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Senators Blast NASA For Lacking Vision
An anonymous reader writes "A Senate science subcommittee clashed with NASA's chief on Wednesday, saying the agency and the White House lacked a clear vision and goal for the program. Skeptical senators told the space agency that it should not just talk about plans, but set out to do something specific. Lawmakers expressed a bipartisan opposition to the agency's plans and the initiatives of the Obama White House." Updated 23:13 GMT by timothy: Reader Trent Waddington contributes this video link to the hearing, if you want to come to your own conclusions.
I can't believe the grandstanding coming out of the US government nowadays. From berating car company executives for flying in their jets (no, they should buy multi-million dollar jets and just let them rot), to coming down on Toyoda as if he were the embodiment of all evil (yeah, US manufacturers NEVER had recalls. I have yet to see the Toyota equivalent of the Ford Pinto), and now NASA.
Oh we took away all your funding and tied you up in red tape, but now we will complain that you lack vision and have not made any progress! It's NASA's fault for literally not delivering the moon, on a budget that would be barely noticed by an average defense contractor. Because it's ok to pour $65 billion into F-22's, the 140+ million dollar planes that always seem to be in the shop (68% readiness you know if I paid $140 million I want the damned thing to work), but no additional funding is required to move forwards in space exploration (the NASA budget has been fairly constant at all time lows since 1993).
It's the politicians in the US that need fixing. They didn't listen when the public said "no" to more war. They didn't listen when the public said "no" to the bailouts. They didn't listen when the public said "no" to the stimulus. There's a pattern here. "Voting" isn't going to change anything... real democracy died a long time ago, victim to the two party system set up by special interests.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No, I think it's actually an enlarged Apollo module and maybe a cargo module on top of a Shuttle fuel tank, with Shuttle main engines on the bottom of it, and Shuttle boosters strapped to the sides.
Apollo's F1 engines used kerosene, whereas the Shuttle's main engines use LOX and liquid H2, IIRC, so the two aren't really compatible, plus it's unlikely they'd go back to kerosene after already having the infrastructure in place for the newer fuels. Finally, the SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines) are already developed and tested, so it's not hard to simply make more, or reuse the ones they already have. Building more F1 Apollo engines would probably be a big challenge since they haven't made any in decades and the plans are probably lost in a file cabinet somewhere, and all the fixtures and such are gone.
It's a perfectly sensible design, unlike an entirely-new design like the Ares. It reuses components that already exist and are highly tested and perfected, and simply jettisons the Orbiter and replaces it with a new capsule on top. It should be cheap and easy to build, unlike the Ares, and shouldn't have any problems except maybe for the capsule part, since that's the only new part.