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Space Tourist Discusses His Vacation
mooneyguy writes: "In a report on cnn.com, the world's first paying space tourist is now saying that astronauts and cosmonauts spent too much time on mundane tasks and too little time on real research. Dennis Tito said, "Most science in space is being conducted by unmanned vehicles. In my view, there is limited amount of science that takes place on the international space station..." It reads as a rather sweeping condemnation of human presence in space, based on a very brief glimpse of life on a structure still under construction. Oh yeah, he's still publically feuding with NASA, too."
While he has a point, coming from him such a complaint is really quite hypocritical. His presence aboard the space station most certainly did not help the cosmonauts and astronauts to focus on scientific experiments. Instead, by coming there as a tourist he forced them to devote time to the very mundane task of babysitting.
In fact his pretentiousness is rather astonishing. In the article he says that he saved them six hours of work by serving meals. Doesn't he realize that if he were not up there, "listening to opera music and taking pictures out the window," there would have been room for an additional cosmonaut, who could have done dozens of hours of work himself?
It may even be that he is trying to justify space tourism by saying that scientific research is better conducted by unmanned missions, and so manned missions should be used for tourism. Whether or not he means to imply this, he overlooks the important fact that the physiological study of humans in zero gravity is itself an important experiment. When John Glenn became a semi-tourist, he, like many other astronauts, was used as a subject in these studies. Tito was not.
As many others have remarked, the space station is still in its early stages of construction. There are many sponsored experiments being prepared but NASA is waiting until more of the station is complete before shipping them with a mission specialist.
And god forbid they should be researching something that might offend some religious group, or anything that made the general public uncomfortable. Corporate money would dry up fast, and the corporate money whores in charge would have to get those pesky scientists back in line.
Goldin is still in power because everyone that was offered the job has turned it down. He's a bitch and a kiss up. Bush NEEDS to get rid of him for the vitality of the space agency. I fear if Goldin is retained through another presidency all we will see are more cutbacks and NASA's mission dwindling to nothingness. He has NO vision and couldn't manage a convenient store much less NASA. We watch every week as useful programs are cancelled to redirect funds to the ISS when in the end there's not even enough people on it to do experiments! What the hell is the point?
I see all these postings about how Tito's just some old rich fart who's sooo selfish and whining because Nasa wouldn't put him up there.
Tell me, if you had the money to burn, would you go up there?
I sure as hell would. Maybe Tito's not accurate. Maybe he's barking up the wrong tree into what the problems are.
But Nasa needs to get it's act together. Look at how old our freakin' shuttles are. When was the last time we did something really impressive, like land a man on the moon?
Spacestations aren't impressive anymore. Mir's been there and done that, well over it's life expectency, even through a few major problems (fires, the one time whatever it was hit the one module, drunken cosmonauts hiding the Smirnoff from the next batch of crew, etc.)
Why do we even have a space station up there now? It's not like it's going to be a launching platform for missions that are farther out.
What happened to Mars, 2005? Or did that become Mars, 2010. Or 15. Or never?
I hope more countries start space programs. Then, maybe our own would get the picture that, maybe, just maybe, we should be doing something worthwhile in space.
Frankly, I think putting a rich old geezer in space for a few days vacation was the most worthwhile thing we've done in a long time.
tito is missing the big picture, as he looks only at the experiemnts going on inside the station. however, if he had the vantage point from afar he would realize that the whole station is an experiment, and as such all those 'mundane tasks' are not so typical. the station is an experiment in international cooperation that has never been tried before on such an astronomical scale (no pun intended). even living and working in space is still an experiment. human exploraiton of space is not even fifty years old and it would be foolish otherwise to think that we know all that there is to know about just being there. there is a wonderful scientific experiment going on up there and it involves the whole station and the thousands of people making it possible. this experiment is more pertanent than any of that two days worth of science that tito claims the astronaut had told him she had performed. bieng a businessman, tito woudl naturally miss what is most relevant, and that is humanity itself...and what it means just to have the station up there. the space station is an experiment in life and an exploration of humanity, not just a satelite laboratory...
The first space tourist was, IMO, John Glenn, the most recent time he went up.
The people that foot the bill for Glenn's vacation in space were the American people.
You may remember at the time, he supposedly was going to study the "effects of aging in space." Did anyone buy this? Does anyone have ANY idea what kinds of rigerous tests were done on Mr. Glenn, or why this powerful Senator (who had been lobbying NASA for years for a last ride) was the most qualified "old guy" in the United States for these important experiments?
In case you think this is partisan-- I'm a lifelong Democrat, but if Glenns' trip was any kind of science, it was the science of PR for NASA. I said as much at the time, and even some NASA PR guy on one of the CNN chats kinda admitted it.
In short, considering a powerful Senator could get himself launched into space for no reason-- and even get the taxpayers to foot the bill-- NASA has no right to get on Tito's case.
Hahaha, not to mention major experiments have been cancelled to fund cost overruns on building the station. Once they finally DO complete the station there's not going to be much to do on it either except watch astronauts do somersaults. With the cutbacks there's not enough power for the experiments, not enough habitat space for more astronauts, and generally no purpose to completing this atrocity. We should have spent the $100 billion on something else like going to the moon. At least that would attract attention rather than watching astronauts do what they've been doing for decades.. orbitting the earth endlessly. BORING.
"We'd really like the astronauts to cap off this experiment by enjoying a cool refreshing Budweiser while saying the line 'Houston, this Bud's for you!'
The ISS is research into how to construct massive modular constructs in low gravity.
I know thats hard for alot of people to understand, but thats what the ISS is, it's a test bed for future construction and components that will be used later on. If someday we wanted to send men to Mars, or large unmanned probes to the outer planets or nearby solar systems, there needs to be background knowledge of how to build these things in orbit.
(Yea, I know I said nearby solar systems and I know how long it'll take for probes to get there, but it is a recently stated "vision" of NASA that in the near future we will send probes to the nearby stars.)
Do you think the first Intel CPU fabs were cheap and easy to build? Do you think they were constructed on time and on budget? The IIS is like any new contruction, over budget and over time.
Yes, probes are cheaper, but there is something about having a human there...that can't be equaled by a mechanical probe.
As for Tito, he sounds like a typical rich SOB that didn't get the treatment he wanted on his vacation.
I'll play opera music and let him take pictures out my window and let him do the dishes at my place for alot less than 20 million dollars.
Or, just as likely, an obscure religious group: i.e. the Raelians...
Goldin isn't neccesarily averse to selling rides-- it's just that his price would probably be about 60 million dollars-- whether this is more economically justifiable is beyond me. Of course, his largish price tag would be undercut by the Russians, who operate under different economic constraints.
Goldin has also been, strangely supportive of James Cameron, obstensibly because the director is not particularly pushy about a launch date. Of course, it is likely that Cameron will direct/produce a film stemming from his experience, both enhancing the reputation of NASA, and encouraging the profitable commercialization of space.
Pasting "billboards" on the space station isn't neccesarily crass-- after all, ceratin functional components already bear the logos of their manufacturer, but it is rather unimaginative. It promotes the idea of space as an exotic tourist destination, rather than as a a research and development center. Nasa has a website dedicated to commercialization.
Because without the CRV (Is it not officially canceled yet? Either way, don't hold your breath waiting to see one in orbit.) they'll be using two docked Soyuz capsules as the escape craft, and those hold 3 a piece.
Perhaps as more modules are added to the station they won't really need instant evacuation capability for every astronaut... but can you imagine the PR nightmare if something did happen? Or the morale torpedo of deciding before each crew exchange who would be the one to "go down with the ship"?
but in fact, Tito is an expert in the field. He's an ex-Nasa engineer.
But we already have over a decade of information on zero-g construction and living in space. Real practical information too. Of course, that would mean NASA would have to acknolwedge the contributions of Russia/the Soviet Union to spaceflight.
And shuttles are by far the most expensive way to move cargo/materials into orbit.
If a meteor hit or a fuel tank ruptured, you can bet his training would be the most useless thing in the world as his charred corpse along with the fragmented bodies of his fellow ISS compatriots slowly drifted in space.
And the CRV won't happen. Who the heck wants to spend billions of dollars developing the dang thing when the Russions already have something with the same exact functionality designed and in production. Yeah, so the Soyuz can't hold as many people, just bolt another Soyuz onto the ISS.
You know, that $1.3 trillion would have bought a whole hell of a lot of Russian involvment. How bout those SOBs in Congress send everyone a questionaire where we get to determine how we want a percentage of our taxes spent.
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
Fact is, we'll find ANY reason to keep people in space. Yes, there is valuable research going on in ISS, but that's just their day job.
I think, deep down, we all know that the real reason that we have astronauts and cosmonauts in space is to keep manned spaceflight alive.
Really. Politics and economics need a reason for us to be up there. But those are fallacious mechanisms we place on ourselves. we want people in the far reaches, wherever that might be. It makes us feel comfortable as a species - being able to do what the other beasts can not. That's really what this is all about.
I for one think that Tito's vacation was a very necessary distraction from the notion of science in space. We'd all speculated and maybe even fantacized of a vacation in space. Tito did what needed to be done. He demonstrated that there is tangible market demand for space tourism.
Think back to the 50's if you can (lord knows I can't. Correct me if I'm wrong). Air travel, especially on a jet, was for the rich. Look at the newsreels. How many yokels do you see? Thought so. But over the years, it became accessible to the common man. I can book a flight from San Francisco to LA for $40. You can't even take a family of 4 to a movie for that much nowadays.
So it will be with space. the market for space tourism and travel will increase. As such, spacecraft will be mass produced, and prices will be cheaper. Corporations, seeking more bang for the buck, will drive prices down even cheaper.
And as such, the price of research will drop. Dennis tito might have cost us a week of research, but he may have saved us billions in research costs.
The inability to recognize this long term trend is a black eye for NASA. They are smart people, they should have seen how this would further their cause. Instead, they chose to take it personally, and for that, they get negative brownie points in this voter's book.
NASA has gotten so entrenched in it's scientific mission as a survival strategy that it has forgotten why we even started a space program: People look up at night and know that the universe has more to offer than this planet, and they want to be part of it. If they grasp and nourish that simple fact, there's no telling the scale by which humanity can progress.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
So the only way for slashdot weenies not to whine and cry and bitch is for people to make degrogotory statements about Microsoft/Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer? If Tito would have said "NASA sure does give their astronauts the monkey jobs up on the ISS, oh yeah Linux rules!" everyone here would be applauding him. Everyone is defending NASA on the grounds that the ISS isn't finished or that he has a grduge. You've missed the point. Tito is 100% correct. We spend 10,000 dollars a pound to send people into space (on the shuttle, and yes I realize a Titan or Atlas rocket is cheaper, fuck you) and have them press buttons and practice their radio lingo. The question I haven't seen posed or answered is why do we do that.
What was the point of the Gemini project? To learn how to operate in space because we were heading to the moon. The Gemini astronauts learned how to dock with stuff and live for a couple days in a space capsule. They collected enough information to allow the Apollo engineers to devise a program that would get a couple of guys from sea level on Earth to the Sea of Tranquility on the moon. After Apollo everyone figured we'd be living on the moon by now with plans to head to Mars. Then Skylab ended up crashing into Australia and then almost a decade later Challenger turned into a fireball. A space platform where we're supposed to learn to live in space and a method for getting us into space cheaply both end up back on Earth. NASA has had to start all over.
Freedom (the original ISS idea without the international aspect) was supposed to be our Mars/Moon testbed. It would be coupled with a shuttle replacement and be a nice local platform to attach experiment modules to before we started any harcore progra mto get o Mars. Then for political reasons NASA has to get buddy buddy with the rest of the space faring community and join in the the ISS. Now most of our efforts human exploration efforts are being retarded because the ISS is costing way too much fucking money and too many aspects of it are being controlled by outside interests.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I also find it interesting that the Russians put him up there cheaper and easier than NASA could have, in fact their whole space program seems more money efficient. I think the problem NASA has at the moment, is that is used to having too much money, and have learnt mostly just how to burn money.
I predict that serious commercial colonisation of space will take place mainly with Russian technology, as they seem to manage budgets better and have more incentive to make their program work with commercial interests.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
from a day trip to the Costa del Sol....
And what I thought was 'Damn.. there's a lot of Ferarri's here!'........... and Porsche's like they were volkswagens....
The restaurant was terrible. Took an hour to take our order, and my Paille was overcooked, and IMHO not worth the price. No more hanging out in Marbella for me.
The recent cancellation (oh, they say it's just on hold, but it's cancelled) of the X-38 derived CRV...
It's actually the recent cancellation of the habitation module that reduces crew size from 7 to 3, but the end result is the same.
In Goldin's April congressional testimony he was asked how NASA could do any science on the space station if the crew was reduced to 3 and it took 2.5 people full time to just maintain the thing. His response was: "That is the challenge before us".
Goldin gets a paycheck from NASA, but he works at the pleasure of the president. He does not look out for NASA's or the public's best interest. In his own words, "My job is to promote the policies of the administration, not defend them". I'm not sure that there is any "NASA Leadership" with the vision to do what is right.
One of the main purposes of this space station is to learn how to do all those "mudane tasks", and how to perform all "the daunting logistics of keeping numerous humans in space". The only way to learn how to do this is by doing it. Yeah, that's not science, it's boring engineering, but we've had the science to do this for a long time. It's long past time to reduce it to engineering. Once we learn how to live and work in space on a larger scale, we'll be able to do more science.
Yeah, it'd be better if the CRV, SSTO, and other things hadn't been proxmired out of the budget.
I suspect Tito is probably in more or less agreement with this, but I wouldn't be surprised if he finds the chance to tweak NASAs nose difficult to resist, after the full-blown tantrum worthy of a spoiled 2-year-old NASA management pitched about his trip. It's going to take NASA a while to overcome the PR hit they've taken from that -- assuming they ever figure out that they have taken a PR hit from their tantrum, and take steps to overcome it. Evidence that they have a clue is yet to become evident.
The head of NASA called you personally to discuss this, did he? Tell me, do the American's always spend their time watching the Russian crew, or do they ever actually do any work up there?
If the NASA guys needed to have meals served to them by Tito, it sounds as if they were the ones being baby-sitted. You'd have thought that with the millions of tax dollars that go into training these guys that they would have learned where the pantry is.
NASA are lying. Before the launch they were totally hostile to Tito going up, and now they pretend they were bending over backwards to support him (and pissing away all our tax dollars in the process). Way to go, NASA - if you wanted good PR and think the public is happy with you wasting their money, then you should have pocketed the $20M and had Tito as YOUR guest, not the Russian's.
The Russian's are already doing this. Aside from Tito, they did a Pizza Hut ad on the ISS that is about to air.
:-)
Considering the Phallic shape of a rocker, I'd like to see a 40' high Trojan ad on the outside
Tito broke what rules? The Russian's are a partner in the SS, paying their own way, and it's up to them if they want to send scientists, tourists or monkeys. Kudos to the Russians for gaining some great PR, and helping fund their own program. Too bad that at $600M per launch for the Shuttle, that NASA were *UNABLE* to make money on taking Tito - for them it would have been a huge loss. NASA should concentrate on doing things efficiently and not wasting our money before they think they have any credibility in critisizing the way the Russians choose to do things.
tourists were on the nuclear (sounds scary doesn't it;) submarine USS Greenville, tourists were on the nuclear (sounds scary doesn't it;) USS Abe Lincoln during ORSE (a naval nuclear program audit, drills are run, paperwork is examined, ...)
Being in space is probably a lot like being in the Navy underway ... you do your job, eat, go to sleep, ... as Tito said "An adult doesn't need months of training to be told 'Don't push that button'
BTW, NASA should get a clue and stop going for the flyboys as astronauts ... former submarine crew members are better qualified than any flier.
Maintain a questioning attitude
I believe Juanita
BTW, where is the ANALYSIS of the pictures? Where are the CONCLUSIONS?
Just collecting data is not science. You have got to analyze the data and draw conclusions. Otherwise, every tourist to the Grand Canyon is doing geological science (they took pictures ;-).
Maintain a questioning attitude
I believe Juanita
Whatever your opinion on the guy, I think it would be informative if Slashdot tried to interview him.
Of course there's still a limited amount of science on the International Space Station. It's not complete yet!
It's an interesting read, though. To be fair, he actually makes a few pretty good points.
Yikes! Did you catch that picture of Tito that went with the story? Now that gravity can work its ravages on him again, he looks twenty years older than he did floating around that space station!
There's the real killer app for the space program. Have rich, old geezers pay to fly in space as orbital servants (Tito said he served meals for the crew!) while trying to extend their own lives by escaping gravity.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
To be fair, he actually makes a few pretty good points.
To quote an above posting, the article was rather bland and could have been written up by someone who didn't even ask Dennis questions, being that only 3 or 4 sentences were quoting him.
Now for my rants on the redundancies, most of the work is pre-determined for most astronauts before they go to space, so on most missions such as the one to attach an arm to the shuttle, it should be common sense to all that nothing more needs to be done, or is going to be done, once their initial tasks are complete.
Placing man on the space station is a costly job for NASA, and it's surprising no one raises a stinker about how much of it is actually overkill. NASA should stop beating around the bush, it seems one of the main reasons they likely didn't want Tito up there is because they kno(e)w he would raise questions about the lack of actual science NASA is doing. Meaning if he showed them up, on how much wasteless money they're spending, they'd likely go through budget cuts or something.
Personally I'm glad he went through the Russians since it boosts their economy when needed. Jealousy is a bitch and NASA it seems is nothing more than a jealous bunch of kids angered by the facts that they can't be the sole space travelers.
So what do you do when you can get away with it? Simple send an astronaut to the moon at the rate of a couple million, ask for more money and pocket it. If the government is too lack to notice the overblown amount of money being budgeted for these programs then that's their problem, however I wish they'd find a way to halt from using my tax dollars on such bullshit.
Want Root?
You're right, submariners make a LOT more sense. They're already accomodated to living in tight quarters with other people and having very limited space for months on end. In addition their disaster training is somewhat similar to what the astronauts go through. Leak = very bad news.
Good point.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
-Dennis Tito
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Every second the ISS is manned is research on the long-term effects of exposure to weightlessness and radiation on human subjects.
I'd say this is pretty damned valuable if you expect someone to spend 600 days hurling through space in a tin can under the same conditions. Some of the most valuable research on the station is conducted on its inhabitants, not by them.
Tito is an armchair astronaut at best -- five days in space no more qualifies him to judge the space program than weekend touch football qualifies the average schmuck to coach an NFL team. For being an ex-rocket scientist he seems rather dense.
Treasure your snapshots, Dennis, and bore your friends with your home movies. I am sorry you did not get an "I went to the ISS and all I got was this crappy t-shirt" shirt, but the final design is still under negotiation between Energia, ESA, and NASA for future tourist missions, and the astronauts have not finished rehearsing their musical floorshow. This is the price you pay for being first.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
It's sad that there are so many people who believe this line NASA fed them. Dan Goldin threw tantrums about Tito and decided to sour the whole thing as much as possible when it became clear the Russians wouldn't let him dictate terms. Tito spent the whole time in the Russian segment of the station. He had two shepherd with him (the crew that launched him). The only alternative suggestion is that NASA is so incompetent it thinks that it needs 5 people to watch one person.
He didn't say it was boring. Too bad you couldn't be bothered to read the article.
His comments are that people aren't doing the research that Dan Goldin promised they would be doing. The reason? Because NASA has decided to cut funding to the CRV that would allow 7 people (enough to do science) to live on the station.
Three humans in a tin can in orbit is NOT the route to great science. Dan Goldin chose not to grow a backbone and demand something better then what we have now. As NASA administrator, it was his responsibillity to say 'look, if we are going to do this station, we need to do it right.' Instead, he let every budget cut come without any struggle. In fact, he actually THANKED congress for some of the budget cuts, suggesting that they would make NASA stronger.
Working backwards chronologically, these are some of the big mistakes made:
1. Goldin's public tantrums about Tito. He needs to do anything he can to attract US public support for space, even if it means whoring himself to celebrity. He's not a congressman who can operate on principle, he has a job: make space work.
2. The recent cancellation (oh, they say it's just on hold, but it's cancelled) of the X-38 derived CRV. Without this, there can never be more then 3 permanent crew on the station. WITH it, the crew increases to 7. 3 crew is just about what it takes to maintain the station. If there were 7, you could maintain the station AND do science.
3. Deleting the free-flying science module. You cannot do precision zero-g experiments on a rattling station that has to support a group of breathing, moving astro/cosmo-nauts. You need to be able to deploy a science platform and retrieve it as needed.
4. Not using the Russians enough. No matter how often clueless people rant about how inept the Russians are, the numbers are clear: They have cheaper, more reliable boosters with faster turn around times. We need to utilize this to its fullest, and if that means using some hard cash once in a while, so be it. Our relations are hamstrung by the need to 'barter' for everything.
5. The failure to push for developing our own heavy lift infrastructure. Cancelling the OMV and the Shuttle-C removed our ability to fly a true world class station.
These are not the sort of things that are only visible in 20/20 hindsight. This is all well known in the space community, and NASA leadership has shown an extraordinary skill for disregarding the obviously correct path at times.
after tito comes back from the space station the tv asks him a following question in the interview:
what russian words dir you learn up there?
da, nyet, uberi svoi ruki nahuj otsuda*
*yes, no, get your damn hands off it
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Actually... you would survive long enough to make it to the pod I imagine. Even if all the air is lost in the area you are in, you have at least until your body has depleted its oxygen enough that you pass out - kind of like being stuck under water - except without the pressure.
Probably a good 60 to 120 seconds before you pass out. COurse at that point you are kind of at the mercy of whoever may still be alive and able to help you.
As for tito....
kind of makes me picture a CEO visiting the construction site where their new office building is still being built. Climbing up girders to the 10th floor, pointing at an area that will someday be a conference room and asking a worker "so how many meetings have they had in there since this building started"
Yes its an absurd scene. However, its no more absurd than this tito guy crisitcizing the research being done on the incomplete space station.
Though, I doubt he is a dumb man. I bet he is shrewd. Maybe its the cynic in me but, I have a feeling he has something planned. Perhaps he has just bought himself some media attention with this stunt for something else?
Then again, maybe he just needed attention.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
A former NASA rocket scientist, Tito tagged along with two cosmonauts who delivered a fresh Soyuz capsule to space station Alpha. Besides listening to opera music and taking pictures out the window, Tito volunteered to serve meals to his crewmates.
The face of citizen explorer Dennis Tito looms over his son Brad as the younger poses a question at a conference in Atlanta
"That relieved them of about six hours of mundane work they would have done themselves," he said.
The solution is obvious: NASA needs to send more tourists up to space relieve to astronauts of their mundane tasks, so that the astronauts can spend more time doing science.
Most of those "routine duties" are in place to keep the astronauts/cosmonauts alive. They should have left him up there.
-Legion
No black pillars. Probably, we've never been in a position to check. Haven't even been back for a couple of decades.
No Pan-Am shuttle. Well, no Pan-Am.
A very underfunded, undermanned space station. No big wheel.
NASA's attempting to go to... earth.
Somebody's going to space, but it damned sure won't be the Unite Staes of America. Probably better that way.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
Big deal. So the guy was rich enough to fly into space. That doesn't make him an expert on all space-related matters. He should be seen for what he is, a rich arsehole who's upset that NASA wouldn't kowtow to his selfish quest to go into space.
/sarcasm
Well, he would basically be right. You see; Bill Gates is rich, and he got rich by selling software. I'm sure he has something interesting to say on the subject of producing commercial software.
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"Why dont you go ahead and think about the whole situation a little bit more. It amazes me when people like you write in... you just seem to be mindless at best. Tito? The guys a doof."
A doof that just happens to be a former NASA rocket scientist. Maybe you should be doing a little bit more thinking before you go condemning someone you know little to nothing about.
Compare the budgest of the ISS and the Mars program and tell me which one returns more interesting science (not fair for now since the station is still not complete, but the experiments they've got lined up are trivial when you compare them with the other things NASA is doing. Well, I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm right no NASA insider is going to say this on the record. So it is nice to see an intelligent outsider who seems genuinely concerned with the fate of research get so close to the actual work of NASA and then have the spine to say they are screwing up.
Not relevant. Most science on Earth is also conducted by unmanned machines. A lot of them are called computers
The purpose of human space travel is to Go Somewhere Else, not do research.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Exactly.
http://www.bootyproject.org
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
"I'd gladly see Pizza Hut ads on all our rockets if it PAID FOR MORE MISSIONS. It's not like the scientific results are tainted by commerical money."
...yet.
http://www.bootyproject.org
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
NASA is alternately brilliant and incompetent. They can do great stuff, like say a space station... but then their charter is written so that they may not make a profit.
I'd gladly see Pizza Hut ads on all our rockets if it PAID FOR MORE MISSIONS. It's not like the scientific results are tainted by commerical money.
Frankly I think NASA needs to start whoring itself out. I'd love to see a tourist on the station all the time... at $20M a pop it would pay for another Mars trip, or something... Film Coke ads in there, anything. Film an episode of Friends in there. Make money, become visible to the public, become relevant, even if it's in a "silly" commercial way.
While Tito was happily flying and floating in his unquestionably trendy and snobby vacation resort, NASA ordered other astronauts to reschedule planned experiments and research so that they could take care of Tito and make sure his journey was a complete success (read: NASA BUDGET-PR). This statement he's made is like a tourist on the costa del sol saying "damn there's a lot of hotels here". It's totally fucked up and he need to get his head checked for sure. Space research is important not just because of the research up there, but because of the innovations on earth they bring, regardless whether even the tiniest bit of craft was launched or not.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And for one thing, tourists are certainly not those you would spend a lot of resources launching.
So, while Tito is probably correct, he shouldn't have been there.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
...and now for the on-topic bit...
Who's this guy think he is anyways? He appears to be some sort of Megalomaniac. First of all he pays all this money to go into space once, probably lacking adequate trainging and a technical background. Then he comes back as some sort of Scientific Expert about research in 0 G??
Bringing irony to the Slash-masses
Not corrupt, but distracted.
Most marketable applications of science are based on basic research that was carried out something like ten years earlier. Now, if the scientists have to start looking for a quick buck, for instance in order to fund all their research, they'll drop producing new information and hash old articles instead. Sure, that's not a short term problem but in the long run the lack of basic research will also kill application of science.
A great example of this is what happened to the antibiotics research. For a long time there was no commercial incentive to go on looking for better antibacterial drugs and the basic research was basically killed. Now people are dying of antibiotic resistant bacteria and drug companies can't develop new drugs because the information just isn't there.
Yeah, likes he's and expert on space travel now! I hope he knows Nasa cancelled all experiments for that week so the Austronauts could baby sit him.
Burn Hollywood Burn
I am sure most things are in baggies and you just toss it into the "nuker," ... but who knows...
Exactly. In all books about space flight that I've read meals they eat are described as precooked and ready to eat. So - it's just a bag to put into an oven (if you want it hot) or eat right away. No bread to slice, no potatoes to cook etc. 6 hours is quite long if you take that into account.
But leaving this particular example aside - if we are sending people somewhere to perform a task (here: space, scientific research) and some "mundane tasks" are seriously in their way - then something should be done about it, don't you think?
Since all space missions so far have been financed by a state (be it US or Russia or whatever) the astronauts are just state office workers. If everything is financed by the state (so the money is anonymous and no one would really ask how it was spent) and controlled by huge administration (the way NASA runs space flight) then there is no push for performance or real results. That's why no one thought that for example it might be a good idea to do something about just serving meals - 6 hours to prepare them is quite a time, even in space.
I think Tito's observations are very interesting, because he is really the first man in space who can openly talk about what he saw - he paid for his ticket, he has no obligations whatsoever towards a "space agency" for sending him there.
Well lets see, there are currently three residents on the ISS, and it is designed to have a crew of seven three of those being used to run the station. And oh thats right, only one of the science modules is currently on the station. So it no blinkin wonder. But hey everybody wants to be the master of something, and he simply chose to be master of the obvious.
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thraktuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
Which is why most scientist would prefer unmanned space missions for scientific experiments. They are much cheaper, because they don't suffer from the huge overhead of life support and enhanced security concerns, and they allow much more precise measurements, because there are less disturbing factors (air, movements, temperature and humidity fluctuations).
The only scientific experiments for which manned missions are good are experiments with human beings themself (e.g. life support in space, or whatever). Everything else is just politics.
This is Ridiculous. Where does this guy get off telling others how to do their job?
I think our space program has a pretty good safety record thus far....(at least where PEOPLE are concerned)....and that "mundane" tasks are needed.
Imagine If Bill Gates Watched you code and compile for a few days and had the nerve to tell you that you spent too much time on mundane and boring things like security and stability, and not enough time on research and GUI development....
in this guy's mind, his space trip should have been like Star Trek.....
I also have to wonder how much of this is in retaliation to NASA for not their protest....
"Any responsible adult doesn't need months of NASA training not to push the wrong button. That's absurd," said Tito, who spent almost one year preparing for the trip with his Russian crewmates. "I was definitely over-trained for this mission."
That's because *nothing went wrong*. If there was an meteor hit, or an oxygen valve broke, or a fuel tank ruptured, or a million other things that could go wrong, you can bet his training would be useful.
Tito said he asked one of the residents how much research she had conducted since arriving at the space station months ago.
"'About two days,' was the answer," Tito told participants at a CNN World Report conference in Atlanta on Tuesday.
Of course. A) the damn thing's still under construction, and B) it's established that three crew members are needed to maintain the thing, that's why the final crew manifest will be seven.
And the CRV will happen, the Europeans are too heavily involved for it to just fall by the waysite due to US budget restrictions:
Yes, there are numerous things that NASA does wrong, and yes, there's a lot of space science that unmanned probes can do, but it's hard to learn about life sciences and what's it really like living in space without having people up there. And that's difficult, dangerous, and expensive.
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=353
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
His comments are that people aren't doing the research that Dan Goldin promised they would be doing. The reason? Because NASA has decided to cut funding to the CRV that would allow 7 people (enough to do science) to live on the station.
Er, the CRV wouldn't be ready in 3 or 4 years, anyway, so I'm not sure what your point is. No one was expecting to do much research at this stage of construction. (Except, apparently, Tito.)
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
Tito complaining that space was boring is like someone paying millions of dollars to go to the Playboy Mansion only to find Hef sitting in an old Barcalounger drinking beer and watching TV.
Want Linux games? HERE.
But come the early - mid 70's and the money dries up. The remaining Apollo rockets were turned into lawn ornaments and the shuttle program was stretched out. The space station became Skylab. Mars? Forget it.
When the shuttle finally flew, it had no mission and it turned out to be a lot more expensive to launch than expected.
Eventually we get to SDI and the closing days of the Cold War. Finally a reason to build space station Freedom That will keep the commies from taking over low earth orbit. Toss in some more money problems and redesigns and, oops, down comes the wall and the cold war is over. Name change to International Space Station. Invite other countries to participate. Eventually it starts to get built.
OK, Now the "Mars mission supply" shuttle is used to build the international "stop the commies" space station which is used by the Russians as a hotel for "filthy capitalist running dogs" to raise the money to pay their rocket people so they don't go and work for Sadam & company.
Now what was that about doing science in space?
First off, althought this really isn't the place for this discussion, I realize this disucssion is more important than the place and time it takes place. That, and the fact that I wanted to reply to a few parts of this thread are why I didn't mod it down.t m) ,or ask your doctor.
So then:
Human Immunodeficiency Virus does cause AIDS (see centers for disease control http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pubs/cause.htm ), but there are treatments which can delay the development of HIV into AIDS for a long time, if not indefinitely. However, you have to know you have HIV in order to get the treatments, which is why you HAVE to tell anybody you've had sexual (or other potentially transmissive) contact with, ESPECIALLY your bf. No matter how painful it may seem at the time, it's infinitely better than not telling them. If you care about any of the people you may have put at risk, you'll tell them immeadiately. One of them gave it to you, and may be continuing to spread it without knowing.
I feel like I'm all alone here and I just don't know what to do
You're not. There are plenty of ways to get information and support. Nationial institutes of health might be a good place to start (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/publications/help/hiv.h
Maybe I would be better off just saving myself all the suffering that is coming... Never. There's always a better option. Treatments can help you live _many years_. Many people live full and productive lives with HIV. Talk to someone and get help.
look at the internet. People couldn't get access to it until people started making money from it. Now alot of the internet is fucked up, but the good parts are still there, and its cheap to get online. The idea that science should be untainted by capitalism is fucked up. Its not like scientists will become corrupt money whores if they get the chance.
God spoke to me
Im glad we get an outsiders opnion on whats realy going on. I mean, if you do to buy something, do you want the sales pitch? or the truth? its nice to know whats actualy done with some of your tax money
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Find out about spacecraft being designed to accommodate space tourists.
Is it just me, or do the pictures of Tito (especially this one: http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/06/01/tito.repo rt/vert.tito.son.jpg) look a lot like Lex Luthor? Now I'm beginning to wonder what exactly he was doing up there... :) heh
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Anyone who has $20 million to spend on a week long vacation would think that anything short of table top fusion in zero gravity is dull. I'd wanna see all sorts of cool shit for $20 million. He's just bitter.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Bah, humans weren't meant to be in space for science... they were meant to build multibillion-dollar overbudget space stations to serve as hotels for millionaire space tourists!
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Mmm... delicious white marbles...
Tito is right, there is little work being done on the ISS, becuase there is not much of anything we can learn in space any more. NASA is wasting our money on useless things.
On a better note, I certainly like what the ISS is doing for our realtions with Russia.