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NASA Cancels Missions After All
jd writes "Barely a day after NASA chief Dr. Griffen swore blind that projects might be frozen but not cancelled due to the new priorities and budget constraints, news comes of a new asteroid mission that has been cancelled due to the new priorities and budget constraints - something Dr. Griffin did not mention in his earlier comments. The visit to two asteroids, short about $90 million, was completely abandoned according to NASA, with no possibility of revival. In consequence, smaller missions are reportedly feeling at much greater risk."
Well the Shuttles were a bad idea.. And attempt to look new and modern, while trying to meet cold war requirements. If you've looked up the info on the upcoming replacement its very cost effective and well thought out.
Merely sending people up in to space isn't exploration. We've sent probes to many of the planets (Mars in paticular), and there are plans to a new space observatory. Considering the costs associated with space, I think the U.S. is doing just fine. Hell, I like to wonder, where is everyone else?
Oh, and for you anti-NASA freaks, I'd like to provide you with a link to a history of NASA's budget. It calculates to about $3 per taxpayer per year. Compare that to the military budget, which is about 500 times higher.
Actually no, a good bit of the shuttle design went to the airforce requirement that it be able to pluck soviet satallies out of orbit then do a quick landing onto a runway strip. This requirement was never actually used (atleat according to all records public today) and ended up costing us unimagined amounts of money in the long run. Most accounts state that the shuttle would have had a completly different design otherwise.
Anyway, he had Peggy Noonan on his show a few weeks ago, who was a speechwriter for Bush and Reagan, amonst other republicans. She was mentioning how during Bush's 2004 campaign she took a leave from her job at Wall St. Journal to work for Bush's re-election. Colbert immediately responds with "Which of Bush's many achievements made that worthwhile?" And she couldn't say anything but just smirk. She didn't even attempt any talking point of one thing Bush did, it was pretty awesome seeing her pretty uncomfortable she was in even trying to list something positive Bush achieved.
make world, not war
Anyone else agree that if any section of NASA should be getting more money it's the JPL. Much of the increased interest in space and the last few really excellent displays of space technology (Rovers, Cassini, Deep Space 1) while the shuttle division languished in time. JIMO, one of the most fascnating and ambitious missions has had its budget sliced as well. I say we go with the most science for the buck and unmanned is the best way to get that outside of our own orbit at this point.
But it's the missions that DO have good crossover that seem to me like they should be prioritized. And the best example I can think of are the missions to put up huge space telescopes to find a second Earth. Finding another Earth would be hugley inspiring, and as far as I understand it these scopes would be fantastic scientific instruments as well.
Am I the only one who was particularly sad to see these missions delayed?
A-Bomb
They probably never used that feature when they realized the Soviets like to booby trap their satellites with explosives.
The space station will be outdated years before its even built.
You dont know what you're talking about. The space station is outdated compared to what? How can you say it's outdated if there is no other new space station with which to compare it. The fact is that space programs must use components that have a track record of stability. For instance, in 1995, would it have made sense to load Windows 95 and its fabulous new plug and play technology onto the shuttle's computers? Obviously no, that software was crap. Space programs are by design somewhat "outdated" but, it's not like you are are flying around in a fancy new 2006 space station that is better.
The problem with having private industry do the smaller missions is that NASA's smaller missions are (in general) the good ones - less about publicity and symbolism and more about real and useful scientific research. Private industry tends to not publish its research in journals and will hold its findings in secret or, worse, in patent.
The primary thing to be gained by travel to space is intellectual property, which is why, until IP law gets the enormous overhaul it will need to properly balance return on investment and the good of the market as a whole, the privitization of space is a great big red flag for me.
Imagine if the Hubble images had been available only with a giant fee, and a license that more or less prevented further open academic research, the way that published findings from (for just one instance) the pharmaceutical industry do.
No, I'm a big believer in free interprize, but IP law is so fsck'd up at the moment, that sadly, I have to say I want to see as much research in the clumsy and innefficient hands of the government, if it means it will at least remain public domain.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Space is absurdely huge. Absurdely. It's difficult for you and I to imagine Pluto's distance, much less the Oort cloud's.
Which is why it makes no sense (technological or economic) for people to go there. Besides, Pluto is nothing. Right now we can observe gamma ray bursts billions of light years away, from when the Universe was only a tenth of its current age, and use that information to learn very fundamental things. How exciting is that? I highly doubt that there will ever be human interstellar travel, but if there is it will only be because we've learned some very exotic new astrophysics that provides us with a cosmic "shortcut" of some kind.
The New Horizons probe is hitting an astonishing 21m/s now - 25 or so when it's past jupiter. Maybe they could stive for a bit more than a 4m/s gain?
This was never supposed to be a speed trial, was it? The acceleration is due to the gravitational effects of shooting past Jupiter, not any special technology aboard the craft. You'd have to change the laws of physics to increase it by much, even if that were a goal.
Maybe they could spend some money to show how safe nuclear power is instead of dealing with the bullshit anti-rng protesters?
Those experiments have already been done, by the former USSR at Chernobyl and by the US at Three Mile Island. But I agree with you that more nuclear power is probably inevitable. If we actually do the research and spend the money to make it safe, you can thank those bullshit protesters.
How about spending a little less money with Lockheed Martin, and a little more with creative engineers at @ Scaled Composites?
That'll happen when Scaled Composites starts matching the Big Boys in corruption and political patronage (just wait a decade or so). Much of the motivation in shifting NASA from science to manned exploration is exactly what you suggest.
Actually, your CPU analogy is a very apt one. The 80286 was a terrible, terrible chip; most were used merely as a very fast 8088. Sure, it offered protected mode and with it the ability to address 16MB of memory, but since Intel assumed no one would ever want to use real mode once they tried protected, they included no way to leave protected mode! The workaround was to instruct the system (the keyboard controller actually) to do a reboot! And that 16MB of memory? If you went a byte past the top address, you wrapped back around to the bottom! No flat memory space either; instead you had to use a very clunky addressing scheme. The only thing I can say good about the 80286 is that once Intel realized that they had gone down the wrong path, they released the chip that they should have (and perhaps the one that you really meant), the 80386.