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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.
It's sad really and NASA is definitely who should get more budget. It's the idiotic short-sighted quick-profit thinking again. We are draining Earth resources and should try to expand to space. If it wasn't for NASA we wouldn't ever have visited or learned so much more about Earth. This way we never get intergalactic flights nor can live on other planets.
reflecting on how this kind of tragedy can happen, and how it relates to our very rational, ends-oriented world, should read Horkheimer and Adorno's (in)famous Dialectic of Enlightenment and its much heralded account of how the very nature of rational Enlightenment thinking carries the danger that we'll fail to enter into "a truly human state" as a world, instead descending into "a new age of barbarism" marked by things like anti-intellectual mass culture, multiplying high-tech wars, short-sighted exploitation, and other modern ills that appear to destroy society and the planet.
It was written back during the Nazi+Emerging Cold War era, but it remains as relevant a warning today as ever.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
With the cut of Ares and other international status seeking nonsense, NASA can concentrate on their roots of science, exploration, and aeronautics.
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
The inflatable structures are able to handle projectiles better than the stiff walled structures since they have some give to them and can disperse the energy across a larger area. The fact that they pack well is just bonus.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The shuttle is retiring. There's no stopping that. No more external fuel tanks are being manufactured, the rest of the parts chain is shutting down. When the shuttle is gone, America loses manned access to space. And it appears we can't even manage to cobble together a bloody capsule to put atop a normal rocket. This leaves only Russia with manned space capabilities. (I don't know if the Chinese really have anything they'd consider flight-worthy right now.) The Indians and Japanese have their own programs but I don't see much happening in the near future.
The Constellation program sounded like a real soup sandwich. Canceling it would be a good thing if it paved the way for something done right. But that's not happening. Every shuttle successor program we've ever looked at has ended in cancellation. Obviously, we have the technology to get into space but it looks like we don't have the organizational ability to make that sort of thing happen.
You don't have to be much of a science fiction fan to appreciate the opportunities created by a serious presence in space. Even if we teleoperated everything from the ground, orbital power is a winner. Asteroid mining to prevent the destruction of our own environment down here is a winner. And human history has proven time and time again that opportunities can be opened up by endeavors and scientific discovery that we couldn't even begin to imagine at the outset.
There's so much more we should be doing up there. The shuttle was just farting around in LEO. We should end it to do something better, not end it to abandon a manned presence in space. If we're not going to move forward up there, other nations will. And we will have ceded the high frontier.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
If I made more money, I'd probably have a set of new golf clubs on my wish list for this spring. As it is, I don't have an unlimited budget, and there are other priorities which are higher, such as food, healthcare, and DirecTV. I mention that last one intentionally, by the way.
You see I could do without DirecTV and save myself enough to get a new set of golf clubs every year. Thing is my wife an daughter really like the programming. They don't begrudge me my greens fees or my high power rocket purchases. Each of us gets something from the family budget, though perhaps not all we want. We simply don't have the unlimited funds for that.
It's interesting what happens when you must have a balanced budget - certain choices have to be made.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Unfortunately it is the whole country that loses in this case. I can remember well the day that Al Gore announced the shuttle replacement. The two finalists were a craft that had already been built and flight tested and another that existed as a powerpoint presentation that relied on technology that is still not feasible. The finalists that actually had built and tested their craft were passed over so that Bill and Al could provide a big fat payday to their wing nut allies in California.
This from the party that always cries about Republicans some how manipulating science for their own nefarious purposes.
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....
The US military is something like ten times larger than the next country's military spend for goodness sake. How about easing off on the military spend and using the money for peaceful exploration of space.
Do you really need a military budget that big?
Through all the brouhaha, the doubletalk about missing blueprints and the expense of reviving older tech, it would have been far inexpensive to bring back a tried and trusted heavy lifter: The Saturn V. The Block 90 series was all set to loft the heaviest payloads to date, even the Ariane V would be hard pressed to match it.
I would have loved to see the V fly with upgraded hardware and avionics. The instrument ring would have been deleted in place for a more compact INS module. The inner structure rebuilt with improved metals and engineering. The engines... Well, hell, how can you improve on a already perfect set of man-made earthquake makers? I can see a V lofting not one, but TWO full sized ISS modules with them stuffed to the gills with parts and supplies.
Now we're stuck with a kiwi, not even classed a hangar queen.
Talk about an embarrassment.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Like, I've pretty much had it up to here with this myth of "private industry" as the salvation of everything. Banks were private industry, and they screwed the pooch not once, but three times in the last 30 years, to the tune of multiple national, no, worldwide economic meltdowns, hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, and for what? So we can have the pleasure of driving ourselves into the ground with more debt?
By contrast, NASA put a man on the moon.
I'm going NASA over private industry, any day of the week.
This is my sig.
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.