Slashdot Mirror
NASA May Drop Ares I-Y Test Flight
Matt_dk writes "Just one week after the first test launch of the Ares I-X rocket, NASA says it may decide to cancel a follow-up launch called Ares 1-Y, which wasn't scheduled until 2014. Reportedly, program managers recommended dropping the flight because, currently, there isn't funding to get an upper stage engine ready in time. Depending on whether the Obama administration decides to continue the Ares I program, this decision may be moot. Earlier this week Sen. Bill Nelson said Obama may make a decision on NASA's future path, based on the report by the Augustine Commission, by the end of November."
Future Leader: Let's use science to process people into Soylent Green!
I wonder if NASA is going to be able to keep up internal interest on these projects with the way their budget keeps getting cleaved. Hell, I wonder how they managed to keep people onboard, what with a 5 year delay between test flights.
Somebody doesn't love his karma!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Too bad we spend a trillion dollars invading the wrong country based on obvious lies and fabrications. I think we would have been better off spending that money on cool space toys or at least getting Afghanistan right the first time.
We will be paying for the George W Bush's disastrous presidency for a very long time.
So Bush initiates Project Constellation, and at a time when it's barely started, after lots of time and resources have been plown into structuring the project, it's on the verge of being shut down?
Well, if it's shut down, at least we saw some cool flames at the back of a rocket!111 Durr...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It will take 5 more years to get another one ready for testing? Clearly someone else (yea, I know, the nazi) was running things back in the old days when they went from speech to stepping on the moon in about 8 years.
...that Obama is really a conservative, not a liberal.
I hope you're joking...
I suppose in some very liberal circles, Obama is conservative ... if you use "conservative" as a "relative" term. But you usually don't use it in a relative term without stating what it is relative to. A conservative democrat? A conservative republican? Conservative conservative?
Anyway, Obama seems to be more "populist" than anything. He won based on his popularity and charisma, not so much his liberal or conservative policies. From my viewpoint, Obama is very liberal. But then, I'm very conservative. So there you have it.
Have you seen his energy initiatives? You can pursue science and "the future of our species" without spending billions on pie-in-the-sky space projects.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a space junkie. I like Battlestar Galactica just like any other red-blooded American geek. And if we were overflowing in riches right now, I'd say let's go for it.
But the practical fact of the situation is that space exploration is only one miniscule part of science, and it is very, very expensive. Yes, you make engineering discoveries, and some of it is really glamorous on the 6:00 news. But if you're looking for bang for your buck, let's be honest. You can pursue science that is much cheaper and which has much more immediate gains by investing in stuff like developing alternative energy, beefing up our computing infrastructure, etc.
Just because money isn't spent on the stuff that you personally think is neat doesn't mean that it's not being well-spent or being put to productive use.
were about the same. Both ran up monster deficits for no real reason. Both had economic bumps up front, so, I could not blame them for that spending. BUT, once the economy turned, they both increased the debts and threw money away. Between their debts, invasions of other countries, stealing of American rights, etc, the American dream is about to be the American nightmare.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Change you can believe and stuff? What better than a daring scientific project of national proportions to catalyze the United States, to unite the minds and the hearts of all the people, to inspire them, to give them hope and a vision?
During the Apollo missions America had a dream larger than life, a vision that propelled her forward for decades to come. The creativity, genius and overpowering enthusiasm that this country showed was what, I think, eventually broke the USSR - the Star Wars "threat" was so much more frightening to the Soviets, because they (the old gard, anyway) still had in mind the Apollo missions and thought that these crazy yankees might just pull this off!
America is now just a shell of its former self - a gigantic trade and budget deficit, a country wholly subservient to foreign (mostly arab) oil, and almost bought out by the Chinese government.
You want a stimulus, one that will really stimulate all the people, all their endevours, all their emotions? Give NASA more, much more money, and tell them to dream big!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I'm going to break Slashdot etiquette by replying to my own reply, but this is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
If you were president, and you had the choice to, say, send a manned mission to Mars to collect some dirt and maybe begin the steps it would take to, if we're lucky and very, very good, colonize the planet a century or two from now, or roll out a national energy infrastructure that will get us off of fossil fuels today, thus keeping our own planet from boiling away (and most likely discovering a lot of very useful stuff that would make such a manned Mars mission much cheaper, safer, and more practical when we DO do it), which would you choose?
Some people are still under the misguided notion that we don't have to make such choices, that we can just do both. That's one of our problems with science initiatives today. We're trying to do everything, and we end up half-assing it all and nothing gets done.
Personally, I'd rather just not have a space program (well, nothing much more than putting satellites in orbit now and then) than spending billions on the white elephant of one that we have today.
The summary is trying to make hay. There are other tests already on the board between now and the 2014 Ares I-Y test flight. Project managers simply decided that the objectives of that particular test fly could be achieved by other means (test flights) thereby saving the program unnecessary expenses. A very helpful thing considering their already tight budget.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Actually, conservative is always used in a relative sense - see for example the Conservative Party of Canada. While they are quite conservative relative to most Canadians and Canadian political parties, they really would not be branded as such south of the 49th.
The saddest part is the test launch of the Falcon 9 has been sitting on the pad since JANUARY. It's been tied up in paperwork ever since. If I had my tinfoil hat handy, I'd say it was tied up solely to make sure the Ares launch happened first. SpaceX has demonstrated their competence with a successful payload delivery to orbit on board a Falcon 1. Not giving the go-ahead for the Falcon 9 smells of excuses, to me. Canaveral is built to handle rockets that size, and the Canaveral range officers have a fine understanding of rockets that size. They know how to use an abort button if necessary. There isn't any danger to anybody, anywhere, whether it works or not. The hazards are to Elon Musk's wallet and to certain pork barrel charity-for-engineers NASA programs. Playing politics has crippled space efforts more than any launch fatalities, anywhere.
I'm not sure not spending money on space flight in a conservative philosophy as I at least would consider space abilities to be very much in line with providing for the national defense. There's a lot of overlapping technology and abilities in that realm and most conservatives don't have a problem with the government spending money on programs that are huge boons to our technology/industry/defense sectors. I've lived in both New York and conservative North Carolina and I've never heard any backwoods Conservatives down there complaining about spending money on NASA. But I have heard a lot of saved the world through government programs liberals complain about spending money on space flight when we could be feeding people instead. In reality I think there are people on both sides of the fence that support it and people on both sides of the fence that don't
Either way the one thing we POSITIVELY want to avoid is anyone managing to label supporting space exploration as a "liberal" or "conservative" policy and having party lines drawn on the issue as that way we'll never get it done. Space Exploration isn't something we can accomplish during the time span that one party is in power, it has to be a common endeavor supported by the entire nation.
Well NASA sure as heck isn't raking in the funding under Obama either. And don't go saying he'll be giving more funding to have NASA do Earth Science either because of his stance on Global Warming, because he isn't doing that either.
All I see right now is liberal special interest groups getting waaaayyyy more money than NASA is even asking for showered on them and NASA continuing to get the shaft from this administration just like they did from the last one.
I am sick of hearing how science can now breathe a sigh of relief because Obama's in the White House. They won't be doing anything at all unless they get some real funding pretty soon.
Yes, since when did 'conservative' start to mean 'dedicated to spending as much as possible on massive military buildup and wars of world domination', anyway?
And when did 'spreading the wealth' become un-democratic?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
A liberal, as defined in this era, would not want to spend the money because it doesn't do anything to further their socialist agenda and spread the wealth.
The problem is that "liberal" and "conservative" as defined in the US have no substantive policy differences, just different talking points that the American media sells to American consumers as profound and fundamental differences in policy, to the extent that when members of your two nominally different poltical parties do exactly the same thing those actions are universally believed to have different meanings.
When a "conservative" runs up a massive budget deficit it's to keep America safe. When a "liberal" does exactly the same thing it's because they're growing government power to promote their socialist agenda.
When a "conservative" bails out a business it is "saving the American free enterprise system" (still don't understand that, but that's what "conservatives" say.) When a "liberal" bails out a business it's to reward their friends in Big Labour and promote their socialist agenda.
When a "liberal" says we must "spread the wealth" it's furthering thier socialist agenda, but when Sarah Palin said it--which she did!--it's "conservative" government support of the common man, or Real Americans, or something.
I've put the above examples in conservative-interpretive terms because conservatives are the dominant political and cultural force in America today, as suggested by Obama's continuance of almost all substantive Bush-era policies on killing people around the world and looting the national treasury in favour of Big Business. But one could just as easily put a liberal-interpetive spin on them: "conservative" spending is "supporting the military-industrial complex" while "liberal" spending is "providing jobs for our hard-working men and women" (in the military-industrial complex.) And so on.
No actual policy ever changes as presidents and congreses come and go: the single-party oligarchs and keptocrats change the window-dressing and continue to amass power and loot, and the nattering idiots that populate American political discourse continue to steadfastly quibble with each other as if the two wings of the Party were the least bit different from each other in any substantive sense.
For your own sake: wake up, people. Please.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
How about a project of national proportions to get us off of fossil fuels, or at least completely energy-independent, today, and for a fraction of the cost of whatever you have in mind?
How about a project of national proportions to beef up our computing and telecommunications infrastructure so that every American has pretty much instant, real-time access to, well, pretty much everything?
Or for that matter, how about a massive funding effort of national in medical research, with the end goal of something like a cancer vaccine, maybe even a cure, or other goals such as extending the quality and quantity of life in general? That would certainly captivate me.
I love sci-fi, I love sci-reality, I've been a space junkie since I was a kid, and if I had the chance to go to Mars, I'd sign up tomorrow. But I'm also practical, and I realize that there are a lot better things that we could spend a lot of money on than the space program.
Maybe "change I can believe in" means "we're going to stop spending billions of dollars on white elephants and put that money to more practical use." If so, consider me on board. I don't want the space program to die any more than anyone else, but I do think that as a country, we have much higher priorities that we should concentrate on.
The first stage was sent back for more testing. Then they did second stage engine tests without the engine nozzle. Second stage mechanical tests. They should still need to make a second stage engine test with the nozzle on, an integrated second stage fire test, vehicle hold down firing tests. Pad work probably isn't 100% finished either.
Actually, it would be foolish to continue with Ares-1. It has no distict advantages over the Delta-IV and Atlas rockets, or the proposed commercial rockets (Falcon 9). It can't lift much more, and it costs a lot more. NASA's been trimming the Orion crew module to make it light enough to lift. (Backwards thinking. Design the crew module, then build a rocket large enough to lift it.)
The biggest cost (both in terms of dollars and time) in rocket development is the design and testing of new engines. This cost could have been completely avoided if NASA had adopted the DIRECT plan. The DIRECT plan involves taking the engines out of the shuttle and tacking them onto the bottom of the external tank. Mount the Orion crew module on the top of the external tank, and away you go. This configuration, called the J-130 could be flying in three years. It would easily be able to lift a fully stocked Orion crew module, plus an extra 20 metric tons of supplies to the ISS. The Jupiter, because it is made of existing shuttle parts, allows most of the people currently employed in building and deploying shuttles to keep their jobs (especially if the shuttle program is stretched out for a couple of years.
By adding a fourth engine and an upper stage, you transform the J-130 into the J-246. It is capable of lofting 85 metric tons into orbit. The upper stage is similar to the upper stage currently used on Centaur rockets. (It can even use an existing Centaur upper stage, I believe.) Because it uses the same core configuration as the J-130 (which is itself a minor variation of the existing shuttle), it can be built, deployed, and launched on the same lauch pad, using the same gantry cranes, by the same experienced personnel that will be running the J-130. ARES cannot do this because the rockets are so dissimilar.
Now, the ARES program is called a 1.5 launch configuration. The 1 launch is the ARES-V, and the 0.5 launch is the ARES-1 with the crew. No matter what you call it, it is still two launches (of significantly different rockets). With the DIRECT plan, you still launch two rockets, but because they are both carrying cargo, you wind up with more tonnage in orbit. Also, since the rockets are practically identical (apart from the upper stage and additional first stage engine), you don't need separately trained personnel. Best of all, both the J-130 and J-246 can be built and flown with NASA's current budget. We could be on the moon by 2020 if we so desire.
Now don't think that all of the development that went into ARES would be lost. By no means! Development of the human rated RS-68s would continue. When ready, they would replace the SSMEs used on the Jupiter core. Development of the J-2X could continue as well. The thing is, they would be optional upgrades, and not required equipment.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
We do want to control malpractice insurance costs. I agree with you there! The system is just far too litigation happy and we have lawyers who make a living off frivoulous lawsuits. But Part of the problem though is insurance companies with have 30% overhead compared to 4% for medicare. If we got rid of the insurance companies and replace it with medicare for all, we would save enough money to cover everyone in the country. Just by getting rid of private insurance and their $120 million dollar salary executives! The insurance companies have so corrupted government, especially repubs. but also the democrats, like Max "Insurance company lapdog" Baucus, that we will never see a real universal single payer system that works best for americans rather than insurance companies. The public option was the middle ground between the conservatives want, the current corrupt, fatten up the wealthy on the pain and suffering from out of control costs on average americans, private health care systems, and the ideal and best option single payer. Single payer would actually give you the most choice, under progressive proposals, to choose any doctor, adn there would be no bureaucracy, doctors and patients would make the decisions about what treatment is best. it would be the opposite of death panels because you would not have private insurance denying life saving treatments so the CEO can get another yacht, and millions of uninsured and dying off. The Republicans are such an immoral and scandalous, outright liars to propogate this totally false lie that there would be death panels in the bill, when the private insurance system they protect IS a death panel and the Republicans are responsible for 40,000 children dying every year due to lack of healthcare so some sleazy CEO can get rich!
The man has been in there for 10 months, has been dealing with the 2 wars, the worse economy since 1935, massive corruption in the previous admin, taking American rights, quite possibly war crimes by the previous admin, and you think that NASA's underfunding by the neo-cons for 7 long years is his top priority? Really?
So far, Obama has nearly DOUBLED the amount of money being spent on Science that W/Neo-cons did, and I HOPE that Obama will br brighter than them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Since Nixon, the budget has been at ~1% of the federal budget. It dropped pretty heavily under reagan and W, stayed mostly even with Clinton and Carter (though both dropped it in their last years due to the economy) and increased with Poppa bush. This current budget which is W's has it at .52% of budget.
It remains to be seen what Obama/Dems will do with it. When it comes to ppl screaming that they do not live in their budget, I see nothing by idiots. The president SETS NASA'S DIRECTION. W set it to be massive new undertaking, but then grossly underfunded it (just like everything he did).
Right now, everybody is screaming for NASA to push THEIR idea of what should happen, and few want to provide proper funding for any of it. Personally, I hope that the dems get the clue that the neo-cons did not; Space is near to being able to survive on its own and grew RAPIDLY. This is the time for the dems to pour a BIT of money into it and get this set up. It is NOT hard to do. What is amazing is that with less than and increase of 3 billion next year, 2 billion the year there after, and then 1 extra billion for the next few years thereafter, they can create in space what the Internet did; massive jobs and new frontiers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think you mean Republican and Democrat. Neither party seems to fit the old distinctions of conservative and liberal. Instead, they have just been used by the media to polarize the country, while in the end they aim for the same things.