have to come out of their slump sometime.
Then it will look like space missions have to be expensive to succeed, and we'll be locked into this paradigm...
- MC
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Space isn't going to get cheaper until we make more scientific advances. Unfortunately that means staying here in earth orbit (yes I mean ISS) and developing these technologies, like maybe some Ion engines or some other way of relying on electricity more, and making fuel cells more effieient. That alone would cut costs immensely since we don't have to worry about the bulk or expense of propellent.
However do we really have that kind of time here? That could take as long as a decade. How long will it be until all interest in space dies out and is no longer a New and Cool Thing, and instead something to be taken for granted like every other technological advance?
I think it may be better in the end, ideally, to let our space program mature before we try any new stunts, but I think we also have a lot of important missions to follow up on before the interest runs out, like the possibility of life on Mars and Europa. I eagerly await their outcomes, but many people may lose interest before long.
# debian/rules
It sounds like somebody is trying to Save Money Through Confusing Statistics. The reason they originally decreased the price of each mission was to save money. So then they increase the price of each mission (through additional safety measures to keep from losing so many) to save money. Now they are decreasing the NUMBER of missions to save money.
NASA needs to stop asking Congress for money and start asking US for money. A very simple ad:
Scene: A war field, guns going off, bloody soldiers, etc.
Voiceover: The "Defense" Department got $750 billion this year.
Montage: Doctors working in labs, smiling children in hospitals, people working on computers, Mars Rover
Voiceover: Scientific research got $2 billion.
Caption and voiceover: Invest in Knowledge, Not War.
NASA is so focussed on science/engineering that they don't understand How To Make Friends and Influence People.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I'm sorry, but once I heard about the "cheaper and faster" space missions, I knew it was a disaster from the start.
Yes... cheap missions that fail is a bad thing and
expensive missions that succeed is a good thing.
I think we are so excited about how fast technology is going today we are moving blindly. I have had debates with people not so technically incline about how the speed of processors will not be doubling every two years unless some new break through is found. They have this blind notion that "No! technology will never slow down". I agree that technology will always advance, but it will slow down until something new is discovered. You can only improve on a single method so much.
Now back to the space program. I think it's good that things are being taken more seriously, and we should slow down and do things right the first time. Prototypes are ok, but the final product should work.
Unfortunately, this means things like that Pluto mission may be axed. But I'm optimistic that programs canceled today will be the programs of tomorrow.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
-Omar
Perhaps they, as well as the public as represented through congress, will reconsider the enormous amount of our hard-earned money we're giving to NASA for missions that are of little value beyond simple entertainment. And that's when things work - the streak of dismal failures they're building is a tremendous and expensive embarassment.
/own/ bills, it shouldn't exist. I'm tired of being forced to fork over money I work hard for in the interests of supporting an ill-defined pseudoscience entertainment legion.
Yes, there have been a few commercially viable innovations which came out of the space prgram. But at what cost? Are those inventions really worth the billions spent? To whom?
If NASA cannot provide enough value to the world to pay it's
They're not really in a comfortable place after all. Their funding relies on both their public image and intensive politicking (is that a word? Ah well, you know what I mean) in Congress. Every time something goes wrong with a mission it makes them look bad, no matter whose fault it really was.
This is a shame since NASA is a worthwhile endeavour and deserves a better deal than it gets from the American government. But we can do without a few minor missions in the name of getting the more important ones working - I don't think anyone would deny that money would be better spent on a Mars mission than say a Pluto one.
In the long run though it may well be that NASA fall behind other agencies and corporate interests. The public is simply not up for a huge space program with its attendant costs. NASA are trying to make space flight cheaper, but it costs money to save money in this case, and at they rate things are going, that'll be money they don't get.
Some of these missions are very time-dependent.
Right now a mission to Pluto is the most convenient time it's going to get; as I recall Pluto is currently closer to the sun than Neptune, meaning a mission 10 years from now (when it was planned, about) would be much better than a mission 30 or 40 years from now. We also want to rendezvous with Pluto along the plane of the solar system (Pluto's orbit is askew) so the best time to launch a probe would be within the next 10 years or so, so that it can meet up with Pluto close to where it intersects with the Solar system, then travel on to the Kuiper belts. Otherwise it will have to travel up and over (direct diagonal would be disaster; no gravity slingshots). Too bad the article doesn't say which missions will be cancelled. Or did I miss it?
Perhaps NASA is considering new propulsion techniques we've heard so much about on slashdot, lie solar sails. This would be great for several of the missions to the outer planets. Maybe this "delay" is just a way to experiment with using these technologies.
# debian/rules
This planet may be the slums, but the rest of the local places are just burned out wrecks.
I mean there is nothing decent until you get *past* the asteroid belt. and that used to be a cool party planet until that one weekend blast that got out of hand...
and let's face it, for the most part, we are way out in the middle of nowhere. sort of like the interstellar equivalent of Las Vegas in the desert before there were hotels, etc.... No-one visits except for the equivalent of UFO teenagers out on a road trip stoned out of their gourds, and playing mind games with the local natives.
Talk about annoying...."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The truth is our elected officials have decided that there are other things here on earth which have priority over the space program.
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In light of some previous comments both here and in the media, please consider the following.
The military gave birth to the space program. For the first 30 years, nearly all of our astronauts were active duty military persons.
The military initially trained most of our astronauts.
The military financed most of the early space program and continues to pay for several missions today.
(see
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/facts
The military needs satellites launched. That requires some NASA folks to get in that shuttle and get some flying time. That is better than playing with models in Florida.
(see
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/schedule/mix
Therefore, I believe that the military has been useful to our space program and hope thier interest will continue as it benefits the program as a whole.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the host of other social programs do not require a space program. These *combined* programs eat more of the federal budget than the defense budget does.
(see http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2001/guidetoc
Does that mean these programs are not neccessary or not as important? Nonsense. However, truth is the success of these programs is not dependent upon a strong space program and these programs' needs will not diminish, on the contrary, they will grow in the future.
So what is the answer? That is up to the individuals which make up our country. I have posted here before that I will only vote for candidates who represent my ideas, which includes, an agressive, yet affective, space program. To that end, I am researching the candidates in order to choose who will best make a working, successful space program a reality. A working space program, however, has to be tempered with meeting the needs of our growing society including assisting our elderly and less fortunate, education, urban problems, committments and cleaning up the planet we were on first.
Your mileage may vary.
Greed man.
You want to get into space in 5 years?
Hand out exclusive land grants on Mars and the Moon to the 1st private individuals who can get there. Give exclusive mining rights to people who can get to an asteroid and stake a claim.
You're dreaming if you think it'll happen any other way.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I wrote a letter to Sen. Kaye Bailey Hutchison (Tx). I expressed my support for the continued and if possible increasing funding for NASA, because of the wide variety of missions that they perform.
Her response back was focused exclusively on the space station. It's like she had little blinders on, thinking that's all NASA did.
I wrote her back and told her that I was NOT talking about the space station, but about other projects such as the Pluto/Kuiper Express.
When you write your congressperson, make it clear that you support projects *besides* the space station. Write them every year. Repeat yourself. That's how we get funding passed for the cool science.
Congress approved funding for the continued war on drugs a few months ago. It was a 12 billion dollar package. 12 billion dollars is roughly the ballpark figure of NASA's annual budget. Imagine what could happen if the war on drugs was limited a bit - NASA could get more cash. There's plenty of money, but the allocation is what sucks. Write the congress and help them to decide how to allocate the money.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
This sounds to me more like elimination for political and special interest group reasons.
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Seriously. All this 'space is for everybody' and no comerciallisation of space stuff has held everything back hugely.
Start selling excusive land rights and mining rights and you'll see a massive takeoff.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
"Having been said often" =/= "redundancy". I'd say the original post _is_ an insight, and obviously it's one NASA (along with many other large tech-heavy organizations, public and private) needs to hear. Over and over again, if necessary, because that's the only way they're going to get the point.
... Modern technological advances, including _but not limited to_ the explosion of computational power, have made faster, better, _and cheaper_ possible for many products. Computers, obviously, but also cars, telephones, houses, furniture, medical equipment, airplanes, clothing -- you name it. We live in an age of historically unparalleled plenty, where high-quality products are available to all but the most poverty-stricken. This is "faster, better, cheaper" in action.
OTOH
So, why doesn't it work for NASA? With the current model, of incredibly expensive one-off missions, it can't. When complex machines are hand-crafted, it really is "pick two of three." The key, IMO, is therefore to start seeing spacecraft as _products_ rather than _items_. We need to pick designs that work well (the Shuttle is actually a good example, despite its well-publicized problems) and build them the way we do computers and telephones, or at least the way we build houses and airliners.
A spacecraft capable of carrying an unmanned payload into orbit, or even out into the solar system at large, need not be nearly as complex as a 747; even spacecraft capable of taking up humans and returning them safely to Earth need be only slightly more complex than that. We _could_ be turning out Shuttles or their descendants in assembly-line fashion, and if we were doing so, costs would drop even as speed and quality rose.
Turn space into a matter of logistics. _Then_ we'll have all three of the "faster, better, cheaper" triad. Not before.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
My proposal: it is time for NASA to return to its roots (a la NACA) as an engine of technological R+D. ISS is developing very little new technology outside of things needed for ISS and little else. The technology that is being developed is self-serving. E.g. analysis methods for controls/structures interactions, great for all sorts of big floppy space structures which are based on many DoF (degrees of freedom) with few inputs and outputs.
In the days of NACA, the role of govt was a technology-agnostic R+D lab, performing in the role of a technology creator, not a consumer.
As a nation, we have let 'The Space Program' become a self-serving extrapolation from the past without examining what we want our space program to achieve. (Actually there have been various commissions whose reports have been ignored).
The fundamental barrier to space is the difficulty in getting there. NASA should be working on the basic technology needed to dramatically lower the barriers to space. This means high-strength structures (buckytubes?), high-temperature materials, manufacturing techniques, propulsion, etc.
For too long, NASA has convinced the US taxpayers that they ought to have a monopoly on space. Time for them to become the enablers instead of the sole operators.
I think this is very sad. Having very cheap missions that fail is not a good thing, but it's not an inherently bad thing either. Let's say you can 200 missions with a 50% success rate, or 100 missions with a 95% success rate. Which is better? The former will still give you more successful missions. Unfortunately, it is politically impossible for NASA -- politicians seem fundamentally incapable of distinguish between robotic and manned missions, it seems (for manned missions, "once you put a person on the spaceship, the primary mission of that spaceship becomes the safety of the human", and a high accident rate is intolerable.)
Pity.