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UK Reconsiders 1986 Decision To Ban Astronauts
An anonymous reader writes "The British space agency, BNSC, is reconsidering its 1986 decision to reject all human space missions. The decision has dominated British space policy ever since, leaving Britain out of many American and European space projects. The UK is the only nation in the G8 group of leading economies that does not have a human space flight program. But space enthusiast groups like the British Interplanetary Society are trying to persuade the British government to participate in both manned and unmanned space activities."
Pathetic whimperings of a dying civilization.
If one takes the British position that 'man has no business in space' then there isn't a point to sending robots beyond geostationary orbit either. The whole point of sending robots is that they are cheaper and more expendable to send than humans, thus they are good for the early scouting missions. But if humans aren't eventually going, what is the freaking point?
Democrat delenda est
Sending a person into outer space would put him or her beyond the reach of police surveillance.
That's just not on. What do you think we are in the UK, some kind of namby pamby democracy?
I guess the UK got tired of the United States government's fancy spy stations spying on the rest of the world :)
Now shut the fuck up, stick a damn firecracker up your ass and blast your goddamn way to the moon. If you want I can form a society to do it if you like, we may even get a few dollars from people to do it.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
The reason bureaucrats hate space programs is because it's the one guaranteed area where you can dump as many billions as you want and you will get no measurable progress. All this probery doesn't count- yes it's scientifically invaluable, but it's just enough to keep American voters happy that their tax money is hiring very smart people to make progress in space. No matter how many soil samples we take, launching probes will never get us to Mars, or back to the moon.. and that's just the way it's going to stay because an elected official would have to bring an economy to its knees to do it, and they're not going to stay elected for long.
At this point human spaceflight is at best a propaganda exercise and at worst a complete waste of money. Why should the UK change their stance on the issue? Has human spaceflight become more interesting in the last 20 years? More strategically important? More affordable?
I realize human spaceflight is inspiring but that in itself isn't enough to justify the expenses.
Little known fact: the Irish drink the most tea per capita in the world, a full 20% more per capita than the British.
You realise that NASA is a US government agency, don't you? Those 'worthless bureaucratic tax feeders' were responsible for just about every advancement into space that the US has ever made...
...with the exception of SpaceShipOne of course. Well done. Of course, SpaceShipTwo will be a joint venture with Virgin Galactic, a British company.
Ironically, you could say that British manned flight is more skewed towards private enterprise than it has ever been in the US.
The NHS if horrifically inneficient, at every level. Just like a government agency in fact.
It gets cheaper healthcare, sure, but there's nothing to crow about. It's just tight budgeting. It's not 'better'. The staff are demoralised, the patients are lucky to get 5 minutes with a doctor these days (they're on quotas and must get through as many as possible) and because of this the standard response has become 'take these antibiotics and go away' - leading to other problems - not only rampant misdiagnosis, but the growth of antibiotic resistant diseases.
Case in point - prescriptions. A consultant puts you on a long term drug, but he can't issue it. That has to be done by a GP. For this they require written notice (no email, web, or phone allowed and they don't open weekends of evenings so you have to take time off work to do it). Having received this request it takes them 3-4 days to sign a little piece of paper, which you then have to take more time off work to collect, and manually walk 20 feet to the chemist next door to have it dispensed (which typically takes over an hour). This has to be repeated every month. I know, I go through the whole charade repeatedly.
The amount of waste in just that simple process is horrendous. There's also the lost work time, which doesn't get counted in the cost of the NHS but is a cost nontheless.
It's not just at the patient level - I have friends in the NHS and they talk about the stupid rules where something 1 person could do very quickly but because of the beaurocracy takes days and has to go through multiple people.
We like to think the NHS is the best in the world, but that's just the propoganda. I'd rather be treated in a 3rd world country than some of the hospitals I've seen.