NASA's New Shuttle

j0ugh writes "NASA releases plans for a new spacecraft (Audio stream contains the meat) that would replace the space shuttle. The vehicle is part of a system that will be capable of putting astronauts on the moon by 2018, laying the groundwork for space travel to Mars. NASA says the new system is designed to be 10 times safer than the space shuttle"

Comments

10x safer?

[confusion]

How do you classify something as 10x safer than something else? Do they expect 10x less people to die, 10x less frequent explosive disasters, or are the events themselves 10x less dangerous, meaning astronauts could survive?

Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/

Re:Great.

[failure-man]

Well, that's only like, 20 times more dangerous than a car. Pretty good considering you're basically riding a bomb to orbit.

Not going to happen

[Animats]

No way is this going to happen. The US doesn't have the money. And they're not going to get it. Even conservatives are now fed up with Bush's spending.

But it's great for NASA bureaucrats. They can just idle along, issuing press releases, running their "centers", and promoting their "education" programs, without actually building anything flyable. And they get to blame Congress for not providing more money.

You can see this already. NASA just converted their home page to Flash.

The next people on the moon will be Chinese. They have such a strong manufacturing economy that it won't be a stretch to build a big booster. The "China price" on a booster should be low. Maybe the US will buy some.

Re:That's Entertainment!

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

I believe that being an astronaut is on a volunteer basis. If you put an ad in the paper that said:
Be one of the first humans on Mars. All expenses paid trip to Mars one way, See a new planet. Do some research. There will be no return trip.
I'm absolutely sure you would have 1000+ volunteers that would consider their life a fair trade just to go, just to SEE it with their own eyes.

Re:I, explorer

[websaber]

I am really starting to feel nausea when speaking about space. Doesn't any one even remember JFK's qoute!!!

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." - JFK 1962

We didn't go to moon to find out what the moon is made of we went to the moon to find out what we are made of!!! Ever since we went to the moon it became the benchmark or our planet, "If we can get to the moon why can't we ...." I am really scared about our lack of ambition I know our best years are ahead of us but let's hope we have the guts to get there.