Slashdot Mirror
The Upside of the NASA Budget
teeks99 writes "There are a lot of articles circulating about the new changes to the NASA budget, but this one goes into some of the details. From what I'm seeing, it looks great — cutting off the big, expensive, over-budget stuff and allowing a whole bunch of important and revolutionary programs to get going: commercial space transportation; keeping the ISS going (now that we've finally got it up and running); working on orbital propellant storage (so someday we can go off to the far flung places); automated rendezvous and docking (allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit). Quoting: 'NASA is out of the business of putting people into low-earth orbit, and doesn't see getting back in to it. The Agency now sees its role as doing interesting things with people once they get there, hence its emphasis on in-orbit construction, heavy lift capabilities, and resource harvesting hardware. Given budgetary constraints and the real issues with the Constellation program, none of that is necessarily unreasonable.'"
There's also a pretty good article from space.com that talks about a couple of the different points
They go into some more detail about the commercial space transportation part paving the way for more "space tourist" like stuff. Obviously this will still be extremely expensive, but I hope that it could increase the total number of launches, and help bring some economies of scale.
This is also the reason I'm excited about the orbital propellant storage and automated rendezvous technology. These items will allow us to launch big (weight wise) missions by using a bunch of smaller launch vehicles, instead of one really huge (and really expensive) one.
This new program is far better than the old one. It is so very heartening to see in a NASA program a stated goal to reduce the cost of human spaceflight, along with R&D of enabling technologies (orbital refueling, etc). NASA is finally shifting its human spaceflight focus in the right direction. As I've heard said before, it's not NASA's job to put a man on Mars (or the moon). It's NASA's job to make it possible for National Geographic to put a man on Mars.
Now congress just has to not be a bunch of idiots and ruin it (possibly the greatest challenge to human spaceflight yet).
You can change the NASA budget all you want, but the major impediments to commercial space launches are still the FAA and the EPA. If you can't get a license for a launch, you aren't going anywhere. And between the FAA and EPA it is almost impossible to get a license in the US.
Maybe Mexico would be open to allowing their skies to be used and for the remote possibility of some kind of pollution. Unfortunately, it is pretty clear they have not been open in the past - or we would be doing it.
China will build lunar factories, and India will have orbital call centers.
Personally I feel NASA's ongoing mission should be the distribution of people into outer space for permanent relocation. We should focus on saving humanity from the off chance we kill each other with nukes or get hit by an asteroid.
An another article summarizing some of the proposed changes for NASA and their implications.
None of this is going to happen. Hanson owns NASA now. If they do continue launching stuff it will be more atmospheric monitoring satellites. The last astronomical observatory of significance launched by NASA will be the JWST. After that there is nothing. The deep space network will wither.
China owns space now.
From the article:
allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit
So NASA's building a version of Voltron?
rounding error with what the President proposed for FY2010. Considering they are spending an unheard of 40% over their income I guess we should feel damn lucky NASA got anything.
Being a geek I want NASA to receive funding an put people into space and on the moon. The space station comes off to me as a camper, someone looking for excitement and adventure but not wanting to commit to the log cabin in the mountains.
Being a cynic, this unabashed spending has got to stop. If it means shutting down the manned space program then please do so. Just cut everything else you can to get a budget down where my children dream of space and not how to pay off the debt of my generation. The cynic in me also says, we canceled all of this because Bush pushed for it and therefor it has to be wrong, and if not wrong, well damnit WE WON.
So NASA will become what? Beholden to corporate interest who may or may not sell services to it because of regulation? Is that the future? We no longer get to dream about going to the stars?
The ultimate cynic in me says, going to the moon and playing in space make for less votes than swimming pools named after Congressmen and schools named after Presidents.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Getting to LEO isn't rocket science, any more. We've been doing that for over 50 years, now.
By now it's rocket engineering, and appropriate for the private sector.
Keep NASA in the rocket science business - deep space, new technologies, etc. The goal here is for the private sector to do it faster and cheaper, enabling other things to piggyback on top - like even further out rocket science. Too much of NASA's attention is spent on that first 100-200 miles.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Doomed is country that is paying a lot for unemployment benefits and welfare and little for space research.
Any company that has the resources to make a manned space flight will have no problem either pulling the correct strings to get licensing, or simply finding their own island to do so.
Science? That sounds like a job for some other organization. NASA should strictly be in the business of managing air/spacecraft (although with the FAA existing to handle atmospheric flight, I suppose we could change the acronym to NSA - National Space Administration :^).
We're gonna need a whole body of laws to deal with space travel - how much junk you're allowed to leave in orbital space, precisely what orbit you're allowed to leave that junk at, what orbits you can have, how long, who pays when stuff goes wrong, et cetera. We're also gonna need a whole body of technology to get there. Let someone else (National Weather Service, Universities, etc.) do the science. The new NSA will be there to make sure that they can put stuff in space to do the science, and it would divorce pure and commercial research from direct government control. NSA should see to it that space travel is available, affordable (as possible) and safe (as possible). Leave science to scientists (lets face it, the current NASA is a quasi-military organization). Leave profit to corporations. Let the new NSA give us a path to the stars, and let that be their only mandate. The government doesn't need to decide what to do in space, only how best to get us there.
I generally don't touch posts by A/C, but in this case . . . WTF? The man has a valid point, he put it succinctly and clearly. Whoever modded the post 'troll' needs to re-read the moderator guidelines.
Turning over a government-run system to private business? How socialist can you get!
Not a typewriter
That's just an observation. It's not intended to be criticism of the plan. I have plenty of criticism of the old plan, but I don't yet know enough about the new one.
It's a big risk relying on commercial transport for transporting crew into orbit, since no private company has done this so far. A number of commercial ventures say that they will do this in the near future, but it's all just marketing until it is accomplished the first time. And, to boot, there is no guarantee that they will be in it for the long haul...what happens if they discover that it isn't sufficiently profitable?
How is NASA supporting that now that Ares V has been cancelled.
No private firm is going to build a rocket of that capability anytime in the near future.
Shouldn't their whole mission be getting people and stuff into the air and/or into space?
No, that's the job of NAPSA, the National Aeronautic and People in Space Administration. I can see how you would get confused, though.
NASA's job is to look out for the USA's space-based interests. It's not clear what having people in space does for us at this point. Putting people in space was useful once, because it was the alternative to cold war: a space race is much better for development of technology than throwing the nation's money at arms manufacturers. Right now we would be better off developing better launch technologies, whether that's vehicles or stationary machines.
We're gonna need a whole body of laws to deal with space travel
...the development of which is a job for some group of nations, e.g. the U.N., not for NASA; NASA's job there is to advise the policy-makers, the people who actually sign treaties.
Leave science to scientists (lets face it, the current NASA is a quasi-military organization). Leave profit to corporations.
Wait, who's going to put stuff in space, again? Universities don't have that kind of money after paying all the administrative salaries.
Let the new NSA give us a path to the stars,
Oh, the space elevator? Why didn't you say so? Regulations are the opposite of a path, they're obstacles, however justified.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You realize that NASA works with lots of people to do what it does. It works with lots of universities and contractors at private companies ...
They basically do what you say they should do already. They manage things for the most part, and do some stuff in house because they are the center point to it all and farming it out wouldn't be nearly as cost effective.
The current NASA is a government organization, not military. They work closely with the military, sure, but they do more civilian work than military.
Putting it all in one big pot allows for all the knowledge and experience to be shared rather than counting on a bunch of competing companies or individual universities fighting with each other to be the first. They help organize the effort and keep things from being tucked away at only one organization so everyone benefits from everyone elses work as much as possible.
We have rules governing the things you talk about ... and NASA is the division with the knowledge to understand, implement and guide those rules.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I believe there should be different agency, one devoted to exploitation of space resources,including transportation and habitability, which is more suited to private industry as compared to NASA who does exploration and science. The two would be interdependent, but it would focus NASA at what it supposed to do.
Much needed overhaul of a partially moribund manned program.
Putting science first will create a much more meaningful space
program in the long run, one in which a manned presence is
essential.
I know! But from reading the article, it is not entirely clear that the Aries V has been canceled. What they are saying is that the Aries V wasn't scheduled to receive any funding until 2016, so this is not necessarily a shift away from developing that vehicle, but other heavy lift options will be considered as well and once they get to that point they will decide what to do. In the mean time the Aries I has definitely been canceled.
Being a cynic, this unabashed spending has got to stop
The spending is going crazy because entitlements are out of control. The feds promise that everyone who is this or that is entitled to a federal zennie, and now there's more of them as baby boomers get old. What was supposed to happen was that entitlements would be pretty cheap and there would be lots of kids to share the costs of the old people. Now, neither has happened.
Bottom line is, if you want the spending to stop, you have to withhold care for the elderly and handicapped on some level and let them die. If you don't want to do that, then you to pay more in taxes to stem the budget bleeding. In all reality, the only political thing that could happen is that some old people will get cut out and some people will pay more in taxes. But all of the discretionary spending doesn't matter one whit, compared to the mandatory entitlement spending.
This is my sig.
Somebody explain to me how this helps them go to mars in my lifetime. I may have 50 years left on the planet. I would like to see us go to mars.
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
I can't wait for the first space war, when the other countries have armoured battleshuttles and we have to hitch a ride on a tourist boat.
If this was an actual cut to the budget i would be all for it.
Obama is actually increasing NASA's budget and re-purposing NASA to study global warming.
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/02/poll-president-obamas-cancellation-of-nasas-constellation-program.html
Is that this whole space privatization thing is anything more than a kill NASA move. Like, come on, we're supposed to believe that a political party that seems to think people should not be allowed to own rifles should be allowed to develop ICBMs? Would Democrats really ever let me own my own rocketship, when, the mere possession of the energy required to get into myself orbit makes for a hugely powerful weapon?
Come on, Democrats banned mercury and lead, and they are going to let us have our own rockets?
What a joke.
This is my sig.
Look, I don't normally post to Slashdot, so you're welcome to ignore this, but replacing a bunch of years-old over budget project with a bunch of new un-started ones is just a great way to clear the balance sheet for future years-old over budget projects. Going to space, especially with the safety we expect (I don't think explorers to America were as stringent on survival rates), is both unexpectedly difficult and unexpectedly expensive. Much like Joel Spolsky rails against throwing everything out and starting "fresh," because it's a waste of time, this too is just a further waste of time. Imagine if in the middle of the Apollo program we were over budget and behind. If we decided to throw all that initial work out then and start anew, we'd never have gone to the moon. It is time to finish this.
On an unrelated note, please stop worrying about the debt you've left your future generations. It doesn't work like that. If we don't spend the money now to fix what ails us and to escape the recession, your children will be born into a place the same debt and no job prospects. Instead we should be spending everything we can to get the economy humming and inflate away our debts.
I really think it's time to focus on developing a technology to put the conventional rocket in the history books where it belongs. The most promising new technologies in propulsion have required large amounts of electricity. Ion and Plasma rockets can produce a faster more efficient thrust (such as Nasa's Vlasmir) but need to be scaled up in power to launch from Earth. One big limit has been electricity for these systems we need a fusion reactor or some other break through technology to change the rules of the game. Fusion seems to be really close there was a very promising breakthrough reported a few days ago.
I understand why it was done (Cancellation of Constellation) but I have some concerns about not having ANY capability to get people into space until some commercial contractor has the equipment to do so. Also, saying "TBD" when it comes to when we will be back exploring space is the equivalent to "never" in terms of washington priorities.
Also, what is to inspire the youth of tomorrow?
So, NASA's jumping on the same bandwagon as private companies now - outsourcing everything they can get away with. I'm not totally anti-outsourcing, but I do think it goes way too far. Executives love the idea of having as few things in-house as possible, especially when a business partner can do it cheaper. The problem is that they don't care how the partner manages to do it cheaper! This happens in every field. Outsource manufacturing, and you get poor product quality. Outsource software development, and you get crappy code that has to be rewritten anyway. Outsource IT, and satisfaction levels go down as the people who knew what was happening get replaced by the cheapest people they can find. How would this apply to space travel?
Also, here's another thought. In not too many years, China, India or one of the other developing economies is going to be the dominant country on Earth. It's just a fact - they have governments who pursue growth at all costs, and we've decided to stop trying to stay ahead. One of the things that kept the US and the Soviet Union on their toes during the Cold War was the run-up in their space programs. The US push to be first on the moon was basically a government mandate, along with the massive amount of funding that it took. Let's say we wanted to do something like that again - maybe to prove a point to China or something. Now, instead of using unlimited money and power to make things happen, NASA has to go beg/bribe 500 subcontractors to do the job instead of hiring the scientists and engineering staff themselves.
"NASA is out of the business of putting people into low-earth orbit, and doesn't see getting back in to it."
That's like GM saying "You know what? We've been producing cars for a long time now. People should have a pretty good idea of how to figure it out. We are getting out of the car business, let people build their own cars from scratch now." (All GM sucks at building cars aside)
Only building a shuttle capable of carrying humans to LEO and docking with a space station MIGHT be a bit more complicated.
Perhaps say the difference between smoke signals and my iPhone.
What this REALLY means is that for a Very Long time, if you want to go to the ISS, you are going to be flying the Russian Rocket.
I can't wait to see what happens when they figure out that they are the only game in town...
I for one welcome my new comrade overlords. :)
I am from Soviet Canuckistan anyway, with my communist health care, so I won't notice much differance anyway... I might drink more Vodka, but I think I can deal with that.
Many (not all, of course) of the posters here are in favor of capitalism. Just a guess.
So, why is it that there are so many her in favor of socialized space exploration? What happened to "The free market can do it better?"
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
FAA and the EPA stopping commercial launches
You can change the NASA budget all you want, but the major impediments to commercial space launches are still the FAA and the EPA. If you can't get a license for a launch, you aren't going anywhere.
Fine.
After I launch, they can come up and arrest me.
-- Terry
To put it simply, we import half the oil we consume. The oil drives our entire economy, so in order to maintain our current standard of living (and that includes all those entitlement programs) we have to maintain a strong international presence. So it is not like you can pick one, you need to do both for the whole scheme to work at all.
This situation is not agreeable to me at all, and I think we should dramatically cut back our defense spending. But I also know that that's going to mean scaling back my lifestyle and taking more personal responsibility for caring for the elderly and infirm. I am prepared to do that, but you need to understand that once the defense spending is gone, the government is no longer going to be able to afford these entitlement programs, no matter how much they raise taxes.
This morning NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had a press conference where he gave more details on NASA's plans and announced the initial contracts for the $50 million commercial crew development contracts (was supposed to be $200 million, but most funding was diverted by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al) towards Constellation). Mind that this is just for the first year, as the budget hasn't passed yet -- once the budget passes, future contracts will award a total of a few billion spread over a number of years. The video link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YvIESqDUk
Here's my notes on the press conference:
(sorry about the heinous formatting)
Charles Bolden takes a moment to thank the Constellation team for their years of dedicated service
"We want to explore new worlds, we want to develop more innovative technologies, we want to foster new industries, and we want to increase our understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe."
"each awardee also proposed significant investment from other sources to leverage taxpayer investment"
Blue Origin
o $3.7 million award to fund "risk mitigation activities related to its development of pusher launch escape system, and to develop a composite crew module for structural testing."
Boeing
o $18 million for space transportation system which includes a 7-person capsule to launch on medium-lift expendable launch systems
Paragon
o small business
o has directly supported more than 70 spaceflight missions
o $1.4 million for a development unit of environmental control and lift support air revitalization system
Sierra Nevada
o $20 million for Dream Chaser, 7-person spacecraft to be launched on Atlas V-402 vehicle
ULA
o $6.7 million for emergency detection system to monitor vehicle health of Atlas V and Delta IV rockets
they are the vanguard; certainly adding to this group in the near future
comments from presidents/reps
o ULA
EDS work for commercial crew and making sure products are more reliable for all customers
o Blue Origin
pusher escape system, at back of capsule to avoid jettison event, not consumed on nominal launch so it lowers operating costs
composite capsule will improve durability over conventional technology and lower weight
o Boeing
principal teammate Bigelow Aerospace
Bigelow represents most probable near-term market for crew transportation to LEO other than NASA
want to satisfy both Bigelow's needs and NASA's
parallel with Bill Boeing's young company and airmail to delivering cargo and crew to ISS
o Paragon
developing air revitalization system
first of its kind: a turn-key system, usable on pretty much any spacecraft
had very first commercial experiment on ISS
o Sierra Nevada
developed under unfunded Space Act agreement for past two years
based on NASA's HL-20 from 20 years ago
o Orbital Sciences (ongoing COTS contract)
um, talked for quite a while
o SpaceX (ongoing COTS contract)
spoke about collaborations with NASA
Q&A
o Do you have a destination and timetable?
tiger teams working on destinations and putting together timetables now
o in-orbit refueling?
Manned space missions, but intentionally one way to add drama to the trip, and drastically reduce costs. "Marooned on Mars, the team sent farewell messages today to..." ------ And if there will be orbiting "gas stations" they could add entertainment value by having built in lethal security systems and pay for the whole thing by selling live video to the various TV networks around the world. "If they don't manage to dodge the automatic gunfire from the docking assembly, and then refuel, they won't have enought fuel for the de-orbit burn. Isn't that right Julie?" "That's right Don. Look! They are trying to shine a laser pointer at one of the tracking devices. Let's see what happens. But first a word from our sponsor. We'll be right back." ------ Change NASA to a purely military agency so that they can pursue getting out in space with all the right funding and really scary reasons. Mars won't be truly under human control until there are opposing sides camped out there, armed to the teeth. ICBMs on Mars would require a lot less fuel than here on Earth. This would help offset the other high costs of waging nuclear war on an alien planet. Cold War II: Mars
The government cutting funding to NASA is like an alcoholic telling a social drinker he's had too much to drink.
The Constellation program might have had issues, but then this administration could have instead demanding a thorough review of the program to better focus it. Instead we get a bunch of half-measures in its place with no clear long term commitment.
People can argue until they're blue in the face that robots can do a very good job of space exploration, and indeed they can, but they will never be an suitable replacement for manned space travel. The thing here, is that we should be thinking simply of exploration, but rather long-term human presence in space. In the myopic view of too many people there is no long-term benefit in that. But if we applied the same lack of imagination to most human advances we'd still barely be beyond subsistence farming. Although, I suppose there are some who would love to see just that. The point is these are the sorts of things that require a long-term commitment.
It's a bit ridiculous to suggest that the private sector will take over what NASA has been forced to abandoned. This implies that companies haven't been involved all along. The private sector has been closely tied to space exploration since day one, however it's just a fact that they're driven by profit. It's far harder to commit to long term programs when they've got property, equipment and employees to pay for, nevermind the investors. The long term is what the government is perfect for and why it was important that they remained focused on programs like Constellation.
Instead we have the US government stupidly investing $8 billion in high speed rail without a proper conventional rail and public transit infrastructure. And where are we going to get the trains? The US doesn't make them, and they have no experience building rail lines. Hell, they can't even keep conventional trains running in my area, every couple of months a train pulls down power cables. So this means we have to go to either Europe or Japan; billions in stimulus spending will automatically go to help foreign companies. Japanese rail lines, including conventional rail are more efficiently run and fares are far more reasonable than they are in the US for a comparable trip. And again, there's an extensive rail network in Japan so that once I get off that high speed train I can get on a regular train and get right where I need to go. How will I accomplish this in the US? I get to my destination and am now completely dependent on someone with an automobile to pick me up. And worst of all, high speed rail lines are seeing stiff competition from air travel and Japan has been seeing some declines in ridership.
Someone people seem overly eager to defend what this administration is doing. There may be a couple of positives here and there, but overall it's poorly conceived crap, intended more to pander to special interests than it is to do anything that actually helps this nation. China and India obviously see the value in pushing space travel and manned space exploration.
NOT environmental monitoring; that's NOAA's job.
Environmental monitoring?
http://www.noaa.gov/about-noaa.html
-- Terry
Terraforming a post-apocalyptic Earth...
The idea to me is ridiculous. Seems to me that by the time we can actually terraform another planet, we'll also be completely capable of "terra re-forming" Earth.
I'd be more comfortable with the idea if we had some practice beforehand...
-- Terry
NASA actually died in 1972, LEO is a waste of money, perhaps we will get on with private exploration.....I hope.
The US government is putting its manned access to space in the hands of private entities. When those entities go broke, will they be deemed "to important to fail"?
...if Bush would have made the same NASA cuts, you would be up in arms and cryin' about how anti-science he was. Even space is political.
Why didn't they do it? Not for any lack of know-how, willingness, or determination. It was for lack of funds. Congress cut the hell out of NASA's budget.
Classic NASA joke:
"How do you know your project's about to be canceled?"
"They send out the coffee mugs"
Its not so much that its cut, as that targets keep shifting. Constant project cancellation within NASA has become such a way of life that dropping Constellation ends up being little surprise for the optimists, and expected by the pessimists. Hard to maintain drive, when five or ten similar goals have died.
Without a strong competitor, national fear, and/or a martyr's vision leading the way, there's just not much hope for big ticket items. In that environment, piecemeal subsidization of privatized spaceflight seems like a reasonable way to go. Although without actual hardware, you're going to lose all the clever folks to contractors, and be left with a shell organization full of farm subsidy style bureaucrats without the knowledge to supervise what they're paying for.
Guess we'll just need to wait for a Chinese moon landing to get us going again, at which point it will probably be too late.
Regardless of all the money they have supposedly wasted, NASA has enriched our lives in more ways than its critics can imagine. The moon and Mars missions were priceless. Those Hubble images alone are worth every penny. And they did it all with one of the most primitive, dangerous and expensive transportation technologies known to mankind, rocket propulsion. And that there is NASA's biggest problem. No other country is going to surpass the US in space exploration because they are all struggling against the same brick wall.
Rest assured that we are not going to colonize the Moon, let alone the solar system and the star systems beyond with a bunch of clunky rockets. Rocket science may look cool but it’s way overrated. Fortunately for space fans, a breakthrough in our understanding of motion is about to change all that.
A new analysis of the causality of motion leads to the conclusion that we are immersed in energy, lots and lots of it. Normal matter moves in an immense, crystal-like lattice of energetic particles without which neither gravity, nor electromagnetism, nor even motion would be possible. Soon we’ll use this knowledge to build vehicles that can move at enormous speeds and negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring damage due to inertial effects. Floating sky cities impervious to earthquakes, tsunamis and bad weather, New York to Beijing in minutes, Earth to Mars in hours; that’s the future of energy and travel.
Physics: The Problem With Motion
We all love Asimov’s dream of a galactic empire. We want to colonize the entire solar system and many other star systems beyond. Going back to the Moon using our current rocket propulsion technology is not the way to do it. What would be the point of that? Is the moon made of unobtainium? No it's not. What NASA should be doing is spending a boatload of money on developing new and revolutionary space propulsion technologies. Even the space station is a complete waste of time and money from humanity’s point of view, the few who are benefiting from it notwithstanding.
We need a new foundational science of motion and propulsion. The current Newtonian paradigm is just not cutting it. It’s time for you rocket scientists to retire and give new brains with revolutionary ideas a turn at the wheel.
PS. Don't say nobody told you because I just did. :-)
Rebel Science News
Private companies will only survive until the first major crash of a manned space launch. Thinking there will be years of failed companies coming.
Your facts are all wrong.
Historic Tax Revenues
1. Decreased tax revenues due to massive unemployment caused by the Great Recession
The biggest reason that tax revenues fell off is because the US Tax Code is actually way too progressive. Wage earners essentially pay little taxes, leaving the bulk to taxes on investments and taxes on corporate profits. When the bottom fell out of the stock market, those revenues evaporated and you can see a drop off of about 300 billion from that.
Bush tax cuts, which were entirely financed by the deficits
Quite clearly, Bush's income tax revenues were HIGHER in 2007 than they were pre-tax cut. At the end of Bush's economic runup, federal tax revenues where 25pc higher than they were at the beginning.
Indeed, the increase from 2T to 2.5T was easily enough to actually finance both wars with change. The question is, what else actually went up?
Well, have a look at Medicare alone. Medicare went from 150B to nearly 450B during that time frame. And, we have enormous SSI payouts kicking in. Entitlements are like 5 wars, every year.
And, having the DoD go from 300B to 750B is a kick in the rear as well.
This is my sig.
---
Space Colonization Feed @ Feed Distiller
is now out of the business of manned spaceflight. Yeah, that's just fucking great.
If we have DEVOTED TASKS with known parameters, then robots will excel. Of course, throw in a unexpected change, and then it is anybodies guess. OTH, Humans do a good job of adapting to various conditions. Who knows, maybe down the road, we will send Wild Wendy to do the job and she will do JUST fine.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We just visited Kennedy over XMAS. The 3D iMax film showed a Russian launch, described the facilities. By comparison, NASA's programs are wildly extravagant.
As Russia has accomplished a substantial fraction of what the US has accomplished with a very much smaller budget, and with a similar failure rate, it is clear that NASA has been an incredible waste of our space development dollars.
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."