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Armstrong, Cernan Testify Against Obama Space Plan

MarkWhittington submitted a story about the first man to walk on the moon testifying yesterday that President Barack Obama's plans to revamp the human space program would cede America's longtime leadership in space to other nations.

70 of 411 comments (clear)

  1. and? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    dont we have bigger issues than who has the biggest space penis??

    1. Re:and? by MadCat221 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There will always be issues that people think are more important than space exploration, things that they think must be taken care of before it. If we wait until they're all taken care of, then we'll never get around to it.

    2. Re:and? by couchslug · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Better yet, why spend money to send people when we can send machines and do science?

      There is zero _urgency_ to send humans, we need robots on earth and in space much more than we need humans in space, and robots don't (unlike humans) impose a prohibitively costly burden. Let other countries eat the R&D, then do what China does to us and enjoy the fruits of other peoples research.

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    3. Re:and? by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Indeed. People seem to be of this braindead mindset that governments must solve problems in a serial fashion. The most important one goes to the top and everything else must wait it's turn.

      Newsflash - if the system worked like that as soon as "world hunger" or "world peace" floated it's way up there nothing else would EVER see the light of day.

      The reality is that if you want to get anything done, you have to work on problems in tandem. Yes, we have a deficit, yes, there are starving children in the world, but those problems will actually get WORSE if you focus exclusively on them at the expense of everything else.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    4. Re:and? by Tekfactory · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You've got it backwards,

      A NASA Space/Mars Colony if anything would help us live better with smaller carbon footprint here on Earth.

      During the last 40 years NASA has spent lots of R&D money on high efficiency solar Panels, Fuel Cells, Water Recycling/Pufification, all technologies required to live lightly on the land, or in the very finite resources available to Astronauts in space or on the Moon/Mars.

      On Earth you have people who choose not to recycle, choose to keep using gas powered vehicles, pollute the water, and spew emissions into the air.

      In space these are not choices you can make, you need to keep and recycle everything, polluting your environment is not an option, even small imbalances will be noticed quickly, and probably kill you.

      It is not within our current technology to build a rocket large enough to carry all the food necessary for astronauts on a trip to Mars, so they will need to grow their own food on the way there. If you can grow enough food in an aluminum tube the size of a small passenger liner to feed all of the crew, you can do intense fertilizer free or biochar fertilized farming in urban areas here on Earth. All with zero impact on the environment.

    5. Re:and? by kgibbsvt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Critical thinking, its something you ought to learn ... I suppose you never thought of the possibility of developing the tech here, apply here, and skip the trip?

      I'm for manned space flight, a romantic I suppose, but talk about a weak argument.

      - kg

  2. Buzz Aldrin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Buzz Aldrin disagrees.

  3. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But we have to do it. How else will we have money in the budget to bail out bankers and pay for their billion dollar bonuses?

  4. Re:So... by keithjr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What do we gain from manned space flight that we wouldn't gain, in a far cheaper way, from unmanned missions?

  5. As opposed to every other NASA proposal since 1970 by dpilot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...which has been overambitious and underfunded.

    We haven't had a decent space plan since getting to the moon. We have had some lofty goals, but never proper commitment or funding. We've also had changing directions every administration or so.

    Perhaps the worst thing about Obama's plan is that it is a little more in line with reality instead of wishes?

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
  6. Re:So... by denis-The-menace · · Score: 4, Insightful

    a media event!

    --
    Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
  7. Re:So... by Shakrai · · Score: 2, Insightful

    International prestige? Further scientific understanding of the effects of microgravity on the human organism? The foundation for eventual space colonization? The laundry list of scientific breakthroughs and advancements in consumer technology that have come from the space program? Jobs?

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  8. Re:As opposed to every other NASA proposal since 1 by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We haven't had a decent manned space plan. Galileo, Cassini, Spirit & Opportunity, and plenty others worked out very well.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  9. Re:So... by Em+Emalb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Me personally, I give a flying fuck about space. (For now, and here's why)

    We're fighting 2 wars we can't win due to the rules of engagement and the enemy's "tactics".

    We're HUGELY in debt, each and every one of us.

    The government's solution is to spend even more fucking money.

    So yeah, Space can piss off right now, IMO. Let some other fucking country "take the lead" while we fix this broken fucking country.

    --
    Sent from your iPad.
  10. Re:So... by Yaos · · Score: 4, Informative

    He's not killing NASA, he's increased their budget by quite a bit.

  11. Re:So... by turbotroll · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What do we gain from manned space flight that we wouldn't gain, in a far cheaper way, from unmanned missions?

    Colonization of other worlds is clearly impossible without manned flight.

  12. ASTRONAUT FIGHT! by buback · · Score: 5, Informative

    Buzz Aldrin disagrees

    Neil Armstrong Vs. Buzz Aldrin Over Obama's Space Plans
    CBSNews URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20002451-503544.html

    Who do you think would win in a fight, Buzz Ald(I won't even finish the question)

    1. Re:ASTRONAUT FIGHT! by Low+Ranked+Craig · · Score: 3, Funny

      Buzz Aldrin was on Dancing with the Stars... Neil wins by default.

      --
      I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
  13. Re:So... by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Informative

    Obama didn't kill NASA, he killed Ares which from what I've seen, wasn't going very well. It's sad that 40 years after we got to the moon the first time, we haven't made much progress in developing a good vehicle to return. Not that the moon is really where we should be going at this point. The asteroids and Mars are better targets due to their long term potential to fuel space based industry and such. NASA needs to go a different direction than it was if we are to have any progress. NASA should be focusing on operations farther out from Earth like Mars, the asteroids etc not a taxi service to LEO.

    --
    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
  14. Re:So... by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Humans in space? Colonies on other worlds? Ending the cosmic equivalent of having all of our eggs in one basket? We're one natural disaster away from complete annhilation of our race. I'd kinda like to have at least a few people offworld just in case.

    All this talk of "Unmanned missions are just as good!" is pretty unconvincing when reports come back that the latest rover mission may be failing because it's stuck on a 3 inch rock and can't wiggle it's way off . . .

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  15. Re:So... by keithjr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Everything in your list can be accomplished by unmanned exploration, except for the effects of microgravity and astronaut jobs. We'd generate even more (useful) jobs if we focused an R&D effort on replacing our archaic technology.

  16. Re:So... by Spazztastic · · Score: 3, Informative

    He's not killing NASA, he's increased their budget by quite a bit.

    He's only killing NASA's next shuttle plan (and the plan to go to Mars), something they had been working on since their current one began falling apart and proving to be obsolete. FTFA:

    Neil Armstrong has renewed his criticism of Barack Obama's space vision, insisting that the president's decision to scrap Constellation and head off to Mars was "poorly advised".

    --
    Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
  17. Re:So... by the+gnat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Colonization of other worlds is clearly impossible without manned flight.

    Colonization of other worlds (which ones did you have in mind, by the way?) is clearly impossible without technologies that don't exist on Earth right now and won't exist for at least another few decades. Spending many billions of dollars on chemical rockets isn't going to get the job done.

  18. Re:So... by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Informative

    Of all the things that Obama is doing, am I the only one who feels that him killing NASA really struck a nerve? It's literally the only thing he's done that made my blood boil.

    'Killing NASA'? You know what makes my blood boil over this is people who act like they know what they're talking about. Obama has not 'killed NASA' - he's increased their budget. One thing he HAS done is killed a ridiculous program started by Bush. While I'm not a big fan of Obama's support for NASA in general, Constellation was a badly-planned program from the get-go. It's unfortunate that Ares was kept, but that would've been a political nightmare due to the number of lost jobs.

  19. Re:So... by Shakrai · · Score: 2

    I'd much rather see the money pit that is our current space plan go into getting better schooling

    Why do you assume the problem with our educational system is a lack of money? Washington DC spends more per student than any other "state" but has one of the worst public school systems. Perhaps the problems with our schools have something to do with misplaced priorities (we spend more money on "special needs" kids than the gifted kids that will actually be running this country in a generation), an entrenched culture that's resistant to change and the intrusion of politics from all levels of government into our schools?

    The first point annoys me the most. I've seen gifted kids that are literally bored out of their mind with the classroom curriculum. Many schools lack advanced programs for these kids so they sit in the classroom daydreaming while "learning" stuff that they already know. Meanwhile we spend thousands of dollars on the special needs kids, some of whom don't even need to be in those programs to begin with but wound up there anyway because the school district gets more money for a special needs kid than a regular one.

    Who was it that said it's a wonder that curiosity survives a formal education? He or she was dead on with that observation.....

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  20. Re:So... by amorsen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Killing NASA by increasing its budget certainly counts as change though. Most of the earlier presidents focused on improving NASA by decreasing its budget.

    --
    Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
  21. NASA needs to go by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Like any bureaucracy, NASA existed only as long as it pleased its political leaders. The result is a space agency that's known for stunts.

    Put a man in orbit. First! {Grab genitalia and grunt here).

    Put a man on the moon. First! (Grunt repeatedly here).

    Seriously, if NASA's main missions now were spaced based power, Zero G industries, low-grav hospitals, a satellite based internet, a space based mirror climate control system, or any of *thousands* of practical, profitable, useful projects, would we even be having this discussion?

    Instead, NASA is all about Texas and Florida political pork, controlled by politicians and shaped to *their* ends. Market based solutions, as bad as they are, would still be better than techno-military welfare that we can't afford.

    --
    Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
    1. Re:NASA needs to go by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 3, Informative

      Good point. My apologies to Mr. Gagarin.

      --
      Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
    2. Re:NASA needs to go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wow, none of the items in your list are practical, profitable or useful.

      Space based power? Really? How about no? You can just use those deserts we have lying around on Earth.

      Zero G industries? Are you nuts? What would you put in space? What could possibly be worth the 12000$ a pound to get up there? For that money, you can use advanced computer modelling to achieve the same effects you want, on Earth. That's what we do. That's why we've never, ever stopped a project anywhere on Earth because of a lack of zero-G (you *do* know that in orbit, G pretty much still equals 9.8m/s^2, right?) produced materials. There's simply no such project.

      Low grav hospitals? That's so deluded and crazy I'm reeling. I know you Space Nutters are barely coherent, but that's a new one. Yeah, there's just so many problems with gravity in hospitals! Stupid tools and liquids falling on the ground! Have you read Neuromancer lately and thought it was a documentary? Are you insane? Astronauts are pretty much the most fit and trained people on Earth to go up in their tins cans, and you want to send sick people? Did your parents send you out to play without a helmet?

      Satellite based internet? Are you on CRACK!? What advantage could you possibly get from an expensive, laggy and equipment-hungry technology when spinning hair-thin glass (on Earth, not in space! Imagine that!) gets you cheap, fast and affordable fiber optics right here?

      You are INSANE. Dangerously deluded, out of touch and resistant to reality and facts, I dub thee Space Nutter extraordinaire!

      Now go back to your Gerard K O'Neill posters and your Krafft Ehricke Worship Society meetings. I got stuff to do on Earth. You know, "reality"?

  22. Re:So... by gyrogeerloose · · Score: 4, Informative

    Of all the things that Obama is doing, am I the only one who feels that him killing NASA really struck a nerve? It's literally the only thing he's done that made my blood boil.

    He's not killing NASA. Far from it, in fact. From TFA:

    Mr. Obama is actually proposing to increase NASA's budget, but he wants to terminate the $108 billion Constellation project, which the United States has already spent more than $10 billion on. Instead, the administration wants to outsource many of NASA's current manned exploration programs to private spaceships and focus on developing a new heavy-lift rocket for eventual manned flights to a variety of deep space targets, ultimately including Mars.

    Obama just wants to terminate one particular project that he feels is going nowhere and has become a money sink. You may disagree with his decision but it's still not "killing NASA."

    --
    This ain't rocket surgery.
  23. Re:So... by Shakrai · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Really, unmanned missions bring the same amount of international prestige and goodwill as manned ones? I don't think so -- the United States gained more in this department from a handful of moon shots and space shuttle rides for friends/allies than it has from all the robotic missions combined.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  24. Killing NASA? I think not. by Larson2042 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Constellation would have done more to kill NASA than anything in Obama's new plan. Constellation was already over budget and behind schedule. If a fully developed Ares rocket had been dropped in NASA's lap, it wouldn't have been able to afford to operate it. So what do you think the next admin would do with NASA if it had been allowed to continue, accumulating delays and going further and further over budget?

    The new plan is the best chance NASA has had in a long time to get back on its feet and stop languishing in LEO. Developing the higher technology needed to go beyond LEO and the moon is what NASA should be concentrating on. Let commercial companies deliver stuff to ISS and LEO.

    (One a side note, it seems to me that almost everyone who hates Obama's plan forgets that there would have been just as long, if not longer, gap in US human spaceflight ability WITH constellation. We're not exactly losing a whole lot by giving commercial companies time to produce their human ferrying ability, as opposed to giving NASA time to work on Ares-1)

    With NASA buying rides at a few tens of millions each vs. billion+ per launch there will be a lot more money for accomplishing things besides putting stuff into orbit on a rocket with a NASA logo on it.

    So I'm all for the new plan. My biggest worry is that congress will screw up the whole thing trying to protect their pork.

    1. Re:Killing NASA? I think not. by vanye · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Its funny - this is a rabid capitalist country, and yet when is proposed to allow commercial space flight to take over the boring operation bits everyone is up in arms. Whenever I hear astronauts talking about this my mind jumps to the infamous Mandy Rice-Davies - "well he would, wouldn't he".

      Let NASA get back to some real research, not shuttling (sorry) people to the space station.

      Who on earth believes that the government is more efficient than private enterprise at the operational level ? So set guidelines, safety regulations, create an environment where commercial enterprises can see an opportunity, and let us solve the problem. If that's done the country will not "cede America's longtime leadership in space", it will just be done more efficiently outside of the government.

      Why should I as a large contributor to the government pay for someone to drive a bus into space ? What grabs my attention (and probably Joe public's for the last 30 years) is Hubble, Spirit + Opportunity, Pathfinder. The only time the shuttle breaks into public awareness anymore is when there's an accident.

      And while long term we do need to have an off-Earth safety net - its not going to happen in my life, and a few people on a non self-sufficient beachhead doesn't do anything except waste money.

  25. Re:So... by postbigbang · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder aloud if space exploration isn't an excuse not to fix the mess we've created here on good old planet Earth. I've read sci fi since I was a kid, and there's a lot of future scenarios where humans now live offwold because Earth died of this, or that or radiation in a post-nuclear holocaust, etc.

    It's my personal belief that we have to fix the problems now, discuss them, and introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage until we can determine the nature of the problems we face (without glib one-liners).

    What makes anyone think that subsequent out-migration to habitable planets will work, when we can't get this one right?

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  26. Obama is actually thinking logically by duckintheface · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The only reason for manned flight is to get to a place worth colonizing. The only place worth colonizing is Mars. All other missions can be done better, cheaper, faster, with robotic craft. So Obama has it exactly right. There is no reason to go back to the moon (Bush just wanted to use it as a military base and didn't even make progress with that). Armstrong is an old guy who was trained as an engineer and made one flight that put him in the history books. That doesn't mean that he knows much about the long-term space policies we should follow. And you notice that he is still thinking of space as a playing field for international competition rather than cooperation. This is the '60s talking.

    --
    "He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
  27. Re:So... by rbanffy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Experience.

  28. Re:So... by turbotroll · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Colonization of other worlds is clearly impossible without manned flight.

    Colonization of other worlds (which ones did you have in mind, by the way?) is clearly impossible without technologies that don't exist on Earth right now and won't exist for at least another few decades. Spending many billions of dollars on chemical rockets isn't going to get the job done.

    Indeed, no question about that. But I could argue that putting a small, permanent, self-sustained human outpost on the Moon or Mars is possible with technologies currently available. Borderline possible, but still.

  29. One lone protester by CompressedAir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As I came back from lunch today, I saw a single retiree-looking gentleman standing on the corner of Saturn and NASA Rd. 1 with a sign protesting the Obama plan. That's here at JSC, home of the astronauts.

    I dunno, maybe more people will join him once work lets out. As someone who works in this industry, I still remain on the record saying that the current plan is the best one NASA has had since the Shuttle was a dream given form*.

    * Not quite the form it should have been, though.

  30. it makes no sense to send people into space... by deander2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    it makes no sense to send people into space... until we know of someplace we can permanently stay.

    robots are faster, more accurate, more durable, can stay out there virtually indefinitely, and are 3-20 orders of magnitude cheaper.

    from a scientific perspective, low-earth-orbit (the only place we're sending people) just isn't that interesting. virtually all space-related scientific data comes from unmanned probes and robots.

    until we're talking about settling another planet/moon, people in space are just tourists. so why is the government funding it?

  31. Things cost money! by Canadian+Window+C'er · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Look guys, do you know that the Government will spend $1.60 per dollar it takes in in revenue this year? That works out on a $4 Trillion-some budget to be ~$1.4 Trillion dollars of additional debt.

    The future?
    $1 Trillion each year in the red. Nevermind the unfunded liabilities of medicare and medicaid.

    That means:
    You have to CUT! lots of spending has to be cut! If you want those programs to go ahead regardless, then send in a cheque and help them fund it! Just my opinion, Regards

  32. Testify? As in under oath? by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Funny

    Did anyone think to ask him under oath if he actually walked on the moon? Just sayin ...

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  33. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All of *my* eggs will always be in one basket. It does me no damn good to have someone walking around on another planet. No, as cool as it is (and yes, it's very cool) it's a *massive* waste of money that could be redirected toward, oh, I don't know, science education, basic research grants, 10-times as many unmanned flights. Besides, the dangers inherent in manned flight hold us back from trying things. I mean, look at our early Mars record: we kept throwing things at Mars and only a few landed nicely. Eventually, we hit a couple jackpots with the current rovers. Prestige? Bullshit! Let's do some *real* science, damn it!!

  34. bzzzt ... try again by damn_registrars · · Score: 2, Insightful

    him killing NASA really struck a nerve

    Except that he isn't killing NASA. If you RTFA you'll see that his proposal is for NASA to go to Mars, and get out of the business of low-earth lifting.

    In other words, he is supporting the outsourcing of some of what NASA currently does. Why his predecessor didn't propose the same is beyond me.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  35. Re:So... by Gulthek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's funny, if we send humans to Mars that could be all the time they have to spend. Robots just need sunlight, we humans need much more logistical support. Robots also just need one way tickets.

  36. Re:So... by h4rr4r · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sure there is, it is a total boondoggle to keep the shuttle contractors rolling in cash. A fresh design would have been something, not another shuttle derived POS.

  37. Re:First man to walk on the moon* by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2, Informative

    If someone landed on the moon and found no evidence, it would mean that either
    a) they were looking in the wrong spot or
    b) somebody beat them to it without anyone knowing and stole the evidence that has already been seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and other countries' observations, or
    c) something even weirder happened to the landing sites, possibly involving aliens, wormholes, and time paradoxes.

    Seriously. The idea that there is no direct evidence of the moon landings and we can't be sure they happened until more people land on it is re-tard-ed.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  38. What do I get? by GlobalEcho · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Armstrong and the other astronauts got to walk on the moon. What do I get for billions of dollars thrown at more human spacetravel? Nothing.

    I'll take the robots and the science instead, please.

  39. Re:So... by owyn999 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or the healthcare plan that doesn't take effect for nearly a decade...

    --
    Where's that cap to the Decanter of Endless water???
  40. Re:So... by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What Kool Aid have you been drinking?

    Natural disaster or man-made disaster? Because other than an asteroid hitting the planet, there isn't a natural disaster that would wipe out all life on this planet.

    And FYI, we are nowhere near the cability to colonize another planet. Not now, nor within 100 years.

    But hey tell the poor shrimper in New Orleans we need to spend Billions on NASA so that someday we can land a man on mars meanwhile we can't do a damn thing to stop BP's Oil spill from killing his shrimping bed.

    Yeah good priorities....

  41. Re:So... by sconeu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm tired of this argument.

    Part of what makes us human is our curiosity; the need to explore, to go and see what's on the other side of that mountain. We need a goal that's inspirational. Yeah, robots do great science, but they're not going to inspire a hell of a lot of people.

    "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" -- Robert Browning

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  42. Re:So... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Humans in space? Colonies on other worlds? Ending the cosmic equivalent of having all of our eggs in one basket? We're one natural disaster away from complete annhilation of our race. I'd kinda like to have at least a few people offworld just in case.

    And we still would be if all we did was build a giant rocket that could, at best, send a handful of people to the moon or eventually Mars.

    The technologies the new plan is set to develop much more directly tackle the issue of humans surviving -- not just visiting long enough to plant a flag, but actually surviving -- than Constellation does. Constellation does absolutely nothing but let us put more boot prints on the moon. Yay. When we finally decide to send astronauts to Mars, there should already be robotically assembled habitats and a factory processing ice for oxygen and fuel waiting for them. We should have everything in place so the astronauts can stay on Mars for a year, or even more. It should be the foundation for a permanent settlement on Mars.

    If you're serious about this "eggs in one basket" problem, and are serious about humans permanently occupying other planets, then you should be all for the new NASA plan like Buzz Aldrin is. He wants a permanent base on Mars, not a boot-and-flag mission.

    Manned missions for their own sake, or to try to recapture lost glory by repeating what we've already done, is just wankery.

    All this talk of "Unmanned missions are just as good!" is pretty unconvincing when reports come back that the latest rover mission may be failing because it's stuck on a 3 inch rock and can't wiggle it's way off . . .

    Yeah, only 6 years of nearly continuous operation on a budget that is comparable to a manned Low Earth Orbit mission, and vastly less than any manned mission to Mars would be, and where even the stuck rover can still perform useful science, surely shows how unconvincing the argument for robotic missions is.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  43. Re:So... by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    dude, we are barely out of the stone age.

    Just 100 years ago most homes did not have electricity or even indoor toilets. Hell we were barely out of the Renaissance era. WW-I did not start until 1914 and at the beginning it was incredibly low tech. Sword fighting was still taught to military personnel.

    Honestly, Wait until 2110. WE will have full walking humanoid bots (which will be dumb, send a dog design, they are faster, more agile and capable of doing more.)

    Cripes the technology changes over the past 10 years have been more than the past 100. Honestly launching delicate ugly bags of water into space is really dumb for real exploration.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  44. Re:So... by Thomasje · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All this talk of getting a few people offworld is pretty unconvincing, too, as long as we can't demonstrate the ability to create a self-sustaining environment first. Let me see a project like Biosphere that actually manages to thrive in complete isolation for several years. Do that, and *then* maybe we should start building rockets and sending people off to live on the moon or on Mars or wherever. Until then, our eggs are in one basket anyway, and we may as well focus on managing this particular basket better.
    We just aren't ready to colonize the planets yet, and right now, a mission to Mars would be just as pointless as going to the moon was in 1969. Impressive, sure, a nice feelgood project if you will, but the practical significance is close to zero. Despite all the rhetoric, Neil Armstrong was not the Columbus of the 20th century; being stranded on the moon is, at present, still a death sentence. Let's do something about that before building more and bigger rockets...

  45. Re:So... by Jaysyn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We already spend more per capita on education than any other country, so I don't think throwing more money at that "money pit" is going to do any good.

    --
    There is a war going on for your mind.
  46. Re:So... by Shakrai · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps if the teachers unions were willing to part with some of their plush benefits that no other industry receives (what other job can you work in and have a lifetime guarantee that nothing short of felony conviction can get you fired?) the public would be willing to pay them more money.

    I would have no objection to teachers making six digits or more if they operated under the same reality as the rest of us. If I do a shitty job I can be fired. If a tenured teacher does a shitty job she gets to keep on doing it until retirement.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  47. Re:So... by techhead79 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's one thing I don't get. Why do we believe these other worlds somehow have the answer to all our Earthly problems. We can't even create a self sustaining environment here on Earth, what makes you think we know how to do it on another planet? Getting there is not the hard part...yet it seems so very hard right now.

    Assuming we do reach a stage where we can have a self sustaining environment here on Earth...suddenly all the horrid things that can happen to you here on Earth are no longer so important as you could survive without end regardless of what happens to the planet even if all life on the planet dies.

    The first step is getting something like the biodome to actually work with NO SUNLIGHT...then and only then could we even consider another planet...unless you plan on eating rocks, breathing toxic gas, and bathing in a sun with no EM protection.

    We're not there yet...maybe Obama realizes this.

  48. And I think its gonna be a long long time by rossdee · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a kid

  49. Re:Who cares about old racists? by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 2, Informative

    What is it with this administration that everyone who disagrees is a racist?

    The GP was a troll, crafting a fake "liberal" outrage in order to evoke precisely your emotional response. Congratulations, you and the person who modded you insightful bought it hook, line and sinker. You need to stop watching Fox News because this administration has not once called anyone who disagrees with it a racist. Some people have actually said a lot of the criticism of the adminstration is racist in origin, but I can't see how you seem to think it's fair to criticize the adminstration for something other people said. The only person I can recall that called anybody a racist is Glenn Beck.

    --
    Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
  50. Re:So... by Shimmer · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ronald Reagan - you mean that guy who raised the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion?

    --
    The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
  51. Re:So... by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Robots also just need one way tickets.

    Give me a one-way ticket to Mars and I'd take it in a heartbeat. No joke.

    I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

    --
    "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
  52. Re:So... by Shakrai · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ronald Reagan - you mean that guy who raised the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion? [wikipedia.org]

    I'm pretty sure he had some help from Congress. As I recall the Democrats controlled the House for all of his Presidency and the Senate for the last two years of it.

    Assigning all the blame for the national deficit to the President shows a fundamental lack of understanding of our political system.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  53. Re:As opposed to every other NASA proposal since 1 by Angst+Badger · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We haven't had a decent manned space plan. Galileo, Cassini, Spirit & Opportunity, and plenty others worked out very well.

    This is really the crucial point. We have done some first rate science without having any meat on board, and in most cases, we couldn't have done it with meat on board because meat is just not tough enough to do the job, and launching the necessary equipment to keep meat alive in space for years at a time is prohibitively expensive, and meat wouldn't serve any actual practical purpose in most cases.

    Mind you, I am an enthusiastic supporter of manned spaceflight, but let's be reasonable and make sure we're putting people into space because we need them to do specific jobs that machines can't do, not just because it's cool to put people in space. All of the proposals for manned spaceflight I've seen in recent years start with the unquestioned and unsupported assumption that putting meat in space is a good thing. Seldom ever does anyone start by saying that accomplishing X would be a good and useful thing, and X requires a human presence in space, which probably shouldn't be surprising, since there isn't actually much of anything we need a human presence to accomplish right now.

    The bottom line is that there is no end of productive scientific projects we could pursue with robots for a fraction of the cost of a handful of much less productive manned projects. Moreover, the more we learn about the solar system through robotic probes, the more likely we are to discover actual reasons for a manned presence in space.

    --
    Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
  54. Re:So... by SirWinston · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's my personal belief that we have to fix the problems now, discuss them, and introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage until we can determine the nature of the problems we face (without glib one-liners).

    We will never do this. Western civilization has basically reached a tipping point, an existential crisis, in which it finds itself unwilling to protect and preserve itself--much less advance--thanks to the adoption of a radical cultural and moral relativism which promotes protecting freedom from being offended and group rights over freedom of expression and individual rights. The legacy of the Third Reich in Europe and of slavery in the New World is this existential crisis, in which the West has vowed not to oppress again--even if it means allowing others to oppress our entire civilization out of existence.

    We refuse to even control our own borders and limit immigration, so we could never "introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage"; the result is that established Western democracies like the U.S. and those of Europe are being flooded by immigrants with no experience of true democracy or common effort beyond tribalism, who seek to remake their host countries to serve their particular interests according to their own selfish and undereducated desires. In the old days, immigrants were expected to acculturate and assimilate into their new country and be educated in and adopt its history and norms; today, immigrants expect their new country to acculturate and adjust to them, and to be educated in and adopt their history and norms. The natural result of this is to fracture the host country, and make it immolate its own values, culture, and norms wherever they come in conflict with the immigrants'. The debacle over South Park's recent Muhammad-in-a-bear-suit-who-was-actually-just-Santa episodes, and the liberal furor over Arizona's new sensible immigration enforcement law (while immigrants carrying Mexican flags protest it with violent rhetoric, people are being murdered or raped or kidnapped by illegal immigrants weekly if not daily, and Mexican drug cartels and Federales make armed incursions on our border with no reprisals), are just two recent American manifestations. And the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had no problem displaying "Piss Christ" over the finger-wagging objections of politicians, has pulled even reverent depictions of Mohammad from its collection of Islamic art.

    In Europe it's even worse; when artist Lars Vilks gave a presentation at one of Europe's oldest and most hallowed universities, this was the result:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zjZRLOdMgk

    And while most Americans react with sentiments like these:

    http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20100513.html

    many European commentators had a less admirable reaction. Stockholm News wrote "By deliberately insulting Muslims in this already-charged climate the artist placed himself in danger. Insulting people's deep-felt religious beliefs is not free speech it's hate speech." While the artist said he'd like to come back to the university and finish his talk, the university says it's not likely he'll be invited back because of the incident--so much for intellectual honesty in academe. The video linked above is the future of the American university as well, though it remains to be seen whether the violent protesters will be shouting "Allahu Akhbar" or "Por La Raza."

    Meanwhile, totalitarian collectivist countries like China have been able to "introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage" and protect their own interests; while they're currently big polluters as they're still modernizing and industrializing, they face a future far brighter than the West's. Their population controls will ensure a manageable future population with adequate per-capita resources, and their efforts to maintain the

    --
    "It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
  55. Re:So... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, robots do great science, but they're not going to inspire a hell of a lot of people.

    I've been far more inspired by what the Cassini probe has seen, or the Hubble Space Telescope has seen, or the Mars rovers has seen, than anything the manned space program has done in 40 years, or could do in the next 20. Nor would I be inspired at all by repeating what we did 40 years ago, just to prove we could.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  56. Re:So... by Stuntmonkey · · Score: 2

    Wrong. Look up "The case for mars" by Zubrin.

    Zubrin's Mars Direct program was estimated to cost $55B over 10 years, according to the Wikipedia article. Zubrin himself estimated at least $10B in The Case for Mars, if I recall correctly. I suspect both numbers are too low. In any case, it's well over a billion dollars per person using this approach.

    Based on the other large-scale human migrations that have occurred in the past, a viable large-scale colonization effort to Mars will not occur until:

    1. The cost to transport a person from Earth to Mars is well within the lifetime earning power of a reasonable number of people
    2. Methods exist to live semi-indefinitely on the Martian surface using resources available there, with very limited material supply from Earth

    It's clear that we are far, far away from achieving either of these conditions today. Until then, any human mission to Mars will be of the Apollo sort, and will not result in a vibrant long-term presence. Constellation didn't get us any closer to the above objectives than we are with the Space Shuttle, or Saturn V -- not a step forward in any sense.

    We need technologies to radically improve the economics of spaceflight. For lifting vehicles, we need propulsion systems with specific impulse (Isp) in the thousands of seconds, not ~400 as with current high-thrust rockets. Potential technologies for this exist, such as nuclear thermal rockets, but they receive no funding and attention in an environment where nobody cares about the cost of spaceflight.

  57. Re:So... by geekoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    yes it will.
    If there isn't a continuous effort to put people on another planet, then we won't ever develop the technologies needed to do so.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  58. Re:So... by geekoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Western civilization has basically reached a tipping point, an existential crisis, in which it finds itself unwilling to protect and preserve itself--much less advance--thanks to the adoption of a radical cultural and moral relativism which promotes protecting freedom from being offended and group rights over freedom of expression and individual rights.

    haha. similar CRAP was said in the 20's, after WWII, after Disco.

    It's meaningless blather of big words that makes you feel like you are saying something useful. Rest assure, you are not.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  59. Re:So... by geekoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "He's only killing NASA's next shuttle plan (and the plan to go to Mars), something they had been working on since their current one began falling apart and proving to be obsolete. "
    you mean the one that doesn't work because non engineers keep fiddling with the goals?
    yeah, scrap it. Start new. Sorry, sometimes that happens when engineering.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  60. Re:So... by GlassHeart · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't think you know what you're talking about.

    Starting this year, insurance companies would be barred from denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions. Effective when the bill is signed, they will also be prevented from placing lifetime caps on policies, or from dropping a patient's insurance if he or she gets sick.

    In the next three months, "high risk pools" will be established for those who who have pre-existing conditions, to provide safeguards until all the provisions are fully enacted.

    Also this year, insurance companies would be required to cover preventive services, which includes such medical procedures as vaccines that are recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    By 2014, insurance companies will be prohibited from denying coverage to adult patients with pre-existing medical conditions or charging them more because of these conditions.

    In a move that has made many college students and young Americans happy, the health care bill allows parents to keep their children on their insurance plan until the age of 26. That provision takes effect this year.

    - ABC World News

  61. Re:So... by hey! · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, but by the time honored catch-22, anyone who'd accept a one way ticket to Mars is not worth risking the price of a ticket on.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.