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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."
Kids are starving to death because they are not eating, not because there is extra-terrestrial scientific study being done.
It would take a small percentage of the NASA budget to get food to all these starving people. So the money being spent on "pointless" things isn't the problem.
What is the problem is the governments of these starving children that let grain rot on docks, use aid money for things other than food and medical supplies, or sell donated items that would aid their populace for weapons or luxuries.
Get of your High Horse and think for once before you spout any more of your liberal tripe.
Who run Barter Town?
Is there going to be a much better replacement, for example? I would have thought it economic to keep Hubble in space, even if it was superseded. Guess that shows what I know.
You know those stupid "would you like to give $5 to the so-and-so party?" lines at the bottom of the 1040? Well, why not have a "would you like to give $5 to the send-a-man-to-mars fund?" I'll pretty much die before I give a dollar to a politician so he can put my name on a "sucker to call when I need more money" telemarketing list but I'll gladly give money to a cause that means something on a historical scale like this.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
I've always liked this idea, taken to its logical conclusion. We could have a truly direct democracy if each taxpayer decided on his/her 1040 what percentage of his/her taxes would go to fund which program or agency.
As long as I'm being coerced to work 4 months per year as a slave of the Government( effectively, if not explicitly ), I should at least be given the choice as to how the extorted funds are to be allocated.
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?
You're kidding right? NASA *is* held accountable for what it spends which is why it's continually bean-counted into cancelling programs in the middle of their life. The space station is a giant mess specifically because NASA was forced into using it as a political chess piece. If the United States had built all the modules and launched it ourselves with no "help" from the rest of the world it would already be fully in orbit sending back scientific data from experiments. Our politicians, in their infinite wisdom, chose instead to make it a political tool in forging an olive branch with the Russians after the Soviet Union collapsed. Unfortunately what that turned into was the US Federal Government funding (directly and then later indirectly) the construction of the Russian built modules. When the Russian workers acted as direct contractors it worked fine and the one module was completely in good time. When we gave the money to the Russians to fund the workers themselves indirectly the next modules were delayed for YEARS because they funneled it away to other things! When the Federal Government stops trying to play global cop and prop up other governments with my tax dollars we'll be a lot better off.
The population will inevitably expand until the death rate reaches equilibrium with the birth rate. Therefore, aside from a plague or a war, unless people are forced to have two children or less, population will inevitably expand until the starvation rate balances out the excessive birth rate. Feeding the poor without stopping them from multiplying like rabbits is completely futile, and perhaps counterproductive, because it means MORE people will starve to death in the long run. The food supply cannot be expanded indefinitely. So don't throw money away on just giving them food. First give them vasectomies, then teach them how to be self-reliant and make their own food and money. Our money really is better spent on space exploration than exacerbating starvation by foolishly attempting to stop it by just giving away food.
Repeal the DMCA!
Columbus new that the risks in his mission were manageable, and the immediate payoff was high. (Of course, Spain went on to become a gold-based economy, importing pretty much all manufactured goods and got their clocks cleaned by British wool and things like that; quickly losing its world status, but that's another story). The risks of a manned Mars mission are unknown in some pretty important areas, all having to do with long-term exposure to space, for both humans and machines.
Consider the moon landing. 10 Apollo spacecraft came before the one that made it. One of those (Apollo 3) burned horribly on the launch pad. And thanks to Hollywood we all know that Apollo 13 also failed to reach the moon. That's 2 failures in 13 missions; a 15% failure rate, and only considering technical failures, since the risks in the human biology area for that kind of mission were understood reasonably well by then, thanks to a succession of manned orbital flights.
Now consider a Mars mission. We don't know what effects on human bodies (and minds!) will result from prolonged exposure to radiation and zero gravity for a mission that lasts that long, except they all look pretty bad. And while unmanned space probes have continued functioning for decades in space, they don't have life-support systems so we don't know what the risks are in that area either.
So it seems to me that advocating a manned Mars mission now is not very rational. We would simply be praying we get lucky, but the odds right now don't look very good.
We (the world, not just the US) need to know a whole lot more about what's involved before making any kind of vaguely rational decision to go to Mars. Use the Space Station to the max. Also put another one in orbit around the Moon for a few years. Learn what the glitches are likely to be and then decide.
"Fix Economy" -- You are right the economy is a multi-trillion dollar living organism and as you know every organism needs food. Right now the economy is anemic. Both monetary policy (Fed Reserve) and fiscal policy (taxes and spending) should be employed to correct this. The Fiscal side, cutting taxes and increasing discretionary spending, says that we should run a deficit (as we are) in order to get more money out there.
"Fight Crime" -- Actually Clintons 100,000 new cops policy has been a tremendous success. In case you haven't noticed violent crime has been going down ever since the program started. I even saw the conservatives in England calling for a simmilar program over there. Sorry but the federal government CAN do a lot to fight crime.
"Cut Taxes" I agree the tax cut was too small. It should have been much larger. Cutting taxes is one aspect of "fixing the economy".
"Reduce Deficit" - Stupid idea at this point of weak growth. As we have seen the deficit will take care of itself once the economy picks up and people start paying more taxes.
"Explore Mars" -- Sorry but I don't see the need to conduct a multibillion dollar goeology experiment in space. What do we hope to gain? So we get there and find out the soil is really 32% Iron and we originaly though it was 31% Wowee! Or maybe we find out it had water 100 million years ago, good, next time I'm time travelling and looking for a glass of water I'll stop by Mars.
I'm just pointing out that the science being performed is mainly in the area of Geology, a rather pointless science except when it comes to looking for gold and oil.
Money spent going to Mars would be much better spent developing fiber optics, improving gasoline engines, learning how to build more efficient batteries, researching fusion... Sciences with a real payoff, not geology.
Keep in mind, all of these private ventures into space are ONLY possible due to the "wonderous big budgets" which NASA has enjoyed in the past.
I agree that NASA needs to get it's act together fiscally, but don't sing the praises of other groups who come in after the basic (expensive) science and engineering are worked out. Those groups are cool in a different way; we still need someone to do the basic research.
Perhaps NASA would be better suited as an organization that coordinated and contributed to University research on basic space science and engineering only, letting private groups, China and Europe do that actual flying? The shuttles are getting quite old now. Of course it would help if corporations could figure out a way to make money off of space other than communications satellites.