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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.
Ok, so kids are starving to death as you speak, and you want to spend time posting on Slashdot?
Shyeah.
Kids are starving to death as we speak, and you're sitting on your ass reading slashdot.
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?
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 I would have thought it economic to keep Hubble in space, even if it was superseded.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.
don't hold your breath for a Mars mission.
Unless it's from China.
Ok, let's say you're an elected member of congress. How would your constituents like you to prioritize the following:
A. Fight Terrorists
B. Fix Economy
C. Teach Our Children
D. Fight Crime
E. Cut Taxes
F. Reduce deficit/Debt Reduction
G. Explore Mars
Assuming you don't have enough money for everything, what do you leave out?
If you want NASA to go to Mars, I'd suggest you help the Chinese do it: The only thing that might sway congressional self-interest is competition. Nothing took the wind out of NASA's sails like the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
They must really be cutting back if they're recommending people holding their breath on the Mars mission.
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 value Space Exploration, but not enough to commit any resources to it.
You have some other definition of "value"?
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
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?
Just send the starving kids to Mars. That way, they technically wouldn't be a problem on OUR planet. :)
(waiting for appropriate mod-down)
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.
So kids are starving on this planet and their stupid parents keep popping out more? Most the countries in africa have a 3% growth rate. This is insane! I had a friend over there with a program that tried to pass out condoms. The locals laughed at him.
No wonder africa also has the highest AIDS rate. Sending food, money or birth control is not going to help. This is a cultural issue. Until these people stop CHOSING to overbreed the problem will NOT end.
It is not up to the US to try and be BIG DADDY. These people chose their lifestyle, they need to choose to end it. I would rather have money spent on expanding on the great things man can do, than supporting the worst that man can do.
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.
Isn't the real problem here Sally Struthers eating all the twinkies that are destined for Northern Africa or (insert starving nation here)? I never trust a fat person who claims to represent starving people. We all know who's getting the food in THIS case.
The potential benefits of such a mission should not be measured merely in the scientific knowledge we would gain (although that would be profoundly valauble moreso, than the lives of the kids IMO, and yes I'm a cold pragmatic bastard about such things, I would be perfectly willing to support my opinion that 99.99% of those children would never have accomplished anything anyway.) The true value is the sum of that knowledge plus the technology and science we would develop for the trip, which would doubtless be of incalculable financial wealth.
Seriously. Privatise it. A massive government monopoly on space is a waste of tax payers money and is stiffling private enterprise.
With shrinking budgets NASA is just an albatross round the neck of space travel.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Is not considering a Mars mission and certainly doesn't have the technology (or the money) for it. I don't know where you heard that from but it's just plain wrong.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
so... what you're saying is politicians should get their supplies from Staples, right?
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..."
Maybe just to make it interesting for the rest of us, send up about 50 camera's as well and a limited supply of oxygen and they have to fight for the right to be the last person breathing up there... and possibly get a free ride home...
That way, everyone left back here gets the best of all worlds...
Mars gets a manned mission,
We stop the fight against terrorism,
AND *shudder* for the reality tv freaks out there, they get the ultimate reality show of all time...
Ohhh... and as a side benefit, we also get rid of all those useless politicians who are just screwing up everything for everyone else...
*** I had a
*** I had a
This is a 1040. US citizens fill one out every year and send it in to the Internal Revenue Service (our friendly government tax people) on April 15. Check here for the complete list of fun-to-fill-out IRS forms. US law says the IRS doesn't actually have to have your 1040 in their grubby little hands on April 15, just that when they DO get it, it had better be in an envelope postmarked April 15. This rule leads to all kinds of crazy stuff happening on April 15, with postal people dressing up in monkey suits and standing by specially designated drop points until midnight....
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.
I think it's great that Hubble is all fixed up. I also agree w/one poster about keeping it going till there is a better replacement. Look at the other probes and stuff we've launched that are still working today. Pioneer 10, Galileo, etc. I think it's only natural that we should keep Hubble flying as long as we can safely.
Regular service missions should extend it's life a little longer, especially since it's already had a heart transplant.
As far as NASA goes I think cleaning up wasted spending is important but not at the cost of exploration. Lord knows there might be a microbe or something on Mars that could cure cancer, aids, or some other nasty Earthly disease and it's just sitting up there waiting for us to get it. Or something could wipe out the entire population of Earth. We don't know though till we go there.
I also saw another comment that said the Chinese could go for Mars. Imagine that, reminds me of the day when the USSR was making a shot for the moon but America beat them to it. Perhaps it will take another challenging country to get America going again and we may ask ourselves afterward why we didn't take the initiative to begin with after finding something amazing.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Boy, oh, boy, moving money from science to ISS may be illegal, but I guaran-damn-tee you it has happened by the billions....
We'll do it ourselves then. Click here.
For example, like this...
It was heard about here in a conference announcement from Marc Garneau and discussed on Slashdot.
And recently, it was pointed out that Canada does have critical exploration technology for drilling for samples.
I hate race conditions. Nevertheless, the other post doesn't have my GUID.
OK, a couple years back (too far back for my user page to remember), I made a post about how great the past NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin was, how he had managed to keep NASA going and doing wonderful things while having to dig through miles of endless beurocracy. I got slammed from another poster as to how he had kept NASA back, how we could have been doing so much more.
:(
So now NASA has O'Keefe. The guy who can stand up for minutes to talk about the future of NASA and not mention the word "space" once. Now we're wondering if humans really need to go up to LEO.
Booyah.
You could claim Goldin got NASA into this mess with bugetary problems, but I think any multi-government project is bound to be over-time and over-budget. And I think some of the cooler stuff, missions to Mars, return to the Moon (also never landed on by people in my lifetime), or even more robotic exploration of our own solar system become questionable under the lens of proper fiscal management.
Oh well. Go China. I'm serious. I'm watching for their next Shenzauo launch with great anticipation. The Chinese should be proud...
But only if the USSR was also trying to get to Mars.
Dyolf Knip
But, and here's the good part, you also want us to take our money and force them to lead better lives. Even ignoring the hypocracy of that suggestion, if you honestly think that is a good idea, I have this bridge I'd like to sell you.
Let me ask you this. Parents are over there having too many kids and then not being able to feed them. If we come over there and do nothing but give them food, without making it clear to them why they were in this predicament in the first place, what are they going to end up with? Another generation doing the exact same thing. They either have to stop having so many kids or start growing more food. We cannot support their entire population ourselves and it is insane of you to suggest otherwise.
Dyolf Knip
NASA goes nuclear
A new effort for NASA boosted by the White House is a nuclear power and propulsion initiative.
Both NASA and the DOD have each studied nuclear reactors for spacecraft power generation, the CRS report notes. Under the Bush White House, nuclear power and propulsion work is being rekindled.
"Although nuclear devices have advantages over other types of power and propulsion in terms of the amount of energy they produce versus their size and mass, some environmentalists oppose launching nuclear material into space. They worry that a launch accident, or an unintended spacecraft reentry, would spread radioactive material over Earth's population. Thus, the decision to reinvigorate NASA's program -- which would be conducted with the Department of Energy -- is expected to raise controversy," the CRS report states.
NASA work in the nuclear power arena is also being tied to outer planet exploration.
By using nuclear power and propulsion, NASA's O'Keefe has stated that spacecraft sent to such locales as Europa -- a moon of Jupiter -- and to distant Pluto, could get to those targets faster, and operate for longer periods of time.
YES! Before we can actually do a manned mission to Mars, we need a way to get there in a shorter amount of time. At least on this issue, NASA has its order-of-operations straight. When propulsion and other basic issues get nailed down (keeping the crews alive, etc), then we can make our grand plans for exploration.
Revolution involves risk, and politicians don't like to deal with that. They often want to pay a fixed amount for a known risk rather than pay a little more to test something that may save much more money in the long run only if it works.
And neither do engineers apparently.
BTW, what have Dyson and Fuller done to make space exploration itself cheaper-better-faster?
I'm not saying they did anything for space exploration in particular, but that's irrelevant.
Saying we need more Christopher Columbuses in NASA doesn't mean we actually want the 15th century Genoese explorer.
Both of these men have come up with interesting, innovative alternatives to the engineering and scientific problems they've looked at; they thought (before a generation of marketdroids appropriated the term) "outside of the box".
And a lot of decision makers at NASA are engineers and scientists. I just get a little sick of this whole "blame the politicians because the techies are just too c00l to criticize" attitude on slashdot.
Washington state residents have voted TWICE in a row now to cut taxs seriously.
Yeah, I live in Yakima, WA. Those idiots!
Initiative 695 made all license tab fees go to $35 per year.
Quite a few shortsighted idiots in Washington thought this: "Hey, I pay 200 dollars for my tab! This is going to take it to $35. Wowee!! I don't know where the money for roads, local governments, and subsidies for my job will come from, but who cares, $35!!!"
People seem not to understand that if taxes are cut, the gov't won't be able to provide all the services their used to.
But anyway, no matter how much food we give to africa, a many will still be starving. Just think of what happened in Somalia. Corrupt gov'ts and militias take the food and the people still insist on having a lot of kids. Do you know that there is an average of 6.5 children per woman in Nigeria!! If you live in a famine and drought-stricken nation, you should know that there is not enough food for everyone to have 6 kids!!!!
NASA's budget is tiny compared to our oversized military. They spend a billion dollars on every friggin' stealth bomber! And bush wants to buy 45 more stealth bombers! A series of missions to mars (using the inexpensive Mars Direct plan) would only take 20 billion dollars. That's less than half the cost of Bushes' recent order of stealth bombers! We could easily cut military spending by 1% and that would give NASA plenty of money.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
To be sure, we are using natural resources more than a 3rd world nation, but that's not really the issue here. The problem is that they are straining their own resources; ie how much food they can produce. Cheap space access in particular would help alleviate our impact on the environment, suggesting that we dedicate even more effort to that end.
I would suggest a fair chance of competing with us in the "free market" for a start.
It might work, it might not. In any event, it affects NASA's funding requirements not even a little bit, which was the topic of the parent.
Note however that im an not calling you "insane". That is bad manners, and not very mature.
I do apologize; I had thought your post was a response by the thread parent, the one who opined that as long as there is any suffering in the world we should do anything and everytyhing to correct it, regardless of whether it would be effective. Thinking that using all of NASA's funding to try and feed the Third World would definitely be insane. It'd be a striking example of the "Give a man to fish, teach a man to fish" maxim.
In any event, I stand by my previous post. So many people like to say "It's their culture not to practice any safe sex whatsoever" even though it is one of the things keeping them in a state of famine and general misery. They might not like to use condoms, but if they want to get anywhere they're gonna have to start, as well as consider implementing a number of other techniques relating to technology, government, and general way of life which we in the West have found to be far more successful.
For instance, imagine a society which considers anyone with blue eyes to be ineligible for any kind of employment. If they then find themselves having a manpower shortage, causing severe economic problems throughout the land, it is stupid for them to continue discriminating on the basis of eye color. It would be even more stupid for other, wealthier nations to start shipping in brown-eyed laborers. It doesn't solve the problem, it just staves it off for a little while so that in the future, even more people will be affected when it resurfaces.
Ever thought about how the ones that used to put their "insane" opponents in an asylum were mostly communist dictators?
Very true, but just because I think an idea is foolish doesn't mean that it is correct. And if ever there was a stupid idea, shutting down our own programs just to raise funds to bail out some other nation's perpetual foulups is one of them, especially when they will continue to do so.
Dyolf Knip
Since the parent was referring to manned missions I assumed that's what you were talking about. Still, I do stand corrected.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
In addition, there's the value that the new technology can bring to the problem of starvation.
If we end up succeeding with nanotechnology in the timeframe it takes to go to Mars (which looks like a very real possibility; I estimate 5-20 years), then we can use nanofactories to produce enough food for everyone -- without the problem of food distribution. We still have the problem of distributing the factories, but that's a one-time problem, not a continual one like starvation is currently.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
What's necessary would be to move ISS from 17,000 MPH (it's current Earth orbital speed) to 25,000 MPH (Earth to moon escape speed). This sounds like only a 50% increase in current speed but energy goes as the square of the speed so we would have to DOUBLE the current kinectic energy of the space station to send it to the moon. This is probably do-able using ion drive thrusters if there was some REALLY REALLY COMPELLING reason to do so - it wouldn't be easy.
However, the PROBLEM comes in that if we did this, the station would be making once-per-week trips thru the Van Allen radiation belts and exposed to raw solar wind / flares during the moon-half of the voyage, none of which it was designed to withstand and which would fry the crew and electronics pretty damn quick. People don't realize just how much protection from space radiation the Earth's magnetic field gives at an orbit of 200 miles or so, and how bad things get above that altitude. In a hurry.
Another problem is the logistics of carting the fuel up to allow back-and-forth transitions from 17,000 MPH to 25,000 MPH to allow crew and supply transfers. If you do the math, it ain't pretty and we sure can't afford to do it routinely at the $10,000 per pound the Shuttle costs.
PLUS when we included the Russians in the ISS program we put it in this weird (57 degree inclined) orbit that the Russians can get to with their far-north launch sites and it is the worst possible orbit (just about, a polar orbit is the dead worst) to suddenly make a break for the moon....
Nice idea, tho. I think we should be doing lunar exploration too.
In this, we are in perfect and total agreement.
Dyolf Knip
In addition, there's the value that the new technology can bring to the problem of starvation.
I see little reason to believe that there is any shortage of food right now. It's just that there is no will, and frankly no particular reason, to hand it out to all of the poor people in the world. Feeding them today pretty much guarantees that you'll need to feed them tomorrow. The only way forward for these people is economic integration with the rest of the world. But, of course, their bullshit-regime governments are too corrupt for that to happen, and the Western leaders don't see point in lining the pockets of corrupt third-world dictators. This merely funds wars which mean more suffering, not less.
Also, the looney left doesn't want to inflict the problems of corrupt corportations on people in the third world. They'd rather watch them starve to death while complaining that the western world in more interested in space exploration.
Well, that's a real interesting question. We know next to nothing about radiation and a Mars mission, in fact the one instrument that got knocked out on the latest Mars orbiter was the radiation meter that was supposed to give a baseline reality check for a manned mission. Better luck next time getting that data, I guess. Solving the radiation problem is the hidden agenda for manned 21st century spaceflight that people don't even realize is a problem. The Apollo capsule had enough "shielding" to make a single back-and-forth trip thru the Van Allen belts because it was designed with sturdy walls to be a re-entry capsule. Even so, during Apollo they had to keep the sun under continuous observation and they were prepared to abort a launch if there had been a big solar flare, which is what causes short-wave radio communications and bright auroras on Earth every so often and would KILL an Apollo crew deader than a doornail if they were running a mission at the time. There was actually a contingency plan - I kid you not - that if a solar flare started after a moon landing, the guys on the moon could cover the LEM with dirt for shielding and wait the flare out before coming home - too bad, the guy orbiting the moon had no chance at all. Check this out...it includes the following quote: "...as an example the August 1972 flare, which it says could have subjected an unshielded astronaut to 20,000 REM in 14 hours....The 1972 flare took place between the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 lunar expeditions. Had it occurred during an Apollo expedition the astronauts would have been incapacitated immediately and dead within hours or days...."
/from the shelter of Earth's magnetic field to a shelter covered with moondirt. Guess wrong, get fried. All of these orbiting hotel concepts haven't done their homework. Space is a BRUTAL environment. It's worth going there anyway.
20,000 REM in 14 hours? 500 REM kills half the people exposed and leaves the survivors sick as dogs, 1000 REM kills everybody. How the hell do you shield against something like this? Very good question. You just about can't protect "the whole ship" because the shielding mass is just too great to lug around. Most concepts for Mars missions include something called a "storm shelter" concept which usually winds up being a coffin-sized hideaway in the middle of the mission water tanks. The closer you look the worse the problem becomes. THere's a lot of talk also about using superconducting magnets to set up a mini-magnetic field around the spacecraft (just like Earth's) but no hard engineering on just what it would take to get the job done....
The difference between StarTrek and reality is profound. Routine spaceflight to the moon is likely to always be a mad dash to
Would I rather be stuck on an island with 100 antisocial, arrogant techheads, or 100 dishonest, power-hungry politicians? Hmm...whichever group had the largest subset of attractive females I guess.
Slashtard bingo!
- Have a picture
Yes, let's do it. I won't even whine (much) about my taxes being spent for this purpose.
Yes, let's do it. Stop all industry subsidies. Lower tariffs and other trade barriers. Decrease tax rates and regulation. We can argue over the revenue impact of decreasing tax rates, but the other measures won't break the bank.
Not a government job, especially at the federal level. Eliminate the Department of Education and save money.
Let's do it. The first thing to do is to free up resources to fight real crime by stopping the War on Drugs (tm). Overall, use less taxpayer money.
Of course.
Let's do it. Let's save money by only funding those cabinet-level departments we really need. Let's see, Defense yes, State yes, Justice yes...um, surely there is another cabinet level department we need. When I'll think of it I'll post again.
Hmm. Cool program, but not something I would want to be a federal program, unless it was related to defense.
Dammit, that means I posted all this for nothing, doesn't it...
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Would you rather be stuck on a remote island with 100 politicians or 100 geeks?
I'd take the one more able to build radio gear, rafts, and whatever else would help us get off said island and back to civilization.
Funny .sig, in that context. ^_-