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Astronaut Wants Space Program With No Frills
colonist writes "A veteran astronaut wants less comfort and more exploration for future missions. British-born astrophysicist Michael Foale has clocked up 374 days in space, more than any other American astronaut. Foale said, 'We need lean and mean spaceships with no frills', such as toilets or kitchen. However, he would like better oxygen-producing systems for the space station. Foale also talked about the Russians: they played 'some sort of Russian folk song. I'm not so sure it calmed me a lot.' As Foale boarded the Soyuz, an official kicked him in the back: a Russian launch tradition. From space, Foale saw a large black cloud over the Middle East: smoke from a bombed oil pipeline in Iraq."
Sice when did being able to take a dump become a 'frill'?
Pretty good description of where our priorities (especially spending) are isn't it? Personally I would like to see more astronauts and fewer plumes of smoke.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
That is his opinion and he is entitled to it. However, humans like comfort, and humans bitch when comfort does not exist, especially on long trips. In addition, there are cultural differences between Russians and Americans as he pointed out. What might seem comfortable for the Russians might not be comfortable for the Americans, just like he pointed out the folk song. Some people can handle comfortless trips, while others cannot. Those who cannot must be mentally trained to do so. No one wants an astronaut to have some sort of breakdown because his toiled sucked his anus too fast, or that he cannot eat anything else but food from the toothpaste containers. Speaking in terms of weight, not having a toilet or a kitchen will not significantly increase the maneuverability of the International Space Station or a future spaceship. It will not make it lean and mean. The only thing that will do is new propulsion systems. -------------
and the internet, and the entire sports industry, what a waste that is.
in fact lets just do away with all nonessential services.
yeah thats the best idea, lets put 40-50 million people out of work.
We can't even figure out how to keep people alive on Mars let alone figure out how to let them live like monks.
No, the waste is all the money we spend on britney spears and sports players. It's the money we spend on luxury items, it's the money we spend on pointless worship of mythical beings.
Space exploration gives us knowledge. War is unfortunate, but sometimes necessary. I wish we didn't have to spend money on war. But humans are vile creatures when it comes down to it, and so we need to spend money to kill and prevent being killed.
I wanted to write an insightful rebuttal, except I don't seem to understand what exactly to rebut. A bit too much metaphor, too little substance maybe. To reach space in a "meaningful way"? "Citizens of space"? Very elaborate, though...
If there was some sort of actual incentive to go to space, like Earth being growingly uninhabitable or some sort of extremely rare material only available on an asteroid, then yes, space "exploration" would increase. That's what you seem to be saying - but that's really quite obvious, isn't it? But for now the only incentive is academic, and most of the actual exploring is better done from Earth itself.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Nothing will further space exploration more than a space elevator.
Even a simple one, little more than a winch that can lower payloads to space and back safely, would bring cheap solar power and a station on the moon within easy reach.
Anyone in the white house listening?
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Yeah, you should tell the terrorists to stop trying to kill us because we want to explore outer space.
Well, I have no problem with sending the bad stuff into space. Sending the bad stuff into space with life support equipment, that's a different matter...
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
Foale was the visiting Western astronaut (as opposed to regular Russian cosmonauts)on Mir during the period of time when there was a fairly serious fire, as well as a depressurization (contained to one module) and a collision with a supply rocket. He was very vocal about his criticisms of the joint NASA/Russian space program (largely that it being pushed through for political reasons, to the detriment of the safety of the astonauts and the spaceprogram as a whole). His arguments had some merits, but they did not make him too popular with the administrators.
So obviously this is a guy who knows about the dangers and travails of space exploration, but at the same time it's interesting to contrast how this new opinion conflicts -in some ways- with his earlier statements.
Again with the "how the hell can we fund Mars" argument.
NASA gets around $16 billion a year. With the new plan of scrapping the shuttle and abandoning the ISS, that' frees up about $6 billion. If we have a timescale of say 20 years to get a presence on Mars, that's $120 billion. If you're a member of the church of the $1 trillion mars mission, that's not enough. However, if you use Mars Direct or the NASA Mars reference mission plan, that's plenty of money.
As long as the American people are willing to pay 1 cent on the dollar for NASA as they currently do, the money to get to Mars will be there. It's just a matter of maintaining the political will to do it.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Almost there.
some sort of extremely rare material only available on an asteroid
Helium 3. Gold nuggets the size of your head. mountains of pure iron. All in a place with no zoning regulations or air quality standards.
How's that for incentive?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
What a sad comment.
Space exploration is about man reaching out and wonderment, not about man being nagged to get off the couch and get the groceries from the car.
>Space simply won't be a "real" place until we have a real human presence
And why do we need to have space become "real" as opposed to what it is now. ("non-real"?)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Why in the world would we wish to kill, harm, torture?
Why would we not want to build a scoiety where there's a place for everyone, where noone has to be afraid, or hungry, or illiterate and uneducated?
Why would we wish to spend time and resources on inventing new ways to destroy and kill?
We don't have to do it, it doesn't improve anything by doing it, and it wont make anyone happier.
We do it, probably because we are no different from other animals, except for our intelligence. We are shortsighted, we are greedy beyond any reason (some think greed is wonderful), and we seem to have severe difficulties when it comes to think about others.
There is absolutely no reason for us to battle for land, or food, or resources, or technology, and certainly no reason to battle over whose imaginary friend is the best.
With technology we could provide for everyone everything they need. No reason to fight for it. When we realise that we can do it and the only thing holding us back is the wish for humankind to never ever grow up, that will be the day we deserve to exist.
Those who do not wish to see a society where people have the possibility to live safe and enlightened and happy lives, they can be provided a desert island somewhere, where they can tell each other what to do with their own bodies, where they can kill each other for not believing in gods, where they can tell people fairytales instead of educating them, where they can deny people healthcare because they are poor, where they can limit freedoms because they think it might make the world safer, when the only thing that would make it safer is when they stop acting the way they do.
well, that just Depends...
For the record I did read the article. ""We need lean and mean spaceships with no frills," Foale said, referring to amenities like toilets and a kitchen." He is not referring to the ISS. He is reverring to new ships to get out of the Earth's gravity well. Nice bit o flamebait though :-)
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
We're all going to die. If it happens while I'm exploring a crater on the Moon, or standing on Phobos while watching Mars below me, or flying through the rings of Saturn, or standing to close to a geyser on Triton, then at least it happens while I'm doing something so marvellous and beautiful as actually travelling through space, exploring its wonders. It beats the prospect of dying by the hands of a murderer, or in a natural disaster, or in a car accident on my way to my boring workplace, just because I wanted to stay on Earth because I thought it was safer than travelling through the Solar System. Safer, perhaps. More exciting? Hmmm.
What our leaders did yesterday (making Saddam president, selling weapons to both Iraq and Iran, give support to Osama, making the dictatorship SaudiArabia an ally... etc etc etc) is what we're paying the price for now. That's something to think about when we elect today's leaders. Do you want to be responsible for tomorrow's problems?
I'm all for mindless American bashing (Their beer is weak!) but having a low tolerence for death isn't solely an American thing.
I recall one South Asian country pulled from Iraq after a few of their hostages were killed, but America still are there after over a thousand military deaths.
>It's no coincidence in my opinion that Americans have no real heroes because nobody lays their life on the line for big ideas.
When did a hero become someone who throws their life away like yesterday's newspaper? A life-long dedication I can see, but not if the life isn't that long.
>You don't see Foale or Benjamin Harris saying "Fuck it all. Today is a good day to die."
Maybe because its a dumb thing to say except when you are showing-off?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I think the main reason many people would like to move to space if they could is the same reason many left Europe for the New World: to escape opression, to start anew. Earth no longer feels like it's big enough to do this. Space, though - well, it's pretty big.
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
Has anyone had sex in space yet? The Russians and US have both been sending up women for awhile. I'm sure someone must have joined the 100 mile(or however high it is) club by now.
Actually, it would be the 200 Mile High Club (station orbits at about 350 km).
I highly doubt that the astronauts have. The only time it would be likely is during a long-term Space Station stay, since shuttle missions are too short. And considering the psychology of three people crammed into a tiny space for months at a time, I seriously doubt that anybody would be feeling particularly excited. Astronauts by nature are not very impulsive people (at least the ones we have now; not true for the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo crews) and would understand the impact of such an encounter on their ability to work together professionally.
Although, I think I feel a reality series coming on...
Coming this Fall to Fox:
We took 8 people and stranded them 200 hundred miles above the ground. Watch as they struggle with life, love and the vaccuum of outer space on...
SPACE STATION SURVIVOR.
The losers get the airlock...
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
On one of the old soviet space missions (I think it was the Salyut 7 space stations in the early 80s) one of the mix-gender crews requested privacy curtains, and the implication of sex was there though the women claimed their behavior was stictly professional.
NASA pretty much has said it's never happened on one of their missions, even with the best possibility being a 1992 shuttle mission with a husband and wife on the same crew, but they had opposite shifts and reports were also that nothing happened.
Anyway, I'd bet the answer is yes, and that it was the old-era Soviets who did it first.
I think a Warp Drive might be more useful.
Not for leaving the planet. Even exotic-energy bubbles of collapsing and expaning space won't help with that; they're space-only, like Ion drives.
Or maybe transporters.
The only theoretical mechanism for "transporters" requires a significant infrastructure at both ends.
Just as feasible too.
Not really. We have materials that are theoretically usable for a space elevator. It doesn't break any extant laws of physics.
And it was thought up by engineers, not TV scriptwriters.
>You don't see Foale or Benjamin Harris saying "Fuck it all. Today is a good day to die."
Maybe because its a dumb thing to say except when you are showing-off?
I say it every day. It has nothing to do with "showing off." In has to do with attitude. Fear tends to find it's way into everything in the U.S. We have a culture of fear. We buy stuff to fight fear and we declare War on whatever we fear when we can't just throw money at it so it goes away.
Accepting death is the only way to make sure you live without regret.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Doing manned missions a ton more expensive than unmanned ones. For purely increasing the (science / $$$) ratio, the most effective thing to do is get rid of astronauts; they're the bigest frill.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." -- George Patton