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Katrina Delays Shuttle
guildsolutions writes "The scoop on MSNBC has it that NASA will not fly again until next fall. With NASA's reluctance to get back into space, and Hubble dying, We just wonder when private industry will put NASA out of the game."
Because private industry did such a great job of evacuating the city of New Orleans before hurricane Katrina. Let's turn over our space program to the free market and see how it handles it.
Does anybody ever notice how whenever the free market fails at something, the government steps in to take the blame, which provides further "evidence" that government is incompetent, which results in further reduction of government services, and more privatization. Then, when private industry screws up yet again, we blame government, and round and round we go. It's a nice circular argument. This is of course the problem with privatization, is that private industry cares about one thing, and that is profit. Markets are horribly inefficient at solving certain kinds of problems, such as the evacuation of the city of New Orleans (or space exploration, unless the only thing we're interested in is sending rich people into space). It would be nice if the free-marketeers in the White House understood this fact.
NASA has done a great job over the many years of it's existence, from the moon missions to designing the shuttle fleets, and various exploratory missions such as the Mars Rovers and the Hubble Telescope. NASA is starting to show it's age though, as lately, private sector seems to be catching up fast... and the question we all want to know, is can NASA keep up with the many contenders currently active out in the private sector, some of which have massive bankrolls available to them, and investors with very deep pockets backing the projects up...
Private Sector has entered the space age, with recent contests, most notable the Ansari X Prize, giving $10 million dollars to the first private space flight to reach into orbit. This prize was won of course by the SpaceShipOne sponsored by Scaled Composites, and has started them on the way to forming "The Spaceship Company"... one of many private sector industries that are sure to bring us some major developments over the next few years, and could very likely take a huge role in future manned space exploration, not just into orbit, but onto surrounding planets as well. The US government may very well be contacting these groups for assistance in the Mar's mission, instead of relying solely on NASA.
It is too early to tell if the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina will place the final nail in the coffin of the government being a contender in the space program, but we know this will help spur private industry even more, to reach into space and take this role into the hands of our citizens, instead of the government. As time goes on, congress may decide that the costs of the space program are too great, having to spend all this money in research and development, especially throwing countless money into finding the source of the foam problems on the external fuel tank for one, as well as many other issues that will need to be resolved if the shuttles continue to fly. Issues that must be resolved, and if not taken care of, could force the shuttle as we know it into an early demise...
Hurricane Katrina may be a blessing in disguise, taking NASA off it's throne, and placing private sector industries in it's place... let's see how everyone as a whole takes charge, and we can all be excited about all the new developments sure to come in the very near future... the space program has always brought new ideas to use by everyone, and this modern "space race" can only bring more and more to the plate...
Only time shall tell...
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When there's a buck to be made at little or no risk. Not before.
I thought corporations that do stuff for profit were evil? I'm confused.
How many different ways can he capitalize NASA? Sheesh.
We just wonder when private industry will put Nasa out of the game.
When space travel and space telescopes become profitable.
What's the deal? NASA is solely a governemt organization. There's no question of layoffs, economic setbacks, anything. Uncle Sam's checkbook has no limits. The only thing keep shuttles on the ground is... the weather? Please. At least give us something misleading that will defer our curiosity.
Beyond the highly-visible impacts of damaged facilities and scattered workers...
Efforts continue to rehouse space workers from the Michoud plant that produced the disposable thirty-ton external fuel tanks used for shuttle launches. An estimated half of them are now homeless, and many have been relocated to temporary lodging near NASA facilities in Houston, Huntsville, Ala., and Cape Canaveral, Fla..
Sounds like they were attacked by Klingons or something
NASA needs less shuttle. NASA needs to be pared back or reorganized such that it uses its funds funding private sector projects rather than trying to do all its research in house.
Just my opinion, or course.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
I'm a lifelong space buff and even I am starting to think it's time to trash the current system and go with SafeSimpleSoon.com's proposals.
Waiting from September til March to fix a problem is fine, but when you've barely done any work so far on fixing the problem (that I'm aware; I haven't seen any test summaries beyond "we got a few tanks to work on now" hit the specialized news sources), suddenly admitting that you never even really thought March was achievable -- if you haven't done any testing yet and you're already saying a 6+ month delay is going to happen), you're clueless.
I used to say that the time wasn't up for the Shuttle yet. Now given this latest example of incompetence, it's time to move on.
Either that or take a hint from id Software, and just say "When it's done". No false promises. No bullshit.
i am a soviet space shuttle
My advice? Stop work on the ISS, buy some Soyuz spacecraft to service it through the end of its tortured life, and spend the money that would have been spent on the Shuttle for a replacement system.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
"The scoop on MSNBC has it that nasa will not fly again until next fall. With NASA's reluctance to get back into space, and Hubble dying, We just wonder when private industry will put Nasa out of the game."
SpaceShipThree, PLEASE SAVE US.
All available foam-coating engineers have been reassigned to the Superdome.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Never has the name "Anonymous Coward" been so applicable.
DRM = Digitally Restricted Media. This is a viral sig, pass it on.
You're right, who cares about the 30 Grandmas and Grandpas that they just found dead in their nursing homes. /obvious sarcasm
They're called the transportation industry, i.e. bus, trains, and airplanes. The last two were started by gravy train government subsidies. However, when they are needed, they bail and close up early, leaving the majority of poor people, and even some well-to-do stranded. At least you see government pretending to take some blame. They're doing a terrible job of it, becuase the conservative administration doesn't take responsibility for much of anything, but the corporations, well, they're invisible. In fact, if you watched CNN's footage of looting, you would think that walmart was the biggest victim in all of this.
Leaving these problems up to industry is not the answer. The reason, it's obvious, because industry doesn't care about poor people.
And now they are blamming Katrina. It took ages between recent few launchings.
... what DOESN'T delay the shuttle? And for those of you who keep fighting the privitization of space with such arguments as "Who would put up telescopes and run pure science research?" The answer to that is NASA- instead of inefficiently and ineffectively blowing billions of tax dollars keeping the wheeles of their wussified, red tape, burocracy running, they could just bid out the launch of their projects to the lowest bidder in the private sector. Ohh.. and while I am venting.. what happened to NASA's hardcore pilots? The kind in the movie "The Right Stuff" and "From the Earth to the Moon?" The people they trot out now to fly the shuttle all look like Volvo drivers.
As much as I want to see the space program moving forward, I would much rather they take their time and get it right.
It is like having a delayed flight at the airport. Sure it is a pain in the butt, however, I would rather they find and fix a problem before I get on board then to rush things and take the chance.
If they make a "promise" and then re-evaulate and set a new target date, that is fine with me. Just get it right.
By 2025 private corporations will have colonized Mars. It is known.
With NASA's reluctance to get back into space
So being cautious is now a reluctance to go into space? Maybe they don't want to kill another seven astronauts? They are probably quite expensive to replace.
I would think that NASA want to be in space, as much as possible, but they are being careful because they figure that their last act of absolute incompetence put them on notice. They know that they have to be careful - or their funding will dry up because of the outcry that would result from being stupid enough to not do something as simple as "look at the wing".
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
The private industry fighting the government for dominance and first-to-do-something rights. It will probably lead to some pretty sweet new technologies.
Our market system discourages anything but profit, and I don't see any corporation or consortium spending the kind of money that NASA spends, until there is a easily exploitable resource for them to take advantage of.
Yes, Virgin Spaceways (whatever it's called) will do their thing with ballistic shots, and very probably orbital shots someday as well.
But full-on space programs will be something that only governments will fund for a long time.
Certainly MS could fund a small space program... who knows, maybe Paul Allen can talk Bill into something like that.
Ignore Alien Orders
"With NASA's reluctance to get back into space, and Hubble dying, We just wonder when private industry will put Nasa out of the game."
When Netcraft confirms it.
How many low-income workers are still getting paid by their supposedly uncaring employers? I've heard countless stories of compassion by employers both large and small. They don't do it out of guilt, or shame, or because it's going to make them money. They do it because they value their workers as human beings.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
They will be taking over very soon, I mean, most private aerospace companies have hurricane proof launch sites in the region, as well as anti-hurricane force fields. Some of it is a mixture of some sci-fi technology that John Carmack got from the Stroggs. The rest is part of some voodoo spells.
While this isn't completely due to Katrina, I'd be scared of how private industry would handle space flight. Yes some of the engineers that work for the aerospace firms might be doing it because they like their work, the owners of the companies that will be going into space, will be doing this for the profit option.
Actually - in many of the areas along the Gulf you will see that private charity (Baptists, Red Cross, various church /goodwill groups etc) were in the disaster area WELL before the government was!
This is a pillar of the free market/libertarian ideal. People cannot depend on the government to help them, and most, not all but most, of the time it should not be the place of the government to provide support and assistance.
Persoanlly I think that the government did have a duty here and there was obviously a breakdown in the system.
However, in this situation, and many others, it has shown over and over again that people CANNOT depend on the government and SHOULD not.
Free markets, individual freedoms, limited government, and personal responsibility are the most reliable courses of action.
Libertas in infinitum
ps, yes I know it's NASA.
blarg.
Either way, it's food for thought. The reality is that it's more complex than my original statement, and it's tough to tell where the private boardroom ends and the government office begins. However, let's not kid ourselves, handing this money and power into private hands isn't going to make things better. It will just provide an extra layer of insulation between the looters and the citizens of our country. Keeping these programs as part of the government will at least help retain some accountability. Remember, you aren't going to be a customer of the space program for a long time, so the only control you will have over what is going is through government.
Actually - in many of the areas along the Gulf you will see that private charity (Baptists, Red Cross, various church /goodwill groups etc) were in the disaster area WELL before the government was!
This is a pillar of the free market/libertarian ideal. People cannot depend on the government to help them, and most, not all but most, of the time it should not be the place of the government to provide support and assistance.
Persoanlly I think that the government did have a duty here and there was obviously a breakdown in the system.
However, in this situation, and many others, it has shown over and over again that people CANNOT depend on the government and SHOULD not.
Free markets, individual freedoms, limited government, and personal responsibility are the most reliable courses of action.
Libertas in infinitum
It won't be private enterprise that makes NASA irrelevant. It will be the Chinese.
Private industry hasn't even come close to being able to reach the orbits that NASA does routinely (remembering that NASA's vehicles are built by private industry contractors).
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Not a chance in the next decade. The space elevator has the best chance of meeting these goals, and it's still just an idea.
Yes, there are occasions where government provided solutions work better than private industry solutions. Thats why anarchy is not a very popular form of government nowadays. Evacuating an entire town before a hurricane strikes is one of those situations, which is why that is the responsibility of the local and state governments, not private transportation. Why you then try to blame the private companies is beyond me. And what the fuck you think this has to do with the space program is an even bigger mystery.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
I thought the whole reason the shuttle was grounded again was the large block of insulating foam that fell off the main tank during the shuttle's most recent launch.
Space exploration is precisely the expensive, too-long term kind of planning private companies are notorious for avoiding, as they are driven to next-quarter results by greedy, scruples-less directors and frothing institutional stockholders.
People are fed-up with the growing pains of globalization of poverty and will slowly start to realize that government for the croporations only bring pain and suffering to the majority while lining the pockets of a select few, and will eventually elect more caring governments.
The political pendulum has already swung to the far-right, and will only go back towards the left, bringing more government in people's lifes to insure that not just a few can get a decent living and protect the masses against the excesses of croporate arrogance.
One net result will be the resurgence of government-funded space exploration driven by the needs of pure science to insure a long-term future, as governments more enlightened than the moronic bunch of foaming croporate stoodges in power all over the place will more readily see the long-term benefits of space exploration, especially in the lights of massive climatic damage.
Article said they were hoping for March '06 before katrina, now theyre thinking august or so? (fall or later says the article)... Thats not much of a delay is it?
With any luck, competition between government space programs and private space companies will spur incredible development over the next few decades. In time of course, the public space programs will probably end up doing the leading edge theoretical and experimental stuff, while the private sector focuses on applications and economical techniques -- just like every other industry.
Is this a good way to spend money? If it were my money, rather than having spent it return to flight for a program which is almost dead, I would have spent it on something with a future. Rather than trying to patch up a system which never came close to delivering on its promises I would have spent it on a new system, that learned from the mistakes of the old system.
In the case of New Orleans, the required investments in levees have consistently returned large benefits to the society. Because of the excellent location of the city, it was an efficient hub for shipping that benefited not just the Mississippi River basin, but the entire nation, and even the world. Sure, other ports exist and competed with New Orleans, but the city's ongoing prosperity was proof of how it contributed to the prosperity of all the other communities that helped pay the taxes that maintained the levees.
In the case of NASA, the people who talk about privatization are consistently clueless about the real numbers involved. Actually, this is also complicated by the fact that most of the return on space exploration is in the form of knowledge that has no short-term market value that could attract investors.
However, both New Orleans and NASA are suffering from the side effects of incompetent leadership at higher levels. Some of them are faith-based fanatics who can't deal with the complexities of the real world. Others are short-term profiteers whose only real mission is to steal as much money from the government as possible. A few of them even have delusions of recreating the Holy Roman Empire.
Whatever. For all of them the same response is appropriate. As Rocky said to Bullwinkle, "That trick never works."
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
No, that's just more leftwing spin, trying to make NASA look out of touch. In fact, the Shuttle has been deployed to rescue survivors of hurricane Katrina. Bush's FEMA assures the Gulf Coast that help is on the way, ASAP. We'll have that Shuttle right over - in Fall 2006, just in time for the Congressional elections. Otherwise, enough Democrats might get elected to the House to impeach Bush, and then where would our faith-based space program be, without its greatest champion?
--
make install -not war
NASA is nothing more than a relic of the cold war. Sure they have a scientific mission but their funding dried up when star wars was shot down and the CCCP collapsed.
Today they try to live the big dream on a shoestring budget.
Because private industry did such a great job of evacuating the city of New Orleans before hurricane Katrina.
Private insurance companies will be writing billions of dollars in claims checks to the victims of the flood, so they can rebuild, relocate or just get on with their lives.
Insurance. Private industry. Billions of dollars.
That enough for ya?
So the people who actually paid to have busses come and pick them up to remove them from the city, only to have the busses STOLEN from them by the government were to blame?
For one, I would trust the private industry, the profit maker with my life. He has a reason to ensure that I make it out of the city alive, if I don't, he doesn't get my dollars.
What does the city have to lose? A vote?
The clear agenda of the Bush administration is to downsize government and give huge tax breaks to the well off. What better way to kill NASA than to propose completely preposterous goals like going to Mars, and to delay and starve anything useful, like the planetary missions and space telecopes. The shuttle delays play into that strategy beautifully. I bet there is no rush on the part of the administration to get the shuttle back in service. NASA will slowly wither away.
When was it ever the private sector's responsibility to evacuate Katrina? It was the government's job, and they blew it, plain and simple.
When will people learn that large entities with too much power and not many alternatives are harmful, whether they be in the form of a government or corporation?
*bashes head on table*
I always hate it when people say that NASA should be on its way out, and private industry should take over. NO! Failures! F-! Private industry is out looking for profit, finding a dollar in something. If there isn't a dollar to be earned, they won't be in business very long. Private industry isn't interested in furthering the field of science, they don't care too much about contributing to the knowledge of mankind. This is why we need NASA-- to make scientific breakthroughs that are available to ALL for (ideally) noble causes.
Quickly sidestepping too much politics, NASA embodies what the government should spend its money on (yes, improving infrastructure of the country is important, but I'm sure there's a lot that the government shouldn't spend money on *cough*war*cough*). NASA is set up to do wickedly expensive, yet groundbreaking research which can be useful 30+ years down the road-- very few companies would make such an investment. It's the department that's set up to be the exploratory fleet of our time. Who else would put a couple of rovers on Mars? Where's the profit in that? We got tons of scientific benefit from it, and I think we all can concur that it was a damn good thing that we landed on Mars and scouted the area. What motivation would private industry have to do the same?
I agree that currently NASA is kind of a broken department. Politicians are more interested in financing bridges named after themselves and whatnot than advancing science. Society today is more interested in what some celebrity ate for breakfast than science. It's a damn shame too! Look, what NASA needs is a bit of a reorganization, a shakedown if you will. They need to get back in gear, and instead of being a political lapdog, they need to get back into their R&D groove. You can't argue that they've done great things in the past. Currently, they've got some of the best damn brains in the country. They were able to hit a friggin comet with satellite! I say that we throw more money into NASA, and tell 'em to make something of it. Make a new shuttle! Find a way to setup a moon base, or mine the moon for materials. Push further into ramjet/scramjet research. There's so much that they can do, we just need to let them do it.
Please, realize that NASA is not a detriment to the country. It's done a lot of great stuff, and has the potential to do a lot more. If you privatize all of NASA, science will be set back many, many decades.
Lockheed Martin Katrina Response
As a weekend help desk guy, I personally have had 3 calls from people out there: 2 of them were living out of hotels. Any time one of them calls up, my coworkers and I give them priority: we couldn't imagine being in their shoes right now. They're still trying to figure out where everyone's gone. Employees from other states are going there to help out their relatives & bring them back with them. They know the "ET" is important. But right now, many don't even have homes.
American Red Cross
You may even want to find out if anyone in your area is matching donations. I heard Albertsons was.
Life is irony, and nothing ever goes as planned.
The idiocy of that statement is so profound, I can only attribute it to higher education. You must have gone to college to write something so moronic (1).
You realize that about 90% of the work done by NASA is actually done by NGOs, right? Boeing, Lockheed Martin, USA and a whole lot of other contractors do all of the actual grunt work. The overwhelming majority of work done for NASA is done by the private sector. It has been forever. NASA basically just manages what is done. The reason that NASA is having a hard time with space flight is that we're still in space flight's infancy, and space flight is fundamentally challenging. It's difficult to get people and materials off this rock we call home, and more difficult to get them back.
(1) Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Season 2 Episode 1: Peta.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
The people they trot out now to fly the shuttle all look like Volvo drivers
When car #1 explodes and car #2 has the same malfunction that caused car #1 to explode, Evil Knieval is not the image you aim for.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Just grab your 2TB laptop and ask 4Frontiers to get you to Mars.
"Thousands of poor blacks out of house and home? Honestly, who cares?"
I care. I also care about your life even though you're an asshole.
That is the society we live in sadly. Everyone is both priceless and worthless to different people and at different points in their life. When you are seperated sperm and egg you are worthless. Combined you are a matter of debate. From birth on your value flip flops. As a baby you are priceless. If you are a male and eighteen you are told you have to fill out this agreement that if we need you must give up everything and risk your life and kill whoever we tell you to. As a senior citizen you are priceless. As a 95 year old woman who can't hear, can't see, and is in a wheelchair. When that storm comes if you are not important to the person who will get you out your, life means nothing.
The people who paid for busses out of town after the flooding paid up front. There were stories of people who paid $100 for a ticket out of town, only to have their bus commandeered before it ever arrived. Again, before splitting hairs too much, I'm going say that I partially agree, our government sucks too, but that's no argument for privatization.
I hate to think about this, but it's probably true. I might be in my 30s by the time we make it back to the moon. By the time we get to Mars... I don't even want to think of how old I will be then! We landed on the moon in just a few years in the 1960s... now it takes 20 years with all this advanced technology we have. Kinda sad.
Haven't you been following the X-Files? On 2012 is when the alien colonization begins, according to the Mayan calendar. We won't be worrying about space travel then.
Tell me, did anyone seriously expect the shuttle to re-launch anytime soon?
Come on, raise your hands.
Bueller?
After the last mission consisted of little more than "can we make it back in one piece," and they grounded the shuttle for months, I'm beginning to think NASA should do one of two things:
1. Scrap the shuttle fleet entirely and throw all its efforts into building a modern, redesigned replacement fleet.
2. Have the guts to admit that dammit, space travel is dangerous, let's get up there, fix the @#$% Hubble and see what else we can do outside the atmosphere.
You can't make strapping yourself on top of a rocket in a 30-year old tin can with obsolete technology safe. It's not gonna happen. Either you admit that and go anyway, or stop pretending you're going to extend its mission and do something else with the resources.
NASA as it stands is a detriment to the country. The ISS is nothing but a pointless money pit, the Shuttle has become little more than a glorified satellite launch vehicle, and the entire agency suffers from a serious, debilitating lack of vision.
I want to be the first to say that the Mars mission talk must stop. We are not ready for a manned Mars mission and most of the unmanned missions have only been very expensive sandbox toys.
NASA needs to start working toward sustaining space travel and giving it a purpose. We need space station around Earth that can serve as orbital manufacturing and construction facility as well as a terminal for people to stay and move onward to a moon station, a space station around the moon that will shuttle people to a moon base, launch interplanetary ships, and transfer materials to and from the moon, and a moon base that we can mine from, build telescopes (SCIENCE!), and other things.
We can do all this while waiting for propulsion to catch up and give astronauts a reasonable chance to survive the trip to Mars.
If NASA is unwilling to do this, someone will have to pick up the slack.
"Politicians are more interested in financing bridges named after themselves and whatnot than advancing science."
We have to fix the problems here first before we can seek to advance
without these foundations fixed, any advancement into space will just crumble like the german wall
Jr
I don't know if you noticed, but the work ethic in this country has changed from 'if I can find a way to improve it, I'll get a raise' to 'If I can look busy and make sure this happens again tomorrow, I'll still have a job'.
The shuttle program was overbudget and underwhelming from day one. The entire project was built top-down when it should have been done bottom-up. The design process should have gone from 'how much mass do I have to lift and return?' to 'what kind of engine can lift this mass and return reusably with it?', instead it was 'this is what it should LOOK like, what can I cram into the spaceframe?'
From precious few years in the American work force, I can say, the vast majority of folks, maybe 95% of them, are looking to keep themselves busy, the other 5% either have the charisma to rise to the top of their fields, or they jump from job to job, looking for a chance to be recognized for their 'unique' point-of-view and talent.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
computer specialists still need to get access to Michoud in order to retrieve key data stored only on that facility's computers.
Excuse me while I laugh heartily at NASA's amazing disaster recovery plan. Mmm... backups? why yes, we have those in a basement in NOLA; we thought that would be far enough away from Michoud. Losers.
While everyone is looking the other way.
The wind tunnel testing is another matter. It implies a flaw in the design of the experiments which is preventing turbulent flows from becoming catastrophic. If such flows are going to become catastrophic, then you damn well aught to know about them. That's something wind tunnel testing is SUPPOSED to find out.
All in all, these failures suggest a fundamental design flaw - not necessarily in the Shuttle, but in the entire systems analysis portion of the operation. Without those flaws being corrected, it will be impossible to determine what flaws the Shuttle actually has, or know when such flaws have been corrected. Simulation - be it on computer or in a wind tunnel - is the only way to test enough scenarios to be sure of the results. Actual missions are subject to enough unknowns that a lack of events is insufficient to tell you if the design is now correct.
Perhaps more importantly, if we had GOOD simulations, we might have a better understanding of how long the Shuttles can remain in operation, if there are (yet more) delays in building a replacement. Space work is not exactly well-funded and is the easiest to plunder when trying to offset massive deficits.
Katrina's more likely long-term impact on the Space Program would be in getting Congress to cut funding of NASA to help pay for the deficit spending that has been forced on the politicians. At present, cuts in other Federal spending is more "speculation" by some Senators, we are moving towards elections in 2006 and those up for re-election may well want to come across as being smart with money. Even though anyone technologically aware would see that it is really being very stupid.
If there is another significant funding cut, NASA may be forced to cancel the Shuttle replacement program the way it did the last time. There isn't a whole lot else that it CAN cut back on. There are some NASA bases that are considered "at risk" (such as NASA Langley) but Boeing gets too much use out of them to be happy about it closing and Boeing is too important in too many Congressional districts. NASA's cuts would therefore be in more speculative areas, which would impact fewer voters right now.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The one thing that the Space Station has demonstrated is that building infrastructure without a serious plan of what you want to do with it is a waste of money. Mining the moon for anything other than helium-3 is also a complete waste of time; there's nothing there that's not available in abundant quantities back on Earth, or, if you want to go sci-fi on us, from the asteroid belt (where you don't have to lift it out of a gravity well).
Oh, and as far as Mars goes, what are these compelling threats that are so insurmountable that warp drive is required to get them there and back safely? The chronic radiation dose isn't *that* scary (have you seen the latest report on Chernobyl?), and a fast ship will require just as much shielding from solar storms as a slow one.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Again this an Apples to Space Shuttles comparison here. The "free market" is not the be-all end-all solution some seem to think it is.
As several people have pointed out here, private companies are looking for immidiate profit and have little intrest in purely scientific research.
NASA for all its failures has given us an immense wealth of knowledge and technology.
I actually hope NASA never flies agian. It would, in fact, be best if private industry took over all missions into space.
/.er we need peer interaction as well. You cannot keep an astronaut in space for the months or years a bot can, they have to be returned to their families. The only real use of sending a human into space - with our current technologies - would be to perform an in-depth study on the effects of spaceflight on humans, over a period of maybe a year, but it's impossible to do this.
Ever notice how NASA likes to send people into space? Does anyone here actually think that this is nessasary? If space angencies were privateised there would be fewer manned missions and more pobotic probes, this would be good for several reasons:
Firstly, there is a high cost involved in sending humans into space, both in monitary costs (think paycheques and supplies) and, of course, there is a lot of danger involved.
Second, robots can do more then humans can in space, and never have to stop for food, rest, etc. A human is weighed down by a spacesuit. and is clumsy do to the thickness of the garmet, while a bot can be purpose-built, with exactly the degree of fucntionality it needs.
Third, Humans are - as priviously mentioned - limited. We need sleep, and except for the average
There are other rational arguments, I'm sure, but at the moment I'm to tired to think on it much. But, still, I hope we do get a privitized space industry soon.
(Sorry for the AC, I forgot my handle.) -Will
If there was no NASA everyone would be clamoring for such an organization. While it might be mismanaged in peculiar ways as is expected of a government bureaucracy it is doing a job that private industry is not going to do. NASA funds and facilitates all sorts of blue sky research all over the country. Not only is this true of NASA but also NIST, the NSF, NIH, in some cases DARPA, and several other agencies. Open ended research is important because it expands our whole body of knowlege, it doesn't necessarily lead to marketable products. When Dupont and Pfizer fund research they're looking for a payoff because they're looking to drive a profit, government funded research doesn't even have to break even.
Private industry is only going to explore space if there's a dollar in it. Scaled Composites and Virgin envision space tourism while other companies are looking towards resource mining. Boeing isn't launching probes to the outer solar system for the benefit of all mandkind, they're building satellites for DirecTV to pump more channels of HD video into televisions. While Boeing or Scaled Composites might contract for NASA or other research organizations they're not going to initiate the explorations altruistically.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to generate a profit, it drives people to work harder and become more creative. There's also nothing wrong with diverting tax dollars into blue sky research. NASA needs to rethink the ISS and SST programs. The ISS is never going to do us any good if it's only manned by babysitters rather than researchers. The shuttles aren't terribly useful if they're only being used as extremely expensive construction rigs and aren't launching with any sort of regularity.
What NASA's spending $1bn a pop on can be done far more efficiently with heavy lift vehicles that don't need to use up payload weight on wings and crew compatments. Crews can be sent up in capsules that aren't wasting payload weight on empty cargo bays and unpowered engines. A larger fleet of cheap less flexible vehicles seems like a step backwards but in the long run it ends up being far cheaper. Say you need a large crew to do EVAs to put together a large habitat for the ISS. Two crew vehicles can be launched from different pads (say KSC and Vandenberg AFB) while the habitat module could be launched from another location entirely. A construction crew doesn't pack everyone and their equipment into a single huge truck that can barely fit on the road, they take a couple different specialized vehicles to the site and the crew shows up after picking up coffee.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
So they've privatized Louisiana then?
That will probably happen about the same time that Slashdot editors start proofreading their stories.
Very little escapes NASA's financial potential well. How much money are we spending every year on NOT sending people up into space? I suppose we have a representative government, and ultimately I'm accountable with the rest of my fellow voters. I simply don't understand why my fellow voters want to have indentured servitude (taxes) to pay for folks who DON'T PRODUCE ANYTHING.
It's a simple trade relationship. So what are we buying from NASA? And ultimately, can we get what we're buying from NASA cheaper from somebody else? If somebody else is willing to provide it, I'm willing to buy it. Of course, we need to talk to our masters (servants?) in Congress and ask them to relieve a bit of our servitude.
Free market economics and private property protection are going to guarantee more effective exploration, scientific understanding, and development of space. If I as an individual have a claim on the results of my work or money, then space can be profitable. NASA will be made obsolete in every way when competition gains momentum, and the only reason it (or other non-protective governmental programs) has survived is because we've been tricked into supporting such a bloated budget with very little return. Cut NASA out of the budget with associated tax cuts, and see if the gain in economic growth isn't more than enough to fuel a vibrant private space industry.
NASA will face increasing competition from China, as it did from USSR during the (first) cold war. RE: Hubble, if NASA decides to scrap the telescope due to lack of funding, it's possible the Chinese government would offer to buy it for a few billion $. They could send up a rescue mission to demonstrate the superiority of their new space program. The Chinese could fix Hubble up real nice, slap some red flags over the stars and stripes, rename it after a famous Chinese military general... Clearly such an offer would make NASA and the US look kinda feeble.
It did. Did you miss that 95% of the city evacuated before the hurricane hit using private means (airplanes, buses, trains, and automobiles)? Only the poorest 5% were left behind and even they could have been taken out had the city contracted a private company to do it (or even asked someone to donate free transportation -- which it didn't even bother to do).
I always hate it when people say that NASA should be on its way out, and private industry should take over. NO! Failures! F-! Private industry is out looking for profit, finding a dollar in something. If there isn't a dollar to be earned, they won't be in business very long. Private industry isn't interested in furthering the field of science, they don't care too much about contributing to the knowledge of mankind. This is why we need NASA-- to make scientific breakthroughs that are available to ALL for (ideally) noble causes.
:)
This is absolutely false. Not all private organizations are for-profit -- non-profit organizations are private as well! There is indeed a market for "unprofitable" research, just as there is for charity and other activities. The market consists of people like you (and many other commenters) who are eager to fund space exploration, disaster relief, homeless shelters, etc.
The advantage to you, as a "consumer" of space exploration research, is that you can choose among many companies to get the most bang for your buck. Think company X gets the job done better than company Y? Give to them instead. Prefer unmanned expeditions to Mars colonization? There could be a niche for that, too. Even without a profit motive, this market would force non-profits to compete with one another, become more efficient, and meet market demand. With the government monopoly, however, there's no competition and little accountability. If you like space shuttles and NASA decides to scrap the program -- well, you can't take your money elsewhere. You're just S.O.L.
If I still haven't convinced you that private industry is interested in science -- well, I guess I'll just get back to working on my PhD at a private (non-profit) university, funded by a private fellowship.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
We just wonder when private industry will put Nasa out of the game.
Did anyone else here first read that phrase as "put NASA out of its misery"?
Oddly, when I googled the phrase "put * out of its misery" the first result was about... NASA.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Considering that the shuttle is built of over 50,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder, I think, private industry is in space.
/. and not the US senate..)
The fact that Nasa administrates it has more to do with the nature of the operations (Political/Mil/Research) than anything else.
Whether NASA is cost effective in this role is a different matter and privatisation will not help it in this role at all. Just imagine the information flow problems of the Military needing to contract its designs and operations with another private entity! Even more corruption and inefficiency!!
No, the state can deal with such issues, whether the United States can is a different question. The US may be in need of some institutional reform on this note.
The fact that the Shuttle program has setbacks both in design and natural disasters is no fault of the US gov't. The article mentions that their are aerodynamic issues that didn't show in windtunnels or computer models, both of which where outsourced to private enterprise!
The flood in the wake of Katrina is only indirectly the fault of the US gov't, it is a possible effect of global warming. But this being said, forcibly removing citizens from their homes is a task only the Israelis seem capable of doing without violence so let's not be too harsh on the boyz from the National Guard, they did what they could, if the citizens happen to be armed to the hilt and high on crack I fail to see how the military or government could do anything about that (except banning guns but hey, this
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
According to the ARLA researchers, all you need is a gas cannon to fire a ramjet at the required 400 MPH, the ramjet then carries a rocket to the upper atmosphere and a starting velocity of Mach 5. It should be relatively simple to build a rocket that can start from there and reach LEO.
(Not trivial, but certainly within the capacity of a joint project by amateurs licensed to wield larger rocket motors.)
Ramjet designs are on the Internet - all it would really take is for someone to build one from light enough (but strong enough) material. If you use a liquid hydrogen fuel, rather than normal aviation fuel, you can get ramjets up to about mach 7 or 8.
There are three benefits of this design - ramjets are much more stable than rockets, so easier to build reliably. As this part would not need to leave the atmosphere, it may also be reusable. The second benefit is that ramjets are vastly more fuel efficient than rockets, making it cheaper for amateurs to launch such systems on a limited budget. The third benefit is that jets are more controllable, so a less sophisticated guidance system is needed.
The first stage could probably be replaced with a rail gun/linear motor, as all you need is an initial velocity. The direction is unimportant to the ramjet. An "Air Turbo Ramject", which can handle both subsonic AND supersonic speeds effectively might even eliminate the need for that initial kickstart stage.
Is this a viable possibility? Maybe. Jets work well up to about 30 miles. The "GoFast" rocket, on May 17, 1994, reached an altitude of 74 miles from the ground. Rockets do better in thinner atmospheres, as there is less air resistance and the air isn't needed for anything. It would also be starting off at Mach 6, not from a standstill. So, the combined altitude of 104 miles is definitely a major underestimate of what could be done by amateurs TODAY, no further work needed.
LEO starts at around 125 miles. If we're just adding altitudes directly, we'd be 21 miles short. But we aren't adding them directly, because we've the initial velocity for the rocket and the reduced air resistance. I don't know if these are enough to add 21 miles to the vertical range, but I imagine it would be damn close.
Can we make this a little more definite? Yes. Ramjets work extremely well in a thick atmosphere, but NASA engineers pioneered in the 50s a technique of adding supplemental oxygen to boost the altitude they'll work at. This is why a lot of US spy-planes can operate at the 50 mile range (and so get all those astronaut wings).
So if we revamp the ramjet to use hydrogen fuel, supplemented with oxygen to maintain pressure at high altitudes, we should be able to shift the point of launching the rocket to 50 miles. Furthermore, hydrogen fuel gives you better output on a ramjet, so our starting speed will move from Mach 6 to perhaps Mach 8.
Again, just adding altitudes, we have a combined total now of 124 miles. This is more workable. The initial speed, plus the lower air resistance, only needs to add one mile before we're in LEO. That would seem plausible enough.
At this point, a rocket like GoFaster isn't going to carry communications satellites into space. On the other hand, amateurs - especially amateurs who are open-sourcing their methods and techniques - who reach LEO are going to kick up an unbelievable stink in the space industry. They are going to be seen the same way Linux is seen by Microsoft - an annoying buzz that won't go away, can't be kept away and keeps getting bigger and louder.
All it would take is the sorts of investments comparable to those being put into Virgin Galactic going to amateur rocketry and distributed computing systems for the number-crunching, and
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually free markets enable class mobility. With a highly regulated market, it makes it harder for smaller and sole proprietorships to cut through all of the regulations and start-up. Big business likes big government because they can buy laws. We are seeing this situation play out currently.
I agree that our individual freedoms are being eroded away with time by the government. We have inalieble rights which are not given to us by the government, but rather secured by it. Thus having a smaller government doesn't allow it to be used as a tool by the wealthy to swing things in their favor.
In this country, the US, it is not the government's job to protect people from different classes.
Do you realize that our most transformative era in US history was when the government took a lazie-faire attitude? This allowed the industrial revolution. Granted there were signifigant abuses that came about during that time period, horrible working conditions, child labor, pathetic wages, etc. However the people began to form unions which was the counter balence. The government had no place. Honestly any basic college economics course will explain that the market always attempts to equalize under free conditions. Imposing artificial restrictions tend to foul the system and prohibit the attempt of equalization. The misnomer of "price-gouging" comes to mind.
If you really believe everything you just posted then you have indeed fallen into the trap and mental illness of modern day liberalism. You have been listening to people cry this dogma of self helplessness for way too long and apparently have succumbed to the class warfare farce.
So I say, pull your brain from your bleeding heart and make some intelligent statements which are not an us vs them, good vs evil, right vs wrong scenario. How about some basic proven economics, social sciences, and most importantly logical and rational thought?
Personally I am not conservative or liberal but embrace libertarianism. I also find classical liberalism interesting. And if you must know I am living below the poverty line at the moment (just graduated college) but I am in business for myself and within 5-10 years will be earning above average income. The government, local, state, federal, is making it harder and harder for me to operate without an attorney, tax consultant, accountant, etc due to the sheer mass of regulations that must be followed. This is what I mean by class mobility.
Libertas in infinitum
http://www.thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline
Friday, August 26
GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY IN LOUISIANA: [Office of the Governor]
GULF COAST STATES REQUEST TROOP ASSISTANCE FROM PENTAGON: At a 9/1 press conference, Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, commander, Joint Task Force Katrina, said that the Gulf States began the process of requesting additional forces on Friday, 8/26. [DOD]
Saturday, August 27
5AM KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 3 HURRICANE [CNN]
GOV. BLANCO ASKS BUSH TO DECLARE FEDERAL STATE OF EMERGENCY IN LOUISIANA: I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster. [Office of the Governor]
FEDERAL EMERGENCY DECLARED, DHS AND FEMA GIVEN FULL AUTHORITY TO RESPOND TO KATRINA: Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. [White House]
Sunday, August 28
2AM KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE [CNN]
7AM KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE [CNN]
MORNING LOUISIANA NEWSPAPER SIGNALS LEVEES MAY GIVE: Forecasters Fear Levees Wont Hold Katrina: Forecasters feared Sunday afternoon that storm driven waters will lap over the New Orleans levees when monster Hurricane Katrina pushes past the Crescent City tomorrow. [Lafayette Daily Advertiser]
9:30 AM MAYOR NAGIN ISSUES FIRST EVER MANDATORY EVACUATION OF NEW ORLEANS: Were facing the storm most of us have feared, said Nagin. This is going to be an unprecedented event. [Times-Picayune]
4PM NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ISSUES SPECIAL HURRICANE WARNING: In the event of a category 4 or 5 hit, Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer. At least one-half of well-constructed homes will have roof and wall failure. All gabled roofs will fail, leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed. Power outages will last for weeks. Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards. [National Weather Service]
AFTERNOON BUSH, BROWN, CHERTOFF WARNED OF LEVEE FAILURE BY NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER DIRECTOR: Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center: We were briefing them way before landfall. Its not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped. [Times-Picayune; St. Petersburg Times]
LATE PM REPORTS OF WATER TOPPLING OVER LEVEE: Waves crashed atop the exercise path on the Lake Pontchartrain levee in Kenner early Monday as Katrina churned closer. [Times-Picayune]
APPROXIMATELY 30,000 EVACUEES GATHER AT SUPERDOME WITH ROUGHLY 36 HOURS WORTH OF FOOD [Times-Picayune]
Monday, August 29
7AM KATRINA MAKES LANDFALL AS A CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE [CNN]
8AM MAYOR NAGIN REPORTS THAT WATER IS FLOWING OVER LEVEE: Ive gotten reports this morning that there is already water coming over some of the levee systems. In the lower ninth ward, weve had one of our pumping stations to stop operating, so we will have significant flooding, it is just a matter of how much. [NBCs Today Show]
MORNING BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: I spoke to Mike Chertoff today hes the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are. [White House]
MORNING BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]
10AM BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: This new bill I signed says, if youre a senior and you like the way things are today, youre in good shape, dont
As an 'outsider' (european), my view is that NASA has had it's day. Sooner or later ALL state-sponsored enterprises outgrow their usefulness. They become bureaucratic behomoths where individuals are forced to work within a 'system' and as a result innovation dies. Having funding that is based on political fickleness doesn't help either. Take as an example NASA's u-turn on RSVs. The Shuttle has proved that they are viable - and yet NASA are going back to expendable spacecraft - essentially because the funding got pulled to develop a replacement for the shuttle. The only thing wrong with the Shuttle is it's age. If it's replacement programme hadn't been scrapped - we would be seeing the first launch before 2010. NASA should continue to exist - but I think that everyone realises that within 10-15 years - it will be a buyer of space vehicles, not a producer.
Still -- the free market, under the right circumstances, accomplishes truly miraculous things. And if the free market can make it comparitively cheap to get into orbit (for space tourism, satellite deployment, etc), then that's something that will make national and international efforts to go further that much easier.
I'm not sure about the evacuation, but the relief effort by the private sector was ZERO, at least in the first days (I don't know whether it has changed by now). It was a GREAT PR opportunity for the private companies, while also providing the chance to do some good.
Had I seen, say, a few coca cola trucks bringing something to drink to the people stranded in New Orleans, I *would* have gone out and would have bought a six pack of coke immediatelly (something I hadn't done for years). Haven't seen any, though.
As far as space efforts are concerned, private sector is going nowhere within our lifes. I've been hearing this wishfull thinking for a *long* time already, without seeing any real advances. The failures, on the other hand, include at least Delta Clipper, Kistler, and Beal. SS1 is a nice stunt, though, but it's still *far* away from being of any real sigificance.
I don't think the public and private sectors have the same scope to begin with. It seems to me that most of the problems we have is confusing what should belong in one sector and the other. NASA and all national space programs are there to develope the cutting edge technology, where risk would be too high for the private sector. Then that knowledge is spread around because we all polled our resources to get that knowlege, we should all be able to benefit from it... government agencies are not there to turn a profilt...They already used the public money, to produce a public service: producing the knowledge that benefits all. That was the problem of the space shuttle program and most government satellite launch programs: they were design to run a public agency as a private for profit business. It just does not work. The private sector's role is to take that leading edge technology and developping it into a day to day business. This is not only true for aerospace, but all field. Whenever government agencies try to commercialize something it is wrong. They inevitable run into a conflict of interest: protecting the public interest or protecing this really lucrative business. On the otehr hand, private sector does very badly in research. Most of their interest is protecting their IP, so it puts real hurdles to development. Take the best examples, drugs. Research is quickly abandonned for drugs that seem too promising. If it promises a quick cure rather than a long term (or lifelong) treatment, research is plainly abandonned. Then, on the treatment drugs, they get these long-term monopolies which are government enforced, and through which they bleed the public coffers dry (if there is some medicare coverage for it) or effectively restrict treatment to rich people. In the case of pharmaceuticals, it is obvious that patents should not be recognized. It is the best interst of the public for governments to pull together resources into research of cures (not liflelong treatments) and have the private industry compete for the production of these drugs. Need to find cures would be the drive to research. The economical incentive is that a heatly population contributes taxes, so the state benefits of lower cost of healthcare and increased productivity. The private sector, not saddled with research and development can make is free to compete at the production level. That's how it should be, and we would find disgraceful profiteering on the backs of dying people as we've seen with AIDS in South Africa. Government is not and should NOT be run as a private business. They have different roles. Private buisness cannot generate knowledge in high risk conditions or for the purpose of the public good. Trying to confuse those roles leads to aberrations that ultimately are costly to all of us.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
If it wasn't already 2AM I'd find and replace all instances of BSD with Hubble.
I don't think you have any idea about the magnitude of the problem facing NASA right now. Two major facilities have been damaged, and in particular the Michoud Assembly Facility which is located right in New Orleans itself has been shut down almost indefinitely. This is the facility that manufactures and services the external fuel tanks for the Shuttle. Not exactly something that the Shuttle can live without.
One problem that NASA is facing is the fact that NASA can't even locate some of its own employees, or those of its major contractors. Some have presumably died from the Hurricane, and most of them at this facility have lost their homes completely. Many of them have been forced to flee with the other survivors in New Orleans and have been scattered all over the United States. There is an attempt to try and relocate some of the employees to other NASA facilities until repairs can be completed in New Orleans, but that may take some time. All access to Michoud is cut off due to washed out bridges and other routes, so you can only get there by helicopter or by boat, although they do have some emergency backup generators and other utilities at the moment.
This isn't incompetence, but a sheer disaster that has affected things far beyond a few football games in the New Orleans' Superdome. This is not bullshit either but a loss of life and a sign of just how important New Orleans really is to the USA, and why it can't simply be written off as a city.
well, I am a hard core libertarian, but even I will laugh at this admin. It is beyond a doubt the most corrupt of my lifetime (he is making johnson, nixon, and reagan look like angels). I am waiting for this admin to announce that unbidded 70 Billion will go to halliburton to clean up NOLA. And if not halliburton, some othter Texan/wyoming/utah company with very close ties to GWB. Followed by another round of tax cuts, most likely capital gains going down for those with income over a million.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You forgot to add "criminals" in the list of those left behind. Who would have anticipated that the criminal element in New Orleans would have been so ridiculously viscious in their attacks on rescue workers? Who could have foreseen that a rescue helicopter would have been shot at, or that the hospital would have come under gun fire, or that the Army Core of Engineers would also be attacked? These mutant lowlifes did much to complicate the rescue effort and prolog the sufferings of innocents. When police arrived in the Superdome, they were beaten back by a mob. What the hell sort of response is that? Even after the National Guard moved in, criminals were ransacking New Orleans department stores for their merchandise (not for food or water) and setting buildings on fire.
There seems to be a lot of pointing the finger at the federal government. But the one man who may deserve a large part of the blame is Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans. Andrew Bolt wrote in the Herald Sun (at http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_pag
Acually replying under the name "George Bush" would probably have been more appropriate to the level of caring he showed.
How many low-income workers are still getting paid by their supposedly uncaring employers? I've heard countless stories of compassion by employers both large and small. They don't do it out of guilt, or shame, or because it's going to make them money. They do it because they value their workers as human beings.
Care to provide some links? Because when I turn on the TV I see people (a lot of them middle classers) in line to get food stamps -- not in line at the local ATM machine because their lovely employer is still sending them direct deposit every two weeks.
That said, any employer who is still playing their people most likely had business interruption insurance that covers salaries. Kudos to them for thinking ahead but they don't get good karma for it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
As far as space efforts are concerned, private sector is going nowhere within our lifes. I've been hearing this wishfull thinking for a *long* time already, without seeing any real advances. The failures, on the other hand, include at least Delta Clipper, Kistler, and Beal. SS1 is a nice stunt, though, but it's still *far* away from being of any real sigificance.
Agreed. And I don't know about you but I'm getting sick and tired of hearing people around here berate NASA all the time. Do you really want to see our future in space handed over to for-profit companies? Do you want to see the Halliburton's of the World controlling the future of the human race?
NASA took us to the Moon, they gave us Hubble, the Mars Rovers, etc etc. If you want to see them stop acting like a bureaucracy then I suggest you convince your fellow citizens and Congresscritters to stop trying to pull their funding anytime a shuttle hiccups or a probe crashes. I suggest you convince your Congresscritter and President to give them a real mandate and some funding.
With what we are spending on Iraq we could finish the ISS, save Hubble and have our CEV to go to Mars.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
And government does? That's a laugh. Government is by far the biggest exploiter of the poor. At least private industry represents a choice that can be refused; government simply exploits the poor by force.
And that's a reason to oppose the private development of space? Get your head out of the sand. Government is out to make a profit every bit as much as private industry. The people who run government are just as filthy rich, if not more, than the people who run private industry. Do you have any idea why?
Because government is made up of people who are motivated by self interest, just like the private sector. That is a simple fact of life, and you'd do well to accept it rather than living through some fantasy where government is a selfless servant to the people. The truth is that government has its own interests in mind, at every single decision they make.
But that aside, how could you possibly oppose a group who intends to voluntarily fund a space-related business? There are good reasons to oppose a group (government) who wants to force you to fund a business (yes, that's what NASA and every other government program is), but what kind of self-righteous prick would oppose a group who wants to voluntarily fund a legitimate business?
And still money left to throw a really big party when the astronauts come back. But all of that isn't anywhere near the top of the priorities list.
The problem is that NASA is hugely inefficient. That's okay if NASA serves a fundamental need that our government must provide. But I don't think it does. (i.e. Do we *really* need to go to mars?
Frankly, I'd rather NASA turn their expertise into consulting for companies that run their space programs. (Heck, most NASA employees are contractors anyway, so they would just contract to the companies instead of NASA.) A few really important, justifiably public, project would remain, such as perhaps Hubble or ISS.
I thought they weren't going to send any shuttles untill the foam problem was fixed.
Just to add to this point, here is a blurb from a private company set up for something other than profit:
The American Red Cross is not a government agency and all Red Cross disaster assistance is free thanks to the generosity of people like you. The value of your donation is increased by the fact that the ratio of volunteer Red Cross workers to paid staff is almost 36 to one. Contributions to the American Red Cross, a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, are deductible for computing income and estate taxes.
Yeah, I know. Now I have to turn in my "liberal" card...
BTW, in case you're wondering why they aren't in New Orleans...
Sooner or later ALL state-sponsored enterprises outgrow their usefulness. They become bureaucratic behomoths where individuals are forced to work within a 'system' and as a result innovation dies.
If you believe bureaucracy is a "disease" of "state-sponsored enterprises", I find it hard to believe you've ever worked in a large private-sector organization. And, in the end, any large, complex effort will require the existence of a large organization.
Bureaucracy is the natural out-growth of any complex human organization. Although the popular rallying-cry is that "bureaucracy is evil", it is impossible to envision any large organization that would be functional without it.
To presume as much is to also presume on the rational behavior and perfectability of human beings. Then you must continue onward to what are the real definitions of "rational", and "perfect"...
There's no doubt we're going to see private industry enter into the space market, but to bring up the shuttle program and private industry in the same sentence just doesn't seem right to me. The fact is, it will require so much capital right from the beginning that it seems impossible to raise it. If a company decides to issue bonds, they're going to be such high risk bonds that the cost of debt will be through the roof. If they issue stock, it would seem really tough to raise the amount of capital the company would need because earnings would be so far off in the future. Investors are going to demand to be compensated for taking on such high risk, but I don't know that the company could come up with any model that provides them the compensation they'd require. That being said, sure launching satellites is feasible, but to have anything comparable to NASA seems unrealistic from a business point of view.
Just my $0.02.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
New Orleans is where it is because there was/is a profit in it.
I think it is attitudes like yours that have caused most of the problems.
Every one for themselves and I'm damned if I'll have my tax dollars spent rescuing anyone dumb enough to live below sea level (or on an earthquake zone or next to a volcano or down wind of a nuclear reactor...).
Well you'd be damned if you don't wake up and help those in need. Needy people are not the same as no-good losers. No-good-losers don't deserve to be drowned or starved or dehydrated to death either.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think the private company Wal-Mart was doing its part by opening the doors to its stores for everyone to get necessary items for free.
Damn! that hurricane killed and destroyed 80% of louisiana and here are people posting about the shuttle delayed by Katrina. bouh! ouh! ouh! what useless crap.
The space shuttle and international space station are effectively dead. It will just take a few years for NASA and the US government to admit to the fact. Without the shuttle the space station infrastucture and orbit decays. Without the space station the shuttle has little purpose.
I see the highly successful robotic space exploration continuing. It is essentially completely outsourced already with manufacturing and operation by private companies and universities. It could be transfered to NASA's successor or the National Science Foundation with little disruption.
You are so clueless.
Height is nothing. These rockets are getting to their altitude and then plummeting back. Yay.
The potential energy at 125 miles is about 1/15 of the kinetic energy required to orbit. You need to figure out how to get that other 14/15 to stay in orbit.
"Ramjet designs are on the Internet - all it would really take is for someone to build one from light enough (but strong enough) material. If you use a liquid hydrogen fuel, rather than normal aviation fuel, you can get ramjets up to about mach 7 or 8."
You idiot. Is this a joke? Aerospace companies have had so many issues with building hypersonic ramjets, and you're suggesting to build one from plans on the internet. Lay off the LSD.
"This is why a lot of US spy-planes can operate at the 50 mile range (and so get all those astronaut wings)."
WTF? Please name these spy planes. The SR-71 has no BS Oxygen supplementation, just jet fuel. And it's the highest flying aircraft.
Perhaps you mean the X-15, an experimental rocket powered "aircraft"? Hmmm, that's not a spy plane and it doesn't use ramjets.
Summary: Stop vomiting up dreams and pretending that you know what you're talking about.
OK, resolved, the fabled "system" failed with Katrina and there's plenty of blame to go around, public and private. It shook us up, and every thread seems to return to this. But the original thread was what Katrina means for NASA and what the delays mean for public vs private space.
The crushing news from TFA for us spacers is that the Space Shuttle not only won't be operational for awhile, but it never really was. Evaluated as a flight test vehicle, it is a complete failure. Not only has it fatally crashed twice in only 114 flights, but NASA's detailed models failed to predict the fluid dynamic environment on Discovery's external fuel tank where unexpected amounts of debris fell off, despite over two years of effort.
Any astronaut will tell you that we'll really miss the Shuttle when it's gone because it does so many things. And that's what's wrong! It was originally designed to accommodate a bewildering variety of exotic missions, such as snagging military satellites in truly funky trajectories. Profitable transport, on the other hand, depends on reliability and safety. Aircraft companies deliver this at reasonable cost by minimizing the number of flight profiles, each of which must then pass (not just survive) hundreds of instrumented flight tests before the vehicle can take paid passengers.
The private passenger space startups are looking at more expense than most people figure, because (among other reasons) with flaky fluid dynamics models, they'll need to do more expensive full-scale ballistic tests. These high costs will really give them incentive to build their systems (with appropriate aborts, natch) end-to-end around a single flight profile at first. And their hardware probably won't come from contractors in 48 states.
Arianespace is the commercial launch services leader, holding more than 50 percent of the world market for satellites to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). Created as the first commercial space transportation company in 1980, Arianespace has signed contracts for more than 260 satellite payloads.
-Fzz
The situation in Cuba is much different because they get hit with hurricanes much more often than New Orleans, so they evacuate more often. Plus, when a communist dictator says "move", you move. When a governor or mayor in the U.S. says "move", you don't really have to. People have weathered many hurricanes before and quite a few of these people had no reason to believe that this storm would be any different. In a lot of cases, it was people's choice that left them stranded in NO, not private industry's or the government's fault.
Sewell Auto Dealerships is spending a huge effort to find and relocate all of its employees from the affected Gulf coast regions and their families to Dallas. They have promised the 114 employees equivalent jobs at their other dealerships at the same or better pay rate. When the TV interviewer asked the general manger how much this was costing the company, he looked at her like she was crazy and said, "I don't know and wont even consider it till we know everyone is safe and cared for. These people are our family and responsibility and this is the right thing to do. We'll look at the total impact from Katrina to our business after we've taken care of our people."
Community Coffee Company
Evil Walmart "Any displaced associate can come and work in any other U. S. Wal-Mart store. Thus far, these associates have been transposed and are working from stories as far away as Alaska, California and Nevada, with many more in neighboring states of Georgia, Texas, and Florida. Displaced associates are eligible for up to $1,000 from our Associate Disaster Relief Fund if their homes were flooded or destroyed. We have already provided cash assistance to more than 6,100 associates, totaling more than $3.6 million in associate relief."
Entergy Energy One of the prime electrical and natural gas suppliers to the affected region. " In addition to mobilizing crews and resources for power restoration, Entergy Corporation is also mobilizing to provide assistance for customers and employees whose lives have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
The Power of Hope Fund will benefit employees and customers who need assistance in rebuilding their lives after Katrina. The focus of the fund is to help families get back on their feet after the disaster. The fund is being administered through the Foundation for the Mid South. Donors can choose to designate their contribution in one of three ways:
* to help Entergy employees who have experienced losses;
* for general relief/rebuilding efforts in Louisiana;
* for general relief/rebuilding efforts in Mississippi.
Entergy launched the fund with a $1 million contribution. The fund balance stands at $1.4 million."
This is just a very brief list. In short, every single company that I know of that had operations in those areas, and was big enough to still have some sort of operation now, is dedicating at least some major effort at finding and helping their displaced employees. Here in Dallas, many companies are advertising on the radio and TV asking displaced employees to call special hotline numbers setup specifically to help the employees get help and get back to work. Also, there are special job fairs being run specifically for local companies and displaced evacuees to get together. I saw one report where it was estimated that over 800 people had gotten employment at the one in Arlington.
Most importantly, all of these efforts are focused on, and will result in, long term stability and recovery for these people. The FEMA, Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc. assistance, while providing urgently needed immediate aid, is not, and will never, provide for long term self-sufficiency for any evacuees. The only way any of the people affected by the disaster will regain normal lives is by all of the companies stepping up and providing employment for them. The only other option is for all of these people to be on welfare and handouts for the rest of their lives.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
The transportation industry was not hired buy local or state authorities to provide evacuation services ahead of time. Had they been, things would *certainly* have been better for New Orleans residents! Not necessarily because the private sector would have done a good job, but because that would have been a *plan*. State and local governments had *no plan* at all for evacuation. Public sector, private sector, who cares who drives the buses!
Note that the Army Corps of Engineers loves to work with private contractors - the Corps does the planning and the private sector does most of the building.
NASA largely works the same way - NASA does the planning, and the private sector largely does the building. Why do these two organizations, which use essentially the same model, differ so much in effiveness in operation? Partly because the Corps has a history of pushing back when the Congress tries to tell them how to do their job - poor NASA is constantly sabotauged by funds earmarked for stupid programs, and good programs being cancelled halfway.
The private sector probably *could* do a better job than NASA (assuming they could steal NASA's best researchers, which seems unlikely), but only because the private sector would be saddled with a controlling board providing essentially random direction.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Specifically, what is the benefit of a public manned space progam? I strongly suspect the original "push to the moon" was a not so subtle publicity stunt with the message, "Look! We've got rockets that are powerful enough to put people on the moon and guidance systems accurate enough to land them safely not once but twice. Your land targets are vulnerable to nuclear missile attack that you will not be able to repel." Which I believe would've been a perfectly reasonable justification: the peace dividend alone would've been worth it, let alone the inspiration value.
But what is the purpose today? What public benefit do we get? In private industry, if the returns are insufficient from a particular activity, the companies engaging in it go out of business (or move to some other activity). If you admit that the economic benefits of a manned space program are insufficient to support a program in the private sector, what overriding public benefit is there that justifies its existance?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I'm not so certain that the private sector hasn't been pitching in. It's not emotional-breakdown disaster news, so private sector relief it wouldn't necessarily get press coverage. However, for the first 2-3 days after a disaster on this scale, the state and local government first responers are the only one who can act, aside from military search-and-rescue, because it take a few days to assess what roads and waterways are safe, and allow private sector help to arrive.
The hotel industry, for one, has been helping evacuees as best they can, all across the country. Anheuser Busch has a long habit of immediately switching the closest bottling plant to bottling water, and in situations where the roads aren't closed their trucks are often the first relief effort in the disaster area. Note that even with that kind of effort, slashdotters have complained that Anheuser Busch is evil for distributing free water to shelters because the water is in bottles with corporate logos! There's no pleasing some people!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
" I think we all can concur that it was a damn good thing that we landed on Mars and scouted the area"
I agree. Just the other day I was hungry and with the technology and science learned from the Mars rovers I was able to have a great sandwich.
NASA is cool and all, but don't kid yourself. It is a cool toy. What has it really done to help mankind? Tang? Velcro? The great feeling that we had a handful of people walk on the moon 30 years ago?
Satellite communications is the only real item of value I can think of and the technology to do that was available 40 years ago.
I like NASA and think they should be funded, but they don't really add much to the national bottom line.
Before we mine the moon, Mars, asteroids, or Uranus it seems like we still have lots of unexplored territory here. It was also be way easier to set up a colony of people 1000 feet deep in the ocean than to put that same group on Mars. Think how many more people the world could comfortably hold if people could live under our oceans.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
This will shed some light.
orbital nuclear weapons (don't say they don't exist... you are fooling yourself if you think that dream)
Put down the copy of Space Cowboys and listen up. Orbital nukes don't exist because there is absolutely no reason for them to exist. Secret orbital nukes offer no advantage over ballistic land- or submarine-based nukes. They don't reach their targets any faster. They don't cause any greater destruction. They aren't any easier to aim or deploy. They're absolutely impossible to monitor, test, maintain or upgrade. And since nukes only work as deterrents if people know about them, keeping them secret would serve no purpose.
Compare to spy satellites - these offer significant performance advantages over terrestial-based systems. And, they are most effective if no one knows about them.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Supersonic ramjets are pretty trivial - no moving parts and the throat is formed by the airstream. All you're doing is building a shaped cavity, albeit to fairly exact specs. Amateurs DO build these, it is done, and it is certainly within the capacity of any skilled engineer with reasonable tools (ie: a bit beyond Wal-Mart quality, but not necessarily that much beyond).
(To call them supersonic ramjets is misleading, as they will operate at 400 MPH, although they are not efficient below 600 MPH.)
Fan assisted ramjets are simpler still - anyone can build a turbine (and many people do), and because the fan increases airflow, you can operate them at much lower speeds when the design is good OR operate them at standard ramjet speeds with greater room for error.
Oh, and height is everything. Sure, the thing you want to place in orbit has to maintain orbital velocity, but most payloads have rockets strapped to them to kick them into position and give them the speed to maintain it. The main rocket ONLY has to get to the correct height for all that to work.
Your kinetic energy figures are BS. Potential energy is along the vector pointing to the center of gravity of the Earth. Kinetic energy is along the vector orthogonal to that in which the object is travelling. The component of either that exists in the direction of the other is exactly zero - the definition of orthogonal vectors.
The idea is that the rocket reaches apogee and is therefore facing along the axis you want to be travelling along. You then fire your rocket to put the payload into that orbit at the correct speed. You've got to do so before it falls back below 125 miles, but gravity falls with the square of the distance so isn't as big of a problem.
Give me the tools and materials today, and give me access to the skills and knowledge of the group who built "GoFaster" and the STAR and MARS rocket groups in the UK, I can flat-out guarantee that I would have a rocket capable of LEO by christmas at the latest.
STAR are the Scottish group who built waverider aircraft at the time NASA was still speculating on whether it could even be done. That kind of attitude is the kind that gets things done.
On the other hand, yours is the kind of attitude that kept the Stone Age going for 400,000 years more than it had to. It's no wonder you post as AC and I feel sad for those who modded you interesting.
Last, but by no means least, my claims can all be backed up by actual accomplishments by groups (whether rocket builders or ramjet engine builders) or by research published on the subjects by NASA or other major research group.
Did you know the Ramjet was designed in 1907? And early prototypes were being built just prior to World War 2? Yet you don't believe an enthusiast today capable of matching war-stressed 1930s engineering? What planet are you on? I need to know, so I can avoid it. It sounds miserably depressing and obnoxiously obtuse.
You might as well argue Linux must be pirated IBM software, as enthusiasts can't possibly build something that sophisticated. You wouldn't be the first, if you did. You'd be just as wrong and just as ignorant.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm reminded of Titan, a book by Stephen Baxter I just read. It is an aching story about a manned trip to Saturn and how apathy killed the space program, and has some vivid experiences with closed biosheres, long space voyages, budget cuts and lots of kinds of disturbing but realistic personalities. If you are interested in this story read it, but not all in one go - you may get too depressed!
One good thing about space is it's a new framework. You can learn new things, you can look back at the entire Earth from one point, you can trigger advances on the ground. For example the recent discovery of the interplanetary superhighway. And tracking of asteroids is also not a bad idea. The photos this month of Enceladus and other parts outbound.
Personally I think a mission to Mars, without nuclear rocketry, is premature and a bad idea. We need fabulous control of materials, biological processes, space agriculture, robotics, space construction processes, bioelectronics and polymers, and probably a bunch of other things, which are the difference between a suicide trip and building a serious beachead with honest to goodness 21st century engineering. If we can't fire a seed at the planet from here and know it will set up a fully powered biosphere with plenty of room, air, temperature and nutrition waiting for our astronauts, it just seems a waste to send people there just yet.
Instead, why not take 10 or 100 billion bucks or so, and make this stuff a profitable business so we can get tons of highpowered people into one campus to work on these kinds of things, make it international and make obvious spinoffs to the commercial sector as well (as the above would). Make something young people can aspire to participate in, and guarantee it will continue to be funded and not be shrunk or pillaged no matter what the administration.
Also it takes less time and energy to get to the moon, so work on that too. First practice on the Earth and successfully build these things here, while identifying key areas and making a sequence of competitions for successively more advanced solutions in each area. This means we will be able to start moving out as soon as a minimal solution is found in each area and then the bar will be raised in stages.
If you consider that NASA's 2005 budget is 16 billion dollars whereas the Iraq war is costing 200 billion dollars (see calculations), you can see that it is a simple matter of the country not making space a priority. It is something like the non-financing of the levees all these years. If you set things up so that it is practically impossible to achieve goals, and instead of a scientific approach you take a cynical, smirking, thieving, political approach, well you end up with a dead space program, a dead city, much waste of human lives and toil. There really is little reason why things are the way they are, except that most people find this way the easiest, and because these things are hard for simple people to understand. They require science, funding, technical capability and longterm committment, and they require everybody else to be happy enough that the experts are left alone to do their jobs. I hope they are beginning to revise their ideas but am wondering what it takes to make a dent.
is that USSR ended. NASA only made achivements because of cold war. Now US goverment doesn't botter about space exploration anymore. How many time until you realize this? See your hollywood movies... They were about space wars years ago, and now their battles are all on terrain or deep in the sea. I made this conclusion years ago and see this being confirmed over and over again. They just don't want to be abrupt about it because they made an entire generation dream to be an astronaut.
What planet are you on? I need to know, so I can avoid it. It sounds miserably depressing and obnoxiously obtuse.
Welcome to planet slashduh. Now with more stupid, in every post!
How was coke supposed to bring it in? The roads were not safe. (Some where, some where not. Their drivers are not qualified to evaluate that.
Not that it matters, if coke was sending trucks there, and they made it safely (that is the drivers were not shot while attempting a delivery, which happened to others attempting to help), you would not have seen it on TV. Coke helping people get safe water is not an emotional story (until the story of dehydration has killed a few people).
I refuse to notice anything about the color of the people left behind. There is no evidence that it has any bearing on anything.
There are equal opportunities for everyone. However we do not force anyone to take those opportunities. Some fairly poor people work two jobs so their kids can go to a private school. Other parents just work the local public education system to ensure that their local schools are good. Most of the poor don't care how their kids turn out, and the results show. It isn't the fault of Capitalism though.
I will admit that we are talking about the deep south, which has traditionally made a big deal about such differences. However those people could move north where we don't care. Once again, there is opportunity, but it was ignored. (There are big downsides living in the north)
Does it have 33% extra free, more trolls than other leading brands and a new formulation?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The problem is that NASA is hugely inefficient.
Compared to what?
Enron?
Ford?
Comcast?
Your argument grossly oversimplifies the problem of instantiating a spacelaunch infrastructure and industry.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Height is (almost) nothing for space travel. Speed is (almost) everything. If you haven't done so, play around with the rocket equation for a while. It gives a good idea of the challenge involved. At least a good ramjet stage could shave off a 1-2 km/s from what the rocket stage(s) need to do. (You talked about both supersonic and hypersonic designs when you brought up liquid hydrogen.) As an example of how easy altitude is, the first rocket to get 60 miles up was launched around 1940. Rockets that could get *anything* up to orbital velocity weren't available until the mid-late 50s. (Does Von Barun count as an enthusiast who found a really good source of funding? ;))
The wave rider prototype that the STAR group tested did beat the XB-70 by a few years. The latter was vastly more capable, though. (Supersonic strategic bomber. Yum.)
As far as the gravity fall-off goes, The difference between 6371 km and 6572 km isn't that much. (point mass assumed for hopefully obvious reasons)
>Sure, the thing you want to place in orbit has to maintain orbital velocity, but most payloads have rockets strapped to them to kick them into position and give them the speed to maintain it. The main rocket ONLY has to get to the correct height for all that to work.
It's worth looking at the records of launches where the upper most stage failed to fire. The rocket as already (or almost already) achieved orbit. Especially in the case of GEO launches, where altitude becomes somewhat important.
>Your kinetic energy figures are BS. Potential energy is along the vector pointing to the center of gravity of the Earth. Kinetic energy is along the vector orthogonal to that in which the object is travelling. The component of either that exists in the direction of the other is exactly zero - the definition of orthogonal vectors.
Energy is a scalar...
I wonder how well a ramjet would survive being shot out of a mini-babylon gun...
If you had an aeroplane that cost millions of dollars, would you fly it into a hurricane?
And after all the stories of beatings, shootings, rapes and murders, I don't blame any private industry not wanting to go within a thousand miles of that city.
A lot of people there either didn't bother leaving because they thought the hurricane wasn't too bad, or they refused (and still refuse) to leave. I don't have any sympathy for them.
Belo Corp - A media giant. They've been actively trying to find missing employees.
Harrah's Entertianment - Handing out checks for at least 90 days. Also note the independent confirmation of the "Evil Walmart" story.
Pinnacle Entertainment - Another casino that's investing $400 million to rebuild their casino. They're also retraining employees with construction job skills so that they can feel productive.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
> You've got to do so before it falls back below 125 miles, but gravity falls with the square of the distance so isn't as big of a problem.
But you have to start counting from the center of the earth. The gravity does not change that much at all between 6400km and 6600km.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
From the Wal-mart link: 126 facilities initially shut down and about 14 are still closed....34000 associates displaced averages 270 associates per store...6100 have received assistance....(averaging $590 each-this is about two weeks pay but after one week 30,240 were back to work)
Now, only 14 stores of 270 per store will mean that Wal-mart is providing pay at the rate of $1,115,000 for the displaced workers from 14 stores, and FYI that is $89,000 per week that each store must sell to pay salaries. Utilities and other costs are in addition to that. No wonder their associates get low pay and no or few benefits! (This is not meant to be Wal-mart bashing. Note that their other support efforts are also very good!)
In other news, Wal-mart provided immediate support to flood and hurricane victims by providing free food, clothing, tools and other items to all who entered their doors and windows. The only requirement was that they had to bag their own items. It is estimated that these immediate supplies helped hundreds of people to survive.
I know that here where I live we got to see a *lot* of coverage about how private people just filled their cars with water and food and drove a few houndred kilometers into hit areas all by themselves, furious about how nobody else has been doing anything. The most of this kind of coverage was from Biloxi. So, at least here in Europe, it was a emotional breakdown news. We would have noticed organized relief efforts by a giant like the coca cola company (or some other company). Regarding Anheuser Busch, if they were ever to start selling their water where I live, I'll buy some. Of course there will allways be people mocking about everything, but they are (hopefully) a minority. I am also against missusing other people's misery for commercial purposes, but if a bit PR pays for clean drinking water, then I'm all for it!
If they add a Nano, the Shuffle stays. BMW has to get rid of the Mini though.
Yes. But only because it looks like NASA will fail to do anything significant to advance space exploration for the forseeable future. Their big failure was the Space Shuttle program. Not because they blow up. Because they deliberately embarked upon a program that did not really serve to advance space exploration.
They chose to put all their resources in a vehicle that could not go out of LEO. A vehicle that could not get to the Moon. A vehicle that costs 8x the amount to send out payload compared to simpler rocket technology. They are a white elephant gov't agency that does not have the vision to do anything significant, at the mercy of legislators who only see it as a pork barrel to be raided for poor investments.
Colonization of space will not happen until there is some form of drive to invest resources to get humans there. So here are the scenarios: You can count on the gov't spending billions of your tax dollars to do it. When it shot itself in the foot when it had a relatively open checkbook in the 70's & 80's, Who you think will now magically get its head screwed on and pick a useful project, like moon mining or a space elevator. Who will not be at the mercy of scumbag legislators.
Scenario 2: a military space race to occur with China. The military's forte is defense, not space exploration. (Star Trek is a TV show; not remotely any representation of reality.) It depends on secrecy and control. If military concerns drives space investment, it will not get Earth beyond GEO.
That leaves the only impetus to drive down launch operation costs and movement to space is commercial ventures. A gold rush to the Moon. Capitalists are scum, but history shows when the target is not benevolent pipedreams, they get the job done.
Leave NASA to run the scientific missions, and get it out of the space launch business as soon they can find a reliable outsource. The military will alway be able to launch its own payloads.
Or rebuild New Orleans. See why the future of mankind cannot be left to the gov't?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
If you don't like being judged, then you ought not be doing it yourself.
I agree with you 100% but we get into 'nature vs nurture' somewhat.
People make choices that affect their lives and have consequences of these choices, positive or negative.
My great uncle was raised in a shack in Mississippi with dirt for floors (he is white). However he went to school and acceled at science and math. Well after high school he was given a scholarship to college etc and went on to get a BS in chemistry, specifically biochem.
He got hired by Buckeye/Procter and Gamble and now he is retired and lives in his million dollar home just up the road from where he grew up because his name is on the patent for the absorbancy factor of playtex pads, and pampers diapers. There is a factory in Perry, FL built entirely on the process that he designed. (every time I see him I joke that he is the smartest man to ever come out of Mississippi)
That is one example of class mobility.
Another example is some more of my family that had 5 kids and they were millionaires. Well, only one of the 5 kids is making a good living on their own while the parents are still supporting the other 4 as grown adults.
I think a lot of it depends on the person and how they were raised. People CAN do things in this country to change their economic status. That is what is great about it. OR they can wallow in their poverty and do nothing. That is THEIR choice. However it pisses me off when people choose to do nothing about it and my tax dollars pay them not to work (but that is another subject entirely).
I am a libertarian and will make my way on my own with only a minimal amount of help from my family. If I can do it anyone can do it. I am a "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" kind of guy. However I must also admit that my parents took me to feed the homeless in our city once a month for 12+ years where we lived. That has given me an interesting perspective on things.
Your post reminds me of a couple of songs. One is by the Offspring called "Way down the line". I find some truth in this song but I think absolutes
are not always the best course of action. Some people really do have problems that they can't overcome; others can but choose not to. Here are some excerpts:
Nothing changes because its all the same
the world you get is the one you give away
it all just happens way down the line
an angry man gets drunk and beats his kids, the same way his drunken father did...
17 Jenny is pregnent, young as a mom when she had her, her daughter is never going to have a dad, the same old way that Jenny never had
and all the things you learn when you're a kid, you'll fuck up just like your parents did.. it all just happens way down the line
welfare moms have kids on welfare
fat parents have fat kids too (poster edit - yeah this is the case for me)
it all just happens way down the line
********************
Theen there is a song from Everlast which has a line in it that says:
"you know where you end, but it usually depends on where you start"
********************
Libertas in infinitum
Tell that to a kid who grows up in a ghetto with shit schools and a poisonous culture surrounding him.
Tell that to a young man who is stopped and beaten by police for driving his own new car, just because it looks so new they think he stole it.
Tell that to a young man who sees the majority of his peers cycle through prison, and who sees them get more respect for it than he does for his university degree.
Tell that to a man who is stopped by the same sherrif at the same place every day as he drives into work, for months.
Tell that to a man whose business consultant flat-out tells him "hire a white man to represent your company".
Just don't tell that to the friend of mine all these things have happened to---he still has enough of his roots in him to kick your ass for being an idiot.
And, yes, all those (save one) happened in the North. Some people truly do have fewer opportunities than you do, and it's ignorant and cruel to berate them as if that's all their fault.
(Mind you, it's even worse to convince them they're victims being held down by The Man. When you have responsibility for something, you can change it. The desire to play the victim is strangling the life out of some parts of the US, and even seems to be infecting the broader culture. What the hell happened to taking responsibility?)