Slashdot Mirror
Cool NASA Tech That Will Never See Space
coondoggie writes to tell us that with the "new and improved" NASA budget on the way it looks like many of the cool projects NASA has in the works will never see the light of day, let alone space. The biggest cut looks to be the Ares heavy lift rocket but other cuts include a new composite spacecraft, deep space network, inflatable lunar habitat, and an electric moon-buggie.
An overview "Fact Sheet" on the proposed FY2011 budget for NASA has been published by the OMB at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/factsheet_department_nasa/ The Constellation program is cancelled, and this could mean thousands of jobs lost in Florida, Alabama and Texas at the major human space flight centers. The savings from the cuts will be reinvested in new R&D for future exploration.
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann
...If it wasn't for NASA we wouldn't ever have visited or learned so much more about Earth....
Hmmm... ;p ) and brought back safely - Soviet Union
1st object in space - Germany
1st Earth satellite - Soviet Union
1st human in orbit - Soviet Union
1st photograph of far side of the Moon - Soviet Union
1st landing on the Moon - Soviet Union
1st rover on another body - Soviet Union
1st large biological specimens outside LEO (around the Moon, in a Zond version of Soyuz...turtles
1st landing on Venus - Soviet Union
1st landing on Mars - Soviet Union
1st space station - Soviet Union (BTW, the Russian part of ISS was supposed to be called "Mir 2")
And so on. In the meantime Europe could afford to play the game and they ended up being the biggest, I think, commercial launch operator(?). Or of the biggest anyway. With their ATV they are a small step from having manned spaceflight capability. China has one already, India is working on it, Japan has some plans too, and all are quite active in Solar System exploration. Plus you have private companies.
I think we'll be fine
One that hath name thou can not otter
That's all well and good you see, but it was the competition with the US that drove them to do those things, it was called the "space race" for a reason.
Everything is porn to somebody.
Sorry, Mr Checkov, you are mistaken. The Soviets neither landed on nor put a rover on the moon before the US (we landed manned moon buggies), and the Germans weren't the first to put an object in space, that was in fact the Soviets. The US went to the edge of space with the X-15 plane, but the Soviets beat us (and the Germans) to space proper.
The Soviets also put the first satellite in space.
"Interesting" would have been an accurate mod, but informative it was not. More like misinformative.
Free Martian Whores!
The Soviets also put the first satellite in space.
But they didn't put "the first object in space". The first "Man made object in space" by all official records is the German V2 Rocket test number V-4 made on 3 October 1942.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches
As for the rest of your facts, I would suggest you check them. They may or may not be correct but I'm short on time to fact check them all.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
is that the list of 'Soviet firsts' should really be 'captured German engineers working for the Soviets firsts'.
And the later 'American firsts' ought to be 'captured German engineers working for the Americans firsts'.
I can't think of any early space-flight that did not depend on lots of German know-how and support. Perhaps the British 'Black Knight' and 'Blue Streak' programs, which were pretty well entirely home-grown. But even they only did this because the Germans had shown that it could be done first....
Technology transfer of NASA tech to private industry already happens. Google "NASA commercialization" and "NASA technology transfer" for more info. For example, here is the NASA spinoff homepage.
Hmm... if you count operating for 20 seconds a successful landing... then maybe... not very useful though.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Because the original Exploration plan *did* close within the current budget. Cost growth and schedule delays made it grow beyond the budget. Also, Obama isn't cancelling the program to save money... he is cancelling the program so that those funds can be used for *other* things closer to his core agenda (namely earth observation and climate science missions).
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
1st rendevous in space, USA
1st multiple rendevous in space, USA
1st practical spacewalk, USA
Most landings on the moon, USA
1st man to orbit the moon, USA
1st man on the moon, USA
1st probe to Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and soon Pluto, USA
This is my sig.
So? You still can't argue that NASA is not an enormous contributor to planetary science and remote sensing.
Consider the Soviet Mars program. They sent three landers there over three years, and Russia is just getting around to following up on those. NASA has sent seven missions there over thirty years, very elaborate and sophisticated ones. The Viking lander was a scientific tour de force, and the US Mars Rover mission alone is a record breaker for sheer number of days in operation.
On the other hand, the Soviet space program practically owned Venus, spent decades in a serious, extended effort to gather data there. That's a huge contribution to science, because Venus is hard, but very, very interesting due to its similarities and differences with/to Earth.
As far as the Earth is concerned, I don't think there is any contest, science-wise. Not to denigrate Soviet contributions in engineering, but I don't think we can even begin to calculate the value of something like Landsat, or the other Earth Science oriented missions undertaken by NASA or with NASA playing a key part.
A "punch list of firsts" approach is not a very good way to gauge the importance of a nation's space exploration program.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Not quite. NASA's getting more money, not less. But they're not going to be spending it on things that will be served by free market resources in the near future. Thus, they will have more money for other projects, particularly actual research. Rather than building another 1960's style heavy lift rocket.
-Dave Haynie
NASA's budget is being increased by 6 billion dollars. They're canceling the Constellation program because it wasn't originally funded enough to ever work. The schedule has slipped so much there wasn't going to be a replacement for the Space Shuttle until 2038 or beyond. The director's statement is here: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420994main_2011_Budget_Administrator_Remarks.pdf
(Celui que tient la peur de devinir nuage)
>Because the original Exploration plan *did* close within the current budget. Cost growth and schedule delays made it grow beyond the budget.
Those two statements contradict each other. NASA cant deliver this thing without an extra 3 billion a year for the next 8 or 9 years. The path to the moon is not sustainable and would only relive 1950s era achievements. Better off with robotics and earth science and building a role for private enterprise.
The history of the effort to develop a successor to the Shuttle is littered with cancelled projects, and test programs that were never part of a coherent technology development program. You appear to be referring to the DC-X, but in fact, the other finalist candidate for the X-33 test demonstrator program was not the DC-X, it was a winged-flyback rocket design from Rockwell, which hadn't been flown, either.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Have you read the budget documents? They don't say that at all. Privatization only applies to LEO transport -- a well-known, well-defined task with clear profit potential and well-understood risks.
The budget specifically states that its renewing a focus on developing fundamental technologies, something that was lacking in the past decades and the main reason Constellation was a dinosaur. The budget specifically lists some things like enabling technologies for heavy lift vehicles, improving RTGs for planetary exploration (we're about to run out of P238), in-situ resource utilization, lunar regolith factories, and in-space propulsion. There are increased budgets for planetary and earth science.
This is NASA concentrating on its roots. NASA was in charge of getting people to LEO when that was new and challenging and unknown. NASA roots are doing the new hard things, with a focus on exploration.
>The entire point of NASA is to get people in Space.
That is not the organizations mission statement. You can make up crowd pleasing shit all your want, but that doesnt make it true. Here's the real mission statement, please note these are all doable without shoving meatbags on top of a rocket and having them play golf on the moon:
" To improve life here, To extend life to there, To find life beyond.[10] "
--NASA Mission Statement
" NASA's mission is to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.[11] "
--NASA Mission
" To understand and protect our home planet, To explore the Universe and search for life, and To inspire the next generation of explorers... as only NASA can.[10] "
--NASA Vision
In fact, I would argue that finding life beyond the solar system can only be done with robotics. Your meatbag body isnt going to handle a 100 year journey too well and even if it was possible it wouldnt be worth the cost.
It's sad really and NASA is definitely who should get more budget.
To be clear, NASA *is* getting more budget in the proposed plan. It's a matter of what the money will be spent on. This latest move is consistent with the findings of the Augustine commission last fall, which was that the program of returning to the moon had little chance of success by 2020 at current funding levels. If you accept that judgment and are actually looking for forward progress, then either you (a) increase the budget for manned spaceflight, or (b) change your goals. Political forces and the current economy make (a) impossible, so they're going with (b).
A problem with NASA's manned spaceflight program is that the footprint is spread across some very influential states (e.g., TX and FL) and companies (Boeing etc.). All of the complaining in Congress about this proposal is simply about saving jobs and govt subsidy of their local economies. Truthfully a big part of why the Shuttle is such an expensive way to get stuff into orbit is the thousands of ground support personnel needed. The Congressional representatives from these states love expensive spaceflight, and will do what they can to protect it.