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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!
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....
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
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