House Asks NASA to Postpone Space Plane

PipianJ writes "The House Science Committee has requested NASA to postpone the orbital space plane program (official letter (pdf)), thanks to lingering concern about the safety of the existing space program. On the other hand, isn't one of the ideas behind the orbital space plane program the fact that our current space program is getting more unsafe through the use of 20-year-old equipment?" The Senate is also getting into the act.

Comments

Of course

[Pingular]

saftey should be paramount, and if that isn't the case I would urge congress to put a stop all manned flights until that is the case.

Re:Of course

[Stween]

Of course safety should be paramount.

But at what point do you call sending people up into the cold, dark vacuum of space by strapping them to a large rocket safe?

Re:Of course

[eliza_effect]

Right, it should be as safe as possible. But there is a limit. What, exactly, would be the point of making manned space flights as safe as, for example, commercial air-travel? The space program is about risk and reward, and I'm sure that the astronauts are well aware that they may be killed.

If I was wearing a flame-retardant suit, being tested for G-tolerance, I would assume there is some risk involved. If you negate the risk, you will negate the reward as well.

Re:Of course

[pavon]

nah, lets just stop development on a safe space vehicle, thus increasing the amount of time we are dependant on our aging ones.

Re:Of course

[Xeger]

You've made a very good point, disguised as a silly joke.

The name of the game isn't safety. As you point out, space travel is inherently unsafe. The focus of the space program, then, should be on the efficient mitigation of risk.

For every action a planning team can take to mitigate risk, there is an associated cost. If I include three redundant valves in my liquid propellant delivery system, let's say that reduces the chance of a catastrophic failure by 25% ... unfortunately it also triples the mass of the system and the number of interconnects between components, which correspondingly increases the cost and the chance of failure in some component of the system.

NASA's mandate should be to find the optimal balance between high cost and low risk. Of course, we also need to distinguish between risk of mission failure and risk of people losing their lives...but that's a stickier issue.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

You make good points too.

But I think that the best people to mitigate these risks is... NASA! Afterall, what the hell does Senator Joe Bob from Kansas really know about space flight? I'd bet my whole year's salary that from a techincal/scientific prespective on reducing those risks, NASA would be so much more qualified to make the best judgement about the space plane's capabilities, that it would make Joe Bob look like a tee-ball player at bat in the World Series.

Re:Of course

[lawpoop]

Russian Cosmonauts in Soyuze capsules have had no fatalities in 20 years.

Re:Of course

[bigpat]

"saftey should be paramount, and if that isn't the case I would urge congress to put a stop all manned flights until that is the case."

saftey should be paramount, and if that isn't the case I would urge congress to put a stop all manned automobile travel until that is the case.

Re:Of course

[pavon]

oops, I retract that comment; I was thinking about something different. The OSP is stupid, although not for safety reasons.

Re:Of course

[vsprintf]

saftey should be paramount, and if that isn't the case I would urge congress to put a stop all manned flights until that is the case.

Safety should be an important consideration but not paramount. The people involved know the risks, or they shouldn't be there. How many test pilots have died? How many mountain climbers? Oceanic explorers? Pushing back frontiers is a dangerous business with its own rewards. Given the number of miles travelled, I'd bet the odds of being killed are higher for commuters than for astronauts.

Re:Of course

[Stween]

With that in mind, would you be able to sleep the night before if you were going up into space in one?

The chances of things going wrong can be lessened, but that's not to say space travel isn't a risky business.

Re:Of course

[Xeger]

Since Senator Joe-Bob's answer would be to let Mom, God and Apple Pie take care of space travel, I tend to agree. NASA is, by law and as a matter of fact, the most qualified agency around to make decisions about space travel. But there's a great deal of room for improvement.

NASA is old. They still work under the weight of a crusty 60s-era layer of bureacrats. They are dogmatic, self-important and no doubt there are employees at every level of the organization who are more concerned with their jobs (after decades of having them) than with their work.

That's not to say we need to take NASA out back and shoot them all. As the original poster said, NASA merely needs some fresh blood, some new ways of doing things. Sean O'Keefe was a good start. "Faster better cheaper" was a step in the right direction. It's a pity we keep cutting their budget while at the same time pressing them for ever more results.

Between China's space program and the impending X-Prize event, I think space development is about to enter a new golden age -- not necessarily corresponding to a greater number of actual missions flown, not at first. But the headway we make in the next 10 years will set the stage for the next 100 years of space travel.

Re:Of course

[kscguru]

I submit that by "manned flights", you really should include regular passenger airline travel - after all, those aren't safe, the terrorists could hijack them! Or the tail could fall off (crash in NY about 3 years ago), or a fuel tank could explode (crash in Florida ~5 years ago), or...

Yes, I'm being facetious. The point here is that the space program has extremely well educated people taking risks they know extremely well. Immediately after Colombia broke up, the media interviewed countless astronauts who said they would gladly have flown a rescue mission, even knowing their own shuttle could have been stranded in space as well.

Safety should be paramount.

Frankly, it already is. Notice how shuttle launches seem to be delayed two or ten times due to a possible fault in backup equipment, or a single bad gauge when we know nothing can go wrong there, or the small risk of weather upsetting the launch? For every accident we see, there are hundreds or more accidents avoided because of careful attention to safety.

NASA employs management to decide when the risks are too high; sometimes, the management is wrong. Frankly, I feel that the problem was that management decided the risks (in recent flights) were so small they felt they didn't need to tell anyone else - which is a completely wrong decision in my book. The fact that Colombia flew is regrettable but unavoidable; ignoring all the engineers who were concerned with the fuel tank insulation impact was wrong, and frankly NASA administrators should (or have?) pay with their jobs.

They guestimated the danger as "negligible", while actually it looked more like "will destroy maybe one in three shuttle flights if insulation breaks off". It is not the responsibility of Congress to demand safety... instead, it is their responsibility to ensure that the managers THEY put in place demand safety.

Re:Of course

[Bendebecker]

Who cares if your rocket explodes? Be a man, face the pain!

But seriously, safety and the beneifts you get from risk are indirectly porportional. The more you focus on saftey and reduce risk, the less benefits you will see until the point where you have no risk but get zero benefits from it. Simply put, no guts, no glory.

Re:Of course

[uncoveror]

Does this mean the X-4000 Launch Aparatus will be scrapped too?

Re:Of course

[MegaHamsterX]

It has nothing to do with the safety of the Astronauts, but of the brass, as all of the world watches a flaming orbiter fall to the earth.

Re:Of course

[dcmeserve]

saftey should be paramount, and if that isn't the case I would urge congress to put a stop all manned flights until that is the case.

Hello people... this is obviously a sarcastic remark, as it would apply to any aircraft. Jeez...

Re:Of course

[deblau]

The focus of the space program, then, should be on the efficient mitigation of risk.

Engineers build complex things and watch them fail. Then they learn from their mistakes, and build something better. That's the nature of engineering: to build things no one has ever seen before, to do things no one has ever done before. You WILL break things exploring.

Safety CANNOT be the purpose of NASA. The purpose of the space program MUST be to explore space, whatever it takes, no more and no less. It's time for a reality check, folks: do we Americans think manned space exploration is worth the cost or the risk? If not, then we should all stop deluding ourselves, shut the fuck up, and let someone else do it. Why fund a program whose purpose we don't support? It's time to piss or get off the pot.

Re:Of course

[WhiteBandit]

NASA is old. They still work under the weight of a crusty 60s-era layer of bureacrats. They are dogmatic, self-important and no doubt there are employees at every level of the organization who are more concerned with their jobs (after decades of having them) than with their work.

You do realize that those 60's era bureacrats accomplished more in a decade than we've been able to try and do in the last 30 years?

I think the problem is that NASA *isn't* being run by 60's era bureacrats... ;)

Re:Of course

[HangingChad]

When strapped to something that's basically a tightly controlled explosive device, the word "safety" is somewhat relative. Space travel will never be completely safe, any more than driving or flying are completely safe. Exploration and risk are inherently intertwined. Because there is risk is not a good reason not to do something.

But there are certainly better and cheaper ways to manage risk when it comes to work in space. Winged spacecraft are what you get when pilots (and former pilots), specifically the Air Force, are running the space program. Wings on a space ship are about as useful as parachutes on a submarine. What we have now is a space plane. What a successful space program needs is a space truck. That means cargo and humans on separate flights and going back to good 'ol ballistic re-entry vehicles, aka Spam Cans. You'll notice the rest of the world using them successfully. They're not pretty but they get the job done on a budget we can afford and they're safe.

Risk management isn't the problem, NASA is the problem. And right now we have the problem dictating the solution.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that after all the cutbacks, the 60's era bureaucrats who got things done went somewhere were they got the money to accomplish things, and the 60's era bureaucrats you are left with aren't the ones who put men on the moon (or if they are, 30 years of seeing plans gutted because of cutbacks have torn out any fire they had in their souls).

Re:Of course

[xtal]

But at what point do you call sending people up into the cold, dark vacuum of space by strapping them to a large rocket safe?

That's OK, the Chinese will do it for you. Once upon a time, it seemed America was a lot more pioneering in nature.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. Anyone in a senior management job now was Werner von Braun's towelboy or something back then.

Re:Of course

[lawpoop]

I'd feel better going up in that than in a shuttle. I can think offhand of two major disasters that have happened in the past 25 years (Columbia and the recent one). Have there been others?

I wouldn't be caught dead going up in a shuttle, because I probably would be caught dead blowing up in a shuttle! Har, har!

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

saftey should be paramount, and if that isn't the case I would urge you to put a stop to congress until that is the case.

Re:Of course

[pi eater]

none of this really matters, of course.

as soon as the chinese get their space program in gear (10?20? years), things will change.

another space race perhaps? who knows. competition will help, whatever happens.

geek shirts

Re:Of course

[HermanAB]

Actually, measured in deaths per million kilometers, space travel is waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy safer than commercial air travel, despite all the much publicized accidents...

It is amazing how fast a space traveller burns up air miles.

Re:Of course

[Sethus]

I think the problem is that NASA *isn't* being run by 60's era bureacrats... ;)

I think the same thing too! I mean at this rate we'd be better of with a buncha dead guys! :P

Re:Of course

[VanillaCoke420]

Eh. Human spaceflight can't get safer by not doing it. It's by doing it that we learn how to do it safer.

Re:Of course

[t0ny]

Actually, rockets have been much safer than the Space Shuttle; the shuttle has what, three rockets on it?

The whole premise behind the Space Shuttle was crazy, especially considering they scrapped a rocket program which had already matured in favor of chasing the illusion of a reusable space craft.

Its sad. Looking at the history of aviation, things went downhill right after we reached the moon, and just kept on getting worse. Had we let technological evolution take its course, we would probably already have a plane which could reach orbit.

Re:Of course

[mike_mgo]

While that's true, measured in deaths per flight or launch it doesn't measure up nearly as well. To me that seems a more meaningful statistic since the biggest risks occur on a per flight basis (launch and re-entry).

Measuring accidents per mile is best for automobiles, trains and boats, but not for spaceflight or probably even for airline flights.

Re:Of course

[DerekLyons]

"No Russian fatalities in 20 years" does *not* however mean there have not been close calls. In fact there have been numerous ones. Two uses of the escape tower off the the pad, one failure to make orbit, one re-entry where the orbital module didn't seperate until almost too late, one failure of the life support system.... And that's just the Soyuz capsule, Salyut/Mir have their own list.

Re:Of course

[Xeger]

The entire point of my post was that safety is not the same thing as acceptable risk. At the end of the post, I even acknowledged that "risk" is defined in terms of mission success or failure rather than loss of life. I couldn't have come closer to saying what you just said if I'd stolen the words from your mouth.

We're not at odds here; we both agree on the fundamental idea that NASA's purpose is to explore space. I'm saying that NASA best serves their purpose when they work to minimize the risk associated with every mission; by definition, minimizing the risk will maximize the chance that the mission will succeed! This is true whether the mission is a sat launch, an unmanned probe or a frickin' Mars mission.

Space is a dangerous place. There are so many things completely out of our control that space travel will never be "safe."

With all of these uncontrollable elements of risk facing us, does it not make sense to take care of the things you *do* control?

Re:Of course

[Genial Generalist]

The shuttle was a compromise of budget and the political goal of manned vehicle reusability. The question is the viability of a manned space program given cost of environmental support, the lack of a clear popular mandate, and the fact that most scientific experiments can be done without people onboard. The problem is that unless the voting populous cares, then budgets will continue to be reduced or morphed by military objectives. Maybe what NASA should consider is producing a "Three's Company on ISS" TV series for PBS.

Re:Of course

[lawpoop]

The shuttles have had close calls too. More importantly, they have had 'failures'. Bottom line, Soyuz has a better record for keeping spacefarers alive

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

saftey should be paramount,

If safety is to be the "paramount" goal, then automobiles should be banned at once. Saves tens of thousands of deaths in the USA per year.

Re:Of course

[t0ny]

I think that got cancelled when they told Justin Timberlake "NO" to going into space.

Re:Of Course

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the parent offended a libertarian/republican Dog-Eat-Dog/Survival of the Fittest Troll.

Re:Of course

[DerekLyons]

The shuttles have had close calls too. More importantly, they have had 'failures'.

Not remotely as many nor as severe as those Soyuz has had.

Let's compare them head-to-head.

Launch failures;

• Soyuz - two, non-fatal close calls but both complete loss of mission.
• Shuttle - two, one fatal, one partial loss of mission.

Failures on orbit;

• Soyuz - six complete loss of mission failures.
• Shuttle - four partial loss of mission failures.

Re-entry accidents;

• Soyuz - four, two fatal, two extremely close calls.
• Shuttle - one.

Landing accidents/incidents;

• Soyuz - at least eight, two fatal.
• Shuttle - zero.

If you haven't been paying attention to the news, you might be surprised to learn that the last two missions have both suffered significant accidents, one threatening the life of the crew, one threatening the ISS itself. The safety and reliability of Soyuz are myths born of two causes; 1- Prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Soviets didn't discuss their failures. 2- After the breakup NASA actively conspired to hide the problems. (They were afraid that if the problems became known to Congress, the ISS partnership would not happen, and without that NASA might not be able to build the station.)

Brilliant minds

[r_glen]

For a better idea of the people affecting this decision, consider Robert Park's comment (from the article):

"Manned spaceflight is going nowhere because there's nowhere to go."

Seriously, who IS this genius?

Re:Brilliant minds

[Skyshadow]

Well, he does have a point: the Space Program as it exists now isn't going anyplace -- it's just endlessly circling the earth. And there is noplace to go, at least not with the current beancounter PHB management.

Before we spend billions of dollars designing a new space plane, I think it's reasonable to ask exactly what we want to do with it. I'm not so sure that having people in space for the sake of having people in space is worthwhile anymore. It seems like just about everything the astronauts do these days could be simulated or automated, and yet there are no grander ambitions being seriously bandied about by NASA.

The space program can't take another shuttle or space station -- huge stacks of money wasted on things that don't do what we need them to do very well. No, they need a *visionary* program right now, not a space plane...

Mars Direct, anyone?

Re:Brilliant minds

[metlin]

You know, whats funnier still is that the Slashdot fortune cookie at the bottom of the page reads:

You got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there. -- Yogi Berra :-)

Re:Brilliant minds

[Reality Master 101]

"Manned spaceflight is going nowhere because there's nowhere to go." Seriously, who IS this genius?

Actually, the comment is much, much, much more sublime and sophisticated than you think. Stop reading science fiction, and actually think about space. Where are we going to go? The other planets are ROCKS. Sure, there are people who want to live on rocks. But not as many as you think. Asteroid mining? VERY unproven. Power generation in space? Also VERY unproven to be economical.

Sorry, but "because it's there" is not good enough.

I think we'll get there eventually, but there have to be solid economic reasons to get there. Remember, Columbus didn't go for the hell of it, he did it to find a new route to China. Exploration has almost never been done "because it's there".

Re:Brilliant minds

[Carnildo]

The problem with Mars Direct is that it's too practical for NASA.

Re:Brilliant minds

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh. I'm not so quick to insult his rhetorical comment. Perhaps, there is a need to reinvent NASA and go back to real (big) goals. It seems to me a casualty of the faster, better, cheaper philosophy is the loss of big projects that Americans can rally behind. Give Americans a project they can respond to. Such as a mission to mars, or, ahem, the space elevator (seriously). Space could provide a technology push to the first world that could rival the growth of the internet.

Re:Brilliant minds

[Anonymous Coward]

Old, rich, white men that are (ex) CxOs, have MBAs, and passed the bar exam.

In other words, uppermanagement + laywers. Or further, greedy, stupid people that are used to getting their way all the time and being told they are right regardless of what they do. Further, they tend to look down on anyone "different." Different opinions, philosephies, religions, wealth, age, race, gender, ethics, morals, etc. Some more than others.

Yes, this is a generalization, an estimated mean average if you will, and parts or even the whole do not apply to them all. So, you technicality trolls can stuff it and sit in the corner.

Re:Brilliant minds

[Nucleon500]

I think that "because it's there" is a perfectly good reason to go to Mars. Though that wouldn't be the main reason, the main reason would have to be science.

Yeah, Columbus came to America looking for a new route to China. He was wrong, but finding America was still a good idea. (For the Europeans, anyway.) Guess what - there's no way to know what will come from exploration until you try. Unfortunately, at present, there isn't much motivation, real or otherwise, for a manned Mars mission. Before, it was to beat the communists - perhaps now we should start a rumor that Mars is full of terrorists, oil, and weapons of unimaginable destructive power.

Re:Brilliant minds

[child_of_mercy]

Exploration has almost never been done "because it's there".

Lets tweak that shall we?

How about

Exploration has almost never been FUNDED "because it's there".

If the barrier to entry is low then people will just wander off and do it.

But if you need ships and provisions and pay for hundreds of people then you need to show the investor a chance of getting something back.

Re:Brilliant minds

[Bowling Moses]

Robert Park's a University of Maryland Physics professor (emeritus? on leave?), Director of Public Information, Washington Office of the American Physical Society and writer of the American Physical Society's weekly What's New column, and is the author of "Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud." You can download his CV here , and it will basically tell you he's a scientific somebody.

Re:Brilliant minds

[bandy]

Going to Mars is a great idea and the next obvious step after the Moon. However, the ideal time to do it just passed, so getting to Mars (and back) is getting harder and harder with each passing day.

Re:Brilliant minds

[ThreeToe]

(perhaps you asked rhetorically, but...)

Robert Park is best known as the wit behind the APS What's New newsletter, a fantastic weekly mailing of science and policy-related blurbs. Park is also responsible for Voodoo Science, a book that debunks science myths and demonstrates how to identify science scams.

While Bob Park's name still appears in the credits, I think his involvement with the newsletter has lessed somewhat since his run-in with an oak tree a few years back. The witty remark per sentence ratio just hasn't been the same.

Re:Brilliant minds

[r_glen]

I think we'll get there eventually, but there have to be solid economic reasons to get there.

So the first trip to the moon was a waste then, right?
Seriously, since when does there have to be a "solid economic benefit" BEFORE doing anything new? You don't think the pursuit of knowlege of space is good enough? What about the POSSIBILITY of finding economic benefits? We'd be completely ignorant right now as a people if everyone shared yours and Mr. Park's pessimism.

Re:Brilliant minds

[andcarne]

How do we know there is nothing out there till we go there? Who knows, maybe there are new minerals we could find on mars. There probably are, but we will not find them until we at least run some sample return missions, or more preferably, send people there. You say that power generation is uneconomical. I recently saw something in the paper about beaming power using lasers in connection with a NASA test. It seems like they have found a rather efficient way to beam power using lasers. This could eventually result in limitless power from the sun. If we parked solar panels near the sun or orbiting the earth, we could generate massive amounts of power. For free.

Re:Brilliant minds

[redmobius88]

"Manned spaceflight is going nowhere because there's nowhere to go." Seriously, who IS this genius?"

The whole point of space travel is to prove to ourselves that we can. How can be be sure that power generation in space is uneconomical? Look how far the species has come in the last 500 years, let alone the last 100 years. We have proven the unproven before, it just takes time.

We explore to understand the world and its workings, you can't deny human nature.

Re:Brilliant minds

[rk]

So, in other words, Columbus was a complete, total and abject failure because he never did find that route to China. I think I beg to differ on that. The thing that becomes the wild success is almost never the thing that is looked for. You may be right, orbital power may not pan out. But who's to say what other things unlooked for will emerge if we try?

As to "unproven" concepts, it's not even proven that I will successfully navigate home tonight, much less something not mundane and trivial. If all we do is wait to do stuff that's proven, then we might as well just stay in bed.

Re:Brilliant minds

[vsprintf]

Going to Mars is a great idea and the next obvious step after the Moon. However, the ideal time to do it just passed, so getting to Mars (and back) is getting harder and harder with each passing day.

I see your point about the distance increasing, but isn't the best time to go to Mars when you're ready to do it? If the point is interplanetary exploration, the distance to a *near* neighbor shouldn't be a real issue. Others in the discussion have talked about the space program going nowhere because it goes nowhere, but the ISS is the first stage. Why does anyone want to attempt interplanetary travel directly from Earth with all the extra baggage that entails? Let's build the launch facility before we launch the mission.

Re:Brilliant minds

[cybermace5]

I think that in this case, "because it's there" provides alomst all the economic potential needed. Sure, you pay the way for the first couple explorers. But the pull of space is so strong, you only need wait for the tourism to begin.

Re:Brilliant minds

[justins]

Remember, Columbus didn't go for the hell of it, he did it to find a new route to China. Exploration has almost never been done "because it's there".

Correction: Columbus went because it was there. The royals who funded him cared about more than that.

Re:Brilliant minds

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you but the thought of giant laser beams aimed from the sun at the earth is kinda frightening.

Re:Brilliant minds

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, you can bet if NASA announced that they found gold, silver, platinum, etc. deposits on mars worth more than 100 billion you can bet that we'd have 2-3 different mars colonies by 2010.

Re:Brilliant minds

[the argonaut]

Correction: No, he didn't. He wanted to get rich just like the rest of them.

Re:Brilliant minds

[Empyrean9]

Where are we going to go?

To another planet. Why? Because eventually we'll have to anyway, in order to survive as a species, and we'd better get some practice. Humanity's time on Earth is finite. The universe, being the volatile place that it is, will eventually confront us with a large asteroid, rouge black hole, the end of our sun, or some other unforeseen catastrophic event. Granted, these events may not happen for a very long time, but we should probably be thinking ahead in this matter. Of course, humans could even be responsible for the annihilation of all life on Earth (i.e. nuclear war), so it makes sense to have a backup plan.

Asteroid mining? VERY unproven. Power generation in space? Also VERY unproven to be economical.

Well, how are we to either prove or disprove any of these ideas if we refuse to investigate, or attempt them? Along the way we might discover, or invent something valuable. But, who knows unless we try?

Sorry, but "because it's there" is not good enough.

Sure it is. Our drive to explore is one of the traits that has made us a successful species - its right up there with being opportunistic. We risk more by being complacent than we do by being bold.

To man or not to man

[Davak]

The board that investigated the Columbia space shuttle disaster recommended that the future goals of human spaceflight be subject to a national debate before any replacement for the shuttle be considered.

Do we need manned spacecraft to do our research? This is the important question that is being floated under the surface.

Davak

Re:To man or not to man

[cmowire]

We sent a lot of probes to the moon. What do you think of when you think about exploring the moon? The astronauts, of course.

We found so much more just by putting folks there and letting them explore and catalog and bring stuff back.

Plus, you can't forget the good feelings and propiganda boosts. Men on the moon are part of our cultural mythos in ways that probes aren't.

Re:To man or not to man

[t0qer]

I think we need humans up there.

We have yet to build robots that can do everything a human can. Take hand tools for example. Using one isn't an exact science, you have to apply a certain amount of torque to unbolt something, while it can be measured and fedback to the CPU of some robot, the robot doesn't know the context of the task it's doing. What if it's doing something wrong?

Not to mention our arms have an amazing degree of flexability, we can look at where we need to use a tool, and determine the best path to getting our arm into a peice of machinery to wrench something down. At the same time we think about how to position the rest of the body to get the best leverage. It all happens subconciously in the lower primitive parts of the brain that our higher thinking doesn't even have access too.

Just that one subconcious part would take a modern computer days to figure out.

For simple stuff, like determining if an atmosphere has O2, sure send in the probes. Anything involving building, sample collection, or surface exploration, humans cannot just be beaten yet...

Re:To man or not to man

[Davak]

When we examine the rain forests, we send people to live with the animals and catalog their findings.

We don't send probes to blindly gather data. Space should be no different.

Just ask Cartman how useful probes are. :)

Re:To man or not to man

[ron_ivi]

The same question's being asked of almost any industry.

Jobs in many industries will go unmanned.

Personally I think it would be nice if when our experienced Air Force pilots get displaced by unmanned craft, that these guys can find jobs in the space program.

Re:To man or not to man

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we need manned spacecraft to do our research? This is the important question that is being floated under the surface.

A human would be able to recognize a screw-up like... oh... replacing meters with feet and make the corrections instead of cratering on the surface of a planet.

Also, we're human... exploring is what we do. Did we send an unmanned boat to the New World before setting sail with three ships chock full of us?

Re:To man or not to man

[Xzzy]

> Do we need manned spacecraft to do our research?
> This is the important question that is being
> floated under the surface.

Not really. A better question would be: "do we need the government to be the sole gatekeeper of manned spaceflight?"

What I see this as (if it continues forth as this release suggests) is the changing of the guard. With privatized spaceflight becoming a very real possibility within the next year, and NASA coming under increased scrutiny, it's a bit inevitable.

NASA had it's time at the top, and will continue to be so for a long time (and probably turn into a regulatory body), but it's time for it to step aside and let private interests fuel the next space race.

NASA's proven it can be done, and will always have an important place in history but it seems to me that the mire of government bureaucracy has made it unable to compete as it once could.

Not that I'm an authority on any of this, it's just my gut reaction.

Re:To man or not to man

[Abcd1234]

The problem with this pipe dream is that the cost of entering the space flight market is beyond enormous. It requires the kinds of R&D investment that's beyond the capabilities of many nations, let alone individual companies. Moreover, while there's profit to be had (launching satellites, subcontracting for the government, etc), it strikes me as doubtful that any company in this day and age would feel that future potential justifies the startup costs. After all, we live in a world of quarterly earnings reports and year-long planning horizons. How can you honestly expect a large corporation (or a small one, for that matter) to invest in something which won't turn a profit for 10 years?

Re:To man or not to man

[thogard]

Most of the x-prise players aren't spending much. It is well within the ability of a company like Boeing to build their own maned space vehicle if they decided they needed to.

Re:To man or not to man

[Abcd1234]

They're also not building vehicles which go to orbit. Until they do that, I'll remain unconvinced.

Re:To man or not to man

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it'd be nice if people branched out into more than one career. I know, I'm crazy.

Re:To man or not to man

[pyrrhonist]

Not to mention our arms have an amazing degree of flexability

Except when they're inside a friggin' spacesuit.

Re:To man or not to man

[sharkey]

Do we need manned spacecraft to do our research?

Maybe we should finally tell Davak the big secret: that all the chimps we sent into space came back super-intelligent.

Re:To man or not to man

[GileadGreene]

Hmmm... perhaps you'd better tell the folks at Spacex, Microcosm, and Blue Origin about your expert insights in to the costs and benefits of entering the launch market. They may want to rethink their business plans.

Re:To man or not to man

[complete loony]

Apparently, a lot of the research projects going up on shuttles are automated anyway. And for the cost of sending an experiment up there, building in automation to perform it is fairly insignificant.

Re:To man or not to man

[Anonymous Coward]

Can Skynet H-Ks be too far behind?

Re:To man or not to man

[Abcd1234]

Eh, BFD. They're designing launch vehicles. Hell, many aerospace companies in the US have been involved in designing launch vehicles (including the big boys, like Boeing), both in the past and today. This certainly doesn't amount to privatizing the space flight business, though. After all, who would be willing and able to buy and launch these vehicles? Why, governments, of course...

Re:To man or not to man

[CKW]

> We have yet to build robots that can do everything a human can.

Maybe that's just because we haven't considered spending $1 billion to make 10 such robots instead of spending $10 billion to send humans up there.

I'm pretty sure that $1 billion would give us a re-usable remotely operated humanoid robot system that can do everything we can and better.

Re:To man or not to man

[Moofie]

No. But we need manned spacecraft to do exploration, which is the most useful thing to do in space, in the long run.

money

[SexyLinuxMan]

could it be they are just doing this to put the space program in limbo to save on money? They have some pretty expensive stuff to pay for these days. Iraq, war on terroism, weapon programs, etc ... just a thought

Re:money

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn straight! I need cheaper gas!!

Re:money

[Carnildo]

Won't save much. Funding NASA for a year takes as much money as funding the military for a day.

Re:money

[Anonymous Coward]

any let's not forget the beam weapons we have always dreamed about coming over the horizen. The next Carrier class is designed for these weapons....we are building everything around future beam weapons. Traveling to space used to be a strategic position...higher ground after all...with beam weapons...anything and everything can be shot out of the sky with just a few microseconds worth of a burst. And sinking a battleship is a lot harder than shooting a bird out of the sky. These weapons change the playing field. No longer is it about who gets to the moon first...what does it matter who is up there when you can cut off their food/water/fuel supplies like cutting a thin piece of wire?...and destroying habitats that are above ground in a vaccume would be trivial with the same weapons...NASA wasn't built on exploring or research even though that is what it has become and even though that's what we said it was for...the real reason for it was obvious at the time when people actually thought they would take vacations to the moon and even live on the moon by 2003...not to mention travel the system like a Sunday drive. Weapons and electronics have changed the need for NASA...much as they have for manned space flight. Sorry folks...but it looks like your best chance in getting into space now is the X-Prize....imagine that. But look on the bright side of things...imagine what your kids would've looked like growing up in 1/3g or whatever planet/moon you settled on. Like it or not it is Sci-Fi today and will be for some time.

Re:money

[Dashing Leech]

Ironically, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report specifically criticized extreme government cutbacks on NASA as one of the main factors that lead to the mindset of managers that lead to the Columbia accident.

It also calls on Congress to actually support the development of a replacement for the shuttle. So, while NASA is trying to implement all the recommendations of the report, it seems Congress hasn't learned a thing.

Re:money

[u-235-sentinel]

This is a good point. There are alot of people out of work because of this war on terroism. The money has to come from somewhere. So now I'm on unemployement as a result. Along with 30 other people from my group. They are down to 7 and about to let go another 5.

Rather than spending money in destruction perhaps we should look at building. Building not just NASA, the space program and these OSP's but perhaps bridges between us and others.

Not trolling (some people need to see this to understand I'm serious). There are times to fight and times to build. I'm not sure this is the time for fighting :-)

Time for comercial companies anyway.

[ron_ivi]

I'd rather see NASA buy next-generation orbital vehiciles from one of the xprize contenders anyway.

With X Prize successes possibly being one year away, it sounds like a good opportunity to help this new industry.

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

The X Prize contestants aren't even close to being orbital. Going straight up to 100 km and back down again takes a lot energy than it does to enter orbit.

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

True today, but the focus on efficient designs required by the less-funded private companies is a good direction. I'd like to see NASA encouraging such projects, perhaps collaberating with these companies in some way, rather than trying to do it all themselves with purely tax dollars.

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[cmowire]

Except that you'd have to redefine huge chunks of the NASA/DARPA/Congress bureacracy in order to do it right.

Well, that, and it would take another incremental huge expense for any of them to go orbital, so it's not one year away, either way.

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[Manhigh]

Except that the xprize contenders are suborbital. They cant reach ISS, and I doubt any of them could be upgraded to do so, within the safety metrics of NASA, for much less than the cost of OSP.

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[drinkypoo]

I bet some of them (with some modification) could be used to come home in a pinch, and very cheaply.

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I bet you have no comprehension of orbital mechanics, or of the differences in the velocities and re-entry profiles involved.

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[tmortn]

What the AC was trying to point out is that orbital velocity is some 17,500 mph... I don't think any of the X-plane contestents have any plans on breaking more than mach 2 or about 1,500 mph. Thus with 'some modification' is something of an understatement.

In some ways I agree with you but the X-prize contestents are mostly rehashes... Rutan's is nothing new, just looks cool as hell. Its basically a rehash of the X-plane model used so effectively in the 50's and 60's. Armadillo is a straight up rocket albeit attempting to implement using a monoprop which is not an unexplored line.

I think assured cheap access ( relative to shuttle ) to space lies in the old prooven capsule design. But the true lessening of access lies in materials and propulsion advances.

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[pmz]

I'd rather see NASA buy next-generation orbital vehiciles from one of the xprize contenders anyway.

This probably won't happen. Rutan would walk up and say, "I'll sell you this thing for $15 million, and it'll cost $750,000 for each flight (made-up numbers)." The NASA budgeteers would be so shocked and ashamed that they would curl up in a ball and start sucking their thumbs crying, "No, it can't be, numbers don't go below 100,000,000! Nooooooo!!!"

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[DerekLyons]

I'd rather see NASA buy next-generation orbital vehiciles from one of the xprize contenders anyway.

The problem being that the X-prize machine *aren't* next generation launch vehicles. They are low performance sub-orbital tourist demonstrators. What the X-prize is attempting to do is important, but they aren't anything like a real launcher.

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[ron_ivi]

Not true for all of them.

Elon Musk's (the guy from PayPal playing the X-prize game) already has launch customers. Best of all, his rocket's designed such that these two stages would be the later stages of a three stage rocket that could put things in much higher orbits.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=12794

SpaceX Announces Defense Department Launch Customer

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) today announced that the Office of the Secretary of Defense, through the Office of Force Transformation (OFT) , has purchased the first flight of the Falcon orbital launch vehicle. The launch will take place in early 2004 from the SpaceX launch complex at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California

Re:Time for comercial companies anyway.

[DerekLyons]

Yes, *all* of them.

The rocket Elon has customers for (Falcon), isn't an X-prize entrant. SpaceX (Elon's company) isn't even entered in the X-prize competition.

That's right...

[Thud457]

Why should we bust our asses to develop space? Let the Chinese do it...

Yeah, I see no problem there.

The problem is NASA

[Reality Master 101]

On the other hand, isn't one of the ideas behind the orbital space plane program the fact that our current space program is getting more unsafe through the use of 20-year-old equipment?

On the third hand, our current space program is getting more unsafe because of the incompetence of NASA. Why give them more money to pour down the rathole? Apparently a lot of people think NASA hasn't tried to design anything since the Shuttle. They have. They failed. Multiple times. The OSP is just another link in a rotten chain.

Re:The problem is NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

They failed because of lack of funding.

Re:The problem is NASA

[Reality Master 101]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA. Guess again. Nasa spends an ENORMOUS amount of money per year, like 15 billion dollars. A YEAR.

And don't tell me how much that is compared to other government programs. Tell me how much FIFTEEN BILLION DOLLARS is. It's freaking lot of money, and they waste it EVERY DAMN YEAR. 12 months. Fifteen billion. POOF!

Re:The problem is NASA

[WankersRevenge]

And you don't see the military having this problem? What's their budget .... between 300 - 400 billion? A year. POOF. Every 12 months. And you don't have a problem with THAT?

Re:The problem is NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget though, that NASA has been the most sucessful space program in history. And, there is now way to be successful if you don't try anything at all. Unfortunately, the ideas so ar haven't been so fruitful. Give the program time, and you will see that one of these ideas will have a major payoff.

"Afterall, you don't hit any homeruns by not taking any swings while at the plate" -me

Re:The problem is NASA

[hobbesmaster]

A vast majority of that cash goes into research into aircraft and unmanned spacecraft. Yes that aeronautical part of NASA exists and they do lots of research in regards to the safety of commercial, private and military aircraft, in addition to researching and testing new aircraft ideas and so forth. Manned spaceflight is around 1/3 that budget, and the space shuttle takes up almost all of that. The research into new manned vehicles is where the rest of the 'almost' goes.

Re:The problem is NASA

[kalidasa]

Well, I know that this is the third next generation space vehicle program that has had its financial legs cut out from it before a workable prototype could be designed. Is that what you mean by "failure?"

Re:The problem is NASA

[tmortn]

I am not sure failure is the right word. Most of those programs faced unrealistic expectations and were canned at the first sign of adversity.... or worse at the first chance someone had to cut the money to funnel it to another nasa project or some other work project in their district. Not that NASA carries no blame but the funding simply isn't solid enough to persue true ground breaking lines of research right now.

The X-33 SSTO might have stood a chance if they could have ever cracked the fuel tank problems ( to heavy if it was storng enough or to weak if it was light enough ). I hate that the aero spikes seem to have been dropped with that program... everything I saw showed some promise in the area of a highly efficient rocket nozzel that was far cheaper than the current bell system. However I have to say the low performance margin of biprops does not make SSTO look very viable unless we can find a higher energy prop.

Re:The problem is NASA

[EpsCylonB]

And the war in Iraq cost 160 billion dollars, on top of whatever the US spends yearly on the military.

15 billion is loose change for 10 trillion dollar economy, you look at that and think what a waste, I look at it and see how little people care about space anymore.

Iraq's oil reserves are worth somewhere in the region of 4 trillion dollars, maybe if we could promise the oil barons that run the US that kind of return from space exploration they might throw a couple of hundred billion at NASA.

Sure, we all know that...

[rusty0101]

... these rocket things just tend to all blow up on the launch pad after all. We really need to realize that Space is a really dangerous place. I mean we have to take up all of our own atmosphere, and if even one thing leaks, we start loosing people.

And with the level of technology we have today, I mean really. Just this last summer, my inflatable raft was punctured by my cat walking on it. This is a really serious demostration of how poor our level of technology is.

If my cat can puncture an inflatable raft, there is no way I can believe that there is anything like safe space travle. And if we can't make travel in space safe, then we really shouldn't go.

Of course I have gotten to the point where the potential risk in my life is such that I don't even bother to get out of bed in the morning. You probably shouldn't either.

-Rusty

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, until we can make inflatable rafts that can't be punctured by cats we shouldn't go into space.

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[RocketScientist]

and if even one thing leaks, we start loosing people

And we all know what happens when people get loose. Chaois ensues. Dogs and cats, living together....

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[Skyshadow]

Don't blame the technology -- you could have bought a Kevlar raft (probably expensive), or had your cat surgically modified (declawed), or kept the raft in a cat-proof container, you just didn't.

It's an issue of budget and management on your part, not an issue of insufficiant available technology.

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[rjelks]

I'm glad past explorers didn't feel that way. I'm sure sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in 15th century ships wasn't exactly safe. The saying, "No risk, no gain" comes to mind. The Colombia and Challenger accidents were terrible, but I would imagine that they wouldn't want the manned space program to end with them.

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[Carnildo]

"Not exactly safe" is an understatement. One ship in five that set out to cross the Atlantic didn't make it back. By that standard, the Shuttle is incredibly safe.

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[eliza_effect]

Concord statistical scares all over again. If you have two rockets and one fails, the next astronauts have a %50 chance of survival.

Except not at all.

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[Bendebecker]

I got the worse cold this january than I have ever gotten in my life. This must mean that the diseases are getting more deadly! See the problem with your logic. Just becuase of one isloated incident with a raft does not indicate a trend. If you take a small enough sample set (or a biased enough sample set) you will get whatever results you want.

In addition, life itself is unsafe and just becuase it is unsafe doesn't mean we shouldn't live it. Take the greek gods and heroes. In the Iliad, two soldiers discuss why they are honored so much and what would happen if they could not die. Their answer: they would go home and not fight anymore and they would not send others to fight. Why? Because death gives life urgency. It shows you have only x amount of time on earth so you better make the best of it. They risked death so that they could know life. If they cannot die then there is no point in doing anything. That is why the gods sat around at Olympus all day and watched and manipulated humanity but never did much beyond that: they could not die so neither could they know what it was truly like to live. If you cannot die than any one day is just like any other. Every day is the same. If you cannot die than life has no urgency and no importance. It becomes a stagnant existance. Now what does this have to do with the space program? Just becuase something is unsafe doesn't mean we shouldn't risk it. Life was meant to be lived. Life is not infinite and it was not meant to be spent lying around all day doing nothing. The ancient greeks had a word for people who did: the word that would evolve into the english word 'idiot'. No guts, no glory, and no knowledge of what life truly is.

Now if you want to talk about the finicial problems of manned space flight, then you'll have a pretty good argument. From a finicial aspect, space exploration in all its forms is foolish. But there is more to life than money. The dream has faded though: who wants to dream about walking around the block a million times? No, we dream of true exploration. Manned spaceflight as it stands now is too little risk and too much safety for no real benefit. No one dreams of exploring someplace they have already been countless time before. No one dreams of exploring where they know they are totally safe. Who wants to go on a rollercoaster if they know without a doubt that it is totally safe (in fact one of the key aspects of rollercoaster design is to keep up the illusion one is not safe)? We weren't born in bubbles with helmets glued on our heads. Since the dawn of time man has looked to the stars, not becuase he wants to simply know whats there but becuase he wants to go there. Space is a dream and we must chase our dreams or we become stagnant. "There are certian things men must do to remain men." (Star Trek)

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[rusty0101]

Make a joke, someone calls it insightful, another critiques the logic, and yet another tells me to move to france. Apparently no one even noticed the last paragraph much less my sig.

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[mrfunky405]

Welcome to Slashdot. It's kind of funny watching witty posts that unintentionally end up functioning as trolls.

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[iwnbs]

I was just correcting the guy that said something about cowards living in Canada. I wasn't implying his parent move anywhere. In fact, I understood your post, but I was just too lazy to say so.

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[shivianzealot]

And if we can't make travel in space safe, then we really shouldn't go.

No, Rusty, let's not to that. You might not be willing to go, and that's fine, but you're extending your own percived risk/benefit outlook as what you wish to be a matter of policy over OTHER people who don't share you view. I'm going to have to ask that you reconsider this. There are plenty of sane people for whom the chance of catastrophe is worth it. Nobody will ever force you off our little planet, but for those who would happily take a gamble, we cannot justify holding anyone back because we wouldn't do it ourselves.

Re:Sure, we all know that...

[Moofie]

Just keep your cat away from my spaceship, and I'll be fine. Think yew.

Riding in your car is not safe. I suggest you stop doing it. Same with going in your bathroom. That's not safe either.

Safety is overrated. Safety is for cowards. Explorers manage risks.

Uh oh... looks like the House reads /. too!

[Not_Wiggins]

Hope they weren't desuaded by the results of the "space debris" experiment from the Enterprise Model Test

Harrison Schmidt quote

[tinrobot]

I really thought this quote from the last man to set foot on the moon was particularly insightful :

"NASA is too old, too bureaucratic, and too risk adverse. Either a new agency would need to be created to implement such a program or NASA would need to be restructured largely along the lines of the NASA of the late 1960s," Schmitt said.

Schmitt said of particular importance is for NASA to consist of engineers and technicians in their 20s and managers to be in their 30s, and the re-institution of design engineering activities in parallel with those of contractors.

Sadly, it's very hard to get rid of an agency the size of NASA and replace it with a bunch of young turks. I agree that NASA does need new blood, a new direction and a kick in the pants, but how that will happen is beyond me.

Re:Harrison Schmidt quote

[dexter riley]

Schmitt said of particular importance is for NASA to consist of engineers and technicians in their 20s and managers to be in their 30s

New blood is one thing, but at what point are you lobotomizing the agency of its collected experience? Who would you rather have manning the control room, someone who's helped land a dozen shuttles, or Joe Ph.D. fresh out of Cornell? I hope they will figure out how to reduce the top-heavy beaurocracy without throwing out the skilled workers that made NASA's successes possible.

Re:Harrison Schmidt quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"...it's very hard to get rid of an agency the size of NASA and replace it with a bunch of young turks."

Sorry, that confuses me...The rest of the U.S. high tech jobs are being outsorced (and the companies doing it aren't finding it so hard). Most of those jobs are going to India... why would they want to use Turks instead?

Re:Harrison Schmidt quote

[sharkey]

Sadly, it's very hard to get rid of an agency the size of NASA and replace it with a bunch of young turks.

Damn straight. Why replace engineers and technicians with men whose claim to fame is buggering each other?

Re:Harrison Schmidt quote

[BCW2]

The old NASA that Jack Schmidt is talking about was the young engineers that had a hand in every nut and bolt on the spacecraft. The helped the contractors design and test the entire spacecraft. The were involved in designing mission control. This wasn't Joe College, just out of school.
Don't forget, Jack is the only true civilian to walk on the moon. Armstrong was prior service(USAF). He is also smart and a nice guy, how many of those are left?

Re:Harrison Schmidt quote

[ACPosterChild]

It's also hard to bring in new blood when there are hardly any more actualy government employees left. After reducing civil servants in the name of smaller government, all the design and fabrication work is being done by contractors. And what does Boeing care about most? Profits. -Tim, the AC Poster Child

Congress always does this...

[Dr Reducto]

First, congress cut defense spending and tied the hands of the CIA, and then they asked: "How could the CIA allow 9/11 to happen?"

Then, they put too much pressure on NASA to avoid to many delays because of safety, and cut their budget, and then say "Why did you allow our astronauts to die? "

They always pass the buck.

Chasing A Technological Chimera

[reallocate]

>> ...isn't one of the ideas behind the orbital space plane program the fact that our current space program is getting more unsafe through the use of 20-year-old equipment.

No. The idea behind the prbital space plane is find a way for NASA to shovel money to a few big quasi-monopolies.

NASA's been trying to put wings on spacecraft for decades. They've spent bilions and they still don't know how to do it. There's no guarantee that a space plane will be any safer than the Shuttle. Remember, old technology didn't crash the Colombia.

There are other, cheaper, ways to get people to and from orbit. We've been able to do that, safely, for more than 40 years. Since we know how to do that, we ought to concentrate on going someplace in space (where wings are pointless, obviously) rather than some useless technical chimera like the orbital space plane.

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[cmowire]

Actually, OSP (done right, of course) would do better for not shoveling money at quasi-monopolies than the shuttle is currently, simply because it's potentially adaptable to a wide variety of carrier craft. Sure it'll probably start out strapped on top of a Delta or Atlas, but there's no reason why a more reusable booster couldn't be used down the road.

Well, that, and taking a page from the old MOL project and using the OSP as the emergency-escape/landing/etc. for larger spacecraft is my lofty blue-sky daydream.

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[reallocate]

Yeah, but why even trying to build anything with wings? Or a reusable launcher for it? That's a waste of money.

We can get as many people as we want to into and out of orbit using capsules. We know how to give them some cross-range capability (Apollo had it). It just amkes no sense to me that NASA is still trying to turn airplanes into spacecraft. Their incompetence and shortsightedness is threatening the continuing existence of human space travel. (Not that NASA has actually travelled anywhere in space in the last 30 years.)

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[cmowire]

It's a trade off. Wings get you precise landing locations, better reusability, and less G-loading in ways that a capsule doesn't. Capsules are lighter and simpler.

Part of the 4-different-shape OSP graphic's appeal is that it lets NASA float the idea of a capsule around and see if people are against it. When your funding depends on congressional and public popularity and part of your goal is national prestige, you tend to go towards ferrari styling instead of volvo styling.

Either way the OSP *has* to offer something that the Soyuz and Shenzhu don't or else it's an instant loser.

Reusable launchers will be useful if you are doing more flights per year and therefore can afford the maintenence. So it's not a waste of money, it's just not needed yet.

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[reallocate]

We don't now, and likely will never, have any reason to have so many landing locations that a winged craft would be needed to take advantage. We launch from one place, and we come back to one or two places. I don't see that changing, or having a reason to change.

One goal of LEO travel should be to reduce the cost. I'm not convinced that going reusuable will do that. It hasn't in the case of the Shuttle. Why not focus on finding ways to reduce the cost of expendable launchers?

Space travel is about just that: traveling in space. Getting to and from Earth orbit is tantamount to taking the shuttle bus from the airport parking lot to the terminal to catch a flight. The purpose of the exercise is to go somewhere else, not shuttle in from the parking lot. Rather than work on the terminal and new destinations, NASA has spent the last 30+plus years re-inventing the parking lot shuttle.

I don't want NASA to propel new technology. I want NASA to propel people off the planet.

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[idadesub]

well, one of the reasons I heard why "precise" landing is so desirable is that back in the days of Apollo and sea landings, NASA used an entire carrier group to cover the possible landing area, which was a huge expense.

Now, the Russians used landing, well, on the land, but because of, once again, inprecise landings, they had to outfit the crew with survival gear, such as food, and guns incase they ran into hostile capitalists :)

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[OzRoy]

There are other, cheaper, ways to get people to and from orbit. We've been able to do that, safely, for more than 40 years. Since we know how to do that, we ought to concentrate on going someplace in space (where wings are pointless, obviously) rather than some useless technical chimera like the orbital space plane.

The problem is that current rocket designs are NOT cost effective. The only reason a rocket was ever used in the first place was becuase there were lots of rocket scientists left over from WW2, and now we are stuck in a "rocket is the only way to space" mentality.

To get a space shuttle even to the same height as a commericial 747 costs millions of dollars in fuel. How can that be cost effective? The idea behind the space plane is you will be able to fly up to space using only a fraction of the fuel, and hence a fraction of the cost.

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[DerekLyons]

There are other, cheaper, ways to get people to and from orbit. We've been able to do that, safely, for more than 40 years.

The problem is, when you look at the records of the American and Soyuz capsules... Yes, they are cheaper, (and far less capable), but they are no safer. Look at the number of close calls and problems the Soyuz has had over years.

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[Moofie]

If I remember correctly, all of the capsules landed within 10 miles of their predicted touchdown point. One landed within sight of the carrier. You don't need to cover a lot of ocean. You can predict the trajectory REALLY accurately.

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[Moofie]

You're wrong. A lot.

The hard part of getting into space is not the altitude, it's the velocity.

Consider the energy equation.

Etotal=Ekinetic+Epotential

Epotential=mgh

where m is mass, g is acceleration due to gravity (9.8 m/s^2) and h is height (calculated surface of the earth, since it's really a change in height, and the vehicle starts out with some potential energy due to its distance from the center of the earth).

Ekinetic=.5*m*v^2

Where m is (again) mass, and v is velocity. Orbital velocity. That's a big number. That's squared.

(Note: You can divide out the mass of your ship, giving you an energy requirement per unit mass on orbit. If you care.)

To solve for orbital velocity as a function of altitude, you can use this equation:

v=sqrt(GM/r) (Szebehely "Adventures in Celestial Mechanics eqn 1.5)

Where G is the gravitational constant (6.672*10^-11 m^3/(kg*sec^2)), and M is the mass of the earth (5.9x10^24 kg), and r is the radius from the center of the Earth to our ship (the desired orbital radius).

OK.

So now you do some algebra (or fire up Excel) and note that the dominating factor in that first equation is the velocity of the spacecraft. According to my simple model (assuming point masses, circular orbits, and ignoring air resistance) the potential energy required is one fifth of the kinetic energy required. Fuel consumption is approximately proportional to energy consumption (again, ignoring things like changing motor efficiency with height and stuff like that).

For every six pounds of fuel, five go to increasing your velocity, and one pound to increasing your height.

So "flying up to orbit" is just a silly idea.

If you're interested, I'll be glad to de-bunk air breathing "rocket" motors (scramjets) for you as well.

Staged, chemical rockets are the best way to get to orbit with current technology.

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[OzRoy]

You obviously know a lot more about this than I do.

I know that you can't "fly" up to space, I'm not an idiot. I do understand some of the principles of flight.

However, what I do not understand is why can't you fly up as high as you can go and then "take off". Surely the amount of fuel you would use to reach escape velocity would be much less that way. It's my understanding that half the fuel is used up before you even escape the atmosphere.

Also I would be interested to hear about Scramjets.

And please, don't come back at me with more maths. I won't read it because it doesn't interest and is quite meaningless to a person who doesn't work in the field. Talk to me in theory and I could listen to you for hours.

Re:Chasing A Technological Chimera

[Moofie]

The math is quite simple, and I inserted it only as evidence for my point.

Half the fuel may be used up before you exit the atmosphere (I don't have numbers one way or the other to dispute this, and it may well be so), because you use a lot of fuel that you need to accelerate the fuel that you need to accelerate the fuel that you need to accelerate the fuel that you need to (...) accelerate the payload.

It's a decreasing geometric progression. As your spacecraft loses weight, you get more acceleration per pound of fuel burned, so it stands to reason that you'll use the large part of your fuel in the first part of your flight.

I (me this one in my opinion I could be wrong) don't see the utility of launching from high altitude, simply because altitude is far, far easier to get than velocity. Even if you launch from 80,000 feet (like Burt Rutan's entry into the X-Prize competition that will a) probably win and b) not look anything like an orbital flight), you will not decrease the amount of fuel you need to accelerate to orbital velocity by a significant margin.

The problem with scramjets is simple: Drag.

Assume you have a teeny space ship that you've figured needs 1 pound of thrust to get up into space. In order to generate that one pound of thrust, let's pretend that we have a space ship that has one square inch of frontal area. The frontal area is the dominant term in the equation that calculates the wave drag of a supersonic body, and the wave drag is the dominant term in the overall drag experienced by a vehicle that needs to do a lot of its acceleration in the atmosphere (which, by virtue of the fact that it needs air to breathe, an air-breathing spaceship like a scramjet must do).

The problem is, that to generate the same pound of thrust as our imaginary rocket, our imaginary scramjet needs to have four times the frontal area to ram the air down its own gullet. So it has a lot more drag (geometric progression, as the frontal area is squared in your wave drag equation). This is really really bad. So, to generate the same amount of thrust, it must be large enough such that it generates LOTS LOTS LOTS more drag. Since your net acceleration (brace for mathematics) A is proportional to the net force Thrust minus Drag (we'll assume the mass M is the same in both rockets) your acceleration is much smaller in your draggy scramjet-powered vehicle than in your rocket.

I encourage you to examine the math. It's really pretty straightforward, and a smart layperson can easily comprehend even the simple calculus of rocketry.

If this is in any way unclear, let me know and I shall elucicate.

What has manned space exploration given us?

[avoisin]

I've been often asked by friends and others just why it is we send people to space anyway. I fully understand all the inventions that we've gotten during the process, such as better rocket power, Tang, etc. But I have a hard time coming up with things that we've discovered because a person actually went along to accompany an experiment.

The best I know of is that humans are able to adapt to failures in space, so that if an experiment starts to go awry, an astronaut can fix things on the fly. But I have a hard time even coming up with human-controlled experiments that have had society-changing effects.

Can anyone here name some?

Re:What has manned space exploration given us?

[eliza_effect]

Pens that write upside-down!

Bricks of dry, tasteless "ice cream!"

C'mon, now.

Re:What has manned space exploration given us?

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA's primary mission is to serve as a giant corporate welfare program for aerospace contractors.

Re:What has manned space exploration given us?

[krymsin01]

You forgot the most important one: Tang!

Re:What has manned space exploration given us?

[Anonymous Coward]

A geologist will hopefully correct me if I'm wrong: we confirmed our guesses as to the age of the earth largely through the geological work done by Apollo.

Re:What has manned space exploration given us?

[vsprintf]

I've been often asked by friends and others just why it is we send people to space anyway. . . But I have a hard time coming up with things that we've discovered because a person actually went along . . . Can anyone here name some?

How about building an inhabitable platform in space? I don't suppose you've heard of the ISS. As usual, stuff happened, and it took real people to make things fit together. And the ISS is the biggest "experiment" ever attempted in space. If you think humanity is confined to this planet, you may think it's no big deal. I disagree. I hope there is a greater future ahead of us, and I will continue to support it even though I won't be around to see it.

Re:What has manned space exploration given us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pens that write upside-down!

And the Russian's worked out that pencils can also write upside down and didn't bother developing the upside-down pen at all... Isn't that how the story goes?

Let's be honest - How many times have you needed to use an upside-down pen? I've NEVER thought "if only I had an upside-down pen right now".

Re:What has manned space exploration given us?

[avoisin]

Ok, I certainly agree that the ISS is a great experiment. I have a picture of it for my wallpaper. But, it hasn't accomplished anything other than being uber-cool and a nice platform for other experiments. But we haven't had any major impacts from work done there.

And as to confining humanity to this planet, I certainly agree that this is a big step. Colonizing other worlds could also reap mining benefits, etc. But we're a long way from there right now, and we've got enough problems to deal with here than the logistics of returning things from other planets to here. We're certainly not going to offload all our excess population to another planet.

Re:What has manned space exploration given us?

[vsprintf]

But, it hasn't accomplished anything other than being uber-cool and a nice platform for other experiments. But we haven't had any major impacts from work done there.

My first point would be that the ISS is still under construction - it is a work in progress. Another problem is that the ISS is underfunded and understaffed. It was running with one-half the ideal staff before the shuttle disaster. All the staff had time for was maintenance and a very few experiments. The shuttle was designed with a space station in mind, and one byproduct (of the shuttle) is the SRTM data from the shuttle radar mission. It may not seem like a big deal to some, but it's the most accurate elevation data we have of many portions of Earth. It's being used by firefighters now in California, and it's a big deal to many scientists in several fields. I'd guess there have been other related advances in other fields like robotics and materials science as well.

Colonizing other worlds could also reap mining benefits, etc. But we're a long way from there right now . . .

Agreed, but Columbus was a long way from the new world while his ships were being built. We need a staging point before we can travel, and I'll bet on the ISS before the *space elevator*.

We're certainly not going to offload all our excess population to another planet.

Agreed. It will be for explorers and small groups of colonists with a reason to leave, just like the colonists on this planet, and once they leave, we are no longer confined. Oh well, sorry to be so long-winded, I'm an admitted advocate. :)

Friggin PANSIES!

[GeneralEmergency]

Since when was the job of those "Fearless and Brave" astronauts supposed to be "safe"?

Rockets, are by definition, controlled explosions! By parking your ass on top of one, you are exhibiting the ultimate example of informed consent!

.

Re:Friggin PANSIES!

[Skyshadow]

I suspect there's a fine line between "fearless and brave" and "suicidally stupid" that you're overlooking....

Re:Friggin PANSIES!

[cliffy2000]

Car engines contain controlled explosions.
Need I say more?

Re:Friggin PANSIES!

[GeneralEmergency]

And ALOT more motorists die each year than Astronauts! Maybe the House should reconsider this "Motorized-Carriage" thing, huh?

.

China

[Davak]

We need manned spacecraft.

China gives us our answer!

By flying someone safely into space and returning him home, China bolted itself to a new level. The entire world had to admit that China was a new technological power. It's a trophy. It's a mark by which countries are judged.

The side effects of this? The people of China immediately (at least those who understood what happened) were filled with joy and respect for their government.

The space race is costly... but we use the technolgical research from it on a daily basis. Even more so, we must stay ahead in the space race for the respect of our citizens and the rest of the world.

In times like today... we need dreams. We need to know that we are exploring, researching, and reaching to new places. It's a part of the human desire to discover.

The old semi-dead people in the senate may not realize this. However, the majority of us thought about being an astronaut as a child. Even more of us would risk our life to see the earth from "out there."

We need to push into space... regardless of the cost.

Davak

Re:China

[Bendebecker]

"The old semi-dead people in the senate may not realize this"
When Gilgamesh wanted to go kill Humbaba, the elders of the sity said he didn't know what he was getting into and told him not to go. He did anyway and even after 5000 years we still remember his name. Anyone remember the names of the elders?

Re:China

[Anonymous Coward]

The people of China immediately (at least those who understood what happened) were filled with joy and respect for their government.

I'm an American with a southern accent, and *I* was filled with joy and respect for their government.

Re:China

[turgid]

Are you just a good ol' boy, never meanin' no harm? Have you always been in trouble with the law since the day you was born?

Well folks,

[codell]

Space travel isn't safe. From its inception it has been inherently unsafe, due to the extreme technical challenges involved. Of course NASA should to the best it can to minimize the risks, but spaceflight may never be as safe as modern airliners. Does that mean we should give up on manned spaceflight?

If we convince ourselves that we should, then our species deserves the eventual extinction that will be its fate. The long-term survival of our species depends on conquring spaceflight, because sooner or later our planet WILL become inhospitable, for one reason or another. I for one hope we're all over the galaxy by then.

Similar artical

[SirJaxalot]

here

Sounds like a Pointy-Haired Boss...

[Squeebee]

"The Bush Administration, according to Washington, D.C. buzz, is thinking about anointing NASA with a new, beyond Earth orbit vision statement"

What the hell? This sounds like my boss issuing a new "build me a brand new OS that is more secure than OpenBSD, runs all MS software, and will allow us to recycle Commodore 64s!" vision statement.

I mean seriously, what good will a vision statement do NASA? Space programs need money, not flowery vision statements. When Kennedy comitted the States would go to the moon, he didn't stop at the speech we have all seen at one point or another, he put his money where his mouth was (ok, he put taxpayers money where his mouth was) and made sure the deed got done!

Re:Sounds like a Pointy-Haired Boss...

[Skyshadow]

I completely, 100% disagree with you. NASA's problems are not of the sort which can be solved by spending money. Rather, they are a loss of vision and sense of purpose.

Since the Apollo program, NASA's "vision" has been one of sustaining itself. That's led to programs like the Space Shuttle and International Space Station, huge money pits which don't do what they're supposed to do very well. And what's next? Er, how about another space plane to do the same things we've been doing for the last 30 years?

This should not be a big surprise to anyone. The difference between NASA now and NASA in the '60s is that in the 60s, NASA *had* a vision statement, clearly enunciated from the highest level of government: Go to the moon by 1970.

So, managementspeak or not, a statement of vision is precicely what's needed.

Re:Sounds like a Pointy-Haired Boss...

[cmowire]

The thing with the vision statement is that it assumes that long term money is also on the way, because that's the new mission.

The reason why we got to the moon was not because Kennedy or his spending, it was because he made a mission that everybody could latch onto and fund. Well, that, and being assassinated before he could screw up always helps.

The big problem is that NASA's main mission is to keep everything it has and appease politicians. If they were told to get together hardware to go to (insert destination here) they can lobby for that one thing and perhaps get some other folks involved in that vision.

The problem is that the last time NASA got such a mission (Bush Sr. told them to go to Mars, Regan with the Orient Express) nobody cared and they faceplanted.

Re:Sounds like a Pointy-Haired Boss...

[Squeebee]

What I am saying is that even with everyone in my department believeing in the manager's vision, we still go nowhere without adequate funding.

the shuttle & ISS have wrecked space explorati

[robert_storey]

The ridiculous amounts and money and engineering talent wasted on a Buck Rogers toy like the space shuttle, the international space station, and now the proposed space plane, have drained funds that could have been used for unmanned exploration of Mars, the moons of Jupiter, Titan, etc. We landed on the moon over 30 years ago, and haven't done anything interesting since. Sending astronauts into orbit around the earth is 1960s technology. It's pathetic that we are just building space toys instead of doing real space exploration. But hey, the shuttle looks cool, and the space plane will probably look even cooler.

PHB's

[t_allardyce]

I dont know about the space shuttle, but planes are designed to last a long time and 20 years is reasonable. There havnt been any accidents because of old equipment - the accidents happen because of management PHB's who are the turds of any system and need to be flushed.

Re:PHB's

[sexylicious]

Check out the FAA or NTSB websites to determine the cause of airplane accidents. Some of them actually were because of worn out parts!

Probably one of the more famous ones was an Alaska Airlines flight that crashed in the pacific off the coast of oregon. A worn out worm gear in the rudder actuator was the cause. The gear wore out in part due to poor maintenance.

Re:PHB's

[Carnildo]

These are maintainence problems. Parts on an airplane wear out over time. Replacing these parts is a part of the normal maintainence schedule. It's only when a part wears out faster than expected, and is overlooked during safety inspections, that these airplane crashes occur.

Re:PHB's

[sexylicious]

Well, DUH!

I was responding to the parent's:
dont know about the space shuttle, but planes are designed to last a long time and 20 years is reasonable. There havnt been any accidents because of old equipment

Re:PHB's

[t_allardyce]

Yeah i realise that but people seem to think that just because the plane itself is 20 years old it must be bad, i dont think the shuttle missions suffered poor maintenance either - just managers totally ignoring what the engineers had to say about what could and couldnt be done

House letter boiled down:

[obsidianpreacher]

1) We haven't cleared this at all. We need to approve this project in order to give ourselves something to justify our jobs.

2) There's no money in the current economy (which we helped create/destroy/etc.) so therefore we're asking you to suspend this, as we don't want "Bad Things(tm)" to happen to you.

As cynical as this post sounds, I really feel that NASA is in the wrong here if even a quarter of what the House letter says is true. If there's no approval from the government with regards to the OSP, even if it's fantastic, then there's no legitimate reason that NASA (a government agency) should continue with it.
IMNSHO*, this is the tinfoil-hat crowd up in arms again since this letter obviously shows the superhuge conspiracy by the PTB** to stop the spread of technology ... give me a break.

*In My Not-So-Humble Opinion
**Powers That Be

Re:House letter boiled down:

[Maestro4k]

• As cynical as this post sounds, I really feel that NASA is in the wrong here if even a quarter of what the House letter says is true. If there's no approval from the government with regards to the OSP, even if it's fantastic, then there's no legitimate reason that NASA (a government agency) should continue with it. IMNSHO*, this is the tinfoil-hat crowd up in arms again since this letter obviously shows the superhuge conspiracy by the PTB** to stop the spread of technology ... give me a break.

Umm, last time I checked, congress didn't have to give explicit approval to every tiny little thing NASA/other agencies do. If the OSP falls under research into new technology, it's probably already gotten budgetary approval as just that.

Now if NASA had submitted it as a budget item and it got turned down, then that would be congress killing the program, but Congress sending them a letter like this is rather weird.

Well on our way

[stoolpigeon]

.. to the Russian/Chinese dominated future described in so much of the Science Fiction that I loved as a kid.

I think people like Heinlein saw things in our culture that would keep us from keeping our edge and staying out front. They might not have had every detail covered- they weren't clairvoyant - but they had an intuitive 'feel' for the reality of the situation.

Re:Well on our way

[eliza_effect]

Well, one of the things that would have us losing our edge to communist states is the fact that while we have a Christian-right controlled government that denies science, the communists have science AS a "religion" (or as close as makes no difference).

In the United States, under capitalism (and "democracy") The People feel that they should determine where their tax dollars go, and many feel they would be better spent in places other than the space program (and therefor lack the pride they might have otherwise took in a successful mission). Communist states do everything with the "best interests" of The People in mind, be it subsidising farms or sending a man into space. While the people have no direct choice, they can take pride in everything the state does (obviously, ideally).

We need more money for wars!

[jared_hanson]

Yep, we can't fund the space program because we are running up a bill for the wars we are waging. Pretty soon other government programs will see the axe.

After all, terrorists hate us. Why do they hate us? Because we like to attack their country and tell them how they should run their government. Sure, some of the citizens, mabey even most, don't like their current government. But, you will always have those that hate us for it. As you build up more and more hate, you get more and more terrorists, and more and more wars to wage to fight them.

The biggest problem is that most of the governments we install become dismal failures. Why?, you ask. We had to work for our democracy. We saw that the situation was bad, we wanted a change, and we faught to get it. The problem with Iraq, Afgahnistan, etc, is that the people, by and large, did not have to fight to get their democracy. It was handed to them by us. When we turn over control, they don't know what it takes to really make it work, so some dictator will exploit this vulnerability and turn the country into a shit hole again. This breeds more hate towards us by the people we were trying to help because they think we packed up bags and left them stranded. It is a vicious cycle.

We could grow up, however, and realize that people in different places of the world share different opinions than ours. We could accept this and let them go about their business. If they decide they want a change, let them work for it so they respect it and know how to handle it. If we did this, we could save our money to fix the problems within our country. We would probably have less of a terrorist problem to (or at least they wouldn't hate us for being arrogant pricks.)

</rant>

Re:We need more money for wars!

[KD5YPT]

Another major reason why the government we installed was a failure is because those government are almost identical to the one we ousted, just more friendly to us. The war and those "Give them Democracy" BS (pardon the language) are just a mask to cover up the true intention, replacing a corrupted government that hate us with a corrupted government that like us.

P.S. I don't have moderation point (a.k.a newbie), but I think jared hanson's post is pretty well thought out.

Re:We need more money for wars!

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of isolationism is possibly the most dangerous current in the political debate today. Absoulte post-modernism leaves no room for movement. While it seems fairly unconfrontational, when applied to other situations you can see the problem. See statements below:

"Sure Canada, you can keep your softwood subsides. Our loggers don't really need jobs, and we understand you have your own opinions on the matter."

"Sure, N. Korea, feel free to play with those nucular weapons. We understand you opinions about proliferation are different than ours. Just promise you will learn from any mistakes."

"Dear Columbian Drug Lord, We understand our 'crime' is your 'very successful business model.' We wish you luck with your endevours."

Apply to any problem you see in the world. Would we really have less terrorism if we abandoned the world to fate? Terrible things in the world are only stopped because someone stops them, and that means making judgements about what is terrible and acting on it. Isolationism, to a certain extent, was tried between WWI and WWII. The situation did not improve because we butted out for twenty years.

Re:We need more money for wars!

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are a fucking idiot. There was a time when civil wars only affected the state fighting. There was also a time when only state actors could threaten another state. Sadly, we've seen that era pass. Civil wars ripple out and affect all states surrounding it; look at the fall of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and all of Africa. Well financed non-state actors (terrorists) can threaten our national interests. We must respond to that, often that response is using our greatest advantage: overwhelming force. Yes, in the past, we have forced democracy on nations not ready for it (southeast Asia and Central America), but we've also been hugely successful (Germany and Japan). Terrorists are fueled by poverty and excused by a twisted form of Islam. Being nice to these monsters and ignoring them won't make them go away. Destorying the cultures that breed it (fundamentalist regimes and despots) is one step of several. Yes, it would be better for these states to rise up and overthrow their leaders. But, while we wait for that to happen, our citizens and property are being threatened and destroyed. Sir, I refuse to allow us to wait and hope that, eventually, these movements will start acting human. To ensure peace, we must prepare for, and be willing to wage, war.

Re:We need more money for wars!

[Obasan]

The US - IMHO, had something else going for it as well. Truly, staggeringly visionary leadership in the form of most of the "founding fathers". It was this leadership and the soundness of the constitution they drafted that saw the US through its fledgling years of democracy. If just one of those men had been greedier, or more power hungry, the world would be a very different place.

The problem with most of the "liberated" countries is the previous leader (dictator) has generally done a pretty good job of shooting or chasing off any kind of visionary who might lead the people to build a better nation.

Re:We need more money for wars!

[realdpk]

er, colOmbian. kthx. and it's:

"Dear Colombian Drug Lord,

We understand your 'very successful business model' is so successful because we've made your product highly illegal, and as such, allowed you to basically print your own money. We wish you luck with our continued partnership."

Re:We need more money for wars!

[jared_hanson]

I'd counter that and say that the vision they had was a direct byproduct of the environment they wanted to change. In the past 50 years in this county, arguably the most visionary leader would be Martin Luther King, Jr. He gains this title because of the strife and turmoil of the circumstances he was involved in. It would be much harder for you or I to be regarded as visionary, because our country is pretty decent. Sure, there are always injustices, but they are minor in comparison.

Did some people do their best to drive out/discourage black leadership in the 60's. You bet your ass they did. Count the number of burtal murders and crossburnings. MLK was assasinated. Did Britian do their best to quelch rebeillion in the Union. Sure thing there too (and at the time an ocean between was a much more significant hurdle than it is now).

Stageringly visionary leaders are regarded so because their vision stands as something staggeringly different from the norm.

Re:We need more money for wars!

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to do more research on those "liberated" countries, most of them did NOT have dictatorships before the U.S. "liberated" them. They just had business model that conflicted with the U.S.

Think about Allende and Pinochet. Chile was doing great with Allende, but they made most of the industry property of the Nation, which was bad for U.S. money, so... the U.S. overthrew Allende and placed Pinochet, hhmm... yeah, good choice.

Re:We need more money for wars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure Canada, you can keep your softwood subsides

It's not over subsidies its over how land is owned. In the US softwood is taken from private land. In Canada softwood is taken from crown land. The stumpage fees in canada are much lower then in the US because the goverment does not charge as much as the private owners in the US.

This is not a subsidy (acording to WTO), this is a different economic model.

I think you picked a bad example, you are better off complaining about the asbestos thing.

Re:We need more money for wars!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sure Canada, you can keep your softwood subsides. Our loggers don't really need jobs, and we understand you have your own opinions on the matter."

If you're going to get all preachy about subsidies, how about all the trade tariffs and subsidies that the US government is running for its countrymen whilst simultaneously preaching "free trade"?

The US government is running incredibly hypocritical trade policies that essentially amount to "remove all your subsidies, but we'll feel free to continue any we feel like".

Re:We need more money for wars!

[amightywind]

After all, terrorists hate us. Why do they hate us? Because we like to attack their country and tell them how they should run their government. Sure, some of the citizens, mabey even most, don't like their current government. But, you will always have those that hate us for it. As you build up more and more hate, you get more and more terrorists, and more and more wars to wage to fight them.

The Taliban and Al Qaida hated us long before we interdicted in Afghanistan. They hate us because they hate everything outside of their weird brand of Islam. You must admit that 9/11 was somewhat provocative. So let Al Qaida recruit to their hearts content. The U.S. military will continue to waste them on their own soil just as fast as they can pick up a gun.

So let me get this straight...

[ikewillis]

We suspend development of a technology that eliminates the need for SRBs because one of our shuttles was destroyed after attempting reentry because it was damaged by an SRB?

According to this story, in the history of the shuttle program 15 flights have had tile damage due to debris falling off the external fuel tank and SRBs.

NASA's solution? Create a space plane that is entirely reusable, and doesn't require rebuilding/recycling SRBs with each mission and constructing a new external fuel tank.

So when a shuttle is destroyed by a technology known to be problematic, the House Science committee recommends... suspending effort on a project to remedy those problems?

<sarcasm>That makes a lot of sense... really</sarcasm>

Re:So let me get this straight...

[brulman]

The loss of Columbia is a red herring, and I think the policy wonks are starting to realise just that. The real issue is why should NASA be fixated on building vehicles that do nothing but take us to take us back and forth to low earth orbit? The russians can get us there and back all we need, inexpensively, reliably, with 20 year old technology.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[RevRigel]

Columbia was not damaged by debris from the SRBs, it was damaged by the main external tank, which contains LH2/LO2. The SRBs contain solid rocket fuel at room temperature, and thus do not have any insulation required for cryogenic chemical storage. If stuff were falling off the SRBs, you'd have bigger problems than debris impact.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Bendebecker]

And when we get the OSP built, what is NASA going to use it for? What if the senate decides to scrap the shuttles and send NASA completely back to the drawing board with a mission to go to mars? Thena ll the moeny spent between now and then was wasted on a design that is going to be scraped.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[ealar dlanvuli]

Except we can easily and cheaply construct our mars vessel in low earth orbit.

Other than that I can't think of many reasons...

*sigh*

Re:So let me get this straight...

[tmortn]

got any details/link on that one ?

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

But there's no need to construct our Mars vessel in Earth orbit. That's the old $450 billion "Battlestar Galactica" plan from 1990.

The hip new way to go to Mars is Zubrin's Mars Direct plan, which costs $20 billion. All you need is a Saturn V-class launcher...one cheap way to get this would be to convert the Shuttle (lose the orbiter and you can turn it into a heavy-lift launcher with minimal development cost). Another way is to buy the launcher from Russia, which has a big one that works well.

The mission takes two launches. On the first, you send an unmanned vehicle to Mars. It's 40 tons, has an unfueled return vehicle, a small nuclear power plant, a small tank of hydrogen, and a chemical plant that reacts the hydrogen with the Martian atmosphere to make methane...ie. rocket fuel. (This is a simple process, 19th-century tech, already tested.)

Once you have your return vehicle safely landed on Mars and fueled up, you send another 40-ton payload with four astronauts. They land near the return vehicle, set up shop, hang out for a year and a half, driving a rover around fueled by some extra methane, doing science stuff. Then they hop in their ready-to-go return vehicle and come home.

The astronaut's vehicle functions as their living quarters. The journey out is six months, and to keep the astronauts in shape, you tether the upper stage of your launch rocket to the vehicle, 300 meters apart, and spin the whole mess. It's a very safe mission, because there's no risk of damaging your return vehicle on landing, and it's a cheap mission because you don't have to use rocket fuel to carry the fuel for the return...that's a huge exponential cost.

Private industry could probably do all this for five or six billion, the $20 billion estimate includes typical government aerospace cost overruns. And once you've done the initial development, you can keep sending return vehicles and astronauts for one or two billion a year (government cost).

Note that none of this requires a space station. See Zubrin's A Case For Mars for full details.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[DerekLyons]

NASA's solution? Create a space plane that is entirely reusable, and doesn't require rebuilding/recycling SRBs with each mission and constructing a new external fuel tank.

Except that... The OSP isn't entirely re-useable. An entire new (expendable) booster has to be used for each flight.

After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[Homology]

it's not surprise that cuts has to be done in order to preserve the tax cuts for the ultra rich. The illegal war in Iraq has been very costly in terms of lives lost and in massive damages to Iraqi infrastructure, and ordinary Americans has to pay for this with money and blood.

Cuttings in space programs would probably seem less risky (in terms of reelection) than messing with cuts in social services, health benefits and pensions in the present economic climate.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[ender_wiggins]

Ordinary Americans? Id say extraordinary Americans are fighting over there. I think the loss of life is less now by far than it was when sadam was in charge. But you don't care about that kind of stuff. Dont care about spreading freedom! Stop being a patsy of the negitive media. Wakeup and get educated.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't been talking about cuts in the space program. Can't you people read?

What they're talking about is NASA's tendency to dream up very expensive projects, start them, then approach congress with the attitude of "well, it's costing more than we thought it would."

The space shuttle itself was a product of baldfaced lies, in that NASA knew they couldn't build it for a fraction of what they promised congress. NASA has tried many times since the space shuttle to replace it, but each time they undersold costs and oversold capability. So each OSP project ended in failure. Just like this one will, if the trend continues.

It's time NASA came clean on the accounting. That's what congress is demanding. For once, our congresscritters are doing their jobs. If you ran a diamond cutting business, and one of your employees ruined every diamond you gave him, wouldn't you at least increase your oversight?

What NASA doesn't want to admit is the wingless, capsule based designs are far more efficient than the monstrosities they're trying to get approval for. They worry if the project isn't sexy enough it'll lack public support.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[sweetooth]

"But you don't care about that kind of stuff. Dont care about spreading freedom! Stop being a patsy of the negitive media. Wakeup and get educated."

You assume of course, as do so many, that this is what the people we are spreading our idea of freedom want. When the truth of the matter is they might not particularly care for our idea of freedom. Either because they haven't experienced it, or because they believe that things should be done differantly. Forcing the American idea of freedom on the rest of the world is no better than a dictator forcing his ideals on his populace.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... apart from that there seems to be something wrong with the picture of trying to spread freedom using guns; it's Saddam (capital S and two d's) and it's negative, not negitive (notice the a there in the middle?). Talk about getting educated... sheesh!

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[bnenning]

Forcing the American idea of freedom on the rest of the world is no better than a dictator forcing his ideals on his populace.

I don't support either, but this is just wrong. "Forcing" freedom on a nation is unlikely to involve concentration camps and gulags.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[sheldon]

I think the loss of life is less now by far than it was when sadam was in charge. But you don't care about that kind of stuff.

That's an interesting point, and actually I do care about such stuff.

What are the numbers?

Stop being a patsy of the negitive media. Wakeup and get educated.

Well as someone who is educated, most surely you have numbers to back up a claim rather than just leaving us with "I think it's true..."

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[cranos]

"Forcing" freedom on a nation is unlikely to involve concentration camps and gulags.

Hmmm, Guantanomo Bay anyone?

And before anyone mods me down for flamebait or anything else,consider this, these people are being held without charge, are being denied basic rights under law, such as access to a lawyer, and are being denied their rights under the geneva convention.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[Bendebecker]

The chinese would have just taken them out and shot them months ago.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[cranos]

And your point is??

The problem here is that the US holds itself up to be the perfect example of democracy and freedom. Follow us it says and a new golden age will come. However as soon as it is put to the test it reverts back to the sort of behaviour that led to the revolution in the first place.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[Bendebecker]

I'm just saying our definition of freedom is still a lot better than others definition of freedom. The orginal poster stated that are ideal of freedom is no better tahn a dictators ideal of freedom. Since you agree with my example, you must then agree with the fact our ideal of freedom is somewhat better. Even on our more evil side we aren't too bad.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[cranos]

Sure the US isn't as bad as Nazi germany or Stalinist Russia, but I suppose for a lot of people we expect China, Russia and other nations of similar ilk to be bastards, we may not like it but we expect it, with the US on the other hand it is like finding out that your best friend has secretly been dealing drugs while at the same time proclaiming loud and clear how much against drugs they are. Its a dissapointment, embarrasment and shame all rolled up into one.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume of course, as do so many, that this is what the people we are spreading our idea of freedom want . . . Forcing the American idea of freedom on the rest of the world is no better than a dictator forcing his ideals on his populace.

Ya know, people probably said the same thing about Germany and Japan after WW2. Maybe they didn't want to be free? Maybe they wanted to be ruled by dictators? But now, nearly 60 years after they were "liberated" and "re-built", these countries are outstanding models of what can happen elsewhere. They are the second and third largest economies in the world, with enviable standards of living. They have excellent human-rights records. They are stable. They are peaceful and don't wage wars.

Are you trying to say that the Iraqis are incapable of freedom or self-rule? That they need a dictator to keep them in line? Are they some how sub-human so they have to be cared for by others?

If they don't like their new freedom, then they can just vote in a dictator in a few years. How could they choose freedom under Saddam? It was impossible. But now they can choose dictatorship if they want. And if they elect and empower a dictator, oh well, that's their choice.

And no, I don't think forcing our ideals on others is a good thing. But I think freedom in general is a human ideal, not an American one. How many people who live in free countries want to move to dictatorships? Compare that with the number in the reverse situation.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh... you mean like a certain right wing talking head? "Drugs are bad, you all deserve to rot in hell, society should dispose of you... oh by the way, I've been an addict the whole time"

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the president told me the war was about the threat of WMDs. A premetive attack to save us. Now he's saying it's about liberating iraq. I still think it's about oil, why else would he be against creating more debt (loans instead grants to rebuild) that would cut into the amount of time it will take for the oil companies to return a profit in the new found free iraq.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Japan attacked the USA and was riding roughshod over SE Asia and the Pacific? And Germany, they seemed to be waging war with the entire western world and Russia. So how does us (and our allies) attacking two aggressor nations and rebuilding them after the war compare to us attacking (alone) a hostile (but NOT an aggressor) nation?

If we were talking about Iraq after they had invaded Kuwait you'd have something. They were an aggressor nation then and if we had marched to Baghdad and rebuilt their government then - it would be a good comparison.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[bigpat]

"Forcing the American idea of freedom"

Seems that many Americans have forgotten what freedom is.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[sweetooth]

I couldn't agree with you more.

Re:After huge tax cuts, and a costly war...

[ralphclark]

Yes indeed, and if the US had gone in and taken Baghdad back then, it would at least have been just, and many more people would have supported it. But that was then and this is now. The last gulf war just wasn't supported by such logic, it was all too clearly done for the monetary gain of US corporations and the richest and most powerful American families.

The government should just say it out-right...

[KD5YPT]

That the government doesn't have money! Instead of using lame excuses as safety issues for people who knows its unsafe, they should just say it straight out that they don't have money left over from the wars to fund space program. And the only reason why we are not getting anywhere is because the government don't want to pay for it. We already have the technology to go to Mars or the ability to adapt existing technology to do it.

third hand?

[Tumbleweed]

> On the third hand, our current space program is getting more unsafe because of the incompetence of NASA

Well, there's part of the problem right there - noone can count anymore! Either that, or there's WAYY too much genetic mutation going on lately. *eek* Still, if it's placed strategically, a third hand *could* come in...ahem...handy. I'll scratch my back, you scratch yours! Handy for those CIA missions in Mexico, too, ala "Once Upon a Time in Mexico." Or a dedicated hand for the joystick. Or the "joystick." Or one just for shaking hands with others - with a glove on, so you don't spread disease. You could use that same gloved hand for handling currency and opening doors (& wiping your butt). Yes, just think of all the diseases that could be eradicated with a single judicious genetic mutation here and there! And while we're at it...

Re:third hand?

[clem]

Actually, it's a reference to Niven's and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye.

NASA is Val Kilmer's Problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

"NASA is everyone's problem. That's because everytime they go up in the air, they're unsafe. I don't like them because they're dangerous. *CHOMP*" --Val Kilmer, during the dedication ceremony for the TV Land "Opie and Andy" statue dedication ceremony.

We _NEED_ to continue the Space Program.

[i_r_sensitive]

Okay, let's look at some objective realities:

1) No civilization has succeeded or advanced by curtailing their use of resources. Ours is no different, we are increasing, practically daily, our consumption of every non-renawable resource on the planet. It's pretty much a binary solution set, we either use those resources while they are still available to access other sources of those resources, or we fade away. Most of them are right in our own solar system, we just got to go get them.

2) The planet's population continues to grow, the sure fired cure to this is to materially increase prosperity for large sections of the planet. That will require resources, see 1 above.

3) Polution and ecological damage result directly from both of the above. Both will be attenuated if we derive most of our resources off-planet, which will require colonization efforts, which should have a small, but positive effect on population. One which can be expected to rise over time.

4) We still retain the means to turn the planet into a radioactive wasteland, we are also starting to play in technologies which have the potential to make life on this planet problematic. The universe istself could have a long period comet bearing down on us right now. The planet has been hit before and can be hit again. The best defense against this is to proliferate.

There most certainly are some massive obstacles to overcome, but we won't overcome them by curtailing our space program, including the manned portion.

Re:We _NEED_ to continue the Space Program.

[Anonymous Coward]

What resources can we get from manned space flight that we are running short of on earth? Space oil?

Re:We _NEED_ to continue the Space Program.

[RatBastard]

1) We do not have the technology, and will not for decades, to go out at get anything. Sure, we could get material from the moon, but there isn't a whole lot there that we need that we couldn't get cheaper and safer right here at home.

2) The real problem with the population rise is not material, but space to live. Nothing short of terraforming or a sever reduction in population will do anything about that. And the population isn't rising across the world either. It's in active decline in the USA and Europe. Italy is looking at sever labor shortages in 30-40 years due to the extreme drop in the birth rate.

3) Pollution will not be reduced by space exploration. It will be increased from the watse products of all of those rockets. The majority of pollution is still created in power generation and transportation. Space exploration won't solve either of those problems. Unless we figure out how to harness solar power in orbit and get that power down here without baking large areas with the microwave transmitters on the satelites.

4) And where shall we go? The moon? Mars? Venus? Europa? There isn't anywhere in the solar system we can live except for Earth. Until we actually find a planet that we can live on we're stuck here.

I think we'd be better served by finding means to live here without shitting in our dinner plates than betting on pie in the sky salvation in space.

I'm not saying the space program isn't a good idea, or that we shouldn't continue to fund it. There are reasons to go into space. Your reasons, however, are neither realistic or even feasable for multiple decades or even centuries.

Re:We _NEED_ to continue the Space Program.

[i_r_sensitive]

Napoleon on his way out campaigning wished to have trees on the side of his road to shade his soldiers while they marched. One of his aides pointed out that it would take at least 20 years before the trees would be big enough to even begin to satisfy that need. Napoleon turned to this officer and said, "Precisely why we should start immediately!"

Ultimately we'll have to do it anyways, if we wait until the need is manifest, it is probably too late.

But, I'll give you, we have to be cleaner about the process, if only to buy more time.

Re:We _NEED_ to continue the Space Program.

[i_r_sensitive]

Most of your major metals. The ones we currently get by strip-mining among them.

photo

[Anonymous Coward]

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2002/10.27.02.eelv _launch.jpg

Government is full of dipwads...

[herrvinny]

Okay, for the 1000th time, let's get this straight people:

WE NEED space exploration. Just because some people died, doesn't mean we should completely stop space exploration. People who think like this should be shot. Following that logic, Spain, France, etc shouldn't have tried to sail "around the world" and find a new way to get to India. A lot of explorers died then, should we say that the discovery of America should never have happened because explorers died? Boo hoo. Cry me a river. Damn it, the human race will ALWAYS look for more adventures. WE will always try to search for new lands. WE will always keep researching new and better technologies. It's built into the human psyche; to always want for something new.

For you people who don't want to explore space, fine. Stay home and cower. Build a tinfoil hat manufacturing facility. The rest of us, the ones whose blood runs hot, will go out a blaze new trails for the rest of you to follow.

I don't know about you, but I would be happy to go up into space. Damn straight I would be more than happy to put my life in NASA's hands, because those people are doing the best they can. If they make mistakes, so what? Lots of astronauts died during the space race, but we NEVER gave in. If I died going up into space, I wouldn't blame NASA, and if anyone of my family did, I'd haunt them.

Re:Government is full of dipwads...

[pmz]

It's built into the human psyche; to always want for something new.

Okay, who want's to break this to the Democrats?

Re:Government is full of dipwads...

[Anonymous Coward]

"A lot of explorers died then, should we say that the discovery of America should never have happened because explorers died?
Boo hoo.
Cry me a river.
Damn it, the human race will ALWAYS look for more adventures."

Interesting.

Capsules anyone?

[MeanMF]

Here's a nice opinion piece suggesting that we go back to using capsules, like the Russians and now the Chinese are using. It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me - if a "reusable" craft like the shuttle costs orders of magnitude more than one-time-use capsules, why not just make a bunch of capsules instead? You wouldn't have to worry about retrofits, upgrades, wear and tear, etc.

Re:Capsules anyone?

[Snover]

Um, massive waste? Like, the reason that we started reusing the shuttles in the first place?

Re:Capsules anyone?

[pavon]

Agree'd. The only thing that the shuttle can do that a traditional rocket can't is fly around in orbit and repair things. The main expense of the shuttle is that it gets beat to hell everytime we go in and out of the earths atmosphere. So we back to rockets to get things in and out of orbit and build a seperate vehicle that stays in orbit, docked to the space station to repair things. We could probably get more done with one of these than with a whole fleet of shuttles, since it's always available for immediate use by the ISS crew. This solution is cheaper, safer, and more functional than what we have now.

Re:Capsules anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trouble was that the grandiose claims made during the development of the shuttle were never made good. Capsules were and still are cheaper.

Re:Capsules anyone?

[dcmeserve]

You wouldn't have to worry about retrofits, upgrades, wear and tear, etc.

Yes, exactly -- spaceflight requires an extremely high level of confidence in the hardware -- far more so than your average aircraft, automobile, etc. This by itself will always make a reusable craft much more expensive than a disposable one.

It'll only make sense to have reusable spacecraft when our level of technology is such that we can be essentially guaranteed that there is no appreciable wear and tear between flights. This means self-healing technology. Take the example from an earlier post, of an inflatable boat punctured by a cat walking on it. When the technology is available to make something as cheap as a rubber boat be able to detect such a leak and repair itself, then it'll be a no-brainer to have reusable spacecraft. Not before.

Re:Capsules anyone?

[MeanMF]

Agree'd. The only thing that the shuttle can do that a traditional rocket can't is fly around in orbit and repair things.

I don't see why a capsule couldn't fly around and repair things - after all, capsules made it to the moon and back. They're not big enough to carry a robotic arm like the shuttle can - I'm not sure what kind of problems that would present. They're also not big enough to return a satellite from orbit to Earth safely for repairs (which the shuttle was designed to do), but as far as I know there has never been a need for that - it's cheaper to just put a new satellite into orbit.

Re:Capsules anyone?

[drinkypoo]

I agree that the way to do maintenance is with a dedicated vehicle. Send it up in pieces, and assemble it. After all, it doesn't have to be aerodynamic, just stable. Once, I would have said you could cut up some shuttle main tanks for shielding, but I'm not seeing many of those go up any more, and NASA has never parked any of them anywhere. It seems so wasteful just discarding these big cylinders which could have been linked together into some sort of ring by now, put under spin, with some stationkeeping engines put up from shuttles. We should have started saving them from the very start, but we're just wasteful I guess. As of December 7, 2002, there have been 112 orbiter missions since the first flight in 1981. Surely someone could think of some clever way to arrange most or all of those into some kind of station.

Re:Capsules anyone?

[bluGill]

Why retire the shuttle compltely? Build a capsule to do one thing we need the shuttle for all the time, and save the shuttle for missions where we need something it can do that the cheap capsule cannot. Want to retrive a satalite and bring it back to earth? (AFAIK it has never been done, so an obvious canidate) send a shuttle. Want to send supplies to the space station? Send a capsule.

ISS isn't in a good orbit for something like that, it needs a lot of boosts to keep it up there. Anyone know if by abandoning the shuttle we could boost it to a better orbit? Seems like a good idea, but I don't know about the energy needed, or if the structure (with mods?) can take it.

Re:Capsules anyone?

[pavon]

Your are absolutely right, they definately can be made to do those things. The point of capsles, however, is that they would be disposable, so you would not want spend extra money to add extra capibilities that would be burned up at the end of each mission. Better to build a custom craft that stayed in space - then it could be designed to be as usefull as possible, with a cargo bay, robotic arm, had tug capabilities, facilitated ease of space walk etc. What this would look like would be a different matter, probably like a shuttle with no wings, although more girder-like. Or perhaps it would be a like a semitruck where the cab was a capsle.

Re:Capsules anyone?

[wronkiew]

> Why retire the shuttle compltely?

We should retire the shuttle completely instead of reducing missions because the shuttle system has a yearly fixed cost of ~$3 billion. This means that the cost of sending no shuttle missions at all in a year is equivalent in cost to sending 150 people into orbit in Russian or Chinese-style capsules.

Re:priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting them down? Yes. Crushing their way of life and manufacturing one more suitible to the US corporate interests ends? Yes. Killing them? No.

If they wanted to kill them then more would realize that mass graves tend to be used when large populations die, say from a plague or massive and repeated bombings of the cities and towns they live in. You wouldn't see half the frickin country thinking that mass graves full of relitively fresh people where evidence of WMDs being used on them otherwise.

Who the f**k wants "research"?

[Julian Morrison]

Space colonization is the only reason for humans to go into space. It's a species instinct thing. Gotta expand to keep replicating, gotta reduce the danger of "all eggs in one basket". Congress will not prevent it. Econuts will not prevemnt it. It shall happen.

You can "do research" with robots - if it hasn't already been so mined out for utility that you're flying schoolkids' projects as "space science". But only real live people can colonize.

Grrrrrr congress butts into everything

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I am not your typical anti-government slashdotter, but I disagree with what the senate is doing here.

I understand that it is congress' job to oversee and analize where tax-payer money is being spent, but more and more often, I am getting a little ticked at these senators and congressmen.

You see, I don't understand why these congressional leaders need to always go sticking their noses in the business of the people who are much more qualified to investigate problems, than congress is.

An example: when the space shuttle was destroyed over Texas, congress was quick to jump all over NASA and start butting into the investigation as to what went wrong. From what I know at NASA (and working there), after the Challenger disaster NO ONE at NASA EVER WANTED to experience a failure like that again. Safety is the paramont concernt at that agency. So when the most recent shuttle accident happened, no one wanted to get to the bottom of what went wrong more so than NASA! NASA hates failures, and was extremely determined to bring home everyone they send up. (but remember, failures are inevitable in this high risk business)

But then, we have know-it-all congress "leaders" sticking their nose into these investigations, making erronious conclusions, embarassing NASA officials, etc.. all while their sole means for holding these high profile investigations is to have their name flash across the TV news screens, in hopes that their name will become more recognizable.

I am getting annoyed at this more and more. These congressional leaders who know nothing about the details of many many programs they investigate cast doubt and embarassment on so many organizations as they try to look like the real people "looking out for the tax-payers". This looks more like total bull than anything, because as soon as these "investigations" drop from the headlines, so do these congress people's interests in the investigation.

It would be one thing if it was political wrangling going on, like democrats attacking White House policy, or vice-versa, but for total unknowledgeable political figures go mucking into serious, highly detailed and skilled investigations, it is nothing more than a show that they are putting on, solely to improve their name recognition for the next district/state elections.

To go back on topic: shouldn't it be NASA that is the ones judging if the space plane is space worthy? Not some politician who has never really understood what the space plane does anyway??

who is robert park?? Re:Brilliant minds

[swschrad]

he is the head of the American Physics Society in Washington, author of weekly reviews of vodoo science and why the laughable and non-repetitive subjects discussed cannot work, a physics department chairman and researcher for decades before that.

or, for you, just another egghead from the tower who can't see a need being met here.

If the Xprize pays off it may be the way to go

[jmichaelg]

If someone collects the Xprize before it expires next year, it may be the way to go. The total amount of money spent by all the competitors exceeds the value of the Xprize but the competitors are trying anyway.

Tech prizes go way back. Parliment issued a prize to John Harrison for developing an accurate chronometer. The guy had zero credentials to do it - he was a cabinet maker - but he beat out everyone else and solved a long standing puzzle because of the prize. Paul MacReady won two sequential prizes for developing human powered aircraft. Lindberg won the Oertig prize for crossing the Atlantic.

If Nasa put up a series of substantial prizes for an aircraft capable of reaching LEO, Geostationary Orbit, Lunar Orbit and Lunar landing and Return, I'll bet we'd see a huge surge in space flight for a fraction of what we're spending today for shuttle flights. Nasa may not like the lack of control a prize implies but it would certainly encourage innovation.

Re:If the Xprize pays off it may be the way to go

[randall_burns]

Prizes for space transport could be done completely outside Nasa-and Nasa could be applied to some projects more appropriate for a large, government bureacracy.

I agree, prizes would be the low-risk, high-return way to go--and Nasa won't do it because they won't have control over it--even if it meant they could have space on less budget than they have now.

Re:If the Xprize pays off it may be the way to go

[mamba-mamba]

Parliment issued a prize to John Harrison for developing an accurate chronometer. The guy had zero credentials to do it - he was a cabinet maker - but he beat out everyone else and solved a long standing puzzle because of the prize.

John Harrison wasn't a cabinet maker. He was a clock maker and an unschooled mechanical genius. He was also, apparently, almost impossible to understand. You failed to mention an important constraint: The chronometer had to keep time while at sea, which is what made the task so difficult. The british wanted this because it would give them the ability to determine longitude accurately on long voyages.

What you also don't mention about Harrison is that he was not a member of the Royal Society, and had powerful enemies inside it. This made it very difficult for him to collect his reward. He had to wait many many years.

If Nasa put up a series of substantial prizes for an aircraft capable of reaching LEO, Geostationary Orbit, Lunar Orbit and Lunar landing and Return, I'll bet we'd see a huge surge in space flight for a fraction of what we're spending today for shuttle flights. Nasa may not like the lack of control a prize implies but it would certainly encourage innovation.

The current X-prize task is one thing. Getting a substantial payload into orbit is another. The other goals you mention are even more lofty. I don't think any organization could afford to do it just on the hope of winning a prize.

MM
--

Re:If the Xprize pays off it may be the way to go

[bluGill]

Yeah, but eventially he did get the prize. Anyone who wants to know more can look up the story.

As for the X-prize, it is a good first step. Once it is done we need another prize for something useful done in orbit. By giving a small achiveable goal you get bunch of engineers thinking about the problem. They now have abilities and expirence to design something bigger/better.

Good evening, everybody

[Sir Haxa1ot]

Hi, folks, how's everyone doing tonight?

I was away for the weekend, but now I am back. So what's new on Slashdot today? Anyone can recommend anything interesting?

Good! Send NASA to Mars..

[adeyadey]

Apparently Robert Zubrin, manned Mars mission advocate, is going to testify as part of this review. At the moment the US is spending $3 billion/year on the shuttle, and an unknown amount on the new OSP (Orbital Space Plane), all without any clear objective in mind. It is very hard not to feel, at least as far as manned exporation goes, NASA is floundering at the moment.

It is me worth re-posting this related extract from a piece posted on www.space.com, by Robert Zubrin - an advocate of reform in the US space program - interesting reading...

In the recent Columbia hearings, numerous members of congress continually decried the fact that the US space program is "stuck in Low Earth Orbit." This is certainly a serious problem. If it is to be addressed adequately, however, America's political leadership needs to reexamine NASA's fundamental mode of operation.

Over the course of its history, NASA has employed two distinct modes of operation. The first, prevailed during the period from 1961-1973, and may therefore be called the Apollo Mode. The second, prevailing since 1974, may usefully be called the Shuttle Era Mode, or Shuttle Mode, for short.

In the Apollo Mode, business is conducted as follows. First, a destination for human spaceflight is chosen. Then a plan is developed to achieve this objective. Following this, technologies and designs are developed to implement that plan. These designs are then built, after which the mission is flown.

The Shuttle Mode operates entirely differently. In this mode, technologies and hardware elements are developed in accord with the wishes of various technical communities. These projects are then justified by arguments that they might prove useful at some time in the future when grand flight projects are initiated.

Contrasting these two approaches, we see that the Apollo Mode is destination driven, while the Shuttle Mode pretends to be technology driven, but is actually constituency driven. In the Apollo Mode, technology development is done for mission directed reasons. In the Shuttle Mode, projects are undertaken on behalf of various internal and external technical community pressure groups and then defended using rationales. In the Apollo Mode, the space agency's efforts are focused and directed. In the Shuttle Mode, NASA's efforts are random and entropic.

Imagine two couples, each planning to build their own house. The first couple decides what kind of house they want, hires an architect to design it in detail, then acquires the appropriative materials to build it. That is the Apollo Mode. The second couple polls their neighbors each month for different spare house-parts they would like to sell, and buys them all, hoping to eventually accumulate enough stuff to build a house. When their relatives inquire as to why they are accumulating so much junk, they hire an architect to compose a house design that employs all the knick-knacks they have purchased. The house is never built, but an adequate excuse is generated to justify each purchase, thereby avoiding embarrassment. That is the Shuttle Mode.

In today's dollars, NASA average budget from 1961-1973 was about $17 billion per year. This is only 10% more than NASA's current budget. To assess the comparative productivity of the Apollo Mode with the Shuttle Mode, it is therefore useful to compare NASA's accomplishments between 1961-1973 and 1990-2003, as the space agency's total expenditures over these two periods were equal.

Between 1961 and 1973, NASA flew the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Ranger, Surveyor, and Mariner missions, and did all the development for the Pioneer, Viking, and Voyager missions as well. In addition, the space agency developed hydrogen oxygen rocket engines, multi-staged heavy-lift launch vehicles, nuclear rocket engines, space nuclear reactors, radioisotope power generators, spacesuits, in-space life support systems, orbital rendezvous techniques, soft landing rocket technologies, interplanetary navigation technology, deep space data tr

Re:Good! Send NASA to Mars..

[Anonymous Coward]

Zubrin is a kook. I read his book. His plan to send men to Mars has little or no safety margins. He wants to use chemical rockets, so the trip to Mars would take a lot longer than with a high-thrust nuclear rocket. The crew would receive a greater dose of radiation from cosmic rays and solar events during the trip. Zubrin's answer? "A little radiation is good for ya" (radiation hormesis)

Re:Good! Send NASA to Mars..

[drinkypoo]

Well, he's absolutely correct. We aren't working any goals. The reason the shuttle is being maintained and a replacement is being sought is, I feel, purely military. Are we going to outsource our military satellite launches to China? Not likely.

We need to go back to the moon, and stay there. We need to build a space station big enough to have some permanence. We need to be working on asteroid mining, it's one ticket to fully utilizing space, the space elevator being the other. Either one would be useful without the other. Asteroid mining however has the advantage that you can stop mining here, except for the exceptionally rare stuff. It could eventually end up being cheaper. And of course, if you're trying to build space infrastructure, if the ore is already where you want it, why dick around?

I feel that NASA is a good organization to help with long-range projects, but we need some extremely short range projects which will provide measurable benefits. Putting people on mars would give us huge masses of information about it. All NASA's early operations seem to have resulted in huge strides forwards, I'd like to see that kind of development happen during my lifetime :/

Re:Good! Send NASA to Mars..

[sunbeam60]

That is all well and good, but how will we know anything about maintaining long-term presence in space if we do not have people in space for a long time?

How will we have people in space for a long time without the International Space Station?

How will we build the ISS without something to fly the components up there?

Something with a crane, people, room for tools and room for the very component that needs to be installed?

How will be able to do anything effective at the ISS without more than the three astronauts?

How will we be able to have more than three astronauts without another lifeboat that can ferry these people away?

And, incidently, how will we test, cheaply, new materials that can allow us to build a new reusable spacecraft that doesn't need expensive repairs between each mission without building a small craft whose sole job it is to go through the atmostphere?

And how do we gather, safely and cheaply, enough information about Mars to finally know where to send Men and what they should look for?

The answer to all these questions are:

1. Build the International Space Station
2. Either maintain the existing Shuttle or build a new type of shuttle
3. The OSP for lifeboat duties. This also tests new re-entry materials and techniques
4. Send robots and probes to Mars

Whooops, that sounds exactly like what NASA/ESA/RKA is doing.

The problem with this whole "we need a destination to go to" argument is that everybody has that destination in mind already. We're talking Mars, for the love of God, and the only reason we aren't, is that politically it is inedible to set out goals "this high".

The reason NASA got so far, so fast in Apollo-mode is that, comparetively, their tasks was simpler than what it is now.

Sending people to a destination 300000 km. away and sending people to a destination 78 million km. away is not the same. Putting people on Mars and returning them safely is a job with a logarithmic job in difficulty compared to landing on the Moon.

Especially when everybody is whining that these guys aren't doing their job.

And for the love of God, and unrelated to this comment's parent, NASA should use the X-Prize winners????? These people will manage to put humans a 100 km. into the air. Contrast, again, with 78 million km.

Re:Good! Send NASA to Mars..

[adeyadey]

I dont think you are right to be so dismissive of the X-Prize - it has yielded so very promising designs for a very low cost, in space terms. To get true CATS, a "747" for space, I believe a range of government funded X-prize type incentives could be a way to go. Let entreprenuers take the risks - financial + literal - like the early aircraft pioneers - then we end up with a range of feasable designs, one or two of which become the LEO vehicle. With CATS, you can have LEO space stations or a moon base that could pay for themselves, in real financial terms.

Or we could stick with the Shuttle. $3+ billion/year for zero launches, until its sorted (2005?), then we are back to 3-4 missions a year to LEO. Whoopee. Maybe we get an OSP escape pod for a few billion - of course its below the US's pride to just buy a few Soyuz at under $100 million each..

So what should NASA do? I was initially sceptical of Zubrins plan, but the more I see of it, the more I like it. A first test of the hardware, or most of it, could be directed at the moon, a long (6 month?) mission with a relatively easy escape route. If that works then head for Mars. Big incentive & a big drive, will attract young engineers back to the agency - and enthusiasm means getting the job done. If you can get ESA/RKA to join in, so much the better. In the meantime, also keep on with the various robot probes and other astronomical science, something NASA still does well.

We already have loads of LEO experience that can provide enough data for the effects of long voyages, especially if the first phase consists of a prolonged moon mission to test the hardware out..

See the Mars direct homepage

Re:Good! Send NASA to Mars..

[adeyadey]

There is one critical point you miss - Zubrin plans to "refuel" those chemical rockets in-situ on mars - using available CO2 in the Martian atmosphere. Otherwise I would agree - chemical rockets are not a very good bet for a Mars mission. Yes, a powerful, safe, reliable, tested nuclear ion drive would be desirable, but we are a long way from having such a system, particularly something safe for craft with humans on. Even if you did, you would still need big chemical rockets too - we have to use chemical either way - to get to LEO, to land on mars, to take off again.. Either way, you are looking at months in space, and radiation has to be dealt with. The advantage of Zubrins plan is that we have the rockets to do it already - Saturn-V class rockets (ie the Delta 3-core heavy lift) could probably do it..

Re:Good! Send NASA to Mars..

[Anonymous Coward]

Land astronauts anywhere on Mars. Leave them there for 18 months and give them a rover, and they can explore anything within 1000 km. Land your next set of astronauts somewhere else, and keep doing this every couple years. Don't worry about long-term zero-g, provide 1/3 g on the way (see The Case For Mars).

Mars is not that much more difficult or risky than the moon, and Zubrin has all kinds of good reasons why. For a long-term stay, Mars is actually much easier. Even NASA is starting to agree.

Re:Good! Send NASA to Mars..

[Anonymous Coward]

No, his answer to radiation was much more thorough than that. Solar flares are easily dealt with by having a sheltered section within the vehicle - a little living space surrounded by supplies. Cosmic rays, you can't help, but would only increase the astronaut's cancer risk by 2%. Not significant compared to other risks of any Mars mission. In fact, if the astronauts were smokers, you would decrease their cancer risk by sending them on this mars mission without cigarettes.

Everything else has safety margins everywhere, this is a much safer mission plan than NASA's old $450 billion plan. One major safety factor is the fact that before you even launch your astronauts, you have your return vehicle safely landed on Mars and fueled up.

The real source of the problem...

[sterno]

The problem is that NASA doesn't have the same backing as it did back in the 60's. We went to the moon because it was a priority, and a lot of money and effort was thrown at it. Now NASA is constantly struggling to make as much as they can out of a diminishing budget. I believe that this, more than anything else caused the accident.

If you are an administrator at NASA and you are told that their might be a problem with the age of the fleet and you know the odds of getting funding for a new project are near zero, do you keep that fleet flying? Of course. That's hardly the safest thing to do, but it's either that or close up shop and go work the chinese space program.

NASA puts safety as first as it can afford to. You can argue that NASA is an inefficent bureaucracy, but we seem to have no trouble financing the inefficent military bureaucracy. It's the nature of government, cope.

Re:The real source of the problem...

[Analog Squirrel]

Let's not forget that a lot of NASA's budget goes into things not related to the space program. They do research into things like aviation technology; don't forget, NASA evolved from the NACA - the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. They do research in Computer and Information Sciences, geophysics, and biology.... and all of these example come from the NASA Ames Lab; there are 10 other NASA centers! I'm in favor of piloted space as much as anyone, but we have to be careful to bear in mind NASA's other tasks when we discuss what they do and do not have the resources to do.

Space is dangerous. Duh.

[Pedrito]

This is something I don't get. Astronauts have been telling congressmen since the beginning of the space program three things:

1: Going into space is necessary

2: Going into space is dangerous

3: They understand it's dangerous and they're willing to take the risks

What part does the government not understand. Space is never going to be safe. Just as going underwater in a submarine is never going to be safe. Comparatively speaking, of course. In both places you're in a very hostile environment to life (or at least our kind of life).

Every astronaut knows the dangers better than any congressman (except maybe John Glenn), and they're willing to do the job anyway. Why? Because it's necessary if we want to advance ourselves as a species. It's part of what humans do.

And really, if you look at it, going to space is probably safer than it was to pack all your stuff in a wagon and head west of the Mississippi back in the 1800s, but people did it, because that's what people do.

Going into space certainly won't get safer if we don't keep going. Man, this stuff just really irks me.

Um, how about experiments on humans?

[Cardinal]

But I have a hard time coming up with things that we've discovered because a person actually went along to accompany an experiment.

I suppose it's simplistic, but what about experiments that look for answers about humans? For example, research into the effects of zero gravity on the body and ways to combat it.

Of course, research into keeping humans healthy in space is only beneficial if you believe that we should explore space at all. But if someone doesn't believe we should explore space at all, I see little point in discussing the space program at all with them. All I'm left with is this nagging feeling that they wouldn't have considered colonization of the Americas to be worth the trouble.

Another project I'd like to cite is the Hubble, which, while not necessarily an endeavor requiring humans to deploy it, did require humans to fix the thing. I'm certain that without a manned space program, the Hubble would've been launched, declared broken, and promptly abandoned. Why? Well, I think they would've deemed the cost involved in developing some sort of robotic repair crew to be prohibitive. Easier to just ditch it and try again.

Re:Um, how about experiments on humans?

[i_r_sensitive]

Also, how much of the basic science and engineering that we learned from sending men into space would we not have learned had that decision been otherwise?

It seems to me that the decision to send manned flights had to have reverberations through the entire program. Surviving re-entry for a manned flight is a completely different ball of wax than an unmanned flight where the instrument package can be re-engineered for higher heat and gravitic tolerances than the human body, that's a whole smeg-load of engineering know-how right there.

If there has ever

[tarquin_fim_bim]

been a greater firm of bean counters, it was prior to the big bang, Ernst & Young are magnificent. They can count beans in a more Alice in Wonderland style than any other bean counters that have ever existed on any planet in this galactic spiral arm. Call them business intelligence firm call them crooks, they are by anyones standard of anything, simply the most creative.

P.S. I used to work for them so I know they're crooks.

Well Said

[digital bath]

Thank you.

Why doesn't congress outsource the space plane?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, Americans are just so stupid, fat, lazy and drunk/stoned-just go to India where the _real_ talent is-those taxpayer dollars would go a _LONG_ ways over there. Just look how well Enron did investing in India!

Your right! They do!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the only reason they have the subsequent "investigations" after these failures is so that they can get their name to flash across the screen just one more time before their next elections.

Do you really think they know enough about CIA spying or NASA engineering to head a worthwhile investigation as to why their budgetary actions resulted is utter failure?

Just put piles of bricks in the congressional seats, that should be a little cheaper than spending $130k a year per blabber-mouths to fill those chairs.

No! No! No!

[HarveyBirdman]

No more boondoggles! Honestly, what is this drive to send humans to Mars? And if you've followed the space plane saga, that has just as much portential, if not more, to become another bloated waste like Apollo or the Shuttle or the International Space Station.

If we had followed the incremental steps into space originally proposed by Von Braun and others way back when, we'd have gotten to Mars years ago. We might even be thinking about interstellar efforts (an Orion-like craft) in a few years.

Concentrate of efficiency. Concentrate on reducing the cost per pound. Create building blocks like orbital industries upon which we can build other things. Think modular. The ISS should look like a Lego set with easily and cheaply mass produced components.

If it turns out that the cheapest and most efficicent way into orbit is a giant pink and purple catapult using Barney The Dinosaur rubber bands, then by God that's what we should use, and ignore the snickers from the ESA and China. No more sexy. We can't afford to let the quest for sexy hold back our move into space any longer.

No more one shot trillion dollar PR projects that sap everyone's time and talent, and do more to make political points than anything scientific or technological.

Argh! Argh! Grrr! Hisss! Rrrrrrrrrrggg!

nuclear space

[Aeonsfx]

Interesting ideas about nuclear space technology can be found at nuclearspace

My view on it is this: Safety is important, but with all great things in life, there is risk involved. Space travel is by no means an exception to this rule.

If NASA isn't willing to take risks, then who is?

If someone doesn't do something *no progress* is going to be made. Well, at least China and Japan are putting some effort in to their space programs...

--Tim

I vote YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

While pure economics would question along the lines of yours, you forget the other benefits of manned space flight:

-national pride (china's primary goal too, look how crazy they went!)
-technical accomplishment
-the desire for exploration
-pushing and testing our abilities to the next level
-advancing the competition (vs russia back in the day)

No I am not a flowery philosopher, but I am sure that someone could come up with many, many more emotional and symbolic positive results for sending people into space.

I for one, am extremely proud of the US' space program accoplmishments. Note, without great risk, you cannot have phenominal sucess.

*sigh*

[Unknown Kadath]

I think most of us saw this coming. It's gotten to the point that when my boyfriend wants to talk about NASA's latest shortcoming, I just don't have the heart. Does it hurt anyone else that the United States is turning its back on space? I cannot understand those people who could watch the footage of the Apollo landings or see the photographs from the Viking missions, who were alive and could experience the breathless awe of the American space program at its peak, yet decide that the risks are too great and step back from the challenge.

I do not doubt that humanity will inherit the stars, one day...but it could have been within my lifetime. Thinking otherwise makes me want to cry.

(Before anyone jumps on me about US-centrism, I'm talking about the 60's and 70's, when the US won the space sprint and then decided to walk the marathon--and now it looks like we're dropping out of the race altogether.)

-Carolyn

Re:*sigh*

[Moofie]

Yep. Me too. Couldn't agree more.

Politics in action

[kmahan]

Safety is one thing. But that's not a big concern to a politician unless he/she/it can rant about it and get recognition in the news. Ignore the fact that these same politicians have been happily voting to CUT spending to NASA. Can't be bringing things like that up. Unpatriotic.

What really matters to the politicians is making sure the people in their state/county get a cut of the pie. It doesn't really matter whether these people are QUALIFIED to build part of the project, it just matters that they get the $$. (and that the politician gets the kickbacks..)

Problem goes deeper than that

[randall_burns]

In the 1960's, there was an enormous pool of young, technical talent coming online-the early part of the boomer generation. Most of them were raised to trust/respect the government.

The Johnson/Nixon inflation, Watergate, the Farm crisis, the S&L crisis, the H-1b/L1 fad have changed that quite a bit. There is today very little incentive in America to go into a technical profession unless you can't really do other things that are more valued by the powers that be(i.e. become a trial lawyer, partner in a major accounting firm, collect lots of political donations).

Just look at what happened to the guys at Nasa when the government was done with them-it isn't a particularly appealing story(i.e. quite a few suicides at Nasa).

It might be interesting if the US government created some serious incentives similar to the X-prize for tools to develop space--but I don't see any evidence they'll do anything like that. The powers-that-be would rather role the dice on causing a nuclear war with their mideast policy and/or have buildings blowing up next door than take the risk of empowering American techies in any serious way.

Congress needs to STFU

[Neuracnu Coyote]

Seriously. Who do you think is more concered with the safety and welfare of our astronauts - the guys who work with them everyday and build the fireworks that they ride in or politicians?

If our boys in labcoats are ready to build another rocket, then they should be able to have at it.

Ah, maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, but then all the Chinese space products would be mass market, cheap ripoffs of the real thing.

I for one, would like my space capsule NOT have any leaks in it because of poor mold lines on the hull, or solar sail fabric that deteriorates after 3 washes!

Besides, in a crisis (yeah, minor problems could be big events up in space) I would like to beable to read the emergency procedures manual without guessing if "buttery" means to replace the battery, or spread margarine all over the electrical sockets.

The final frontier

[eadint]

I think that china will change our mind in the next 10 years.
once china starts ramping up their space program we will start to wonder, hey what the hell are they doing up there. and then it will be a mater of national pride for the us. we went to space because the russians were one upping us along the way, it was called the space race for a reason. maybe china will light the fire under our ass that russia did, in that case, more power too them. i dont know if i read it anywhere, or just pulled it out of my ass but i think china fully intends to send a manned mission to mars. if that is the case than we will certainly be going to space. i think the real question is, why are we doing a fucked up job of it. AC Clarcks idea of a catapult rocket system was a good idea. so why are we wasting our time with modified WWII theory. maybe a space plane is not the best idea, maybe the best idea is a cheaper method of getting up there.

20 (25+ really) year old tech, so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Russians are using 30-40 year old tech, and have a much better safety record than NASA. I doubt the problem is the age of the technology, but rather the application of it.

We need space!=we need Nasa

[randall_burns]

We need development of space. That doesn't necessarily mean Nasa is the appropriate mechanism to make space happen. Prizes would be a low risk, high return way to make space happen.

Park is just a reactionary man...

[NuWinter]

And at this point he spits venom at anything new in science or anything that violates his assumed beliefs. He's of the sort that would have said flight was impossible, or nuclear power would come to nothing, or that the world market is only for a couple of computers pre-home pc. Nothing he says should be taken seriously at all.

Re:Park is just a reactionary man...

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's one overarching idea in science, I'd nominate "Put up or shut up." Park's just more visible (and blunt) than most scientists. If someone comes up with a new idea that challenges his "assumed" beliefs, he like anyone else doing science will insist that it explain and predict better than current theories, and can be tested. If the new idea passes muster, it will be added to our body of scientific knowledge. If it can't, it'll be just the latest addition to the scrapheap of failed ideas. If that makes Park (and science) "reactionary" so be it.

2 things

[Anonymous Coward]

1) if we spent billions of dollars on your inflatable raft, I am sure that we could come up with a solution that your cat could not defeat.

2) And if we can't make travel in space safe, then we really shouldn't go.
I think you miss the point. It is the American nature to challenge and test the limits of our abilities. To simply sit idle and make due with what is currently available is not the American, nor human way. We push ourselves to see what we can do. It's exciting and always rewarding in what we learn from it.

If your detered from advancement, even in the face of possible death, I urge you to get some balls, or move to Canada!

(sorry canadians, you were the first thing that came to mind)

Re:2 things

[iwnbs]

France...buddy. Move to France.

Right. In the meantime, China is soaring

[Anonymous Coward]

Safety is paramount, but risk is necessary. US should take this opportunity to remain the first, the brave, the pioneers. And that takes risk.

It is a damn good thing they are killing it...

[codepunk]

The idea of a winged space craft is stupidity. What purpose do those wings have in orbit? The only thing they do is reduce payload capability and greatly increase complexity. NASA is not gaining anything in reusability. Put a capsule on a simple liquid fuel mostly expendable rocket, strap on the current shuttle SRB's for a little extra boot and you have a sensible space platform.

Not a big deal

[twiddlingbits]

NASA has some VERY good engineers, just very poor management. There have been some sucesses, the failures were because we gave up too soon. Instead of looking for a solution to a problem often NASA is forced to accept a less than good solution due to budget issues. Of course the Shuttle and Station both eat HUGE chunks of NASA's budget and are not returning much on that money. The Shuttle exists to support the Station and kinda vice versa as well. Station Components and passengers could launch on Titans IVs or Delta's but they won't do it as it's not as "sexy" as the Shuttle (but its safer). Sure it would take a bit of work to stow the components and the payloads would need a autodock mechanism (which exists on the Russian Progress), but not as much as supporting the Shuttle for many more years. We could build a more modern Apollo Capsule or buy a few Soyuzes. Maybe, just maybe then the Space Station could be something instead of a maintenance nightmare where all the astronauts do all day is keep it running, there is not any time left for science!
I can bet you (working inside NASA) that the OSP will face the same issues as the Shuttle, to do it right costs too much money, so compromises will be made that are not sound engineering which down the line will come back and bite them causing even more cost overuns and causing another subsystem to be less than adequate. Some system will get shorted due to another system running over and eating all the budget. The ONLY way to build this is to tell industry what you need, tell them it has to be built at a fixed price (they get to bid the price) and it must meet ALL the requirements and be no more than 6 months late or they don't get paid. No waivers, no excuses. NASA provides MINIMUM oversight related only to flight safety, everything else the contractor does and they must test drive the vehicle and prove it works before payment and guarantee the OSP for at least 20 flights. Right now NASA is asking for money for an OSP that they really dont have good specs for and are already compressing the schedule. That's adding lots of risk in my mind, which does NOT have to be there. We have some good interim solutions as I mentioned above, so let's slow down design it right, fund it right and DO it right.

time to replace the shuttle.

[r.future]

After the US won the space race they really have not been under pressure any to make the "best" equipment to go into space. (Maybe this will change with China getting people into space now.)

The way I see it the space shuttle old technology that NEEDS to be scraped in favor som something new that is saffer, and more cost effective. Rather than just revamping a system that is out of date, and not very safe.

I think that NASA sees things the same way, which is why the are attempting to develop the Orbital Space Plane.

Congress telling NASA that they need to revamp the system that does not work very well before they will be given funding to make a new system that will work better, and be more safe, is just stupid. It's a waste of time, money, and resource.

Basicly I think the space shuttle is like an old car that has been to hell ad back, that has well over 200,000 miles on it, that a parent (parent=congress) gave to it's kid (kid=NASA)when he started to drive years ago. When it brakes down some people (IE congress) want to try and fix it rather than just geting a new car, because they think that fixing the old car will cost less than getting a new one (A new car would be the Orbital Space Plane.) I think the parent (congress) needs to just let the kid (NASA) get a new car. It is long past time, and fixing the old car again, and again, and again will end up costing more in the long run.

-r.future

Re:time to replace the shuttle.

[Bendebecker]

I'd agree but who then goes out and gets the same model, just a different car and a coupel extra hood ornaments. The OSP needs to be a real techinical leap before it can justify putting the money it will take to build it into it. As it looks now, it isn't much better than the shuttles and the shuttles are 20 years old!

Oh come on!

[dcormier]

"This car is old and unsafe. So is your driving style. But don't get a new one!"

The truth.

[Simple-Simmian]

The truth is political elites want to use any money they can steal from NASA and this program to buy votes. It's pretty simple. Government programs are vote buying and NASA isn't delivering the votes. Therefore NASA and the space plane are a waste of money.

Asteroid mining

[sbszine]

If anyone's interested in the current state of asteroid mining tech, have a look here. Thought provoking stuff.

Other projects

[EvilStein]

Ok, postpone the "space plane" idea.

Give NASA some money for the 5 dozen other projects that it's working on. Not all of them have to do with space, that's for sure.

NASA does a LOT of stuff that directly affects us here on Earth.

Congress CHASES the buck!

[alispguru]

NASA started out as a little research agency. It became a big agency with a mission (going to the moon by 1970).

The moment it became big, it attracted the attention of Congress, which sees everything the Government does in terms of "how can this be used as a vehicle to steer federal dollars to my state/district?" Ever wonder why the rockets are launched from Florida, but manned mission control is in Houston? LBJ ran the Senate at the time, and a major federal program in his state was the price he charged for getting the moon missions funded.

After we got to the moon, NASA evolved from an agency with a mission into the full-employment wing of the aerospace industry, with bits and pieces of it in every state. This focus on spending money in every district makes everything NASA does cost too much.

It has even compromised spacecraft design, fatally at times. Remember the boosters on the Challenger? The O-rings that failed sealed the "field joint" in the solid boosters - it's called that because the boosters are manufactured far away from the launch site, then assembled in the field. It's possible to make those boosters in one piece, without a joint - they're stronger and lighter when you do it that way. But if you do that, they're too big to ship, so they can't be made in a remote Congresscritter's district.

NASA should do research and prototype development for launch systems and manned vehicles. It should not be in the business of providing space transportation services. Congress makes it do so because doing that creates more long-term, high-tech jobs.

Please check your warp core.

[glrotate]

There are no warp drives!

How hard is it for you Star Trek geeks to get this through your heads? There isn't going to be any manned space exploration because we have no way of getting there.

Imagine oceanic exploration without SCUBA, that's all manned space exploration can give us in any of our lifetimes. Quit wasting my tax money because you can't get Buck Rogers out of your head.

Re:Please check your warp core.

[JCholewa]

> There are no warp drives!

> How hard is it for you Star Trek geeks to get this through your heads? There isn't going to be
> any manned space exploration because we have no way of getting there.

Alcubierre's metric is by the layman considered to be in the same category as warp drive, and it's a valid metric in General Relativity.

For that matter, you don't need ftl travel to get to nearby stars in your lifetime. All you need are an effectively infinite supply of fuel and something to stop little grains of dust from annihilating your vessel. Special Relativity takes care of the rest: You just constantly accelerate halfway, then constantly decelerate the rest of the way. Yeah, to the people waiting on Earth, it took you five to ten years to get to Proxima Centauri, but to you, it only took a year or two.

> Imagine oceanic exploration without SCUBA,

Um. There was no SCUBA two hundred years ago. Now there is. Good analogy, that.

--
-JC

PS: Yeah, I know that the infinite fuel and magic interstellar dust shielding aren't really easy, if at all possible, but my point was that you don't need some sort of "warp" travel to visit the stars.

Re:Please check your warp core.

[Moofie]

I'll be delighted to send you a check for the $2 you spent this year on NASA's budget.

Please stop pretending like we're talking about large amounts of money here. The costs are miniscule, and the potential rewards are incalculable.

We don't NEED space exploration.

[glrotate]

Please explain why, without space exploration, the universe will end.

Perhaps you think that given the vastness of the universe there must be a she-geek out there somewhere for you, but please stop calling for my tax money to be spent on your Star Trek dreams.

I'd much rather the R&D money went to building more efficient combustion engines, better batteries, computing... Not spent sending somebody up to grow 0G tomatoes ad nauseum.

Re:We don't NEED space exploration.

[cranos]

Okay heres a scenario for you, great big sodding rock slams into the planet, all life wiped from planet, sure the universe didn't end, but it may as well have for you.

Space exploration is necessary, how else do you think man kind is going to deal with the continually growing population and dwindling resources?

Re:We don't NEED space exploration.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, dipwad... guess where many of these new innovations come from? That's right, NASA!

Smoke detectors, have any? Well they were developed for NASA for Skylab by Honeywell.

Sattelites? Communications, weather, environmental, GPS? The space program put them there.

Medical imagine advances, bar codes, novel new materials (teflon, ceramics, velcro, etc); you got it, all NASA.

So the big question

[mcc]

To me, after the last shuttle disaster is: Will this cause america to wake up, realize the problems its space program is having, put serious effort into understanding what the direction of the program should be and what the problems it has at the moment, and work toward solving these problems and revitalizing our space program into something useful, meaningful, and forward-looking?

Or will we just get skittish and just dump the program entirely, looking the other way because it bothers us, cutting what precious little it has to worth with and letting it sink from its current mediocrity to just being a pathetic, bare shell?

Looks like we've gone for option 2.

The only good thing to come of this may be a plan

[tqft]

The only good thing to come of this may be a plan.

If they actually say "Hold on a minute what is our plan? What are our strategic objectives? What is in the national/political career/global best interest [probably in that order]?"

Your congress/exec may actually come up with a sustainable forward looking plan, with short, medium and long term goals. Which they would then proceed to accomplish - barring a catastrophe like an all out global war (but perhaps even then).

At least in the USA you have some people who want to go into space. In Oz the Science Minister's job appears to be finding interesting space/astronomy/science projects and organisations and killing them.

Why Congress butts.

[glrotate]

Because the US is a democracy. We don't tolerate a bunch of bearucrats making decisions about where out money should go. Do you think your typical congresman knows much about civil engineering, yet they make decisions about building roads. They typicaly have very well informed committee staffs. Technocrats don't make good leaders.

The space program is going away because it is a big waste of money and people don't care that much about it.

Re:Why Congress butts.

[bastiaannaber]

You don't know what you are talking about, the pentagon eats away more of your tax payers money in one (1 !!) week than NASA does in an entire year. Do you feel your money is better spend at the pentagon than at the NASA ? At least at the NASA you get nice museums and exibitions, the pentagon rarely shows what they do with your money!

Fuck Politicians...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck them up their stupid asses...

It won't happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for another century at least. Unless you consider a few people orbiting the earth in a space station colonization. The easiest place to colonize would be the moon, and how much have you heard about efforts to do that? What would be the point? Just because you claim that it's our instinct? I don't think so. Compared to the instinct not to waste a couple of hundred billion dollars just to say we did it, I don't see it happening.

Yes, please...

[arthurh3535]

Let's add waste of time to wasted opportunities and mindless red-tape to NASA's political problems.

If they are talking about finding a consensus, they will never find one that is worthwhile. Especially if all they have is...

"Hey, wait a second. Is this a good idea or not?"

What we need is someone with some real vision and the ability to sell that vision to NASA and US Politicians.

An almost assured impossibility, I guess.

Arthur Hansen

The existing system

[heroine]

It would probably be best if they scrapped the space plane entirely and focused instead on a beefed up shuttle. They could boost the engines to lift more redundant equipment and heavier shielding. The space plane is really whimpy.

Re:To man or not to man - Which is more efficient?

[mykepredko]

The answer to the question is not as straight forward as you might think.

I remember reading that the astronauts of Apollo 15 were able to gather an equal the amount of gross geological survey information of all the unmanned spacecraft (the rangers and surveyors totalling about 45 hours) in the first 15 seconds of being on the moon. The astronauts, trained in the expected geology of the moon were able to observe and develop plans for closer study much faster than what was possible with the probes and humans have the ability to move about very easily compared to a robot. Apparently this ratio (three hours of machine time equals 1 second of trained human time) has been proven repeatedly in different studies.

Along with this, despite some amazing work arounds over the years (I'm thinking of the Pioneer 10/11 stuck bits and Galileo's faulty high gain antenna specifically), humans can fix problems at the source and have a high degree of success working with damaged equipment.

So, I think the answer is that we do want a human presence in Earth orbit, the moon is probably just as certain, but going further out, the costs in supplying and protecting humans quickly outweigh their usefulness. I would think that it would never be cost effective to send humans to any of the outer planets.

Probably the more important question is, is it appropriate/cost effective to send humans to Mars and the asteroid belt?

myke

NASA should be forced to do what is needed...

[iJed]

NASA should be forced to do what is needed to advance the space program beyond LEO. This, in my view, involves a few obvious steps:

1) Kill the shuttle immediately. The shuttle is a dreadful compromise from the Reagan era that should never have been man-rated. Its uses solid rocket boosters for god sake! This is the craft responsible for the current state of NASA. Its a large and highly complex ship that basically goes nowhere. Kill it before it kills another crew. Put these '70s space planes in museums like they should be.

2) Accept that people are going to die in the space program. There is simply no way that this can be avoided. Precautions can be taken, within reason, but people will still die.

3) Push as much money as possible into building a new manned launch system. Something simple, cheap and reliable. If this means building a modernised version of the Apollo CSM then so be it.

4) Push for Mars. This is the obvious objective that NASA should have had for the last 30 years. This is what the successor to Apollo should have been. You develop a spacecraft to go somewhere and not just fly round and round in circles.

The Mars system, whatever it may be like, can be assembled piece by piece on the ISS using unmanned medium or heavy lift boosters and the crew launched on board the new OSP. I assume the Prometheus project will be what eventually pushes the Mars ship...

Spreading freedom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that why we invaded Iraq? Because I was told it was because of WMD, but I guess it's ok if they just keep changing the reason to suit the day, I mean it's only war we're talking about. Apparently these details aren't important to "educated" Americans.

You need to wake up. We went there for oil. We went there for politics, to distract the American public from the fact that the Bush administration doesn't have any solutions to our domestic problems. We went there because the Bush administration needs to look like they're doing something in the "war on terrorism", which cannot be won militarily. We went there because the Pentagon hawks have been itching to go for a decade, and this is just the beginning of a multi-country middle east war that they want. We went there for a lot of reasons, but spreading freedom isn't even on the first page of that list.

the only safety question here

[alizard]

is the safety of the "pork barrel" programs our Congressmen would rather fund.

Unless a chunk of burning shuttle or barbecued astronaut hits an important campaign contributor on the head, our Congresscritters simply don't care.

CHINA

[Anonymous Coward]

does the march of progress just keep moving west? think i may move to china.

Good 'ol America

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs space travel and the expanding possibilities of mankind when you can have oil, war, and 500 channels of reality shows?

So honest contrary opinions are flamebait, now?

[HarveyBirdman]

Feh. So be it.

So we must all march lockstep into the next era of space boondoggles, and set back humanity's emergence as a truly spacefaring species for *another* century? Let's all salute the flag and fritter away the trillions. Just so we can plop several hundred pounds of under-evolved primate flesh on Mars for a quick romp. Then we can say "Hey, look what we did!" and masturbate or something. Whatever.

We can only hope something sets a fire (pun intended) under the nascent private space industry. *This* space nut long ago gave up on the political and big government solutions to space travel.

It's all moot.

[brunes69]

As soon as word gets out to the general public that "The Commies in China are going to have a moon base by 2012", you'll see the Americans seeing red, and the current President at the time will ensure that NASA kicks into gear again. The administration will hopefully stop spending the billions upon billions it spends on destruction and death to finance something for the greater good..... even if the motive is just a big pissing contest like it was in the 60s.

Re:To man or not to man - Which is more efficient?

[brassman]

Interesting ratio. There's another aspect, too; nobody lives forever. Why not go out trying to make a difference? I like Mars Direct -- sign up some volunteers and give them a one-way ticket. If they can refine enough go-juice there to get back, that's great, but even if they can't, they got to go to Mars!

Every time I look at the Bonestell paintings and the Grumman models and think about where we were supposed to be by now, it makes me want to cry.

MOD PARENT UP

[rock_climbing_guy]

Please, that captures the way Congress acts better than any other post so far in this discussion.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Simple-Simmian]

Thanks for your comment but it appears a political elite with mod points doesn't and considers my statement about the true reason for the lack of support by congress for the space plane and NASA in general as flamebait. But this is Slashdot so go figure.

I've said it before...

[sllim]

And I'll say it again.

It is high time that the private sector starts getting into the act of man spaceflight and NASA reevaluates it's mission.

In the 60's NASA was taking on a mission that only goverment with it's vast capital could undertake.

That isn't the case anymore. One need look no farther then the X-Prize to see that.

I think many people missunderstand the point of the X-Prize. I hear a lot of complaints about how just simply shooting someone up in the air 60 miles and then doing it again 2 weeks later isn't that challenging. How a real challenge is orbital velocity.
The point they are missing is that before you can hit orbital velocity you have to be able to shoot a man 60 miles straight up.
The X-Prize is providing the private sector with encouragement to achieve step 1.

It is hoped that once someone shows that you don't have to be NASA to do that, then maybe harder things are doable.

Re:Fixing Hubble cost more...

[complete loony]

.. than building another one!!!

If it fails, you've still learnt something, just do it again. It would still be cheaper and easier than sending people into orbit.

History says otherwise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because one day there will come another mass extintion event. They have happened in the past, and they will happen again. Whether the cause is an asteroid impact, or war or a plague, or humanity slowly poisoning itself, or a freak nuclear accident, the end will be the same. All your snide comments about Star Trek and 0G tomatoes, your 90-miles-to-the-gallon Honda, your iPod with a 3000 hour battery, and your quantum 256-bit Mac G7 will all be for naught, and for a second, just before you die, you will realize we were right...

Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

...sell the plans to the Chinese and let them get on with it. They can afford to lose a few people. Mind you, they probably already have the plans.

NASA has other responsibilities besides space.

[Anonymous Coward]

"NASA flew about three score Shuttle missions allowing it to launch and repair the Hubble Space Telescope and partially build a space station."

Allright--what about all the aeronautics stuff? Maybe this doesn't change your point but NASA != space.

Amen. Man is not leaving Earth.

[Ars-Fartsica]

Sorry to all the nerds who think Star Trek is real science. We are not getting off of the Earth.

There is nowhere to go. Anything nearby is completely unsuitable for human habitation. When I mean "nearby" I am including a very very large volume far beyond the solar system.

Even if you could determine a place to go you don't have the right equipment. I mean you. Humans are not designed for long term exposure to space. Sorry. I don't know of one respected scientist who thinks our physiology and psychology permit long term exposure to radiation, low gravity, and isolation.

The very best you can hope for is sentient machines who can survive and in fact thrive in open space to spend thousands of years travelling as Earth's ambassadors. There is no "warp drive" that is going to zap you safely to a tropical paradise in another galaxy.

Re:Amen. Man is not leaving Earth.

[monkeyfinger]

Throughout history people have always said that certain technologies will never exist only to be prove wrong eventually. Before the wright brothers got off the ground people were saying "if god had wanted man to fly he would have given us wings".

Re:Amen. Man is not leaving Earth.

[aanantha]

Sorry to all the nerds who think Star Trek is real science. We are not getting off of the Earth.

The laws of physics as we know them aren't carved in stone. They're simply approximations. The General Theory of Relativity does not fit with Quantum Mechanics. The unified theories being developed do offer possibilities (higher dimensions, wormholes). No one knows that faster than light travel is impossible. There wouldn't have been a Breakthrough Propulsion Laboratory at NASA if respected physicists weren't willing to entertain the possibility.

Even if you could determine a place to go you don't have the right equipment. I mean you. Humans are not designed for long term exposure to space. Sorry. I don't know of one respected scientist who thinks our physiology and psychology permit long term exposure to radiation, low gravity, and isolation.

And you think these problems can't be handled? We can't build radiation shields? We can't produce artificial gravity? We can't build communities in space?

Human beings are willing to do some crazy things. We have people living in the Sahara desert, living in high altitudes, living in the Arctic. We could have just stayed in the trees. Our physiology is certainly more suited to it. Maybe there was a grand debate a long time ago about whether to leave the trees and whether to live in any of the godforsaken places human beings are willing to. No respected "scientist" then would have said we'd survive okay but people did it anyway. And the people living in these terrible places end up living a lot longer than we do, sitting on our asses watching TV and popping cheesy poofs.

I sure as hell don't want to pack up and move to Mars. But when the colony ships launch, there are going to be plenty of volunteers.

Essentially yes

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon landing had incredible political and inspirational value but very little lasting impact otherwise.

Consider this:

[Ars-Fartsica]

If we landed a human on Mars, destroyed his craft, had him collect a rock sample and phoned home the data, it would be a $500 billion disaster.

If a machine landed on Mars, had its craft destroyed, collected a rock sample and phoned home the data, it would be a $500 million success.

The debate of manned vs. unmanned is over save the vitriol - the science and economics are not even in dispute.

Re:Consider this:

[Moofie]

Over, because you say it is. That's nice to know. Are you similarly the arbiter of right and wrong on all other topics? How can I contact you?

Probes don't explore. They gather data, to facilitate exploration. Exploration takes humans. Anything else is a waste of money.

Incorrect context and assumptions

[Ars-Fartsica]

The man needs the wrench in the first place to repair the huge amount of equipment needed to keep him alive.

The robot doesn't so the wrench is left at home along with your dilemma.

YES

[Ars-Fartsica]

You will probably get marked down as a troll but the sad fact is that Boeing, TRW, Lockheed and the rest survive on the waste of government. Now and then they produce neat toys but just as often they are involved in very significant cost overrun/contract malfeasance.

It amuses me to see huge flags hanging in their buildings, as if they have the market cornered on being patriotic. Yet they are constantly being in the news for ripping off taxpayers. I don't mean suspicions of ripoffs, but charges laid and fines paid on the basis of evidence.

Forget the space plane...build the space elevator

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget the space plane...build the space elevator first. Then we could use it to build what ever we wanted in orbit from space stations to outposts on other worlds.

The results are conclusive

[Anonymous Coward]

We cannot survive in space for extended periods of time. It has been demonstrated with every extended ISS trip. There really isn't much more need to research the topic.

Score : -1, Didn't Get Sarcasm

[orius_khan]

"I think you miss the point."

No, I think POINT MISSED YOU!

Take this quote from the bottom of the post, for instance...
"Of course I have gotten to the point where the potential risk in my life is such that I don't even bother to get out of bed in the morning. You probably shouldn't either."

Easier ways for the US to get respect

[Ars-Fartsica]

First, no one is doubting that the US and the Russians are far ahead in space research. No one seems to care really. If the US wanted respect it could simply stop invading nations based on their predominant religion.

Amen. Orbital research is DOA

[Ars-Fartsica]

How many companies do you see chomping at the bit to do ISS research? NONE. Orbital research was a dream of the 80s and it died shortly thereafter.

Environmental research??

[Ars-Fartsica]

how else do you think man kind is going to deal with the continually growing population and dwindling resources?

Preserve the resources and lower the population. Or do you think we can just fry off the best biosphere we know of and just go live on Mars??

Re:Environmental research??

[cranos]

So how exactly do you propose to lower the population? One child policy for all???

Never mind that lowering the population is the worst thing that the human species could do, smaller gene pool and all. Nope sorry, Humanity has to go to the stars if he wants to be around after the resources run out, and they will. Otherwise its syonara humanity and hello new dominant species.

They were wrong on (1)

[Ars-Fartsica]

There was no scientific, economic, or environmental imperative to put humans in space. We always wanted to know if it could be done, so we did it. Now we know space is toxic to humans and Earth is actually the best place in the galaxy for us to live, so maybe we should start spending money on preserving it instead of fantasies of leaving it.

Listen to the Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you read the reports on both accidents carefully, the problem appears to be that the beuraucrats DIDN'T LISTEN TO THE ENGINEERS. They thought the shuttle was a tried and tested technology and they were wrong. Throughout this the engineers kept warning them of this but they didn't listen.

Re:Listen to the Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't listen because they didn't really have a choice. Like said in an earlier post, NASA funding has been cut torrential amounts since the 60's. NASA barely has the funding to fix existing problems let alone start any new projects.

My opinion? It's ridiculous that our government is set on destroying other countries for "the good of all man" when we could be working on going into space and possibly making colonies on other planets. (I.E. the moon. What's china trying to do again? Yes... colonize the moon.)

Re:Listen to the Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Those engineers, like most secure in their jobs, lack the "CAN DO" attitude. They have no insentives to try to do thing chiper, more efficient since their jobs don't depend on it. So they prefer to wine:
- oh, this can't be done unless I get another 10mil, that can't be done unless I gent another 10 year and etc...

Develop Space Shuttle to technological limit

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading the CAIB document gives excellent insight to NASA, the Shuttle and it reationship to ISS. The essentials being one system on it's own may be manageable, but combining the systems produces unexpected failure modes which require a flexible management to prevent loss of life.

The comparison drawn with the shuttle was the Navy's nuclear submarine fleet. Both entities are complex and require engineering centric management to ensure safe operation. Both shuttle accidents were the result of NASA management failure to read the warning signs that point to a potential failure. Where Nasa says 'foam shedding has never been a problem in the past' the Navy asks 'will the foam shedding cause a problem' and then fail the shuttle for flight until the problem is resolved.

Case in point - the Navy assigned significant resources to studying the CHALLENGER accident to see how they could improve Navy proceedures, whereas Nasa slowly fudged things so they could maintain the status quo.

The Space Shuttle is NOT obsolete - it's still under development and there is no way you can develop a new technology platform (OSP) until this platform has reached it's potential - which it has not. Case in point Boeing 747 - operational - but still being developed and improved.

The report pointed out that NASA wasted significant resources trying to develop the shuttle replacement, whilst ignoring critical upgrades to the shuttle itself. This lack of directon is clearly the source of current apathy towards the space program in general - ordinary people cannot see how it relates to them in everyday life, and why they should pay for it with thier taxes.

I can only see this as a good thing as NASA is a valuable organisation to humanity. I'd pay my taxes for it - but I'm not an American taxpayer.

1. It should focus it's resources on fixing it's management's problems and learn to listen to it's engineers, as the CAIB document recommended.

2. Time and money should be spend upgrading the shuttle and it's support systems (did you know the shuttles design documents aren't even available online to NASA staff!!!) and recognise that the shuttle requires ongoing development.

3. Remove all scheduling presures pertaining to construction of the ISS, development of the ISS should continue so that we gain experience in space based construction.

4. Use these combined experiences to Build a Space Elevator - currently the Space Shuttle is the only vehicle available that could do this, and essentially this is the only realistic point to the space program and only viable source for private and international funding. (And Perth, Australia would be a great place to build it!!!)

After achieving this feat, you can welcome the evolution of all mankind - after all this is the TWENTY FIRST CENTURY!!!

The question that has to be asked is if America has the energy and will to do this any more. A nation that is tired of being the leader - will not lead, it is after all, a burden. I for one hope sense prevails and a more pragmatic age evolves.

Why was all the money on a SSO replacement?

[ducomputergeek]

Why is the Single Stage to Orbit (SSO) concept such a dominating factor in a shuttle replacement? I've been following this for quite a while as a space nut and discussed it in an honors class entitled "Design your own Space Mission" in college. It was fun being a business and german major working with all the physics and science students. Many were rooting for the X-33, which hadn't been cancelled yet, with its SSO and no waste.

Yet in report after report I kept reading that a Dual stage "piggy back" system was:

1) Was extremely feasable with existing technology. Some research need, but not as much as the X-33
2) Just as reusable as one plane would go up to 80k feet, then launch the orbiter from its back and both were 100% reusable (proably with quicker turn around
3) A hell of a lot cheaper to develop
4) Even more hellishly cheaper to operate than the Shuttle per mission (could increase launches by 50% on exiting budget or something like that

Yes I know a lot of space nuts like the SSO because, "its more technically challanging and cooler", but come on, let's get some common sense into the program. Yes, SSO maybe nice, but from a logical, business like thought process, wouldn't the DSO be much more plausable considering we need something by 2010 realistically speaking?

Maybe China will get agressive and it will spark us to be as well. A renewed space race could lead to a lot of funding for just basic research, which a lot of useful stuff we use everyday came from. That would benefit us more than anything...

Re:The only good thing to come of this may be a pl

[Simple-Simmian]

The plan in congress is to get re-electd, If killing the space plane or NASA gets them re-elected that is what they will do. The political elites have no interest in space or space exploration. They want the money that are using on that to buy votes and will grab it if they think they can get away with it. It is no diffenrent here than it is there.

rtfa genius

[Anonymous Coward]

nasa says you're wrong, buddy

"Fifteen flights, from June 1983 through October 2002, experienced significant tile damage after being hit by debris from either the external fuel tank or the solid rocket booster, according to NASA documents and officials."

what was that about stuff falling off the solid rocket boosters causing "bigger problems"?

u pointed out the cluelessness of the first poster, but then made yourself look clueles. good job!!!

NASA Has No Goals

[Anonymous Coward]

If NASA had goals beyond the ISS, this OSP fiasco might not have happened. Right now they're designing spacecraft and technology "for future use" without defining what that future use might be. If NASA had known what it will be doing in the next few decades, it might have said to the OSP contractors "you know, we really don't need that feature, we won't pay for it" instead of "we don't need the OSP to do this, but maybe down the road we might, so put it in anyway."

To stop wasteful spending, Congress needs to set goals for NASA that reach beyond the next few years.

Not in a million years

[iamacat]

People risk their lives for much less noble things than space travel, which in some sense is the most fundamental, if uncertain future of humanity. Like going to a war in a foreign country without being told the real reason why it was started. Or extreme sports. Or smoking and eating junk food.

Sure, we should use the best technology available today to keep cosmonauts safe. But say, we develop the technology to send people to Mars but they only have 75% chance to get back alive. Perhaps, 20 years later it will be 95%. But we should still go today, because this is one of the best ways to risk one's life.

If I had $10M to go to space, I would go today. I don't care if it's a space shuttle with nice ceramic tiles, Mir or the new chinese rocket. There are just some things bigger than one life and it's worth risking the same to get closer to them. I wish NASA or russian space agency held lotteries for civilian space flights.

Re:To man or not to man - Which is more efficient?

[cheeseflan]

I think the parent is very accurate and observant. I also think this is missing a vital point. Manned flight for the U.S. is extremely expensive. (I'm sure we can all think of the $20m toilet and other items.)

Even though it takes three hours to get that second's worth of observation, those three hours are so much cheaper that it's still a better idea to send a fleet of probes. That's for the same price as the single low-orbit shuttle launch.

NASA was always best as a R&D organisation. It's just that the R&D was focussed on a clear, linear goal. It achieved the goal, and did put several men on our moon. Everyone understood that, but didn't see the underlying strength of the organisation.

That early direction has been lost. We focus on manned space flight because that was what it seems we were doing. We forget that the race to the moon was always about the expected benefits of a clear goal being achieved. JFK always saw it as a way to put the soviets noses out of joint while pushing money into the economy through R&D.

Please don't misunderstand me. I really want to be able to achieve orbit one day, but realistically I know it won't happen.

So what should happen?

IMHO, simply that NASA should refocus on the R&D aspects of aerospace. The clear analogy is the DARPA-led research and testing that led to an internetwork of networks. Funny how that took off...

It's called "Pump Priming" and NASA hasn't been doing anywhere near enough of it in the last few decades. Where is the materials research into esoteric uses for thermal or radiation proof materials? They're all focused on manned spaceflight. Just as Teflon was never developed for use in the kitchen, materials technology leaps forward when inventions are developed in different and unexpected ways.

So much money is spent on the orbiter fleet that nearly every other programme is run on a shoe-string (by "Big Science" standards). This harms the free-thinking research that could be done by any number of research groups able to bid for a larger pot of cash.

Let's give NASA the mission that government departments do best: spending a big pot of cash on a variety of things that private money would never fund. As we've seen in the past, all of a sudden, a tipping-point will appear and the private sector will suddenly see why we should be in space - so we will be. Who knows what it's going to be for? (after all, what hippie could have predicted the internet?)

Until then NASA will be wasting time, effort and money with expeditions to 100 miles above my head, literally boring a hole in the sky.

Space Planes Do Not "Fly To Orbit"

[reallocate]

Np spaceplane could simply "fly up to space". The wings, in fact, are useless in the launch phase. (More than useless, if you consider that they require extra design work to ensure the stablity of the entire craft.)

The only way anything can reach orbit is by travelling at orbital velocity. Rocket engines are the only propulsion we have that can power a vehicle to that speed. That's why people use them for space travel, not because there were "left over" German scientists at the end of World War Two.

It's worth noting the all spaceplanes would be boosted to orbit by conventional rocket booster.

The spaceplane notion is based on the idea that the wings permit maneuverability during the last few minutes of re-entry.

Spaceplanes would not fly back from space like an airplane, or as depicted in early science fiction. Like the Shuttle, they would enter the atmosphere with nose up at a high angle. The underside of the wings and the fuselage act as a heat shield, taking the full brunt of the dynamics of re-entry. It's only when that phase of re-entry is over that a spaceplane would pitch the nose down and begin to develop lift under the wings.

Fuel is not the major component a launch cost. Nor is it appropriate to argue that a rocket is inefficient because it uses more fuel than a 747 to get to the same altitude. Achieving altitude has nothing to do with achieving orbit. A 747 can fly forever and it will never, ever, fly much faster than 650 mph. Orbital velocity is approximately 18,000 mph. Rockets are the only thing that can do that.

Meaning of "Young Turks"

[fantomas]

Historical ref:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWyturks.h tm

YOUNG TURKS - "insurgents; restive elements within a party seeking control or at least a voice; usually, not always, comparatively young.

The Young Turks were the reformers of the Ottoman Empire, a revolutionary group that seized power in 1908 from the aging sultans; in 1922 the House of Osman gave up and the Young Turks - middle-aged by then - set up a republic.

The name was used to describe a group of Republican senators in 1929 who broke with their leadership over tariff legislation. Wrote 'Time" magazine at the time: '...These new Republican warriors were called the Young Turks, a band of about 20 who had mutinied against the feeble leadership of the 'Old Guard.' For senators they were young men (average age 56). As legislative legionnaires they were mostly rookies serving their first Senate enlistment.'"

Today the phrase is used to describe any faction impatient with delay or defeat, seeking action. Party regulars use it patronizingly, but those so labeled do not resent it. The phrase was eclipsed for a time by 'angry young men.'

During the Bermuda Conference of 1953, Winston Churchill digressed from the agenda to discuss imperialism with Dwight Eisenhower, expressing his doubts about the wisdom of self-government for peoples not yet ready for it. When the American President disagreed with a portion of Prime Minister's argument, Churchill smiled and said, 'You're just like the Young Turks in my government.'"

From "Safire's New Political Dictionary" by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993).

http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/bulletin_board/15/messa ges/739.html

Dennis Miller's Recent Take on the space program

[rustycage]

Take a look at Dennis Miller's recent take on the space program. He makes a few good points in his own way.
My favorite quote was: Instead of coaxing a Battle-Bot off-road on the Red Planet why don't we take NASA's budget and rededicate it to a public works project and build a comprehensive system of bullet trains right here on terra firma? Because, quite frankly, the current odds of getting to Saturn are a whole lot better than those of going from L.A. to Fresno on Amtrak.

Wings Are For Airplanes, Not Spacecraft

[reallocate]

The Soviets lost crews in Soyuz predecessors many years ago. The current craft has proven to be quite reliable.

Both Shuttle disaster can be attributable to failures in hardware that exists only to support the Shuttle. The O-rings exist only because the Shuttle design required strap-on boosters at launch. The Colombia disaster was caused by damage to the leading edge of a wing by ice at launch. If there is no wing, there is no wing to break.

Here's the deal with wings on spacecraft: Wings are just useless mass during launch and on orbit. The extra mass sucks fuel and adds no capabilities. During re-entry, wings function as a heat shield as the Shuttle assumes a nose-up posture-- not to provide life -- until the last few minutes. At that point, the nose is brought down and the Shuttle glides to a landing.

In theory, the wings allow the Shuttle some maneuverability during this part of the alnding. In reality, since it is a powerless glider, once they commit to a specific runway, they're not able to go around and come in again, much less fly off to another landing field.

In sum, the wings have added nothing at all to our capabilities in space. Neither will wings on a spaceplan.

Mars is no rock

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars is a good destination. See Zubrin's The Case for Mars for details, but basically, it has all the local resources you need to support a human civilization. Mineral resources, water, good soil, and it's the one place in the solar system other than Earth where you can grow crops without artificial lighting. You can even partially terraform it pretty easily, to the point where you can grow plants in the open. You know those planet-wide duststorms they have there? That's because the cap of dry ice at the pole is just below the vaporization point, and in the summer it starts evaporating. Four H-Bombs to coat the pole with dust would vaporize the entire cap, increase the atmospheric pressure, and increase the temperature above freezing due to the greenhouse effect. But even without doing that, the local resources on Mars make it by far the easiest place to colonize.

Now, the asteroids. Maybe asteroid mining isn't "proven" because we haven't done it yet, but we know for a fact that nickel-iron asteroids have enormous mineral resources readily available. It's much cheaper to get there from Mars, so here's your economic structure: high-tech goods go from Earth to Mars, bulk goods including food go from Mars to the asteroids, and mineral resources from the asteroids go to Earth.

That's the tip of the iceberg, there's a lot more I could mention. We've got one empty planet that hardly qualifies as "just a rock," and a few million mountains of stainless steel floating around. The economic growth that would accrue from taking advantage of all this defies imagination.

And cost? We can get started on Mars for $20 billion (see Zubrin again), and keep going for $2 billion/year. Ie., a helluva lot less than we're spending on Iraq.

'Go' Fever Cured

[LifesABeach]

'Go' Fever Cured

CAPE CANAVERAL (MRT) - After several attempts of entering into space, an administrator that did not want to be named stated that NASA has concluded that the safest place to be is at your home in a stationary position. It was stated that NASA has spent several hundreds of millions of dollars to listen, on the job, to the nations leading authorities on population growth and education. NASA has concluded that the safest space launch is no launch at all. NASA has started organizing a celebration of its 'new' space oriented goals; Any visitor to the NASA space center will be given a free user login to kazaa, and will be allowed to download 1 and only 1 mp3 file of "Glory Daze", sung by the NASA Administrators Vocal Coral.

Space travel with chemical rockets won't work

[Animats]

Space travel with chemical rockets will never get much better than it is now. It isn't any better than it was thirty years ago, after all. The limits of what chemical fuels can do have been reached. No rocket powered by chemical fuels will ever do much better than what's been done already.

Any progress has to be based on a new technology. Which is hard. We can't make fusion work. Fission is too messy. Laser launch requires giant lasers that don't exist. Skyhooks require materials that don't exist. Antigravity requires new physics. And none of those fields have large numbers of good people going into them.

We're stuck here, unless we get really desperate and build an Orion.

The Problem with NASA is...

[LWATCDR]

Us.
We do not care. We have no vision. We have no hopes or dreams of a better future. All we do is sit around and hope that we can eat all that we want and not get fat. Watch all the TV we want and not get stupid. Look at all the Porn that we want and not become moraly desitute.
We do not value honor if we did Clinton would have been run out on a rail. We do not value compasion unless someone else pays for it. No heros because we must find their flaws so we can feel better about our selves. No God so we are only accountable to our selves.
When we care enough about our wifes that we would never do anything that could hurt them. When we care about our children enough to teach them right from wrong. When we care if the people in our town have enough to eat, or are lonley, or hearbroken.
Maybe then we will care about the stars.

Yes it is a rant but this breaks my heart.

TEMPUR-PEDIC!

[slappyjack]

THats right, EvilStein!

NASA Invented the Tempurpedic Sleep System! For roughlt $2300 (yes, I looked up their prices the other day) You too can sleap on a big slab of layered foam, just like the astronauts!

I bet this is really how NASA could fund itself. INvent shit and sell it thorugh Infomercials.

The Chinese Toyota

[AndyCanfield]

NASA has a ten wheel truck that's grounded. They need a toyota; a cheap small vehicle for hauling people around. Why build a space plane from scratch? The Chinese just did it! Cheap. Small, Space Vehicle. Carries two passengers plus the pilot. Goes up; comes down. Fast, cheap, gets the job done.