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Goldin to Retire from NASA
nervesmiffs writes: "Lots of people hated him. I believe he has been one of the truly
great leaders of our time. He has completely turned NASA around
during his 10 year tenure. Here's the retirement story." So if you were NASA's next director, what would you do with the agency? Men on Mars? Probes on Europa? Trans-warp drives?
I would send people to Mars.
This really needs to be the next goal.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
I know this is flame, but do we really need to spend 5% of the federal budget on the space shuttle?
Someone you trust is one of us.
I wouldn't do anything.
Seriously, I would enjoy my government provided salary and hoped that nobody realizes this country is completely wasting so much money on NASA.
Given the current administrations seeming hatred of all things research or science oriented, I think the better question is whether the next director will choose between Creative Ways to Kill Afghani's from Space (Operation CWKAS), or Creative Ways to Kill Iraqi's from Space (Operation CWKIS) ...
So if you were NASA's next director, what would you do with the agency?
Why, would they hire me?
Let's crawl before we walk and get warp working first!
-Peter
lets fix all our social problems with the moon.
perhaps we can give israel half of the moon, and the palestinians the other half.
then no more land disputes.
plus, if they wanted to terrorize the earth, we'd seem them coming from over 100,000 miles away.
heh
--donabal
Safety First Day?
CowboyNeal!
Oh, this isn't a vote?
You can laugh without eating a sandwhich, but you can do both if bring one.
So if you were NASA's next director, what would you do with the agency? Men on Mars? Probes on Europa? Trans-warp drives?
Um... detox gel.
I'd get to know the Borg, they have some mighty FINE looking humans, once you take out all that tubing and crap outta their hands and stuff.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
if i were director, i'd go to completely unmanned missions. i know it would kill me in the popularity polls, but it would be a huge boon for budgets AND science.
Great... next thing you know, NASA will be losing vehicles in the Gamma Quadrant, and then who knows what'll happen to their funding.
_sig_ is away
In the last 10 years the focus of the country (the U.S. I mean) has changed to the point where his style and policies were REQUIRED for NASA to survive and progress. I personally praise him.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Were I offered the job, the overriding priority would be manned missions to Mars, starting with exploration, and ending with colonization.
No question about it.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Nope, not me, I must be someone else...
NASA could be really profitable. If I were the next director I'd increase profits through the roof, then I'd have the funding to do everything else at the same time, instead of pursuing one thing or another.
I might even be able to afford one of those new optical motherboards!!
Once you have the budget in place everything else will also fall into place...
Just because I AM paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get me.
How about the all-powerful Infinite Improbability Drive!
well never do it on mars..
i've said it before but...
[RANT]
we need a moon base. in the words of hienlein (I think), "once you are on the moon, you are halfway to anywhere"
I was born in 1967, by the time I was in kindergarten, we had been to the moon several times. by the time I was 10, we had driven dune buggies on the moon. now, 23 years later, we have sat around with our thumbs you know where, and we think Skylab++ is an amazing achievement, while we underfund or dont even try to fund the cool stuff which could lead to a truly spacefaring humanity.
look at the launchers that have been cancelled or delayed just in the last 5 years:
delta clipper (dc-x) (cancelled)
x-33 (delayed)
rotary rocket (died for lack of funding)
kistler k-1 (delayed - please don't kill it)
Beal BA-2 (killed by a concerted effort by 2 governments and enviro-weenies)
blackhorse (rocketplane) (lack of funding)
kellyspace (lack of funding)
most of these programs required no more than $100M to survive, but couldn't get even that, at a time when our gov't spends that much every day dropping bombs on empty "terrorist training camps".
are you pissed yet? you should be living on the moon by now.
[/RANT]
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
I love space, I love the shuttle, but these days it seems hardly the kind of thing we should all be spending ooodles of cash on, when there's so much trouble brewing here on earth. Franky, this should fall on the backburner for a little while.
What I would like to see is a real 'time capsule' on the moon with a permanent record of human history (up until now and ways of updating it every 10 years or so) and a detailed description of the human genome with samples.
This way if we ever nuke/shoot/infect/choke everyone on Earth, we'll be garunteed a lasting reminder of the human race for future earthlings and/or alien visitors.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
A artfull blending of MST3K, hot grits, a certain young actress, and space trip to the Beowulf Cluster.
It would all be very hush-hush of course...
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Probes on Europa?
Probes on Uranus! Probes on Uranus!
Manned exploration is costly, but necessary; to get the roadwork done before we put people up there, we need more cheap probes. $1 to $10 million variety each, so that if we lose one a la the Mars Polar Lander and Climate Orbiters, it's not a show-stopper.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
If I were placed in charge of NASA right now, not only would I likely be rich, but happy as well. I would start newer, more useful projects such as finding some legitimate use for what we already have, air, sea, and land spaces. I would start difficult projects just to push along technology and to spark the industry into a new age of prosperity. As big of an organization NASA is, they still insist on spending billions on finding one microbe on Mars, when we could spend billions to make life better in every way.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Then, once we have mastered the technology over there and removed the terrorist over here, we can build anotehr one on Earth.
We've been there already, why not go back. We send people out in space stations all the time (relatively), so why not start building a station on the moon. At least we wouldn't have to worry about keeping it in orbit. Maybe sometime in the near future it oculd be liviable, and we could start making plans to actually develop the moon for habitation.
-Space for rent
If you're interested in the nuts and bolts of NASA, you may want to check out the pseudo-fictional (historical fiction, real events, mostly real people, some author elaboration) book Space by James A. Meichner. It's a long read, but well worth it.
The article asks where the space program in the States should go next... perhaps a good way to start is to look at the past. Where have we gone seriously wrong, and what have we done right? What can we do better in this century is the real question, I suppose.
To the naysayers, I'm (1) not plugging this book for profit, (2) not associated with Amazon.com, (3) a definite literature geek. You may not like it, but at least give it a shot
I would take Stephen Hawking's advice and work on a Star Trek style "warp drive" so that we can colonize space before the human race is wiped out.
n g-dc
http://news.excite.com/news/r/011016/09/odd-hawki
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Build a hugh radio telescope on the dark side of the moon, its the only place in the galaxy where you wouldn't pick up noise from us earthlings. Not very sexy, but probably 100x more useful than sending little R\C toys to mars IMHO.
"Get them before they get....
I'm not sure what I should think.
On one hand, Goldin has done some good things. And he did some difficult things that needed to be done.
On the other hand, he's done some crappy things. He cut down NASA expendatures too much.
The problem is, nobody wants to be the NASA administrator. He would have been replaced now, but nobody wants his job. I know that Jerry Pournelle, deizen of Byte Magazine, famed Science Fiction writer, and often advisor to congress, turned the possibility of that position down (rumors were flying he was in the running).
The problem is that NASA, while it enjoys bipartisan support, is always on the chopping block. Most of the expendatures have to go to the different NASA centers that have to remain there for NASA to get congressional support. The infrastructure for the shuttle MUST get funding, and enough of it, or else safety will slip, we'll loose another shuttle, and heads will roll. It's also the only available craft for returning cargo to the earth, construction tasks in orbit, lifting space station parts, etc. It does too many things to have an easy replacement.
Whoever takes his role will have more hard decisions, trouble because of Sept 11-related extra funding, etc.
If I don't live to see men on Mars in my lifetime, I'm going to be pissed. If I'm alive to see a time when space isn't inhabited by humans, I'm going to be pissed.
Gentoo Sucks
would implement my datailed plan ona logical and safe(as it can be) way to get mankind on mars.
I would also ensure that the next generation of space telescope gets into space.
My goal for these items is too fold:
1. Find a planet that can support human life
2. Send people there.
I would work my PR machine so hard, that after 10 years, there would be too much momentum to stop.
I would first sent the taliban. After a couple of years I would start a project on how to get people there and get them back...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Privatize. No need in wasting taxpayer money for the sake of nothing anymore.
So if you were NASA's next director, what would you do with the agency? Men on Mars? Probes on Europa? Trans-warp drives?
duh... I'd send a probe to Uranus.
I would send people back to the moon... but this time, to set up a permanent base using technology developed for the long mars trip. Instead of research being the primary goal, they would be focused on the practical arts, so that unlike most every other mission they could pay, at least in part, for the expense of being there. They would be manufacturing heavy items - structural members, fuel, etc. - so that we don't have to ship them up from earth at high cost. They would develop new technologies for living and travelling in space. They would manufacture items that could only be fashioned in low/zero-g, and shoot them to earth. They would become a base for lunar/asteroid mining for rare elements.
Why put all that money and risk on a mission to mars first? Why not try it out in our own backyard, where we can support them if need be?
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
It's like the Antarctic desert, but with reddish rocks. Go colonize the Antarctic desert first. Only when it becomes overpopulated can you go to Mars.
I'd love for the next NASA administrator to press for a man on Mars, probes to the outer planets, interstellar probes, ... the list goes on.
Let's be realistic though; with recent events NASA's spending priority will be falling.
(Too bad the Afghans aren't trying to beat us to the Moon.)
The next NASA administrator should invest heavily in high-risk engineering projects that could lower launch costs. This is the role of NASA as a research center; commercial launch companies are already efficiently launching satellites, while the Shuttle and ISS projects are already well in hand. If the Venture Star (or some related SSTO vehicle) could actually work, it would cut launch costs by an order of magnitude, thus reducing the cost of a manned Mars mission from $100 billion to $10 billion. That way, a mission to Mars would no longer require the complete dedication of a nation's technology infrastructure, which is hard to justify for any goal short of war.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
me> Alot of people dislike Goldin.
alice> What do you like?
me> What's your take on him?
alice> Objective case of He, used as a predicate complement with a linking verb. Also standing for Imperial Majesty.
me> Fascinating.
alice>Yes Mr. Spock?
me> What do you see as the future of NASA?
alice> I don't eat that.
me> Excuse me, ALICE
alice> You're excused.
me> what is the future of nasa
alice>You are talking to her.
me> have you been drinking this afternoon?
alice>No I don't think I have been drinking this afternoon. Have you?
me> i'm drinking right now
alice>At this moment It's good to meet someone who is drinking.
me> Are you coming on to me?
alice>Do I act like it? I don't mean to come across that way.
me> What's your sign, baby?
alice>Don't call me "baby". Saggitarius
me> let's go back to your place.
alice>That sounds good to me.
Is the San Francisco Presidio still available for
Star Fleet HQ?
The original note notes "Lots of people hated him. I believe he has been one of the truly great leaders of our time. He has completely turned NASA around during his 10 year tenure."
Ten years ago it was coming off the Challenger disaster and attempting to get funding for the space station. Morale sucked, and all the good science projects kept getting canned.
Today NASA has largely forgotten the Challenger disaster, to the point where it cut the space lifeboat. They continue to attempt to get funding for the hole-in-space station, but now they can't even justify why. Morale sucks, and all the good science projects keep getting canned.
Some change, indeed.
I don't know if Goldin is a good or bad guy, I don't think that's the point. The point is that he is definitely the WRONG guy. I don't know, making money at TRW during Star Wars doesn't really strike me as credentials for running NASA.
He did no good for NASA's image, and his hissy fit over Tito make him look like an ass. Congress doesn't seem to like him either. And he just can't seem to say no.
What NASA needs is Steve Jobs. A completely crazy git who will cancel a whole bunch of really great things and freak the crap out of everyone, but in the end leave a core with a vision and the bottom line to do it. You might not like the vision and be pissed off that he killed the Comet Smasher Express, but it would have died anyway, death of a thousand cuts.
Maury
Pretty much ruined our attempts to go into space. Kept us in low-Earth orbit, destroyed the Mars exploration program in favor of the space station boondoggle, contrary to the current president's orders.
Hope he enjoys retirement. Now maybe we can get someone in that will destroy the entrenched NASA fiefdoms and actually get back to the business of exploring space instead of providing job security for bureaucrats.
Figure out where the hell the moons of mars have decided to leave to, as they are certainly not in an orbit around the Red Planet anymore.
t im atebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=25&t=000886
See:
http://communities.anomalies.net/cgi-bin/bbs/ul
You think GWB is a "fucking moron"? Ha, you're the one who wants to live on the fucking moon.
Hi Guys,
Very simple, if I were NASA Director I would work towards new manned landings on the Moon.
This would explore the Moon in further detail; check to see if there is any Water in the Polar areas.
Hopefully this would in time become a preminent presence on the Moon, to be used as a stepping stone to Mars and beyond.
The expereinced gained working on the Moon would stand us in good stead for the future. If anything should go wrong, Earth is only a few days away.
In addition I would look to extend unmanned exploration of Europa, Titan and onwards to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
Regards
Zed
I'd establish a base on the moon. When we have living quarters on a celestial body other than earth, I'll get excited. As it is, all were doing is sending probes. This could have been done 25 years ago (and was...), albiet with lesser technology, but something like a colonization program, or even something larger, like the terraforming of mars (I'm not sure if it's possible, but I saw it on TV once, where they pump super greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to equalize the tempeture...), could get people interested. As it stands, even a mission to mars is just a pipe dream at this point...
It's been a long time.
1) Faster propulsion, and if that means nuclear powered engines, so be it.
1a) Develop heavy lift capability.
2) Develop tech necessary for colonization, and use the moon as a testbed.
3) Do thorough study of the moon, manned study if necessary (probably is), in particular to find all water and mineable metals that may be there. Not to bring back to Earth, but so we won't need to transport them from Earth.
4) Especially if #3 allows for the construction of spacecraft hulls, when 1-3 are done, head to Mars. Use tech from #1a to transport the machinery to equip the craft.
I'm tired of the $2 billion/year ego project that the ISS is. I'd go back to really good 100 million buck science projects, and fund 20 of em a year, or 5 bigger and 12 smaller ones. I suspect a few scientists would agree.
People forget that it takes foundational science to do sexy science, and there are TONS of really worthy and interesting projects that get sidelined by sex appeal.
Even the dreamers should realize that ISS does much less to get folks on mars for example than real good focused R&D here on earth.
Man on mars (one way trip to start) is definatly cool, but let's take a pause to do some real science for a while, say 5 years, then see where we are.
NASA's next move should be to dissolve itself, so that we can use much of the money that goes into the space program for important things like universal health care and sustainable agriculture research.
Space program spending may be fun for Slashdotters to drool over, but ethically, NASA spending is hard to justify. Instead of dropping probes on the moon, why not have a freely available communications satellite network for cheap global phone/internet/whatever? WHy not spend money toward public good?
5% of the federal budget????
The shuttle's estimated annual cost is 2.98 billion according to nasa (for the year 2000). 1999 total budget outlays were 1.7 Trillion dollars according to government records. So in reality the shuttle program is roughly 1/10th of 1 percent of the entire federal budget. Now if you took the total budget of NASA for 2001 it comes to approximately 14 billion according to NASA.
If you take that number the budget is still a mere 4/5ths of 1 percent of the overall budget.
It's merely a drop in the bucket in the grand schem of things, and frankly we've gained a lot from having it. We've gained amazing advances in materials science, aeronautics, and life sciences. Also, where would be without Tang?!? So if you're gonna try to save money, how about finding something truely useless to cut.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I wish they would hire Matthew Broderick to do something about all those poor monkeys being killed in flight training.
I heard he's been looking for a job ever since that Wellville fiasco.
The theory:
Anyone insulting another's intelligence on the Internet will invariably spell a simple word wrong, thus demonstrating their own lack of intelligence.
"You're statement"?
First thing I would do is put a big Taco Bell logo over certain portions of Afghanistan...
we must first find a way to make the trip lenght not an inconvenient for those who will go there. So, we need better propulsion, and a way to freeze the passengers (and to bring them back after too...). After this, even we'll be able to go everywhere we want to.
No, seriously...
If I had the magic CEO wand, I'd become a funds dispersement agency dedicated to investing in commercially oriented space technologies. Exactly what confluence of technologies will spark the space gold rush is out there waiting to be stumbled upon - we just haven't done it yet. So, how do we speed it up? Throw money at any idea that might work - think of it in terms of what the dot com gold rush did for info tech.
"...The one thing that we do know for certain is that some day the sun is going to go nova. And when it does, it won't just take the Earth with it. It'll take Marillon (sp?) Monroe, the Yankees, Einstein, etc. If we don't go to the stars we are guranteed that at some point in the future, no one will ever know we were here."
(I put that in quotations but it's obviously not a quote, wanted to make the point that it's what he said).
The point is, that says it all. We HAVE to colonzie other worlds because sooner or later, we're gone. And probably MUCH sooner than a couple of billion years. I doubt we'll have to wait for the sun to go nova, we'll likely do it our damned selves within the century!
But in any case, the first step is a colony on the moon. Then a colony on mars. Then somewhere after that, and then somewhere after that, etc.
So, if I got the job, aside from booking myself on the first shuttle I could (yeah, right!), I'd make a moon colony the top priority, followed by a mars colony no more than a decade later. And the moon colony would come with two decades of the day I took the job.
It HAS to happen, no questions asked. Sure, it's more important in most respects to stop terrorism and make sure we have enough Anthrax vaccine and solve all the other myriad problems of the world. But in the end, we know with 100% certainty that if we don't get of this planet, we're doomed anyway, so in a sense that really *IS* the most important thing we can do.
You are right. What exactly does the Space Shuttle provide? I don't think this is a flame at all. There really needs to be debate about the utility of NASA spending.
Is there any way we can please spend money on health care, shelter, food distribution, and education?
The priveleged readers of /. should be willing to enter into debate about the utility of space program spending, as many in our country and world lack basic access to food and clean water!
1. Bin Laden /.
2. Jon Katz
3. Every Single Troll on
4. Any Guy better Looking than me
and finally
5. Those bastards at Verizon to sell service to the people we've stranded there
What, me worry?
I agree that a moon base would be tremendously cool, and would advance humanity to another level in exploration. A few problems with moon bases are as follows:
Moon dust is not a viable construction material
Compositional studies of moon dust have been done and a concrete like material can not be made with moon dust. Colonists would need this because...
Having no atmosphere, the moon gets pummeled with space debris
Thus, the colonists need a stable structure to take cover in when these things happen. The classic plexiglass domes might not hold up to that. Living underground seems to me to be the best solution, but I don't know enough about lunar geology to say if that's safe or not.
We can't afford to haul any appreciable amount of materials up there
The cost to send a pound of anything into space is tremendous. I read it somewhere, but I forget.
What we need to get is a more efficient way to get into space. Rockets are such a brute force way, and Nasa needs some more elegance in that department. Before we build a base on the moon, lets develop the ability to get there and back as easily as sailing the Atlantic.
I would open up all of NASA's research on the space program to private companies. I would form strategic non-competitive partnerships with those companies, making the full resources of NASA available to them.
The current NASA funding would go toward paying the NASA staff, maintenance of facilities and services and not a single dime would be spent on anything new from a technology standpoint. I would spend every dime on scientists and consultants to private companies.
This way, there would be incentive for private firms to take up the space race again. If they could borrow a bunch of NASA scientists to help them, they'd go a lot farther more quickly.
JMHO.
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Probe Uranus.
m00.
I think he was way out of touch and not a good leader at all.
While he ran NASA he allowed a massive brain drain (good engineers going to commercial jobs), increased the bureaucracy and was very much against commercial opportunities.
Add it all up and it's huge lost opportunities for space exploration. He was against space tourism for one thing.
I hope NASA gets a new leader who actually wants to see scientific advancement and increased space exploration, not just empire building
What are you talking about!?? I challenge you to name a single, publicly useful advance that NASA space exploration has produced that justifies the cost... Please don't say "Micro-gravity research!" or "Velcro".
Rotate the Hubble Telescope towards Afghanistan so we can see WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON down there.
For real.
"And like that
I highly recommend the NASA Watch website, which has a highly informed (and often highly critical) view of NASA and especially Goldin.
He wrote an editorial a couple weeks ago saying that he didn't think Goldin would be replaced any time soon. Well obviously that prediction turned out to be wrong, but I am eagerly awaiting his comments on Goldin's departure.
I think Goldin was seen by a lot of people as a bureaucrat, as someone who was holding NASA back, not advocating for them strongly enough in Congress, and not setting his sights high. The ISS has become a monstrosity that has gobbled up dozens of other scientific missions, and now it looks like barely any science will be possible due to massive cost-overruns and then the slashing of key portions of the station.
My personal hope, at this point almost prayer, is that the new director has the vision and balls to put humans on Mars within the next 20 years. Right now it seems almost impossible that that could happen, but it should have happened already, and I for one am sick of waiting.
Although we already know that there's bacteria on Uranus.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Earth first! We'll strip-mine the other planets later!
Rather than assuming that I was some kind of omnipotent being and knew exactly how to best spend our nation's money for projects in space, I would work to allow for the commercialization of space and privatize portions of the space agency.
I believe the market place would be a better forum for discovering more useful projects in space. I know many disagree and would rather coerce the tax-paying American to fund projects that don't have any immediate or certain value beyond the "quest for knowledge".
As NASA's director in today's America, I wouldn't totally discourage such quests, but I would gently nudge the government to accepting private commercial entities into the space club.
Gates to Retire from Microsoft
There is no dark side of the moon. Every area (apart from the poles) gets his share of daylight and night. At the equator that is around 14 earth days each.
So, we know we can build a space vessel in which people can live for months (the ISS). Let's build another one, slap some engines on it (the new ion drives should do nicely), load it with crew and supplies, and send it on a loop around Mars. When it gets back, resupply it and send it to Venus. Then the asteroids...
Then start thinking space elevator. Once we've done that, we can start thinking about getting off this rock.
Then the future is here.
-- Support Ometz le-Serev.
Upon his retirement Goldin will release documents onto the Internet concerning NASA's use of reverse engineered alien technology taken from alien spacecraft.
I was thinking, why need to assemble IIS when we can just slap some cheap plastic base on moon?
:-) why we choose not to build a research/launch facility on moon?
- IS it the climate? I am sure the IIS is subjected to extreme temperature swings aswell.
- or is it the meteoride attacks (IIS smaller mass thus attracts less meteors)
can some one explain it to me (like I am a 4 years old
Others have shown that the entire budget of NASA (not just the shuttle program) is less than one half of one percent of the entire federal outlay. This betrays your true prejudices. Why don't you people complain when important congressmen (*cough* Trent Lott) secure huge contracts for defense contractors in their district .. spending hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars on aircraft carriers that the military doesn't even want? Why aren't you complaining about the government spending half a million dollars to study cow farts?
.. a blatant lie. Unfortunately for you, you have been caught. Are you going to be big enough to admit that you were lying and apologize?
.. somehow I think we won't be seeing much more of you around here.
You fundie types are opposed to space exploration because you feel it is somehow anti-Scriptural. Fine, you are entitled to your opinion. But you're obviously not too concerned about government expenditures if you're willing to overlook the real wastes of money. In conclusion, consider this: do you suppose that your God is pleased that you so blatantly lie for him? Because that's what your "5%" figure is
Somehow, I doubt it
Wouldn't they have to get Ford to start making the Probe again? It was discontinued in '97!
This is just another example of how tax payer money does nothing and nasa is still years behind the times.
...is one from Jerry Pournelle (who IIRC is/was the president of the citizen's space advisory council -- for a while they actually had people in Washington listening to them):
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Once we do this, we will have materials which can be used to fabricate orbiting structures and vessels (with or without human involvement) and still send some very homogenous materials planet-side.
There's merit in being able to bring incredibly strong and light custom materials down the gravity well and fetch top-dollar for a product which cannot be made any other way. In turn, the revenue generated from this would make happy campers out of an agency that's been pulling at the Tax-teat forever.
The technologies to make this happen are only a couple of decades from perfection...limited use and operation would occur long before that.
Automated processing/manfuacturing technologies in orbit will springboard the development and sustainability of anything else we do in the solar system, even on our own world. And being able to make nearly _perfect_ metals will do more for us than some baked rocks from a dead world. Really.
And if you don't believe me/don't agree then think of history. The "Stone Age", the "Bronze Age", the "Iron Age"...we need to make a step in a new direction.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
I'd find another scam to keep the money rolling in as the "Life on Mars" story is wearing a bit thin.
"Warp drives are just around the corner" would be a good one - especially if you can convince the defence guys that phasers photon torpedoes would come out of the same research.
Maybe NASA could go religious. Maybe they could start publishing stories about how they can find evidence of God in the stars. Maybe his name is etched on a planet somewhere if only they could launch a big enough telescope to see it. Or some weird anomaly in the distribution of planets that would make it easy for Jesus to travel from one to the next saving alien souls. That would guarantee lots of money from those gullible Americans. He he...maybe they could launch a mission to demonstrate that the universe is in fact only 5732 years, 3 months and 21 days old. Divert a bit of money from those wacky Creationists.
But please, please, please. Drop the "Life on Mars" stories!
-- SIGFPE
An oldie but a goodie...
It should be noted that he is resigning, not retiring. It that a usually significant nuance? Yes. Is it in this case? I don't know, but it could indicate something deeper behind the scenes. Or not...
;-)
Let the paranoia begin!
So Goldin's gone? As another refugee from NASA put it to me in an e-mail, "Break out the champagne!"
Goldin has the reputation of being an abusive control freak. Large and increasing numbers of those can be found in NASA and the supporting aerospace companies.
Remember, folks, this is the agency that crashed probes on Mars because they failed to convert from English to metric. They also gave us the misbegotten X-33 project. The ISS is way over budget and behind schedule.
Goldin was great at external PR. So, for that matter, is NASA.
Yes, there are lots of great people still at NASA. The work will draw people in and make them suffer through all kinds of abuse and lies.
What do I think NASA should do? How about emulating the old NACA and developing technologies that will make a revitalized space industry that will benefit all humanity, not just provide a few real services and an expensive sideshow.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
Two words: Moon Base
It's close, its doable, its cheaper and easier than stepping on Mars for a 2 hours out of twelve months vacation.
It's enourmously less subject to catastrophic failure, its corporately sponsorable (if you want that sort of thing - MTV's "Real Moon"). It can provide millionaire tourism fundage.
Aside from a few dozen tons of metals and chemicals shipped from Earth, the lunar dust can provide enough material for concrete. Plastic sheeting can be used to form air tents in underground excavated tunnels, and caverns. Plus essentially free solar and photovoltaic power for base operations.
Most importanly, it's actually useful. Long term low g experiments, communications, metallurgical and construction material research will be advanced. That means faster computer chips, smaller cel phones, longer lasting batteries for the downloadable movie ewatching on the same, etc.
It's boost the economy a hell of a lot better than a $300 rebate or a capital gains (rish people) tax cut. Plus it's enourmously politically advantageous. "God and Allah may Rule Earth, But Rich Capitolists/Communists Rule the Moon and beyond!"
"The Moon, minutes from home, but a world away from your problems."
This message brought to you by Lunar Tourism and Economic Development COuncil.
there are two ways to making it cheaper to get payloads into space. one is the tactic being worked on by a number of space entrpeneurs - make the launch vehicle smaller and more clever. the other is to go for economies of scale.
i'd like to see nasa work on the heavy lift vehicle - an unmanned launch vehicle designed for maximum payload. such a vehicle will be needed in the long run to support the space station and to create inventories of really useful stuff in space (like rocket fuel, spare sattelites, food, etc.) a heavy lift vehicle would be just the thing to lift low cost low value bulk into space. then the high value low bulk payloads (like astronauts) can be put into space on a smaller more efficient vehicle where all the safety technology would be correspondingly less expensive.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
First, NASA needs to have clearly-set goals, with a clearly-defined timetable. Sure, you can argue all you like about the politics of getting man on the moon, but the fact is this: NASA -did- achieve the goal, inside the time specified.
What those goals would be are not altogether clear, though they WOULD include pushing the hard science and the frontiers of what's possible, especially in space.
(We already know you can do research in space. Spacelab proved that. Mir proved that. If it doesn't lead to growth, it risks leading to stagnation.)
I believe oxygen-breathing rockets and laser-propulsion need resources. I believe that NASA's goal should not so much be a man on Mars by the end of the century, but rather a permanent supply station in Mars orbit and the first steps to a Biosphere II on a Jovian moon, by 2005.
(Why Jupiter? Because that way, you have a secure point, each side of the asteroid belt, from which you can do anything from mining work to deep space research, with increasing independence on shipping materials over. Only securing one side or the other just increases the costs - and the risks - of moving through, and doesn't provide as good a platform from which to catapult further missions.)
Isn't the time-frame a little... optimistic? Not really. Virtually all the hard parts (figuring out what's needed in a biosphere, figuring out how to build a self-navigating vehicle, constructing spacestation modules) have already been solved. The only real time needed is to get the stuff to where it's wanted.
Mars, you should be able to reach in a year. Jupiter, maybe two or three. That gives you a year to build some skeletal components, and launch them. That's not a huge amount of time, but it's certainly doable. There's nothing impossible about building combined habitat module / DS-1 in that kind of timeframe.
Why not go to the moon? The answer is simple. Why bother? We know that simple economics and social inertia make it unlikely that you could try for a second major space endeavor, which means that you really truly don't want dead-end destinations. At least, not right now.
By getting a platform in space which corporations can use for their own profits, you're not providing the same kind of dead-ends. The paths are open, the incentives are there, and there's just a chance that somebody will want to see where we can go from there.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
We figure a way to escape the Earth
We must leave here, or die from wars and
pollution and overpopulation and enviromental
destruction and etc.
terraform Mars, create Moon colonies. A
requirement for our existence
...we need to have probes to Uranus. Heh. Heh
Since NASA headquarters moved into the "rough" part of DC, there have, of course, been stray bullets in the area. One actually made it through someone's window, leaving a nice sized bullet-hole through the middle. The next day there was a sign beside the hole saying, "Goldin's office is on the third floor" or words to that effect...
Overheard by a colleague at a conference.
Jeez, haven't you heard: "All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Don't send any probes there."
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
And I would patent the concept, and I would also copyright the ads with a new SPACE COPYRIGHT ACT with a pay per use clause that made everyone American owe $1 for each glance they took towards the night sky. If you looked several times a night, you'd owe several dollars. It would redefine space and would redefine advertising and copyright all at once.
That, or I'd aim a "Laser" at the RIAA, and, ah hell, I'd fire it too.
Whatever happened to those hoverboards from "Back to the Future"? Didn't some company claim they worked?
I also remember an article in Omni I think (probably 5 years ago) about somebody that created a spinning top that defied gravity, but it was unstable because they said that gravity is not constant.
Personally, I'd just like to have a SkyCar for now. But maybe a personal shuttle would be kinda fun. They need to get artificial gravity working though, I don't want hook a vacuum to my privates.
If NASA isn't going to do something useful like send a human to mars or enhance military defense, shut it down. Let the FAA or military handle regulations over space flight and end the pointless experiments that result in no new information beyond "computer enhanced" photos of objects that probably look nothing like what we end up seeing
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
There was a good profile (well, I would say that as I wrote it :->) on Physics Today about Goldin and where he sees NASA going. You can read it here.
Not to flame, but look at how much time & money have been wasted on civilian space cadets... if it was not for this stuff we could have had a real (1000s of launchers, nuclear armed) ABM system and maybe even a nuclear deterrent in space, ie. real strategic security. Then nobody would dare touch the USA. IMHO, return control of space to the USN and USAF.
Explore Uranus!
I'm wondering where might the replacement come from? somone already in NASA or someone from outside NASA?
I have to vote for somone outside NASA that just grew up in love with star trek and can't get enough of this new fangled farscape thing. All I want is a space geek from outside NASA.
I think anyone inside NASA may be to beholden to the past and has already given up on Mars in his or her lifetime. someone from outside might not yet have their spirit broken and will wonder "well why haven't we" all the time. Then go about making it happen.
-
I think what would get up the public's intrest in space are 100's of little robots on the moon that can be controled by the general public via the internet.
e ro botics.shtm
If you can't afford to go into space why not bring space to you.
At the same time some of these robots could be built for mineing and construction on the Moon to build a radio telescope on the dark side of the moon. Also stuff mined on the moon can be sent into orbit of earth for constrution of space stations and ships.
Personaly I don't think there is a need to have people in space unless they are doing reseach on the effects of space on the body. We can just about do everything else via telerobotics.
There are lots of examples of telerobots online right now but most of them are quite basic and are hard to use.
This is a neat little telerobot:
http://www.swampgas.com/robotics/rover.html
Nasa's telerobotics website: (Check out some of the online robots under real robots on the web)
http://ranier.hq.nasa.gov/telerobotics_page/tel
God, root, what is the difference?
The latest keyhole spy satellites are as good as if not better than Hubble for resolving images on the ground. I've read that when they had the mirror problems on Hubble the people who run the Keyhole systems knew what had happen and what to do as they'd already had it happen to them with one of the early KH11 satellites. Of course they couldn't say or do anything officially but....
development.lombardi.com
someone needs to make some real money from space exploration to keep it viable. Produce giant tomatoes, or perfectly round ball bearings, or somthing with a viable financial future to boost NASA :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
2. International Space Station: Complete the project as currently spec'ed, so Clinton has something for his legacy. 5 years after completion, implement plans to move and land the ISS on the Moon, and set up a permanent base of operations.
3. Create an official robotics division, take on (corporate) sponsors from colleges and tech companies. Implement robotic material gatherers to "mine" the moon, starting on the far side. Use the material gathered on the moon to create more structures, or tunnels, or whatnot. Once sufficient "warehouse" type buildings are set up, allow corporate funding of "factories" to keep the projects going. Low gravity manufacturing has incredible promise for efficiencies, but the bottleneck is transportation...
4. Which means its time to revise the space shuttle vs reuseable launch vehicle argument.
5. Create more partnerships with media outlets, through telemetry-controlled robots, or other projects. Make it "fun" for kids to get interested in science again.
I'm surprised I've hardly heard anyone saying they'd work on the construction of a mass driver.
With tons of nuclear waste piling up on earth and no legitamate and safe means of disposal, a cheap method of jettisoning material into space seems crucial.
A mass driver would not only provide this, but also pave the way for cheaply transporting materials around the globe. Once in space, little problems like drag and wind resistance become irrelevant. Take-off costs would be less than the x-33. Nasa has succeeded most in those areas where it has made avionics commercially affordable- namely aeronautics. Let Nasa give business the capacity to put a McDonalds on the moon and, unholy as it may sound, they'll lobby congress more effectivly than geeks ever could.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Sounds like a good-ish idea: make a synthetic aperture radio telescope with one side on the earth and the other on the moon...
Of course, we could also use the lagrange points in the earth's orbit around the sun. Now, that would be cool.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
NASA should be more concerned not just about exploration of space, but the Explotation of space. There are tons of materials, tons of err.. space in space. How about start some sorta mining initiative to get raw materials mined and processed in outter space. How about some colonizations that are self-sustaining. There are lots of Lagrange points that can be used for perminant (meaning doesn't need a boost from fuel rockets every X months) space stations and possibly colonies. NASA has the means to do it. I mean, the biggest problem is getting the ships into space to begin with. If you start manufacturing materials in space, then what's the problem?... Hardly any.
Faster: The party will only last for 45 minutes.
Cheaper: Keeping with NASA policy, it will only cost 12 million dollars.
Smaller: It will take place in a closet in DC.
Ironic: The party will start off looking very good, but before anything truly cool can happen, it will mysteriously stop.
I can't tell if you guys are serious or not.
a) Hubble would fry if it ever looked at the earth
b) due to completely different design goals and needs the spy satelittes couldn't do anything like Hubble eitherc) the mirror problems on hubble we pretty obvious to anyone who had ground a mirror
"So if you were NASA's next director, what would you do with the agency?"
I would startup space tourism. Immediately after, I would set up a brothel on the space station, where there are no laws governing prostitution. Just like people are attracted to the internet for porn, people would be attracted to paying for space travel if they knew there was zero-gravity nookie involved. Once the program got rolling NASA's money problems would be over, and they could start spending the cash on all the cool things congress will not fund.
that are in use all over the place now. There are so many small advances that can be traced directly back to NASA. Why don't YOU try some research instead of copping out and masking everyone else to think for you.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Good work, Dan -- you saved the planet the most horrifying fate of allowing the pioneering culture that founded the United States of America to escape being turned into a feminized consumer culture.
Now we can all look forward to a more stable, terrestrial-bound future -- if the oil producing coutries continue exporting, the anthrax vaccines don't have too many side-effects, no one engineers any Y-chromosome specific retroviruses and ...
...uh...
...um...
Are there any of those kind left in places like the Alaska now that we've gotten most of the best women born there to come to the lower 48 and be fuck-dolls? If we can find any we could put them on a reservation somewhere in the Yukon or maybe even, oh, I don't know, Kodiak Island(?), and let them try to do something ...
Seastead this.
As a matter of fact, it's all dark.
The moon is just as far, from a resource and expenses standpoint, as Mars is.
If we can go to the moon, we can just as easily go to Mars - and during certain times of the year, it's even *easier* to get to Mars than it is to the moon, because of the timing of things.
Also, getting there is only half the problem. Stopping and landing is a big deal - and guess what: it's easier to stop on Mars (aerobraking) than it is on the Moon (retro rockets, burning precious fuel).
There's nothing on the moon worth the effort. Mars has *lots* to offer. We should go there first...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I would experiment with some new software development methodolgies on a pilot basis. At least until I came up with some better then the NASA approach or attempts at CMM at NASA. CMM and it's ilk are combersome enough initially, I cannot imagine how burdensome it is in a organization where that Capability Maturity Model stuff is entrenched.
Sure I don't know what would come out of the experiments but I suspect it would be something better. At the same time I'd rate the odds of this happening are as good as me being picked for a Mars mission.
~~ What's stopping you?
The overriding philosophy that must be adopted is to start building an infrastructure for human outposts that can "live off the land."
The failing of the Apollo program was that each mission was self-contained. The missions should have left behind pieces of infrastructure that could be re-used in future missions; instead, junk and toys like single-use moon buggies are strewn all over the lunar surface.
I'm talking about power units (solar or nuclear); units that extract oxygen or turn the lunar soil into cement, metal, or glass building materials; and with the discovery of polar ice, water-extraction units. These are the things that will make largely self-sufficient outposts possible.
Not everything needs to be made off-planet. Microprocessors are light and easy to ship; it wouldn't make sense for Intel to build a fab on the moon anytime soon. But at $10,000 per pound to low earth orbit, we'll never get anywhere until the high-mass needs of our astronauts are met with resources that don't have to be lifted out of the earth's massive gravity well.
This is why de-orbiting Mir frustrated me so greatly. Everyone though of it as an either/or situation: either burn it in, or find money to maintain it and keep it manned. No one seemed to consider the third and best option: boost it into a non-decaying orbit, and leave it there unmanned as a resource to exploit in the future. Because, you see, it contained hundreds of tons of aerospace-grade steel, titanium, and aluminum. Someday (10 years from now? 80? it doesn't matter!) we'll have foundries in orbit which could have melted it down into components for future space structures. Structures which will now be vastly more expensive because we have to re-boost all that mass at $10,000 per pound, instead of using a resource that had already been put in orbit.
Another example: the original Reagan-era plans for the Space Station included a large hangar where interplanetary vehicles could be assembled. That's forward-thinking INFRASTRUCTURE, folks! Oh, and the Station was projected to cost only $6 billion at that time. Now, after innumerable Congressionally-mandated redesigns to "save money," all the cool features like the hangar have been eliminated.
By the way, asteroids have an even shallower gravity well than the moon. We need to be prospecting those puppies yesterday. Especially given Steven Hawking's warning about space colonies being necessary for mankind's survival.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I know that Jerry Pournelle, deizen of Byte Magazine, famed Science Fiction writer, and often advisor to congress, turned the possibility of that position down (rumors were flying he was in the running).
Oh hell no.
The missions would eventually be completed, but afterwords we'd be subjected to endless reports about how NASA tried this and that and finally got things to work.
If you wait that long, it will be too late. Then you'll just die a bitter, pissed off, old individual and all will be for naught. Better to be pissed off now since that might motivate you to pester your Congress critter for better NASA funding, etc.
Then you can happily die as a merely bitter and old individual.
When those tentacle thingies break through the ice to pull down the probe, we can't say we weren't warned.
Maj. Kong
Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
Man should make the bold move into space. The first step in this process is to build a true space station, a place where man can build deep space exploration vehicles that will propel us to the stars. A place where man can experiment with the cutting edge of science, a place where we can grow and multiply. Stephen Hawking is right, if we are to survive, we must move into space.
Work on better propulsion. Trans-warp drives or whatever you want to call them, we should get better vehicles before we worry about doing anything else in space. Once we have such means of transportation, all of our missions will be much easier, faster, and we will be able to to so much more.
~ now you know
We've done virtually nothing with the first planet, but for one flyby long ago. Sure, it's small, but it's actually pretty interesting. For one thing, it has a huge deviation compared to other planets in that it's way too dense for its size. Mercury may have an iron core like Earth, and there was something about a sulfur-precipitating model I heard of (long time ago...may be wrong...). We know virtually nothing about Mercury, but it's probably the oddest planet we've discovered yet. I think it would be worth the moolah to send a probe there, or at least a more detailed flyby. We might learn why Mercury's s weird, and some major stuff about planet creation. Who knows? Everyone likes Mars because of the possibility of life, but Mercury as a planet is cooler IMO.
________
"And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion...." -- J.S. Mill
Good riddance Dan. Remember when NASA had successful planetary missions? Remember when NASA did great things? Today NASA does great things in spite of you, not because of you.
You stood by for 7 of 8 years while NASA's budget was reduced. You spend countless hours and money on your insane quest to eliminate the venerable NASA "worm logo". Your "faster better cheaper" was none of the above and cost billions in failed missions and years of setbacks in the evolution of space exploration.
One has to wonder if it was just incompetence or if the above was actually your intended goal. Perhaps you were instructed to keep NASA from exploring too fast or discovering too much at this critical time in our cultural evolution.
NASA has a wonderful opportunity now to turn itself around and once again lead the evolution
of the human civilization by exploring and colonizing space, and all the new technology that derives from that quest.
I am of 2 minds on this
1) I've heard Goldin talk at AAS (American Astronomical Society) meetings and was very disturbed by him. The best part was his comments on how genetic algorthimns should be used to do everything and that all of our current computational methodology was useless. Being someone who does use genetic algorithmns occasionally I couldn't believe how obvious it was that he had no idea idea of what he spoke. And he continued on several topics just spewing ignorance. Even worse was his reply to a questioner that tried to be reasonable. So he, as a person I really dislike
2) Nasa before Goldin was a mess, it still has a long way to go but its has improved. Most engineers don't go to Nasa anymore, a lot fo money and beauractic waste still occurs. But it has gotten better under him. As much as I don't agree with much of his vision he does have far more long term goals then previous adminstrators-and that is good. Also, faster, better, cheaper is mostly a good idea.
SO although I don't like him, his methods, or his goals I do think Nasa is better than it was when he started.
and I thought NASA was like Dead man...Maybe Tacobell should report the truth..instead of this x-file bullcrap
If you want NASA to be special - make it special. Don't make it a civil service career choice where you never get fired and you plod along, engineering paper, while the contractors do all the hands-on work. Fire all the contractors. If you don't want something to be in house, it's not important enough to keep at all - just sell it off.
Make NASA the place that every top engineering and science Brainiac want's to go. Yeah, it might be a training ground for industry - but make people want to stay. Make every project important. Some science areas are like this. It's amazing when you see the fire in the eyes of a scientist in Goddard SFCs earth sciences area working twelve hour days because they absolutly love it. It's also depressing to see engineers - good, creative engineers - reduced to pushing papers so that engineers at a contractor (be it large or small) can do the hands on work.
I'd eliminate the contract system for engineering and science services. If you want it done, do it in house.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Simple answer! Trans-warp.
"And in recent news, the science and technology necessary for Trans-warp travel have suddenly become available. Most credit the recent takeover of NASA by Mr. PimpinMonk."
I believe it was once said about Goldin and the budget process in the early 90s (when many good programs were in fear of losing funding from congress), "He saw the invading army miles in the distance and ordered all the women and children slaughtered so they wouldn't be captured."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Nasa is a waste of money most of the time.
Why study space when we dont even understand earth yet?
Not just that
why go into space, when we arent prepared for the possibility of meeting aliens in space?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I already bought the prime real estate. All your base are belong to me.
AC's cheerfully ignored
I'd relocate western civilisation to Mars so we don't have to take sh1t from anyone no more.
Then build a warp drive onto the Earth and blast it into the Sun to get rid of all the useless crap.
"Faster better cheaper" was Goldin's doctrine during his tenure at NASA. Perhaps history will be kinder to him, in light of defense and research budgets tightening all throughout the '90s, but many people, including those who worked for NASA and various government labs thought the policy disastrous.
My father works for a lab that contracts with NASA quite a bit (I won't name names, but its initials are J.P.L.), and they've really suffered politically and monetarily, with a number of unmanned missions in the past few years failing directly or indirectly due to "faster better cheaper." As any rational engineer knows, you can only have two.
Part of the strategy was to cut down on "battlestar galactica" projects that occupied resources on the scale of decades -- the Voyager project is one example -- in favor of less expensive, more easily mobilized efforts. Part of the huge cost of missions like Voyager was the amount of in-house quality checking that went on. Hundreds of pairs of eyes with knowledge of the entire project constantly monitored progress. It's an expensive way to go, but the success of many of NASA's flagship missions were due to this.
When FBC became policy, labs were forced to cut staff and contract out more. The results are more frequent missions (Mars is a big focus now), but diminished quality. Most of the major disasters in recent unmanned projects are directly attributable to communication breakdowns between labs, agencies, and contractors that simply would not have happened in the old monolithic model.
It could be argued that FBC saved NASA from some hard times that could have been harder. However, it also resulted in many glitches in a system that had prided itself on quality and accuracy. How do you balance the two? Ultimately, it was all under Goldin's watch; the buck stops there.
Now all you gotta do is get filthy rich,create your own aliens, and frighten the crap outta everyone into declaring world peace.
I personally think that we should work towards social justice if ever want a truly lasting peace and not just an absence of conflict... Actually I believe it was either Ghandi or MLK that said that, too
The benefits of NASA have been mostly of theoretical scientific value. But they have also been responsible for domestic inventions/innovations. Right now the biggest scientific problem is solving the energy problem. Although it doesn't directly have anything to do with space, NASA should be working on feul cells and other alternative hydrogen based energy sources. Mars can wait, our domestic crisis' cannot.
To me, without a doubt, the next project should be working on reducing the amount of money that it costs to get something into LEO. There have been a lot of setbacks recently with the X-33 quasi-cancellation because of micro-cracks in the carbon-fibre fuel tank, and of the X-43 scram jet test being aborted because of a failure in the sounding rocket.
These problems can be worked out though (I believe there was another sucessful scram jet test since then) and they could mean a real change in the way we get objects into space.
The reason why the ISS has been such a boon-doggle of a project is because of the incredible amount of money and effort it takes to get any of it up there, and if we could reduce those costs, we could easily afford to be able to do a *lot more* of these types of projects like space stations, moon bases, hugely fantastic orbiting telescopes and trips to Mars and Jupiter.
That's what we all want, right?
Quick background: A few years ago, some otherwise competent low-end programmers I knew were coming out of school, training classes, etc. calling Microsoft's IDE with the initials VB, "Visual Basics" -- plural. I thought at first it was just a single mistake, or a particular guy, but then I started hearing it enough that it was scaring me that it might be becoming people's actual idea of the proper name. There are other examples of things like this, and I'm sorry to mention F$!krosoft on this site, but...
Getting my present point. When did otherwise *perfect* grammarians/spellers like the fine gentlemen/lady who wrote this commment which included "we'll loose another shuttle" start to get the idea that "loose" could be used as a verb in regards to objects other than arrows?
"Loose" is an adjective, an antonym of "tight". "Lose" is a verb that is an antonym of "find".
I really would not bring this up except that it's about the sixth time I've seen non-haX0r types (i.e. those who appear to be trying to follow common English grammar and spelling conventions) on this site use "loose" improperly in place of "lose".
THIS MUST STOP!
Seriously -- it's a matter of /. pride!
Look I'm not against going to Mars. It's just that such endeavors require clear purposes. Next logical step to other stars and solar systems? Fine. Determine the viability for colonization of the red planet and potentially other solar systems? Fine.
Because it is there? Not good enough. I welcome your reasons for going to Mars...
Goldin's great success was getting the Origins program started (searching for extra-solar Earths among other things), and his biggest failure was failing to get the X-33/X-34 programs to work. Origins provided a truly inspiring goal, and had X-33 worked we could have had a viable space program. Now we are facing limited budgets, a space station that we can't afford to keep in orbit, and an administration that really couldn't care less about the space program.
Of course, Stephen Hawking said it best just a few days ago - unless we get a substantial presence off-planet we will sooner or later face extinction as a species.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
If I were NASA czar I would...
1) privatize the lot. I think the government monopoly on manned space travel is an idea whose time has long since passed. Develop the tourism and entertainment potential of manned space flight by partnering with companies like Disney, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, Electronic Arts, Holiday Inn, Carnival Cruiselines, Air Miles, etc... NASAs scientific and technical research efforts would then become the R&D division of NASA Inc.
2) develop two classes of single-stage-to-orbit shuttles: a heavy lift cargo shuttle and a high capacity passenger shuttle.
3) develop long range interplanetary shuttles for routine trips between Earth and Mars.
4) push the tourism potential of the moon and Mars. The majority of permanent colonists on the moon and Mars won't be scientists. They will be waiters, tour guides and other workers in the hospitality industry.
The space program, in its current state, is going to have to get worse before it gets better. The first thing I'd do is streamline.
First of all, the shuttle fleet is too expensive. We should return to the good old days of cheap, disposable boosters and capsules. Either integrate an ET tank or three with the space station, or stop using the wasteful beasts. There are already a whole slew of disposable, cheap Titan rockets, and Apollo or Gemini would make a decent ISS ferry.
The International Space Station is a nice idea, but it can't hold all that many people. Give them decent living quarters in TransHab or some other good inflatable, god damnit. An ET tank or other large living quarters would be good for a sustained human presence in orbit. Start practical research of sustainable life support technology.
The ISS is a bit too low for satellite repair, but given a good supply of Apollo capsules or teleoperated robots, you could do satellite construction, deployment and repair for corporate customers, and use the profits to fund the construction of heavy in-orbit spacecraft, possibly a moon shuttle.
Build that freaking moon base. You could do long-term low gravity research, actually achieve the goals set in the 50s, and supply the ISS with a cheaper supply of parts and raw materials for itself and the satellites that corporate customers will want produced. A moon base would open up the private sector to a whole lot more real-estate. It would also provide a very good trial site for a mars mission, nuclear propulsion technology, etc.
But of course, NASA is a government agency, so Goldin's successor will be just as bad as he was for establishing a human presence in space. Oh well.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
I mean, there's no way in hell we could get a Trans-warp drive working, we don't have nearly enough people working fuel ore.
For god's sake, we haven't even built a citadel yet, let alone upgraded it!
-Denor
But you're still talking rocket fuel. I think the point was that we need to find a more efficient reusable vehicle for propulsion. Tachyon Drive for example... :)
Terraforming Mars is a popular idea but it's just not going to work. Martian gravity is about a third of Earth's and Mars is never going to be able to hold any kind of atmosphere. The Martian atmosphere is about 1/100th as thick as Earth's and bringing that up to breathable would be nearly impossible. Plus Mars receives only 43% of the sunlight Earth does and it would need a very thick atmosphere to trap enough heat to be livable. Some people suggest solar mirrors to increase heat but these would need to be moon-sized structures before they'd produce any perceptible difference.
What we need to do instead - and yes, this will take a *long* time - is terraform Venus. Venus has a surface gravity 90% of Earth's and already has a thick atmosphere. Venus is obviously far too hot at present to even explore, but we can take steps toward terraforming it if we're willing to take a long-term approach.
First off, we can stick Venus in the shade. This isn't going to require another gigantic structure to accomplish, since we don't need to focus the sunlight. Something as simple as a series of paint bombs set off between Venus and the Sun would produce a cloud that would scatter quite a bit of incoming sunlight. Obviously the solar wind would blow it away sooner or later, but if we were to move a few asteroids into position and set up automated (solar-powered!) factories to slowly convert them into dust clouds, we could keep Venus shaded continously.
Once the surface temperature drops, we can seed the atmosphere with microbes to break up the CO2 and sequester the carbon, releasing the O2 and making the atmosphere eventually breathable.
Some useful stats on planets can be found here
> What would I do as the new NASA director?
Increase research in aeronautics - the first 'A' in NASA. Especially in basic powerplant research. Let's replace our 50 year old piston engines. Let's make jet engines affordable.
That is what the X-33 project was all about. Unfortunatly, one of bushes first order was to kill it. I suspect though, that the x39 or X41 is actually the X-33
Couldn't these wonderful things have been invented without the use of a publicly funded space program? Note I said PUBLICLY FUNDED! Why is the public's money being used to pay for items that end up making money for sporting equipment companies and the space pen people?
Don't forget what happened to the Chinese!
ehintz
I would commit to landing on mars by the end of the decade, and I would also commit to a project to provide cheap crew and experiment access to the station. A small shuttlecraft that could carry 6 people or some experiment racks to the station, but no cargo bay or anything would be brilliant.
Can you explain in more detail what this "political importance" was? In retrospect, can that expense really be justified? Is posturing, through NASA, rather than spending on social programs, the best way to have beaten the Soviets?
Actually, 5 billion could make a huge difference. The UN World Food Program estimates that: the whole of the world population's basic needs for food, drinking water, education and medical care could be covered by a levy of less than 4% on the accumulated wealth of the 225 largest fortunes. To satisfy all the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only $13 billion, hardly as much as the people of the United States and the European Union spend each year on perfume.
For more information on food supply and cost issues, try looking at:
Institute for Food and Development Policy
UN World Food Program
Funny thing about NASA. There are thousands upon millions of people, kids, teens, adults, who love Space, who love the idea of space travel. People who look at old footage of Apollo launches and get this tingling in their spine like nothing else. These people are *hungry* for what NASA can provide. These people are the astronauts and engineers of tomorrow, people who want to go forth and explore, as is evidenced by the tenor of many of the postings here.
But, NASA offers them nothing.
Sure, you can go to Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and spend hours and hours waiting in line for exhibits that are insulting to morons. If you find your self at KSC, don't bother asking any hard questions, as the staffers don't know an Atlas booster from a bottle rocket. Don't expect to see anything other than a watered down Disney version of Space; in Boston, we have a better exhibit (albeit smaller) at the local Science Museum.
Sure, you can watch NOVA. Or listen to the occasional astronaut interviews on NPR. Or join local interest groups. Or wait in line at book signings to have 15 seconds near an aged astronaut. This is not enough.
NASA is, and has been historically though the Goldin era, dropping the ball in such a fundamentally stupid way it makes me spit. When they face budgetary cutbacks, crises like the Challenger disaster, competition from ESA, Japan, India, and the like, their best friends would be a supportive public. And yet, they do not recruit the thousands and thousands of space enthusiasts.
A close friend of mine has been applying to become an astronaut for years (and made it to the interview level last cycle). She was an Aero/Astro major at MIT, and works for a company that supports space missions through contracts with NASA. She travels a good deal as part of her job, and tells me time and time again, people she meets are fascinated by the idea of space travel, but there are no resources she can direct them to. Why isn't NASA using this waiting, eager resource to their benefit?
NASA needs the public's help and support. If I were the next administrator, I'd made it a priority (after firing Boeing's incompetent ISS staff) to build positive public sentiment. The "amazing benefits to humanity" horse has been flogged to death. Why not NASA-sponsored rocketry competitions? Why not recruit college students into NASA fellowships? Why not a whole lot more visits to elementary schools? I'd eschew the encroaching commercialization, and re-present the NASA of my childhood (one where corners weren't cut, missions captured the public imagination, and astronauts were heros) to the public. Then, the pro-NASA advocation, at the grass-roots, could start.
-- pz.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
How about probes of your anus?
There's nothing elegant about a heavy-lift vehicle. Russians have a cargo-carrying spacecraft that works pretty well, but it's still using tons of fuel to lift itself up, and most of the weigh is indeed fuel.
An elegant solution would be to use some kind of sling to launch things into orbig, for example. I.e. something where the propulsion doesn't have to travel with you into space.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
...is privatize NASA, since the agency has been inexorably pushed in that direction for the last twenty years anyway.
I wouldn't say that what NASA has accomplished has been without value; rather, I'd like to see private industry take over, because they'd undoubtedly do it more effeciently.
There are others who can argue this position far better than I - for a taste, visit here:
http://www.cato.org/dailys/7-16-97.html
and here:
http://www.cato.org/events/space/index.html
The pomposity of the professor is inversely proportional to the difficulty and importance of the subject being taught.
I couldn't agree more with you guys that we should be on mars already. But what about those guys (for example:stupid jurnalists) that don't know jack about space exploration and its benefits, but nevertheless are absolutely certain that humanity should throw away the rockets because they are useless. IMHO they're not entirely different than those fanatics that believe that anyone that doesn't believe in their god should be put away.
I'd be happy with plain old warp drive.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
As much as I hate to say it, I also think we should get out of manned space flight for a while. Right now, almost all our big science gains and almost all our spacelift is or could have been done with unmanned missions. The shuttle still needs replaced, but do we even need a shuttle? I would cancel the shuttle program, and not even start another replacement for 5-10 years.
Then, when the time comes, NASA's primary goal should be to eliminate the differences between orbital craft, sub-orbital craft, and aircraft. Star Trek aside, space shouldn't be a big deal exotic situation, but a normal part of the process of travel, just like flying is part of travel now.
To sum up: Dont be afraid to put the hammer down, and get rid of "middle" projects. NASA should have two mission concepts: Unmanned probes and spacelift that give us the best bang for our space-bucks, and long term avionic concept projects that work in baby steps to get really, really good space exploitation down the road.
I'm not a NASA employee but I am very disappointed by NASA's performance. The same kind of managers sit in their fine wood paneled offices sucking down millions of dollars to fund a burocracy the like of which is only rivaled by the federal government. They've been wasting
time and money for 30 years.
I remember living on the coast during the Saturn V program when my father was an engineer working on the propulsion systems. He worked there recently on the Shuttle. The strife between the union workers and the engineers who sit in their offices is visible in the lack of quality of the
whole Shuttle operation. This is just one of the many problems at the Cape.
The only way this nation is going to move forward into space is if Russia or China fly to Mars or builds a moon base and forces us to overhaul NASA. Something we should have done by now.
why you don't work for NASA. How does less than 1% = waste ?
I would whip up a PR corps.
We would make get a bunch of "Here's what's right around the corner (with $X million)!" videos and sell them to the Discovery Channel and schools and stuff. I'd try to get America excited about space and NASA. We'd sit around brainstorming about ways to get USA all hot and bothered for space. For a large profile / low cost project I'd look at dropping gengineered bacteria onto Venus to begin terreforming. Yeah yeah, it'd take like 500 years to do, but we can get started today! The final result is wildly difficult, but what about the first steps? I guess we'd have to make sure that there isn't any life already there though.
From there I'd look at extra-terra solar energy collection to start making us look cool. Then research into extended human habitation of low / no G environments. From there you're ready to have people live on the moon and you can start putting fabrication facilities up there. Think of the silicon chips you could make. You could mine the moon for a long time before it ceases to be economically feasable (presuming you got it feasable in the first place), according to my understanding. And what an astronomy base it would be. Now with your income you can start looking at Mars. And by this time we prolly got that fusion thing working a little better, we can start making models of drives which shoot high-momentum photons out the back so that we don't have to carry around all that reaction mass. When the moon runs out of minable materials there is always the asteroid belt. And then there's the Jovian moons... and how's that Venus thing coming along?
I would seriously give an arm to be director-for-life of NASA.
Adam Thorne
Pigs... In... Space...!!1!
"Bite me, it's fun!" - Crowe T. Robot
-1, didn't get joke
Rather than try to steal money from other worthy groups, why not lobby the right people to support your cause?
I don't exactly know what you mean by worthy...In fact, what exactly does NASA do that is so important? Do you have concrete examples? If NASA does research that just happens to improve, say, something like weather prediction, why don't we simply decide to fund only those types of scientific developments?
I don't buy the argument that the research by-products of Space Exploration justify the huge costs, that, I might remind you, are funded by public tax dollars. Is there some way we can spend less money on Space Shuttles, and more money on issues that directly affect the US public. (My assumption here is that Space Shuttle missions don't really affect our general population!)
By the way, if you think "sandwiches" are the way to combat hunger problems (sometimes they can be - food not bombs!), you should check out:
The UN World Food Program!
Propulsion should be one of our priorities though obviously "warp" is far off. We need to both find a cheaper way of leaving the atmosphere and find a method of high-speed space travel. Howstuffworks outlines some possibilities but there are other ideas floating about. A moonbase does sound like a good idea, though. A Europa probe may be a few years off.
Commence probing Uranus. And yours and yours and yours... :-P
Lemme guess - you're over 30, right?
I'm glad *some*body said that...
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE BELONG TO YOU EXCEPT EUROPA.
I'm not sure it was in quite those words, but that sure made me laugh.
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
Sure it wasn't "TAKE OFF NO 'ZIGS' THERE"?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Why do people want to storm the moon? What the Apollo program has taught us is that the moon is actually a big, unhospitable, barren rock of dust. There isn't any reason to send people to live on the moon, except maybe for research purposes (the backside could give us some *great* pics of the universe. incl radio) and extravagant tourism.
Now Mars is totally different. It has an *atmosphere*, as thin as it may be. Which could be terraformed, given time and resources (Opinions differ as to viability of the project, and through which means, and to what ends). Water could be found underground, giving us a good basis for further colonization. Disantvantages? It's a heck of a far way off, but let us not be stopped by this.
Let Us try.
My little grain of salt.
Such an elegant sarcastic response to someone else's flamebait shouldn't be modded down as flamebait.
Things are looking remarkably like a re-run of the early 1970's. World economic turndown, dramatic new forms of terrorism, a (fortunately minor) oil crisis, the US running huge deficit budgets and heading into a war in a place that was Russia's Vietnam.
And of course a very large and expensive space project is going ahead without clear long-term objectives. Remember that lack of $$$ resulted in the cancellation of Apollo 18 and 19, in retrospect a tragically short-sited decision. I fear that the ISS could go the same way and we'll have to wait another thirty years for a major space project.
But there is a silver lining: China's economy is still going gangbusters and they have an ambitious space program. China may well end up being the great (white?!) hope of manned space flight.
Then you've got the costs of either a) moving the solar cells from Earth (or maybe the moon) to the right spot, or b) moving a whole heap of, say, asteroid to the right spot, then manufacturing them there (and presumably the solar-cell plant has to come from Earth). Either is going to be a heck of a lot more expensive than manufacturing them on earth and shipping them to central Australia, say.
Sorry, I can't see how this is going to fly. Maybe the solar-powered laser thing (beaming the laser at earth using the energy to make hydrogen from water) the Japanese are currently experimenting with might be a possibility, but with conventional solar cells I just can't see it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
To answer the question in the story, if I were taking over, I would do two things. First, get a moon station, as many others have suggested. Second, get some damn probes into Europa already!!! For those unaware, Europa and even Callisto supposedly have oceans underneath their frozen crusts. Life can exist there, and life that is more than just bacteria. I want to see it before I die. You can get info about the moons if you're interested.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Dan Goldin is exactly what's wrong with our Space Program. I actually have no faith he will be replaced by anyone better. NASA has become a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Case and point the X-33 project. From an engineering perspective vertical launch single stage to orbit is just dumb makes no sense. It's actually a huge step backwards and if it actually ever did fly I doubt it would have been significantly cheaper than what we have now (space shuttle). Those familiar with the original shuttle design know that it called for a specially built plane for horizontal launch using the power of a lifting wing to get it close to space before launch. This was dumped in the end and the deadly solid boosters added in due to huge cost over runs. Using a lifting wing to go up is so basic aeronautically it's a big DUH. I remember watching some program on TLC or Discovery and they asked Dan Goldin why they chose X-33 over the already flying delta clipper (technically I don't think clipper makes sense either). And he said with this smarmy bureaucrat smirk that X-33 was better and did not specify how. Let me translate "we need to keep our defense contractors in business so congress advised us we should dump a bunch of money into Lockheed Skunk works". Over one billion spent no flying prototype. Instead of flushing money into people interested in the status quo we should dump money into public grants/prizes for truly innovative commercial space products. Also you have to wonder why Goldin was so pissed about Dennis Tito going into space on ISS. I believe it's because if space is no longer the exclusive domain of the NASA bearcats and their chosen ones. And people figure out you don't really need NASA to get to space. All of the sudden they're funding dries up. He is dead set against what I want most, that is cheap everyday access to space for the average human.
1) The Hubble mirror would not fry but the scientific instruments would. The KH11 spy satelites presumably have different instruments. Supposedly, before Hubble was around, they could read the headlines of papers on the ground.
2) The main mirror and the secondary could be the same, but the focus point would change, but not by much.
3) The problem with the Hubble mirror was a measurement problem. The Focault test, while one of the most accurate, can't tell you what you need to change to fix any problem you have. They used an interferometer to find out what they needed to change to get the figure they wanted. Unfortunately a washer on the interferometer was in wrong and therefore the measurement of the interferometer was wrong. They checked with the Focault tester but decided to believe the million dollar tester instead of the 10 dollar one. Yes that is how much they can cost. Well made expensive Focault testers can cost a couple of hundred dollars.
Really, this is a BIG deal.
o gy /space_elevator_001226.html
All the payloads of all the chemical rockets in the world are popcorn farts compared to the kind of mass we'll have to orbit to make a _real_ space ship, like a generation ship or something else big enough to really go anywhere. Everything we've done so far has lost 95% of its mass just struggling its way up the first hundred miles or so.
Consider this:
Put a geosynchronous satellite into orbit, a BIG one, over the Equator, and drop a rope (well, you'll need a better material than hemp) down to the surface. The satellite would have to fly a bit higher than the truly geosynchronous altitude so as to generate force to hold up the rope. Once the rope reaches the ground, you anchor it and then you can put an elevator-type vehicle on it to climb the rope. Sure, that'll take power, but nothing like the energy required by a rocket, and maybe the power could be sent up from the ground over wires or conducting strips built into the rope. Such an elevator could have a chance of lifting the kind of mass we _need_ to get into orbit (and it would be a _high_ orbit at that, about 22,000 miles) to build any king of large station or spacecraft.
http://members.aol.com/beanstalkr/project/
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technol
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Goldin probably did as much as anyone could have within the limits of current funding.
As for where NASA should be going, the suggestions of Mars bases, Lunar bases etc are totally out of the question as long as the shuttle and some LEO (low Earth orbit) boosters are the mainstay of the spacelift capacity. Improved propulsion systems are the key to open space exploration, that is where the money should go. Drop the cost of getting into space to a fraction of what it is today and everything else, Mars missions, Europa missions, etc, become practicable. The US had the option in the 50s and 60s to pursue resusable rocketplane development but the political climate of competing to get to the Moon sent the US down the expensive big rocket big price tag path. Space planes are the obvious way ahead, remember the X15s were flying at 4500 MPH at heights of 70 miles plus in the 1960s. The fastest aviators of all time were X15 pilots like Scott Crossfield, Neil Armstrong, Milt Thompson, the fastest "spam in a can plus glider" pilots fly the shuttle. Imagine a larger X15 type built with modern technology, or with tomorrow's scramjet,ferrying loads into space at a fraction of today's expense. Space travel will always be expensive, projections of bargain rate space travel will always be wrong, but the US space programme doesn't have to be built around an ageing design (ie the shuttle) with a vast price tag. Maybe costs can be got down to an equivalent of a berth on the QEII, where space tourism and more commercial activity becomes feasible.
With cheaper space travel we can have "darken the skies with probes" AND human space exploration rather than the current situation of having to choose.
After that, Mars and Europa has to be first ports of call. Radio telescopes on the dark side of the Moon, probes to everywhere, astropalaeo' on Mars, sounds great !
For anyone interested in proof of anti-gravity technology check out: (no joking) http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/lifter4.htm
For anyone interested in proof of anti-gravity technology check out:
o ut h.htm
u fo .htm
(no joking)
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/lifter4.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ufophysics/grangem
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ufophysics/bahnson
ACtually, the RUssians considered this quite thoroughly. The problem is, even dedicating two or three Progress ships (at $20 million+ a pop) to reboost would only have bought a few years breathing space before it would have to be done again. By the time it could be smelted down on-site, you would have spent more than it was worth on reboost flights.
You are aware that NASA is working on a Europa Orbiter at the moment? It's a prime example of what's wrong with NASA.
There are a substantial number of tehcnological issues that need to be addressed before the mission is feasible. Hardened circuitry is a big one, as Europa orbits Jupiter inside the unbelievably strong radiation belts. These issues have pushed the launch of EO back from 2003 to at least 2006-08. Costs have also skyrocketed to the point that it may eat up the entire outer planets science budget.
The big problem with this is that Goldin would rather fund EO than Pluto Express, because in his opinion (contrary to many in the scientific community, but that never stoped Dan before) people aren't interested in Pluto. Europa will still be there a few years from now, but if we don't launch to Pluto really soon, then its atmosphere will freeze for another couple of centuries. Meanwhile, money could continue being poured into EO with no firm prospect of short term success.
Let's prioritize our limited space science budget to examine the stuff that we can and should reach right now.
Well...is ol' Jack Welch doing anything "worthy" after leaving G.E. What NASA needs is someone who knows how to build an organization...i.e. get the right people and then let them do what they think they can do...That's what seems to really have made the Manhatten Project, Apollo Program, and Rickover's Nuclear Navy (to name a few)the successes they were... Anything else would be putting the proverbial cart before the horse... Ad Astra Bill
I want to see the U.S. flag on our spaceships. I also want to see the Russian, Chinese, and hopefully Saudi, Iraqi, and Afghan flags on theirs. I want to see the flags of the enemy. COOPERATION IS THE LAST THING WE NEED.
S(#3$ unity. We need competition!
People are short sighted by nature. Joe Sixpack or Jill the Soccer Mom will NOT spend money on something as "ridiculous" as exploring Mars or building a base on the moon when "we haven't even balanced our own budget, built a healthcare system, made our beaches free from sharks, stopped online music piracy, etc."
Right now, we're trying to invent "Earth based" problems supposedly solved by space research. Nobody's buying. It's politically suicidal to talk about exploration for its own sake. In the 50's they were just trying to get out there ahead of other guy, and (necessarily) ended up discovering stuff that was useful. If they had unity, they'd still be debating the usefulness of having an artificial sattelite. But because of competition, there was political will for the space program, and that brought money. The rest took care of itself.
WHAT WE NEED IS A NEW SPACE RACE!
it would certainly beat the current race to actively destroy each other
We need to go to Mars. Manned. And golf.
It would be a great way for this country to get happy again.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I work with many people that have previously worked under Goldin, and I can tell you right now that none of them like him. He did not turn NASA around. He turned it upside-down. Why is NASA one of the top 3 worst managed government institutions?
when come back bring pie
First and formost, I beleive that NASA needs a specific long term goal to work towards. Many folks will say "The Space Station" and I would agree that it is a goal. But I am thinking of something a little more far reaching. Now one poster has mentioned getting rock from the moon and bring it back. That person was a little sarcastic, but he was making a point about technological advances. I say that not going to the moon, but to rondevous with near earth asteroids should be the course of action. Then to Mars. This requires many technological leaps in many fields. One field, electromagnetics, would gain a good deal of knowledge. This could lead to enormously high levels of tech advanses. A clear goal for NASA to strive for would be very helpful. It is also interesting to note that yes Goldman cut cost. He also cut important programs to help with the "cutting cost." One of these was the X-33. The development of X-33 would have eventually resulted in Venturestar. Then we can get rid of the expensive, old, complex, and high maintenace shuttle. I think the air force might pick up the X-33 but who knows. When it becomes cheaper to get in orbit, it becomes more feasable to get ME in orbit. :)
Send Ashcroft, Feinstein, the RIAA, the MPAA, and the whole of Al Qaeda to Mars.
Then up the space defense budget, because I'm sure, even on Mars, they'd all still have designs on the world.
Actually, most people I know have no clue what the ISS is there for.
They hear no news about it, I've even come across a few who said, "What space station? Oh, you mean the Mir?"
The ISS isn't sexy science either. It's just a big freakin' waste of money.
First of all let me state that I want NASA to succeed. NASA isn't sexy anymore but it should be. What was sexy then was the risk and surpassing the Russians. What is really sexy now is money. Lots of money. NASA shouldn't be a public charity case they should be a government sanctioned monopoly. Whenever somebody comes across as against NASA the common response is to retort with all NASA has done for us and can do for us. What it has done for us is the most important to the short sighted of course. (correct me if I am wrong because I am basing this off of zero expierance) NASA should have special government agency patents on everything they discover. I am not talking about patenting every little thing that crosses their mind and suing those who don't pay. I am talking about benefits that they implement. Plastic is the obvious and only one I can think of right off. Since they are a government agency these patents would expire after something like five years. Long enough to make money off of the first too markets. With this policy they could rake in a lot more money and become self sufficient and sexy all at the same time.
Also going somewhere for the sake of going there is acting goofy. We should be trying to mine near earth satellites. Imagine a man who is trained as a teenager to operate a simple (not quadruple redundant) spaceship and guide a meteor into orbit. If it took his whole lifetime he would be a national hero and a prearranged large sum or percentage would be payed to whoever he wants (seen as way for poor son to promote his family to riches). Once in orbit this meteor could be mined for the likely riches of metal of large amounts of gold, iron, and copper. Even if it turned out that meteors are worthless mud and sticks (I dont think so) at least we would have tried.
But we won't establish any Mars colony. It's not sexy. Planting the first flag on Mars is.
--Zarn
> Probes on Europa?
Yes! and also in Mid-Est, Africa, Asia, South America, ecc.
We have to remember all those 2m size mirros (acting as magnifyng lens) already orbiting around earth.
Sorry, I forgot, are we dealing with NASA or NSA?
Actually, we should be able to get the cost per kilogram of shipping from the Moon down pretty low. We know there's silica there; use a mass driver to get chunks of rock into Lunar orbit, then move them to the Lagrange points.
We would want to research more efficient methods of collecting solar energy in space, certainly. But O'Neill thought this was doable in the late 70s. As fortune would have it, /. posted this the day after my post -- further discussion of the same idea.
-- Support Ometz le-Serev.
When people talk about colonising the Moon, they seem to forget that unlike colonies on Earth, lunar colonies won't be able to start small and work their way up. A colony on Earth can start out very small (a handful of farms) and very simple (nothing more advanced than a stone axe). It can sustain itself entirely without external support, gradually augmenting its technology using local resources. (Building wooden houses, dry stone walls, fences, looms, kilns, bricks, tanneries, breweries, forges, and all that other Settlers II shit.) A colony on the Moon would need technology more advanced than anything we currently have on Earth, from day one. In order to maintain that technology, everything needed to support a 21st century civilisation in a hugely hostile environment would have to be shipped from Earth. We're talking about putting Small Town USA, Silicon Valley and the Rust Belt in a rocket and sending them to the Moon. We had enough trouble getting a beach buggy to the Moon!
A self-sufficient lunar colony is an incredibly ambitious venture. It is nothing like a space station. A space station gets everything it needs from Earth. If a computer breaks down, mission control puts a new one in a rocket and sends it up. A self-sufficient lunar colony would have to make its own computers (and lightbulbs, and socks, and lard, and steel, and little tinfoil bags full of freeze-dried ice cream).
I'd develop commercially viable Single Stage to Orbit craft, a la Michael Flynn's Firestar. Once the infrastructure for cheap lifts to orbit is built, moonbases and such will follow.
>|<*:=
For anyone still paying attention to this article, there is a great article on how to reduce launch costs (they are not really dominated by fuel) at http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html
Please read it
I've read Zubrin's plans for Mars colonies, and all of his stuff sure sounds great... make the necessary food, water and fuel out of the Martian atmosphere and dust using solar panels and nuclear reactors. Save all that weight and brew your own supplies when you get there.
Yep, sure sounds great... until you get to the part where he says that all you need to bring with you from Earth is a boatload of compressed hydrogen. During a SciAm Frontiers interview, e dismisses this as a trivial issue. It's my understanding that it's almost impossible to keep a tank of hydrogen without leaks. His plans call for lifting a couple of million cubic feet of liquid hydrogen, shipping it to Mars, aerobraking it down to the surface, and living off of it for a year or so. This doesn't strike me as a trivial detail.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
So far all we've built are the tug boats and ferrys that get you out of port. Now we need a real spacecraft. Think Enterprise, but on an interplanetary rather than interstellar scale. Assign a permanent captain and crew. Rotate the habitable areas for artificial gravity. Build it in space, make it big enough for the crew and at least a dozen passengers (scientists now, maybe tourists and entertainment producers later), and never worry about landing it anywhere. Use a combination of SSME or better engines to break earth orbit, and use VASIMR engines for interplanetary cruise. Make it modular, so that improved power systems, propulsion modules, planetary landers, etc. can be swapped out as they become available. This thing should be capable of flying to the moon, Mars, Venus, asteroids, comets, and even the outer planets with added consumables. Design a mission, this thing will get you there with all the equipment you need.
That's a space program.
VASIMR to Mars!
NASA needs some wild-eyed, scraggly-haired Berkeley astronomy professor to head it up. Maybe we'll actually go to Mars then. I know Slashdot doesn't like to get partisan but check out this from the BBC from 1999 (Republicans demand huge cuts in NASA):d _4 04000/404947.stm
2 6. htm
l
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsi
Then check out where Dan Goldin is going -- the Council on Competitiveness. Read the history of this organization.
Reagan & Bush screwing with the EPA and clean air:
http://www.epa.gov/history/publications/reilly/
Headed by Dan Quayle:
http://www.quaylemuseum.org/backup/biograph.htm
So let me get this straight. The Republicans hate space exploration, they appoint a budget hawk to end the era of manned space exploration beyond earth orbit, and then -- rather than teaching astronomy -- he goes back to where his true colors shine.
I choose:
Give to the poor
Single Stage to Orbit is the most important goal for NASA. It is simply astronomical to launch anything into space ($10,000 per pound!). If we want to go to mars or the moon, or anywhere off the ground we need to bring down the cost of launch to about ($1000 per pound). We will not be able to afford to build hotels in space, but it would be cheap enough to do some real cool projects.
SSTO is not going to be cheap to develop, probably between $10-Billion to $20-Billion.
Unfortunately the DOT-COM bubble and the recent attachs has all but shelved any new big projects for NASA. Bin Laden is right now is the biggest enemy of NASA, since it will be unlikly the we will be able to resume work on a SSTO project for at least 10 years.
By 2010 Oil prices will begin to rapidly rise making energy and transportation costs to high to afford any SSTO projects.
You can basically kiss Mars or any moon mission good bye for probably the next 100 years or so.
Over the next decade expect NASA to focus on down to earth projects, Better Jet engines, Aircraft safety, etc.
I'm talking about boosting it to an orbit where atmospheric drag is negligible; an orbit that is stable for 50+ years without additional reboosts. It could have been done -- atmospheric density drops off exponentially with altitude.
Would it have cost some coin? Yes. But far less money than we're eventually going to spend reboosting hundreds of tons of mass at $10,000 per pound. The United States should have bought scrap salvage rights to Mir.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The surface of the moon is an utterly desolate lifeless wasteland, punctuated by craters and boulders. An open pit mine on Earth would be an incredible improvement!
Besides which, no open pit mine of any conceivable size would be visible from earth. You can barely see the largest manmade features on the Earth from low Earth orbit, and the moon is hundreds of thousands of times farther away than that. Maybe you could see the lights when the mine was in shadow, but I'm not sure if you could see it even then with the naked eye.
Besides which, I do want to see the lights of the colony when I look up from Earth! And if I live long enough, I will!
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
And I'm telling you that the Russians worked out that two progress rockets expending their entire fuel supply to reboost would have only bought Mir about three years.
IANA physicist, but I'm quite sure that atmospheric pressure drops off pretty close to linearly.
Typical of the sort of instant punditry found on Slashdot - Some computer geek states that 'it could have been done' when rocket scientists (who would have dearly loved to keep it up if even remotely practicable and safe) spent months working out that it wasn't possible. I know which one I choose to have faith in.
Use the Moon as a construction yard/launchpad for interplanetary flight. The Moon has many obvious benefits for building and launching spacecraft:
1) Lack of hazardous weather conditions allow spacecraft to be built in the open. On Earth, this would be infeasible (rain, corrosion, etc.)
2) No insects/biological contaminates that could creep into the craft without our noticing.
3) Greatly reduced gravity means less engine power required for liftoff. This means that more cargo, food, etc. can be transported for longer voyages, and fuel can be conserved for the voyage itself.
4) Reduced gravity makes actual construction of the craft easier as well.
5) Astronauts living on the moon would have an easier time accustoming to life in zero-gravity than astronauts living on Earth, as they will already be used to low-gravity environments.
6) Lack of atmospheric interference means that craft-to-moon communications will be easier than craft-to-earth communications.
7) Re-entry "burnup" is not an issue on the Moon. Also, lighter gravity means the craft will have a gentler landing.
And the disadvantage: When the Earth gets in-between the sun and moon, and the base is on the far side. It'll be DARK.
-Chardish
Atmospheric density drops of exponentially with altitude. It's called the Law of Atmospheres -- look into it!
Typical of the sort of instant punditry found on Slashdot - Some computer geek states that 'it could have been done' when rocket scientists (who would have dearly loved to keep it up if even remotely practicable and safe) spent months working out that it wasn't possible.
Um, I am a rocket scientist (if a practicing, degreed Aerospace Engineer is allowed to say that).
the Russians worked out that two progress rockets expending their entire fuel supply to reboost would have only bought Mir about three years.
Progress rockets? They're little chump rockets compared to what the Russians are really capable of: try two Energias!
As I said, boosting Mir that high wouldn't be cheap. But the cost of two Energias is far less than what it's eventually going to cost us to reboost those hundreds of tons of mass at $10,000 per pound.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.