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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."
Isn't it about time we start calling the shuttle the Albatross? It was a bad idea from day one. Heavy lift rockets are more efficent and more dependable. Now science is going to suffer while we continue to throw good money after bad. If the Russians can get astronauts in orbit for 20 mill a pop isn't it more cost effective to pay so they can hitch a ride and dump the shuttle? In truth the 20 mill was paying most of the flight costs, third world economy with first world technology. They may not be able to carry the payload but they still have heavy lift rockets so even that could be somewhat resolved until we could restart a heavy lift program. The shuttle's safty record makes them a massive risk. Isn't this more about the government trying to save face and not crawling to the Russians for help than about science and saving lives? Before the shuttle NASA had a perfect inflight record. Now the shuttle flights seem to be a ticking timebomb.
Mass... Driver...
/. as to why a mass driver would be economical is
IMO most economical if all you are doing is heavy lifting/cargo - thats all the Shuttle ever was in the first place - a glorified bus to take up people and supplies. Go ahead and try to argue that the shuttle was also used for science expirements, the only reason that happened is it has a decent amount of space inside to put shelves with expirements in the shuttle.
BTW: previous points I've made here on
One: no more buying million dollar per pound of thrust rocket fuel.
Two: If you make it an electromagnetic rail (a rail-gun) or a gauss gun system and power it with a nuclear reactor, you could sell the electricity being produced when you arent launching things, and so in the long run cutting costs and maybe even paying for the whole launching system (mass driver and reactor). If you are worried you might not get enough energy at once, do what that laser-fusion facility is supposed to use - basically a bunch of capacitators with a fast discharge rate - the fusion facility claims it only costs a few pennies (actual pennies, not just that it doesnt make a dent in their budget)
Science is important, but not as important as living and working in space. If the scientific discoveries wait 1 extra year or 100 it makes little difference in the scheme of things. Personally I'd rather increase manned exploration, which will have more immediate benefits.
Going back to the moon is a technology testbed - to prove and test the technologies to get man to Mars (and beyond).
Just like the early rocket launches built up to Apollo, current projects test the technologies we will be using in the future. Ion drives and such.
Just having a quick browse through http://exploration.nasa.gov/ shows the stuff they want to develop - for unmanned and then manned flight.
"SS-1 pretty much a copy of the X-15, which is a dead-end as far as getting into orbit is concerned."
A bizarre claim, given that there were plans to turn the X-15 into an orbital spacecraft launched on an expendable booster (similar to the Dynasoar).
Odds are very high that Rutan will put people into orbit in the next decade in a spacecraft he's designed and built. I can't say the same about NASA.
Years ago I would've said you're just a moron, but I'm beginning to think you've hit the nail on the head. Over the last two years I've watched more and more money funnel away from centers like Ames (California), Glenn (Ohio), Langley (D.C. area), and Stennis (Louisiana) and go to Johnson (Texas) and Kennedy (Florida) where BushCo run the family business in those states. Fuckers.
I understand the ideals of pushing 8 year olds into the sciences, engineering and technology sectors, as these types of jobs do need fresh blood, but space exploration can be done much cheaper and better by robotic vehicles.
Witness Spirit and Opportunity; both these rovers are (relatively) simple in design, and yet both have far exceeded their original designs and goals. If you had the choice between spending (say) a billion to send a manned mission there, or a billions to send several remote vehicles, then I know where my money would go.
And there's also the sad fact of losses in the space program. If we lose a robot, it is only a robot. If we lose a man, sadly like we have done on too many occaisions, then that loss is felt much harder.
NASA is studying commercial alternatives. A number of hungry alt.space companies will be in the hunt, like Space-X (first Falcon launch is planned for this Friday). In my view, this is a subtle end-run around the hugely expensive ESA.
Helium balloons want to be free.
I wasn't trying to be specific, more that what they are doing will generate progress. Aircraft were at one time experimental, like the Wright Brothers, then between the wars, we saw something development and challenges (like Lindburgh and the Schneider trophy). After the war we got commercial air travel, which over the past 50 years has been put further and further into the reach of everyone.
It was a couple of decades between the first flight and Frank Whittle creating the jet engine which gives us the level of commercial space travel that we have.
I'm not saying that Rutan and Branson are the only players out there, but that the largest driver to reducing costs of men in space is space tourism. As that gets cheaper, the competition will grow and the next stage will be orbit, in the same way that in aviation, people wanted to get to the point of having direct flights.
The cost of travelling on early transatlantic flights was about $700 return, something that in 1939 would have been something like $10,000 in today's money, and you'd have to change at Bermuda and the Azores.
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.
The entire EELV program (Atlas V and Delta IV) was conceived and executed specifically because of the Challenger disaster, as a backup means for the NRO to get payloads on orbit.
The problem was - NASA didn't hop on the bandwagon in 1987 when they should have, and work to get EELVs human-rated. So while the NRO and USAF have their backup vehicles (and the communications satellite industry) - NASA got stuck with the Shuttle as their single-point-of-failure for manned spaceflight.
Ironically, the original Atlas (and Titan) missiles were crucial for the early manned-spaceflight program. (The entire Gemini program relied on Titan.) That their grandchildren didn't get human-rated is a tragic absurdity.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.