Atlantis Expected to Launch Today

PreacherTom writes "Following recent delays, NASA makes its fifth attempt to get Atlantis off the launchpad at 11:15 a.m. EDT today. NASA stopped Friday's launch try only 45 minutes before its scheduled departure for a faulty fuel tank sensor: the same glitch that thwarted two previous missions. The launch delay cost NASA $616,000, and if the mission is scrubbed again, the space agency must abandon for a few weeks its efforts to send the shuttle off on a construction mission to the International Space Station."

Comments

Cynical, but true

[SuperBanana]

When someone asks me why we have to spend so much money on space exploration, I should have them watch a launch with my daughters. It's all about the thrill of exploration, the daring of it, the wonder of fellow humans climbing up off this planet and touching the stars.

Um...not to be cynical, and Slashdotters hate being reminded of these things, but your daughters are in awe because they don't know that:

• It costs $16BN a year to keep NASA running of which $3BN is political pork, and a fair bit goes towards research which is primarily for the purposes of weapons and has nothing to do with the "quest for knowledge".
• The ISS, which this mission supports, is falling apart after just a few years in space. It was supposed to last JUST 10 years after final assembly, and it hasn't even been fully assembled. Failures have ranged from oxygen generators to basic handtools to attitude correction gyros. The price tag was $100BN; that money largely went to our nation's (and other nation's) defense contractors, which build the majority of the hardware NASA uses.
• The "smoke" from the solid rocket engines contains huge amounts of hydrochloric acid.
• One in five of their classmates go hungry at home or at school because their parents can't afford to give them enough food, and the government currently spends slightly more than NASA's budget to feed 7 million children a year a decent lunch. Let's not even get started about basic supply and book shortages. We're supposedly the most powerful nation in the world, but we can't but enough [food in the stomachs / textbooks in the hands] of our children so that they can recieve a sufficient education to support themselves later in life, instead of ending up working at Walmart for minimum wage.

Personally, I don't find any thrill in NASA's "exploration", which seems to consist mostly of "let's see what _______ does in space" and the nation's military and scientific elite (yes, military- many of the people you see up there are military officers) playing. There is no "daring" (save the small chance their shuttle will be destroyed) and they're not touching any stars.

Re:Cynical, but true

[topical_surfactant]

Then, of course, there's the argument that if we don't get off this rock and colonize other (planets, moons), some day those problems you just mentioned will seem trivial compared to the immenent extinction of the human race. Just sayin'.

Re:Cheesy, but true

[jthill]

And why should the government be spending our tax dollars on "the thrill of exploration, the daring of it" and all that?

Because some things that nobody can make any money at are worth doing anyway? Because some of those are beyond the capacity of private enterprise? Because some of those actually produce benefits that would otherwise never be reached?