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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?
So if you were NASA's next director, what would you do with the agency?
Why, would they hire me?
Flame is an understatement. That thing is a bloody rocket man!
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?
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
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
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.
Only if we get to vote on who gets sent there first. :)
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.
I'm not sure that should necessarily be our next goal. Of course I'd like to see us go to mars but I'm not sure we should aim for that as our next "big thing."
I think what really needs to happen is we need to finish the IIS and start working as planet as oppose to a bunch of competing countries that are always going to war against each other.
I don't want to see the U.S flag on our space ships. Or Russian, Chinese Canadian or anything else. Instead I want to see either a picture of Earth, or a flag that symbolizes all of Earth.
Then we can explore as a unity. Because really, how the hell are we ever going to explore the "final frontier" and seek out new lifeforms and civilizations when we can't even get along with ourselves.
That should be our next big mission. Of course that's just my opinion.
--
Garett
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
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?
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.
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
we need to finish the IIS
:O)
Heh... I think I've been reading a little too much Bugtraq lately. That should be ISS
--
Garett
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.
According to http://ifmp.nasa.gov/codeb/budget2002/03_multiyear _budget.pdf, the proposed 2002 NASA budget is $5.584 billion. According to http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/usbudget/blueprint/ budx.html, the total outlays for the 2002 US Budget is $1.969 trillion. According to my math, that's less than 0.3%. And then, the shuttle budget is of course less than half the total NASA budget...
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'd say that money is well spent considering the modern benefits that have come from space exploration (new materials, medical research, technology advances, etc).
Probe Uranus.
m00.
Rotate the Hubble Telescope towards Afghanistan so we can see WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON down there.
For real.
"And like that
Of course it's ignorant, but I think it's important to explain *why*.
Here on earth, we spend 99.999% (or more) of our energies trying to survive and improve ourselves already (when we're not spending energy squabbling with each other), and only the tiniest fraction trying to explore what lies beyond this little ball of mud we're stuck on. But if there's to be a future for us, it lies in the worlds we have yet to discover; our time here is slowly running out.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
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.
Earth first! We'll strip-mine the other planets later!
Well, at first glance at http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/spinoffs2.htm, my two favorites are the space pen and the football helmet, though you may prefer the medical imaging, plastic packaging, and fire fighting equipment.
Yeah, it's a kiddie page, but there are plenty of sources for real valuable spin-offs...
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.
Matthew Broderick is laughing all the way to the bank, seeing as how he's starring in the biggest, most popular, record-award winning Broadway play in years - Mel Brook's "The Producers", as Leo Bloom.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I've always been partial to the Brazilian Flag myself. Maybe not so much the colors, as the concept of the planet integrated in the flag.
From the CIA website (for those that don't like following links):
Flag description: green with a large yellow diamond in the center bearing a blue celestial globe with 27 white five-pointed stars (one for each state and the Federal District) arranged in the same pattern as the night sky over Brazil; the globe has a white equatorial band with the motto ORDEM E PROGRESSO (Order and Progress)
...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)
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
The "Dark Side" commonly refers to the side of the moon that faces away from the Earth. Since we only see one side, the other side is "Dark"... more as in "unkown" (like dark-horse).
Oxford gives:
adj: 7 remote, secret, mysterious, little-known (the dark and distant past; keep it dark).
n: 3 a lack of knowledge.
and a nice example (also from Oxford): dark star - an invisible star known to exist from reception of physical data other than light.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
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.
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)
Is the entire moon composed of nothing but moon dust?
"Sorry Mr. Columbus, we'll have to go back to Spain. All there is on the beach where the ship landed is sand, and we can't build shelter with sand."
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.
I submit myself as a candidate for the common enemy. Give me a moon base, a robot army, and a neat evil-futuristic-warlord uniform (damn well better have a cape), and I will gladly terrorize the world so it can unite against me.
Anyone up for the job of my chief lieutenant? I promise not to kill you when you inform me that my demise is imminent unless I rethink my plans.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
The dark side of the moon is the side of the moon that faces permenantly away from Earth. It's considered 'dark' in the sense of knowledge rather than sunlight.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Hmmmm, well how much time do we have?
4-6 Billion years sun becomes inhospitable
0.5-1 Billion years, possible collapse of oceanic biosphere due to H20 escape into space.
25-150 Million years to next mass extinction asteroid/comet if you bet with the odds.
Length of human civilization: 15000 years.
Offhand, I'd say we've got plenty of time to find a solution provided we can keep our heads together long enough not to kill ourselves off. If we get Mars colonies in the next 10 millenia will be doing pretty good as a species. Of course that wouldn't be nearly so much fun as seeing it in my life time.
The same could be said about $1 million cruise missiles being shot at empty terrorist camps. The missile itself isn't $1M. They're just aluminum, explosives, and a couple of microprocessors. But a thousand people in Ratheon's southern California factory have steady jobs assembling them.
I think you're expecting something like a NASA-made machine to go to the moon, mine, and bring back enough gold to pay for itself, but that's not the point. Western civilization has valued knowledge for its own sake since the ancient Greeks came up with the idea of "philosophy". The effort of this pursuit is valuable in itself, for knowledge is added to humanity's stockpile even in failure.
If you still really want to picture a NASA project as a closed economic system unto itself (which it isn't), then consider the Mars Pathfinder mission. Enough merchanising tie-ins were sold that the project paid for itself.
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.
There are several inaccuracies in this post that need correction:
The moon surface is comprised mainly by tholiitic basalt - the same stuff that the Hawiian Islands are made of. It is extremely dense, hard rock.
The moon dust is just a surface veneer, just like blow sand in the Western US. Bore deep enough and you have a structurally stable environment to build habitable shelters.
As for geologic stability, the moon is tectonically dead (no seismic hazards), has no liquid water on its surface, and has no atmosphere to form winds. In short, there is no erosional capability other than by meteors.
As I said before, dig it deep enough (50 - 100 m), and your pretty safe.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
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.
-
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 ?
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.
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.
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. --
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.
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
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.
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."
Sustainable agriculture research? If that's one of your goals, and you need money, you can start by removing government subsidies for disuse of crop land. America alone could easily meet the world's food demands, if there weren't economical and political incentive not to.
funny munging
I already bought the prime real estate. All your base are belong to me.
AC's cheerfully ignored
I think what really needs to happen is we need to finish the IIS...
Man, that's one scary typo when you think about it:)
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
The sun goes through a half period in oscillation about every 30-35 Million years, for a round trip time of 60-70 Myr. Thus it passes through the disk every 30 Myrs or so, unfortunately these trips through only poorly correlate with known mass extinction events, so it may not be as likely a cause as one might imagine.
25-150 Myrs might be a little optimistic, certainly we'll be hit before then, but I'm figuring it would have to be relatively big to kill humanity. You can expect a regionally important meteor event in 10 Myrs or so. But even that is an insane amount compared to length of human civilization and the progress we've already made.
You're quite right of course, when we rearrange some rubble with a $1 million cruise missile in Afghanistan, it's not like anything tangible has been destroyed except some explosives, some metal and maybe an Afghan or two.
The more significant impact of this (from American perspective, Afghan's may see it differently) is that money has been redistributed. Likewise, the main impact of shooting rockets into space is to enrich the owners and employees of technology companies. It's a form of state subsidy for technology. State sponsorship of high tech is a good thing IMO, but it would be more democratic if it wasn't disguised as something else.
The problem is that the roundabout way of doing things severely distorts several things. In the first case, people are mislead as to what they are paying for. A manual labourer of gas attendent may accept that it's fair for him to pay taxes to spend on "defense". He may be less impressed if it was clear that his taxes were subsidising people far richer than him.
Also, if the extent to which large corporations were subsidised by the state was clear, then people might start complaining that things were a little unfair. The last few decades has seen the income of the average worker stagnate in real terms while the rich have become immensly richer. It's not unfettered capitalism that redistributes wealth upwards, and is responsible for technological advances. In fact the actual research and development of high tech (computers, aeroplanes, internet, etc) is mostly paid for by the state. Once a sector becomes profitable ownership is transfered to the private sector, so that the 1/2% of the population who own 80% of the shares can become wealthier. Now, maybe this is a good system, but you're deluded if you think that it's simply a product of a "free market". I don't agree with taxing the rich to pay the lazy, but stealing from the poor (actually the middle) to give to the rich, seems a bit much.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Don't forget what happened to the Chinese!
ehintz
Click here [slashdot.org] to disable stupid signature lines
Wow! Now that's got to be the most advanced feature in the slashcode yet! You mean if I click that, I will only see the clever signature lines from now on?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
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.
Mars is absolutly within our grasp. We can get there with Apollo era rocketry and when we get there we can live off the land. Robert Zubrin has been writing about this for years and has built prototypes of the equipment we'll need to generate rocket fuel, oxygen, and water out of native materials.
The big issue is that we can't go for a month. For a Mars trip to be worthwhile, in scientific terms, we've got to stay for a year.
For anyone that needs convicing check out the The Mars Scociety. Mars awaits us. Its our next step.
There is nothing for us on the Moon. It's not a good lauch pad for future missions, or fuel depot. It might be a good place to put a telescope but we could do that with an unmanned mission. Save the moon for the tourist, at least not until we can build fusion reactors that depend on all the helium-3 up there.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." -- Marx
...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'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....
Well...nothing, actually. But you do get free room and board. And you'll get a snazzy uniform. And some slave girls.
Ooooh yeah...slave girls.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Moon dust (or regolith) contains mostly aluminum, magnesium, oxygen, and several other metals and miscellaneous elements. The best idea would be to put together a smelter powered by solar energy (having the thing operating in a vacuum would be a fun engineering challenge), then scoop up regolith and make metal. Habitats could be made out of lunar aluminum, then buried under regolith to protect against radiation and small meteoroids. Another option, the better one IMHO is to set up a base on a near-earth asteroid. No meaningful gravity well to worry about, asteroids of various compositions can be found, including ones with hydrogen, oxygen, water or organic materials. Many of the asteroids have free metal - bits of pure iron, nickel, aluminum, even gold, silver & platinum. The only issue is getting there - we'd have to use significant amounts of fuel & time sending a spacecraft with mining equipment to the asteroid
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
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 &
This is a great idea. Humans are terribly fragile things, and the sheer amount of effort and expense required to feed our sci-fi-inspired fantasies of humans in space must seriously detract from more practical goals.
I think people who are excited about the idea of living in a moon or Mars colony should be made to go live on an oil drilling platform for a few months. Living in a moon or Mars colony is going to be like that, except worse.
Does this "Orbiter" do more than orbit? Because when I said I would send probes "into" Europa, I meant it: send landers, crawl the surface, heat the ice, melt down into the plates, swim into the slush or water underneath, really look for life, send home photos of the environment, etc.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
No way....you can't have Europa...all these worlds are yours, except Europa.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
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).
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.