Slashdot Mirror
NASA Funding Boost, But No Shuttle Extension in Obama Budget
adeelarshad82 writes to point out that details have been provided for President Obama's proposed $18.7 billion in funding for NASA in 2010 (up from $17.2 billion in 2008). Quoting: "The budget calls on NASA to complete International Space Station construction, as well as continue its Earth science missions and aviation research. Yet it also remains fixed to former President George W. Bush's plan to retire the space shuttle fleet by 2010 and replace them with the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which would fly astronauts to the space station and return them to the moon by 2020. The outline does make room for an extra shuttle flight beyond the nine currently remaining on NASA's schedule, but only if it is deemed safe and can be flown before the end of 2010."
Did they say anything about ditching Ares and going to DIRECT?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
No idiotic talk of planting a flag on Mars.
* Continued funding of robotic exploration of everything outside of the Earth/Moon
* A focus on the meat and potato tech that is fundamental to our long term presence in space. Orbital construction, long term living in space, space science, space manufacturing, long term maintenance of equipment in space
* An eventual permanent base on the moon
Lets inhabit the ocean before we try space. Why would we leave such an important biosphere unexplored for the depths of hell?
But still good.
Anyone suggesting extending the shuttle program is advocating extending a clearly unsafe and inefficient program.
Instead, we should ramp up production to get the new systems in place ASAP. That it was scheduled with a gap in the first place is just shameful. It may be too late to avoid the lost air time, but I'd say we should try, and pay what we have to. The NASA budget is small potatoes, and incredibly important as we become more dependent on orbital systems.
Boost has a very good smart pointer implementation, not to mention an excellent threading and regex package. It's nice to see an organization like NASA supporting it.
is to develop a way to eliminate all the space junk orbiting the planet. No I didn't RTFA (go figure :P), but it seems like that would be money well spent. If a flock of birds can take down a jet, all that trash up there has to be hazardous for the space program!
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...
...the thundering silence from the Air Force about all this? I wonder why they apparently don't give a rip about having humans in space, the ultimate high ground? Ya, they are into robotic craft, etc, but there's still that little thing called man that is quite useful for unusual eventualities that haven't been fed into the program... and those little odd wildcards or "black swan" events happen with an unpredictable but recurring regularity.. ..just sayin'
If SpaceX (or one of the other space companies) commit to building a heavy heavy lifter, I am guessing that you are correct. Remember that Musk wants to build a new version of Merlin that approaches the F1. He has always said that the issue is how to get it paid for. Well, if Ares V is dead, then my guess is that he will probably throw money at it (or let some others invest their money). Likewise, I could see l-mart or boeing deciding to take this on ASSUMING that the feds back away from a heavy lifter.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That worked out real well for that comunications satellite ...
We can't just keep treating the oceans as a huge septic tank.
once US manned missions stop, they won't continue in the US until funded by private enterprise if ever. The gap between the end of shuttle and the launch of Orion is long enough for people to start asking, "Do we really miss a manned space program? Maybe we should fund education or XYZ or ABC...."
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Question: I have a picture of the LAST man on the moon in my screensaver - can you name him without looking it up?
While your raking your brain on that, let's go with your entertainment theory and assume people are not interested in science and just want to watch heroics. My prediction is that these people would not be interested in a Mars landing for the same reason they were not interested in the last man on the moon.
Why? - Because it's a rerun, they would simply shrug and say something like "what's the point, we've been to the moon already". The enourmous technological gap between a moon landing and a mars landing would be lost on them because they are not interested in men on Mars anymore than they are currently interested in men on the ISS. I was born the year after sputnik and grew up in the 60's, the Moon landing did indeed make the world stand with their collective jaws on the ground, but for the type of people you are describing the show ended with Apolo 11's return to Earth.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Orion and Direct are both pretty terrible, costwise. So Direct is a little better. In *theory*. But there are little incentives for the government to be efficient when they build these things. What congress should consider is Space X. Space X is fully private and is so much more efficient than NASA its crazy. And right now if we don't change anything we will use Russian Soyaz rockets to bring our people to the ISS, wasting taxpayers dollars in a foreign country. Even though Space X is 1 for 4, they already won the re-supply contract (pending some litigation) and their capsule is designed to carry people to space. We should cancel government funded efforts and instead contract it all out.
They would never get us to the moon, or put up the ISS. Instead, they would do something like build the Shuttle.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, obviously you work at l-mart, boeing (well, ULA), ESA, or RSA. And I make it a habit to not feed trolls. But, curiosity and all that.
Why is SpaceX a fiasco? What do you base that on? Competition to you? You just do not like that they are making it cheaper than Russia and China?
Seriously, I suspect that I have seen you out here before and you never really answer the question.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is it a 'mega' boost, or a 'super-energy' boost?
We got 'em all at the 'Frosty Shack'.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
"And I make it a habit to not feed trolls"
Then shut the fuck up.
... look forward to the day when Space sets the national agenda in the Hearts And Minds, as it did during Kennedy's term in office.
NASA gets 18 billion and change this year.
The DOD got over 400 billion in discretionary spending in 2008.
I called my dad on the anniversary of Apollo 8, We talked about how he'd heard the broadcast in his youth, the state of the space program and the future of manned spaceflight. He's of the opinion that the next boots on the moon will be Chinese. I'd prefer to think otherwise... but he thought Ellen Tigh was a Cylon at her very first appearance... and hey, they need it more than we do.
More money for Space is always a good thing. Look at what NASA has given Americans in terms of national pride and the world in terms of scientific advances.... then look at the price tage of the Joint Strike Fighter and its price/performance ratio compared to current ready-to-fly equipment. Look at the price tag of our post-Clinton "nation building." Tell me the world wouldn't benefit more from NASA being tossed, say... an eighth of the DOD budget.
Hell, for the price of invading Iraq we could be holding national lotteries to see who gets to be on the next colony ship to MARS.
Our only hope as a species is to get off of this rock before we turn it into Venus Junior. The only agencies that can get us there - Roscosmos, NASA - can't even begin to try for lack of adequate funding.
Which, ultimately, stems from lack of adequate political incentive.
In terms of securing a future for the species, every dollar spent on NASA increases our chances more than any 100 million spent on "defense" (from what? Asteroids? Global warming? Some kind of superflu?). Unfortunately, that money isn't going to be spent until every television channel and radio station is broadcasting a "time till The Big Rock hits us" countdown.
It's Watchmen all over again.... and while I'm grateful that Obama has bumped the NASA budget.... he's no Ozymandias.
If we can't get private industry in space then we don't deserve to be there. NASA must die, by any means necessary.
Thanks. Gemini 8 was possibly an even more dangerous situation than Apollo 13.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
The politicos are all completely short sighted and frankly too fucking stupid in most cases to understand the importance of manned space exploration.
You want to see economic stimulus? Actually start working on a permanent moon base and the means to get there on a regular basis, like a SSTO plane. This would employee millions of people in many high tech sectors, and there are lots of benefits to industrial activities on the moon and in orbit
Hell, people complain about the defense budget. We've given the thieving bastards on wall street a lot more than the defense budget, and we gave (it's not a loan if there is no intent to pay it back) more than NASA's budget to two mismanaaged auto makers.
Bush was an asshole, Obama is an asshole, and the next guy will likely be a pandering asshole too. Personally I give the human race 1 chance in 3 of surviving in any meaningful way for more that 50 years zt this rate. As a group we apparently lack the ability to move forward and grow, instead we huddle together and waste time watching American Idol and wondering who is fucking who. That's apparently more important to most people than the future of the race.
Fuck it. I'm going to bed
/ end rant
I can't speak for the rest of the public but I can speak for myself. I don't see much space science value in ISS or a manned Moon base. There's some space medicine and space logistics value if you plan to later proceed on to other planets. But I think that's a slow and expensive route to go if the most valuable scientific question to answer is: Does life exist somewhere other than Earth?
You want public excitement for space exploration? Find microbes on Mars. Or find fish swimming around the oceans of Europa. Or find intelligent radio signals from Sagittarius. Or find a habitable planet within a hundred light years of Earth. If I were allocating the budget at NASA I'd rather pour the money into robotic missions for those discoveries rather than putting more footprints and golf balls on the Moon.
Oh, sure, we can DOUBLE (yes you read that right, DOUBLE as in TWICE as much as last year) the amount of money we give to "foreign aid" and get not so much as a thank you in return but allocate more money to NASA to keep shuttles working, nope, not yours. DOUBLE?!? DOUBLE??!?!?!? Yeah, that'll bring down the deficit. *bangs head on keyboard*
The problem is that these are plankton-sized pieces of plastic, outnumbering plankton by a ratio of 10 to one, and doubling every decade.
Doesn't sound like it is happening at the scale of 1-2 mm. Unless there's only one 1-2 mm sized plankton per 10 square meters which I suppose could be true in deep ocean. And I'm unclear why plankton is going to die because of plastic. Seems to me something will figure out how to eat (for real) the problem. It is food, life just needs to evolve to eat it. And algae not plankton are the bottom of the ocean food chain.
Moving on, the lake example is wrong. Lake Nyos had an active volcano pumping CO2 into it. This CO2 upheaval is infrequent but routine for such a lake.
The plankton are at the bottom of the food chain. Filter feeders die off because they no longer get enough plankton (picture eating 1 bite of food for every 10 bites of plastic in YOUR diet). The filter feeders die off, and so do all those above them. Next, we end up with dead zones and algae blooms. All those good plankton are now gone, and we have an expanding dead zone.
The lake example is pertinent. Methane and ammonia (both much more toxic gases) come from the anaerobic decomposition of dead stuff like, well, the animals that fed on the plankton, the animals that fed on the animals that fed on the plankton, etc. If that lake had contained a much smaller level of methane and ammonia than it did CO2, the results would have been the same - dead people everywhere.
The plankton are at the bottom of the food chain.
Again, algae are the bottom of the food chain.
Filter feeders die off because they no longer get enough plankton (picture eating 1 bite of food for every 10 bites of plastic in YOUR diet).
At the plankton concentrations in question, filter feeders probably couldn't survive even in the absence of plastic.
The lake example is pertinent.
Except you ignore the chief observation. Namely, CO2 releases routinely happen in a volcanic lake. There's no similar record of dead lakes doing the same thing.
If that lake had contained a much smaller level of methane and ammonia than it did CO2, the results would have been the same - dead people everywhere.
No for two important reasons. 1) both methane and ammonia are lighter than air and would disperse upwards rather than flow downhill. 2) ammonia, which would be the really toxic part, is also highly soluble in water and wouldn't bubble up like you claim.
Actually, one of the theories about the great die-off after the dinosaurs involves just such a world-wide inversion as part of the mechanism for killing off more life than should have died just from a meteor strike and global winter..
There's evidence for another one 55,000,000 years ago http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P3-30005525.html
I wasn't there for either one, but it would be nice to have a time machine to find out ...
The Permian-Triassic extinction has some pretty good evidence supporting this sort of die-off. The evidence for the rest is rather weak. In any case, they involve radical changes in ocean chemistry or climate. A modest amount of plastic just doesn't qualify, in my view.
Return them to moon by 2020? Who the hell wants to go to the moon again? We've been there, let's plant down on Mars already.
As we countdown to the final Space Shuttle mission and the first Constellation missions, you can keep track on your iPhone using a program called INfonaut. For more details check out http://www.britechnologies.com/ Bob