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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.
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?
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 I would have thought it economic to keep Hubble in space, even if it was superseded.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/
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)
Heh. What if Congress and your 1040 were like the Reality TV Show Big Brother? Each year at the bottom of each 1040 the audience could vote out one member of Congress.
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.
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
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! ~~