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NASA Panel Says ISS Cuts Hurt Science
medcalf writes: "The AP reports that the International Space Station, as proposed, is incapable of doing much meaningful scientific research, and that NASA should thus stop characterizing the program as 'science-driven.' Factors listed in support of the recommendation are insufficient crew, lack of certain vital equipment and insufficient resupply missions. Makes me proud of spending $30 billion in tax money -- hey, isn't that about enough for a manned Mars mission? Perhaps a reevaluation of our goals in space, and what we are prepared to risk for the money, would be in order?" The AP article is summarizing the conclusions of a 23-member panel, which finds the current aim of a "core-complete" station too slender a justification of the past and current expenditures in the name of science.
Now we'll never know if ants can be trained to assort tiny screws in space.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Another example of the same principle : "Cutting funding to x hurts children!"
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
a billion isn't nearly what it used to be...
Its our damn tax money that pays for this stuff, I say we should be able to vote on what NASA should focus on next. They really havent done anything ground-breaking lately. The U.S. should take a vote on whether or not we want NASA to goto Mars, or build a space station on the moon. If that were to happen, people would be more interested in Space, and be willing to spend more on space exploration, thus it wont hurt science.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
...and all the while NASA has to cut the ISS and other viable projects, the Senators and Representatives unanimously vote themselves a huge payraise because they've doen such an outstanding and thankless job last week.....
Gotta love the American System...
Isn't one of the points of having a space station to have a platform to launch a mars mission? Need one to have the other...
Makes me proud of spending $30 billion in tax money -- hey, isn't that about enough for a manned Mars mission?
Well, given the inability of multiple independent national and international space agencies (the US and Russia in particular), to bring in a much simpler, safer, and less technically challenging mission (namely ISS) on time and on budget, I find it highly doubtful that a $30 Billion dollar projected budget for a manned mission is even within an order of magnitude of what the actual cost will be....
Being that we, as a civilization, do not know if it will be today, tomorrow, or many years from now when an asteroid hits us, plague overtakes us, or our resources deplete, I'm always suprised when people declare that space exploration should be anything other than our number one priority.
What good is feeding the starving, curing cancer or AIDS, and fighting the latest war when it all comes down to the fact that for the foreseeable future we, in fact, have no real "future" beyond what is here in front of us.
--
I actually have never seen any NASA science reports in any tech journals I read (IEEE, ACM), so I have to ask where you usually find scientific reports from NASA in the first place??
Are the NASA experiments in medicine and materials science published in any popular journals??
This sounds an awful bit like something influenced alot by NASA in order to get a bigger budget. I think everyone on slashdot would agree that doubling or tripling NASA's budget would be better than sending cash to Israel, or sending that extra fighter wing to the "war against terrorism", or even wasting it on keeping pot smokers in jail...
As i recall, the original plan for the space station called for 15 billion, and satisfied pretty much all of the scientfic needs. Thanks to political budget games, its been redesigned so many times its usless and costs 3 times as much, and dosent even meet the original needs. I love it when humanity pisses on its own feet.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
This seems so typical these days. Just look at what the United States accomplished in the first 5 or 10 years of our space program..... then since the early 80's we haven't done crap. Granted that it helped to be in the cold war and have someone to compete against. IT seems without that pressure that the US isn't interested in making the needed investment and dedication to really push space exploration. To me that seems terribly sad. We shouldnt' just let the ISS sit up there and collect dust, it is a great place to do some very interesting science. IF.... we would get our act together.
Also, lets do something about the space shuttle for god's sake! What total piece of shit. How sad is it that we are flying something designed 25+ years ago that has the computing power of an P90 into space in the 21st Century.
NASA was formed to one up the Russians, not to do scientific research.
..."
From http://history.nasa.gov/brief.html
"... Formed as a result of the Sputnik crisis of confidence, NASA inherited the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other government organizations, and almost immediately began working on options for human space flight.
Some cats swing, and others don't. Don't you be the kind that won't.
I know people that are already doing subcontracting work for a planned mars mission... it's just not been announced to the general public. But, like many things, that which is already pseudo-public knowledge, is often not admitted until a few months before it's actually time to happen... like the new cost of stamps.
Liora
You must be frickin rich, big daddy to be spending $30B of *your* tax money.
It's time to slap a logo on the ISS and turn a buck. It could be Hershey's K-ISS or Sw-ISS M-ISS. Anything to put some money into the system in the name of science. It's not like anyone should be affronted by the idea of corporate sponsorship and science intermingling. It happens all the time. Check any biology lab or methods section of the scientific papers that come out these days and you're bound to find someone shilling for some company's enzyme or centrifuge. As long as the sponsor is just happy having their picture on NasaTV and isn't making decisions on food supplements or spacesuit fashion, I say go for it.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
The abreviation similarities and now the bad report for ISS makes me wonder if ISS is like IIS. Lets hope not.
I'm so sick of people who slam NASA for not being useful and a waste of money. The same people who enjoy their CNN/HBO/. If it wasn't for NASA's research many of the things we take for granted wouldn't be possible. As for $30 billion, how much of that was to take up slack for the other countries that were supposed to contribute and haven't or have only contributed a small portion of the funding originally promised? As for the mars mission comment, weren't some of the stated goals of the International Space Station to be a platform for studying the long term effects of weightlessness on the human body and to perhaps provide a jumping off point for missions to mars and beyond?
Have you hugged your Karma Whore today?
"Cuts" is such a harsh characterization. Better to consider it a "trickle-down" approach to scientific funding. It works universally (as repeatedly proven with economics, social development and most sciences) except in zero-g atmospheres, where things don't exactly "trickle".
</facetious>
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Let the public actually decide how its money is spent?? Quiet, you. The only thing you can choose to spend money on is to donate for political election funds. Does that sound wrong to anyone else??/
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
hey, isn't that about enough for a manned Mars mission?
The Russians are going to try to do it for 20B
Is this news? After spending billions of dollars
..or if the French had said:
in the space program, we haven't really seen all those fantastic scientific
developements NASA has been promising for years..
Now don't get me wrong here.. I'm all for the space program,
I just think they should quit using science as a front and say it like it is:
We need space exploration because space is our destiny.
We need space exploration to inspire people through monumental achivements.
We need space exploration to learn more about ourselves and the universe.
We need space exploration because it's fun.
The inspiration argument is IMHO the most neglected.
Yet, the world would've been a poorer place
indeed, if the egyptian pharaoes had said:
"Forgeddabout the pyramids, let's spend the money on defense instead and whip those Babylonians"
"A cast-iron tower in Paris? What the heck for?"
etc..
Rather international cooperation was a significant factor in the early stages of proposal, being post-cold war and all. Hence the Americans foot the bill, and we speak with Ivan Ivanovich in space and smile for Earthling Cameras
ok i know you all like seeing things geting blown up
mabey not thouse howm read this but tell your goverment to stop killing inosent ppl and put YOUR tax money to something worth while !!!
if you put all the money you chaps put into bombing ppl you could put them all on mars ?
Also, lets do something about the space shuttle for god's sake! What total piece of shit. How sad is it that we are flying something designed 25+ years ago that has the computing power of an P90 into space in the 21st Century.
What exactly don't you like about the shuttle? Why is it a piece of shit? Is there something wrong with it? Is it not meeting our needs? I can't tell if you have a legitimate beef with it or just don't like it because it's old. Except for the tragic Challenger accident, the shuttle seems to have done a pretty good job of wethering the years. I think it's impressive that something built 25+ years ago is still in service. Like the U2, it's a testiment to the quality of the original design. And what makes you think the shuttle has the computing power of a P90? I find it hard to believe that NASA hasn't upgraded the computer system in the shuttle. And if they haven't, it's probably because they haven't needed to.
GMD
watch this
Are they deliberately trying to be confusing. So far 30 billion dollars have been spent, and congress is worried about the fact that NASA may go 600 million dollars over budget. I'm no politician, but the difference between 30.0 and 30.6 just isn't that striking. I guess when you write it out as 600 million it just sounds more impressive.
-- Adam
You do get to vote on what NASA does w/its money.
Every time you vote for the people who represent you in Washington.
If it is as important as you think- get the word out, get others to rally around your platform and elect someone who will get the job done.
If you don't think people will do that now- what makes you think they would be more active if they were voting for how money is budgeted directly?
If the American populace determined the budget it would be a complete mess. And if you think a majority of your fellow citizens are in favor of huge expenditures for space exploration - you are mistaken
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Man, you know how many beers that could have gotten me at the baseball game? ...Like 4.
Its our damn tax money that pays for this stuff, I say we should be able to vote on what NASA should focus on next.
Why should NASA be different than any other government agency? There was no election held to decide whether we should bomb the bejeepers out of Afghanistan. I never got a chance to vote on the S&L bailout in the 80s. The religious people don't get a chance to veto public money being used to support artists that create blasphmous works like the "Piss Christ" and the "Dung Virgin Mary". The public never gets a chance to vote how their money is spent.
Besides, if the public had their way, they'd probably vote for NASA to blow it's budget sending N'Sync of J Lo into space. Remember how the media wouldn't shut the hell up about John Glenn's return to space a few years ago?
GMD
watch this
You notice how all the politicans are looking for development X. If development X does not come about then the whole thing was a big waste of time and resources. That smells to be just a bunch narrow minded poppycock! The progress we make along the way is equally if not more important than the final product. There have been to many failures to count in space exploration and each one of them was another step in the learning curve.
You want the best results, then you better be willing to pay for the best materials and the brightest minds. Pay some pencil pushers and lowest bid contrators, then come to the public and whine. We made so many leaps in the early years because the budget was immense and the best minds were on the job.
The politicans can not even handle the task of balancing the budget or funding critial services. Then, for some odd reason, people give the politicans a platform to complain about poor results! Let the politicans continue to pander to constitutants and suck up for the next election. Give NASA the budget they need to get the job done. Then maybe, they may get that X they have been looking for.
The wages of sin are unreported and back taxes are hell to pay.
There's a bank being built in my neighborhood. Its about 40% the way to being completed. Its got form, you can tell what it might eventually look like, its somewhat habitable. Now I bet a panel that looked over the bank at this moment would say that it is not 'finacially-driven.' Much like the ISS not being 'scientifically-driven' at its current state.
oh, and I just have to complain:
2002-07-11 14:52:58 Panel: space station not 'science-driven' (articles,science) (rejected)
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Traveling to other Stars - that's phantasy for the next 100 years. We probably will never go anywhere because 100 years is enough to destroy everything what's left here on earth. Nobody will give a damn about going to space when we can't even save our own environment.
I was hoping that what might come out of the space station would be more experience with space.
There are a lot of unknowns about people in space as well as how to build things in space. If we tried to launch long range manned missions now we'd spend a lot of money and very likely kill a few astronauts.
I just hope humans keep trying to get into space... Maybe 300 years from now we could send a ship to a distant solar system with a planet that might have life. We need to start now.
Maybe there'll be a moon base by the time I'm old. That'd be so cool.
Little baby steps.
Don't rag on NASA - they rock!I'm curious out of that $30,000,000,000 cost for the ISS, how much actually went into PARTS for the Space Station and how much went to pay for people's paychecks ?
It'd be interesting for organizations such as NASA and other government bodies to actually be accountable to 3rd party auditing firms for their spending. I mean, could you imagine how much was spent on engineers who get paid over $145,000 a year just to design a better O-Ring for the base of the toilet ?!??
I think when an issue like this comes up, NASA should not only plead for more money and complain that they are not getting the funding they need, but also VALIDATE these reasons with actual COST and EXPENSES they incur and actually how much more money they'll need with validation for that as well.
It just frustrates me how government agencies will complain that an amount of money like 30 BILLION dollars isn't enough to fund a project, but refuse to be accountable to anyone other than themselves for their spending habits and business practices!
You must remember that humanity is a rather short sighted specieis. A meteor strike isn't going to happen in the next 4-8 years so as far as a politician is concerned, that's never going to happen. If a meteor strike did happen, civilization would fall apart and it wouldn't really matter whether the politicians fought to save the planet because the survivors would be too busy hunting and gathering to worry about voting them in for another term.
The problem with the future of space exploration is that there's no evidence that there's any useful return on that investment in the short term. As we can tell from the social security debates, that's what makes or breaks any political decision.
As for your view that we shouldn't care about AIDS, etc, because it doesn't matter in the long run if a big asteroid wipes us out. Using that logic, then to hell with space exploration, lets get to work on reversing entropy. Because regardless of anything we do, if entropy continues on its merry way, we're screwed. Check out Asimov's short story, I believe it's called "the question" or something like that.
Personally I think space exploration is vital to our survival, but in a way that isn't immediately obvious. It's not about avoiding the next plague, rather it is about creating hope and something to strive for. Right now, there are few frontiers left to explore on this planet. We have this growing sense of stangation of culture, etc. BUT, if we were pushing into space, then suddenly we've got new things to strive for.
I suspect though that, as with all of past exploration, money will have to be the driving factor. Corporations need to be convinced that there's money to be made by investing in space exploration. Renaissance exploration was all about trying to find resources, and wealth. If the WWF's report on the fate of the world is any indiciation, there will be plenty of motivation to do this in the near future.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The super-conducting super-collider was purposed several years ago. This was going to be the largest particle accelerator ever built. The benefit to science would have been enormous. However, the project was dropped because it was too expensive. Now the International Space Station is costing the United States a lot more money, and the benefit to science is questionable. Kind of makes you mad at the government for masquerading the International Space Station as science.
...interesting if true.
Yes, preferably one with large breasts.
the article does not say that currently the space station is not able to do much meaningful research, but it says that it cannot do enough.
Also the heading suggests that the space station is failing as a tool of science and that is just not true - it is completely capable of being a tool of science with increased funding. And that increased funding seems to be much less than the initial 30 b cost.
As far as mission to mars is concerned, considering NAsa's track record of cost overruns, a manned mission to mars will cost much more than 30 B.
I think the real sign of wealth (besides how many times you can buy the library of congress) is this:
Bill Gates is actually Rich Enough to build and travel to his own Moon Base.
The interesting thing about people that get that rich is: they don't want to go to the moon or mars. Afraid of attracting the attention of Bond, James Bond, perhaps?
-pyrrho
Everytime a government agency doesn't get it's way or desired budget they always bring on the doom and gloom stories of civilization ending and all scientific and social advancement coming to a halt.
I got an idea to save money. Have a Mars Survivor TV show. All the participants sign away any death compensation rights.
That way we don't have to spend lots to make the ship extra safe, and the TV ad revenue for the show helps pay for it.
Plus, it will make great drama.
"Dammit! I'm leaving this tin can! I can't stand you four. You selfish b8stards only want....."
"Wait!!!, don't open that air lock without a......"
(Swoooooooooooosh)
"Nevermind"
-T-
Table-ized A.I.
that is some deep stuff there man
stifeling humanities exploration in out of space, and scientific research, is money.. then maybe we should reeveluate the principles our society is based on? :/
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
American Physics Society head Robert Park has been saying that there's no research of any consequence going on in the ISS since its inception. Most science was cut out of the budget because of all the cost over-runs, Russia & US inability to synchronize production timelines, & other ISS bullshit. The Mars Pathfinder mission alone provided more new information about space & Mars than the ISS at a fraction of the cost.
Practically, being on the ISS is hell. You've got to wear ear protection because the noise of the machinery is like sitting front-row at a Metallica concert. It's smaller than you think due to missing modules that haven't been put in place yet, and you spend so much time putting it together and keeping it a safe, clean place to live there's no time to do anything else. It's like a tiny house that's so poorly designed all you can do is clean & fix it all day. Basically, without pouring tons MORE cash into this yawning vacuum of funding, it's a dead horse. Unless someone steps up to the plate with money, probably the US, this thing'll be abandoned within the decade. Good riddance. Fund more satellites & probes like Pathfinder.
Fat budget-heavy projects featuring humans simply aren't feasible without the confluence of factors seen in the 60's. With all the smart engineers in NASA it's troubling that they're still so driven by publicity & flash at the expense of real science.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
NASA's spending billions of dollars just to maintain the ISS because it can't afford to do anything else with it.
it is still in service but it gets practicaly rebuilt after every flight.
I would think that a technology oriented group would understand that there is more value than pure scientific discovery in a project like a space station: We are learn the technology and problems of work in space.
/. content does not come from cutting edge research, but accumulated know-how and an appreciation for the subtleties of the technology we work with. Pure research, technological development, and the application of technologies are distinct studies each with its own value.
Case in point: The value of
Even if 90% of space station crew time is devoted to keeping it running, we aquire essential know-how in how to function and work in space. No, it's not glamorous, but it certainly has value. In the near term, where the most profit is to be gained from satellite launches and maintenance, it could potentially have more return than pure science.
While NASA's original intent migth have been to one-up the Soviets, and now tries to be a research organization, in attempting to achieve these goals, they not only test the technology, but train a ledgion of engineers and support staff capable of working with it.
I'm not prepared to say that that money couldn't be more effectively spent on Earth ($30 billion could probably produce a Malaria vaccine) or that it wouldn't be way cooler to go to Mars.
My motto: "A cat is no trade for integrity."
Political pressure is one of the greatest forces working against space exploration right now. Pressure from the top (Capitol Hill) is what caused the faster-better-cheaper fiasco. Ever hear of the expression "too many cooks"? What we should really be doing as a republic is telling our elected officials that we want to do X (say establish a Mars base, or not get killed by an asteroid), and we're willing to pay Y dollars per year. Then stay the fsck out of NASAs way and let the engineers do their job.
Right now it's like we told a chef we want baked salmon risotto, then halfway through cooking we come in and say "Oh, can you make that into chicken fried-rice, and we're not paying for it."
-Ryan C.-Ryan C.
What a shame that this new NASA bigwig is robbing the bank. Exploration and scientific research are extremely important in both the scientific findings and the future frontiers we settle as a civilization.
It wasn't cheap for Columbus to find a path to the Indies or for the mission to be successful at all. But yet it was done. And even in his failure to find the East; Columbus paved the way for future generations.
It wasn't cheap to get a rocket into space for the first time, yet the scientific and real world developments that came out of it have far surpassed the cost. It will be the same for the ISS.
I'm afraid we will have to turn to private business to pave the way into space for us. The group that wants to mine the moon for H-3 is a good start.
It bothers me when people try to reinvent the wheel. Look at this.
I never figured out why the Skylab was allowed to fall. And why the second module was allowed to scunge away in a museum. By now, I guess the thing is not spaceworthy anymore, what a waste.
With regard to our "short-sightedness" regarding space in general & meteor strikes in specific:
Suppose we were to find out & verify, ala Armageddon, that meteor X, about the diameter of Texas, composed of a mixture of metal ore, rock, and ice as most meteors are, is hurtling toward us to destroy earth & humanity. What those politicians you refer to as short-sighted realize that you may not is that there's not a damn thing we can do about it. There is no ICBM collection, no space shuttle that can do jack shit for us no matter what story Jerry Bruckheimer likes to tell. There's also no form of technology we even have an inkling of that can deflect a meteor large enough to do serious damage to our planet. You can do the calculations yourself, but there aren't enough nuclear weapons on the planet to put a dent in a rock that big. We'd all have to face the fact that we're fucked and everything wasn't meant to last.
For fuck's sake, if there's any situation it's not the US government's job to handle, that's it. It's bend-over-&-kiss-your-ass-goodbye time, because almost all of us would die and the state of the US budget would instantly cease to be a concern for any survivors.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
I think that if you have a vote 'go to mars by 2030 or reduce NASA budget to $0' then people would vote for mars. Alot of people would like to see something 'kool' being done, but as it is now NASA isn't doing anything 'visable' enough for people to want to fund it.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
(* NASA was formed to one up the Russians, not to do scientific research. *)
This is actually a good thing, perhaps.
It has been suggested that battling it out with space accomplishments reduced the chances of physical conflict on the ground by focusing aggression and ego toward the space-race instead.
Table-ized A.I.
As somebody has already pointed out, and most of us can deduce with some thought -- one of the primary reasons why we are not on mars yet is because of the lack of immediate return.
At *best* a manned mars mission, or any important space-endeavor (say, moon-base) will be so costly time-wise, it will way overshadow a politician's limited term, and they won't give a damn about it. to make it worse, even if we did any of these (moon base / mars mission), the politicians have little to show for it except the "we did it" and that isn't helping.
i am sure they can come up with something clever, of course, if they ever wanted to: "look everyone, we the US, even under terrorist threats and in the post 9-11 world, can still acomplish grand tasks like _______" but they won't. because they can do the same thing by passing some cheesy law about corporate fraud and whatnot and achieve similar effect.s
back to the topic: china, on the other hand, does not have this problem of limited administration. (unless they get overthrown someday, which for the good of the world, i hope not) and with the US getting new fighters and national missle defense etc, going to space would really give them an edge.
which is good... because as soon as a threat comes up, the US will hopefully get in gear and haul ass. otherwise, well, chinese moon-base as it is, humanity as a whole does not really suffer.
on the other hand - i can see one way to make this work within the US, though unlikely: if one party (say, democrats) decided, *as a whole party*, that going to space is something they want to do, then maybe it can be done. it will need some seriously intricate conditions to work out, but can work out none-the less. this is hoping that we as citizens (not only slashdot, now) actually cares about this going to space deal, and republicans (for example) does not jump in the bandwagon -- because if they did, then "going to space" is no longer an exclusive propaganda-machine, and the actual execution will likely get diluted.
last small note: Bush asked congress for 40billion to fight the "war on terrorism", by the way. to put things in perspective in a little bit. over budget as ISS may be, it's a better 30b spent than certain other places where money is going.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
The limit here was in politics, not technology. NASA is big enough that is has it's own politics (I am not going to propose/support X because if it fails I don't get position Y), plus having to deal with outside politics (if X fails your funding goes down to Y).
This is why I suspect that truely commercial/private ventures will be the ones that give us a significant presence in space. Such organization don't have to worry about outside politics for funding, and their internal politics reward taking a risk and achieving something.
I still have my hopes up for www.armadilloaerospace.com It is still relatively primative, but progressing despite the budget being relatively tiny and with a small staff. I am hoping that, at the very least they will demonstrate that it is reasonably possible for private/commercial entities to go to space without the aid of NASA.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
One of the biggest problems right now is that the program to make a new reentry vehicle was a complete failure. So there are these very old Russian cargo pods that deliver supplies, and they keep one around all the time. They put garbage in them and send them back to earth when they get full. They can hold 3 people. If there is a big fire or something else catastrophic, the plan is get in the garbage can and ride it down. Without a larger lifeboat vehicle, and nobody knows what it would cost to make one, or how much development time it would take, the permanent crew is limited to 3 people, which isn't enough to do very much real science. It might take less than 30 billion to make a "new shuttle/lifeboat" but I wouldn't count on it.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Although $20 trillion from precious metal asteroid mining might provide some incentive.
Skylab was *far* before my time (which is now), but I have to wonder...
WHAT?
This thing looks way larger than the ISS. Was it? I understand there was a lot of research which went on there. How much did it cost? How much would it cost now?
!
Quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Anything said in Latin, sounds profound.
No, the AP doesn't editorialize, they were simply reporting on a report by a panel. Slashdot is well-established as a commercial operation, can't we have a little bit of professionalism?
You saved me the trouble of typing this myself. The ISS, our shutle fleet, hell, the ENTIRE MANNED SPACE PROGRAM is a huge white elephant. If science is really NASA's goal:
1) Give the manned program a rest until we have heavy lift capability or reusable vehicles with maintenance schedules similar to those of military aircraft.
2) Build more Galileo-class probes. The faster-better-cheaper nonsense has been exposed for what it is. Doing anything right is neither fast, nor cheap. Focus on the "better" part and save money in the long term.
3) Don't succumb to the urge to "build pyramids." Apollo, was a classic example of what we DON'T want to see happen: an awesome technical achievement left to decay when priorities shifted. When we go to Mars, I hope we'll have a CONCRETE exploration / colonization plan that extends DECADES into the future, not just a series of flag-plantings.
Now really, don't you think that it would be more sensible to conduct the main launch for the Mars Mission from a space station such as the ISS?
Surely this would allow the craft to be smaller and more efficient (or larger, depending on what you intend it to achieve once on Mars) as it wouldn't need to carry or have attachement points for fuel tanks, boosters and other assorted atmospheric launch gear?
Anyway, I feel that having a permanent manned base in orbit, be it of scientific benefit or not, is as large and important a step as that of Mars, albeit far less exciting to think about.
At the time when ISS was approved I took an informal poll in the NASA area and found that, to a person, NASA contractors (I was one at the time) thought the ISS was a *bad* idea and people not attached to NASA thought the ISS was a *good* idea.
The ISS was always about politics. So, until terrorists start putting up space stations, don't expect the ISS to get much budget.
Everything NASA has ever done has been underestimated and underfunded. What makes you think someone would have gotten that $30B figure correct? What makes you think NASA's first-ever on-time on-budget project would be its most ambitious one ever?
Infuriate left and right
It does depend entirely on when the object is detected. I mean humanity given 50 years to figure out a way to stop an asteroid from demolishing the planet, would figure out a way. We don't have the technology because there's no eminent threat so we don't put the money there. Hell even a government bureaucracy can react in 50 years time :)
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You hit the nail on the head.
Probes are the key to studying space. Are there people on Chandra? On Hubble? People only go to them to make repairs and upgrades. I use these two observatories as an example because they have been of great benefit to science and should be exemplary (with the exception of the Hubble lens snafu) of the rest of our efforts in space. Manned presence in space is only necessary for maintenance, repairs, and upgrades.
By the way, do you ever read Robert Park's weekly "What's New?". If you don't, I think you would really enjoy it (go to aps.org). He frequently comments on NASA.
Space Propulsion Engine for Flying Saucer -
Silicon Valley -
Space Propulsion Engine using Propellantless Mass to US and other countries.
http://colossalstorage.net/colossal.htm
He says he has looked at and researched the world's space agencies, aerospace
companies, universities research, and corp. research and feels very confident
knowing others technology while no one knows his.
He is working in top secret and he says no physicist or scientist he has ever studied or researched had this approach and knows his concept will work to give near light speed travel thru Galaxy with 500K/Miles per Hour to start or 138 miles/sec. Nasa fastest time are 25,000 mile/hr or 3.9 miles/sec
he says it is a mankind first concept !!
I understand this inventor is looking to sell
his technology to the highest bidder !!
He says NASA and our Space Community are
sitting on their brains and havent come
up with a really good propulsion systems
since the GERMANS invented it 60 years ago
in WW II, jet and rocket propulsion, yep
he seems to be right, nothing NEW !!
What do we need NASA for then, do scientific
work to find out if velcro works, wd40 isnt
a good lubrication in space, that mice get
hemroids in outer space, and plants dont
grow right without gravity ?? DUH.
The 30 billion dollars discussed here wasn't spent last year, it was spent over the decades this project has been in effect. Take a look at some of the things we're spending in defense; two billion a pop for a B-2 and the air force hates the things. Take a look the national budget each year and tell me that 30 billion over 15-20 years isn't an insignifigant amount compared to whats being dumped into welfare and other programs.
NASA has accomplished many feats in the past decade despite many of yours insitence to the contrary. HST remains to be the best observatory in existence and has a two year waiting list for astronomers to use it last I heard (of course that comes from my father's rant about the gyros failing a week before he had his time).
The NASA chief spoke to the Naval Submarine League last month. His talk focused on the difficulty for getting anywhere in the solar system in a reasonable time. A scientist who wants to study Pluto, for example, would effectively devote an entire life-time to the project because of the length of time a probe would take to get there.
No one, he pointed out, has been in space long enough to know that a human would function after being weightless on the trip to and/or from Mars. It just takes too long - and the effects of living in micro-gravity aren't well understood.
What was proposed was a look at nuclear propulsion in space. The best case would be a reactor launched into space BEFORE it had ever achieve criticality. At that point a horrendous event at launch would not spread highly radioactive substances all over the place. (For those who don't have a clue you can walk up to the reactor core of a nuclear submarine before it's installed with no danger at all - I've done it.)
A nuclear engine in space would give us a substantial power boost than traditional chemical rockets.
How such a beastie would work, precisely, isn't clear but it's certain that NASA is looking into it.
With such an engine a trip to Mars could be accomplished much faster. The engine could be, presumably, be reused for other trips, so you could build an automated tug that might be able to take probes to distant planets and return. After you're done just point that puppy into the Oort Cloud - it won't ever have to come back to Earth.
You should be shot at sight, coward.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Let's scrap NASA and come up with something better.
I think we ought to give the ISS to the russians, and scrap the shuttle. Let's give 40% of NASA's budget to the russian space program, 10% to fund a civilian auditing organization (to stop the fleecing), and 50% to US contractors to build a cheap, reusable launch vehicle. Let's leave the heavy lift vehicles to the russians.
The russian space program, though beaten down by their new economy, is much more efficient, dollars to rubles, than NASA will ever be. They're unencumbered by the massive buracracy, have far fewer regulations, will sell space flights for money (the horror!). Basicially they can do for 1 Million what the US can only dream of for 50 million. Our money is better spent on their program. Hell, they could even launch harmless nuclear payloads without worrying about braindead idiots in the US protesting the poisoning of outer space.
Once the new vehicles are tested and in place, we can think about using ISS as a gateway to MARS! That would be truly cool, and well worth taxpayer's money. We'll just never get there under NASA's current (very heavy) thumb.
How do you balance one of those things on your knees in 0-G?
There are lots of interesting experiments that can be done in a space station that are almost impossible to perform on earth. For example effect of zero gravity on development of various organisms which might help in possibly designing a 'space colony' of sorts. That might be more useful than a manned mission to Mars which in all likelyhood won't accomplish much more than what all those unmanned probes have managed to over the years.
At first I read "NASA Says IIS Hurt Science". Sounded funny to me, and then I realized my mistake. Well, maybe my title was a real fact too...
More American voters voted for Al Gore than for any other candidate. That is an undisputed fact [infoplease.com]. And yet, Mr. Gore is not in office. So let's correct that sentence to read, "in a flawed, unrepresentative faux democracy, what most people want may or may not be what you get".
How many times does it have to be said? The U.S. is not a democracy. It never was. It was never supposed to be.
The U.S. is a collection of states, not just a collection of individuals. More voters in more states voted for George Bush than for any other candidate. (Even after the infamous media recount in Florida.)
The U.S. system, including the bicameral congress, was designed to protect the rights of states as well as the rights of individuals. Maybe it isn't perfect, but there are a helluva lot of people who want to move here and subject themselves to our "flawed, unrepresentative faux democracy." Personally, I don't want the frootloops in New York and California dictating national policy.
The ROI case is almost trivial: how much money is the entire resource base of a planet worth? The I is infinitesimal compared to the R, even assuming that you don't bring resources back to the Earth.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
The ISS was always primarily an aerospace engineering project whose main benefit was to keep the aerospace industry alive. Its scientific potential is dubious at best, and the project is so expensive that it sucks funds away from a host of more scientifically interesting projects along the lines of Mars Explorer. We should be as grateful for it getting munched as we are that SSC went down a few years ago.
If I join, am I able to filter out junk like this?
NASA aren't the most efficient (the ants would more likely be a private enterprise trick), on the other hand, they built it on what for them is a shoestring, telling Congress the whole time that paring the budget back to a little below the bone was a bad idea... and lo! For it was indeed a bad idea.
Having knackered the project, Congress are now saying that NASA were silly to do it in the first place. In a way, they were: they didn't leave enough fat in it for Congress to lop off without cruelling Fred.
Well... goodbye, Fred. Goodbye, Grand Tour. Goodbye, anything else past the orbit of Mars. What are the USA going to do now, send a man up with a red flag to walk in front of each satellite?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A saturn V third stage was the shell of the orbial workshop, or skylab so they called it. It weighed in at 168,000 lbs, was eighty feet long and twenty feet wide. It existed mostly during the time between the Apollo ships and the shuttle. The shuttle was not ready in time to salvage skylab so some burned up and the rest splattered over an area in australia.
The whole international thing is the problem. It's a nice idea, but diminshes control and diffuses responsibility. There's nothing wrong with NASA taking advantage of international expertise and hiring people form outside the country, they could even open up international branch offices. But they need to have more control, esp. since it seems they're being asked to be totally accountable for the success of this 'international' project.
Asimov's short story is called "The Last Question". To sum it up quickly:
The question of whether entropy can be reversed was first asked by a pair of drunken technicians of the supercomputer UNIVAC (appearently Asimov hadn't heard of the Beowulf Cluster), but the computer had insufficient data for a meaningful answer. Asimov continues this through several generations both of the human species and of computers (ending with a superorganism simply called 'Man') but no answer could be found until the universe collapsed and only the computer remained (because it was in hyperspace). Then it had all the data it needed, and proceeded to show how entropy could be reversed through a demonstration: "Let there be light." (Literally). I love those kinds of stories.
What other explanatio is there?
Building the most expensive space delivery vehicle you possibly could.
"Losing" 3-4 probes sent to mars.
Making the International space station useless.
The other explanation is plain stupidity.
But the place *IS* probably the only place
on earth where you could actually say;
"As a matter of fact, I am a rocket scientist!".
Same here in Australia.
The lower house (Representatives) is for the people. It is elected on the basis of electorates having (roughly) equal numbers of voters. The government is determined by who has the numbers here. Legislation starts in the Reps.
The upper house is for the states. All states have equal numbers of senators (ie Tasmania with c. 500,000 has as many as New South Wales with c. 6 million), elected by proportional representation. Like the US Senate it is intended to be a House of Review.
For much of Australia's recent history the Senate wasn't really a states' house, but interestingly over the last decade or so the balance of power has been held by political parties with strongholds in the smaller states. I think this is a counterbalance to the movement of economic power and population to Sydney in particular.
[Disclaimer: I'm talking mostly about NASA, but it applies equally well to any of the other space programs. Oh, and I'm not an American ;) ]
From the original post:
Perhaps a reevaluation of our goals in space, and what we are prepared to risk for the money, would be in order?
As a (possibly too enthusiastic) follower of the space program, this one sentence wonderfully sums up what is IMO the crux of the whole issue.
We all want to dream about humans going to space/moon/mars/beyond. Let's face it - the day a human steps onto the surface of mars is going to be one hell of an achievement. BUT we have to accept that space is, and always will be, inherently dangerous. People are going to die attempting to get to wherever it is we choose to go.
Are we prepared to accept this risk to attempt to go? The current political (and social I guess) climate says no - it is not politically acceptable for [US(A)] citizens to die (much like in modern warfare).
I am willing to bet if you did a survey asking people if they think we should send humans to Mars, there would be a resounding 'yes' vote. But if you changed that to "Do you think we should send humans to Mars if it costs $30bn" (which is a gross underestimate IMO) I'm pretty sure the response would be negative.
Joe Public says that everything must be done to make space travel safe. So the costs escalate because of all of the redundancy and safety required. Then Joe Public turns around and says "Wait, how can it possibly cost that much? You must be incompetent." and then the politicians are too scared to allocate the funding. Like it or not, politicians decide (NASA, ie. space) funding, and Joe Public influences the politicians. The current NASA administrator is an accountant who is more interested in counting cents than space.
I wasn't around to see man land on the moon, but I desperately want to see us send humans to Mars. If for no other reason than to show what we can achieve when we dream.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
What puzzles me is why a project which is at the forefront of human achievement is only given a declining $30 billion when the US military is getting $343 billion just so it can act all big, tuff and important when the only country it picks on are all impoverished 3rd world countries like Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Vietnam etc. Countries like Britain, France on the other hand are able to maintain equally un-used militaries on about $40 billion, leaving an extra $300 billion, which would obviously mean ISS actually could get seom science done aswell as sending probes to jupiter etc. If the reason for Nasa's decline in funding is the end of the Cold war, then why is the US Military still given such staggering amounts?
This is no surprise at all. Way back in 1990, at the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Atrophysics, I saw presentatioons that demonstrated that no real science was going to get done on whatever the space station was called at the time. They'd just stripped off all the astrophsycis capability and much else. Why has it taken so long for this panel to reach a conclusion that has been blindingly obvious to anyone with a set of eyes for more than a decade?
The $30 billion dollar figure is an Andersen-quality accounting trick. It doesn't include lots of costs that go into building the station, including those of getting the people and equipment into space. This is a letter that the GAO wrote regarding NASA's accounting practices, and this is GAO's independent estimate of costs: $94 b. (Both .pdf files>
See subject. The author makes a very, very good point.
$30 billion could be much better spent doing submersible research. High pressure experimentation is going to be at least as important in the future as low gravity/low pressure experiments. Plus there's the obvious benefits of finding new species with the potential of providing important new medicines. It would also provide tons of new information for tracking weather and climate change. Anyway, I just find it a hell of a lot more relevant to do oceanic research. We know less about the deep ocean than we do about far away galaxies.
Remember that there was some under-the-table dealings going on with the land contract for the location of the SSC? And how a post-mortem investigation revealed that if the SSC had actually been completed, it would have sunk into the ground and partially collapsed? The SSC was a bad idea to start with - just a mechanism to keep particle physics theorists happy and give grad students places to work. Modern particle physics is really just a lot of navel-staring and has contributed very little to mankind since the initial developments of atomic theory in the 1940s and 50s.
Whatever happened to the project to build a functioning space gun that could fire a 1 tonne object into low earth orbit for only 2% of a SHuttle Launch?
The only hazard for humans being sent into orbit this way in it was the 200 Gs of acceleration at lift-off...
Ceci n'est pas une
I guess some are too busy being paranoid and spending money to bomb ppl back to the stone age.
Now that's progress!
I wonder how much of that money goes into, say, the study of depression and its effects, the effects of physical, emotional and mental abuse of children and adults, or the effects indifferent educational systems on children, adults, and our society. Not today. The study of Pluto and inter-galactic planets that will never be physically visited by mortal men are, apparently, vastly more important for our federal dollars, than, say, a way to generate energy without pollution. The only way this stuff is gonna benefit you is if you rename that usually-shaded part of yourself Uranus.
So go vote yourself silly. See if that helps. I imagine that the only way to change the system is to get inside it and fix it a piece of it, yourself. Just Undo it.
BuddhaLite.
ps. Have fun.
Run out of sock puppets?
I knew the Freedom/ISS/whatever station was an enormous mistake to begin with. It had no meaningful mission for the costs involved. The quantity of saliva that flowed from aerospace contractors was just obscene. At least $8 billion was announced as spent, while nary a kilogram had yet made it to orbit.
The ISS is another example showing how NASA's budget is the most efficient launch system ever devised to send money far and away.
The politics involved in space developments like that are essentially just panderings to taxpayer emotions. If we went around building dams and highways with as much illogic as that approach, we'd tend to be driving in mud when crossing the country. More of civil engineering's discipline and unsexy methods of work need to be applied to space construction, if we expect the things we build to last for generations.
Gerard O'Neill's various works on the economics of space development have fallen on deaf ears and dull minds for many years. He appeared before a Congressional committee on these matters, but he may as well just have done a show with sock puppets for all the good it did. I challenge NASA to crack open some of his work and dare them to adopt more of an economic approach. For all my criticism of the practice of Western capitalism, I support the solid core in its philosophy that says spending must return value.
Using that measure, what can the ISS return to us? I suspect the profit on that investment was already taken by contractors and NASA lifers. It is for this reason that I supported killing off the Superconducting Supercollider, and the ISS's bloated future should die the same death.
Does our civilization have the gumption to conduct space development not as a boondoggle but as a sound exercise in profitable infrastructure? Why do we respond to silly pulpit-pounding by demogouges, starting projects that are just expansions on the theme of "our country can pee farther than yours"? (Considering how much was pissed away in space programs, the urinary analogy is apt.) What would be the public response to a president that got on TV and pounded his table, saying "we will put solar-power satellites in orbit and really show the Euro-Sino-Slavic bloc a thing or two about cheap energy"?
[also misbehaves on Kuro5hin as Peahippo]