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NASA Expands Role of International Space Station
coondoggie writes "NASA is looking for a few good experiments to run in space. The space agency this week said it was seeking research ideas (PDF) from private entities who want to do research on board the International Space Station. NASA said it was looking to expand the use of the ISS by providing access to the lab for the conduct of basic and applied research, technology development, and industrial processing to private entities — including commercial firms, non-profit institutions, and academic institutions. NASA said using the ISS as a national lab could help develop a number of applications in areas such as biotechnology, energy, engineering, and remote sensing."
It worked for me when I was renting out a room.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Tell me we're not doing remote sensing experiments on the ISS!
Plane on a giant treadmill... in space!
Come on, we all want to know how sex in space works. Its probably the simplest experiment that would generate tons of interest.
Okay, so let's cut all government funding of NASA because you don't want to support "intellectual curiosity". While we're at it, let's cut all government grants to US higher education institutions. After all, that's intellectual curiosity, too!~ And let's stop giving out government-awarded scholarships to promising students. Why the hell should we all pay because they want to learn more, do some research and solve our problems?~ And none of this publicly-funded disease research shit. Let the big pharma corporations handle it, we all know they're open and willing when it comes to sharing their discoveries and creations.~
I say we send one up there and plug it in and point a webcam at it.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
NASA emphasizes the utter uselessness of the ISS by asking people what interesting things can be done with it.
Yes, and the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is useless as demonstrated by NASA asking people what interesting things could be photographed with it. Manned stations, robotic probes, equally useless!
P.S. I agree, more robotic probes. But seriously, sending out a call for researchers to propose experiments is not an indication of uselessness.
The enemies of Democracy are
What kind of work is useful to experiment on in microgravity?
Don't know how useful it is, but Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki has demonstrated that soap bubbles retain their color in space, answering a scientific question from her daughter.
Again, how useful this is will depend on the person.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Article I, Section I: "All legislative powers herein granted..."
Nowhere after that statement is Congress granted the authority to do whatever it wishes. Congress is extremely limited in its powers. As James Madison said, "The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
Sadly since I pissed off 1 to many NASA engineers in the past (blah blah Crusader project by UDLP, blah blah trying making some money... blah blah blah remote mining and processing project... sub orbital meteor mining is a stupid idea...)
Anyway they'll no likely to talk to me (ever again) so here are my suggestions. Please feel free to run with them:
1: Sex (Duh. We all want to know.)
2: Artifical ring construction via centrifical force =
Take a spinning sphere and launch a tethered satellite while still spinning. from the teathered satellite launch another teather out such that the secondary teather is long enough to have the circumfrence of the satellite's oribital circumfurance. See if you can get it to hook up back to the original satellite to create an artifical ring on which we can construct stuff. (may required 2 satellites at opposite sides.
3: Behavior of molten metal in low gravity for crystal structure analysis (see if effect is more brittle or harded.)
4: Better estimate of open space survival time of a human being.
5: Field test atmosphering re-entry capable space suit for orbital deployment of troops (GETA LL WARHAMMA 40K ON YA!)
6: Polymer extrusion and blown film line test in low gravity for polymer chain linkage testing.
7: Smoking in the cargo bay in low-G (Can you blow smoke rings in low-g)
8: Will a paper airplain with a weight of less then .5 lbs survive re-entry to Earth?
9: Subspace structural testing to see if spacial structure exists (e.g. test if space itself has an actual shape, e.g. a quantum of space itself (rather then an infinitly divisible continum))
10: Test if the bullshit in DC is so thick you can really smell it on the ISS.
Just a few...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I'll bet the use of your taxes to pay for public libraries really pisses you off too! You just sit there drinking your tang, typing on your computer and watching your satellite TV, bitching about all the money wasted on the space program...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
With all due respect, "getting off this rock" is a fantasy. Consider this: How much money, time, and resources would it cost to move 10 million people (a miniscule fraction of the earth's population) "off this rock" in a manner that they could survive for 100 years (a miniscule fraction of humanity's longevity up until now)? Put them 1) in earth orbit, 2) on the moon, or 3) on mars. Have them be 1) totally dependent on earth for their consumables and other resources, 2) dependent on earth only for half, and 3) completely self sustained. At the end of the 100 year period they should be completely self-sustained in any scenario you choose.
Please don't make extensive use of the old "we don't know what super-advanced technology there will be" trick to pretend that at some point it will all be really cheap and easy. Historically, that has never happened. Powerful new industrial technologies have always been expensive, and this particular case will be no exception. Creating large scale habitation is also always expensive in direct proportion to the inhospitability of the environment and its distance from vital resources.
Wait, they want to turn the International Space Station into a national lab? What about all the other countries with a stake in this real estate?
I do not need my government to give me stuff. By the pursuit of happiness, I mean of course things like keeping monopolies from abusing their positions and encouraging real competition in the market place. So I can get rich if I really work at it.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Well it was before the Supreme Court fucked the citizens of the US out of their freedom with a truly horrible interpretation of the commerce clause.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Sorry, you said that asking for suggestions on research to be done just emphasizes its uselessness. That's not a strawman, that's what you said. It's not my fault that same logic applies equally to things you like such as MRO or Hubble.
Let's not assume that manned and unmanned missions can do the same thing, because they can't. Manned missions can't visit Saturn or Mars yet for that matter. And there are plenty of experiments that are much more easily performed with human supervision than without, and with pre-existing infrastructure than without. ISS is already up there, and contains space-shuttle-payload size bays designed exclusively for research. It isn't useless, the space agencies involved are already performing experiments on it. Expanding the number of experiments done is expanding its usefulness, not admitting it isn't useful at all as you claimed.
Again, we're in agreement that robotic probes are cheaper and better for exploring the solar system and beyond. I disagree with your stance that the ISS is useless. And your statement that asking for research to be conducted on it demonstrates this uselessness is factually and logically wrong.
The enemies of Democracy are
Does pursuit of happiness include an education? Millions of extremely hard working but uneducated people would suggest that this is the path to being tired and poor, not rich.
The enemies of Democracy are
If only the world would be so simple...
"Paying for the poor" helps to keep the place nicer all around, meaning you have more chance at all of "pursuing happiness". BTW, inancing first two things inevitably gives more opportunities for that pursuit to quite small group of people. And as to your ability to pursue happiness...people have shown time and time again that they generally have a hard time at moderation, a hard time not living on the credit of future generations (this graph is especially "inconvenient")
No, I'm afraid it's not so simple.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Creating large scale habitation is also always expensive in direct proportion to the inhospitability of the environment and its distance from vital resources.
Right. So if we never spend the time and money to learn how to make it work right here in LEO with a small population we will never learn how to make it work on a larger scale. New industrial technologies are expensive. For example: Can you imagine how costly the first functional farm tractors were to small time farmers that hoed their few acres with animal power? But do you see how the development and refinement of those technologies have led to wonderful advances in how farms are managed?
Nobody is saying that it will be cheap or even easy in the remotely near future. But is that really a valid reason to not even make the attempt? You have to start somewhere, and it will NEVER be cheap/routine if we as a society don't start working toward that goal. Along the way, we can use the technological advances derived from such exploration to (hopefully) better life for those here on Earth. Even something unrelated to ship construction or propulsion systems (such as a self-sustaining food/oxygen supply) could be scaled up to benefit people in the more remote regions of the world.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
I should not be forced to pay for the intellectual curiosity of others.
Actually, it's intellectual incuriosity that I'm tired of paying for.
This is actually quite false.
Building an air tight pressure vessel capable of supporting an internal pressure 1 atmosphere higher than the outside pressure is a solved problem. Hell, we can even make it inflatable and almost but not quite arbitrary size and shape.
Building an water tight pressure vessel capable of supporting an internal pressure over a thousand atmospheres less than the outside pressure is a ridiculously hard problem that is almost but not quite solved for a 6ft wide sphere with a skin taking up more than 10% of its diameter. Without revolutionary new materials, that proportion of the thickness of the wall increases dramatically as the size of the space increases and in most cases is not even approaching practical for shapes other than a nearly perfect sphere.
The big cost in dealing with space colonization is getting raw material from the bottom of our relatively deep gravity well. And that is a problem that can be mitigated by bringing material from the much shallower gravity wells of the moon and asteroids once there is some infrastructure out there.
However the big costs of colonizing the deep sea will always be the engineering and material required to keep 7 miles of water from finding even the tiniest path to the inside of the vessel.
I did read the parent post. Did you?
Tell me how you can put 10 million people at the bottom of 7 miles of ocean for a hundred years (and have them not be dead in a fraction of a second).
That is a much harder problem to solve that building a space station capable of supporting the same population in orbit for a hundred years.
Libraries? Schools? A police force to catch your mugger?