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Bush's Space Panel Seeks Public Input
brandido writes "Space.com is reporting that Bush's space panel is seeking public input on the effort to return to the Moon and then reach Mars. From the article: "President Bush's new space advisory commission for getting humans to the Moon and Mars has launched a web site seeking public input with the promise of reading all comments." The article provides a link to the website for Bush's Space Panel, but it does not provide a direct link to the site for sending comments. I personally think we should use a Martian Space Elevator to further our exploration of Mars."
The thing is the cost of atmospheric launches against the cost of pushing up in a vaccuum. Instead of costing $10k per kilo, it's $1k per kilo.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
According to the Original speech announcing the plan, what you propose is already viewed as the first necessary step.
(Celui que tient la peur de devinir nuage)
Grab yourselves a copy of Arthur C Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise". Most often reviewed as as novel about a "space elevator" from Earth to a geosynch orbit, it also includes passages about the development of the same concept on Mars. Clarke's address "The Space Elevator: 'Thought Experiment', or Key to the Universe? (Part 1)" (which also acknowledges that the concept isn't his, nor new) can be found here: http://www.spaceelevator.com/docs/acclarke.092079. se.1.html
Florida isn't all that bad a launching place. For the slight performance hit of launching from 30 degrees, we have a logistical advantage in the fact we can bus and truck supplies to the facility.
Supplies get delivered to the launching facility in french guyana by boat, which is just as effective in getting stuff there. In fact, the ariane rockets are built in Europe, and then shipped like a lego kit to french guyana where they assemble them and put them on the launch pad. I've visited the ariane 5 construction hall. It's like a factory, with rockets in various stages of completion. Most impressive.
Very true. This is exactly why a change is in order. ISS/Shuttle is a white elephant. For the same money we can be doing far more real exploration.
So when my back is against a wall like that, i think i too would come out with crazy plans like this.
Bush's back isn't against a wall. These changes have been in the works for a long time. The Columbia disaster just forced a decision. Unlike other administrations of the last 10 years, GDubya has the guts to make the decision.
Not to mention the costs that it would have, NASA budget doubled for like 5 years when the appolo missions were going on.Clearly, such budget increases are not going to happen. However, the US does have new powerful and economical launchers (Atlas V, Delta IV) and the potential for rapidly developing Shuttle derived launchers. This is not a cold start like Apollo.
Dont get me wrong I am not anti-NASA, I am just anti-mars right now. We could use that money for more important things.Like what? Social spending?
an ill wind that blows no good
Actually ...Australia has this thing called Medicare which we all get and dont have to directly pay for (Its in our taxes). Some public hospitals have beter patient care records than the private hospitals. How much cheaper can you get than FREE?
"Persistance is Fertile" - Me. I can quote myself if I want to.
When I was young, I though about America as presented by Hollywood: land of opportunity, freedom and "the good ones". Now, every day, week, month that passes I just realize that you're becoming a really strange country where words like privacy and liberty mean nothing, and I find really hard to figure out if the US are still on the "good" side.
Which means you are still listening to what Hollywood and the Media have to say about us. Things are rarely, if ever, as black-and-white as you've described. I'm no advocate of Bush, per se, but at least half the list you present in your post has another, more reasonable side to it that people disregard because it's become popular accross the world (and the US) to hate Bush and malign everything he's done.
Noone, even President Bush, is either totally wrong/evil or totally right/good.
You talk about the wrongness of the US boycotting the Kyoto Accord, but you don't mention that while we didn't sign it, neither did a single other country. In fact, not only did President Bush take issue with it, but several members of Former President Clinton's staff also felt it was unacceptable. These and other facts suggest that in its then-current form, it had some fundamental flaws that needed addressing.
You talk about us acting like protectors of the world, but never mention that almost every 'police action' we engage in (with the notable exception of Iraq, admittedly) has been done AT THE REQUEST OF THE COUNTRY WE HELPED. We get attacked for being the policemen of the world, but countries keep asking us to police their neck of the woods. While we do sometimes go overboard---I don't deny that---many of our police actions have been a great help to the people in the area. We helped the people of Somolia. We helped the people of Korea. Hell, we have even helped the people of Iraq (though at a high cost!). I mean, no one is arguing that Saddam was a nice guy who deserved to stay in office. We may not have found WMD, but we've found rape and torture rooms, and other evidence of a truly brutal regime.
We have our problems, but let's not go overboard and start asking whose side we are on! Almost every American I know (that's a lot, by the way, since I live here ) is a decent, hard-working person who honestly wants to make the world a better place. We don't always make the right decisions, but hell, no one does.
-Tom
and the humans won.
Energy: time to change the picture.
OK, Mr Republican Propaganda Machine, I'll bite.
I lived in the UK up until 1997, and had the pleasure of experiencing UK National Health Service care in 1996, and the same treatment supplied by the USA's #1-rated HMO (Harvard Pilgrim) in 1997.
My medical needs included diagnosis and treatment of a kidney stone (i.e. typical non-surgical stuff) plus treatment for common chronic conditions like allergies.
Guess what? In my personal informed experience, the best US HMO healthcare is about as good as the UK's state-funded National Health Service. Wait times are about the same, quality of care is about the same. Yes, I had to wait weeks or even months for treatment in the US.
And remember, that was the #1 rated HMO in the country that year. I hate to think what kind of medical care you get if you live in rural Alabama.
Of course, the medical industry loves the fat profits it soaks out of the US consumer, and has lots of money to pay for the dissemination of propaganda to try and convince US consumers that those poor European countries with their universal healthcare systems are much worse off than the lucky USA. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they paid people to post propaganda to the Internet.
Here's your free clue for the day: Try talking to people who actually have experience of both US healthcare and state-funded European healthcare. Don't just believe what you read in the corporate media or hear on FOX News.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Excuse but I must react.
French healthcare is one of the best in the world. Where did you see that you have to wait six month for heart surgery ?
I know people that had heart surgery, when it happens you can't wait. And nobody will make you wait. I you speak about heart transplant it's another story since there's a lack of donors but that is the same for every country in the world.
That's plain BS, I'm sorry to tell you.
Healthcare in the US is a plain failure because you country in unable to accept the fact that maybe it's not a bad idea if everyone pays a little on its income for the health of everyone.
I've been in the US for 9 months and when I have a medical problem I don't go to the doctor, too expensive.
Last time I went back to France I saw all the doctors I needed (eyes, teeth, general, etc) and I paid next to nothing. I'm my country nobody is dying because he can't pay for the medicine. I'm proud of this fact.
How comes the parent post was moded as Insightful? Give me a break.
Care to provide any sources to back up your statements?
According to an interview Germany has practically no waiting-lines. I assume the Scandinavian countries are known to have an even better health-care system.
In the WHO World Health Report 2000 France is ranked first, the US 37th.
> You want cheaper healthcare? Get the government OUT of it.
I did not see the parent saying anything of cheaper healthcare. Not everyone is an egoist.
Oh, BTW:
> The U.S. spends more total dollars and more dollars per capita on health care than any other nation and New Zealand is in approximately the top 10% in spending.
Source
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
A huge amount of countries have signed the Kyoto Protocol and most of them have even ratified the Protocol. Even the US (by Pres. Clinton) have signed the treaty, but Clinton knew that congress would not ratify it and did it just before leaving office as a symbolic act.
Without the US on-board, the Kyoto Protocol is not legally binding without Russia, while Russia has lately used the Bush administration's line as an excuse for not signing up (lead by example). The reason Russia has gained importance, is because: The protocol would have entered into force when 55 signatories had ratified it, including industrialised countries responsible for 55% of the developed world's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 1990.
Why don't you explain that to mr. "Evil axis" guy instead of the parent post, which seems very reflected.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Funny you should ask. Just yesterday I ran into this little story:
/ ar ticles/2004/02/10/why_canadians_are_healthier/
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science
My favorite quote: "There isn't a single measure in which the US excels in the health arena," said Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington in Seattle. "We spend half of the world's health care bill and we are less healthy than all the other rich countries.
Kill the mars program and fix the Hubble. We will go more places this way.
:)
Are you kidding? First of all, science is about a diversity of observations. Space based optical wavelength, small telescope astronomy is nice, however it provides only a tiny portion of the measurements needed to understand the universe. The observations that we are making on Mars could seal the case that life is probable to exist elsewhere in the universe, perhaps even nearby! The Hubble, currently, can do little in the way of the search for life or habitable planets. Secondly, the hubble is an ancient piece of technology. The money used to run the program is better spent on new, much more powerful types of observatories, for instance Gossamer Telescopes, next generation x-ray observatories, or the Terrestrial Planet Finder. For exploring the furthest reaches of the universe, you must use infrared telescopes like the James Webb Telescope due to the massive redshift. Also it is important to set up a method of making groundbreaking observations of gravitional waves using something like LISA is essential to furthering our understanding of general relativity and cosmology. Also planetary exploration helps us develop propulsion systems that will eventually be used to launch interstellar probes.
There's so much to explore, and we're never going to make progress by continuously dumping money into a dying technology... Hubble's service record has been amazing, especially considering its flaws, however it is time to move on, to discover new and different things that Hubble cannot see.
Eliminating planetary science in order to take more pretty pictures, IMHO, is unacceptable. I'm glad to see that NASA agrees with this.
Disclaimer: I work on the Mars Exploration Rovers mission, so I'm a little biased
Cheers,
Justin Wick