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Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement
schliz writes "Nasa has announced that it intends to officially retire the aging space shuttle fleet by 2010, four years before it has a replacement craft ready. The space shuttle fleet will make ten more flights, mainly to add modules to the International Space Station and carry out repairs and upgrades to the Hubble orbital telescope. The retirement will leave the US without orbital capacity for at least four years, until the Ares booster programme is complete. European and Russian launchers will service the space station in the meantime."
No joke. If you went back in time 20 or 30 years and told the NASA folks we'd spend the 2010s depending on Europe and Russia for our orbital needs, they'd smack you one.
I also find it sad that current launches go off with out much fan fare or press. It's like we as a Nation have become spoiled to the fact that we send folks into space these days.
I think most people don't realize (or have forgotten about it) the danger these men and women face during a mission.
Yes, but catching those derned ter'rists is WAY more important than science, education, helping people get off welfare, or anything else that money could possibly be used for. Ten billion a month, and all we get is death and destruction.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
The money for developing Ares comes in large part from the money currently allocated for shuttle operations. Barring an increase in NASA's budget, any prolonging of shuttle ops will primarily postpone the gap, not shrink it.
That's only six years away. Call me skeptical, but I bet it's more like 2018 at this point. With all the testing that is required and work remaining, I'd be really surprised if it's done in six years.
On the economics, the shuttle was never the cheapest solution. Originally the idea was to be able to turn that thing around on the pad, and send it back up after fueling.
As it turned out, the refit of the shuttle after each flight is about as costly as a Saturn V launch. Now, the Saturn V could lift 100 tons into orbit, the shuttle 30. You can do the math on cost per pound.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Given that we've had an active private space industry flying since the early 1960's... when exactly is the innovation, greater efficiency, and lower prices supposed to kick in?
Behind the joke is a serious point.
At the risk of being modded flamebait, I think I can say that Americas education system has never produced the quantity and quality of talent necessary for real innovation in space. The US has always relied on immigrants. Your victory in the space race was in part due to the fact that World War 2 drove the best rocket scientists out of Europe. Once they had retired and died, there wasn't the kind of people you needed coming out of your home grown education system, and no great cataclysm in countries with good education system to scatter geniuses for you to scoop up.
Your latest administration isn't helping matters either. Pushing widespread hostility towards evolution and climate change, leaning on NASA scientists to misreport results, and generally acting like a dangerous theocracy in many ways means that you'll have a harder time attracting the talent you are unable or, more likely, unwilling to develop at home.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I would venture to say that no country has ever really produced the quantity and quality of purely home-grown talent necessary for anything like Apollo. The whole point of the United States used to be that it was where the best and brightest could excel, and where hard work could be rewarded. Any time you have a nation that attracts these people you end up ahead. I agree that recent US policy has made it both more difficult and less desirable for such people to come here, but disagree that it has much to do with our educational system. No educational system could compete.
E pluribus unum
The education system in the US can produce as much good talent as anywhere else in the world, but the cash flow in this particular society trumps all other things. Why make a relatively paltry living as a scientist when you can make oodles of cash as a lawyer, running a business, or even to a lesser degree, writing software?
There's no prestige in this country in being a geek in a lab coat. The prestige is all in being the guy in the suit making the deals and living large. 18 year old kids don't even bother thinking about being that geek in the lab coat with his middle class income.
I think the implication of a decline in technology in the U.S. that is implied by "decadence" is a little unfair.
A little but not by any means completely. In the 40's and 50's, kids learned as they played. Want to go fly a model plane? You had to learn how to build it and, in the process, learn a bit about aerodynamics. Nowadays you want to fly a plane? You load up Flight Simulator. While this might teach you the controls, it won't teach you squat about centers of gravity, airfoils, structures, or thrust. So tell me--where is NASA supposed to be finding someone to help design the next launch vehicles if there's no talent growing up in our country? 360/Wii/PS3 are all mental decadence.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007