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NASA Admin Says Shuttle and ISS are Mistakes
Teancum writes "NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was recently interviewed by the USA Today Editorial Board regarding the current direction of the U.S. Space Program, and in the interview he suggested that the past three decades have been a huge mistake and a waste of resources. As a total cost for both programs that has exceeded $250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources. Griffin quoted in the interview regarding if the shuttle had been a mistake "My opinion is that it was... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible." Regarding the ISS: "Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.""
I'm sure I've heard that the ISS was supposed to have a more equatorial orbit, but when Russia came on board the orbit was tilted to give them easier access to it.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
Sure, that $250 billion could buy us another year in Iraq!
But seriously, the ISS is not a waste of money. When you think of all the research done there, the international goodwill spread there, it is well worth the cost. I do wish the degree of internationality was a bit larger. Simply having Americans and Russians isn't very diverse -- it would be nice to see China/India/other aspiring space powers to join in the fun (and help with the bills).
Headline doesn't reflect the Michael Griffin quote in the summary :(.
I wonder if he is aware of the recent wars that the US has gotten involved with. Talk about real wastes of money. At least the Shuttle program, and the ISS to a lesser extent, have furthered our knowledge of science and engineering, rather than just our ability to mindlessly destroy.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
$250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources. Griffin
... say... defense companies to make a killing from.
Yes... Other things indeed. A... war... perhaps. Say... a war for oil and
Or . . . welfare...
Or.. even... rebuilding a flooded city that could have been fortified for $20bn ahead of time.
Or hell, even paying off a whole 5% of the debt!
I RTFA and can see what he's saying that the shuttle and ISS were basically mistakes, and I agree. However, I'm not so clear about his proposed alternatives. Is he shilling for Bush's "Man to Mars" mission and saying that should have been our goal since the 1970s? That would certainly be a wise career move (at least for the moment) but what purpose would it serve to send a man to Mars? We can't even get some of our unmanned probes to the Martian surface successfully. Maybe we could try to get a probe there and back to Earch first.
The space program benefits those it was designed to benefit. Thank you for the future we have today, Raytheon, General Dynamics, etc...
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Remember spaceship one used knowledge and tech that NASA developed/figured out.
They were first to do it privately, not first ever.
Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
When you consider our prodigious investments in both combat and weaponry, it's hard to see any kind of space exploration as anything other than progress.
Having no space program would be a mistake. Having an inefficient one just reminds us that there is always room for improvement.
Do you like German cars?
Or building hurricane-proof levees near, let's say, New Orleans. That would've generated another $200BN ...
As a total cost for both programs that has exceeded $250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources.
"Useful"? I hate it when people use words like that in reference to the sciences. It's like they think every last penny of the national budget that's not being spent on Medicare or disaster recovery should be spent feeding the homeless.
How do you define "useful"? This is NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Their entire charter is building giant cans that explode out of one end in order to throw chunks of metal into orbit. They're science, which means $99 out of every $100 they spend goes toward what amounts to research and development of ideas nobody else can implement, and then working with them for a couple of decades to see what comes of them.
How can you gauge the "usefulness" of the Cold War space race in the 1950s and '60s? Yet that race eventually led to the technology and processes which, today, have placed hundreds of communications, weather, and astronomy satellites in orbit. Was any of that "useful" at the time? Heck no. We haven't gained one "useful" bit of knowledge from our trip to the Moon in 1969, but we didn't know that would be the case until we actually went there.
NASA's budget is on a shoestring as it is. Give them credit for doing what they do with as few dollars as it is. You never know when an investment will pay out until it does.
It's fairly well known that the space shuttle was a compromise between NASA and the military. In order to get the budget, they agreed to design requirements that involved weird payloads and the ability to launch them into polar orbit. That in turn drove the design to be what it is today.
In terms of the space station, it seemed to quickly turn into an exercise to divide up the money according to country and state. I'm not even sure what science goes on up there any more. These days the reduced crew seems to spend their time repairing the place. Crazy.
Does anyone have any links to a more verbose explanation of his stance? This USA Today article is almost as bad as reading the comics. In particular I'm curious as to what orbit he would have had in mind.
That's a whole different kettle of fish to the saying the ISS was a mistake. Several NASA officials are on record to the effect that NASA didn't want to build the ISS in such a low orbit, but agreed to do so in order to accomodate the Russians. Some of that might be coloured by the failure of Skylab, but it was also to enable the station to be of use of the ISS as a launch point to the Moon and beyond. It's kind of ironic that with the ISS project starting to show serious signs of floundering that it's NASA that's currently having problems getting to it, despite the lower than desired orbit, and the focus of manned spaceflight has once again returned to visiting the Moon and reaching Mars.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Damn it!
"Only now is the nation's space program getting back on track, Griffin said. He announced last week that NASA aims to send astronauts back to the moon in 2018 in a spacecraft that would look like the Apollo capsule."
No no no no.
Going to the moon is a publicity stunt. The only way that is "back on track" is if the trip itself will be used as a testbed for new technologies and techniques intended to support longer trips, like to Mars.
But even a trip to Mars at this point seems wasteful. I love the notion of traveling the stars and look forward to tea and danish on Alpha Centuri one day.....but not as our country is embroiled in more problems and debt that your average citizen can comprehend.
Imagine if the Space ship One team had 250 billion...
.com era to realise that.
They would probably become just as inefficient as NASA. Generally, the bigger the budget you have, the less efficient and more wasteful you become. You've only got to look at some of the excesses of the
they wouldn't have accomplished jack, if NASA hadn't come up with the tremendous knowledge base that current teams get to draw from.
NASA could put a tiny ship with barely any payload into low orbit decades ago. Not really all that comparible.
Your post was rated insightful? More like overly-rehashed nonsense.
1) Cheap, reliable, frequent trips to geosnychronous orbit.
2) First generation platform at one of the Lagrange points.
3) Lunar observatory on the dark side.
4) Another Hubble-like telescope at L3.
5) Space elevators, aynone?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
He offers plenty of criticism of the current plan, but the article lacks one important detail:
- Exactly what would Mr Smartypants have had us do with the money?
I mean, he states the shuttle was "deeply flawed". What would he have built? Kept shooting Apollo capsules up forever more? Built an Apollo 2? And if the ISS isn't in a good orbit, what orbit would he prefer? And additionally, how were we supposed to know the Shuttle wasn't a solid idea, until we had actually built a few and tested them operationally?
It seems to me he's just trying to ride the wave of popular opinion that says the shuttle must go and the ISS isn't interesting. It's plenty easy to offer criticism, but it's a bit harder to come up with an viable, alternative solutions. If he's going to be so critical as to call the last 30 years a mistake, than it's only fair he steps up to the plate and specifically outline what he would have done better.
Slashdot could benefit from fark's [Obvious] tag.
What he should have pointed out is that manned exploration of mars and a manned return to the moon is also a giant waste of resources. Why not do these unmanned, as we are having terrific success with our current unmanned missions?
Robots don't have psych problems, waste elimination problems, urinary tract infections, etc.
I've always found it interesting that hardware and research which began as byproducts of various military initiatives may actually preserve our species in the end.
It's almost poignant.
Do you like German cars?
The thing is, even if Scaled Composites had 250 billion in one large lump sum, it wouldn't get them very far at first. You see, the Space Shuttle was nickled and dimed into existance, as was pretty much all of the space program (except maybe Apollo, those budgets were kinda wild).
In fact, if we go back to why the Space Shuttle concept was even dreamed up, it was to cut costs, so that the program wouldn't have to keep nickel and diming their way into space. Of course, it didn't save them as much as they had hoped, and more recently has scaled up quite a bit in expense maintaining old flight hardware, but nevertheless the reasoning is all there.
I mean we can all look at what we've spent to date in any industry, find flaws of where the money was put, credit them to bad engineering, cutting corners, whatever you like, but the point remains the money is spent and you should be working towards moving your industry in a forward direction and not spinning your wheels trying to figure out what to do next.
This is why I'm supporting the SDLV so much. We have flight hardware that works, and has worked many times. The flaws have been hammered out by catastrophies that happened with the Shuttle hardware that can now be retired to a museum. Even if this will set us back a few years, and it will make us look like the Soviets had it right all along, we will still be moving forward into further reaches in space, and we'll be able to go back to the moon (something the shuttle would have never allowed us to have done).
Sometimes it's good to have disasters like these; it makes you look at yourself and realize that man is mortal and that the hardware you're flying on is only as good as its weakest link. It makes you grow out of complacency and mundane attitudes about flying into space. And it opens up people's checkbooks to help mend the ailing space agency. The only really sad part is the loss of human lives to make people realize that this needed to have been done years and years ago.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Bush himself was quoted on TV last week saying he was in Texas to watch an learn about the interaction between state and local government relief efforts after Hurricane Rita. He said he's got "a lot to learn" about those government operations. Bush's credentials include "governor of Texas", prior to being appointed president. I guess he was too busy "working hard" to learn about his job down there.
--
make install -not war
When people state that a arguably successful endeavor was "was extremely aggressive and just barely possible", I have to wonder exactly what is behind the statement. The shuttle has been successful on a number of fronts, too many to list here. Yes, exploration is a dangerous business--an not just space exploration. You can always look back in history for dangerous expeditions and high casualty rates. Test pilots, famous historical exploration, modern-day exploration (in space, underwater, and caves), unnamed and unrecorded Viking, Chinese, Phoenician, Portuguese, and Polynesian explorers, etc. I am sure you can find many harrowing tales of death and suffering in the name of exploration. I am sure there are a number of tales of failed Colonial settlements which ended tragically. It makes me wonder if we have lost our tolerance for casualties in the name of science and/or exploration. If it wasn't for seemingly foolhardy or impossible endeavors, would we have really learned anything of value?
I don't understand what you're complaining about. This guy isn't doesn't like frivolous expenditure of money, and somehow he's a bad guy? Would you have preferred more of the do-nothing status quo?
Sounds like you don't like him simply because he's a Bush appointee, which is hardly relevant in this case. Besides, he right. NASA has been horribly mismanaged for the lat three decades, and it's time someone on the inside came out and said that.
I think you need to brush up on your world events. We tried that. And when the goods wern't going to some warlord of the country we were trying to help, we were basically told to stay the fuck out and mind our own business from the rest.
As Richard Feynman's brilliant analysis from 1986 clearly states, the shuttle's main engines were NOT designed properly and are doomed to be both expensive to maintain and markedly dangerous to use.
t ml
A link to his comments is at http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.h
He has a wonderful explanation, in terms that non-engineers as well as engineers can understand, about how to build complex devices. Good engineering, he says, comes from dividing the task in to component parts, creating specifications for those parts, building samples, testing them to their limits, retesting them to various other limits, until you have a complete understanding of all the failure modes of that component, as well as the reliability of your manufacturing process for that component. Then, you assemble multiple components together and test that assembly together in all the modes you can conjure up, to create what I have always heard termed, "A Well-characterized System".
As he points out, the space shuttle main engines (SSME's), though complex and "groundbreaking" in the sense that they were very big and incorporating some (at the time) quite advanced technologies, they were NOT WELL CHARACTERIZED on a component basis. To my knowledge (although I'm not a NASA watcher with as much fervor as some) I don't believe the SSMEs have EVER BEEN analyzed and re-engineered to create characterizations of their failure points, reliability, etc.
The fact that NASA's next plan is to use them in the follow-on vehicles for heavy lift only testifies to NASA's complete lack of focus here. They should put out several contracts for heavy lift engines with well-characterized failure modes, with focuses on reusability, reliability, maintenance cost, and overall operating cost.
We're soon going to be stuck with the next-gen heavy lift using components of unknown reliability, which forces us to replace component parts ("tune-up" or "overhaul") the system too often and with too large an expense.
Feynman was right. Solve the root cause. Engineer these things with good methodologies. And don't tie us down to next-gen-of-schlock-engineering if we don't have to be. I congratulate the able engineers who worked on the SSME's, but I respect Feynman's analysis that correct procedures benefit lowering long-term costs and ensure safety of the admirable crews who pilot our national spacecraft.
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You are a liar and a loser. You criticize Griffin without any grasp of the facts, and in doing so lie and distort his significant record. Griffin was distinguished head of the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Before that he worked at NASA and previously did important work for SDI which led the development of the Delta anti-missle system. When he was appointed to head NASA he had just been elected to be president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a group of scholarly aeronautics engineers. He is also shockingly well educated: BS Engineering from University of Maryland College Park Masters in Aerospace Engineering from Catholic University Masters in Electrical Engineering from University of Southern California Masters in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins Masters in Civil Engineering from George Washington University MBA from Loyola College, MD BS Physics Johns Hopkins He was working on his BS in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins when he left for NASA. He plans to return at then of his term. He co-wrote what many believe to be the definitive textbook on space vehicle design used in virtually every graduate aeronautical program. In general, you are an asshole. Griffin is not a hack. He is a shockingly well qualified man. His views expressed here are refined, excellently thought out, and very reasonable. Disagree? Fine. Say why and be prepared to be ripped apart. Assholes like you are the reason qualified people avoid politics and positions of responsbility. You labeled him a hack without even knowing anything about his impressive qualifications.
NASA waited too long to move past the shuttle, by now they should have been useing the next genneration of shuttle one that can fly into orbit. This thing that they are doing now is just a waste.
If it was up to me I would cut NASA just to unmanned stuff and set more prizes to private business for achiving goals like orbit and moon orbit etc.
To those to say we could have spent the money to feed the poor and other things, the space program has taught us things we could not have learned on earth and things that help or one day will help all mankind...
NASA Admin Says Shuttle and ISS are Mistakes
is not the same thing as
he suggested that the past three decades have been a huge mistake and a waste of resources
which is not the same as
"It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible....we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in"
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
This is not meant to be a troll. I love the space program and everything about it. But I do have a serious question to make sure I'm not overlooking something.
At this stage of the game, what is it that we can do on Mars with a manned mission that we cannot accomplish better, cheaper, and safer, with a robotic mission?
I really don't see a point in a manned mission to Mars until we've been on the Moon long enough to have a permanent station of some kind there.
As much as I loved Apollo, I'm not sure I see that it really accomplished anything with manned missions that a robotic mission couldn't have done. Especially since if I'm not mistaken only one or two real 'scientists' went on any of those missions.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I think most of us SysAdmins new that IIS was a mistake for years now.
we owe a good deal of our peace-time technological progress to NASA. There are thousands upon thousands of everyday things we use that came from NASA research.
And most beloved people on Earth? Yeah, because all those people here in the US that were on welfare loved the rich. People tend to think so well of the generous rich that give the poor enough to keep being poor. All those places in Africa that we in fact did feed in the last few decades - they loved us so. Built little temples in homage to us, sang our praises...
OR...we could stop treating them like children, and open up markets. Like we're doing now.
Absolutely. Flood that money into the private market and let it take their chances with space exploration.
I can't believe a NASA Administrator (read: advocate) would be so candid. But the point here is not that space exploration is bad, or science is bad or we are bad at science or we shouldn't invest in science. The point is Government is bad at science. Government is bad at running a multi-hundred billion science program. Government is inefficient. Government is bad at ensuring safety and reliabilty.
What we need is less government involvement, whether it is domestic government or foreign governments. Yes, japan, china and india can help stem the costs - private japanese, indian and chinese firms. Not more mismanaging governments. Other space exploration will just be run by the same types that run the UN. Gross incompetence, malfeasance and inefficiency.
The problem isn't overinflated budgets, it's poor management of those budgets. People who design soemthing turn around and say "hey look, we need more money to keep going, this is going to be more expensive"; make them quantify why it will be more expensive, come up with a list of alternatives, and make these people work for the money they're getting.
If Scaled Composite was handed a check for 250 Billion they'd wet themselves, hire a ton of new engineers, and start on their way to becoming NASA. But forcing them to work with a small budget makes each and every bolt a considered cost, and a lot more streamlined.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Scaled Composites can do better than NASA, but it will take some self control when it comes to spending, designing and testing. But I would be greatly disappointed if they were handed a huge check for a quarter trillion dollars.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
If you don't believe me, take a look at the actual charter, aka 'The National Aeronautics and Space Act'.
Items like "research, development, demonstration, and other related activities in ground propulsion technologies as are provided for in sections 4 through 10 of the Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 1976" don't necessarily have anything to do with "giant cans that explode out of one end in order to throw chunks of metal into orbit".
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I could be wrong, but I thought the Bush administration had said we would hit the moon by 2010 and Mars by 2020?
How is it that Kennedy says we'll do the (at the time) completely impossible within 10 years and they do it 9 years later, and today we can't even decide if we'll do the completely possible (and redundant) within 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years - or ever?
Lets go back in time. Back, say as far as the 1970's, to a time when people thought the world was flat and the moon landing was a farse. Oh wait. O.K. Lets not bother because people still beleive those things. How about we just take away the things those people have learned from scientific exploration. O.K. I still have nothing. Well, I guess he is correct. The shuttle and ISS where a complete and total waist of money and time. Everything we needed to know about imaginary things like - What effect does space have on people if they are there for long peroids of time and what is the feasability of a reusable craft - were already known to be the devil's lies. U.S. money is better spent supporting our missionaries and soldiers in those crazy arabic counties.
Good bye Karma I'll miss you.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The ISS is a very different station to the Freedom / Alpha designs that came before it.
Essentially concieved as an international project from the start using design elements of station Freedom, it would always have had an orbit which intersects Baikonur and French Guiana.
As it is, the shuttle only operates (or has been operated) between orbital inclinations of 28.5deg (which is not all that equatorial anyway) and 57deg. (the station orbit being approx 51.6deg).
That 'advantage' of the low 30's / high 20's orbit is the added assist from the earth's rotation which means higher payload lift. However, it also means a limited number of de-orbit opportunities and IIRC a marginally higher initial re-entry velocity (as a factor of the wider orbit due to the shape of the planet?) - For a decidedly shakey platform like the shuttle which may yet need to make an emergency de-orbit, it would seem with hindsight like a poor choice.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
why do people always refer to spaceship one when space shuttle articles come up.
space ship one wasn't designed as an orbital vehicle. in the fact that it was designed to do one thing and one thing only, it actually mirrors the short term thinking that went into the space shuttle.
therein lies the issue. and it isn't just with NASA. All of our governmental goals are short term. So there is no natural evolution of our technological process in regards to space.
just our whole governmental process is screwy. How is it that George Bush promises no tax increases in light of the recent meteorological disasters. How is this fucking possible? Would I have a problem with a slight tax increase to cover shortfall and to finance the rebuilding of an american city? No. Would I have a problem with the slightly increased cost of what we learn of protecting our coastal cities because this is a country built on the economic might of its coastal urban centers, especially because I live in one? No. Who are these people in our country that favor these reduced tax rates; it's like the governmental equivalent of anorexia. How is this possible, Mr. Bush? Regardless of whether there are billions of dollars wasted on other things, and I assume they are, they've already been allocated. Where is this cash coming from? And who the fuck cares about Mars when we can't get back to ORBIT. Orbit, Mr. Bush. We can't get to orbit.
Our government is like a macrocosmic MTV. Short attention span.... much ado... about nothing. Everyone knows that overspecialization breeds inherent weakness, but we keep making task specific ships.... we keep overspecializing over and over, which forces us to throw out designs when administrations and priorities and mission requirements change.
and please, lets not even refer to space-ship one - it's a glorified bottle rocket. It's not even innovative; the air force pioneered all the research in the 50s. It doesn't even have avionics; which is why it pitched wildly (catastrophically!) during one of its "record" setting flights. We shouldn't be "piloting" spaceships; shit, as a species, we can barely drive.
un burrito me trampeó.
Omg what are you talking about, we got the memory foam bed out of nasa teknol0gy. Definately worth the 250 billion
I'm only basing this on the summary text, but you're telling me that we can get 30 years of space program for about the same price as 3 years of war in the mid-east?
Sounds like a good deal to me.
When I read the submission I said "hell ya!"
As a total cost for both programs that has exceeded $250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources.
Yes! What could the individuals that were taxed to pay for this have done with this money? Build 5 million houses? Buy 50 million cars? Each 20 billion meals?
Who knows, because the money didn't enter the economy in an efficient way. It went to cronies with clout who used it in ways that didn't build wealth as it should.
Then I reread the submission and realized the author meant "what would NASA have built if they spent the $250B wisely?"
Answer: they wouldn't use the money wisely. They can't.
There's a thing called "testing". Ever heard of it? SpaceShipOne's success shows that their fundamental technology works, and they can proceed with working on SpaceShipTwo or whatever their next project is safe in the knowledge that the underlying parts work.
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The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
Imagine the beowulf cluster you could build with $250 billion!
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Ciao
Absolutely. Flood that money into the private market and let it take their chances with space exploration.
.coms failed; they had little or no ideas, but a ton of cash to blow on hardware.
Bad idea. I don't want to be picking up would be space explorers off my lawn each and every morning. Better to put money into ventures you know have some kind of chance than to just flood the market with money. This is why so many
The point is Government is bad at science.
Sore point really. Government can be an aid or a hindrance to science as society guides it to be. It just so happens we wouldn't have rocket science or even jet science if it wasn't for a government's overinflated military spendings and need for the next latest and greatest weapons. Things you take for granted are almost all rooted back to some government spending. Remember ARPANET?
What we need is less government involvement
No, what we need is less governmental hindrance, and from what I've seen, the goverment is apt to do just that right now. Step out of the way of anyone who wants to go into space, and even provide a little room in the budget for them. The FAA has been more than pleased to grant several air-worthy and space-worthy some flight time recently. This is the American government at work for science.
Lastly, I want to add my own point. Space flight in this country is generally overlooked by people. Most people equate the saftey of spaceflight to the saftey of air travel, which is a gross misunderstanding. While we were singing the praises of the Apollo-era astronauts, the Space Shuttle Astronauts are generally not even given a single block of airtime on television, or a mention in the evening news. Most people don't even realize that there are people in space this very minute, and think it's a generally safe place to be. This needs to stop. Space flight is exceedingly dangerous, it's industrious, hard work, and the people who have the courage and training to hop on top of a million gallons of high explosives need to be seen as national heros for what they are doing. The work they are doing right now in space is almost entirely peace-oriented, even if the science could easily be turned to make weapons. These are the kinds of things we need to look at as a society if we ever want to colonize space. Sadly I don't think any of the things mentioned above will happen in my lifetime.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I agree. The idea of going to mars is quite appealing. I am in favor of furthering our knowledge of the universe and life beyond our small planet. However, with all of the economic challenges that we've got, there's no question that the money could go to some better use than flying to mars. Honestly, we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fly a handful of people to mars for what purpose? Just to show that we can? Meanwhile, there are thousands of Americans living in poverty.
In some ways it doesn't seem right that we don't take care of our people better than we do before spending billions on space exploration. The priorities seem mixed up to me.
Actually, I've always quietly agreed with the folks that have questioned why wer're sending
people up there instead of manned probes.
However our leadership, and the leadership of several other countries have a vested interest
in manned space exploration now. From what I understand Japan and Russia
have pieces of the space station that have been waiting for launch for some time.
The EU seems to have an interest..
I think Michael Griffin stuck his foot in his mouth; at the very least he could have
chosen his words more carefully.
I believe in the 60's JFK made a challange of going to the moon by the end of that decade. They did it. So why is it going to take 13 more years to do what has already been done. I mean it took them less then 10 years to do it with more archic technology then we have now, why is it going to take us at least 3 more years then it took them almost 40 years ago?
The ISS had its start under Reagan, and there were no doubt many political and bureaucratic reasons for it getting started. But by the Clinton Administration, it was _continued_ primarily for one purpose: to allow the US to indirectly subsidize the Russian space industry, and give all those soon-to-be-unemployed Russian rocket scientists a paycheck. Thus giving them less reason to wander off to Iran, Pakistan, China, etc. And that seems to have been fairly successful.
sPh
I know there are thousands of NASA-defending geeks on here, but the amount of money wasted on space travel could do a lot better going back into the thousands of decrepit schools we have in this country.
As soon as the terrorists announce they have inserted suicide bombers into orbit and will soon be able to found a theocracy on the moon you can bet George W will be on the moon so fast you wouldn't believe ( obviously I don't mean George personally will go there )
There's a thing called overspecialization. Ever heard of it? Sure it works, but will it scale well? lol... and from a company called scaled composites no less.
The fact that there are no avionics means that much will have to be redesigned from scratch. lol
And like I said, much of this "testing" was done in the 50s. lol.
And like I said, it's not "their" tech. The air force did it in the 50s. Ever heard of the cold war? lots of good tech came from it. check it out.
un burrito me trampeó.
Because the fuel tanks are useless for a space station.
They have no protection from radiation or micro-meteorites. To make them safe you have to completely replace the exterior of the vessel or at least cover it with tiles / armour.
They aren't empty spaces internally they are full of tanks and plumbing (with traces of extremely volatile fuels left behind). To make them safe you have to completely replace the interior of the vessel and clean it.
Considering the amount of wiring / plumbing that goes into a habital space station trying to do all that work from scratch in zero G as opposed to on the ground with thousands of trained technicians is just ludicrous.
Thousands of engineers did think of the idea and they all decided it was a worthless idea
No, what we need is less governmental hindrance . . .
Government involvement == government hindrance. The (US Federal) government is incapable of 'providing a little budget' for something without attaching all sorts of strings to the money. The fact that the FAA is 'granting' flight time to vehicles is not the government supporting anything. It's the government interfering less than normal.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
Not wanting to be a troll but what about:
The National Aerospace Plane ("NASP"), Lots of money, no hardware.
The X-33; several billion with no tangible return except for a few fuel tanks which were larger than the foreseeable technology could reliably build.
I never understood why the X-38 (small spaceplane/ISS Lifeboat) was not persued even though its funding was cut due to ISS overruns. It looked like an excellent concept.
There are also a ton of other programs going back even further (Dyna-Soar, MOL, etc.) in which substantial money was spent that were either impossible to build or didn't have the political will to work through. I daresay that a totalling of these projects would match the $250 Billion spent on the Shuttle and ISS.
The Shuttle and ISS were not the best possible implementations of a reusable spacecraft and orbital outpost, but at least they have flown and are helping advance the sciences of going to and from space as well as living there.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Oh yes, the "Scaled Composites kicks ass, NASA sucks!"-argument.... SC has the benefit of being able to take advantage of stuff NASA, ESA and Soviets invented for them. Shuttle and the like were built from the ground up. Gradual evolution from something else was not possible, because there was nothing to evolve from. Some of the required technology did not exist, so it had to be invented. Computers were at their infancy when they designed the shuttle etc. etc.
Now all that hard work is done, and we have so powerful computers that the computer I'm typing this message on, is propably faster than all the computers combined NASA had when they designed the Shuttle. Now we have Scaled Composites who marches in, takes advantage of all the stuff NASA pioneered at great expense, and they barely manage to get one spacecraft (with just the pilot, and nothing else) in to space for short amount of time. And they shout off "look how cheaply we can do this!". Well, no shit Sherlock, since NASA and others did all the hard work for you! NASA had none of that whiz-bang technology at their disposal that you take for granted! The foundation on which SC can build their space-operation on already exists. It did not exists back when NASA designed the shuttle, NASA had to build it from the ground up. And that takes money. SC didn't do it, they just take advantage of it.
Yes, what SC did was great. But I'm getting sick and tired of listening to the "NASA sucks, Scaled rules!" choir of fanboys. NASA has done A LOT of work for space travel, and now we have others taking advantage of their pioneering work. Usually it is very expensive to be the first one at doing something. Those that follow have easier job in front of them.
And of course it's very easy NOW to point out the flaws in the Shuttle. And of course it's easy NOW to deisgn something better than the shuttle. And the reason for that is that we can learn from the shuttle! NASA didn't have that luxury when they designed the shuttle, it was the first of it's kind.
NASA does lots of stuff. SC managed to barely do a sub-orbital spaceflight. Maybe NASA spends more money, but they also do A LOT more than SC does!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm
As far back as 1970 cost was an issue
__
Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
Engineers were criticizing the shuttle as it was being built and pointing out the flaws in it's design before it was built. The problems that the shuttle has have all been predicted. One doesn't need a operational test to know that if I fling my self off a 100 story building I will end up as a crumpled dead smear on the ground.
What would be the point of outlining an entire plan of "What would I have done if I was king of NASA?" I prefer that he outline what he will do NOW. Which if you note the beginnings of this was announced last week.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
"Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in." When the first space station was build, USA had a wooden model of something simular the IIS was build as an international coalition, and USA provided some parts for the IIS and money but still they won't not be able to build it by themselves and the most important parts of the IIS were build by Russian's
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com
...wasn't that about the amount of money that Louisiana was just recently asking, to fix the damage from one hurricane? What, they want their own space station, now?
somebody please mod this guy up.
un burrito me trampeó.
why do people always refer to spaceship one when space shuttle articles come up.
Good question. My only answer is that Space Ship One has reinvigorated people thinking about spaceflight, even if SSO is a farcry from the STS.
just our whole governmental process is screwy. How is it that George Bush promises no tax increases in light of the recent meteorological disasters. How is this fucking possible? Would I have a problem with a slight tax increase to cover shortfall and to finance the rebuilding of an american city? No. Would I have a problem with the slightly increased cost of what we learn of protecting our coastal cities because this is a country built on the economic might of its coastal urban centers, especially because I live in one? No. Who are these people in our country that favor these reduced tax rates; it's like the governmental equivalent of anorexia. How is this possible, Mr. Bush? Regardless of whether there are billions of dollars wasted on other things, and I assume they are, they've already been allocated. Where is this cash coming from? And who the fuck cares about Mars when we can't get back to ORBIT.
Many people will have disagreements about this paragraph. I've already heard hundreds of sentements like "Why would you build a city under sea level anyways", "Why should my tax dollars go somewhere that isn't helping me", etc. Some people simply don't realize what their dollar is actually doing for them, and some people don't really realize the value of a dollar. Only a few people exist that actually don't have a clue of either side of this issue, and to all our lamenting I think one of them is in the White House as we speak.
As for the point about space; by setting a goal to go to Mars, you encompass the goal of getting into space. A plan already exists as a back up plan to the shuttle; Soyuz capsules will be bought from Russia, and, when they are ready, SDLVs will replace the ailing Space Shuttle as our main route to space. Not only will we see space flight get cheaper per pound, we will see a greater number of people getting into space, as it is almost trivial to launch 50 people into space once you remove the cargo limitations from that launch vehicle.
Lastly, people fear change, which is why the government tends to be very short-sighted with its goals. Setting short term goals of even 10 years (which might seem long term to most of us, but this is a government; governmental long terms are hundreds of years) is hard for congress because the next politician will simply come in and undo what the last one did. Now that the Republicans have railroaded our government, we will see a lot more focusing of budgets, lots more spending, and probably, lots more taxes. There are good things and bad things about every situation, and limiting yourself to the short-sightedness of one political party or spectrum really can make you miss the triumphs of another. I'm personally a Socialist, but I do have to commend the Republicans, first of all for attaining the position they are in, and second of all, for not being frugal in a time of need. My biggest fear, though, is that no internal investigations will happen as to why these things have taken place in the first place, but I don't think the Democrats will let this one go.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Asked Tuesday whether the shuttle had been a mistake, Griffin said, "My opinion is that it was. ... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible." Asked whether the space station had been a mistake, he said, "Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in."
I disagree with the article's description here. Griffin's being pretty blunt in those answers, esp. for a government employee. Most would never admit to such huge mistakes.
3) Lunar observatory on the dark side.
Possibly combine these; L2 is off Lunar Farside. Not being down a (2kps?) gravity well, it should be easier to get back and forth from. True, since it's an unstable position (especially under n-body perturbation), you'd need some minor active orbital stabilization, but "that's not a bug, it's a feature" — that would also make it an ideal stepping off point for exploring the rest of the solar system. Just be careful that the station doesn't do that unplanned.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/
"My opinion is that it was... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the point of space exploration as a whole? That it's really hard, fraught with danger, and constantly pushes the envelope of what's possible with our technology and ingenuity?
We stunned the world by putting men on the moon, but for chrissakes, that was decades ago. With advancements in technology since then, we should have half the solar system under our belt by now.
One could say government is always involved when you measure the extent to which hinder or allow certain sciences to proceed. And I am well aware of ARPANET. Notice the wealth, innovation, commerce and progress created due to private sector access to it? And do assume that the private would not have invented the Net eventually, or even sooner, had money that in reality was tied up in government was flowing freely in the private sector.
It has always been that way. For example, do you like canned items? Thank Julius Ceaser. You like our modern medical miricle in the ER and Surgery? The foundations were laid during war time (sadly, it was really advanced during WWII by axis powers and experiments). You like the highway system here in the USA? primary mission was for military. How about subs? Military.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Apollo was able to put a couple of guys on the moon and get them back. In contrast, the shuttle is incapable of going beyond LEO. It's not exactly breaking new ground in terms of space exploration.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Government involvement == government hindrance. The (US Federal) government is incapable of 'providing a little budget' for something without attaching all sorts of strings to the money. The fact that the FAA is 'granting' flight time to vehicles is not the government supporting anything. It's the government interfering less than normal.
I take it you believe heavily against the government, and that's fine by me, but you've done nothing to strip my point from validity.
The government is more than capable of handing money over to anyone it wants, and in fact, you probably wouldn't have made it through elementry, middle, high school or college if they hadn't have (of course you'll say the government never gave you a grant, but what you fail to realize is that they gave your institution a grant, and thus, helped pay your astronomical schooling fees). Of course, there are always exceptions to this rule, but if you are one of them, you are exceptionally wealthy or exceptionally poor and never went to school at all.
The fact that the FAA monitors flight is something they've also done for you. If it weren't for them, all kinds of machines that should never see air travel would be up there fluttering around, and coming down on people like you on a whim. In order to prevent "the sky is falling" catastrophies from making the nightly news every day, the government instituted a way of tracking, monitoring, and guiding the aircraft over your head so that you don't even think about it when a Boeing 747 comes barreling over your head in a large city. If you think that the government "interfering" by trying to keep your life well and protected is a shame, then perhaps you are in the wrong country. That same government keeps a house over your head with building codes, keeps the food you eat safe with regulations and guidelines, and tries to prevent you from being ill with hospitals, and the CDC. But of course, you don't think of any of this during your ordinary day, and don't realize just how much you need that government supporting you to maintain the quality of life you have now. If you don't mind it, though, you can find a nice little island somewhere and live off coconuts for the rest of your days.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
He's been a part of those bad decisions he's criticized. He doesn't have a way out. That's an out and out LIE. He hasn't worked at NASA since. So fuck you, Bush worshipper That's an out and out LIE. You are a LIAR. You called him a HACK. Which is an out and out LIE. He is qualified in the field for which he is responsible, by definition he is not a HACK. Because you certainly don't have any actual argument. Stupid cunt.
My argument is that you certainly haven't read the article, or no anything about the actual topic at hand. And then you LIE about it because you are a LIAR.
$250 BILLION? Rutan would freak. $250 MILLION is more accurate.
Boy, some real good ones. Let's see, Space Ship One can be scalled UP, that means made larger and going higher with more payload. So, not exactly short term if it is leading to something else. Task specific ships vs. do-it-all ships are like jack of all trades, master of none. Having a higher number of special purpose ships that cost less to design, build and operate are better than one over priced ship that is supposed to do it all better but can't. Space Ship One my not have looked innovative to you, but you need to look deeper. The propulsion system, the fuel it uses expecially, have never been used before for one. The re-entry method had never been tried before. The launch method had only been used for the X ships (I can't recall for sure if the X-15 crossed the space threshold or not). The avionics situation was simple, K.I.S.S. They had a basic system to orient the ship, simply the pilot over-corrected and put the ship into a ROLL (not a pitch you fool, pitch is up and down) which was obviously able to be tollerated and the flight continued. Now, I am not sure how "catastrophic" the ROLL was seeing as the guy made it to the target altitude, then regained control and landed the ship safely. Catastrophic is what happened when NASA ignored all the engineers on a cold morning and caved to the pressure of policitians or when there was a large chunk of frozen foam that smashes into the leading edge of a wing and they just decided it was OK and didn't even bother to check it out. Please, get your facts inline before you dis something as extrodinary and innovative as Space Ship One.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
the space shuttle, which provided cheap reliable frequent trips to a lower orbit
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Thanks, I needed that.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I don't see the RutanGang as a model to follow. Sure, there is a lot of bravado and ingenuity but I really don't think you can compare the product against what Nasa has accomplished.
What Nasa is now saying is basically that politics have intervened with science and technology at a great cost. The ISS is in the wrong spot and is not suited to the tasks at hand. However, it does provide a number of usefull lessons and shows us that StarTrek style space exploration should remain in hollywood. Long term habitation in space is a stupid thing to do and now that we have learned that, we should concentrate on the rock we live on, send robots out to space.
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Well, it depends on whether they know what they want to spend it on.
The first prerequisite of any successful engineering project is to have a worthy goal that is clearly identifiable and governs everything else. In this sense, Scaled Comoposite's acheivement has a lot in common with Apollo, and the Shuttle and ISS have a lot in common with each other. The Spaceship One effort and the Apollo program were both narrowly focused on one thing -- sending one or more humans to a specific place and returning them safely. All the engineering done on them was focused on achieving that goal. The Shuttle and ISS programs, while they support many worthy scientific an technical goals, are primarily driven by pleasing enough constituencies to continue their operation. These are political goals, which means many types of missions under many types of conditions.
If you had to put the Shuttle's purpose on a bumper sticker, it would be "Cheap Access to Space". Except "Access to Space" is vague. Obviously, we mean "Manned Access to Space", but even stipulating that, different missions under different scenarios require different performance characteristics. The shuttle has all kinds of capabilities that it uses on very or none of its missions; yet all the things needed for those capabilities are shot up to space and landed on every single mission. I'm thinking primarily the wings here, but its large payload capacity and its capacity to launch satellites into polar orbit count here too. It follows that the Shuttle design is likely never to be the cheapest way of doing any mission. But, without the ability to perform a wide array of missions, NASA would never have got the backing of the Air Force, which wasn't really all that interested in the Shuttle.
You can't design any system to do everything; and the more the system does the more complex costly and unreliable it's bound to be.
Specific goals such as "get two men higher than 100km and return them to the surface safely" are inherently more efficent to pursue than broad, vague goals such as "build an orbital launch capability" or "cheap access to space". And, this has other consequences. Scaled's accomplishment, while signficant in its own right, gets them practically zero percent of the way to orbit. They just built an air launched rocket plane like the X-15. About the only thing they're almost immediately ready to do is create a suborbital space tourist business. If the mission was "get two men higher than 100km and return them to the surface safely primarily with components that will be part of a future orbital capacity," they'd have spent a lot more money, taken longer, and may not have been as safe.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Hahahahaha
Someone without a dime to their name usually doesn't make it past immigrations nowadays. And is probably kept from entering the country at any point thereafter, just for the reason of having been denied entry once.
Being poor should be the ultimate motivator to not be poor.
Being poor (really poor) is one of the ultimate causes for staying poor.
Really? Why doesn't NASA use SS1's fuel and propulsion system? NASA is sitting five technology generations behind where they should be? So what tech did NASA "develop/figure out"?
Laws are for people with no friends.
NASA used to be the shining example of a good Federal agency. They lost that status after Challenger and instead of regaining it they sank even further with Columbia. The unmanned programs are still doing well. The unmanned propopents say we get a better return on our investment with robots. From a scientific point of view, the answer is yes, but from a public perspective, the answer is no. Without manned space travel we have no visions of space as a frontier. The lure of the frontier is deeply embedded in the American psyche. We look to the people, the astronauts, who enter it. NASA needs to do a better job with it's manned program. The return on investment with a manned space program isn't the same as those of an unmanned one. We need both.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I feel for the shuttle program.
But more seriously, I think that the real benefits of the program are probably a lot broader and far-reaching than what was stated in the article. It was inspiring. It got kids interested in space. It helped Reagan beat the communists.
Also, it paved the way for one of the most difficult Estes model rockets ever, as well as one of the best Simpsons episodes of all time. "Look out. They're ruffled!"
I mean, he states the shuttle was "deeply flawed". What would he have built? Kept shooting Apollo capsules up forever more? Built an Apollo 2? And if the ISS isn't in a good orbit, what orbit would he prefer? And additionally, how were we supposed to know the Shuttle wasn't a solid idea, until we had actually built a few and tested them operationally?
After nearly 35 years imagine how the original Apollo design might have evolved? We might be on the 10th iteration! The ISS orbits sucks because it is highly inclined and low altitude. Highly inclined orbits are less accessable from low latitude launch sites (thanks Russia). Throw in the new lighting requirements for the Space Shuttle and you have absurdly few launch opportunities from the Cape. The low altitude of the station results in the need for frequent reboost due to atmospheric drag. It is also of marginal use in earth remote sensing because there is no global coverage.
I do agree that a shuttle-like vehicle has great R&D value. Perhaps a smaller reusable vehicle could have been built that integrated smoothly with Apollo launch capabilities.
It seems to me he's just trying to ride the wave of popular opinion that says the shuttle must go and the ISS isn't interesting.
Better that than ride the wave of mindless groupthink that left the US without a space architecture. Now that there is a negative (and richly deserved) feeding frenzy against shuttle/ISS lets make sure we kill the beast!
an ill wind that blows no good
> > Imagine if the Space ship One team had 250 billion...
> They would probably become just as inefficient as NASA.
1/2 billion on Spaceship One, 249 1/2 billion on whores and cocaine.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Because NASA actually wants to get stuff into orbit and beyond, instead of just barely peeking out of earth's atmosphere.
What I think you, and others, fail to realize is why the net, amongst other things, was invented in the first place.
DARPA created the net. Note the D in DARPA stands for "defense", as in, to keep you safe from foreign invaders. The network kept military installations in contact with each other quickly, when someone realized this technology would work just as well in the private sector, keeping people together.
So let's start to think of what other things can be attributed to Defense budgets.
Computers were first used in governments to crack codes from other goverments, arguably dating as far back as Caesar's ciphers (though, you need to think of a computer in the human sense, for this). Mechanical computers aided the government, and eventually the private sector got ahold of the idea.
Human transport! People needed ways to get to people to conquer lands. So engineers figured out how to build extremely effecient bridges, people figured out how to make things float. Of course, these things were invented by private citizens, but were capitalized by, you guessed it, the military.
Firearms, the original concept was invented as a toy, was quickly modified by a government to produce weapons, which were then turned and used again by the government to create designs for even more powerful weapons, which lead us to space flight. But of course, the private sector really had a jump here, the Chinese tried to fire a man into space thousands of years ago. Sadly, I don't think they ever got anywhere...
Face the world around you and realize that governments invent things to control people. Uncontrolled people are less productive than controlled people. Though we might have figured out something as complex as space flight entirely in the private sector, it would probably have taken another thousand years, if even that. People would run around killing people because they wouldn't give them their latest and newest inventions and as soon as someone actually had the time to do something on their own, they too would meet their demise either at the hands of their inventions, or other inventors. People aren't naturally civilized; we are brutes by nature. Just look at New Orleans if you need any example of that. Even when well laid plans were in place, they failed and people took law into their own hands and became what we Americans are so against.
So, please realize that government is a delicate balance, and that the things you and I take for granted are almost assuredly invented because a government needed it. Most of us wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for government, and I'm sorry your middle/high school didn't teach you that lesson.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Jeeze, lax editorial skills abound. The first shuttle flight was April 12, 1981. Took me all of 2 seconds to research that, can't reporters do the same?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
We're soon going to be stuck with the next-gen heavy lift using components of unknown reliability, which forces us to replace component parts ("tune-up" or "overhaul") the system too often and with too large an expense.
Apparently, the SSME's in the heavy lift vehicle will not be reused.
Many of Feynman's concerns revolve around components which become fatigued after multiple uses. I don't think he expressed any concern about the operation of new SSMEs.
SS1 goes no where near as far as NASA needs to go, and SS1 is still fairly immature technology. SS1 had a few good test flights, that means nothing... the Shuttles had over 100 flights (and spent over 1045 days in space), only 2 failed. If you want to know the many ways that NASA has not only helped the Nation, but the entire world with technologies they've developed read this. The formatting is screwy under firefox, if you highlight the text, its easier to read. In short, NASA has done a lot, and you live a better life because of it and their research, their failures, their software all helped SS1 come into being. One of the best things you can do is learn form others mistakes, NASA was the only one willing to take the risks on things like the shuttle, so they were the only one that could make mistakes, now we are learning from them and improving, this is how its supposed to work.
Regards,
Steve
There's a big difference between going on a drive where you've never been before and hanging your rear end out the window waiting for the next 18 wheeler to knock it off.
Fairly tortured analogy, I'll admit, but the first case is what we should do- Difficult things, things we've never done before. That's not the same thing as recklessly doing the very most difficult thing we could possibly, do, like the shuttle.
Oh, and this guy has more advanced degrees and experience than either of us will ever have combined. I'm fairly willing to believe he's a smart person.
There's no excuse for the wasteful and incompetent management of the Iraq war. If our leaders weren't so arrogant they would have required real support from the international community as a prerequisite to invasion. They would have gotten informed opinions from real experts (manipulators like Chalabi make me sick), they would have let skilled people manage the war (not idiots like Rumsfeld), and they would have been honest with their own people. The WMD issue is extremely humiliating for the United States because, to the objective observer, it looks like we invaded the wrong country - and at a time when we had just raided the piggy bank in tax giveaways and were still running an operation in Afghanistan!
Now, it's true that Saddam was a nasty dictator. It's true that Iraq could possibly have had a better system in place. I realize that the popular conservative view of the day is that the rest of the world is full of children that need our constant monetary and military support. None of that even comes close to excusing the blunders, incompetence, and arrogance of our leaders. I'm sorry if this sounds overly liberal, but sometimes it's good to be critical of the government.
therein lies the issue. and it isn't just with NASA. All of our governmental goals are short term.
That's why I wasn't particularly impressed with the description of the next moon shot as "Apollo on steroids".
Apollo was technically absolutely f****** brilliant, and it's amazing that it's been done once. However, it was horrendously expensive, and crucially didn't provide a platform for a sustainable space programme at decent cost.
Justifiable for beating the Russians and getting the Americans to be the first men to land on the moon, perhaps.... to use the same one-shot technology again and again seems gratuitously wasteful, however. And that was Apollo's problem; they spent a lot of money and tons of effort getting to the moon, which was incredible- but once that had been done, they didn't have that much more to show for it.
The space shuttle was meant to do that; even though it didn't work out that way, it doesn't negate the fact the Apollo approach isn't going to build the Americans a sustainable programme.
However, I suspect the expression was intended to fire the public's imagination (with respect to those involved in the space shuttle programme, I grew up in the 1980s, and it just didn't fire my imagination that well).
Or perhaps, since the moon shot is being planned as a first-step and test for the Mars programme, it *will* have to be like Apollo, since getting to Mars is going to be at least as big a challenge as getting to the moon was back in the 1960s.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Come on, give me a break. First off, this guy is a moron. Second, does anyone in here (or in that press meeting for that matter) actually have any clue about the inner workings of NASA or space research?
For starters, the claimed 250-billion was not entirely spent on 1 thing that failed. If they spent 250-billion to make a bolt, there might be a point to this hashing, but they didn't. Of that 250, how much was lost due to setbacks, and how much was used simply because that is what it costs to do the work? Huh?
Even if the end result (the ISS and the Shuttle) could be considered failures (which I think is too blunt a comment), the technology, research, experiences, and developments that came out of this whole ordeal are not to be played-down as worthless. So you think the ISS is a failure, but what about all the parts and work that went into it? It's a literal gold-mine of new technolog and knowledge.
In short, the 250-billion was not a total waste. I'd even venture enough to say that 80-percent of that 250-billion was well spent.
People need to realize that it is not the idea of space exploration that is the problem. The high costs can be attributed (most often) to blunders and idiocies caused by the people managing the projects. What people should really be arguing about is "why things went wrong" not "space is stupid." Anyone who thinks there is no benifit from space exploration, really doesn't know what they're talking about.
I don't like him because he's been part of that mismanagement. Bold face lie. You don't have to like his decisions, but that doesn't make them "mismanagement". He has proven to be an excellent administrator merits of his decisons aside. He has not been a status quo monkey, and has been pro-active in reforming NASA.
..cronies..
I don't like him because he's not taking any responsibility for the problems he's enabled.
Bold faced lie. He hasn't enabled these long term 30 year problems. What an utter lie you just concocted. His work at NASA before went to academia shows without any trace of a doubt he was working towards better science, better exploration technique, and to increase America's leadership in the space field. His academic and private work has also been second-to-none, including his endorsement by the Mars Society and virtually every forward thinking space consortium out there. Why not go try to find some substantive criticism of his space policy. Go ahead. We are waiting.
I don't like him because he doesn't actually have any vision for the future that will keep American leadership in space exploration/science/development.
Well here is the real reason. You are an idiot. The NASA administrator does not set space policy.
You don't like him because he came from Bush. That's it. The only reason. The NASA administrator implements space policy set by the Administration and Congress. If you don't like the implementation, talk to him. If you don't like the policy, talk to Bush.
defense we always hear about these Bush hacks Here is your standard lie. Look up what hack is. This guy is no hack. You are a liar. Lying about the most qualified director NASA has ever had because you don't like Bush or his policies is mentally crippled. And it makes you a liar.
The fact is you've offerend no substantive criticism of the man, except he was appointed by Bush. You've lied by calling him a hack, and lied by associating him with decisions that he actively opposed. The charge of crony applied to his man is beyond laughable. The facts are obvious: you know nothing about him, his management, or the work he has done. You just hate him because he stems from Bush. And now you are going about smearing him.
The main engines have not been the cause of either of the Shuttle's spectacular failures. The solid rocket booster killed Challenger and damage to the tiles on the wing killed Columbia.
To be fair, the main point of Feynman's analysis is that NASA tended to assume that because something was not a problem in the past, it would not be a problem in the future. This is an unwarrented assumption unless you understand all significant aspects of the situation. If there is anything substantial which you have failed to investigate, then you are deluding yourself.
Conditions such as heat, cold, and how often particular equipment is used can vary widely from mission to mission. If you have not exhaustively mapped out the tolerances of the equipment, then you have no basis for saying that success on Mission A gives confidence for success on Mission B.
That being said, Feynman seems to indicate that the tolerances of the SSMEs have been adequately mapped for periods of use on the order of what disposable engines would require. His main concern mostly component fatigue over time.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
100 KHz? Really? I don't know much about power distribution, but wouldn't AC at that frequency cause all sorts of interference? And wouldn't you have to stick transformers everywhere to actually use it?
A bit of googling says yeah, people really do 100 khz power supplies, and higher. But I don't understand the advantage.
My parents were very poor, but I've done quite nicely thanks. To presume there is no 'opportunity' anywhere on Earth except the USA smacks of delusion. I'd rather have opportunity plus a safety net though. Its called giving a fuck about your fellow man.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I can understand wanting to finish the Gulf War. The Gulf War wasn't over--we merely had a cease-fire, contingent upon Saddam continuing to abide by what he said he would do (which he notably broke left and right without real repercussion). But none of that is what Bush claimed. He claimed there were still more WMDs and didn't give the inspectors time to check it out (and ignored what they were saying). And that's inexcusable, given how badly things didn't pan out. I was so very sorely disappointed when he kept is job.
Rationally evaluating the facts isn't conservative nor liberal. It's the way things are supposed to work. Unfortunately, people on both sides of the fence seem to get carried up in the politics and hate and forget this.
I'm getting mighty tired of the hate. From both sides.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
OR...we could stop treating them like children, and open up markets. Like we're doing now.
The "free markets" are bullshit. The Americans and the EU both preach "free markets" and *require* these reforms in exchange for aid; but they don't do the same themselves, subsidising their own industries, and slapping tariffs on processed goods, so that only the raw materials get imported, and the real "added-value" work has to take place within the EU, etc.
You might say that those giving the money are entitled to dictate stuff in return. In some cases, this might be fair; I wouldn't give money to (e.g.) Zimbabwe if I thought it had any chance of ending up in Mugabe's pockets instead of those it was aimed at. But tying "aid" to reforms pretty much blurs whether it's aid or not.... especially when it's required to go straight back into the pockets of western companies charging grossly inflated rates for work. Oh, and those companies *just happen* to be best friends with the government giving the aid.
And let's not even get onto the fact that a *large* proportion of money that is portrayed as "aid" is in fact *loans* that have to be paid back.
Anyway, that wasn't my point. My point was that those that preach the "free market" don't practise this themselves. Free markets? Yeah, well let's stop being so damn hypocritical about that ourselves, then.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Your reply fails to argue for his (NASA head) mismanagement, and simply goes back to irrelevant criticisms of Bush. I offer no defense for the administration (only the NASA guy), and suddenly I'm a "Bush hack." All I see here is argumentum ad odium, guilt by association, and simple ad hominem.
Present one of this guy's policies that has contributed significatly to the decline of NASA in the last 30 years, and I'll concede that he's an ignorant jackass. Until then, I still don't see any substance to your criticism.
I think that would be Napolean rather than Julius Caesar... but yes still thanks to the (French) military.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Was the exorbinant prices that we pay for our NASA equipment. Lockhead, Boeing, etc charge rip-off prices and NASA forks the cash over. For the amount of money they pay they could have opened up their own manfucaturing plants, and made more fleets of ships. 250 billion..that could have been slashed if the government didn't allow itself to get robbed.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
lol. lame. to go HIGHER and with more payload to do what??????? What is it that we can DO by going high and with more payload??????????? What is it that SSO can do now, or in scaling it upwards, that will allow it to do something that we CAN'T ALREADY DO.... without significant redesign? Wasn't that the exact same point of the space shuttle... pointlessly reinventing the wheel? lol. I think so dude.
The only innovative aspects of Spaceship One exist precisely because of the large failure that the space shuttle is turning out to be. Reusable craft that can be launched frequently and inexpensively. That was the dream of the space shutle. Instead, NASA decided to build a big erect penis. Too big - too complex. The pendulum swings, and spaceship one revives an OLD IDEA.
We can already go high. The Russians can already go high (lol, as you put it) and for relatively cheap and relatively safely. More payload - the Russians scale well. SSO still can't achieve orbit. It will need a major redesign and avionics to do so. Guess what that means. Back to the drawing board, buddy - just like with the space shuttle - an evolutionary cul de sac.
The space threshold is arbitrary. The only people who get wet over passing this threshold are SSO fanboys.
"For that, we have an arbitrary definition to blame. In the 1950s an informal group of aeronautical scientists, led by Theodore von Karman, sought to define an altitude at which space began for the purposes of, among other things, ensuring that existing aviation records for speed and altitude would not be shattered by spacecraft. That group calculated an altitude below which "significant" thrust would be required to keep an object in orbit. Those calculations were done in units of nautical miles, and the resulting figure was, according to one scientist, a "very uneasy number to remember." Von Karman then suggested a nice round number, 100 kilometers, which was near the number they calculated, as an alternative. This was eventually accepted by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, and is sometimes called the Karman Line in his honor. The X Prize later accepted this figure for its competition; prize founder Peter Diamandis noted that they had considered setting an altitude requirement of 100 miles, but rejected that after potential contenders noted that this higher altitude would be much more difficult to achieve.
There is nothing that significant about 100 km; conditions there are little different than at 95 or 105 km. Indeed, it is not the only definition for space: the Air Force (and now the FAA) award astronaut wings for those who exceed an altitude of 50 miles (80.5 km). However, thanks in large part to the X Prize, 100 km is now perceived by the media and the public as the boundary of space, an imaginary line where the final frontier begins."
Your KISS argument. No.... rutan acknowledged that simple WOULD NOT SCALE WELL and that they stripped out to keep costs down. The avionics were designed to SOLVE THIS SPECIFIC PROBLEM. That will not scale as this solution solves no current spacefaring problem. How do you plan to GO HIGHER and be MADE LARGER (your words, lol) with a human piloted "spacecraft"?
Oh dude, you kill me in so many ways, the least of which is your inability to parse your sentences and your apparent susceptibility to PR releases and propaganda.
He also acknowledged that SSO was proof of concept and would NOT SCALE WELL. NO SPACECRAFT THAT DEPENDS ON HUMAN PILOTING WILL SCALE WELL. NONE. LOLOLOLOL.
Lol... and the innovative hybrid rocket engine. The fuel mixture is new, but the Dolphin hybrid first flew in 1984. It was innovative tech then. The company that built it folded because no one would fund their subsequent research.
Then, guess what. in 1988, SPACEDEV... the company that designed the SSO "innovative" engines, ACQUIRED ALL THE DOLPHIN TECH for pennies on the dollar. The engine in the Spaceship one is based on a 25 year old design, dude. lol. lol.
Lame.
un burrito me trampeó.
The thing is, even if Scaled Composites had 250 billion in one large lump sum, it wouldn't get them very far at first.
If Scaled Composites found 250 billion in the couch cushions, we would have men on Mars in a decade and a permanent research base in two.
If Scaled Composites had 250 billion the way NASA has 250 billion, with 50 states they were required to spread pork around, an army of existing jobs they couldn't afford to cut, and the possiblility of getting that budget cut any time Congress thought they were taking too many risks... well, I'm still sure they'd make orbit, but that's about it.
NASA's funding has always been low.. Just because they have spent 250$ Billion up to this point does not mean it was a large waste of money. It took them several decades to rack up a tab like that. How long did it take the newest Bush Administration? Couple years? The only reason people (republicans) complain about it, is because they would rather of had that money for either war, oil exploration, or their pocketbook. If NASA had even 25% the funding of the American Military, we would already been living on, and exploring the surface of Mars.
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: j...@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1993 07:16:54 GMT
Local: Tues, Jun 29 1993 12:16 am
Subject: Who I am and why I support Big Science
There have been some questions about who I am and what my positions are. Here are the relevant details for sci.space readers:
As chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce, I have, over the last 5 or so years, been the principle activist promoting the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 and the launch voucher provision of the 1992 NASA authorization.
To preempt some noise:
Allen Sherzer has yet to apologize to me for his repeated slanders in this forum 2 years ago, declaring that my contributions to the passage of the LSPA were insignificant compared to those of Glenn Reynolds, then chairman of the legislative committee of the National Space Society. However, during congressional hearings on space commercialization, the LSPA's sponsor, Congressman Packard, gave me a personal introduction (the only panelist out of over 10 to receive such an introduction) and my organization credit for passage of the LSPA. Congressman Packard did so with Glenn Reynolds sitting next to me on the same panel -- and he did not mention Glenn Reynolds or the NSS. This is in the Congressional Record and on video tape. Allen Sherzer's words are in the sci.space archives of late spring to early summer 1991. I encourage those with access to the sci.space archives to retrieve them and see exactly what Allen Sherzer said and the manner in which he said it.
I've been involved in several other, as yet unsuccessful, legislative efforts to reform NASA, DoE (primarily fusion), NSF and DARPA. In so doing I've come across gross inefficiencies in technology development -- inefficiencies that some small high technology startups were ready to fill with technical advances of great economic and social import. The government agencies I just mentioned see these high technology startups, not as vital partners, but as deadly political threats to the credibility of those, within the agencies, that picked incorrect technical directions. These government-funded individuals drive funding away from those who would bring us critically needed technical advances -- rather than working with and help them.
The dollars we spend on NASA, DoE, DARPA and NSF to promote technology are actually used to suppress this country's technology in a frighteningly effective manner. But when one looks at the political incentives of these institutions, one wonders how anyone could believe it to be otherwise.
My first and most tragic experience in this area was George Koopman's statement to me, made in person just before his untimely death, that NASA had been relentlessly driving his suppliers and investors away from doing business with his company, AMROC. NASA appeared to reverse its behavior in a tokenistic manner just prior to Koopman's death. The first test of an AMROC booster, shortly thereafter, failed and AMROC was forced into capitulation with established aerospace firms. This pattern of hostile behavior from NASA, combined with the means, motive and opportunity, leave room for reasonable suspicions of murder against individuals within or funded by NASA.
This is only one story and I wasn't even inv
Seastead this.
I'm not trying to troll here, but what kind of experiments are being done in space and how do they benefit us? Since the start of the space program, how have we benefitted aside from getting dried ice cream and Tang? It's nice to learn more about the environment we live in, but I can't think of anything offhand that has come out of space exploration other than learning about our surroundings, getting pretty pictures, or development of better materials that were driven by the desire to get into space.
I'm sure there are many valuable things that we have learned as a result of being in space, but most people just don't know about them. Most average non-techies probably do not understand exactly why we're going into space so much - I'm even a nerd and I don't understand. Perhaps the public needs to be enlightened, and they'll be able to appreciate the space program.
This whole budget waste discussion reminds me of a Spaceballs scene. I think it fits perfectly.
Computer: One minute left for self-destruct. It's now a good time to press the cancelation button.
CANCELATION BUTTON - OUT OF ORDER
Generally, the bigger the budget you have, the less efficient and more wasteful you become. You've only got to look at some of the excesses of the .com era to realise that.
.com era is that a little prodigy company cannot grow faster than its natural growth rate, no matter how much money you throw at it.
You are overgeneralizing. The lesson you should learn from the
It is a lesson we should have known already, because we make the same mistakes every generation. NASA is also a product of these mistakes. Capital is not the limiting factor anymore at some point.
Bill Gates' family was already pretty wealthy actually. He was never poor.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
What about feeding, clothing and educating more than half of the planet?
I do live next door to the farmers who do feed most of the planet.
Have a nice day!
China is starting its manned space program from a clean slate. They plan a week long manned orbited on Oct 13, 2005 and manned moon landing by 2015. They dont have 20-year old legacy technology to slow them down.
On the other hand Russian never tried to drastically change its 40-year-old tried-and-true technology, and dont have the US problems.
Woah. The reason governments did these things first is because they have more resources than you or me or even corporations. At first, when building transportation or building computers or building space shuttles was too expensive. And where did government get all those resources? From you and me and corporations! But, the private sector eventually catches up and passes the government by.
The stories from New Orleans were all fabricated. None of that stuff happened. Your vision of a world of people running around killing each other over his/her inventions is a pessimistic and unrealistic view. Shall I start to list all the things government did not invent?
Have you ever wondered what it is about this country, just 225 years old, that has allowed it to run circles around other countries that are thousands of years old?
The shuttle was originally sold as a cheaper way to get things into space. It's not meaningfully cheaper. They said it would cost $28 million per launch. As of January 1986, (in the same 1980 dollars), it cost over $200 million per launch. They said it would turn around in seventy-two hours. As for reliability, how many fatal failure modes does the shuttle design have? What sort of improvement over the final Apollo design is that?
Which of its original design goals has the shuttle actually met?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I know we're beating this topic to death... but that $250 billion would have gone a long way towards Space Elevator research and construction!
They say the mind is the first thing to
Yes, war does drive a lot of research and development. But not the sort of war that's going on in Iraq, mind you
Do you have any idea the sort of field-testing that remote imaging, remote control, combo intertial/gps/multi-sensor guidance, distributed networking/comms technology is getting in a place like that? How about the huge portion of the Pentagon's budget that's going into building Iraq a this-century telecommunications system, real water treatment, decentralized power distribution/management, and so on?
The only people "mindlessly killing" anyone over there are the hardcore Islamo-fascists that want to reinstate a Sunni-esque pan-Arab caliphate, just like the good old days several hundred years ago. If simply bombing a place like Fallujah was at all helpful, there would be no Fallujah standing (never mind that we're busy there building infrastructure now that the large strongholds of insurgents have been removed from that town).
Of course, the US, Britain, etc., are still getting their asses kicked daily by the citizenry of Iraq
Actually, no. Citizens of Iraq are being murdered by insurgents, mostly made up of, and certainly funded/armed/trained by non-Iraqis (Syrians, Jordanians, Saudis, Iranians) that don't want to see a forward-looking democracy take hold there. The Iraqi police and military are not able, yet, to deal with the fact that their own people are being killed by car bombers and the like, or that Al Queda is killing people who do things like work on the country's new constitution. It's very similar to the years that Britain spent unable to completely stop the IRA from killing people there (though the IRA was at least somewhat less likely to deliberately kill school children, and rarely used suicide bombers - at least, not on purpose).
Some US and British troops get killed while supporting and training the local forces, and while handling that which the local forces are not yet anywhere near taking care of on their own. This is hardly "the Iraqi citizenry" rising up against the troops. Ask those very same citizens if they think more, or less of them would die at the hands of crazies like Bin Laden's head boy in Bagdhad, Zarqawi, with fewer US/British/other troops helping out. There's a reason that the majority of the people in that country realistically understand that they very things they've most recently done (like elect their own representatives - something that Zarqawi is preaching as "un-Islamic" and evil) simply would not be able to happen without the stability provided by armed forces. To the extent that those forces cannot be entirely Iraqi, they have to be from someplace else. To the extent that the US, Britain, and the rest of the civilized world benefit from the spread of democracy in that vital, fragile part of the world - we absolutely should be stepping in and staying in until guys like Saddam, and the murderous mysoginistic punks who would like to fill his shoes, are just a bad memory.
How do we do these things as carefully/surgically as is militarily possible? High tech tools. They're being tested and improved every day, and things that weren't even on the drawing board a few years ago are being prototyped and tested in the field where they can do the most immediate good. That R&D absolutely spills over into other areas - even into relief efforts (as supported by new imaging platforms and mapping integration techniques) in the hurricane-struck Gulf Coast area.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
True, I went to government supported primary and secondary schools. However, evidence shows that as the Federal Government has gotten involved with local education, the quality of that education has declined. More involvement, poorer education. We had good public schools in this country long before the US Department of Education came into the picture. Much of the 'astronomical' cost of education is driven by compliance (and documentation of that compliance) with federal mandates that go with federal money.
I've worked in the aerospace industry for the past several years. I'm familiar with the FAA's standards, etc. Oddly, the more exposure I have (to aerospace in general), the less confident I am when a 747 flies over my head. The FAA's safety mission is nice, but it's bogged down with all sorts of bureaucratic nonsense (no more than any other federal agency, though).
What if there was no FAA? A 747 is an expensive piece of hardware ($205M - $236M depending on configuration). If I were buying one or flying one (or insuring one), I'd do my due dilligence to be sure that it was airworthy (whether or not the design complies with FAA standards). There are precedents for private organizations establishing industry-accepted safety standards. The ASME Boiler Code is the example that comes to mind.
I agree that if the government would just give money to somebody qualified, their involvement could be helpful to space exploration, but I just can't reasonably picture that happening.
. . . you can find a nice little island somewhere and live off coconuts for the rest of your days.
No, I'm in exactly the right place. I refuse to leave my home because the Feds have become too involved in areas where they don't belong.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
Can he tell Congress and the Prez the same thing, pretty please?!
***
"How is it that Kennedy says we'll do the (at the time) completely impossible within 10 years and they do it 9 years later, and today we can't even decide if we'll do the completely possible (and redundant) within 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years - or ever?"
You're kidding right?
The obvious answer is that no matter what the current administration proposes, a large part of the electorate will squeal about it. So large, generally, that it kills any momentum a genuinely forward thinking proposal might create.
In short, it's the crybabies, and the cowardly politicians who listen to them too much.
We could preemptively invaded and developed 2 whole countries with $250B. What a waist.
--- Just say no to negativity.
Wasn't skylab a Saturn V tank?
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
How can you say that this war does not demand R&D when we have 50 soldiers getting killed a month?
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For one, we need to have research in ways of detecting IEDs by other means besides having them blow up on us, and the government is working on this:
http://www.hsarpabaa.com/main/BAA0503_solicitatio
http://www.emclab.umr.edu/research/IED_Detection.
http://www.special-operations-technology.com/prin
And we are building a better armored vehicle to replace the HUMMER.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-23-hu
And we need to have a means of intercepting RPGs in flight.
http://www.deagel.com/pandora/cicm_de00400001.asp
This is my sig.
I'm sure the 100,000 (at least) dead iraqi's families are pleased to hear that you're getting tired of the hate. Must be a great comfort.
He was referring to the Russians, but it applies to the U.S. now. We are space pussies. We could have already established moon bases and probably already had a trip to Mars if we hadn't gone crazy with this whole shuttle/crappy assed tin-can of a space station. Where is the big freaking space station that I go vacation at? Or the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino at Tranquility Base? Space pussies.
In other words - Kennedy could promote vision and enthusiasm from his fellow politicians and constituents when it came to exploration and scientific accomplishment, whereas Bush can only seem to promote vision and enthusiasm among those politicians and constituents when it comes to blowing up brown people and sticking religious artifacts in court rooms?
Of course, the US, Britain, etc., are still getting their asses kicked daily
I was just wondering what kill ratio qualifies as "getting their asses kicked." Perhaps you can clarify that? Because the news reports I've seen and the couple of Iraq vets I've talked to have indicated that the kill ratio over there is tilted significantly in the direction of the Coalition, and even the Iraqi police and soldiers are keeping their ratio above one.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
It's about time for the adminstrator to criticize the ISS (and the shuttles)! Dr. Griffin, you got my vote.
On the other topic, will the ISS ever be useful? I doubt it at this point. The number of the crew on board the ISS is limited by the capacity of a return vehicle available in case of emergency. At this point, that's 3 with Soyuz capsule. Unless there is a more capable one coming on line, the ISS will NOT function as a laboratory as it is originally intended (note: at this point there are no more than two docking bays in the design -- one docking bay open for a supply vehicle, and another for the escape vehicle). Quite frankly I don't know how ready NASA/Russia would be when European Space Agency (ESA) or JAXA (Japan) put up modules and demand NASA to let them occupy the modules. That simply ain't gonna happen.
So why did we built it in the first place? Well, first, the Russian had it and the U.S. didn't. It must have occurred to the Congress (and NASA talking heads) that the U.S. could build one, too? Second, the space industry needed a handout (federal grant) from the government? The industry was suffering from one budget cut to another. And the R&D in space research is an art; if you don't exercise the skill, you'll lose it. So did the Congress (and the industry lobbists) see the need for some project (on the cheap) to sustain the technological skills in the field? Is it kind of like what the U.S. did with Tennessee Valley Authority program after the Great Depression (in order to boost the economy)?
I'm totally speculating on these. Doesn't mean to speak with authority at all. But the social aspect of this development leading to this day is sort of interesting.
And so begins the countdown to the privatization of NASA. Halliburton? Bechtel? Anybody?
How about using the usual measure of science, and counting published peer-reviewed papers coming out of it. Plenty for Hubble, and unamanned planetary probes. ISS and the Shuttle? Not so much.
If it were to end today, about half of a war in Iraq.
Nevermind, it said "useful".
most of those loans get forgiven. If you aren't aware of that, you should do a bit more research.
some of the largest cities in the world right now were tiny fishing villages in Africa just 30 years ago, and it isn't from selling fish that they got to be so huge in one generation as to make NYC seem small. Any particular reason Zimbabwe can't do the same thing? Any particular reason why Zimbabwe, or anywhere else for that matter, should need money from the US to do anything at all?
crap, "tiny fishing villages in Africa just 30 years ago" should read "tiny fishing villages in China just 30 years ago..."
"You are NOTHING but a political singularity, and infinitesimal point that emits no light, but plenty of sound and fury signifying nothing."
I think his point is well stated, that credentials don't always express the caliber or qualifications of a person. Your critisim of him chanting next, or the above rant seems to go counter to your critisim of him "You cannot debate."
It seems you can not debate either, given that measuring stick. (pot and black kettle problem).
It would seem that this Griffin character is possibly a credential collector and if he has been elected to an acedemic society, we know he is also very political. If you want hotbeds of political infighting, go to a university. You would think that the scientific community was of one mind. They in-fight incessantly. The process of science seems to be futhered by one scientist attacking anothers research or defending their own, with hopefully some good stable science being the only thing left. So it is not suprising that Griffin has his own fairly strong ideas about how things have been done in the past and I am sure that he will politically further the cause of science and space exploration stearing the process along his own lines when he can. But it does seem to me that his comments about the historical process and the current state of designs is only self serving. (reguardless of his many many degrees)
It will very much be a testbed of new technologies, just not so much cutting-edge tech.
The CEV will be new, though using much OTS technology. The lunar lander will bear little resemblance to the original landers, capable of supporting four crew for a week at a time. The service module will be capable of keeping an additional 25 tons of cargo in lunar orbit.
As for possible conclusions, the construction of a base is a real possibility, especially with the heavy lift booster under development for the CEV. Refining in place of raw materials such as titanium is a reasonable possibility for the mid-term outlook. Maybe at some point it can even be sent to Earth, if it can scale up effectively.
No, it's not a major leap like Apollo was. But it's a good step.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I think NASA is back on doing politics instead of science.
.... that stinks like politics again for me.
Quote: "It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path," Griffin said. "We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can."
So, Griffin thinks the path was wrong? Couldn't it be that the path was right but the conduction was wrong, or some minor planning?
For me that sounds like big games of politics again.
The original purpose of the Shuttle Fleet was not only small lifts and minor exploration. As everybody knows the shuttles carry a hughe main tank, which is dropped after burn out.
The original plan was: take the main tank into orbit, move them into parking orbits, use them later for space stations and interplanetary vehicles.
This was first reduced to: drop them on a parachute for refuling and reuse. And later it was reduced to: just drop them.
If NASA did not had stepped back from the original path we now had about 111 empty main fuel tanks in orbit around earth. If you use 6 main tanks to produce one ISS like space station the shuttle starts would translate to 5 space stations with together 30 fuel tanks used. There would still be 80 fuel tanks left for building manned Lunar vehicles or a lunar orbiting station, or 2 Earth/Lunar L4/L5 stations, probably several manned Mars vehicles and unmanned Mars supplies vehicles.
Landing some on the moon for having a starting base for a manned Lunar base would also be an option. Selling them to other nations with a space program, but not the resources to place "containers" in orbit would have been an option also.
The Shuttle path was completely right, but it got stripped down more and more until only the shuttles itself where left. The reason behind that mainly are political, the cold war was over, no need anymore to to show presence or impress the enemy or to fund the "military industrial complex". In fact budget cuts where needed to use the resources elsewhere (but they did not get used wisely anyway, look at the education system e.g.).
And now, we hear a NASA politician/bureaucrat making big words
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Rutan's technology represents roughly where NASA was in the late '50s and early '60s. Better materials and avionics, sure. But still suborbital stuff on a par with the X-planes or the very early Mercury flights.
NASA's Been there, Done that, and wore the T-shirt on the moon....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
The main problem of the ISS was that it is essentially a low-orbit station. Good for a few "lighter gravity" and "pigs in space" experiments. It is a venture doomed to failure.
What should have been built was a launching point. Situated between the earth and the moons gravity wells. It should be much larger. It should designed as a stop point between the earth, the moon, and a venture point for missions to Mars.
Continually expanded while at the same times endeavorings to mine the moon for radioactive propulsion supplies. These could be safely launch from the moon without fear of mass human hazard (main opposition to nuclear launches being done from earth). Nuclear propulsion rockets could cut the time of transit to Mars by several months.
This is what should have been done. You can read this essential concept in numerous science fiction novels. And you might wonder "how we'd build such units". Well space is a vacuum. We often simply let the "external" fuel container shells drift. When in fact these might provide external shells for non-pressurized storage modules.
Though I see your point, I don't really see how it takes that much courage to fly into space. Hell, I'd give my left arm and leg just to switch places with one of those guys, and I suspect many other people also do. They do great work, but IMHO they are very privileged compared to the rest of us.
We have a big enough problem with space junk as it is.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
"How is it that Kennedy says we'll do the (at the time) completely impossible within 10 years and they do it 9 years later, and today we can't even decide if we'll do the completely possible (and redundant) within 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years - or ever?"
Maybe because for the moon race with the Soviets, NASA was given a practically unlimited budget, and enjoyed overwhelming public support (partially because of all those NASA contracts going to just about every town big enough to have a machine shop)?
Nowadays, the budget is much smaller, the contracts will go to a select handful of aerospace giants, and the populace is so dumbed-down and complacent that scientific exploration takes a back seat to the latest reality show.
Hardly the proper context for huge advances in a few year's time....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Honestly, we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fly a handful of people to mars for what purpose? Just to show that we can? Meanwhile, there are thousands of Americans living in poverty.
In some ways it doesn't seem right that we don't take care of our people better than we do before spending billions on space exploration. The priorities seem mixed up to me.
With that sort of attitude, you'll never get to space exploration. There will always be people needing assistance no matter how much money you throw at it. If you ever reached the point at which you've thrown enough money at taking care of the people in poverty, more people will join the ranks of poverty (those on the borderline of needing assistance) because at that point, it will be easier than working.
Sure, we should help the poorest of the poor, but at some point you've got to say "Hey, you're just going to have to start looking out for yourself, we can't take care of you from cradle to grave."
People's wants will always surpass your ability to provide.
Live forever, or die trying.
Why not just link to Wikipedia about it? They have a good article up about it. That way you don't have to wait for me to come along and post it!
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Umm . . . yeah.
"Kennedy could promote vision and enthusiasm from his fellow politicians and constituents when it came to exploration... whereas Bush can only seem to promote vision and enthusiasm among those politicians and constituents when it comes to blowing up brown people"
Do Vietnamese count as brown people?
I'm sure that was a great comfort to the family, friends, and co-workers of the crews that died on the two shuttle disasters.
You're one of a very small amount of people, though. Most people bow away when they realize how much work and training it actually is to go to space, and then once you get there (unless you are a millionarre hitching a ride on a Soyuz), you have a purpose of being there in space, and you must execute it to the best of your ability, most of the time wearing a suit that gives you the mobility and dexterity of a 3-year old.
Sure, I'd love to fly to space too, but I could never go through the training that's required, I could never keep calm moving at 20 Mach, I could never sleep thinking that at any moment a meteorite could pierce the hull of the ship I'm in and rob me of my life, and I probably couldn't do the mission I was sent to do in the first place being such a nervous wreck.
They are also privileged because they go through a lot of hard work and rigorous training. Astronauts are almost always Air Force pilots, or have trained multiple years in a military branch simply to attain the discipline nessicary to do their work in space. It's not all just a ride in the park. And to be honest, I think it takes a hell of a lot of courage to even step on an airplane to fly over long spans at exceedingly high speeds, or a submarine under hundreds of tonnes of water, but to step into space with radiation, lack of pressure, the cold, and the unknown, these things would scare me a hundred times worse. I honestly think I'd lack the courage of jumping on top of a million gallons of rocket fuel and hoping that it doesn't all explode at once.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Huh? That's exactly the argument that was made. Go back and read all the speeches made before the war. 90% of it was about Saddam not complying with U.N. resolutions.
Er, no. There were claims about continued interest in developing weapons which are still reliable. There were claims about a desire to boost his image in the Arab world by supporting terror, which is still valid. There was evidence presented about Saddam's dodgy behavior which is still valid. But at no point did the President jump up and down and scream "He's got millions of ICBMs! Let's go get 'em!" This is what everybody seems to think he said, however.
As for the inspectors, their phones were bugged, they were followed around, and they worked for the U.N. Combined, that makes them about as trustworthy as a carnival barker. Quite frankly, if you don't trust a regime to control dangerous weapons, why would you trust them to be honest with weapons "inspectors"?
To be honest, I think you are trolling if you can't realize what all the space program has brought us in the way of inventions. Dried ice cream and tang are just the tip of an iceburg...
If you really care to, here are a few links (of course, if you wanted to just learn about it, you could have googled it and hit the first few sites that cropped up instead of writing a, rather wordy, response.
I'll leave you a link that's easy to understand. Just the Beginning of Space Innovation
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
How about subs? Military.
Yeah, I had a sub yesterday for lunch. The military invented those? Cool.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Huh? What color is the sky on your world? Because we don't live on the same planet. What is this "liberal view" that is "spewed over the airwaves these days" that "ignores detail" so the liberals can "point fingers"?
I don't know about the US but here in the UK our prime minister's main speech before the declaration of war went "We know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, we know he can launch them in 45 minutes, [and we need to invade to stop him doing this]" (my emphasis)
I am trolling
And Google is how old?
.com lesson is a bad idea stays a bad idea no matter how much money you throw at it.
The real
The problem with the shuttle was they ran out of money for R&D so they tried to get the Air Force to back it. Which forced them had to make a lot of stupid compromises. If that had gone with the original design it would have cost 1/2 - 1/4 as much to operate but the Air Force insisted it could do a lot of things like "hot landings" that had little to no real value and just jacked up the price.
People still think you need "heat shields" to get back from space but there where functional designs for Parachute that would have let Apollo Astronauts get back from orbit in their space suits. The only real problem was getting them down fast enough so they would not run out of oxygen and getting them from orbit into the upper atmosphere.
We should have done. Going to the moon when it was barely possible gave us nothing and took away a goal that we should have to motivate us now. We should have sent up space stations then, something very possible, and then gone to the moon fairly recently, when it was quite possible and mars started looking barely possible. Then we could go to mars a bit later. We'd get more good science that way.
Is anyone else bothered that this guy is in charge of an organization that we consider on the edge of "barely possible" and he considers such things as mistakes?
Going into space is routine. Using telescopes to observe things is. Sending probes to other planets is very doable, even rovers are pretty much known-working. NASA's job isn't to be constantly pushing the boundaries of technology, it's to do good science with the technology we've got.
I wonder what his vision is? I assume from that statement that its either moderately aggressive or not aggressive at all, and very possible. Lets not explore science because at this point...we kind of know whats possible...why look at the barely possible. Those supercolliders....garbage...get rid of them.
No, but better to build a 30km supercollider that we know we can actually build than start digging for a 60km one and have to abandon it, or turn it on and have it not work. We should do our science with the technology available. Newton worked out gravity from 30-year-old observations of the planets and ones of the moon and an apple that could have been done any time in the last several millenia. You don't have to be on the cutting edge to make discoveries.
I wonder if he also subscribes to the intelligent design hogwash....because I think one of its tenants is that some things are just too aggressive and on the edge of possibility (too complex) that we as humans can't hope to understand them.
No-one's saying we shouldn't try to understand things. But as with anything else, we should be using working, tested technology to do so. You wouldn't try and make a new super-duper barely-possible programming language to write your programs in, why do that with any other area?
I am trolling
But I'm getting sick and tired of listening to the "NASA sucks, Scaled rules!" choir of fanboys.
Then why not give Bob Dylan a chance:
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
and at a time when we had just raided the piggy bank in tax giveaways and were still running an operation in Afghanistan!
You are still running an operation in Afghanistan. And so are several allied countries.
But is it a step worth the pricetag? What else could NASA use that money for? I am guessing a great many things that would be far more beneficial. Or, for that matter, why give that kind of money to NASA? What about the many other issues we're currently facing?
Now that is quite incorrect. But Bush never said anything that urgent. His main concern seemed to be Saddam's violations of cease-fire regulations. Which is not to say that there wasn't a hidden agenda. But the hidden agenda was an attempt to alter the cultural and economic make-up of the Middle East and check the power of Islamic extremist appeals for pan-Arab unity.
Don't change history. Please. We have an administration hard at work trying already...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/2
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. "
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/2
"Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly -- yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
In both of those speeches, there was little cushioning "weapons of mass destruction" with could produce some day in the future. The language and intent was to make the threat seem imminent.
There is a big difference between getting to 100km with a payload of three people and building something that can make it to the ISS and higher orbits with a significant payload. And the reason that the shuttle is several technology generations behind, is because it's thirty years old.
NASA has no clear mission that the average tax payer can understand. Bush's plan of going to the Moon and Mars is another huge blunder, because again, we'll do one-off missions rather than build any real capability to do things in space.
What we really need is an overall plan to identify and develop resources in space that can be exploited economically. The space elevator could easily be completed with the kind of money that was spent on the shuttle and ISS, and it would eventually give us very economical access to space.
We need to work on technology to divert asteroids, not just to protect the Earth from possible collisions, but to capture asteroids that have valuable resources that we can mine.
The New World didn't get settled by explorers, but by people who moved there to stay. We won't really conquer space until we establish and populate colonies in orbit, on the Moon, and on Mars. But even those goals should be put on hold until we have some kind of strategy for making them pay off. Considering the enormous wealth available in a single nickel-iron asteroid, it shouldn't be hard to develop such a plan.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
I don't know about the US but here in the UK our prime minister's main speech before the declaration of war went "We know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, we know he can launch them in 45 minutes, [and we need to invade to stop him doing this]" (my emphasis)
Yet you guys re-elected him. IMO brits are about as lame as yanks
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
About all I can say is I didn't vote for him, and under a representative voting system he wouldn't have an absolute majority and would need one of the other two parties to agree with a law before it got passed.
I am trolling
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/ki ss_nssm_jb_1995.html
... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?"
"There is also some established precedent for taking account of family planning performance in appraisal of assistance requirements by AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and consultative groups. Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production. In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion."
"Mandatory programs may be needed and we should be considering these possibilities now," the document continued, adding, "Would food be considered an instrument of national power?
Kissinger also predicted a return of famines that could make exclusive reliance on birth control programs unnecessary. "Rapid population growth and lagging food production in developing countries, together with the sharp deterioration in the global food situation in 1972 and 1973, have raised serious concerns about the ability of the world to feed itself adequately over the next quarter of century and beyond," he reported.
The cause of that coming food deficit was not natural, however, but was a result of western financial policy: "Capital investments for irrigation and infrastucture and the organization requirements for continuous improvements in agricultural yields may be beyond the financial and administrative capacity of many LDCs. For some of the areas under heaviest population pressure, there is little or no prospect for foreign exchange earnings to cover constantly increasingly imports of food."
"It is questionable," Kissinger gloated, "whether aid donor countries will be prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by the import projections on a long-term continuing basis." Consequently, "large-scale famine of a kind not experienced for several decades--a kind the world thought had been permanently banished," was foreseeable--famine, which has indeed come to pass.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
We didn't know if we were going to win the cold war in 1972. We had to prove that USSR could never defeat u.s. by showing a complete dominance of technology. The space station, on the other hand, represents today's political reality.
Political motivations like this are the reason India and China are so important. India and China aren't bound to political constraints. They have the financial independance to do what needs to be done without regard for involving the right people.
The Air Force did not have reusable manned suborbital rockets in the 50s. There's a difference between a high-altitude testbed and a reusable passenger rocket.
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
I don't have a problem with government serving society's interests. My problem is with the fact that they (particularly the Federal Government) don't do a very good job of it.
Also, I don't want to eliminate public education. I just want the Feds out of it. The Dept of Education wasn't created until 1980. We had universal public education for a while before then . . . I don't think there's any danger of returning to 20% education rates.
I have absolutely no financial interest in the price of a 747. My point was that there are incentives other than the FAA to build safe airplanes. I don't understand your other point . . . competition is _bad_ for the aircraft industry? Why is lack of competition good for the aircraft industry and its customers, but bad for the software industry (ref: your sig)? Monopolies (or duopolies) are bad, no matter what the business.
The ASME does not receive any government support. At least, that's what their most recent annual report says.
I am far from complacent in the state of my government. I am doing everything I can to change things. I vote, I lobby my representatives . . . hell, sometimes I even argue with total strangers on the internet. It may not ever change anything, but it's my right and my duty to try.
Anyway, I'm now way off topic. My original point still stands: as long as the Feds are funding space exploration, it will end up being run the way NASA is now. If I could convince myself that it would be otherwise, I'd be all in favor of it.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
Here's the thinking:
You have Arabic, Muslim regions that hate Americans, want to kill Americans, hate the American way of life, matter of fact, hate any way of life other than their own, but the American one is just particularly obvious.*
I'm reminded of America at the time of desegregation. Iraq is like what would of happened if a black family moved into a white neighborhood. All the KKK members in the area, faced with this affront, this intrusion into their domain, are forced to attack the intrusion, instead of driving down to the black side of town to light their crosses, etc... Except in this case, the black family is armed, and picking off KKK members. KKK membership(besides being more dangerous) is seen in a more and more negative light, because when they become more enthused, they accidentally(or deliberatly) set fire to white homes as well, thus eroding what support they might have.
Another term is a "honey-pot". It's a lure for the undesired element**, drawing it in to a place where it can be eliminated at lower expense, and not damage your important assets.
And that's how we're rendered safer.
*Note: Reasons for said hatred are varied and already fill whole books, and thus are beyond this discussion. If you bring it up, I'll quote Honore at you.
** bugs, internet attacks, spam mail, terrorists, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
Didn't a project/goal like space and IIS cause innovation? Humans do not innovate without a goal/cause/need. I'm sure tons of patents and inventions have come out of this project. Even if just 1% of these innovations has a direct impact on the common man, if that 1% innovation was something along the lines of a microwave oven I think society would see the benefit and it not be a waste. Was it a wise use of the money; too subjective of a question. Opportunity costs always exist and is only a black and white question if the project operates in a complete box totally issolated from any inputs or outputs.
I'm looking at the far reaches of this. I get an emotional thrill from seeing people launched into space, but that's short term. Within a few days, all that's left is the glow of pride I have in our space program. From a more fundamental structure, I look at things like:
I understand that the first two are possible with robotics, but the flexibility of having someone to handle this over a longer run is important to consider. The ability to upgrade in place such equipment without always having to do a special launch for it is something that I also consider to be a positive.
The latter three all go hand-in-hand. It may be more efficient to construct major structural pieces on the moon and send them on some sort of lunar-LEO ferry, and then send equipment from Earth to populate those structures in a technical (and eventually human) sense. The timeline I have pictured for this is over 25-30 years, but I think it's a path worth investigating.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Amen.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Sorry, you're now modded -1 Offtopic. Have a nice day, thank you for playing.
(I am making a joke!)
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
But if they'd spent that much on cocaine, they wouldn't need Space Ship One to enter LOE.
Kennedy said that we choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
The point of NASA is to take on stuff private companies could or would not do. This would set the stage for the eventual trickle down of the technology to private industry. We are starting to see this happen now.
To say we shouldn't have built the shuttle because it barely works now is engaging in a lot of armchair quarterbacking well after the fact. At the time we wanted to push the limit and engage our imagination. Maybe it didn't work so well, but personally I think that amount of money quoted, which is less then will we spend on the military budget for only one year, is not unreasonable.
You shouldn't say that money could have been spent on better stuff. If that money had not been spent it would have gone into more military spending or more tax cuts for the weathly elite.
It's common knowledge that the republican party doesn't like the word "International" so much and so they don't like the ISS project. So I am not too surprised to see this new Admin choosen by Bush to be towing the party line. This administration has been expert in putting such people into power all over the gov't. Personally I don't see any other way to test human ability to endure long term space travel. Maybe the ISS goals could be more focused and simplied in order to bring the costs in line with what is more reasonable and achievable during the expected life of the craft.
If anything we did not go far enough. The original design for the Space Shuttle did not include two things which caused our accidents. In the original plan the external tank was supposed to be a rocket in it's own right that was supposed to be manned and returned for reuse. The booster rockets were added afterward (cause of Challenger accident was faulty O-ring in the booster)
Peace, or Not?
I agree with everything you say. My impression of Rutan, however, is that he is extremely creative and definitely doesn't go along with conventional wisdom. The man has aces up his sleeve that nobody has thought of yet. So yes, despite itself, NASA has done some incredible things. I believe that is because of the talent that ends up there. The really sad thing is the talent is suffocated under paranoid bureaucracy. NASA should be focusing on basic research and issuing licenses.
Laws are for people with no friends.
You're right. You don't necessarily need heat shields. Not if you have enough fuel to actively decelerate, instead of to dissipate the velocity in the atmosphere. :-)
There was a very interesting thread on sci.space.science a few months ago. Try this (a tinyurl link to a deja thread), for example, for some interesting information about why it is necessary to have your heat shields with you when you attempt a re-entry (provided you don't have fuel to decelerate, which - unfortunately - is still waaay off limits for our current propulsion technology).
The cost of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station over the last 20+ years is roughly equivalent to what we've spent on the Iraq war (another mistake in many people's opinions) in the last 2 years.
So the space program was rougly one tenth the cost (and less one one-hudredth the cost in American lives) over-all, of the Iraq war. So far, anyway.
That's a half trillion dollars that could have been better spent.
Now it looks like Hurricane Katrina is going to cost potentially another $250 million.
It does no good, really, to play "woulda, shoulda, coulda" games with this information. We need to make sure we learn the lessons here, and not make similar mistakes in the future. Personally, I think a manned mission to the Moon and/or Mars is wasteful at this point in time. We're running massive budget deficits, and I don't think it's right to ask China and Japan and Saudi Arabia to subsidize our moon mission, given we've been there and done that, and there isn't a horribly compelling reason to send men back there right now. I'm a big space booster, personally, but we have more pressing priorities down here on earth at the moment, dealing with very expensive messes in our own country and elsewhere. Instead I think we should continue to focus on probes and robotic missions that can get us a lot more scientific bang for the buck, and only consider sending people back up once we have our financial house in order back down here on earth.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
most of those loans get forgiven. If you aren't aware of that, you should do a bit more research.
Most? Can you provide some good references?
Politicians say stuff like that all the time then have a nasty tendency to forget about it when the spotlight has moved somewhere else. The perception remains, though...
some of the largest cities in the world right now were tiny fishing villages in Africa [you corrected this to China] just 30 years ago and it isn't from selling fish that they got to be so huge in one generation as to make NYC seem small. Any particular reason Zimbabwe can't do the same thing?
Yep!
It's because Zimbabwe has been systematically driven into the ground in well under five years by Robert Mugabe, and can't feed its own people now. Actually, they're being systematically starved.
But that's beside the point; I never said we should give money to Zimbabwe simply because they were in a mess. That was the whole point. Sheesh.....
Anyhow, that aside, China and most African countries aren't comparable. China wanted to turn into a capitalist society (or their leadership did), and western governments (in particular the US) believed that in doing so they would become less of a threat to the west (though they probably misjudged this in retrospect). So, unlike African countries who are subject to tariffs on their goods, and so on, China is basically given carte blanche to export as much as it likes.
No struggling African country is ever going to be a serious threat to the US, or as potentially strong an ally (if only because they're nowhere near as big). So they're never going to get "most favored nation" red-carpet treatment; but a level playing field might be a start.
Any particular reason why Zimbabwe, or anywhere else for that matter, should need money from the US to do anything at all?
Good question; Zimbabwe shouldn't be getting any direct aid at all, as the problem is man-made. As for some of the others; that's a complex question. I think it comes down to your philosophy; if you think that no aid should be given out with something in return, it depends on what you want.
Certainly, giving loans (not aid) to certain countries under the control of corrupt governments, with the knowledge that the money was likely to be funnelled into the pockets of government officials hasn't done much to make Africa part of the world economy in the past 50 years.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Your post is a perfect reflection of your nothingness. Purely selfreferential in its nihilism. Anonymous nothing Coward.
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Silly clown, let me spell it out for you. Bush's credentials include "Texas governor", which would indicate experience in state and local coordination in Texas disasters. Yet he confesses he doesn't have it. And everyone can see that Bush didn't even have the sense to come in out of the rain, to cut his vacation short as thousands drowned (and worse) - he isn't qualified to be president. That discredits the "he's credentialed" argument in various ways.
While I'm handing out free clues, I'll point out that your obnoxious, anonymous post indicates you can't even read my posts. Keep your hands away from the keyboard - you're hurting yourself.
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Not to mention that the geological discoveries made from the space program are just fascinating. After the geology we learned from the Apollo program's recovery of materials from the moon, I can hardly wait to see what more we will discover during this next 'apollo'. And that was just the first taste... The mysteries of the formation and history of the inner solar system are just laying there, waiting to be discovered...
FTFA:
"Earlier in his career, Griffin served as Chief Engineer and as Associate Administrator for Exploration at NASA, and as Deputy for Technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization"
For years, Griffin has been part of that establishment he's criticizing. Now suddenly all those policies were bad. You show me his record of fixing NASA while he's been in a position to do it. I'll show you a guy positioned to remake NASA as the "Space Force", turning America's space R&D into just another military contractor porkbarrel, just like he's been doing with his Star Wars gig. STAR WARS.
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So he's smart - maybe. He's credentialed, for sure. His boss, Bush, has degrees from Yale, Harvard biz school, Texas governor, but couldn't find his ass in a hurricane. So go fuck yourself - you might hate Bush, but you do worship other idols.
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1) Aero-braking. You can use Mar's atmosphere to slow down your approach, whereas on the Moon it has to be done entirely with rockets. So it's a lot easier to land and take off from Mars than it is from the Moon.
2) Water. Water can be broken down into its base elements and used as fuel, or just used for drinking, plants etc.
3) Gravity much closter to Earths.
So in the long term, a permanent Mars base makes more sense than one for the Moon.
What is it with you? The guy has been NASA's chief engineer and exploration administrator, as well as running the Star Wars program. He's totally status quo. He's another Bush insider, now running against his organization's own record, which he helped produce.
It is you who is the liar, making up nonsense to excuse this guy. Because you love Bush. It's so easy to call out you Republican bullshit artists: just watch your own words betray your own worst fears about your own guilt. You're a liar.
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I was thinking more of "cheap" or "reusable", which it failed miserably. Y'know, things that the Apollo system didn't already do (with the exception of landing at an AFB). And I don't know if "not monstrously more complex than it absolutely needs to be" was a design goal, but it should have been.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Nice try, Anonymous moron Coward. You're serious only the way VD is.
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Bush is entirely appropriate to denounce along with one of his bullshitting appointees. Because Bush is the king of the fake credentials, the incompetent leader lying about being an "outsider", a "reformer". You're the one trying to keep Bush out of that entirely appropriate context, because you're afraid of how fragile Bush is exposed to any light at all. Anonymous crybaby Coward.
BTW, little wet one, what is the "ideology" you're referring to? Just hatred of your own obvious neocon obedience? That must really piss you off, especially when your ideology is collapsing everywhere around you, and hasn't nearly made you the rich Republican you wished for when you cashed in your rotten soul.
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I was thinking, "what a great movie title!" but, as they say, it's all been done before.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
You are a liar. And a retard. He was on the "good side" of the SDI program - working on anti-missle and space programs that actually WORK. As exploration assistant head he pushed for MORE resuable vehicles, MORE space leadership, and MORE advanced science, not the 1970's rehashed shuttle. In the SDI program he personally worked on an anti-missle technology that is in use today in the Aegis cruiser line. He's a scientist you fucking bozo. You are an idiot. He is by far the MOST QUALIFIED NASA administrator in the history of the agency. Calling him a hack is a fucking joke. Name two things he done that are hackish. Name one aeronautical or science organization that opposes. Name two Democratic senators who opposed him. Give us anything of substance. I hate Bush, but I hate MORONS LIKE YOU more than anyone. You just now made up the bit about him re-engineering NASA into SDI. You goddamn LIAR. LIES. LIAR. LYING FABRICATOR. You are blinded by anti-Bush rage.
Of all abuse I dumped on you in that post, all you care about replying to is the one about your obsession with my dick? You've got a lot to learn about yourself, punk. Don't expect any more help from me - it's boring, and slightly nauseating.
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Because kill ratios mean jack shit when your enemy is infinitely more prepared to die for his cause than you are. This is why we lost in Vietnam, not because we were defeated militarily or because of war protestors, but because the enemy didn't care if they lost 20 men for every one of us they killed, and because the people we were trying to protect were frequently the same people who wanted to kill us.
All that stuff you just linked to is insignificant next to WWI or WWII, or even the Cold War. At the start of WWI, many armies were still made up of calvary. At the end of WWII, you had jet fighters, artillery capable of hitting targets 50 miles away, submarines that did not have to surface for air and of course the atomic bomb.
Let's hear some more about how his experience as Assoc Admin of Exploration and Chief Engineer at NASA doesn't make him complicit in the programs he now calls "a waste of money".
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The shuttle is not the shuttle that the engineers designed. It was designed by politicians. The original design called, e.g., for a titanium skin, but we were having trouble with Rhodesia and Russia at the time, so that wasn't politically acceptable. (Uncertain supplies could have been dealt with by stockpiling...but that would still have given money where the politicos didn't want money to go.) Other compormises were made to make the design cheaper. What we ended up with was sort of a cheap (not inexpensive!) version of the shuttle that was originally designed.
Don't say that it was impossible to make a decent shuttle. Say we were never given a chance to find out whether we could or not, because the plans were sabatoged.
Another problem was running the funding on election cycles. There were others.
I'm not speaking about the ISS, because I don't know. I suspect, however, that it had the same kind of interference, or worse.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I've wondered why they don't just stick a big ion drive on the space station and fly it someplace interesting, like lunar orbit. Use it as a pit stop for lunar landings/takeoffs. There are practical uses for a giant orbiting vessel.
The problem with the space shuttle can be summed up in two questions:
1. How much does the shuttle weighs empty ($10,000 per pound to get into space)?
2. Which is more important, get things up into space, or get things from space and bring it to earth?
The first question reveals the hidden cost of the shuttle and the poor design.
The second question goes with the first in that if the purpose is to put things into space than disposable is the way to go. More weight the spacecraft weighs, the less you can put up there.
My questions about the new Moon Rocket are two fold:
1. If you need two rockets (One being larger than the Saturn V) just to bring four humans to the moon, what do you need to take the same size crew to Mars and land on Mars and then return?
2. Why don't Nasa use a ferry system? Store the Command Modulbe (Apollo Speak) on the Space Station and supply it with fuel and just send up replacement parts for the LEM (i.e. the part that was left on the moon) as well. Assemble them at the space station then take it to the Moon. The vehicle that brings the people to the station can be smaller and can be use to land back on earth? A lot more complicated, but a whole lot cheaper reusing these systems this way?
Moderation -1
100% Flamebait
What qualified that post as "Flamebait"? My sharp response to a post called "idiot-logue"? Or just the usual TrollMod cowardice, suppressing posts that call out Bush as a fraud, a fool, a dangerous liar, with specifics?
--
make install -not war
Are you sure you can afford it? I hear it costs $100 billion a year.
Lies about crimes
We lost because we couldn't hit strategic targets, which hamstrung the effort. Had we been able to do so, supplies from North Vietnam to the Vietcong may well have slowed or ceased, with negotiators operating in good faith at the Paris peace talks to avoid having their society -- which still needed electricity, sanitation, clean water, and usable transportation facilities and lines -- completely crushed into the ground.
Iraq and Vietnam are two completely different kinds of war. They both have urban settings and involve irregulars to a high degree, but equipment sourcing, political support, and rules of engagement have little in common.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The internet, i.e. the TCP/IP protocol might have come from military research, but the www came from Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, which has no military usefulness, and both the www and mobile phones, which also came after the cold war, boomed in the 90's in a time when people were less worried about international war for a change and even the Israelis and the Palestinians were getting on for a change.
A good, fear-free market is a better driver of innovation than a paranoid military driven one if you ask me.
I covered this all already.
We lost because we couldn't hit strategic targets, which hamstrung the effort.
We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped by all sides during WWII. Fireboming every last supply trail would be like fireboming every last cocaine field in Columbia - it's not going to make any difference because in the end because they'll just make new ones. No, once again, the reason we lost is because they maintained moral and motivation no matter how many casualties they suffered. The Vientnamese beat us in a war of attrition, the same as they did to the French before us.
to avoid having their society -- which still needed electricity, sanitation, clean water, and usable transportation facilities and lines -- completely crushed into the ground.
Their society was pretty much crushed. And considering that much of the population lived in self-sufficient agrarian villages, the carrot of electricity and running lines was a bit underwhelming.
Iraq and Vietnam are two completely different kinds of war.
There are obvious differences and there are obvious similiarities. One obvious similarity is that the same people we are supposed to protect are the same ones trying to kill us. That tends to be a bit of a downer on the old morale.
1. In 1993, during the design of ISS he wrote a highly public and highly critical letter about how ISS was designed and executed. There were three options presented - A, B, and C. Griffin complained that the review process was designed to emphasize A and C, which HAPPENED to be more friendly towards pork and big NASA spending than the technical merits of space exploration. The selection of many scientists - B- was ignorned and the selection of politicans - A - was the final decision.
2. After the Challenger explosion Griffin wrote that the shuttle fleet should be grounded, and that manned space flight was both two dangerous and two expensive. He stated that a continued expensive shuttle program was bound to end in more disaster and that the goals of science could be met without manned flight while a more robust, cost effective, and reliable vehicle was developed.
3. During his tenure in the Exploration and Engineering fields he spearheaded efforts to increase the amount of science able to be done by probes and satellites, dedicated small research grants to universities - instead of private business - to develop and refine "multi-camera" devices, like the ones used routinely today in all space flights and programs.
4. He selected approved the Mars Pathfinder for initial funding, and protected it against two rounds of funding cuts. His initial foresight by budgeting just $10M over 3 years lead to the best bang for its buck NASA has had in many, many years. $230M for the entire program which more than tripled the quantity of data we had on file about mars, space exploration, and autononmous robotic exploration.
exploration administrator Assistant. This was a "lateral" move, given to him by Dan Goldin for dispariging the ISS program. Punishment. NASA's chief engineer Forced out. During this time he selected, funded, and protected the Pathfinder program. $230M for NASA's greatest technical and PR success in two decades. Fought against the shuttle. Fought to keep the next gen shuttle project alive. Fought against the ISS. Total lies. He's been academia since Bush has been in office. He has opposed the most poignant failures of NASA at the time, hurting his own career on two occassions. In this interview he acknowledges things that are already in the public domain - ie, that the shuttle he fought against is a bad program. Big surprise. You continue to make up lies about the guy. You have provided not one shred of any evidence to backup your hate for the man. You called him a hack. He is not a hack. He is qualified beyond any doubt. Don't like his policies? Fine. Bring them up, and I'll look over your points. But you have failed to that, because you are a hate filled liar who doesn't like the man simply becaues he's connected in some way with Bush. You are a liar and a loser. If you spend a few minutes poking around my comment history and on other sites (dkos?) you'll find that my opinion on Bush is pretty clear.
So he's smart - maybe Yeah, you are right. He's been in academia for 30 years, but he's a total tard. He's obviously an unqualified hack. No business being at NASA. He's the Mike Brown of NASA. What a tool you are. His boss, Bush, has degrees from Yale, Harvard biz school Gentlemen's degrees and grades. He did the minimum. And MBA is worthless and you know it. What we are talking about are engineering degrees, inventive work, and peer reconigition. Can't fake that moron. Not for 30 years. you might hate Bush, but you do worship other idols. Yeah, competetance.
Do you have any idea the sort of field-testing that remote imaging, remote control, combo intertial/gps/multi-sensor guidance, distributed networking/comms technology is getting in a place like that?
BFD. Of the many problems we have in Iraq, technical superiority is not one of them. Are there advancements being made? Of course. Are they insignifigant next to advances made when you are facing equal opponents? Of course. Look at all the leaps that were made in either of the World Wars or the Cold War. The Iraq war is small potatos.
How about the huge portion of the Pentagon's budget that's going into building Iraq a this-century telecommunications system, real water treatment, decentralized power distribution/management, and so on?
Huh, I wonder how much of that wouldn't have been neccesary if the U.S. hadn't spent 12 years bombing that stuff in the first place. In any case, the Iraqis are vastly less impressed by this than you are.
The only people "mindlessly killing" anyone over there are the hardcore Islamo-fascists that want to reinstate a Sunni-esque pan-Arab caliphate, just like the good old days several hundred years ago.
A gross oversimplification, but yes the Sunnis are considerably more pissed off than the Kurds or the Shiites. That could all change if the country dissolves into civil war, or Turkey decides to invade an independant Kurdistan.
Citizens of Iraq are being murdered by insurgents, mostly made up of, and certainly funded/armed/trained by non-Iraqis
A Republican fantasy. Foriengers are comming, yes, but it's to help out the home grown insurgency by Sunnis, they did not create it in the first place nor are they the primary force behind it.
that don't want to see a forward-looking democracy take hold there
Bullshit. You really drink the Fox Kool-Aid, don't you? They hear all this talk of democracy and they just look next door at Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Pakistan to see just how seriously we really push democracy. They just want the U.S. to get the hell out of threre.
First of all, Bush NEVER said that the threat was imminent. He said very, very, very clearly to anyone who felt compelled to actually pay attention at the time that we had to act before the threat was imminent. He then tacked on "Since when do mass murderers announce their intentions to their victims?" or some such rhetorical question. I'm sure you didn't miss it... it was in the 2003 State of the Union Address.
m v
Also, you seem to under the impression that Bush was just making things up out of thin air, when in fact the entire planet believed that Hussein possessed the WMDs, including Saddam's own cabinet and perhaps Saddam himself. The intelligence used came from intelligence agencies around the planet, including the French, Germans, and Italians. And don't forget that Vladimir Putin has said that he told Bush prior to the invasion that he had reliable intelligence that Iraq was planning to attack the US on US soil.
This stuff has been rehashed a million times, and noone who has a clue what they are really talking about would even try the "Bush lied" insinuation around people who pay attention.
You may find this video to be a bit fascinating... actually, you will probably be shocked, as insulated as you seem to be from the actual state of affairs prior to the invasion.
http://www.humanracewatch.com/video/therealdeal.w
It goes on for quite a long time, but you'll get the point after one or two or three or ten minutes.
In Vietnam, a common complaint was that the list of prohibited targets outweight allowed targets because of the desire by the White House to avoid civilian casualties and anything that might suggest that the US was trying to harm North Vietnam.
Dams? Prohibited.
Bridges near major cities? Often prohibited.
Ports? Prohibited.
Rail stations and switches? Prohibited.
Power stations? Prohibited.
Sanitation systems? Prohibited.
Government buildings? Prohibited.
SAM sites if they were next to a school or hospital? Prohibited.
Going into Iraq, bridges, ports, rail stations, power stations, warehouses, government buildings, and a wide variety of others were targeted. Granted, the weapons were far more precise and so a single shot kill on a target was more likely, but even after laser-guided bombs became used in Vietnam, targeting strategic resources was often prevented. North Vietnam had far less rebuilding to do than did North Korea, Japan, or Germany after the respective wars with them were through.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
How do I know this? Because we just spent the past three years doing precisely this task. We developed an entire, cost effective architecture that supported every mission type from comsats to a manned mars mission and all the steps in between. Its technology was the equal of anything Rutan can dream up - and it was done by a team that can actually make more than three of something and have them be identical. Development cost was 1/5th of SDV and could have been shared across users. Real performance and reliability were equal or better to SDV. Sad to say but technical excellence was trumped by personal preferences and political expediency. When those ungainly SDV's show up you should be aware of just how mediocre a solution they really are. Truly the Yugos of the spaceflight world. But hey...a real live astronaut came up with the idea!
When you set a series of limited goals like you mention you end up with a hodgepodge of stuff that is not interoperable, is totally suboptimal as a system and ends up being even more expensive than the previous screwup. The SDV "plan" has fallen into this trap already. They asked: "Go to LEO". Then "go to Lunar orbit". Then "Go to the lunar surface and back". etc. They end up with separate solutions for each problem but with a totally suboptimal overall architecture. Bottom line: it is unaffordable. Meaning; beware of newbie NASA administrators bearing costs for projects that are to be executed by untested government design teams who have NEVER done the kind of work they are being asked to do.
If automobile designers had asked " Go from San Diego to Sacramento" instead of " go from anywhere to anywhere" I doubt the car would be the masterpiece of transport that it has proven to be.
I also think that when people do not have a rigid budget they tend to produce crap. This is true of many authors, artists, musicians, directors etc. Their best work is often done early in their careers when they had strict limits on spending, length of books, special effects etc. Despite their whining they benefit from critical input. They succeed, they get known, remove layers of critical attention like an editor, can command huge salaries and budgets and their work becomes bloated, clumsy and boring. The same can happen with any creative enterprise. NASA just is a few orders of magnitude farther down the budget death spiral.
90% of it was about Saddam not complying with U.N. resolutions.
And wtf do you think most of those resolutions were about? Over 90% of the resolutions that were still relevant dealt with weapons of mass distruction.
Spank spank, neocon beyach.
But at no point did the President jump up and down and scream "He's got millions of ICBMs! Let's go get 'em!" This is what everybody seems to think he said, however.
No, he jumped up and down and talked about mushroom clouds and how we had to invade right now to stop Saddam from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Bush was wrong and so are you. Deal with it.
Why don't you go there and tell those Iraqi families that those figures are inflated. Take up a collection, you might raise enough money to buy you a ticket.
we'll do one-off missions rather than build any real capability to do things in space.
reminds me of someone who writes a script and hard codes every path and command. (to non scripters -- this makes it a rather useless script, good enough for a 'one-off').
so, good point, parent.
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
On the radio he was quoted as saying we would have reached Mars and maybe had a moonbase by now if we didn't spend it on the shuttle and ISS.
I initially disagreed that a moonbase would significantly help the Mars issue, but now agree that it would serve two purposes:
1. Practice living on a desolate body for long periods, including renewable/recycled resource harvesting.
2. Provide an isolated lab in which to test Mars return samples without risking infecting Earthlings (unless moonnauts become latent carriers).
Table-ized A.I.
Perhaps they were mistakes, but the problem is that space exploration is not a known quantity. We are pioneers and pioneers encounter problems. We are often not going to get it right the first time. Nobody does. It was perfectly reasonable to believe that gravity-free manufacturing would allow all kinds of new, unseen technologies. However, because it hadn't yet been tried heavily, nobody knew. You cannot explore the unknown via a Gaant chart and flowchart. In real exploration you don't know where the arrows lead until you get there.
Table-ized A.I.
I pretty much agree with Griffin.
We didn't get what we wanted with either the shuttle or ISS. I think it's time to say, "Well, that didn't work. Let's try something different." However, we've learned quite a
bit and can apply the lessons on the next generation. I don't expect that we can apply all the lessons. We can't even agree on what they are. We can try to address some of the big problems.
Here are a couple things I think we may(?) have learned:
1) projects over $1 Billion or so are difficult to manage efficiently,
2) budgets need to be more reliable for long term projects,
3) space exploration and space development are not the same.
I think that the manned space program is really more about space development than exploration. As such, I think it should be split off of NASA and given its own agency with a budget that is separate and managed as a long term investment. NASA has done very well in more science oriented ventures, such as the Mars rovers, Deep Impact and Cassini.
Apollo was successful, but the time from inception to a man on the Moon was still less than ten years. The shuttle project is over thirty years old! The management techniques used for the science missions does not work for building a space infrastructure. The shuttle was meant to be the foundation of a space transportation system and ISS was to be a colonial foothold.
Think of this, thirty years after Apollo, we haven't gone back. Thirty years after Columbus, there were cities in the Spanish colonies with paved roads and a university!
Alcanazar
Here
and here
explain why it hasn't been debunked (apart from by unqualified journalists).
the rich can get richer. big deal. I dont care so much about that. Im more worried about people with no health insurance who cant afford to eat healthy food. I guess that makes me a pinko lefty communist.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Post 4 knows what he is talking about. But, he missed the point. "A large surface area does buy you something: you decelerate earlier, in thinner air, and the heat is spread out over a larger area. This lowers temperatures and makes materials problems much easier. But things still happen just about as quickly."
When you're getting back from orbit your dumping all that kinetic energy as drag. ~50% of that heat ends up on your craft and 50% ends up on the ship. The problem is you can't dump that heat to the air because your drag is also heating the air next to where you want to cool things down. Which greatly increases the temperature your ship get's to. Now with a shoot all the heat is dumped on one side but the other is a vacuum so you get to dump that heat much faster. You also get to dump the energy at higher altitude as you add more surface area that lowers how much and how fast you heat your craft (As your dumping a higher % of the heat on the shoot).
For small craft heat shields are probably a better option, but for something the size of the shuttle your dumping x^3 more energy in x^2 more space. So if you double the size of the ship you get 8x the mass but that's ok cuz you can add 8x the shoot but it's much harder to keep increasing the temperature that the heat shield can take.
PS: The advantage of the Para sail is you get some lift which increases the time it takes to land which decreases the need for exotic materials (but you need more insulation because while the oven is not as hot your in there longer there comes a point where a little active cooling can go a long way to help this.) And, you get to control where you land / avoid the bump you would get from a normal shoot. Wings also give you this with out them the shuttle would need an insane shoot to keep from killing people as it drops like a rock.
Think about this would a single sheet of paper burn up on reentry?
Especially since Scaled Composites can't put a tiny ship with barely any payload into low orbit now. They can put a tiny ship with barely any payload quite high up in the sky on a ballistic flea-hop, but they can't orbit yet. IIRC they didn't even match Shepard's flight, never mind Gagarin's.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The SSME is . . . a race car engine! I guess there is not much wrong with the design apart from the fact that the engines are required to be very light weight for their thrust, operate at very high chamber pressure so they are efficient at both low and high altitudes with a fixed nozzle. These engines are operated on the edge of what the materials can handle, much like race car engines or the R-3350's on the WW-2 B-29's. After seeing video of maintenance being done on the SSME's, these very high tech engines being serviced by techs with those ubiquitous red multi drawer tool cabinets, it dawned on me that we should contract the whole thing out to Roger Penske. He and his race car mechanics have a lot of experience doing tear downs and reassemblies of such motors. By the way, if the SSMEs get used in heavy lift boosters, do these engines get thrown away? Do they even have production lines to make any more SSMEs?
Exactly. Which was and still is a completely valid reason for invading since Iraq was attempting to purchase materials for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. And they already had quite a bit. They just didn't have massive stockpiles of ICBMs that the Left suddenly thinks we went there to get.
Contrary to popular belief, SS1 is only an aircraft, not a spacecraft.
It is claimed that SS1 reached "space" which "starts" at an altitude of 100km. Nonsense.
Space does not "begin" at 100km, or at any other altitude. Achieving space flight is a question of speed, not altitude, and SS1 didn't come close. The minimum speed needed to reach orbit is around Mach 22, or almost ten times faster than SS1 achieved. To get SS1 up to that speed would need a lot more fuel, and fuel is heavy. The tanks needed to hold that extra fuel would also be heavy, and would need to be discarded when emtpy.
Beginning to sound a lot like a multi-stage rocket, isn't it?
Apart from the fuel problem, the engineering problems involved in building a plastic airplane that can withstand the stresses of Mach-22 flight would be immense. And then there is the heat of re-entry to deal with. Melted plastic, anyone?
Don't get me wrong: Rutan and company at Scaled Composites are totally cool dudes, and they are building some awesome aircraft. But SS1 is a far from being a spacecraft.
Did you even read those press releases? They make my point precisely. Constantly, the President stresses the duplicity of the Hussein regime. This is the casus belli. And in reference to WMDs, he makes those very clear statements that Saddam possessed WMDs and was actively working to obtain more. After the invasion, we found plenty of evidence that this was true. Hussein didn't have enormous stockpiles of long-range MIRV-tipped ICBMs ready to obliterate all of America, but that was never the threat in the first place. This isn't the cold war.
Just as an example, immediately following your first quote, Bush said this:
As we see, the threat was that of an easily transportable and small to medium quantity of an agent being passed to Hamas or another terror organization and moved to our nation or an ally like Israel, where it would be used to kill. Saddam supported terror organizations because he wanted to be seen as a pan-Arab hero. The likelihood of this scenario is so astonishingly great that to take any other action than regime change is little short of idiotic.
From the 2003 State of the Union address:
This, to me, was the clincher. It quite frankly doesn't matter to me what Saddam Hussein, or Kim Jong Il, or the Ayatollah are or are not doing. Their behavior itself is indicitive of a threatening posture and is worthy of action. The fact that Saddam kept playing shell games with the United States and the United Nations was evidence enough that he needed to be removed. If you let somebody like Hussein go on and on with that kind of behavior, sooner or later you will regret it. When 300 million people are relying on you to protect them, hoping things won't go wrong isn't reasonable.
Of course, there were other useful objectives in the war too. The goal of social, political, and economic changes in the Middle East is worthy, in my opinion. The strategic position between Iran, Turkey, and Syria is also helpful.
You bet. Many times. I also read your reply to the GP post at the time many times before replying. GP said:
You then said:
(emphasis mine)
No, everyone did not think he said there are millions of ICBM's. I'm sorry if I assumed you were just exaggerating to make your point. Obviously you were being serious. Everyone thought he said exactly the quotes I posted, which were from public speeches made before the war. They clearly state that he thought they had such weapons in their possession. Whether they were on ICBMs or not is irrelevant since the second clearly stated thread in those speeches was that Sadam had links to terrorists and therefore those weapons would be available for them to use.
The fact remains that there have been no WMDs found since our second invasion. And credible reports of sites able to produce such things on reasonable timescales are few to none. His explicit link to terrorists has also proved extremely tenuous. History will eventually tells us (hopefully) if this was purely misinformation or organized deceit. What's appalling to me at this point is that there has been little credit taken, apologies made, or change in course based on the fact that this critical "evidence" used as a major part of the justification for the invasion was not true.
This attitude:
Is what saddens me most about the country today. Our global dominance has reduced the lives of many in the world to an expendable commodity for our prosperity and "security".
Dams? Prohibited.
Sure, and those are all critical targets in a war such as WWII, where the German army was dependant on oil refined in Austria and was occuping land with hostile locals that were happy to out them. That doesn't cut the mustard when you're "defending" a country from large segments of its own population in a war of attrition. The Viet Cong didn't need railroads, bridges or dams to wage its war when all they needed was to backpack some mines and sniper rifles through the jungle. Same goes for the Iraqi insurgency - they don't need tanks or supply lines when their weapons are IED's and assault rifles. And last time I checked, every household was allowed to have one AK-47.
Going into Iraq, bridges, ports, rail stations, power stations, warehouses, government buildings, and a wide variety of others were targeted.
Yup, and if we hadn't gone all out in bombing civilian infrastructure, we wouldn't have as much of a problem with reconstruction or winning over the Iraqis.
Which was and still is a completely valid reason for invading since Iraq was attempting to purchase materials for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
No, they weren't.
And they already had quite a bit.
No, they didn't. I suppose you are one of those polled who think that Saddam had WMD's and that we found them already. This crap was all debunked years ago.
They just didn't have massive stockpiles of ICBMs that the Left suddenly thinks we went there to get.
Nice revisionist history. Here, lets review: three years ago Bush said that Saddam had signifigant stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and was actively trying to aquire nuclear weapons. Bush said this wasn't a war of choice, it was a war of necessity, and that Saddam was such a threat that we had to take him out right now. Of course, this all turned out to be false.
Try playing a game with yourself. It's called, "what if Clinton did it". What if Clinton had convinced the nation to spend hundereds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives on what turned out to be false pretenses. What if Clinton had sat on his ass for half an hour while he knew an American city was under attack. What would your reaction be if Clinton gave multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to a company formerly headed by his Vice President. And so on.
In Vietnam, we weren't defending all of Vietnam. We were defending South Vietnam. Go find a map from the era, or read a history book, and you'll see that they were two countries with two different governments. We were prevented from targeting much of the infrastructure in North Vietnam which might have forced Hanoi to the bargaining table to address peace earnestly. Hanoi is where the Vietcong got their equipment and much of their training. Get Hanoi to agree to stop that, and the Vietcong would have been much less of a threat.
As for Iraq's infrastructure damage, go grab a copy of Google Earth and start looking over the dams, bridges, and various other locations, and tell me just how much of the infrastructure actually was taken out. I spent part of yesterday marveling at the traffic jams that appear to be common at major intersections in Baghdad, and all the parking lots full of cars. You don't have to destroy every bridge or rail station if you can take out a key chokepoint. What was taken out would be almost completely back in place if it wasn't being blown up periodically by the insurgency.
I've talked to people who have done at least one tour over there, and they say that while things were bad in some ways, they never were even close to the descriptions that were used by the anti-war protesters that suggested we'd carpet-bombed entire cities into the ground. The situation is miles ahead of where they were even a year ago. The problem is that no one has reported clearly on what has changed, what has not, and what has yet to be done.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
This was recently sent out to NASA employees and I have copied it directly. The only thing changed is the name and contact info for "Point of Contact" have been removed. I tend to believe that he is the kind of guy that doesn't really think the two huge centerpeices of NASA tech are blunders or mistakes.
Point of Contact: D*** A*****, Public Affairs, 202/***-***
Message from the Administrator
I'm sure you've seen the press coverage concerning my supposed comments on
the space shuttle and International Space Station, beginning last Wednesday.
I've been in Russia since the day the article came out, and have therefore
missed most of the reaction to it, but I've received enough e-mail to
realize that I didn't handle the situation well and have left some hurt
feelings behind. So, I thought I should make the effort to clarify the
situation, and this e-mail to all of you is the best way I know to do it.
The attention-getting parts of the story were, of course, associated with
the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder" in connection with the
shuttle and station programs. The press coverage has been such as to make it
appear that I used those words to characterize the programs. In fact -- and
I would hope that this goes without saying -- I did no such thing. I was
asked by an interviewer if shuttle had been "a mistake," and I provided my
answer, which addressed the difficulty of the design challenge and the
paucity of funds with which it was undertaken. This answer was given in the
article, and was quoted correctly. But the use of words such as "mistake"
and "blunder," as well as the overall pejorative tone of the article, was
not reflective of my remarks nor of the general context of the discussion.
At the strategic level, I think all of you know that I believe we have been
restricted to low Earth orbit for far too long and that the proper focus of
our nation's space program should be the exploration of our solar system. I
do understand that others will disagree. In that context, it is useful to
recall Norm Augustine's observation that most people believe we should have
a robust space program; it is just that no two people agree as to what that
program should be! But it is my sense that this debate has been had and has
been resolved for the time being. The Vision for Space Exploration is the
right path, and it is the path that we are re-engaging our agency to follow.
I am committed to it.
With that said, I do hope you know that I would never speak of our efforts,
past or present, in a way that would be intended to denigrate the efforts of
the engineers, technicians, managers, scientists, and administrative
personnel who "make it happen" at NASA and at our contractors.
As I have often said publicly, the shuttle is the most amazing machine
humans have ever built, and it has been the recipient of the most brilliant
engineering that America can provide. The station is a more difficult
engineering project, by far, than was Apollo. It is true that we have not
met our original goals for these programs, for myriad reasons dating back 35
years or more, involving strategic and budgetary decisions made, properly or
otherwise, above NASA. Although this is not the fault of the dedicated
people, past and present, who have worked in these programs, I think we all
know that we can do better, and that we will. But even if everything were
in our favor -- and it is not -- it would be several years before we could
have available a successor to the shuttle. In the interim, we must complete
the station and the only tool with which we can accomplish that is the
shuttle. At this point, an expeditious but orderly phase-out of the shuttle
program, using it to complete the assembly of the station while we develop a
new system, is the best thing we can do for our agency and for the nation.
These are the messages I have tried to convey. It is not my intention
Thought people might find this interesting. We received the following email today: Message from the Administrator I'm sure you've seen the press coverage concerning my supposed comments on the space shuttle and International Space Station, beginning last Wednesday. I've been in Russia since the day the article came out, and have therefore missed most of the reaction to it, but I've received enough e-mail to realize that I didn't handle the situation well and have left some hurt feelings behind. So, I thought I should make the effort to clarify the situation, and this e-mail to all of you is the best way I know to do it. The attention-getting parts of the story were, of course, associated with the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder" in connection with the shuttle and station programs. The press coverage has been such as to make it appear that I used those words to characterize the programs. In fact -- and I would hope that this goes without saying -- I did no such thing. I was asked by an interviewer if shuttle had been "a mistake," and I provided my answer, which addressed the difficulty of the design challenge and the paucity of funds with which it was undertaken. This answer was given in the article, and was quoted correctly. But the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder," as well as the overall pejorative tone of the article, was not reflective of my remarks nor of the general context of the discussion. At the strategic level, I think all of you know that I believe we have been restricted to low Earth orbit for far too long and that the proper focus of our nation's space program should be the exploration of our solar system. I do understand that others will disagree. In that context, it is useful to recall Norm Augustine's observation that most people believe we should have a robust space program; it is just that no two people agree as to what that program should be! But it is my sense that this debate has been had and has been resolved for the time being. The Vision for Space Exploration is the right path, and it is the path that we are re-engaging our agency to follow. I am committed to it. With that said, I do hope you know that I would never speak of our efforts, past or present, in a way that would be intended to denigrate the efforts of the engineers, technicians, managers, scientists, and administrative personnel who "make it happen" at NASA and at our contractors. As I have often said publicly, the shuttle is the most amazing machine humans have ever built, and it has been the recipient of the most brilliant engineering that America can provide. The station is a more difficult engineering project, by far, than was Apollo. It is true that we have not met our original goals for these programs, for myriad reasons dating back 35 years or more, involving strategic and budgetary decisions made, properly or otherwise, above NASA. Although this is not the fault of the dedicated people, past and present, who have worked in these programs, I think we all know that we can do better, and that we will. But even if everything were in our favor -- and it is not -- it would be several years before we could have available a successor to the shuttle. In the interim, we must complete the station and the only tool with which we can accomplish that is the shuttle. At this point, an expeditious but orderly phase-out of the shuttle program, using it to complete the assembly of the station while we develop a new system, is the best thing we can do for our agency and for the nation. These are the messages I have tried to convey. It is not my intention that they should be used to criticize or diminish the efforts of those who have devoted their lives -- and in some cases given their lives -- to the space program. Space technology is still in its infancy. To criticize the shuttle and station because our best efforts have fallen short of the goals we have set would be like criticizing the early aviation pioneers because they did not understand, then, how to build transcontinental aircraft. In this business, our goal is to push the frontiers of technology, to learn what we can by doing so, and then move on. And that is what we will do. Thank you all for your time and attention. Michael Griffin NASA Administrator
Message from the Administrator
I'm sure you've seen the press coverage concerning my supposed comments on the space shuttle and International Space Station, beginning last Wednesday.
I've been in Russia since the day the article came out, and have therefore missed most of the reaction to it, but I've received enough e-mail to realize that I didn't handle the situation well and have left some hurt feelings behind. So, I thought I should make the effort to clarify the situation, and this e-mail to all of you is the best way I know to do it.
The attention-getting parts of the story were, of course, associated with the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder" in connection with the shuttle and station programs. The press coverage has been such as to make it appear that I used those words to characterize the programs. In fact -- and I would hope that this goes without saying -- I did no such thing. I was asked by an interviewer if shuttle had been "a mistake," and I provided my answer, which addressed the difficulty of the design challenge and the paucity of funds with which it was undertaken. This answer was given in the article, and was quoted correctly. But the use of words such as "mistake"
and "blunder," as well as the overall pejorative tone of the article, was not reflective of my remarks nor of the general context of the discussion.
At the strategic level, I think all of you know that I believe we have been restricted to low Earth orbit for far too long and that the proper focus of our nation's space program should be the exploration of our solar system. I do understand that others will disagree. In that context, it is useful to recall Norm Augustine's observation that most people believe we should have a robust space program; it is just that no two people agree as to what that program should be! But it is my sense that this debate has been had and has been resolved for the time being. The Vision for Space Exploration is the right path, and it is the path that we are re-engaging our agency to follow.
I am committed to it.
With that said, I do hope you know that I would never speak of our efforts, past or present, in a way that would be intended to denigrate the efforts of the engineers, technicians, managers, scientists, and administrative personnel who "make it happen" at NASA and at our contractors.
As I have often said publicly, the shuttle is the most amazing machine humans have ever built, and it has been the recipient of the most brilliant engineering that America can provide. The station is a more difficult engineering project, by far, than was Apollo. It is true that we have not met our original goals for these programs, for myriad reasons dating back 35 years or more, involving strategic and budgetary decisions made, properly or otherwise, above NASA. Although this is not the fault of the dedicated people, past and present, who have worked in these programs, I think we all know that we can do better, and that we will. But even if everything were in our favor -- and it is not -- it would be several years before we could have available a successor to the shuttle. In the interim, we must complete the station and the only tool with which we can accomplish that is the shuttle. At this point, an expeditious but orderly phase-out of the shuttle program, using it to complete the assembly of the station while we develop a new system, is the best thing we can do for our agency and for the nation.
These are the messages I have tried to convey. It is not my intention that they should be used to criticize or diminish the efforts of those who have devoted their lives -- and in some cases given their lives -- to the space program. Space technology is still in its infancy. To criticize the shuttle and station because our best efforts have fallen short of the goals we have set would be like criticizing the early aviation pioneers because they did not understand, then, how to build transcontinental aircraft. In this business, our goal is to push the frontiers of technology, to learn what we can by doing so, and then move on. And that is what we will do.
Thank you all for your time and attention.
Michael Griffin
NASA Administrator