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Hubble Upgraded; NASA's Future Not So Bright
jokrswild writes: "After 5 space walks and 172 million dollars, Hubble has been successfully redeployed. Hopefully it will be able to amaze us yet again in its abilities to capture the unimaginable." And Captn Pepe writes: "Space.com has a couple of articles regarding what the Congressional Research Service and what NASA's new chief administrator have to say about the space agency's future plans and prospects. The short version is, don't hold your breath for a Mars mission."
Space travel and starving kids are two completely separate things. Why again are these connected, and how does funding one detract from another? It's not like the U.S. government would or even could use those funds saved from no space travel to feed starving kids.
If I'm missing something, please, enlighten me.
Hargun
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
You fall into a trap when you engage in zero-sum games. Must it be "either or"? How come it can't be both?
If you save a buck from NASA's budget, do you believe this administration or this congress is going to fund UNESCO? Or do you kinda sorta suspect they are going to give that buck to a favorite corporate son?
don't hold your breath for a Mars mission.
Unless it's from China.
OK, let's say you are Queen Isabella of Spain. Christopher Columbus comes to you with some high-budget whacko proposal to send a small flotilla to the "other side of the world" when no one even knows if there is another side of the world.
How do you prioritize the following?
1. Keep funding the war with the English.
2. Keep funding your own court and all of the sycophants whose political support keeps you in power.
3. Keep paying the Vatican tribute so that you can get your sorry ass into Heaven through papal dispensation.
4. Keep throwing bones (in the form of subsidized wine and cut-rate fish prices) to the starving peasants who constitute the single largest economic class in your fading country.
5. Keep slipping dough to support the pirates who make the Dutch mercantilists' lives hard and prevent you from totally ceding international trade to a bunch of guys wearing wooden shoes.
The more times change the more they stay the same.
Just such a horrible thought! Making NASA accountable for what it spends!
After all look at the blazing fiscal successes of the International Space Station and it being able to come in under budget!!!
Or the success of the X-33...
Or X-34...
Or the X-30...
Or how about how the shuttle and how much it brought down launch costs just like they said it would...
Maybe there is a theme here, huh?
Perhaps when NASA learns some fiscal responsibility then we'll get our mission to Mars from them. And it's quite possible the wonderous big budgets of Apollo aren't EVER coming back.
In the mean time, it might actually be others who get there first. And, no, I don't mean other nations. John Carmack (yes, that John Carmack) is working on his one rocket company:here and Jeff Greasona nd crew are working on their own stuff here.
I might just wanna give them some competition myself...;)
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
We need something to cheer for or at least a place other than Earth to escape to.
Let's Explore Mars.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."