Slashdot Mirror
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
This is bad! I mean how are they going to get the shadow angles right now!? ;-)
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
How are we going to get that moon station up and running? And what about sending a man to mars? All my dreams are gone to *"?!#
Million dollar sig.
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.
So we're spending billions of dollars to preserve old spaceships, when things like SpaceShipOne only cost tens or hundreds of millions for test flights?
This is kind of like my father's insistence on maintaining his 1972 Cadillac (at a ridiculous annual cost) instead of purchasing a newer vehicle (say, a Honda) that gets three times the mileage and has much lower support costs. Of course, it just isn't as big or masculine... that's probably what this is all about.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
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.
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.
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'!!
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.
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.
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).
--
this additional sig includes a portrait of Mohammed in support of freedom of expression, feel free to reproduce it
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
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.
It costs about $1.3 billion to send the shuttle on a mission. As an example, the HST cost about $2.5billion to build (though with significantly higher operating costs). If/when it comes down for repairs, the repairs themselves would cost money, and then it would have to go back up. In short, it is a very infrequently used feature, and one that isn't practical; cost of replacement for anything but the most expensive thingies is always less then the transportation costs.
If SETI makes contact anytime soon, I could see the Shuttle becoming a pop-culture phenomenon in alien societies. Of course, it would be popular in the same way that the Jamaican Bobsled Team and William Hung are. The shuttle and the ISS might be the least efficient fleet of spacecraft that will ever exist in this universe, which might be good in the long run as the aliens will take pity on us and hand over the Warp Engines so we can stop going in circles.
8 70913-1427800?v=glance&n=283155
If we knew the shuttle would end up like this, I don't think we would have bothered. We've spent $145 billion on the shuttle for just over 1,000 days in orbit. This makes the math so depressingly simple even the president can do it in his head.
The lifetime cost of Voyager, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity, Galileo, Cassini-Huygens, and the Hubble Space Telescope combined is about $10 billion, while the ISS alone has cost $35 billion so far. Why throw good money after bad, pull the plug already and rethink the strategy.
There's no point sending humans to the moon (or anywhere else for that matter) unless we plan to stay. There may be large deposits of Platinum-group metals (PGMs) on the moon, and PGMs will be a cornerstone of the hydrogen economy, since each fuel cell needs a few ounces. There isn't much on Earth, and mining/refining the quantity needed to run a full scale H2 economy might cancel out the environmental benefit of fuel cells.
Moonrush by Dennis Wingo is a great read on the subject - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1894959108/103-9
Our only saving grace is the work being done by small entrepreneurs like Burt Rutan. It looks like the X Prize actually did a good job of jump starting the space economy.
I personally know ~30 people who got laid off last summer because of NASA's recent penchant for cutting science programs. And I know of another 50 who received the same fate. And that's just for one small payload project.
2 2)
But if you listen to the talking head that is Michael Griffin, "The science program has not--in our forward planning, we do not take one thin dime out of the science program in order to execute this architecture." (http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=181
Yes, Mr. Griffin, but you take out a few thousand employees overall.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
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.
From what I had been reading, the American shuttle has been grounded for the next few years. Perhaps even until 2012...
And despite other comments I've read and the lack of coverage of this in the news, we WILL be depending on Russia during this period to get us to the ISS. We are buying Suyoz vehicles.
The sale of them WAS out of the question since NASA could not purchase any space equipment from Russia because of the Iran Nonproliferation Act. Only a U.S. President could "bypass" the legislation.
Read for yourself... http://www.spacedaily.com/news/NASA_Had_No_Choice_ But_To_Buy_Soyuz_Flights.html
Yes, it was--in 1969.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
Some here would dismiss this, but you are correct. The Saturn V was, and still is the ultimate in heavy lift. Obviously the one they have left couldnt be used, but I think it would be easy to copy it.
Problem solved, ditch the shuttle.
The only rocket to ever exceed the Saturn V's capacity was the Russian N1. Only problem with the N1 is they all blew up on the launching pad.
Time to also ditch LOX - Liquid Hydrogen, and go back to LOX Kerosene
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *