Slashdot Mirror
NASA Seeking Innovative Ideas from Public
Mike Peel writes "Science Blog is reporting that NASA is seeking proposals 'for creating and managing innovative activities, events, products, services, or other types of formal or informal education methods for the purpose of disseminating information nationally about NASA's projects and programs.'" Sadly I don't think simply providing them with a list of people you want shot into space counts.
"NASA is seeking proposals 'for creating and managing innovative activities, events, products, services, or other types of formal or informal education methods for the purpose of disseminating information nationally about NASA's projects and programs.'" Seriously, I have no idea what this sentence says.
Czech language for absolute beginners
"In exchange for a collaborator's investment to creatively distribute NASA information, the agency will consider negotiating brand placement, limited exclusivity and other opportunities as part of a strategic collaboration."
Does this mean we're gonna see big "Drink Coke!" advertisments next time we look through a telescope at the ISS? That would be some impressive brand placement...
Will program for karma.
Call your next spacecraft the Wii.
I'll never give up my tin-foil hat design!!!
Someone from NASA needs to post a question for Ask Slashdot to get some innovative ideas. I'm sure some of those ideas will be quite colorful.
Seriously. The shuttle program at this point in time is insane. We do not have the technology yet to make space travel cost-effective. Instead of pointlessly doing it wastefully now for no other purpose than habit, why not pour all that money into a program to develop new forms of propulsion and energy, and come back to spacefaring when we have a better solution?
,etc.!
It's not like sending humans into space serves any real purpose anyway. Robots can carry out virtually everything we need to do for FAR less payload cost. People often whine about the limitations of the robot missions compared to human missions, but these people have simply not thought through the cost-benefit analysis. Sure, a human mission payload can do more than the current robot misisons: the payload of the human missions is many many many times greater than the robot missions. If any of the Mars lander people could fill something the size of the shuttle with robot equipment, we'd be able to set up huge self-sustaining robot colonies on Mars easily. Instead, we want to send humans in what will then have to mostly be wasted space.
Look Mars, we bring you... poop! And urine! And lots and lots of empty space for our various gases! And tons of food! And energy for a return trip! And beds, chairs, tables, toilets
It's just nuts.
If I had such a mechanism I'm likely to want to employ it first in the commercial field - since any idea is going to get copied pretty soon after it first appears. Thus even with IP control over the concept, NASA is going to be way down my list. Double that because there's no prize money involved, only cost.
For instance, I might suggest allowing people to name newly discovered stars, nebula, galaxies, craters, etc. However I'm better off just doing it anyway and selling the certificates at $10 a shot.
Mind you, on the other hand it might be worthwhile keeping an eye on submissions in case there is something that comes out that you can use in more financially interesting ways.
Make our lifes worthwhile. Disclose the information you keep about UFO-s, aliens and the alien technologies you've reversed engineed, you sneaky bastards.
And if all of that is just the product of some paranoid conspiracy theorists, oh well, just make it up and lie to us.
We'll love it.
Start working on things that average people (e.g. non-scientists) can get behind.
The shuttle program and space station may be incredibly valuable to the scientific community for research purposes, but there's nothing about it that captures the imaginations and emotions and concern of the general public. I hate to break it to NASA, but there's really nothing you can do to make average people excited about nerdy harcore scientific research.
That's the difference between today's NASA and the old JFK-era NASA.
You geek types out there may say, "but NASA isn't a popularity contest, it's a scientific endeavor". But you have to remember who funds NASA: ordinary taxpayers.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Most people are aware of many NASA space programs. Hardly anyone appears to be aware of NASA's aeronautics programs. You get the occasional show on the Discovery Channel but that's it. I liked the one about control an aircraft in three axes using thrust only (the project was inspired by the Sioux City DC-10 crash).
Why not contact the Jim Henson corporation to see about having Kermit and Gonzo teach a couple of classes to the new guys?
They could cover complex scientific concepts like "Near and Far", "Toward and Away", and maybe even "Counting to 10 in Metric".
Couldn't hurt...
Please, this is not a troll. I renember reading that back in the 70's, somebody got a bunch of companies together to try and buy an unused Atlas rocket from the government and form a private space program - NASA killed it. Do I even need to mention the cost and problems with the space shuttle, or the meter to feet conversion disaster of the mars mission, or the lenzing error on the hubble telescope. The simple truth is that by being there, they make it so that nobody else in private enterprise wants to act. For chrissake, why did a private millionaire space tourists need to go to Russia? Why did the X-prize happen without NASA at all? The writing has been on the wall for a long time, the future of space is here and it is not NASA.
Killing NASA will not kill the geniuses who work at NASA, all it will do is shut down the bureauocrats while the talent finds ways to be applied thru the rest of the private market.
Because the CIA/NSA/etc require a satellite-servicing capability and NASA is a wonderful distraction. NASA *is* a cold war agency.
Yes, but sending robots tootling around the solar system is frankly not very exciting, and the biggest payoff of all from spaceflight derives from the extent to which it captures the public imaginations.
Oh no... it's the future.
Well, if several years of reading sci-fi novels and watching sci-fi movies has taught me anything, YOU DON'T LET ROBOTS BECOME SELF-SUSTAINING! Cuz once they are, they get all kinds of crazy ideas about saving humanity from itself and decide to rule us for our own protection. Or, sometimes you'll get robots that have a persecution complex and decides that humanity needs to be obliterated because we are "imperfect," and thus a threat to their orderly existence.
Nope, if we let robots build colonies on Mars, it'll only be a short time until humanity is either subjegated, or annihilated.
When I worked there it was an amazing culture of self-absorbed, self-agrandizing, self-promoting bullshit artists, retired military, political appointees, and rednecks that has probably ever been assembled. It might have been funny if it weren't so painful.
Round-trip tickets to those who vote to continue funding space research :)
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...Reality Television Show.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
NASA should send a "Highlights" DVD to every American citizen every year, right before Christmas. Which includes a free login to a NASA video site. And a summary of the ROI on NASA expenses, as well as its tiny percentage of the budget.
I've told that to every NASA and aerospace exec I've ever met. Now I'll use the webform, too.
--
make install -not war
I didn't truly appreciate how hard it is to get into orbit until I played with that freeware Orbiter game (heard about it on slashdot).
Granted, the geekiness of just flying spaceships around is not exactly compelling next to the current group of shoot 'em ups. The trick would be making something that was interesting and compelling. Get some good eye candy and the right balance of 'real' and 'fun'. Maybe there are some multiplayer possibilities.
Think of it as "today's astronauts" instead of "todays army".
It would be nice to see NASA expand there business.
National Assassins Space Association
Their next hit is in Mars, therefore all these tasks for manned flights.
You are SO right. Does anybody else just picture a shuttle trip to Mars as basically like a road-trip with some of your friends....and you bring as much crap as you can so you're all basically stuffed into the van.....and there's that guy who fidgets the whole time next to you driving you nuts?
And I mean, I hope those guys have video games to bring along. Must have shitty pings though.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Considering the problems with oil and personal transportation needs, how about building that Jetson's flying car we were all promised we would be driving in the 21st century.
Oh, and robot maids would be nice too...
I lost my sig...
...the "Sii"
I have an idea for overhauling all of NASA, let alone just implementing an oh-so-trendy blog:
How about firing the whole lot of politicians and PHBs and hire visionaries, pioneers, and engineers? Folks such as Burt Rutan, for example. While some would say he doesn't have the expertise to build a shuttle replacement, look at what he accomplished with minimal resources at his own company; he has designed quite a few high-performance near-stall proof aircraft (The Vari-EZ and derivatives), the Beech Starship (If I ever come into a lot of money I'd pay well over market value to own one, to keep Beech from destroying it. It's a gorgeous aircraft), several fighters, the Proteus, and of course SpaceShipOne. He bucks trends and doesn't accept status quo as the end-all, be all way of doing things. Heck, even the SpaceShipOne benefactor Paul Allen would be a great addition to NASA. And again, he does things efficiently. He'd be the ideal visionary to manage an organization such as NASA and to see that money is being spent to achieve results rather than to maintain high salaries for a select few PHBs and politicians, and spending a token amount of the allocated budget on money-pit pet projects like the ISS.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yes, we do. What we don't have is political commitment for a government backed development (which some may argue is a Good Thing) nor sufficient venture capital available to the private sector to get off the ground floor (if you'll excuse the horrible pun).
Instead of pointlessly doing it wastefully now for no other purpose than habit,
Pointless? Hardly. The Shuttle is the only launch vehicle capable of completing ISS (International Space Station). Whether we're better off ditching the whole ISS/Shuttle program because it's wasteful is a separate, though related, argument.
why not pour all that money into a program to develop new forms of propulsion and energy, and come back to spacefaring when we have a better solution?
This really bears repeating: the viability of a successful space program -- public or private -- has nothing to do with technology; what we have now is totally adequate for the task and has been for at least the last 20 years.
The plea to "come back when..." is a specious bumper sticker argument that emerged in the early 1970's though it usually goes like "... when we've solved the problems here on earth!" as if the space program exists to "solve problems in space". The suggestion that we wait until we've developed "the right" technology betrays enormous ignorance.
As for doing science, an astronaut can stop, look, say "ooh, what an interesting rock!" then walk over, pick it up, and examine it closely with a Mark I eyeball in, what, 30 seconds? It takes days if not weeks for a Mars rover to do the same thing.
So answer me this, earthworm, what "new forms of propulsion and energy" should we wait for? Scramjets? Totally unsuitable. A large, lightweight tank filled with LOX (liquid oxygen) is a far superior solution than a heavy air breathing engine that carries a huge drag penalty. Better to get out of the atmosphere quickly and carry your own oxidizer. LOX is cheap, as is rocket fuel be it RP-1, liquid hydrogen, or whatever.
It's not like sending humans into space serves any real purpose anyway. Robots can carry out virtually everything we need to do for FAR less payload cost. People often whine about the limitations of the robot missions compared to human missions, but these people have simply not thought through the cost-benefit analysis.
As if you have done a thorough analysis? Right. So what benefit are you talking about? Science? Economic return by exploiting an extraterrestrial resource? Human colonization of the solar system?
Why would we build a colony of and, presumably, for robots on Mars? As for any sort of "easy" robotic mission to Mars, forget it. The robotic technology simply does not exist. It's likely, but by no means certain, that the cost of developing the robot technology would be at least as much as it would to develop a human mission. Why? Human beings are a well developed technology; the technology to send humans on long space voyages also exists -- because we've been doing it for over 40 years when we include the Shuttle program. Duh.
Geeks of Slashdot, I bring you the link to The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. It's not the latest treatment on a manned Mars mission but it indicates that we've had sufficient technology to begin development of Mars mission at least as early as 1996 when the book was written. Goo
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
Put the shuttles in museums, I'd pay for a tour.
Work with the Russians to contiune support of the ISS.
Pour all new research money into developing the technologies to build the space elevator. This is the only way in our reach that can make space cost effective. We'll need much longer carbon nanotubes, a good solution for climbing the cable, and a way to bring an appropriate anchor into orbit. Get to it guys I'm getting old fast and I want a ride once you've finnished.
-- QED
Killing manned exploration for a few decades would free billions we could use to learn about the places we wish to visit in the future.
The space race between the Soviets and the US was great for jumpstarting space exploration, but what humans do in space (other then personally experience it) can be automated.
We are getting away from manned combat aircraft because meat in the cockpit gets tired, makes mistakes, and needs life support. Losing people damages a program far more than losing hardware, because they have emotion-based value to the public.
Free the space prrogram, advance robotic technology, and keep the meat on Terra!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
OOH! OOH! Let's, like, send a rocket to the SUN!
Promote NASA via TV Commercials the highlighting archievements NASA has done. Promote US Space Camp to kids and adults. It is a great way to get more people interested into becoming an astronaut. Develop a business plan and start turning a serious multi-billion dollar profit. Use the billions of dollars from profits to continue research without fear of budget cuts from the Federal government.
\
"Pointless? Hardly. The Shuttle is the only launch vehicle capable of completing ISS (International Space Station). Whether we're better off ditching the whole ISS/Shuttle program because it's wasteful is a separate, though related, argument."
So, we must have the shuttle because we need the ISS. Why do we need the ISS. Well hey, if we didn't have it, the shuttle wouldn't have anywhere fun to go!
That is just so tragically insane I hardly even know what to say.
"This really bears repeating: the viability of a successful space program -- public or private -- has nothing to do with technology; what we have now is totally adequate for the task and has been for at least the last 20 years."
It has everything to do with technology. Yes, what we have is adequate to get into space, but at an ENORMOUS COST that simply does not justify itself in any way shape or form.
"As for doing science, an astronaut can stop, look, say "ooh, what an interesting rock!" then walk over, pick it up, and examine it closely with a Mark I eyeball in, what, 30 seconds? It takes days if not weeks for a Mars rover to do the same thing."
Did I not already cover this argument? Robot missions are done for a tiny tiny fraction of the payload and cost of human missions. They have to conserve and go slow precisely because they are not given the funding, resources, or payload size that the human missions are. And several different sorts of robot eyes are a heck of a lot better than human eyes.
You still have yet to make any case whatsoever that sending meatbags into space has any point to justify the incredible expense. Right now, real science prorgams are being canceled left and right so that this nearly purely masturbatory enterprise of putting humans back on the moon can go forward.
Come on, shutting down NASA to let private companies take over will probably bring benefits in terms of human space flight, commercial science in weightlessness to produce, say, new synthetics,... and space tourism.
But it would kill the thing that - for me - is the biggest archivement of NASA: space science. Forget probes to the solar system, cosmology using satellites or the origins program, because that doesn't produce money. If comanies would exist for the benefit of all, you'd be right. But they aren't, they exist primarily for making money. That's why we need NASA.
Everytime you kill a kitten, god masturbates.
Actually, the $1:DVD cost is probably right, if they mailed it in a paper wrapper with instructions. And though they'd probably have to mail only one to each household, which is about 113M. NASA's 2005 budget was over $16.2B. A $113M expense would be under 0.7% (<<0.005% of the Federal budget), which would deliver promotion of the rest of the budget's product to every citizen it's working for. Which would likely increase support for bigger NASA budgets and better national programs, reflecting Americans' actual prioritization of NASA work among all government work. And a Netflix type of distribution contract at competitive bid (including the USPS) would invest in American info distribution infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the Iraq War has cost at least $300B, and will likely cost at least $1T, not to mention diverting lots of other government productivity from other services. But Americans get to see the "best" parts of the Iraq War on TV, so it gets lots of promotion, while most of NASA's valuable and popular work happens in the dark.
So thanks for recognizing the thrifty economics of a program to educate every American about NASA's work. Your support for my NASA career is thoughtful, but certainly overkill. NASA needs more educated and communicative citizens like me, rather than extra on-budget staff. If they can perform promotion like the one I suggested, with such great ROI, in keeping with NASA tradition.
--
make install -not war
well if Gary McKinnon can get in your system after smoking a lot of cannabis at the time
i'd say they need to hire some new I.T. staff
What's not getting mentioned in this light-hearted article, or the commentary, is the disastrous 2007 NASA budget. The idiotic "Vision for Space Exploration" coming out of the White House has made honest defenders of NASA's science initiative look like fools for declaring that science would not be cut. Well, it wasn't cut, it was eviscerated.