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NASA Shuttle Replacement's Problems Are Worsening
ausoleil noted that NASA's replacement for the shuttle, the Orion, is slipping behind schedule "'We're probably going to have to move our target date,' NASA exploration chief Doug Cooke told The Associated Press on Wednesday after Nasawatch.com posted the 117-page internal status report (PDF) on the moon program. The cost problems include an $80 million overrun on a motor system. The Orion spacecraft's design remains too heavy for the proposed Ares 1 rocket. Software development, heat shield testing and other complex work remain behind schedule or over budget. There are dozens of such serious challenges, many of which are 'worsening.'"
Just set up a national tip jar on something akin to PayPal.
Citizens actually want to fund space activities, not the stuff that's killing us: http://perotcharts.com/
Dis-intermediating DC is step #1 in carrying out the will of the people.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The more expensive and the longer it takes, the more the contractors make. There's no motivation to be on time and under budget.
Not true... cost plus is good if you don't want the "lowest bidder" mentality. Although underhanded tactics will inevitably exist, NASA only pays contractors cost plus a FIXED profit for the contractor.
They have no incentive to run over on the time
That's exactly what's supposed to happen.
We're canceling the Shuttle, and later when Ares/Orion turns into a huge disaster with budget overruns and shortfalls, Congress will be justified (in the public's eyes) when they cancel it as well and shut down the entire manned spaceflight program.
And if you think they're going to make private spaceflight easy to make up for this, you're deluded.
We're in the process of shutting down our airline industry with ridiculous security policies that do nothing for security and everything for driving people away from air travel. Private aviation is being similarly crippled with new taxes designed primarily to ensure that only the very wealthy can afford to fly. There is no reason to have NASA when we can outsource our space flight needs to overseas vendors and get paid kickbacks to our secret overseas bank accounts.
A population that stays in the same place all the time is much easier to control. Transportation is under attack.
If only it were that easy. Adding to the Cost usually means you're going to take a beating when it comes to determining the Plus. It's also not a great idea to willfully and purposely dick over a major customer like NASA; both because it's illegal and because you'll have no chance to win future contracts.
I don't buy that. First, there's a long history of prime contractors (the ones actually able to make contracts with government agencies) screwing over federal agencies yet continuing to get contracts. Second, it looks pretty straightforward to legally exploit cost plus contracts.
FYI, I found updated numbers for the six engine Ares V on NASA's site here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/aresV/index.html
The correct LEO figure is stated here:
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's really tragic thing. Maybe we don't deserve to be a spacefaring race.
Have some patience, man! It's like having the Vikings visit the Americas, get killed, never return, and then you complain that "Maybe we don't deserve to be a seafaring race."
A little over a century ago, man wasn't even flying airplanes. The first human was sent into space less than fifty years ago. There's no real reason to think that large-scale space exploration and even colonization won't happen. There's also no real reason to think that it will, or should, happen within the next fifty years, or even within the next two hundred years. The amount of time that humanity has so far been visiting space is but a blink of an eye in historical terms.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Nonsense. The vast majority of people really want to see some cool pictures on the news every couple of years or so. If you substitute to 10c per person (or whatever the current budget works out to) with half a dozen multi-millionaires and a long (actually, short) tail of "enthusiast" types chipping in $50 or $20, you won't have enough for a single Delta launch, let alone fund design testing build and operation of two and a half new launchers, a new crew vehicle and the TLI / lander / ascent hardware needed for another moon landing.
I personally am of the opinion the moon landings will be jettisoned as soon as practical, and that that's a good thing. I just hope it's early enough to leave enough left for the increasingly delayed outer planets flagship mission and some more Mars landers / rovers, oh and a telecoms relay orbiter that will be desperately needed in 7-10 years' time. (Did you know there's nothing on the Mars launch schedule after MSL in 2010? That money's gone to Dubya's cock-eyed publicity stunt of trying to get Kennedy's rep by announcing another manned moon landing. But I realise that's unpopular around here.
You should check the figures on that... it stopped being true some time ago. Email has killed the ability of the USPS to fund itself. It's really hard to track the USPS budget, for lots of reasons (for example, their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quarters are 84 days long, and their 4th quarter is 112 days), but the Federal budget includes payments to the USPS for security and anti-terrorism, to make up for reduced revenue from Congressionally capped rates, and for other reasons.
Suffice it to say that the USPS is no longer self-sufficient.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
NASA has been on a long, uninterrupted downward slide ever since Reagan, when it became more heavily politicized. They somehow managed to get people to the moon in 1969 with a basic, brute-force, heavy-lift vehicle and almost enough computing power to run a pocket calculator. Since then, the manned program hasn't made it much past Low Earth Orbit.
If the current crop of idiots can't get their act together, why not blow the dust off those old Saturn V plans, save some weight by substituting new materials where it would work, and get freakin' going? Longer stays could be accommodated be using the Mars Express approach of sending automated supply missions on ahead.
I don't know if it's time to fire everybody in upper management and start fresh, but it's getting really tempting. And let's try to remember that space exploration is dangerous work. Test pilots die. Astronauts die. That doesn't mean you shut down and abandon your whole program for years on end whenever something goes wrong. They tried it with the Space Shuttle, and all that down time didn't ultimately make things a lot safer.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.