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Shuttle Retirement Costs Divert Science Funding
FleaPlus writes "Although overall NASA funding is expected to increase next year, NASA has announced plans to divert money from its science program to help pay for the expected cost overruns for flying the Space Shuttle safely until its retirement in 2010. A number of science projects are being canceled or delayed indefinitely."
This might be classified as hindsight, but NASA has FORSEEABLY painted itself into a corner. The ISS is going to fail without the shuttle, yet NASA (or those that set policy for NASA) procrastinated with building a replacement for the shuttle for years and years. Now the Shuttle has been bleeding NASA dry, yet they can't abandon it without losing the ISS. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.
They really need to make some hard choices. One possibility would be the diverting of funds to find out how to assemble the ISS with existing hardware, mainly Russian, as they are the only ones with heavy lift vehicles, though this might be very difficult. Another might be to try to reconfigure the shuttle platform as a heavy lift vehicle, thought that would take time and the ISS would be on hold. Of course the ISS is on hold now too...
The problem with the shuttle is, that a tremendous amount of energy is used to lift not only the required ISS part, but also a heavy hunk of 70's junk covered in tiles. This is not a smart way of lifting things into orbit.
I'm sorry, but NASA really needs to find a way to ditch the shuttle real soon. Considering the fact that the new Federal budget gives no hope of fixing the huge deficit, NASA money might be harder to come by in the near future, even thought they did get their money this time around.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Wow, so nasa is now like an airline I guess. Just trying to keep flying those pointless shuttle flights.
Kill the shuttle and keep the science, after all they are going to spend 100 billion dollars to get back to the moon and do nothing there AGAIN, no base, no telescope, no science, most likley just golf.
STUPID
Eh? What does this have to do with religion?
Due to problems with the shuttle and extreme caution involved with current and future shuttle projects, the cost of running the space shuttle program has jumped. They had to get the money from somewhere within the NASA budget. Grabbing more from Congress isn't going to happen when you've got an $8 trillion budget deficit and cost overruns left and right. Congress has no fiscal discipline, and this is the result.
The two reasons the Russians can get cosmonauts into space for $60m per flight is that wage costs are *much* lower than in the US, and they're flying them on a ship that's vastly less capable than the shuttle. If the US could pay Russian-level wages, the shuttle would be a lot less expensive to fly too.
On the shuttle's safety record, it's in the same ballpark as Soyuz. One accident on Soyuz would tip the balance back in the shuttle's favour. The difference is not significant. Also, Soyuz has had plenty of close calls in recent times.
There's more to it than just keeping a spaceship flying or maintaining the basic science. The space program plays an important role as the "carrot" to inspire young engineers and scientists. The thought of one day going into space or living on the moon drives a lot of 8 years olds down the path of math and science. Most never end up working in the space program, but if all future engineers think they have to look forward to is designing braking systems at Ford (not that there's anything wrong with that) even fewer students are going to head in that direction. Throwing a few dollars at hungry people isn't going to fix the problem (especially when the problem generally isn't lack of dollars but 3rd world corruption). It's the ranks of future engineers and scientists that will increase food production and find cures for diseases...
Note I'm not saying this is the way things should be, but if you want an actual space program instead of a white-elephant jobs program you have to address the real problem. The continued existance of the shuttle program is a symptom of a structural problem in Congress, and that has to get fixed before you can expect anything useful from NASA beyond the odd robotic probe.
Seriously; I hate Bush - and religious fanaticism - more than most people, but parent post is no more than a troll or flamebait! The current NASA situation is not a result of the current administration as it is a result of years and years of under-funding and beating the PR dead horse called Space Shuttle. Regretfully, NASA has no viable alternative but to keep the Shuttle in service, despite it being an old, inefficient, money-guzzling launch platform.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
1. Talebans? bin Ladin? Terrorists? - all funded by US$
2. Fueled and blown up untill it burst by capitalits greed
3. Kyoto protocol anyone? Nah, why bother?..
4. Those are called "ricochetes": "... Ricochets are one of the main dangers of shooting because after bouncing off an object the bullet that ricochets poses an unpredictable and serious danger to bystanders, animals, objects, or even the person who fired the shot."
The only thing the shuttle is good at is launching payload and people at the same time when the payload has to be delivered to the same place as people and possibly serviced prior to installation. In reality this is usefull only for space construction and nothing else which funnily enough is the program US insists on closing. Even in that case sending the payload on a proper heavy booster like Ariana, Proton, Energia or Delta 5 and people separately will end up being cheaper and safer.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The shuttle and space station have been sucking funding from other programs for years now. I recall reading an article in Aviation Week a couple years back talking about how NASA had eliminated all funding for rotorcraft (helicopter) research. Much aviation related research has gone the way of the dinosaur, needed to keep the space station and shuttle going. The first A in NASA used to stand for aeronautics, now I'm not sure what it stands for.
Similarly the large number of Jesuit scientists should be enough to show that at least some parts of christianity can be seen to be in favour of scientific research (science afterall is the only thing that can let you see god's own handwriting in creation).
James P. Barrett
No, this has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the fact that NASA exists in the real world.
:)
That's the same world where you and I exist; even if you would happen to a billionaire (I'm certainly not one) there is always some level beyond which you have to prioritize, beyond which you can't have everything. Most people learn this as little toddlers however a lot of (or all) politicans love forgetting it if it can get them elected
In the system which NASA exists that power of priority is in the hands of Congress (mainly) & Senate, however in this case it is NASA itself which is rearranging and reprioritizing at their own discretion.
Yes, one can argue for more money to NASA (even if they've already gotten more). Yes, I support "pet" projects of my own (like the Dawn mission which is on hold, and that's just a start; if I started listing all the things I'd like to see it would keep me occupied for the rest of my life) and I would of course love to see them get a massive increase in support. But neither changes the fact of how the world works or that there are other things than NASA which needs funding and/or which a majority of the elected representatives across any boundary deem important enough to manage to agree upon.
Enter the current plethora of private space initiatives; it's the only solution because it strives and directly aims to be economically profitable (something which 1. simply isn't NASAs job and 2. for the most part wouldn't even be legal for NASA as they as part of the US government aren't allowed to for example hold patents).
To sum it up: if you don't expect "this kind of thing" from anyone and everyone, always, you're going to be constantly disappointed (and to no gain for anyone including yourself).
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this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
At the same time, I do think space programs are good things, and Science in general is great, but I was just saying that money is often used in vain things instead of doing something that might actually make a difference to a significant amount of people's lives.
They lost one in the early flights, and three in a later one due to a faulty pressure valve (the craft itself landed perfectly fine asfaik). Also in terms of deaths I was talking about on the flights with accidents that I mentioned.
It's vastly easier to design a high-survivability capsule than a high-survivability 'space-plane' because it can take much higher stresses and still be able to land.
My point basically, for the foreseeable future a capsule is simply a safer (and cheaper) design to use. You can't really argue that the Shuttle is safer or even as safe, a US made modern capsule can easily do much better by design alone. It may not of course however then it is a problem of incompetence.
Low radioactive waste (ILW ) includes parts of the building, cooling water, steam generators etc. Probably several hundreds of tons of material... imagine the uranium mill tailings from the initial processing of the urainum ore. If you need to shoot this stuff into space, you have probably done the most unprofitable investment ever.
My point is that if you incur these cost into the cost of a nuclear plant - just about every other form of energy generation looks cheap in comparison.
What immediate benefits? How about turning that around and saying: "living and working in space" is not something that's going to be done on any scale for decades, so what does it matter if it's delayed a few years when the funding could be used for research that has more immediate benefits? Rather than talking out of my hat I'm saying that as someone who's done some work at the Langley Research Centre...
Personally I'd rather increase manned exploration, which will have more immediate benefits.
Such as?
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for manned space research (and one day I hope to be up there, too). But seriously, think about what "living in space" alone would accomplish in the next decade or so. Especially on board the ISS, which cannot function in the foreseeable future (I'm thinking the number of 10 yrs right now).
At this point the ISS is simply a money drain. It's not doing anything at all. It cannot do much of anything til it is fully staffed (can't do, b/c we don't have a vehicle to ferry them back & forth...such vehicle isn't even designed yet). Quite frankly the ISS was a failure from the gecko; it is still not canned because it's an international mission (and it'd kill Russia's space program for sure).
What chaps my hide the most is the loss of the Terrestrial Planet Finder. That's the one project with the biggest potential to change the whole way we look at the universe and our place in it. It could be the biggest thing since Galileo pointed his telescope at the planets and discovered they were worlds, they were places, not just specks of light.
Can you think of anything that would light up the public's imagination, and interest in space exploration, more than finding Earth-like planets? Even if we didn't have any clear idea how to reach them, just knowing they exist would be huge.
If I were calling the shots, we would fly one more mission with the existing shuttle -- to service Hubble -- and then pack the shuttles off to museums. This whole mad scramble to update the shuttle and make it safe to fly, just when we are on the verge of retiring it, is ridiculous.
As for ISS, I say let's put it in mothballs until the CEV is ready -- and then restart ISS only if we can figure out what we're really going to use it for. Yeah, I know we have international agreements involving the ISS. We can re-negotiate them. Our partners have to realize the old plan no longer makes sense, if it ever did.