Slashdot Mirror
NASA Ends Plan To Put Man Back On Moon
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Times Online: "NASA has begun to wind down construction of the rockets and spacecraft that were to have taken astronauts back to the Moon — effectively dismantling the US human spaceflight programme despite a congressional ban on its doing so. Legislators have accused President Obama's administration of contriving to slip the termination of the Constellation programme through the back door to avoid a battle on Capitol Hill."
riiight.... because skipping around on the Moon is sooo much more beneficial to society than giving medicine to poor sick people. Oh, wait... I just realized you're a fucking parrot moron. Forget what I said... going to the Moon is stupid. Give me medicine.
It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space. I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
At this point in US space travel's history it seems like we're in a transition period. The old technology has finally caught up with itself and now without the Shuttle we must pay the penance for its mistakes and not having proper plans afterwards. Rushing into a new manned programmed for what seems like no good reason other then to just do it will be a waste of money and take awy from developing tech. Spend the next 10 years using robots for science (the area NASA/JPL does very well with) and develop new propulsion, energy, life support etc for a new manned directive in the future. In the meantime let commercial ventures work out some new low cost delivery systems. Any plan for a moon base would involve robot systems paving the away ahead before humans regardless so let's focus those funds long term rather then making a couple of special interests happy.
Unless we can set up a colony there, it just isn't worth it.
The moon, you see, is a harsh mistress.
YEAHHHHHHHH!
I vote we just send you to the Moon... with no health insurance.
The Admin and the Engineer
Yep. All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
Jobs for locals and the 'thanks' that flows back into the political system. Loss of face? Dual use tech might also keep the cash flowing and skill set in place..
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Ya, I mean, it's kind of sad, but lets not forget we now have people living in outer space on the ISS. I don't think we're losing any scientific benefit we might get from a trip to the moon.
that's teh shizzle bizzle
Constellation, particularly Ares, was a boondoggle that was years behind schedule and was never going to get us there. Now we can work on Mars and do it in a feasible manner. Commercial companies like SpaceX can handle the LEO stuff, and maybe even heavy lift. Also, it gets rid of ATK, who should have never gotten another contract after blowing up Challenger.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
If Congress is really mad that the Obama administration is shutting down the moon program, then there is a simple way they can handle the situation. They can vote to fully fund NASA's programs. So far, all I hear from Congresscritters is lip service. If they really want to send humans back to the moon, then show us the money. Talk is cheap. Space hardware is not.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
People act like any measures taken now determine the future of the American space program forever. The budget is what it is. If NASA needs to focus on less expensive methods of exploration, that doesn't mean it will be that way forever. If it's a major setback, that's unfortunate. It doesn't change the financial health of the country, however.
I really don't have a problem with this. We've already been to the moon several times and have found that it is, in fact, a giant rock. I really see no reason to go there again without some kind of purpose in mind. For example, constructing some kind of permanent base there.
This is a symptom of the "winner gets the spoils" approach to administration in the US. Every administration is supposed to set new policy in every direction, which comes from the system where every new President appoints his people to jobs all over the executive. This frequent revision of policy makes sense for short-term issues, especially ones central to the election (say DOJ anti-drug projects or FTC business regulations) but is an absurd way to manage scientific and engineering projects which naturally have timescales much greater than 4 years. Having every president retask NASA (or the agency of your choice) leads to enormous waste as projects are cancelled and new projects are started so they can be cancelled by the next administration.
The article and the information within don't add up. If you want a screaming article about the end of the Constellation program, direct your anger at NASA's budget, fewer then 1% ( about half of that, actually ) of the federal budget. Don't go insulting NASA. All the voices against it in this article are biased. Why do they want to keep it? Not because they support the system. They want the jobs in their district. Really, they dont care about the program at all. At a time like this, you have to ask yourself- what is NASA? A job programme, or an exploration agency? Constellation is a waste. It had to be cancelled. It was unsustainable. Even if NASA got one rocket right now ( from santa ) with all the research done - THEY COULD NOT SUSTAIN IT. It is too expensive, way more expensive then even the shuttle. Compare this: After 9 nine billion spend on the Constellation program. How much is there in orbit? After half a billion spend on a new family, SpaceX falcon have had succesfull launches, into orbit - And faster! There is something wrong with constellation and / or Nasa management. You HAVE to scrap or fix it. This cancellation could be seen by industry insiders from years away. It ended right after the beginning, when the funding was slashed by congress
[blockquote]An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Times Online:[/blockquote]
Isn't it odd that these days, more and more, Americans have to find out what their government is doing from foreign newspapers?
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
the idea of humanity continuing on the moon or Mars is gaining popularity
Really? Maybe if enough people BELIEVE...
Seriously, there is no place on Earth as deadly as the surface of the Moon or Mars. There is no place on Earth that costs as much as a hundredth, maybe a thousandth of the cost of just getting to the Moon, much less Mars, much less staying for any period of time.
These people you speak of... you really think they have any idea of what they're proposing? I'm all for fantasy and imagination, but at the end of the day, no matter how bad the Earth gets, it's exponentially more comfortable and practical than any other place in the Solar System.
The Admin and the Engineer
Going to the moon now would have been Apollo all over again, with little to gain. The moon has been done and we should leave it to commercial and new scientific activity now.
If we, as a species, want a project of comparable difficulty (compared to Apollo from the 1960 perspective) then we should send a human crew to Titan.
But the problem is how to fund it. The cold war and the US taxpayer funded Apollo. The Soviet people helped in their own unique way, by showing how not to do it. A new space program would have to be a global exercise, with contributions from many countries. If we decide to have just one war less then finding the money should not be a problem.
For a couple of decades we have been avoiding an important question: why do we want human beings to go into space? We should think hard and come up with some answers pronto.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I don't think the case for visiting the moon (and Mars) is compelling enough for the current economic climate.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They should just shoot another Moon landing footage on a studio lot in Burbank. That should be enough for another 40 years of national bravado.
Except this time we'll do it in 3-D and put it on Pay-Per-View with heavy product placement. Doritos Moonwalk? Why Not?
Social insurance and spaceflight are not mutually exclusive.
I imagine if you swap two wars for a space program, we could be halfway to Mars by now (at least).
I believe what you meant was you traded that for giving all your money to China, health insurance companies and greedy doctors.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Well, we decided that there might be another bank or car corporation that the US government wants to buy or just give money too. The citizens will bitch and moan about raising taxes so abandoning projects that millions have already been spent on just to reserve the other couple million for political capitol seems to be the going plan.
yes, go. by all means.... if you really think the sky is falling. We can use the air.
The Admin and the Engineer
Seriously, there is no place on Earth as deadly as the surface of the Moon or Mars. There is no place on Earth that costs as much as a hundredth, maybe a thousandth of the cost of just getting to the Moon, much less Mars, much less staying for any period of time.
The same could have been said of America or Australia from the perspective of Europe, before colonisation.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
> but at the end of the day, no matter how bad the Earth gets, it's exponentially more comfortable and practical than any other place in the Solar System.
While you are correct as far as your limited imagination goes, ponder these notions:
1. One medium size nickel-iron asteroid has more metal content than pretty much everything we will need for decades. Space has a LOT of resources and there isn't any sort of ecology to worry about despoiling. So do YOU care about the environment? Or are you a poser interested in the egoboo of recycling your plastic Walmart bags? Or perhaps a pave the Earth nutjob? (See how easy it is?)
2. The one thing space has is space. Something we have run out of here, there aren't any places to go here and start over. Yes there are barren hellholes almost as hard to colonize as space but you won't escape the long arm of civilizatrion ANYWHERE earthside. A frontier is a great social relief valve, allowing a certain personality type to be a useful asset instead of a bomb waiting to go off.
3. Sooner or later Earth is doomed. If we are still all here when that happens we go extinct.
4. Resources expended on space exploration has a hell of a lot more useful economic benefits than warehousing losers in housing projects.
Democrat delenda est
There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
Why be interested in that, when you can keep fighting in silly wars that no-one can win, when you can keep bailing out finance sectors and car manufacturers even though their business models clearly got them into trouble in the first place.
Sorry, my rant toggle must have been on, and I didn't notice.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Yep. All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
No one is interested in the Moon unless we'll build a base there. No one wants to pay for another trip back to the Moon if we're just going to plant the flag and come home again. Been there, done that.
Do something new and different, or don't go at all.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
There's debate over whether we got a man on the moon
Buzz Aldrin ended that debate. Does he have to end it again? Can I have your WGS84 coordinates please?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Ah, I see you're one of those people that are self made. No one helped you, it wasn't luck, it wasn't fate, just you alone against the world with the same exact starting point as anyone else. All your blessings you gained for yourself, and none came any other way, huh.
The poor still pay taxes, dick wad. Taxes payed for the Apollo Missions. I'll bet anything the poor outnumber you sophisticated science-types about a million to one. Also, I think they'd rather have $2 worth of free antibiotic than whatever fantastic discoveries await you on the Moon at a cost of trillions (but, oh, man, tang and microwave ovens made it sooo worth it!).
Then again, you have a point... those poor engineers and scientists... what WILL become of them if we DON'T go to the Moon? They certainly can't advance science on Earth, certainly not if medicine is socialized!
Hey, IQ22, keep up the good work for humanity. We're all counting on you.
The Admin and the Engineer
Yeah but he is not a troll, he is just telling the truth. In the US you have kids with leukemia with parents unable to afford the best treatment, but hey you it's OK because you can go to the moon! In the UK we have our kids looked after and getting the treatment they need but no moon..
guess what I would rather have.
Good thing most people in power haven't historically shared your worldview, or we'd still be debating whether it's worthwhile to move out of the caves.
Traded it for a welfare state? Last I checked communist Russia had a manned space program, as does communist China. More communist countries have put people in space than capitalist countries, and pretty soon ONLY communist (and formerly communist) countries will be able to put people into space. We're the only ones who can't seem to pay for both the general welfare, and a manned space program.
Don't forget the funding of that idiot "Blair" on "NASA Edge."
Maybe in the ISS it's worth it, but not for Moon/Mars missions since robots should be able to do a better (can stay there for years making a huge collection of rocks) and cheaper job.
"Can," assuming, you know, dust devils consistantly clean off the solar panels, don't crash on landing, don't get stuck in dust a mear half inch thick, don't get buried under a sheet of ice, and are free of mechanical defects.
Humans were able to bring back hundreds of pounds of moon rocks. How much have Mars landers been able to bring back? Heck, how much have moon landers been able to bring back (hint: this one's a non-zero answer)?
Seriously, there is no place on Earth as deadly as the surface of the Moon or Mars.
Wait till WW3 happens or an asteroid hits. Then other planets aren't going to look like such a bad place to live. If we stay here, we go extinct.
Morons like you traded all that for a welfare state."
$738 Billion was spent on "National Defense." Compare that to NASA's budget.
I liken the attitude, the irresponsible attitude, to really really wanting to go to Disney World. You want to go so bad, you rationalize the cost, even if you can't really afford it. That is the issue. We can't afford it. Discovery is not a right or a necessity, it is a luxury. If the return on the investment was actually knowable, or even if Apollo had been a remotely profitable investment, it might not be so clear cut. But as it is, whatever discoveries await us on the Moon will still be there when we can finally afford it. Discovery is not going anywhere. In the meantime, the neighbors' kids are hungry and sick. Yes, that is EVERYONE'S responsibility. If you disagree, save up your cash, and please go live on the Moon. And don't come back until you understand... it's not me against you, or us against them, or everyone for themselves... we are all in it together. The world would be a better place if these space cadets would read and understand Kant, or MLK, or Ghandi, rather than trying to find the most expensive way imaginable to kill themselves.
The Admin and the Engineer
Umm...things like Social Security, Medicare and Unemployment aren't real welfare, just social nets. People paid into SS, Medicare and Unemployment and that is why they get them, true welfare programs, like Aid for Families with Children go to people who never really paid into them.
Spend the next 10 years using robots for science (the area NASA/JPL does very well with) and develop new propulsion, energy, life support etc for a new manned directive in the future. In the meantime let commercial ventures work out some new low cost delivery systems.
As an astronaut has said recently (I think it was Armstrong himself), you cannot say "develop technology for next 10 years". Technology doesn't appear out of nowhere. Any technology developed is to get to some goal, be it digging a well or landing on the Moon or Mars. If there is no goal to land a man on Mars or to have long term presence on the Moon, then such technology will not be developed. It's as simple as that.
We currently have our multi-core, 64-bit processors and 8+GB of RAM in our computers at affordable prices only because of AMD and Intel rivalry for the almighty dollar. If AMD never existed, Intel would never needed to develop the technology they currently use. We would have our Pentium Pros and we would have to be happy with them, as a step up in performance would be the Itanics. Goals and an attempt to reach such goals is what drives technology and development, not mere attempt to "we want technology".
But then who needed that useless Apollo program anyway, eh? NASA was one of the only major purchasers of early silicon chip technology. Without that money for that "special interest" of silicon chips lasting 10-15 years, well, modern CPUs would have been a pipe dream. Definitely no PCs today and everything that they encompass.. Apollo program payed for itself 1000x over just through their funding of the early silicon technology.
The poor still pay taxes, dick wad.
No they don't.. Bottom 50% earners pay less than 3% of total taxes collected. Bottom 47% pay nothing. Top 5% pay 60%.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Only if they are defensive wars against other nation states who attacked you. The problem with the US policy is that it attacks others "preemptively" (the very same official reason given by Hitler when he attacked Poland and by Japan when it struck at Pearl Harbor) or attacks nations in pursuit of amorphous non-state entities and on other, flimsiest of excuses all the while pursuing a thinly-veiled strategy of global domination.
In this context "gotta" apparently is a result of a supremacist attitude and total disregard for anything but greed and thirst for power, very like that of a typical citizen of Ancient Rome who too would believe that the Empire just "gotta" expand into those "barbarian" lands to bring "civilization" in exchange for a slight payment of loot and slaves.
In modern times the US exacts a different kind of payment for exporting of its "civilization" but on the altar of its self-declared superiority, the dead just keep piling up all the same.
Communist Russia? Did I miss something? Say what you will about Russia today, but true communism hasn't existed there for some time now. The only true more-or-less communist countries left are Cuba, N. Korea and China. Russia has embraced capitalism for better or worse, mostly they have adopted the worst parts.
Welcome to the 21st century. Enjoy your stay.
And before you say I don't know what I'm talking about... how many times have YOU been to Russia?
It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space.
I don't quite understand how "Not going to the moon" translates to "Not going to space."
Space is a lot bigger than just the moon. Also wasting money and time trying for human transport to the moon is...a waste. It would be much better used trying to, I dunno, try different things?
I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.
See, I don't get this. It's like saying "Well, we've tossed in billions upon billions of dollars down a hole with no end in sight already, why don't we just toss a few billion more in there?"
They're stopping the program since it's a *waste of money* that's taking away from other viable programs. I don't understand why people want the government to keep throwing money at the same outdated plan in the vain hope that, somehow, with enough money, you'll hit some magic point where the money spent actually becomes economically sound.
Man, shit. Give me 10 million dollars ever year and I'll show you a productive space program. Trust me. I'll always project completion 5 years in the future.
Sooner or later Earth is doomed. If we are still all here when that happens we go extinct.
Sometimes I wonder if that would be a bad thing.
Wars are a different matter, you gotta fight wars.
Or what happens?
Troops overseas are always questionable if they are draining more resources than they are gaining.
The variables are so numerous that nobody can know, and anybody that does claim to be able to analyze all the possible outcomes, is pulling the answers out their rectum.
Switzerland has survived for a very long time without fighting a war, they do have a defense force, and a military, but they don't piss a substantial portion of their GDP away on munitions and such.
I urge you to consider that maybe, not having so many troops abroad would improve our boarder security, and allow us to allocate more resources to R and D, business development, social programs, the arts, and improved education systems. Just a thought. and maybe the wars are the best thing for the country, but it is still unlikely that the foreign wars "need" fought, even if it turns out to be the most advantageous course of action for the country.
Work bio at MMWD
So according to you, the millions of people who currently want jobs but can't find them don't deserve to live? I mean, its not like there are people who do want jobs but have been unemployed for over a year.
My point is the rather severe problems we have should be attended to before we shoot the Moon. If it was as simple as walking out of a cave, that'd be another story. but it's not like that at all, and your metaphor is not well received.. If you can't imagine yourself in a less fortunate position, there is something wrong.
The Admin and the Engineer
um... your numbers are WAY off. Sure, pre colonization period, probably god awful expensive to move to America. But, even with inflation (heh), it doesn't even begin to match the relative cost of space exploration.
The Admin and the Engineer
Social insurance and spaceflight are not mutually exclusive.
I imagine if you swap two wars for a space program, we could be halfway to Mars by now (at least).
ok, I'd go for that. I wish we could do that.
The Admin and the Engineer
Humans aren't fit for space
Humans aren't fit to fly from Australia to Europe in 20 hours at mach 0.8 but somehow we manage to make it routine and safe.
(the satay sticks with peanut sauce in MAS business class are absolutely FTW).
http://michaelsmith.id.au
> If the return on the investment was actually knowable...
I know the US was the undisputed tech leader during the NASA era. We aren't anymore. Correlation doesn't always mean causation but in this case it almost certainly does.
> Discovery is not going anywhere. In the meantime, the neighbors' kids are hungry and sick.
Uh huh. By that 'logic' we wouldn't spend a dime on any R&D until we had made the world a utopia where nobody was ever wanting for anything. But of course we don't have the wealth to even attempt such a thing and the sort of socialism needed to try would destroy the world's productive economies. R&D is the way out you fool. We can argue whether we should be spending our R&D on space, safe nuke plants, green bullshit or whatever but saying R&D can't happen until we have heaven on Earth is a sign of a unserious person.
> Yes, that is EVERYONE'S responsibility. If you disagree, save up your cash, and please go live on the Moon.
No it isn't everyone's responsibility. First off, care to explain why society shouldn't be telling prospective parents "If you can't feed em, don't breed em!" I don't object to private charity to help those who have the unusual/unexpected happen to them but I do object when the State trys to do it. For they always make things worse, creating an entitlement mentality such as you exhibit.
And if we could, many of us WOULD go to the moon to escape the sort of civilizational suicide folks such as yourself represent. But we can't. After all, even Columbus's three ships (fully equiped and manned) represented the sort of inventment few private sources could have managed and space, for now, is a lot bigger job. Of course the potential rewards are equally greater if we but had the imagination to seize it.
Going to the moon and then losing the will to plant a colony will almost certainly be remembered as the moment our civilization failed. It would be like Moses leading his people to the Promised Land, them looking over the mountain and saying, "Nah, too hard we are going back to Egypt."
Democrat delenda est
federal income taxes != taxes
gas, state and local sales, state income, property, &c
thanks for playing
Absolutely! Particularly enslaved are those unable to work due to, say, debilitating diseases! If only you could convince them to die of starvation quietly, they would truly cast off their yokes of slavery and croak totally free! No?
And then there are those poor over taxed "innovators" like, say, Bill Gates, who wouldn't know innovation if he tripped over it, fell down the stairs pulling it behind him and if it landed on his face with a bone crunching impact. Poor tax molested Billy and his bunch of jolly henchmen! I mean just think how many more poorly thought-out rehashes of technologies and ideas invented in 1960s could we have if he paid less then zero in taxes (since near $0 is what Microsoft and many other pan-national conglomerates already manage quite handsomely as it is)! The mind boggles!
> Sometimes I wonder if that would be a bad thing.
Then give yourself a Darwin Award and get the hell out of the way of those of us who actually give a damn. But of course you won't do it anymore than than asshat Peter Singer (look up his latest NYT column) will off himself. No, your type would want to be the last one out after you make sure all the useful people are killed off.
Democrat delenda est
I take issue with 2, 3, and 4.
2. There's lots of space at the bottom of the ocean. It's a lot less dangerous, and a lot cheaper, too. See my point? Space is a barren hell hole that makes the barren hell holes on Earth a paradise. I don't know what you've heard, but... Space... it's not a nice place.
3. You are mistaken... wrong headed here... it's humanity that is doomed sooner or later, not Earth. Earth is a rock. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Even after the Sun novas, there will still be Earth... just quite a but different than it is now... maybe not all in one place either. People are what matters about Earth, and little else (my cats, too!).
4. The point of housing those that can't afford it is not about economic advancement. It's about being human. You should try it.
The Admin and the Engineer
Pretty sure there were air, water, animals and plants in the Americas and Australia before Europeans got there. I heard a legend once that there were even indigenous people!
I did not know the man in the moon was missing.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Ya it's too bad that guys that work hard and innovate like Sergey Brin are not in any way financially rewarded in America.
OTOH when a kid can inherit 9 billion bucks tax free when his dad dies in 2010, I agree that kinda kills any financial incentive that kid had to contribute anything to humanity and he'll probably just spend the rest of his life consuming rather than producing.
Communist Russia? Did I miss something?
Yes, let me highlight it in GP's post:
Last I checked communist Russia had a manned space program
The only true more-or-less communist countries left are Cuba, N. Korea and China.
You'll have to scratch the last two off this list.
North Korea isn't even officially communist anymore - they've purged all mentions of "marxism" and "communism" from their constitution and laws and almost all books, and now the official party line is that NK has a unique sociopolitical system (best in the world, of course), devised from scratch by Kim Il-Sung.
As for China, it's unabashedly capitalist these days when it comes to economics - it's all about making money, and private property (including on land and means of production) is not illegal at all, which is directly contradictory to fundamental marxist principles. It is still authoritarian, but that is not a unique hallmark of communist states. In fact, their current social system could be most accurately described as original national socialism (as in NSDAP party programme, and minus all the frenzy about Jews).
No one is interested in the Moon unless we'll build a base there. No one wants to pay for another trip back to the Moon if we're just going to plant the flag and come home again. Been there, done that.
You have to do that kind of thing every now and then to prove the status of a dominant empire, though. It's pointless in and of itself, but it's a status thing, which is why China is pursuing it so aggressively. If they do it, it will be an implied challenge for the US to repeat the feat to prove that they are still strong.
I would guess the deep abyss of certain places in the ocean are more deadly. You have vast amounts of pressure, I'm no rocket surgeon or brain scientist, but I think that's a lot harder to deal with then the vacuum of space. Actually if you were exposed to those pressures you would be crushed and dead instantly, where you could survive at least 20-30 seconds in space and live. Plus there are giant squid.
*DrugCheese rants*
Morons like you traded all that for a welfare state
Yes, because you have to be moron to prefer taking care of actual people rather than making big, symbolic, and above all, expensive gestures.
Going to the moon was never more than President Kennedy's dick waving; he wanted to show the world that his testicles were bigger than those of the Soviet leaders, so the US spent huge amounts and took appalling risks with the lives of astronauts in order to plant a flag, using what now seems to be stone-age tools. Big achievement, but not hugely useful in itself; unlike the modest Sputnik, which ushered in the era of satelite communication and all the blessings of Sky TV (oops, there we go on the sarcasm again, sorry about that).
Having a proper, well equipped and well-funded space station would be useful, and a base on the Moon might in time become useful too. I would vote for going to Mars as well, but not in the haphazard way we went to the Moon, and it should ideally involve all nations capable of contributing to the project: the US, China, Russia, India, countries in Europe, and who knows, in South America and Africa as well - it will take many years before we are ready to go to Mars, and hopefully both Africa and S.Am. will have overcome their current struggles by then.
Uh huh. By that 'logic' we wouldn't spend a dime on any R&D until we had made the world a utopia where nobody was ever
No, just the R&D that costs trillions with no foreseeable return. There is nothing even remotely as expensive as space exploration. It's not the same as spending $500 million curing a disease. That's a bargain. There are no bargains in space... it's all retail x1000.
No it isn't everybody's responsibility.
Yeah, it is. And you agree or you would stop paying Social Security. Unless you're a hypocrite. Or a coward.
And if we could, many of us WOULD
Buuuuuut this is reality, and you can't. And even if you could, trust me, it would suck. Space really sucks. A Moon colony would only suck slightly less, because, presumably, we'd ship air and food and something to protect you from cosmic rays, solar flares, and the vacuum of space. But what's the point? Just so you don't have to live here? You'd be far happier living here on Earth in something much worse than, say, a nasty college dorm room, than with any accommodations on the Moon. At least here you can walk outside without dying instantly. On the Moon? Not so much.
The Admin and the Engineer
Seems to me there is really no good reason for a manned spaceflight programme just now.
Research and exploration can pretty clearly be done more cost-effectively by robots. Even if a certain proportion of them get stuck in stupid ways that a human could fix in a minute, they're just so much cheaper per mission than people that you get much more science per $billion from the ones that survive.
Colonization and so on is a great goal, but I suspect the best way to pursue it just now is to simply to grow the economy on Earth and research basic materials science etc., until it becomes more affordable.
So, that leaves bad reasons -- national flag-waving (being first for the sake of being first); and media/political appeal (easier to get $10b to fly an astronaut than $1bn for 5 robot missions).
Makes me a little sad -- I share the "living in space" dream, but I truly can't see anyway it makes sense at the moment.
It would be nice to find a way to reward and motivate Sergey Brin just as much by giving him (say) $100m for all the luxuries he could ever consume and then giving him medals or something instead of the rest.
I guess so. They've lost the dream, they've lost the initiative, they've lost everything needed to get off the earth. The future is either overseas, or with the private sector. The only question is, "When did the US cede dominance in space?" I say, it was when they decided to build a stupid fucking space plane, and fly it repeatedly, when a space plane is OBVIOUSLY NOT a viable method of moving deeper into space.
I hated the idea of a space plane when it was first publicized. Morons. Space planes don't explore space - they only explore planets and atmospheres. Every real exploratory space ship should carry something LIKE a space plane, for deployment when a really intersting planet is discovered, but no one with a dream of space exploration even things of winged craft.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Arguably, yes, bottom of the ocean may be as dangerous and as inhospitable as space. But it's a lot easier to get to, and a lot less expensive. And that's an enormous understatement. And remind me why we want to go to dangerous places for the bargain price of a decade of national revenue?
The Admin and the Engineer
My first thought was that if the Russians announced a plan to put someone on the moon again the Yanks would be back there tomorrow.
My point is the rather severe problems we have should be attended to before we shoot the Moon.
The problem with that otherwise insightful meme is that there is a finite sum of money available for all projects and it is suggested that at some point in our future the Earth will be so densely populated that it will take ALL the money just to keep people alive and there will be no spare cash for space exploration. It will also be political suicide to pull the plug on "worthwhile" Earth-bound projects to fund space programs because people will die. At that point we are doomed as a species because we have to get off this rock.
That point may not have arrived yet, but at this point in time we DO have sufficient spare cash to decide to build a base on the moon, and from that experience perhaps Mars next, and we can do that without robbing the money from projects that keep people alive.
It's now or never (for some values of "now").
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
And the money I pay into home insurance has very little relation to how much I get back if my house catches fire. What's your point?
I think your rant may have been well placed. With the international treaties against nations laying claim to space objects, and agreements not to send any armed space vehicles, it doesn't allow for war there. On the other hand, if a nation were to do exactly that, they would have the upper hand.
Imagine some rogue nation develops a significant space program, *AND* arms it. There would be no way to defend against it, or for other nations to fight against it. Of course, with the way things usually go, the rogue nation would be the US, swearing to defend the neutrality of space through superior force, and in such stop evil nations from having a space program.
Since we can't militarize space, there's no incentive for military involvement in space, except for spy and communication satellites, which are run happily from the ground.
I've argued quite a bit, if nations of Earth were to stop wasting their resources on crap they are now, we could have a significant space presence, with a strong step towards deep space exploration. We will never learn how to do it unless we work at it. ... and for a car analogy. If we had looked at the M. Brezin car 1769, which could do a whopping 2mph, and said "this is too slow, it will never be worth pursuing", we would still be traveling on foot, horseback, and by horse drawn carriage. Today, we look at space travel and say "it will take too long to get anywhere", so we don't try. 6 months to Mars? Of course it is, we're still in the Bronze Age of space travel. We've discovered a little, but we have an awful long way to go.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The only way to get the rich to disgorge money is to persuade them that an external enemy wants to take it from them - hence the constant use of communism as a bogeyman by the Right. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and its presence in space, the external enemy was lost. If you want a new space program, better get the Taliban to start launching satellites.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Repeat the feat? That would just be another waste. If we go back to the mooon at all (and I hope we do) I want to see a BASE STATION built, with personnel stationed there permanently. Hydroponics, mining, extraction of atmospheric gases, as well as water - you know, built a habitat for a few thousand people, then grow it to a few million people.
But, what I REALLY want to see, are manned missions to the Mars and the various moons that might be made habitable with a minimal effort. (Minimal effort, meaning the erection of domes, and/or digging into the surface, as opposed to some moronic effort to put a base on a gas giant, or a hot planet, like mercury.)
Nope, I don't want to see a stupid scrap of cloth hung out on some barren rock. I want PEOPLE there, to transform the barren rock into something useful.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
When the Federal Income Tax was established only 3% paid any.
Here in Alaska, I don't pay any local or state taxes, but I do pay Federal Taxes
I pay the following Federal Taxes
Federal Insurance and Contributions Act (FICA) - 6.2% of my wages by me and 6.2% by my employer.
Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax - 1.45% of my wages
Payroll tax to support unemployment insurance. This is 1.2% of the first $7,000
I also pay an excise tax on alcohol, gasoline and who knows what else because I'm not a tax lawyer.
It seems to me that the human race needs to work on improving its skills in robotics in space exploration and many other areas. We are seeing them used in deep sea disaster recovery and warfare and it is time to see them used in positive projects. With an aging population exoskeletons need to be commercialized. Space exploration by robots is the next step and the technology developed there is going to help us get through the next few years of difficulty we are going to be experiencing.
it's a status thing, which is why China is pursuing it so aggressively. If they do it, it will be an implied challenge for the US to repeat the feat to prove that they are still strong.
so wait and see if they do it first... if they fail, we'll be able to point out not only that "this is why we no longer attempt to do this just to see if we can... it's very dangerous", but also, "oh yeah, but when we did attempt it, we succeeded."
if they succeed, and msnbc/cnn/foxnews ratings don't drop as the head pieces babble about american pride, then do it again live and shut everyone up. ultimately, it's a barren rock. have fun.
3. You are mistaken... wrong headed here... it's humanity that is doomed sooner or later, not Earth. Earth is a rock.
Er, yes. I guess that's true, though trying to build anything on 'Earth' once it is subsumed by the expanding Sun will also be an expensive project.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
at some point in our future the Earth will be so densely populated
I used to be concerned about this when I was in school. I actually attempted to start a movement I called "Get Off the Planet." But then, er, later, I drove across the country a few times. Right now, there is miles and miles, thousands of miles of room. And places like India, and parts of China, where the population is denser than anywhere, we do not see people eating their young. The one possible future of overpopulation is not so bleak as you describe.
When it becomes a real problem, we deal with it. Let's not put the cart before the horse, or try to cross a bridge we haven't arrived at yet. You know, the tires on your car will be bald someday. Why aren't you buying new tires now?
The Admin and the Engineer
Of actually developing new technologies that will truly expand humankind's frontiers beyond what they've ever been before.
Rather than rehashing a 40-year-old accomplishment, just to prove we still can.
Of course we still can. If we wanted to devote resources to it like we did the first time, we could make it happen. But with no Cold War competition to make putting some boot prints on the moon seem like an urgent need, nobody wants to spend that kind of money, even those who hate social programs as much as you.
That's why Constellation was crippling NASA while still failing to meet its already mediocre goals.
Instead, focusing on basic R&D while leaving the heavy lifting (literally) to private industry, NASA will actually be able to accomplish things. Actual new things, things that will make future trips to the moon cheaper and more than just a boots-and-flag mission. Frankly even if NASA's budget was Apollo-sized I would rather they pour it into these projects.
The future of NASA hasn't looked brighter in decades. It's always darkest before the dawn, and recently it was very dark, but that was caused by the very project the loss of which people are lamenting!
The enemies of Democracy are
3. You are mistaken... wrong headed here... it's humanity that is doomed sooner or later, not Earth. Earth is a rock.
Er, yes. I guess that's true, though trying to build anything on 'Earth' once it is subsumed by the expanding Sun will also be an expensive project.
I suppose. Maybe we can mitigate that cost by starting a project now to put Man on the Sun. It's just as practical as Mars, and only mildly less comfortable.
The Admin and the Engineer
I wanna go too. And, we're taking our air with us. And, maybe some of yours too. It's not like you'll need it when the sky does fall.
Whether it's some new disease, a catastrophic meteorite hit, volcanic and tectonic action - SOMETHING will bring the population explosion of the past 200 years to an end. When people start dying off, from whatever cause, civilization will falter. We could even see another dark age, if things get bad enough.
I'd love to have my DNA firmly planted in space, where the however many times removed grandchildren won't have to suffer with the rest of humanity.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's not possible to solve all the world's problems. Most major problems are societal or political, not technological or financial. There's lots of food and water in the world yet people starve every day. There's a lot of roadblocks between that food and people's mouths. Those roadblocks won't magically go away because we throw money at them or postpone some other task. Putting any sort of scientific endeavor behind "solving the world's problems" will just mean those endeavors will never be accomplished.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
If you taxed every working man, and every investor at 99%, and taxed all corporations at 99% of gross profits - you STILL wouldn't have enough money to feed and clothe and shelter the worthless to the standards that they demand.
Help me out here. What standards are "the worthless" currently demanding?
Gotta fight wars?
Dude, I'm unpopular with a lot of slashdotters for defending the troops. But, really, Iraq wasn't a "gotta fight" war. Afghanistan was, but we've done it all wrong. We should have just done a punitive expedition into Afghanistan, punished the Taliban for harboring Al Queda, then got the hell out. But, nooooo, we have to play some silly game of "nation building".
Aren't we the morons? Those Afghanis have been right there, in the same place, for thousands of years, defying any and all comers - most recently the Soviet. When the invaders go home, those Afghanis just go back to growing poppies, herding goats, and whatever else they do in those hills of theirs.
Gotta fight wars. Crap, I could have fought that Afghan war for less than pennies on the dollar, and avoided the Iraq war altogether.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
To attempt to head off common misconceptions about NASA's new plans (like those in the article summary), I'll go ahead and post the contents of an FAQ straight from the source. Also, it's important to note that the new budget -increases- the amount of money for NASA.
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/new_space_enterprise/home/faq.html
This section contains answers to frequently asked questions about NASA's exploration mission and its associated programs and projects following the 2011 Budget Rollout.
Why is the Administration proposing a new direction for Human Space Exploration?
In May of last year, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) tasked an independent committee with reviewing U.S. human space flight plans and activities, with the goal of ensuring that our nation is pursuing the best trajectory in this arena - one that is safe, innovative, affordable, and sustainable. While the committee did determine that the Constellation Program was technically sound, they found it to be "be on an unsustainable trajectory" because it NASA was "perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources." In other words, the budget did not support the Constellation architecture.
What is better about the new approach?
The new approach proposed by the Administration focuses long term investments on the fundamental capabilities required for human space flight beyond Low Earth Orbit, but that we currently lack. The plan calls for technology development in areas like propulsion, in-orbit propellant storage, automated and autonomous rendezvous and docking, advanced closed-loop life support, and tele-robotic operations. It also increases funding in NASA's human research program, allowing us to better understand the potentially harmful effects the space environment might have on people and how we can best mitigate them. Most importantly, this approach is financially sustainable.
Does this mean that NASA has given up on returning to the moon?
Absolutely not. In fact, recent discoveries of water on the moon have made it more scientifically interesting that ever before. Our focus in the near term will be discovery through robotic missions, such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, followed by robotic precursor missions, to scout the terrain for the eventual return of humans.
Why is turning over a portion of human spaceflight to commercial industry a good idea?
NASA has already committed a significant investment to commercially provided space flight services. Almost all of our satellites and many science missions are launched commercially. In addition, we recently contracted with commercial companies to carry cargo to the International Space Station commercially. The next natural step is for NASA to buy commercial flights for our astronauts to the ISS. This will free up NASA to pursue the greater challenges in the way of a trip to Mars.
Exploration Systems was the directorate that managed the Constellation program. What will its role be under the new plan?
Under the new plan the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) will be responsible for many research and development programs including exploration technology and demonstrations, heavy lift and propulsion technology, exploration precursor robotic missions, and human research. In addition, ESMD will manage the commercial crew and cargo spaceflight programs.
No matter how bad the economy might get, I'll feed myself, and my family.
Hmm. Would you still feel the same if you were in a terrible accident and lost your legs? Or if you were dead... think you'll still be feeding your family? Or maybe you could choose to live in a society where people work towards a common good, help each other, so those that fate has brought misfortune to aren't just seen as garbage, then you wouldn't have to worry so much about feeding your family because, well, if you can't, we'll help.
The Admin and the Engineer
Arguably, yes, bottom of the ocean may be as dangerous and as inhospitable as space. But it's a lot easier to get to, and a lot less expensive.
If you saw ROV feeds from BP, it's eternal night at mere 5000', temperature near freezing, hardly any life, and soft silt hundreds of feet deep. Humans can't just don a spacesuit and walk there, they need a robot or a very expensive submarine. Space is easier to work with, even though it's harder to get there. Also space is more natural for humans, and there is more to do there. There isn't much to do at the bottom of an ocean. You can't have any industry there; vacuum is far better than water. If your pressurized vehicle develops a leak in vacuum you can stop it with a chewing gum. If the same happens deep under water, that thin stream of water will slice you in two.
The moon is relatively "easy" as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. It's close enough to make mistakes and learn. We haven't left low earth orbit in a long time.
this is my sig
You forgot the numbers for the war, to put things in perspective.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Well - my kids are all in their teens and twenties. If they can't feed THEMSELVES by now, they never will. Unlike city dwellers, we have acreage, we have livestock and seed available, we have water, we even have wildlife. If they can't feed themselves, then my kids will join the rest of the worthless bastards, as statistics on Darwin's charts.
Needless to say, I'm not a collectivist, of any kind. I'm not much into society working towards a common good, especially when 1/2 or more of society are worthless shits anyway. That business of society working towards a common good mostly means that hard working people are supporting lazy asses, no matter how you slice that money redistribution thing.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The US budget is $18.3b for NASA in 2010 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget. and The United States currently pays around $20 billion per year to farmers in direct subsidies as "farm income stabilization"[10][11][12] via U.S. farm bills - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a federal government entity designed to supplement regular oil supplies in the event of disruptions due to military conflict or natural disaster, costs taxpayers an additional $5.7 billion per year. and who knows how many billion on protecting its gas corporations - http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm. Space research is cheap, repays in technology dividends and uplifts people. Subsidies encourage the status quo and defer the inevitable.
This is fine, until someone else puts a permanent base there. Then they will have the high ground; literally. The gravity well on the moon is so much less than earth, that kinetic weapons will work so much better from it. Hence, it is a strategic imperitive that someone will utilise the moon for a weapons platform at some stage.
What about the USA buying rocket technology from ESA ? Ariane is an excellent vehicle with a great record.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
It's never been the National Aeronautics and Mars Administration. We're talking about blowing off putting an American on the Moon and Mars, not everything higher than a dozen miles off the surface of Earth. We got space really close to Earth we can still discover stuff in, still expensive, but at least we can afford it. And one thing NASA is relatively good at is probes. Are Voyager, Viking or Pathfinder style missions chopped liver? No! They're fucking awesome. NASA rules... even on their relatively tiny budget.
The Admin and the Engineer
The top 5% pay 60% only in that each additional dollar they earn above a certain point gets taxed at that rate. In general every n-th dollar you make is taxed at the same rate that everyone pays on their n-th dollar. A rich person can't simply multiply his entire income by 0.6 to get his tax liability.
People like to scream that progressive rates aren't fair, etc. But it's totally fair to the taxpayers involved. What it isn't fair to, is each individual dollar in income. If the ultimate goal is being fair to individual dollars, treating all the dollars you earn fairly and equitably, then a flat tax would suffice. But being fair to dollars isn't the point.
BTW I clicked on your lobbyist anti-tax think-tank link, and lost several minutes I'll never get back.
The issue is not space to inhabit, perse.
1. It is, partly, space for the animals to inhabit. Without animals, we cannot have our current Eco-system. we are not the only animal on the planet, and if we squeeze out all other animals to serve our own needs, many other animals might die off, leading to cascading effects.
For instance, if we squeeze off wolves, hawks, and other animals that eat rabbits, it's possible one day rabbits will become a significant threat to our agricultural output. If we kill off bees, then pollination will become difficult for many many plants, again killing our agricultural output. I'm willing to bet that the attrition rate of human caused traffic accidents and territory loss against mid level predators significantly outstrips
2. It is arable land. A quote from a study published by a guy Cornell and a guy in Rome.
(link: http://dieoff.org/page40.htm)
# At the present growth rate of 1.1% per year, the U.S. population will double to more than half a billion people within the next 60 years. It is estimated that approximately one acre of land is lost due to urbanization and highway construction alone for every person added to the U.S. population.
# This means that only 0.6 acres of farmland would be available to grow food for each American in 2050, as opposed to the 1.8 acres per capita available today. At least 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current American dietary standards. Food prices are projected to increase 3 to 5-fold within this period.
# If present population growth, domestic food consumption and topsoil loss trends continue, the U.S. will most likely cease to be a food exporter by approximately 2025 because food grown in the U.S. will be needed for domestic purposes.
This is a BIG problem
Especially for all of the people dependent on US agricultural exports. 'Screw them, we need food' is a valid opinion. But by 2100, the birthrate will have either gone down, or the starvation rate will have gone up. Current population growth rate is unsustainable with CURRENT agricultural technology. This may change when it becomes economical to build greenhouses and desalinate water in the desert because food prices have risen above the cost of growing them in said environment.
It, in my opinion, is a foolhardy argument to say 'we have plenty of space, so we will never reach a population crisis.'
What a lot of people don't know is that even if they only live in a 2000 square foot house, their net resource footprint, put into the perspective of how much land worth of resource production is necessary to sustain them, is significantly larger than what they can immediately see. Farm land, factories, roads to bring factory goods to the people, highways to move places, land to dedicate to bio fossil fuel production once petro fossil fuels runs out (or alternatively, build new renewable or non-exhaustible fuel (nuclear) powered plants), transmission lines to get them their electricity, etc... etc..
Right now, it would appear that Cuba is actually one of the most efficient providers of standards of living per hectare of land used per capita. We might all live like Cubans one day, if our population keeps spiraling out of control. Which wouldn't be bad, but would be much different than the world you know at the moment.
The reason why we can't put men on the Moon is that we never really had that capacity. Yes, we managed to put a few people there at enormous expense, but that was simply not sustainable; technology is only now starting to near the point where maintaining a presence in the Low-Earth Orbit might be.
But, rather than look at the problem and even trying to understand the reasons, you blame it all on the poor not starving as they should, like a right-wing tool you are. Moron.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
And then the question becomes, "Do we seriously need to keep trying for Constellation?" It doesn't seem to be working whereas new techniques may or may not be applicable here.
Imagine if all the money wasted on Constellation had been spent on, I dunno, researching better rocket tech? Making better robots? Doing actual science?
I understand the stepping stone thing, but look at it this way. Imagine there's a stepping stone in the river. The first time we made it by jumping there and BAM we made it. So now we keep thinking up bigger and better ways to jump there and started building the same shoes we had last time. Only, we've been building those shoes for so long and spent an insane amount of money on it.
What if we tried building a bridge with planks to the stone instead of spending half a century trying to build the shoes we used 50 years ago? Or, I dunno, get some modern shoes?
Making mistakes and learning is one thing. Wasting insane amounts of money on a rocket to nowhere is something else.
It's not about "OH NOES NO MOON ROCKET!" It's "OH NOES NO MOON ROCKET THAT USED UP SO MUCH MONEY THAT IT IS RIDICULOUS HOW IT STILL CAN'T FLY AND HOW OUTDATED THE TECH IS."
Since these flights costs tons of distiled oil per seat from dead biomass rotting and cooking in high pressure during millions of years, this is a dead avenue. Sooner than expected, we will face the reality, that transporting our flesh and bones bodies from places to places is a waste of our precious limited resources. We better hope we develop alternatives with efficient telecommunications and advanced robotics if, we really need to interact with remote environments.
Léa Gris
If we don't go to the moon, someone else will.
Sorry, the money didn't go to welfare, it went to the banks and car companies.
The can-do attitude was replaced with the "can we make a profit on it by swapping stocks around".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's all a matter of perspective. From Sagan's perspective, we're already in space, on a great big blue space ship. Sure, it sorta only does this one loop, repeated... but if it's good enough for millions of NASCAR fans, it's good enough for you. We'll even let you drive, as long as you don't attempt to turn left.
The Admin and the Engineer
You want someone to beat to the punch ?
Go for the indians. EXACTLY to show that they're capable of every bit as much technology and engineering as a US based company, they have ISRO (feel free to google it). They've got lunar probes launched already. Are currently fielding a solid fuel rocket (so they may well be the first to reach Mars), as well as some nifty ideas on how to continue the human space flight programme. ISRO spends billions of dollars on their space programme, and gets 5-10 times as much for the money, because they generally contract locally.
When Kennedy stood up to the Russians when he said "we do this not because it's easy", he also created jobs and techonological advances for AMERICANS (and the rest of the world also, but primarily for his own people). This is the knowledge and legacy that Chineese and Indians are now usurping.
I do agree that ADDITIONAL spending beyond that which was originally budgetted might be frivolous currently, due to the current financial environment. However, dismantling the programme entirely will be like pissing your pants when you're cold. It may feel nice NOW, but you're going to regret it later.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
The first is from those who say "ending Constellation will cost jobs in my state" (i.e. those who just want more pork thrown their way and more lobbying money from the contractors) and who wont accept any option other than the status quo.
The second argument is from those (including various astronauts etc) who say that the alternatives proposed by Obama will leave America without manned space flight capability for too long (forcing the US to buy expensive seats on a Soyuz to get to the ISS). They claim that the "commercial providers" Obama wants will not be able to deliver a manned booster/capsule fast enough (and have zero experience with manned booster/capsule production). This group is open to alternatives to the current program, just not the (currently non existent) alternatives Obama wants.
And libertarians wonder why people think they're crazy.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
No, just the R&D that costs trillions with no foreseeable return.
There are plenty of returns for all the R&D even ignoring our eventual need to expand beyond this planet.
What are you talking about? Obama didn't veto the NASA budget, he redirected the focus of NASA. The parent's post is saying, correctly, that if Congress wants NASA to go back to the Moon they have an easy solution: write a line item in the budget dedicating X-billions of dollars to returning to the Moon. The US does not have line item veto and Obama isn't going to veto the general budget.
You misunderstood. Top 5% of earners (in 2007 that meant whoever earned over $160K/year) pay 60% of the total federal income tax revenue that the IRS collects. It's nothing to do with the tax rate.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
How about Burma? Myanmar?
If the trillions of present day dollars that went into the space race alone were just diverted to pure R&D to better humanity do you think the accomplishments would not have been similar, if not better? Saying we would never have happened upon velcro or microwaves without NASA just because that is historically what played out is simpleton logic.
There are definitely some things we learned from the space race we probably wouldn't have learned nearly as quickly other wise. But we are past that. There should be diminishing returns technically from near earth limited space exploration like any other technology. The automatic justification should be revoked and hard ROI criteria should be set for any future programs of significant costs.
Sending people into space quickly isn't necessary, merely entertaining. It is emphatically NOT exploration.
We REQUIRE robots and remote-operated systems to interact with everything out there anyway, and those are useful on Earth too. We can EXPLORE space and learn at a much better ROI by developing remote-manned systems that don't need life support and won't need to return. Space exploration not being a mission of US conquest, let some other countries spend the money to put humans up. We can do to them what they did to us and exploit their tech later. The race isn't always to the swift.
I understand the anguished horny craving of Slashdotters to go into space. Get rich, pay a contractor for the ride, and be entertained.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
... until we come up with a space propulsion system better than the rockets and ion drives that we currently have. Despite the talk, putting humans in a tin can for 3 years 30 million miles from earth is not realistic for medical or psychological reasons. Unless a system can be developed that can get people and materials around the solar system in months rather than years or decades then we can forget about colonising or exploiting it in any realistic manner.
a true ideologue.
--
damaged by dogma
I'm not much into society working towards a common good,
So, you're stuck in the Cro-Magnon, every-man-for-himself era, and completely believe that everyone who ends up on hard times should just be left to rot? I call that being a selfish bastard myself. It's particularly amazing, given this attitude, that your offspring lived to their teens and twenties; from your statements so far, I'd figure you for the sort to let them figure it out after they left the teat.
especially when 1/2 or more of society are worthless shits anyway.
This, I have a hard time figuring out what kind of statistic makes this anywhere near a half-reasonable argument; I can't recall a time where unemployment got anywhere near 50%, or the homeless rate for that matter; and if you go by wages alone, that's not a matter of choice for most anyone who isn't a professional athlete, who can hold out for an extra few million a year. Minimum wage is minimum wage, and if an employer sticks to that as the entry wage regardless, the people are pretty well stuck. This is why labor unions exist, a group of people in a common trade working for the common good, so that people with their skillset don't become the aforementioned worthless shits. Taking the other extreme, the number of people who make significant advances in anything useful, that's been in the range of 0.001% of people, and certainly nowhere near 50% of all those even living now.
That business of society working towards a common good mostly means that hard working people are supporting lazy asses
You mean the undertaxed executives, directors, and the like, who directed needless layoffs to justify employing people in 3rd world countries (by their arguments, to support the people in those countries and the economies there, which by your arguments, is something that is un-Darwinian), or otherwise unjustifiably firing employees just to save a few bucks? Those are hard-working people? Or do you count corporations who rape their employees as people now, since the Supreme Court gave them pretty much the same leeway as you or I would in campaign contributions? Even so, they would be in the minority, and they significantly take advantage of tax breaks issued by the government; I would posit these as in the same class as single mothers taking advantage of tax breaks, who would probably fit in your class of the aforementioned worthless shits of this country, ultimately rendering that argument invalid.
This isn't to say that there aren't those taking advantage of the system; in fact, those that are make a pretty good argument for their inclusion in the species ongoing; they've adapted and survived. But the fact that those people exist does not, by any means, indicate that programs in support of (intentionally or otherwise) disenfranchised people is inherently wrong; and the unsupported figures you present in support of that argument are bigoted and wrong.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space. I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.
Contrary to the prevailing public relations blitz that is being put on by ATK and certain entrenched interests within the D.C. beltway, The United States of America is not ceeding leadership in space to other countries. Instead, the paradigm is changing from that of a central government bureaucracy that is responsible for the financing, acquisition, and planning of such an endeavor to something that is more de-centralized, mostly privately led, and allowing freedom to ordinary individuals to try and get into space.
For commercial spaceflight companies, America simply dominates the rest of the world combined. When I hear of things happening in spaceflight and can compare stuff that is happening elsewhere, there are about two to three times as many companies formed and activities like the creation of a new spaceport than anything happening in the rest of the world. No, I'm not saying that private companies aren't being set up elsewhere and there certainly is something afoot in the European Union too in terms of private efforts for getting into space, but if you want to get into the action and see where the hot activity is taking place, it is currently in America. South-western USA to be exact if you want to know where the bulk of these companies are working at.
Never get into space? I suppose that this flight was a figment of my imagination. This is hardly the only company going into space, and I don't see vehicle production lines necessarily getting shut down.... except in Utah. I call that simply ATK having a singular problem trying to figure out how to make a profit in the current market rather than a national crisis. Sometimes dinosaurs go extinct too.
The same could have been said of America or Australia from the perspective of Europe, before colonisation.
It could be said, but only incorrectly, since the Europeans were well aware that those places were inhabitable before colonising them. Also, in both cases, there was specific reasons why humans were sent (or went of their own accord). In those days, infections often meant amputation. These days, we are able to cure most infections using penicillin. Similarly, in those days, exploring or exploiting remote, inhospitable locations meant sending humans. These days, we no longer need to send humans to exploit or explore remote locations, instead we do so using robots.
But of course you won't do it anymore than than asshat Peter Singer (look up his latest NYT column) will off himself.
Oh, come on, have you even READ his column? Singer isn't saying that everybody should just commit suicide because humans suck.
Singer is a philosopher, and he specializes in ethics. As a philosopher, it's his job to ask questions - difficult questions, questions that haven't been asked before, questions that noone yet has an answer for. As an ethicist, he's doing that in the field of ethics.
Most people presuppose that when somebody asks "should we do X?", what that person really means is either "yes, we should do X", or "no, we should not do X". This usually isn't a bad approximation, either, but it doesn't work for philosophers. Philosophers don't ask questions to communicate opinions that they have already formed based on gut feelings; rather, they ask questions to think about things and arrive at conclusions and form opinions in the first place.
As for singer, he's asking questions like "If a child is likely to have a life full of pain and suffering is that a reason against bringing the child into existence?", "If a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life, is that a reason for bringing the child into existence?", "Is life worth living, for most people in developed nations today?", "Is a world with people in it better than a world with no sentient beings at all?" and "Would it be wrong for us all to agree not to have children, so that we would be the last generation on Earth?".
These are all good questions that are worth considering. The answers aren't obvious, and thinking about these things, no matter what your opinion ends up being, will only strengthen your understanding of the matters at hand. They aren't comfortable questions, but that doesn't mean they aren't good or necessary ones, and attacking Singer for no other reason than that he's asking them reeks of anti-intellectualism.
Finally, here is a link to the blog post in question itself - you conveniently failed to provide one. I'd invite everyone to read it for themselves, make up their own mind, and enter the discussion (not necessarily in that order), rather than revelling in their refusal to have a discussion in the first place.
(but, oh, man, tang and microwave ovens made it sooo worth it!).
Tang, like the Fisher space pen, were not made by NASA, they just had great product placement. Kind of like the Olympics didn't develop any of their official drinks, shirts etc. The microwave ovens, I have no idea what your connection is suppose to be.
Never get into space? I suppose that this flight [spacex.com] was a figment of my imagination.
It's not a figment of your imagination, but let's also bear in mind that American commercial space ventures are just now accomplishing what NASA was doing about 50 years ago, and that's with the aid of all the wonderful new tech that has evolved since that time. It's not reasonable to expect they're going to make up that kind of shortfall in a short period of time.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Yep. All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
One thing that can be said about things like telecommunications satellites (including TV broadcasting sats but much more), remote sensing ("weather sats"... but also monitoring remote weather stations on the Earth too), and reconnaissance sats (including the classic "spy sats" by various military agencies.... but also things like Google Earth) is that they are proven applications of space technology where clearly a commercial entity can make some money and convince investors to dump in billions of dollars for infrastructure necessary to get it going. A good example of this is with the Iridium Satellite Constellation. BTW, Iridium is going to be expanding in the next couple of years with a new generation of their technology... with increased bandwidth and capabilities.
I'll also note that with these applications, while the "wealthy" do get served with this technology, it also helps those who are at the bottom of the heap in the social order of things too. This very technology has saved more lives due to advanced warnings for things like tsunamis, hurricanes and cyclones, and other severe weather problems than almost any other human activity other than urban sewage distribution and treatment systems. Very ordinary and indeed poor individuals also have access to the telecommunications systems, and navigation systems like GPS and Magellan have helped to make the transportation of goods around the world much, much cheaper due to increasing efficiency of navigation and shipping transportation.
The real trick is trying to figure out how to make money doing something else in space. Where there is going to be something new happening is with space tourism (yes.... those who have money "throwing it away" for a few moments of micro-gravity) and with space-based manufacturing. There certainly are processes and products that can only be made in space, and until very recently there was no basic infrastructure in place to even permit this kind of activity to take place. It really hasn't happened yet except on some very experimental processes that generated more hype than actual products. You will very soon be using products that have been manufactured in space and not simply just made for space manufacturing companies.
As for going to the Moon or Mars, the problem is that there is no infrastructure in place to be able to get to those places in the first place. Apollo was not about establishing infrastructure... other than building up Kennedy Space Center. Anything related to the Apollo program has long ago been gutted and sent to museums, and really didn't involve setting up a general system of allowing anybody other than government bureaucrats and employees to get there.
Getting to a Western USA model, when trying to exploit frontier areas there is a need to establish various bases of operation that can be used for both military and civilian uses. There is this thing call "logistics" that is necessary to really get somewhere and spend some significant periods of time away from your home. It doesn't matter if the location is in Antarctica, the bottom of an ocean, or on Mars. If you don't have that infrastructure in place to support that exploration, you can't have a sustained presence there. We don't have that infrastructure in place, and it is a fallacy that Constellation was ever going to get that infrastructure put into place there either.
We don't have an equivalent of McMurdo on the Moon, and until that happens you can kiss any chance for people doing projects on the Moon goodbye. Once something like that is built on the Moon, opportunities will expand and there will be
Can I float a theory?
Ex-Soviets who are itching to get back into The Game of Everything, make a deal with the Afghanis, to trade oh, ONE TRILLION DOLLARS in return for fun toys??
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Compromise for you -
Go to the moon with Prelim equipment that wheels out a return a little faster than a full base. Come on, Can't we just build some kind of goddurn Steel Box and plunk it down? Yea, it would have no air, but you could stick some Spy Eye stuff in it to look for "Tuurrists". Can't we drill that out for under say $100 Million?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
...f*ck.
Just how stupid can you be? If I lose my legs, I have insurance. If I die, my family will benefit from insurance as well. And you should examine how humans really work once you step out of retardedland: humans do not decide to choose to live in a society to work towards a "common good" or "help each other". Humans are animals who do what's best for them.
The trick to a successful society - often forgotten by loserboy nerdy politicians - is to balance it so that everyone striving to obtain advantage for themselves will result in a net gain for the community. If this doesn't happen, people will simply find a better community to live in or one which requires their skills so that there is reciprocal gain.
No-one does stuff to "help other people", no-one with half a neuron anyway. I'm not a blood donor because I like to help other people, but because giving blood is actually good for me. Apart from the health advantages, I get a medical check 4 times a year without me paying money for it, and keeping the blood bank supplied with my type increases the chances that there's some available should I need it. If someone else is helped by this, their luck. But I don't do that for them, I do it for myself.
Your "common good" does not exist. Get over it once the kindergarten kids are through with brown-swirling you.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Weaponizing space really does little good even if there is somebody who tries. BTW, it was the Soviet Union who first put weapons into space... as a machine gun found on one of the Salyut space stations. Yes, that was technically in violation of treaty, but who cares? There really is no enforcement provision on any such provision.
BTW, a little lesson on orbital mechanics: If you fire a bullet in space, there is a tendency that the bullet ends up back at roughly where you are at when you fired the thing.... after making an orbit around the Earth. In other words, most weapons that are used on the Earth right now tend to create "space debris" if they are actually used.... which tends to make life miserable for the person firing the weapon in the first place. Essentially, if you use weapons, it is a space-equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot. Generally it is a bad idea.
As for the "waste of resources" and diverting it to space, that isn't going to happen unless there is something which is a draw to encourage us to get "out there" in the first place. Other than the petroleum reserves of Titan (hint, this is a joke), there is little reason at the moment to exploit resources off the Earth. I think that will change over time, but that time hasn't happened yet.
"Saying we would never have happened upon velcro or microwaves without NASA just because that is historically what played out is simpleton logic."
Ah, the reasoning of the unworthy. Columbus himself had to deal with it, when a dumpload of Spanish buffoons told him that every fuckin' spaniard could have done the same as him. His answer? He beat up the spanish nerd and shit on his face. Sort of.
Would you rather have the stuff now or when some dude happens to think about it some decades after you're dead, POS? Without aerospace tech and the Cold War, you couldn't have that fancy GPS you use to get to your scat kiddie porn peddler.
Without WW2 and tons of research into jet engines and radars, you couldn't get on a plane and fly to Thailand to have sex with underage boys.
Your whole life as a pedophile geek would be miserable, even if less so than when I get my hands on you, rip your limbs from your torso and shit into your braincase. Afterwards, you will wish it could have been invented a thousand years in the future. Yes, you will THINK, because for the first time in your miserable life there will be something - my shit - doing the thinking in your moldy, maggot-infested skull.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Personally I'd like to add at least a second spaceship.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
SS and Medicare are not only for those that paid into them. They're general safety nets that also cover those unfortunates that never could earn any money.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
true. twenty years ago, the us regularly sent people into space and was in the process of building a huge space center. people were even sent to repair a defective telescope. it took 3 hours to get from new york to london. nasa was perhaps the most celebrated government agency. they regularly did things never done before by anyone, and they had the best people on earth working for them.
fast forward to today. the only reusable manned vehicle available to mankind has only two flights left. there is no viable way for the us to send there men (or women) in space on its own. they have to buy tickets on a russian craft. water was discovered on the moon by a nasa device attached to an indian unmanned rocket. it takes 7 hours to get from new york to london (plus all the paranoid/demeaning security checks). nasa's funding has been reduced to the point that they can't start work on any ambitious project because they don't know if they will get a continuous stream of funding. young brilliant people from india/china/korea don't aspire to work for nasa anymore. their country's space agency is given the same treatment given to nasa twenty years ago.
what has gone wrong? why is the us losing its edge in space research? why has it lost its high-tech manufacturing prowess to china/korea? why is it burning up trillions of dollars on two futile, useless wars?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
and your point is that when the us was sending people to the moon its sick people were not getting medicine? because i don't think that ever happened.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Social insurance and spaceflight are not mutually exclusive.
I imagine if you swap two wars for a space program, we could be halfway to Mars by now (at least).
ok, I'd go for that. I wish we could do that.
Or even just 1 war, the one we didn't need to be in in the first place.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
as in NSDAP party programme, and minus all the frenzy about Jews
Can Falun Gong be interchangeably substituted?
The irony is that China may be the best place for developing a business now, in the best and average cases. In the worst case, though, they execute you for offending the State and send a bill to your family for the cost of the bullet.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The old ________ has finally caught up with itself and now without the ________ we must pay the penance for its mistakes and not having proper plans afterwards.
There, generalized that for you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
it makes me sad to think that most people think like you nowadays.
do you know how we got all our medicinal progress and antibiotic manufacturing expertise? research. long, expensive research. 'those poor engineers and scientists' worked their ass off while other losers and lawyers reaped the benefits of their work.
i suggest you read up on how a new medicine is founded, or how a new type of rocket propulsion is invented, or how silicon lithography is perfected. scientists and engineers work for hundreds of thousands of hours, losing most of their social life and neglecting everything else. 90% of them fail to make something truly revolutionary. the other 10% make something that benefits humanity (not just a specific class of humans).
hell lets not talk about space at all. wonder what will happen when idiots like you and all those poverty stricken bastards in india and china continue to multiply like they are? yes, there will be scarcity of food. how do you think we have managed so far? by throwing away billions in agricultural processes that don't work. the ones that do work keep today's billions alive. the only way to continue this feat is to throw money, lots of money at the problem. sure that will keep the lazy poor, but i don't think that is a matter to complain about.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
And places like India, and parts of China, where the population is denser than anywhere, we do not see people eating their young.
of course people are not eating their young. that would be inefficient because you would need to eat a lot of food just to make a baby.
When it becomes a real problem, we deal with it.
so you are saying that we should start thinking about advancing our space tech when people start dying en mass due to starvation?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
There is no shortage of energy if we are clever about it. We can make hydrocarbons directly from solar energy and recycled carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. We can do that for the next five billion years if we want.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You're forgetting the (enormous) difference in budget between these new space companies and NASA 50 years ago.
Mada mada dane.
Would you still feel the same if you were in a terrible accident and lost your legs? Or if you were dead... think you'll still be feeding your family?
if i were doing a job that required manual labor, i would not expect anyone to give me money for free. its my own luck, innit? i would rather die than live off someone else's welfare.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Then don't rely on other people providing the medical care you might need. Do your own medical checks on yourself. Collect your own blood and store it. Do the surgery on yourself. Stop being lazy and relying on other people to do the work you need.
rewriting history since 2109
no, you are crazy. why should a kid get preferential treatment just because he's MY kid?? every man should earn his own bread through his own hard work. this is just pure evolution at play. people like you hinder the advancement of the human race.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
but look! he's gone now! HE GAVE UP!
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Or with the case of Constellation, which was designed for 6 month global access missions (Apollo was only equatorial) with the purpose of exploration and the construction of long term habitats and research facilities on the moon, absolutely been there, absolutely not done that.
I agree with you 100%, I just find it strange that no one, including Obama, read the mission plan for Constellation, instead of just seeing that Ares wasn't doing well and saying the whole thing is trash. It was designed to do things that we've never done before.
The Constellation moon missions were to the Apollo moon missions as Portland is to the Lewis and Clark expeditions.
"...And who wants to make buttprints in the sands of time?" ~Bob Moawad
Those writers you mention... do they have some sort of feasible backup plan to asteroids, nuclear war, or other ecological catastrophes making the earth uninhabitable? There is no humanitarianism without humanity... and that is the fundamental reason why space colonization is important.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Except when one pays for social security for less than a decade, and then spends the rest of one's life living off of it. Close to half, possibly more than half, of the US population that pays into social security would be better off putting the same funds into a bank account for retirement. That's why it's "social" security. It is a team effort. And like any exceedingly large team where no one can get fired, it's the lazy bastards that get it the easiest.
I think what you mean is that they're designed to be social nets. In use, it is so trivial to abuse the system that several people make it their "profession" to do so.
"...And who wants to make buttprints in the sands of time?" ~Bob Moawad
The point of a republic is to keep stupid reactionary things like this from happening; to filter out the short-term whims of the majority while still representing them overall. Unchecked democracy is terrible.
Although, since this is Obama's doing (or so it seems, indirectly), Congress didn't get a chance to not do its job before we gave up on manned space flight for a half decade in the name of politics.
as if millions of space nerds suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'll probably get modded troll too, but seriously, why do American taxpayers owe anyone a ride to space, much less foreigners?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
It's much cheaper to simply launch your weapon on an ICBM or launch a stealthy weapons platform in space than it would be to go to the moon and set up a giant frickin' laser. If there's ever weapons on the moon, they'll probably be used for fighting other people on the moon.
Besides, there's that whole outer space treaty that makes the moon a neutral zone like Antarctica. Hasn't been too many wars on that continent, and it's a lot nicer than the moon.
No, I'm not forgetting it - that budget difference is a critical factor when it comes to whether commercial space travel will work. NASA had the benefit of somewhat expendable military test pilots, which saved a fortune on liability and other concerns, and also had the benefit of being able to use existing military technology for boosters and other hardware for the Mercury and Gemini programs, plus military support for other aspects of the mission.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
No, it's okay - you're ranting for millions now, so you might actually feel a little bloated and even nauseated at times :)
I love my country, but I hate the current state of my government.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
'cause the space program is the only thing republicans will agree to aborting, so it can get by-partisan support.
as long as they didn't rely on the resources of others for student loans, education, transportation, etc, then they can certainly do their shit on you if you pay without relying on others for medical insurance, and the collective that provides transportation infrastructure, communication and other services and facilities that you don't pay for.
rewriting history since 2109
Wars are a different matter, you gotta fight wars.
You gotta fight *some* wars. Other wars, you choose. The U.S. chose a war to convert a tin-pot dictatorship into a chaotic sectocracy over health care for all with a permanent Mars base on the side.
When it becomes a real problem, we deal with it. Let's not put the cart before the horse, or try to cross a bridge we haven't arrived at yet. You know, the tires on your car will be bald someday. Why aren't you buying new tires now?
Your car analogy doesn't work. I'm not buying tires right now because I know that they will be readily available in the future at the time I need them. All I need to do is reserve an hour or two of my time, walk into the store, and pay a couple hundred bucks. I don't need to sit and do basic, fundamental research and make a bunch of test models and do rigorous service testing in advance; that work is already done. At best, it requires that I save up a little money in advance.
Your bridge analogy doesn't quite work, either. For one thing, the bridge already exists, and if it didn't, we'd have to be working on designing and building it long before we showed up at the riverbank with truckloads of stuff that needs to get to the other side. And if we had something particularly heavy or unusual that needed to cross, we'd need to start planning the actual bridge crossing well in advance.
The thing is, overpopulation and/or extinction-level events (very large asteroids, pandemics, biowarfare, etc) are a little bit harder to solve than "oh, I need new tires". Viable solutions (and particularly space-based ones) aren't something we can just head over to the store or local contractor and get a solution for in a short time. They take years--if not decades--of research, development, and testing to get something truly practical and usable. If we wait until we hit a population crisis that's taking every dollar we have to try and control, not only will we not have a solution ready to go, we won't even have the money to start building one. The time to be working on solutions to these problems is now, while we have the extra resources to spare, not sixty years in the future when we're staring the problem in the face from an inch away.
We're seeing the same thing with oil today. We know that at some point it will become too expensive to recover usable oil. That point may be fifty years in the future, but right now we're speeding along at 95mph and only watching about two feet in front of our bumper, with half of us saying "hey, we have enough for today and tomorrow, so let's not worry!" and the other half saying "Cut! Tax! Restrict!" in hopes that doing so will make the impending problem magically go away.
You don't wait until your house is burning to set up a local fire department or buy a fire extinguisher. You don't wait until a hurricane is two days out to come up with evacuation plans and put flood and storm protection in place. So why do we insist on doing that with big problems for which we dont at least have a standard formula or big body of knowledge for?
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Yea we can put men on the moon but... No wait we can't anymore.
And for many posters on slashdot we never could in their lifetime.
Of course we could fall back to the other old saying. We should stop spending money on space and use it to feed the hungry... "put your cause in here" We did and did that make anything better?
I fear that we have lost our way. We no longer care about the stars in the sky. We only care about the stars on TV. Oh brave new world has such people in it. As long as get your bread and circuses we will be happy. Or our daily Soma if you like.
Good night all the future has left the building.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So do gas, state and local sales taxes get applied to the space program? Did those taxes contribute to the Apollo program? I understand the statement you're making and its true but I think the context was within taxes contributing to the space program.
federal income taxes != taxes gas, state and local sales, state income, property, &c thanks for playing
Good point. Rich people don't own houses or cars, they don't buy gas, and they never, ever buy anything at stores.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
There is a third, that Constellation was a failure due to engineering issues from the get-go without a huge budget-up. But that the mission can be done on the budget that we do have.
That argument is called DIRECT, as in Directly derived from the shuttle stack. It is an evolution design, which was originally proposed in 1978 and always kept on the back burner should the need arize for heavy lift, which a lunar mission all but demands. It has already passed through qualifications, all of the components exist now (unlike Constellation which was all-new) and we can have it flying within 36 months according to the engineers as well as the contractors involved. And that is the conservative estimate.
http://www.directlauncher.com/
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I have to agree with the parent. It's pointless to 'go back to the moon' unless there is actually something to be done. Just doing something 'because we can' is pointless and doesn't advance science in any way. Private industry can advance rocket technology faster than NASA if they find incentive to do so. Since they have verified water on the moon, there appears to be some incentive, but just showing up for some pissing match that we already won is stupid. I agree a permanent base on the moon would be ideal, but I just don't see that happening in the next decade or two. I do see it becoming more realistic in the next 50 years or so as we become more efficient in both robotics, solar power solutions, and potentially in propulsion techs as well.
Ideas that we will unleash our robotic army to build a base station there are also just fantasy. We lack the technology to deploy such a mechanical fleet. Our robotics are limited to a solar powered buggy with some minimalistic sensors, a saw, and an easy-bake oven. Hardly the stuff that SciFi is made of.
Lets all try to be a bit more realistic here. Leave it to private industry to catch up and surpass what NASA did. They've had 50 years to come up with a better rocket. All they've done is refine what we have.
Which is more efficient, a private taxi, or public mass transit? Which is cheaper to use? Which moves more people on less fuel?
Why would a private space taxi be any different?
--Joe
America could do both welfare and the space programs, provided that they don't fund huge wars.
NASA's target should be to build a mothership in orbit; a ship that could host humans for interstellar travel, complete with artificial gravity (from rotation), hydroponic bays, electromagnetic shield, powered by nuclear reactors. It's feasible, all the technology is available, and it will make manned spaceflight to other planets of the solar system quite cheap in the long run.
Being an astronaut is a job at the end of the day, not an entertainment "ride". Last time I looked, people got paid for jobs, not the other way round. If he got the job, good luck to him. Are you going to complain that your taxes are being spent on giving a "foreigner" a ride? That suggests you think the only purpose of manned spaceflight is to give a few Americans an entertaining ride...
Imagine some rogue nation develops a significant space program, *AND* arms it. There would be no way to defend against it, or for other nations to fight against it.
That's when you chop the heads off the Hydra - space weapons can't hurt you if the government and command-and-control infrastructure that control them has been slagged by a conventional or nuclear retaliation.
I think the real threat from space is not space-> ground attack but attacks on other space-based assets - imagine taking out all of country X's surveillance and military comm sats in preparation for a ground or ICBM attack.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Good thing most people in power haven't historically shared your worldview, otherwise you'd end up dying from something as simple as breaking your arm, or you were too ill to go and catch some food one day.
Maybe both exploration and medicine (including welfare) are good things...
Nevermind that the price for both is totally different.
you want medicine you PAY for it
You want manned spaceflight, you pay for it?
Skipping around on the Moon means technical challenges that foster technological progress. It means more scientists, more engineers, more skilled jobs that cannot be outsourced to Bumfuckay and will stay around for at least a couple of decades, and the indirect benefits of the research and development will find their way into the market, adding to the country's competitivity.
Yes, obviously there are no technical challenges or research and development in medicine. Nor are there any skilled jobs required, and all the doctors can be outsourced.
you're so determined to get medicine to the poor sick people, why don't you give away all the money you don't need to survive?
Why don't you give all your money to NASA?
(Seriously, I'm a fan of manned spaceflight, but your arguments on the false dichotomy between national manned spaceflight and national healthcare don't make sense.)
The fact that rich people pay sales/property taxes doesn't negate that poor people also pay those taxes. Since the original statement was that poor people don't pay taxes, your comment doesn't disprove eldepeche.
Virg
they also earn 99% so they should pay 99% to be fair right??
The US is still the current leader in space technology. Just try to compare how many different types of launcher architectures the US has compared to other countries: Atlas V, Delta 4, Pegasus, Taurus, Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and soon Taurus II. This is even not counting the Shuttle. Also try to compare national space budgets. The US spends more than the rest of the world combined.
Tell me which other country has people working on something on the technological level of SpaceshipTwo.
There has been a prioritization of state funds that happens in any sort of economic crunch. This means suppliers which have been missing time and cost budgets (like ATK) are being accounted for their actions. ATK has spent years milking state funds for Ares I and Ares V. Their major claim to fame in Ares I is launching an old Shuttle solid engine with a mockup on top (Ares I). Ares I, according to the original plan, should be launched after the Shuttle was retired to service ISS. Well the Shuttle is retiring this year, and the ISS was originally planned to de-orbit in 2016. As things are going they are nowhere near meeting that 2016 deadline. Neither the first stage, nor the second stage, nor the capsule are finished, nor are there any prototypes looking anything like the final design.
If anything Ares should have been canceled sooner. Heck Bush should never have allowed the NASA administration to fund this failed enterprise. It should have just done the EELV upgrades that Lockheed-Martin and Boeing have been proposing for yonks and put a capsule on top of an existing rocket, instead of designing a whole new rocket based on expensive legacy technology.
"Those Afghanis have been right there, in the same place, for thousands of years, defying any and all comers - most recently the Soviet." I agree with a lot of what you said, but i would like to point out that the gud ol' USA was instrumental in helping defeat the soviets.... They did not build their own stingers... You miss the point of the war completely. We are not actually fighting anyone... just small skirmishes and limited operations to maintain a large military presence in the region in furtherance of our bullying powers.
Thank you.
...enough food that they can put 100 pounds or more of lard on...
I've always thought that the food stamp program should essentially only pay for unprocessed/minimally foods - what your grandparents called 'staples'. Fresh fruit and vegetables, flour, reasonable cuts of meat, etc. No prepackaged anything - no Fritos, no sodas, no alcohol, nothing. The recipient must learn to use these basics to provide meals for their family.
Barring that, it would probably be more economical and healthy to sell prepackaged menus for each week of food tailored to the age(s) of the family members, much like the food that Nutrasystem sells. It isn't gourmet, but it is at least tasty and nutritious. I lived off of Nutrafood for many months several years ago, and successfully lost a whole person worth of weight.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Then don't rely on other people providing the medical care you might need. Do your own medical checks on yourself. Collect your own blood and store it. Do the surgery on yourself. Stop being lazy and relying on other people to do the work you need.
I realize this is a radical stretch for you, but what if I merely paid out of my own funds and at my own discretion for someone else to perform these tasks for me? The costs for such things would be quite affordable for all if (a) government regulation weren't so onerous as to increase the cost of such services, (b) if trial lawyers weren't allowed to create such hideous insurance burdens on those trying to provide such services, and (c) government didn't keep trying to take so much of my money (via taxes, fees, regulation, etc.) and give it to other people who didn't earn it and won't spend it as wisely as I have. It's called Capitalism, and it's created more wealth, more inventions, and more prosperity in general than any other form of economics in the history of mankind. Socialism and Communism brought bread lines and rationed toilet paper.
The "we're rich enough to afford it so we ought to do it" argument is what started some countries down the Socialist road that now has them in dire economic straits. Those few largely-socialist countries that aren't in horrible economic shape also happen to be countries that aren't superpowers, don't have much impact on world affairs, and certainly don't have extensive defensive commitments to defend other countries -- sometimes even their own borders -- like America does.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Robots are the only way we will ever explore space in regards to our present technology. We should focus on robotics.
You pay for medical insurance, you don't pay for medical service (or at least not all of it). Services you receive are not fully funded by you, you share the costs with many others.
rewriting history since 2109
In fact, the US is the ONLY superpower in the world today.
Go grab some statistics about the nation today, and X years ago. With any measure you can come up with, you'll find the US is just as well off today as it was X years ago.
Look up some numbers, and you'll find the US has lower taxes now, than we have through much of the nation's history.
Here's just one chart, of just one : http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates-graph.php
Federal Income Taxes on 1mil USD were 77% in 1918. Earning more than $100,000 in 1950 would result in 91% tax rates. Today, taxes top-out at a mere 35%.
Yeah, get to work you blood-sucking orphans! Stop mooching off the gub'mint!
Actually, we're doomed if Medicare costs aren't brought under control. But hey, right-wing shills just want their taxes cut further, they don't want health care reform!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's easy to forget about opertunity cost. NASA was 5.5% of the federal budget in 1966. How much do you think it would be worth if they had invested 1/2 of NASA's budget into the S&P 500 and just kept the R&D?
LCD screens are taxed. Yachts are taxed. Food and clothes are not taxed. (usually). Items bought on food stamps is not taxed.
your mind is small and weak.
rewriting history since 2109
It never makes sense until you get there. All of the world's great explorers didn't know exactly what they would find - that was the point. The transition from living in space not making sense to it being a necessity includes all the baby steps of doing it "just because."
or else!
People can't legally stop paying social security if they want to keep their rights. I would gladly withhold my SS payments and invest that same amount in my own future (securities, retirement funds, etc) if I could.
True, we aided the Afghan's during the Soviet invasion. But, no one is supplying the Taliban with stingers and crap today, and they still manage to hand our asses to us on a platter from time to time. The Taliban is making a comeback.
As I said, a punitive expedition to punish them for supporting Al Queda would have had us in, the Taliban bloodied, and the population upset, and our troops safely at home, all within a year. Actually, six months should have been long enough. The population would have lost faith in that Taliban, and created new parties and powers when we withdrew. The only interest we should have shown the world as we withdrew, was to warn the OTHER local powers that we wouldn't tolerate any of them invading after we left.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
They're general safety nets that also cover those unfortunates that never could earn any money.
Please explain to me how it's possible for someone to live to the Social Security retirement age and never earn any money? Short of being born in a vegetative state, it's practically impossible to do what you suggest unless you're voluntarily deciding to live off of someone else for your entire life. Such a mentality might suit you just fine, but what if everybody did that? Who would pay for Social Security then? The system collapses if everyone decides "hey, the government will take care of me fairly well if I vote the right fellow into office so I might as well become a slacker!"
Now perhaps you really meant Social Security is for those who could never save any money. Saving money is a lifestyle choice everyone gets to make. Minimum wage not enough to support your lifestyle and set aside some money for the future? Either change your lifestyle (i.e. spend less) or improve your marketability and get a better-paying job (i.e. free or low-cost classes on job skills are available to anyone who wants them). But what if you've spent yourself into a lifestyle already that doesn't allow you to save? Well, that's where responsibility for your choices comes into play. You chose your lifestyle and spending habits. If you can't set any money aside because the bills keep coming in, you don't have to look very far to find a person to blame.
But I forget that responsibility for your own actions and Socialism aren't remotely compatible. And Socialism sounds so cool when you aren't the one paying for it, forgetting that somewhere, somebody is paying for it. The entire concept of Socialism depends upon there being someone out there who is willing to work hard so that you don't have to. What short-sighted Socialists never seem to grasp is government benefits inevitably rise to unsustainable levels, which leads to higher and higher taxes, which makes working harder less rewarding while making slacking off more attractive, which leads to a stagnating economy, reduced employment, and a collapse of the entire system.
Economically-speaking, there are no "unfortunate" people. There are, however, people who make unfortunate choices. If you feel so horrible that these people are in "unfortunate" circumstances, please feel free to donate money to a charity or do volunteer work at a soup kitchen. I've done both. But you have no right to require anyone else to do so. Any government that seeks to impose such a requirement is running contrary to the principles established by the Founding Fathers.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
We've spent one or two billion $ over 30 years on Mars probes, give or take. Some did crash, some did get stuck in stupid ways, none has yet tried to do a sample return, although it has been proposed. On the other hand others have outperformed expectations and given us more photographs and so on than any manned mission likely could.
No one seriously believes we could put a man on Mars for less than $30bn (Zubrin, for a quick cheap flags and footprints mission) and most serious estimates are $100 to $200 bn. For that money we could send a LOT of robots.
I'd like humans in space to make sense for research/exploration, but I can't see the numbers ever adding up.
If Eisenhower hadn't created NASA, we'd now have solar power satellites instead of nuclear waste and oil spills, space settlements and access to space as routine as is air passenger flight.
Seastead this.
I think BP has spent the last 60 days showing the extreme limitations of robots or tele-operated machines in harsh environments. If you want to get anything serious done, send a person.
The people that want to go to space are not you, and they DO have reasons for wanting to go. A lot of them are even spending their own, hard earned money to do so. Whether you think they should or not is rather beside the point.
Necron69
It is interesting, to say the least, to see non-NASA people's opinions on this issue, and moreover, to see people's opinions who are technically minded but outside of NASA. As someone working on Constellation at NASA, I am living this issue every day, and have been living it for months now. There is lots of misinformation on this thread, and lots of opinions I disagree with. I won't take the time to really respond to any of them, but in the case of the former, it's entirely understandable considering the poor communication coming out of NASA (both in general and on this specific issue) as well as the poor quality of news reporting as it relates to spaceflight (and by extension, nearly everything technical in nature). In the case of the latter, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Mine is that we need to get society off this rock as soon as possible and establish a permanent self-sustaining settlement on another one as a means of risk mitigation against the various calamities that could destroy human civilization. Second, I feel it should be us (the United States) because someone is going to do it - it will happen eventually. That point should not be up for debate. For us to sit around spending money on things like wars and bailouts instead of continuing the role as the leader in space is, in my humble opinion, short sighted. But I digress.
The one thing I will say is that Constellation is not dead - yet. It's had its head cut off by reassignment of the program manager. It's been dealt a tough blow most recently with HQ telling the prime contractors (Lockheed, ATK, Oceaneering) that they need to put money into reserve for contract termination liability - the costs associated with winding down a contract. Typically this contract clause is never enforced, and especially not at this time of the year. Our fiscal year ends on Sept 30. These contract termination liability costs now represent about 50% of the money left in the budget for this fiscal year, which essentially means that things need to be cut to the bone to get there. Many people feel that enforcing this clause is a pretty shady way of circumventing Congress and the law, because until Congress signs a new budget or specifically tells NASA to stop working on Constellation, NASA is legally obligated to continue working on it as the program of record. By enforcing this clause, it could be construed as circumventing this legal process. If a budget agreement is not found by the end of the fiscal year (and that is looking more and more likely), then NASA gets a continuing resolution - the same money allocated the same way for next year as it was this year. So hypothetically, NASA could pick back up with this "new money" and continue working on Constellation.
That being said, for months now, before this contract termination issue came up, most of the different Constellation projects (Orion, suit, etc) have been working to try to scale back design, remove Lunar content, accelerate the schedule, reduce scope, etc to try to "bridge the gap" between what Congress says they should be doing and what HQ and the executive branch says they should be doing.
Lastly, I think that most people at NASA don't necessarily have a problem with Obama's general plan for NASA - they have a problem with its lack of specificity, lack of a concrete goal, lack of a timeline. I get the feeling that if Obama came back and said he wants to cancel Constellation, come up with a new heavy lifter (both things he has said before) but also that the goal is to establish a human presence on "X" surface "Y" years from now, more people might get on board.
I think the real threat from space is not space-> ground attack but attacks on other space-based assets - imagine taking out all of country X's surveillance and military comm sats in preparation for a ground or ICBM attack.
Only issue is that blowing up their satellites is a rather scorched earth tactic. It's not real viable unless you don't have any satellites of your own and don't want any either.
Aside, it might be feasible to take out low-orbit surveillance satellites, but not comm sats, as it's not exactly trivial it hit a bus-sized object 22,000 miles away (geostationary orbit) and moving at about 7,000 miles per hour, so it's unlikely that any country with the capability to do that would meet the criteria above. Both anti-satellite tests (China's weather satellite and USA-193) were on satellites at ~500 and ~120 miles up.
But on the other hand, crazy people seem to occasionally get into positions of power.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It is very difficult for me to argue against 'cheaper' and 'safer' when it comes to robots, but you've still got a long way to convince me that they do a 'better' job.
Robots do their job well but they can do only a miniscule fraction of what a trained geologist could do in the same time. At best, robots are adequate, and that's limited to their mission objectives.
I think BP has spent the last 60 days showing the extreme limitations of robots or tele-operated machines in harsh environments. If you want to get anything serious done, send a person.
Ah -- the one thing NOBODY has (credibly) suggested dong about the oil leak. There may be a reason for that. Sure robots are limited, but when you get far enough from home (in any of a variety of senses) humans are (a) also very limited and (b) very, very high maintenance.
The people that want to go to space are not you, and they DO have reasons for wanting to go. A lot of them are even spending their own, hard earned money to do so. Whether you think they should or not is rather beside the point.
Necron69
That's fine. Branson, Cormack and co. are welcome to play about in suborbital rockets. Musk is now running quite heavily on US govt money. At this stage Bill Gates or Warren Buffet could probably get themselves to the Moon by blowing their entire fortunes. When economic growth and/or technical development makes it cheap enough, people will go, and good luck to them but it's not a sensible investment for a government or a corporation just yet.
The thing is that it's not one robot vs one geologist. $ for $ it's more like 1000 robots vs one geologist. Also, the geologist can tele-operate the robots (at least on the moon).
A permanent base is one thing. A permanent base for humans is quite another. Much of the benefit of having humans on the spot can be gained as easily by having humans drive by remote. Either way will encourage technological development.
Don't worry, the human diaspora into the rest of the solar system will come. We're just not ready for it technologically yet.
The poor still pay taxes, dick wad. Taxes payed for the Apollo Missions. I'll bet anything the poor outnumber you sophisticated science-types about a million to one. Also, I think they'd rather have $2 worth of free antibiotic than whatever fantastic discoveries await you on the Moon at a cost of trillions (but, oh, man, tang and microwave ovens made it sooo worth it!).
As my dad said, "poor people have poor ways". I've been broke a few times in my life, but I've never been poor because I always understood the concept of long-term investment. I've I'd been poor, I would have spent four years partying my ass off instead of working my way through college because it would have been more fun at the time.
In short, I don't give a rat's ass what poor people think. I'm not talking about people who don't have money today - that's being broke and it's a temporary condition. But people who continue to make stupid decisions that keep themselves impoverished? I'll be damned if I want their input when deciding policy.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Your hyperbole is over whelming.
First you chose to pick a "tear jerker" segment of the entitlement program and suggest that the parent is asking them to starve to death. Completely ignoring the huge amount of dollars wasted on different agencies who have overlapping responsibilities that dispense these entitlements.
Next you picked on Bill Gates. Of course he is a popular demon on Slashdot but your opinion run counter to the facts. Like how many operating systems during the 80's and early 90's operated on a "IBM" personal computer running a multitude of different hardware configurations? I think thats pretty f'ing innovative.
I question your source that Microsoft paid $0 dollars in US Taxes, and you didn't consider the amount of income taxes paid by the employees of Microsoft Corporation.
On top of that, you completely disregard the existence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that funds immunizations in underdeveloped countries.
I'm not the biggest fan of Microsoft. But try to get your facts straight and stay on topic. Your rant reminds me of a Family Guy sketch where Peter wins a debate against Lois by repeatedly saying "9/11".
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Dude, I'm unpopular with a lot of slashdotters for defending the troops.
From your posts, I'm going to assume it's because you're a hyperbolic demagogue. No one is against "defending the troops." People are against the silly military engagements we get ourselves into. The demagogues like yourself turn that into "you hate soldiers" to demonize your political opposition.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
4. The point of housing those that can't afford it is not about economic advancement. It's about being human. You should try it.
Thank you for pointing this out. Taking care of our fellow human beings is one of the things that makes our humanity what it is. (Of course, all the bad stuff also is part of that.) One thing not to overlook with respect to housing, however, is that it's not ENTIRELY driven out of the goodness of people's hearts. If you allow too many people to live on the streets, and don't take care of those who can't (or won't) take care of themselves, society will quickly find itself succumbing to high levels of crime as those individuals attempt to survive any way they can.
So, while there is obviously an aspect of taking care of each other as human beings (which is great), there are also selfish/societal pressures for doing so as well.
Only if they are defensive wars against other nation states who attacked you.
That's right! We should allow our enemies to build up their forces and position them where they can cause maximum damage to us, our armed forces, and our interests abroad before we do anything. After all, if you see a suspicious-looking guy prowling around your home, checking the doors and windows to see if they're locked, all while armed to to the teeth, you damned sure shouldn't call the cops until after he's broken in, raped your wife, killed your kids, and started carrying your belongings out the front door.
Funny you should mention Poland and Japan in your post. In both cases, the U.S. didn't pre-emptively strike, largely due to isolationist politics like what you're suggesting. The result was a World War where more than 60 million people were killed. How many might've been saved if Hitler had been stopped when he first violated the Treaty of Versailles? How many might've been saved if Japan's imperialist intentions -- blatantly displayed in China prior to 1941 -- had been curbed before their navy had built up its ability to hit Pearl Harbor? But no. We sat and watched as our enemies prepared. We listened to them preach world domination on the radio and did nothing. We let them get away with larger and larger violations while we gave bigger and bigger chunks of appeasement. Churchill said it best after the war when he stated "at one point, a memo would've stopped Hitler."
But you are one of those who refuses to learn from history. It's a good thing you aren't making policy because your ignorance of it would make the rest of us relive it.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Actually I think he is railing against the millions of people who refuse to find employment even during an economic boom. Instead they "benefit" from a government program that incentivizes having children and provides no exit strategy since the benefits immediately disappears if they find any form of employment regardless of how unlivable the wage.
The reason I place "benefit" in quotes is that despite some of the right wingers assertions, I don't think they are living that great a life on government assistance.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I think SpaceX is doing a fair bit better than what NASA was doing 50 years ago. The Dragon capsule is certainly going to be at least as good if not better than the Apollo capsule, and competitive with the Orion capsule on a whole bunch of levels.
More importantly, it isn't going to cost a billion dollars to launch the Dragon + Falcon 9 in order to get into orbit with cargo and/or people. And in comparison.... what has NASA been doing over the past 40 years since the famous Moon landing to get anywhere beyond low Earth orbit? If you are trying to suggest that the Ares V was going to get us back to the Moon, I'd like to see the actual congressional authorization to get that vehicle built in the first place. There is no "bent metal" on that one either, and I certainly am not holding my breath to see it built... even assuming that the current "Constellation" program is ever restored or preserved in current and future budget cycles.
NASA is still going to be going in circles around the Earth stuck in low-Earth orbit for the next several decades.... unless private Americans somehow get out of that rut. It will be a sad day when the return of NASA astronauts to the Moon will be covered live on CNN.... by reporters who got there first to film the NASA spacecraft landing there.
It hasnt changed much since the 1960s. NASA's manned goals were (1) moon, (2) space station, (3) Mars. Vague discussions of (4) moonbase have popped up now and then. (1) and (2) have been done and are un-inspiring. (3) and (4) are too expensive for a declining world power like the US.
So let me see if I understand this accurately: CONGRESS (whose responsibility is actually allocating funds) is complaining that the PRESIDENT (whose role in budget matters is primarly negative) isn't talking about enough spending on a program that they have actually underfunded for 30+ years?
-Styopa
While I agree that Afghanistan war is a lost cause for the US, what you propose is sheer lunacy. If you had bothered to read even a cursory summary of recent Afghan history you would know that Taliban was essentially unassailable. It overpowered (very violently) the communist government and all the other violent bands of warlords, bandits and thieving locals and proceeded to murder anyone even remotely capable of resisting it, which it has done for nearly a decade years. Faith of the people in it was not even a remote factor in this equation. In 2001 there was no viable political force capable of replacing it, nor there is one now, because to oppose a bunch of crazed, totalitarian, fanatical, religious medievalists one needs an ideologically united opposition group with common appeal - a task impossible when vast majority of the locals are themselves illiterate medievalists with a generous sprinkling of religious nuts.
Afghanistan will change, eventually, but its road to modernity and any semblance of a stable political system will be a very long one, many decades in the making and no amount of foreign military intervention is going to change that.
The best policy in 2001 was a special ops extraction of top Al-Queda leaders (preferably for a trial in Hague which would have legitimized the US operation in the long view of history) followed by an uncompromising containment of the Islamist nuts within their own pot, very much like one seals a highly contagious and incurable deadly disease.
Then die. You paid - at best - a tiny share of the cost of the roads and bridges you likely use every day, the medicines that keep you and your family alive. I'm personally a big fan of antibiotics when I have an infection. What paid for the development of mass production of Penicillin? Oh, right... the military, which is paid for by who, again?
Yeah - those damned government workers... just flaunting their lazy, socialist lifestyles and living off of the hard work and industry of others. I've always felt that cops and firemen were just drains on society. Hell, government subsidies of modern hospitals in rural areas (...where many of the supposedly self-sufficient people live and work) are just a drain on your independently earned dollar. Same idea for schools - screw people in rural areas! They shouldn't have modern, competitive schools! Don't even get me started about all the hard-earned cash that's wasted in taxes and regulations to compel telecom and electric utilities to provide service to sparsely populated areas.
While we're at it - what about all of those contractors that are building things for government agencies? Clearly all pork. Shut 'em down! Why bother with helicopters for the Coast Guard? If someone's ship capsizes then it was clearly their fault! And if they can't swim to shore when 10 miles out? Screw 'em.
Oh - and your job? Hopefully whatever goods or services you're involved with selling/producing/distributing/etc aren't ever procured by people who work for those contractors building those helicopters, tanks, ships, planes, etc - 'cause then your livelihood is, at least partially, tied to precisely the same tax-mooching lazy bastards you're sick of supporting.
Take a look at how much money is spent of AFDC or Medicaid. It's a lot of money. Now compare that to the cost of the defense department budget, Social Security, Medicare or the cost of infrastructure. Guess what? It's a *LOT* more money.
Face it, all of the self-sufficient hard work you're putting out there to make money from the open market is utterly and completely reliant on lots of shared services and, yes, regulations that are administered by local, state and federal government. Short of folks living in tribes in the furthest corners of the Earth, *everyone* is reliant on some amount of so-called welfare.
I never thought of the "where would a bullet go in space" question. I guess that would make for a rather funny looking platform. It would need a big armored wall for when it came the whole way around. :) That, or they'd have to be careful to shoot off of their plane. If they shot down a little, it would tend to (hopefully) continue in a decaying orbit.
Militarization of space doesn't necessarily mean guns against other spaceships. A rain of titanium rods down from an orbiting platform towards the ground would be nasty.
I suspect the want for resources is why we've checked out moon rocks, asteroid composition, etc. Of course, we've only looked at a very small part of anything we've investigated.
The cold war cost a fortune, and only served to show who had the bigger dick (and budget). You have a nuke? We'll build 10. We have 10, you'll build 100. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, until ... well ... the cold war fell apart.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Uhhh - no. Maybe you should read this thread?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1683756&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=32549240
There are slashdotters who claim that every single American citizen who has ever worn a uniform is a baby killer, serving the industrial war machine. If you actually read through the whole thing, you'll quickly see that I'm no demagogue defending either politicians, or the military industry. I will defend the troops, though - unless and until the troops actually violate law. Then, I'll support the court martial proceedings which send those rogue soldiers to prison, or to their graves.
Demagogue? I don't think so - you just go read, and judge for yourself.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
But would those 1000 robots still perform better? I doubt it. Robots, while excellent at performing P equations, they can't do NP as well.
They can't go "oh, that rock looks interesting over there, let's check it out." As far as remote control, it's a 20-40 minute round trip. Can't make snap decisions.
So... Income distribution in the US is such that 35% of net worth resides with the top 1% of the population and ~86% resides with the top 20%. How would the other 80% of the country, which holds the remaining 14% of total wealth / net income (http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html) even theoretically be -able- to contribute an equivalent amount?
I work hard and make decent money - likely many times what a teacher, fireman or construction worker earns. Likewise, the amount I pay in taxes is also several times the average gross income in this country. I'm reaping a somewhat higher reward from an economy that is underpinned by infrastructure that's paid for by my taxes and supported/protected/defended by individuals that are also paid from my taxes. Without roads, telecom, cops / law enforcement, firemen, teachers and, yes, the occasional bureaucrat to help keep it all together then my company is going to have a hell of a time selling its wares and, thus, will likely have proportionately less need for my services.
The notion of "poor" is a pretty variable term. Lots and lots of folks live in that bottom 14% - especially including the civil servants I mentioned above and lots of folks who are loudest to condemn the so-called "socialist" nature of our government. This, of course, is notwithstanding of the fact that lots of these folks couldn't accurately describe the distinctions between socialism, communism and fascism - at least judging by the way such terms are lightly thrown around.
Can Falun Gong be interchangeably substituted?
Not really, since it's your typical (of authoritarian regimes) suppression of dissent, not a racial supremacy thing.
As for the rest of it, here is the original 25-point NSDAP program. If you replace all instances of "German" with "Chinese", remove all time-specific references (e.g. Treaty of Versailles), and skip point #4 (dealing with racial purity and Jews), then this whole thing is by and large what China is implementing.
In the worst case, though, they execute you for offending the State and send a bill to your family for the cost of the bullet.
They use lethal injection these days, and don't send the bill for that, if it helps any.
Anyway, getting executed for offending the State there is pretty much impossible unless you deliberately go out of your way to do so. The funnier part is that you may get executed for financial crimes - large-scale fraud or tax evasion, for example - but, again, you'd have to actually break the law for that. So it's not really a threat to a legal business there, not anymore than, say, being executed in US for murder.
The problem is rather that you may run afoul of some established business, the owner of which has "connections" to the Party and/or local bureaucracy, and will use it to harass your business. They don't need to "go political" on you for that, either - just claim that you e.g. violate safety standards, and bribe the people doing inspections to back that.
My point is the rather severe problems we have should be attended to before we shoot the Moon.
Why? I agree that these problems need solving, but why take the money to do it from NASA? Why not take it out of the military budget?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
While the FY2010 budget for NASA is 18 billion, I find it interesting to note that the amount spent on cell phone handsets in 2008 was around 37 billion.
Or if you look at the past six months of cell phone handset sales from the top manufacturers - closer to 65 billion.
The public's disposable income could practically fund it's own space program.
When it becomes a real problem, we deal with it.
Others have pretty much covered the points I might make except to answer this particular one.
Once it becomes a problem is it too late, at least that is what a number of quite bright people suspect. The problem is that when it costs everything we have to feed everybody (or even everybody that counts!) there is no money left to run the space program unless you choose to let people starve to death to do it!
The one analogy no one has mentioned is the Titanic: ... and you are suggesting we set sail and worry about it when we hit the iceberg!
We have a few lifeboats, but nowhere near enough for everybody, indeed not even enough for everyone who counts.
Unlike the Titanic, however, we are now aware that we we are going to hit the iceberg and we are also aware that we don't have enough lifeboats
FWIW, I regularly check my tires and when they are no longer serviceable I change 'em. This rock is no longer serviceable (if not now, then sufficiently soon that "now" is a reasonable estimate given the time required to resolve the situation) and we should seriously be thinking about setting up a permanent presence elsewhere.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
Beyond that... there are minerals an energy resources out there. Whoever gets there first with permanent settlements will have a real advantage as we are tapping out most of our resources earthside. The space program has probably never been more important than now. Its importance is not properly valued by most, however. It's obviously not just about putting some "Antarctica" style science base there. It's about putting self-sustaining, potentially growing on their own bases, with the concurrent use of local resources.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
This is fine, until someone else puts a permanent base there.
It should be us who put a permanent base there.
Constellation is not the first step in the process of doing so. It does nothing to help us towards that goal.
The R&D into automated factories and robotic assembly, in-space refuel, cheaper propulsion systems once outside earth's atmosphere, and so on are the first necessary steps.
We should not go back to the moon for a stupid boots-and-flag mission. We already did that; the flag and bootprints are still there. People should not be going to the moon until robots have already built a habitat for them there.
The enemies of Democracy are
43+% of the people in the US pay no income taxes, over 50 million of them are families that make over $50,000 a year.
If you're worried about people being sick, reform the FDA and USDA to better regulate what we put into our bodies. Pass laws to reform how much drug companies can overcharge for those antibiotics to recover research costs before they become generics. Pass laws to contain healthcare costs like they do in Canada and the UK who pay much less for the same drugs that we use.
Pass laws that forbid hospitals from charging to treat secondary infections they caused. There ARE hospitals giving patients $20 worth of topical antibiotics before surgery to prevent thousands of dollars in secondary infections after the surgery.
We have more diagnostic information available to us now, and the doctors are using it to make poorer decisions, or to protect them from lawsuits. Doctors with too much info perform surgery to remove small cysts that they would have left harmlessly in the patient using older lower resolution scans. Defensive tests cost us Billions of dollars in unnecessary costs every year.
Use of hospital protocols (continuous process imporovement) uses data to greatly increase patient outcomes, and reduce hospital costs. Lookup Intermountain Healthcare, the Cleveland clinic, or Mayo Clininc if you need examples.
Pass laws to require doctors and hospitals to declare their patient success/survival rates, secondary infection rates, etc. If we're all free marketers, maybe Doctors should be incentivised to do better if they want customers.
A better idea from the last is to let the doctors work for Hospitals, and not worry about running a small business, and spend more time being doctors. Let the Hospitals compete for business on the merits of their treatment. Certainly there is some other Entrepeneurial Practice management that can remove being an administrator (accounting/HR/payroll) from the Doctor's schedule.
None of these things costs any more than what we are doing now. The problem is the Doctors/Hospitals/Insurance companies get to bill more $$$ for doing a bad job, then taking care of you while they fix their mistakes and extend your recovery time and outside of the state of Mass, there is hardly anyone calling them out on it.
The other thing to know about Socialized Medicine is that stealing every dollar of NASA's budget will not fix even medicare, much less healthcare costs increasing many times the rate of inflation.
The only way to have socialized medicine, or just affordable healthcare with private insurers is with comprehensive healthcare reform.
More money paid into an inefficient system will not fix the problems it is having.
The reason:
Have you learned nothing from the story of Odysseus? "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." We do that which is difficult because it is difficult, and in the practice of doing it, improve ourselves.
A lot of the problems that cost so much time and effort to solve 50 years ago are now well-known and documented. Modern space companies are staffed with people who literally grew up in a world where the problems and solutions are well-known. Just knowing how the problems were solved back then makes it a lot cheaper to build new rockets, even aside from GP's point on the other new tech that has appeared on the shelf in the last 50 years.
Emotionally, I agree with you completely. Logically, I think we get to go to the stars better, and probably sooner, by not spending buckets of money addressing a an artificial challenge like flags and footprints on Mars in the next couple of decades. We did something a lot like that already with Apollo and it pushed a lot of interesting technologies, but I think we need to find a different kind of challenge next to push a different set of technologies -- curing cancer, maybe or resolving religious and ethnic differences without killing each other -- much more difficult and in different ways than another big engineering project. I'm not convinced that any manned space programme that we can do just now is actually the right challenge for any real purpose. I'd love to be -- I'd love to look forward to phone calls from my grandchildren at University on Mars in 2050, but I don't think I can.
Am I the only one who read the title as:
NASA Ends Plan To Put Black Man On Moon
Russia now only has the only launch vehicle capable of reaching the ISS.
Japan has returned from an asteroid with a sample and launched the first solar sail.
For some reason, America let the momentum stop after landing on the moon, and we can't seem to get it back.
I think a big part of this is that NASA hasn't properly conveyed the importance of space travel to the public. When people say insane things like "We should spend those billions on Earth", they miss the big picture: that the Earth is limited. Our resources are finite, and eventually, we will use everything that can't be recycled, re-mined, and re-used.
What happens when we pump the last barrel of crude oil? What happens when we run out of some rare metal? Our very lives are now dependent on technology that cannot continue to exist if we do not find new sources of materials, energy, and simple room to grow.
Sure, the problem is 50 or 100 years down the road, but that future is rushing down on us fast. It's already been 50 years since we first achieved orbital flight; if we allow another 50 years to pass before we start working on the problem, it'll be too late.
Well, the problem the "defenders of the troops" like yourself run into is that the US troops operate under a very questionable set of Rules Of Engagement, which they happily follow. Add to this a very low value of lives they place on non-troops, particularly local civilians, and you get a package which makes "defense of the troops" an exercise in futility. The troops, guided by a set of truly "home-grown American values", it turns out, are their own worst enemies.
Now all of this would have been a non-starter if the troops were on their own home turf defending against an invader. But even while pursuing the said invader the US (and other Allies in WWII) were known to go overboard quite easily, committing an impressive number of outright war crimes, to which they later applied Hitler's own adage of "the victor writes the history" in the time-tested tradition of truly vile double-standards that very few victorious groups in history did not ply.
In short, your stance is roughly equivalent to that of some mis-guided charity activist in early 1940s Germany who rallies "support for the troops" because, you know, they are nearly all hapless draftees, God-fearing sons, brothers and husbands, freezing their butts on the outskirts of Stalingrad and one should not blame them for the decisions of the politicians ... except for that little bit of rather .. err ... enthusiastic following and support for these decisions by the very said troops - until things went pear-shaped, that is.
There was not trillions of present day dollars invested in the space race. It was not even one trillion. According to the Office of Management and Budget and the Air Force Almanac, when measured in real terms (Meaning: if the value of $1.00 at today's rate equaled the value of $1.00 in 1958), the figure is $806.7 billion, or an average of $15.818 billion dollars per year over its fifty year history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
You are a moron. I mean, have you ever heard of diplomacy? Defensive preparations? Defensive pacts? Alliances? That wee thing called NATO? What, I mean what bleeping nation-state with an ounce of self-preservation would attack any of the NATO members and expect to win? Even the Soviets, with all their industry and thousands of nuke tipped-ICBMs, considered the proposition logistically laughable and focused on their own defense instead.
All this freaking out about shadowy, cartoon-villain-managed "enemies" ready to spring a Red Dawn on the poor hapless US of A would be a laughable lunacy if it were not a ticket to multi-trillion dollar looting of treasury, a way to chip-away at personal liberties and a license to strut around the globe murdering anyone who dares to look up.
Should US strike first, the WWII would still have erupted except the US would have been on the losing side, having been the reviled aggressor and facing a German-Japanese-Soviet (and possibly many other nations) alliance of convenience. Given that in Europe 9 out of 10 German soldiers killed were killed on the Eastern front and that Germany deployed 200 divisions there while all the other Allies combined faced mere 50 on the Western front, even without any Soviet support a German-Japanese alliance would have presented a force capable of overwhelming a lone-wolf, self-righteous US. Apparently you did not consider that. It figures.
As I already said, you are a moron. Your "lessons" from history are limited to "US always right. US big. US strong. US bash first!".
The original poster did not differentiate between legitimate causes, fraud or bureaucracy. He simply, being probably an Alissa Zhinovievna's follower, communicated his general disdain for all things altruistic and community building along with his unshakable admiration for insane greed.
Oh quit with the bullshit. While Gates was busy buying a boot-loader and reselling it as an "operating system", every Computer Science University course worth its salt was handing out student assignments that involved writing a multi-tasking, multi-user OS for micro-processor architectures. Gates would have flunked (with a good reason as history amply shows). His earlier "innovation" of a BASIC interpreter was at the time an obvious choice and common-place amongst pretty much all home "computer" vendors.
Bill is the kind of "innovator" who "innovated" use of rubber bands and duct tape to "reinvent" a bicycle and declared himself a "visionary" and "discoverer of the most efficient propulsion system known to man"! If it weren't for IBM's grave lapses of reason and the utterly abysmal gullibility of the general public when it came to computing, he would be delivering pizza for a living.
Nice try. The income taxes paid by employees are of no import, as they would have been paid irrespective if they work for Microsoft, making won-tons in a Chinese restaurant or digging ditches in rural Montana. True, the amount of taxes would have been slightly less in a non-monopoly thievery scenario, but given that a vast majority of the loot made its way to Gates and a few other cronies, the difference would have been negligible.
Just like I disregard other "charities" set up by notorious thieves and murderous thugs, such as Carnegie or Rockefeller for example. Looting a lot of wealth out of a lot of people and then giving some of it back out of a guilty conscience, to pet projects and with full tax deductions, is not going to rehabilitate Gates any more then it those others before him.
All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
I have no idea where you pulled this from, but it's completely and utterly false. Please read through the budget and exploration plans before making idiotic comments like that:
http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/new_space_enterprise/home/workshop_home.html
TX would love that.
The Admin and the Engineer
The first problem with the libertarian argument is that free markets exploit only that which is profitable. Discovering that which is profitable is often a thing done by or for governments. If you look at the history of innovation over the past hundred years, almost all of it would have been impossible without the direct involvement of government. The computer was developed for the defense industry, as were rockets, jet propulsion, modern nuclear physics, refrigeration, microwaves, radio, the list goes on and on.
Lately the profit motive behind going to space has been more or less limited to tourism. A visit to the moon by NASA, especially an extended manned one with the intention of exploiting the moon's natural resources and discovering the problems of long-term hostile-environment extraplanetary colonization could provide the very sort of research that would create a profit motive for private industry to exploit the moon.
The second problem with the libertarian argument is that the companies developing these technologies already are private industry, they are merely funded by the government.
The third problem is the cost. If you compare government spending in any given year, 3bn is a drop in the bucket, but it's a drop in the bucket that could result in MEN WALKING ON THE FREAKIN' MOON. What part about MEN WALKING ON THE MOON did you miss?
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
You're adding technical complexity that's not needed for something like a Mars trip. We can boost people to sufficient delta-v for Mars transit, that's not (comparitively) difficult. Even if it were difficult to do in one go, we have the technology for orbital rendevous to make that work (given all our ISS experience). The energy costs are "just" a matter of throwing enough money at it (and it's not a prohibitive amount). Putting people in a confined space for a year for the Hohmann transfer to Mars orbit and having them come out the other side not suicidal is IMO the more challenging aspect.
As Far as I've heard, the orbit of the ISS is not a good one for lunar transfer. ISS is at 51 degrees inclination and the moon varies between ~18-28 degrees. Inclination changes use lots of fuel.
I'm thinking at best you could send the parts up to the ISS, have them assemble it, and then send it off to slowly change it's orbit unmanned using an electric thruster like an ion engine. It would take a long time, but once it got there you'd fly a crew up to dock with it and go off to the moon
However, there is no hardware designed for in orbit assembly of ships on the ISS. ideally, you'd want lots of robotic arms that could do the assembly automatically, so that you wouldn't need to risk any astronauts lives with spacewalks. ISS isn't equipt for that, and your be risking the investment in the ISS and the crew's lives unnecessarily by trying to keyhole it into that role.
An orbital construction facility at an inclination of ~23 degrees WOULD be great for getting to the moon, but not the ISS.
But, nooooo, we have to play some silly game of "nation building".
Nation-building isn't a silly game at all, unless you like dealing with unaccountable non-state actors.
Moon dust problem is too big an obstacle in low G environment
We'll go back when we have some answer to controlling super fine moon dust particles.
Obama wants to end the socialist policies set by previous administrations and allow free market corporations to go into space. Why do republicans hate the free market?
Umm. Which part of your comment addresses my point about "Like how many operating systems during the 80's and early 90's operated on a "IBM" personal computer running a multitude of different hardware configurations?"
Did I mention multi-user? or multi-tasking? No I did not. Nor did I mention BASIC. I did notice that you couldn't answer the question. Maybe you didn't want to admit that the answer was Microsoft Windows?
To further my point made in my original comment - Microsoft created and marketed an OS that worked with a multitude of hardware. Windows was the first consumer operating system that handled all the different hardware available and freed the application writer from having to worry about printer codes, video codecs, or graphics acceleration. Gone were the days that a home user had to pick up the printer manual and enter the codes for bold and underline into their word processor. The consumer no longer had to limit their hardware choices to a single computer manufacturer. For example a home user was free to buy any printer they could afford and as long as it said that it worked with Windows on the box the user was pretty sure that it would work when they got it home.
Computer manufacturers loved Windows. They had a user-friendly OS that allowed them to make PC clones and picked the components that fit their intended price/performance. Dell, Compaq, Gateway, Acer, E-Machines, and the huge selection of beige boxes would not have existed without Windows. The only thing the manufacturer had to promise was that it was made for Windows. The large number of computer suppliers drove the price of a home computer down from over $2000 to a much more affordable around $1000 or less. Not to mention the growing number of home computer hobbyists that were able to pick up a Computer Shopper and build a Windows compatible machine.
I think Linux would have an even harder time becoming popular today if it weren't for the abundance of off-the-shelf PC compatible hardware that is being created to satisfy the consumer demand for Microsoft Windows. I bet the thought of Microsoft's influence in providing ready made computer components that ultimately made Linux and other operating systems possible is making your blood boil right about now.
I think you are forgetting that Gates (and Jobs) was not concerned with the Computer Science crowd that you mentioned in your comment. They knew if they made the computer usable by the average consumer, then they could make a fortune and advance home computing. It was more important for them to recognize a need to make a computer that a home user would purchase and use than your requirement that they be technological proficient in their field.
Because Bill Gates recognized the potential of the home computer market. He is both an innovator and rich.
As for your view of charities. Damn if a rich man gives and damn if a rich man doesn't. I don't think Bill Gates gives a rat's ass on how we think he should spend his money. I'm pretty sure there are children in third world countries that are glad he paid for their immunizations.
Anyway I think you are too obsessed with hating Bill Gates and company that you refuse to acknowledge any contributions he and his company has made. Too bad...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Screw you! I want my $60* back! I *NEED* that $60 so I can pay my cable bill and watch American Idle! :P
:P
* $18,724,000,000 (NASA 2010 budget) / 309,496,000 (Estimated 2010 USA Population) ~= $60.50 per person. Yeah, not everyone pays taxes, but I have no dependents so should only get back $60.50.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Yup. :)
Ok, that was too short of an answer. You are absolutely right. We should be exploring, and not in the way that we have been. We've looked at a few drops in the ocean, and concluded there are no fish. There could be vast mineral deposits on the Moon and Mars that would be amazingly useful. Beyond that, who knows what we'd find. I wouldn't be surprised if we found non-terrestrial minerals that we could spend decades figuring out the best uses for. Who knows, the better fuel for space travel may just be a planet away, waiting to be mined, but we've pretty much given up on the whole idea.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Recapping our top story... moon project scrapped.
Please explain to me how it's possible for someone to live to the Social Security retirement age and never earn any money?
mental illness for one, and doesn't even require you to live to the retirement age to collect.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I was talking about the earlier time-frame of the early DOS days which were the foundation of later Microsoft "successes" as a de-facto monopoly (yes, students wrote multi-user OS kernels for assignments back then even). You were not specific. Furthermore, your question about Windows is utterly irrelevant as at the time Windows appeared on the scene, Microsoft had near total contractual strangle-hold on all PC makers and near total technological user lock-in. No other OS could be shipped at the factory with PCs, a subject of later (politically butchered and neutered) legal proceedings against Microsoft. Some DOS variants (the lock-in to the abomination that was DOS was already too strong to break) were shipped earlier and were ruthlessly eradicated by means like alteration in Microsoft products to break when running on them. See also DR-DOS lawsuit. So it is like asking someone "who is your favourite supplier" while one of the suppliers in question is holding a gun to the interviewee's head. The answer is bound to be somewhat biased. By the time any attempts at competition became feasible (due to the breakup of Microsoft/IBM abused spouse relationship) it was far too late because no other OS could win irrespective of its features or price due to a huge entrenchment of Microsoft ecosystem and would require near total emulation of all Windows functions as a backwards compatibility feature. Which is what killed OS/2.
One has to admit a certain amount of conniving cleverness at thievery and thuggish acumen to Bill Gates in this regard, pretty much the same way one has to offer grudging respect to Al Capone. But these tactics were "innovated" somewhere in the Ancient Phoenicia, right after they invented this thing called "money".
You've described Apple McIntosh, which came out long before Windows did. And all of these concepts were innovated at places like Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (where both Apple and Microsoft got their ideas). Even the mouse was invented there.
They loved money. Their "love" of Windows was instilled into them by means of blackmail, legal thuggery and de-facto monopoly status.
You've described pretty much any consumer-grade product be it an OS, stereo components or car accessories.
But, don't we already have that? Who exactly are these terrists we are at war with? Who exactly is Islam, and who are all these mullahs issuing fatwahs and such?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
> Yeah, it is. And you agree or you would stop paying Social Security. Unless you're a hypocrite. Or a coward.
WTF? Are you under the delusion Social Security is optional? It isn't. If you don't want to pay you only have a few options:
1. Live a life off the grid, doing menial labor for cash. This also gets you out of most other taxes but odds are you won't make enough to worry about that.
2. Work for a state government and participate in their mandatory retirement system.
3. Go to Federal Prison. Yup, you won't pay Social Security taxes..... there are some downsides.
4. Leave the US. And go where? We are the last bastion to fall. When America is gone there will be no free land to flee to as the few outliers will quickly fall. The last stand must be here or not at all so no, I won't run.
5. Wage a successful rebellion, overthrow the Empire and restore the Old Republic. Me. By myself. I never knew you Progressives though people like me were so formidable. Perhaps it explains your team's irrational fear of any opposition.
Democrat delenda est
A Moon colony would only suck slightly less, because, presumably, we'd ship air and food and something to protect you from cosmic rays, solar flares, and the vacuum of space.
The point of building a colony on the moon is to learn how to survive away from Earth using only local resources. The goal is to make the colony self-sustainable, not to be completely dependent on Earth for all eternity.
But what's the point? Just so you don't have to live here?
Yes, because eventually we will not be able to.
That argument is called DIRECT, as in Directly derived from the shuttle stack. It is an evolution design, which was originally proposed in 1978 and always kept on the back burner should the need arize for heavy lift, which a lunar mission all but demands.
If we must do an Apollo 11 remake, then I'd much rather we go with Direct than Constellation. Ares re-uses a lot of the shuttle too, but it was more ambitious about trying to actually improve more than the silly orbiter-stuck-on-the-side problem. Hypothetically good for technical advancement, practically bad for its schedule and cost.
Personally, though, I'd hold off for a while until it doesn't necessitate a single huge rocket to lift everything needed to get to the moon and back in one launch. I think it makes a lot more sense to have a fuel depot waiting in earth orbit for separate stages of a vehicle to the moon to be lifted, assembled, fueled, and sent off to the moon without having to carry all that extra propellant. If we do it right, we'd have already used the same mechanism to put supplies and a return vessel at the landing site, waiting for them. That way, the astronauts can actually stay on the moon for a while, rather than staying for only as long as the tiny leftover fraction of the mass budget of the moon mission that was allocated for actually being on the moon. Ya know? Make it worth our while? Doesn't that sound more interesting?
Without the urgency of going back to the moon quickly and thus the need for a shuttle-class lifter, the big advantage of Direct isn't there anymore. And without that, a change of technology looks more appealing. Falcon IX, for example, just demonstrated an ability that Direct could never do: aborting a launch once all engines were fired. You hit 'go' on an SRB and detect some abnormal behavior, tough shit. For that and other reasons, I would prefer to go with a liquid-fueled system if possible. And it seems pretty possible since it's already launched with an amazingly low price tag compared to any government-developed system.
Don't get me wrong, I've been impressed with Direct since I first heard about it. I just want to know what programs we'll have to give up to do it, and a good reason that we really need something bigger than a Delta IV so badly to justify giving them up.
If Congress wants to mandate Direct but also give NASA extra budget just for that, then I say go for it!
The enemies of Democracy are
I believe Outsourcing to India will be cheap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_human_spaceflight_program
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
The ISS inclination was selected primarily for Russian purposes, as it is the easiest orbit to achieve from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. That is one of many compromises made for its development that might have been different in terms of an overall infrastructure had it remained as simply Space Station Freedom. An inclination of about 28 degrees is more appropriate from KSC (maximum payload to orbit), and as you point out would also make a fairly decent depot for trans-lunar injection flights too.
It will be interesting to see what Bigelow Aerospace is going to be up to.... presuming that anybody can actually get to the Bigelow space stations in the first place. If there will be in-orbit construction going on including spaceships to the Moon, I would expect it to happen with some Bigelow equipment at least in the short term. At a price of about $400 million, it seems like a bargain to purchase one of the BA-330 modules for some long-term duration flights that might include beyond low-earth orbit flight experience.
The constellation & Aries may be gone but there are replacements for them, & yes they most definitely are out sourced designs, see http://www.spacex.com/F9-001.php Oh yeah & its in orbit right now! thats 15 years ahead of constellation / Aries.
Where do people get off determining that all everyone wants is free food, free medicine, and a warm place to shit?
There is a big universe out there. Lots of things to learn and places to go. It's inspiring in fact. Its thinking that has a future in it. I kind of like that.
Much more inspiring than having humans line up for their free medicine, Oliver Twist style...
Oh yeah, the argument is incredibly specious anyhow. Anyone have the citations on how the space program has caused people to starve and took away their medicine?
And let's not forget, if the space program disappeared today, and we allowed other nations to become spacefarers, while the US remained comfortably on the ground, that reallocated money would be more likely to go to shareholders of various corporations rather than to feed, treat, and clothe the poor. To think that would happen is hopelessly naive.
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?
When people give you massive amounts of money for failing, I would say you have a fairly good business model.
cat
A lot of conjecture there.
BTW the DR-DOS issue was Windows 3.1 refusing to run on anything but Microsoft DOS. This was a short lived problem for DR-DOS and had nothing to do with a competing GUI. Don't let the facts ruin your rant.
Ummm no. Apple made Apple branded printers which worked great with the Mac. And yes their software also worked well with epson compatible machines, but the best results always came from an Apple branded printer.
Also where was the expansion slot? How do I upgrade my graphics card? Oh yea I can't. But at least in the 80's everything looked good in black and white.
Oh and when did Xerox ever sell a home computer?
Yea because we all know computer manufactures are non-profits and give stuff away... what are you smoking?
You are absolutely correct. Linux is a perfect example. It is not consumer friendly even though Ubuntu does a very good job of making it friendlier. None of the programs consumers want to use (eq. Games) run well or at all on Linux. Therefore Linux still has a very small percentage of the home market.
Now we are getting to the root of your problem!
You seem to not care what the end user wants, but keep harping about computer science students. Why? Who cares? Except maybe you.
You keep harping on a "conspiracy" about consumers not picking your favorite OS. The problem being that you rather force users into using your OS. You mock those that don't. You assume that the reason consumers use another OS is because the creator did a better job of forcing them into "vendor lock in".
No one was ever prevented from making an OS that the end user wanted to use. Apple did it.
As for the rest of your comment:
Acknowledging someone's contribution to home computing is not celebrity worshipping. Everything is black-and-white with you. I'm sure you don't worship RMS either...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I've argued quite a bit, if nations of Earth were to stop wasting their resources on crap they are now, we could have a significant space presence, with a strong step towards deep space exploration.
But what exactly is in deep space for us to explore which robots can't?
There are no Vulcans or Klingons. There's vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and tiny specks of rock and...?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Beyond that... there are minerals an energy resources out there.
There's minerals, yes. But unless you can eat aluminium, magnesium, titanium or nickel-iron - or have a really big zero-g rocket to build (in which case what is it going into space to get?) - how much is their absolute worth on the scale of human life-support? A really big rock or lots of electrical cable is still not much compared with some soybeans, water and oxygen. Unless you're building a space society for robots, in which case see our current space exploration plan.
What is the purpose of mining the solar system? Is it to attempt to sustain exponential population growth and resource usage for Earth citizens? Then I can see a few problems with that. One, even the solar system's resources are finite and an exponential growth curve will max them out in a few hundred years. No problem you say, we have a galaxy? Nope, two, speed of light limitations mean we're going to hit the solar system's limit long before we can hope to get even to Alpha Centauri, and getting there will mean learning to live inside very small cans with very small finite resource limits. Heck, even getting to Mars will mean that. So even empowering exponential growth will eventually mean learning to live with zero-growth. Why not short-circuit that learning curve and start to learn to rock zero-growth right now, while the cost of failing is much cheaper?
Three: are you really sure you want to mine space? What happens when you run out? What about aesthetic considerations? How much of the Moon are you willing to convert to space widgets? 50% seems too high, nobody wants to live under a romantic skeletal Death Star II . 10%? 1%?
Whatever fraction you pick, eventually some mining company is going to complain it's an arbitrary political limit and start pressing for more. Then what?
tl;dr: Stuff runs out, getting space stuff is hard, getting it back is harder, so we really are at a steep wall and it's probably smarter to stop running rather than hope we can learn to fly before we hit.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
This is fine, until someone else puts a permanent base there. Then they will have the high ground; literally. The gravity well on the moon is so much less than earth, that kinetic weapons will work so much better from it. Hence, it is a strategic imperitive that someone will utilise the moon for a weapons platform at some stage.
Not entirely sure that that's right - Rocketpunk Manifesto goes into some detail on possible space warfare tactics and I think came to the conclusion that the 'high ground' in orbital space is probably actually LEO. But I admit to being very hazy on these things.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Well, if any of us pretend that we even have a clue of the contents of the rest of the infinite amount of space that there is, we're lying to ourselves.
What's out there? Who knows. Wouldn't you want to find out?
Asteroids made of solid platinum? Gold? Minerals we haven't even theorized exist yet? We already believe there's a planet size diamond out there (BPM 37093).
A space presence doesn't necessarily mean people there. Something is a lot more than nothing. But, the day a starship comes into range of BPM 37093, and it's illuminated by another star, I want to be on the bridge watching.
But as you say, all that's out there is nothingness and tiny specks of rock. It's good that you already know the contents of the rest of the universe. Now we don't have to explore it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Clothes are subject to sales tax in most states. Gas is taxed. Utilities are taxed.
Virg
Thinking of space as a way to try to solve issues of overpopulation and related problems is currently totally wrong headed. The simple reasons are that space is such an unbelievably harsh environment and fucking expensive to get there.
It would be far cheaper to build under the sea, deep underground or 1000's of 1000m skyscrapers. Where animals could be raised and plants grown under artificial lights using hydroponics. If we ever got to the point where we have fully utilised all space on Earth then we would have to think that our species is dumb. It would make sense to leave places unused for natural habitats and as a buffer for future catastrophe.
Even as a protection from apocalyptic events space is not necessarily the place to be. There are only a small number of rare events which could make Earth more inhospitable than the moon or Mars. In fact these events tend to be the ones which would hit the moon/Mars just as hard. For instance if you consider the most massive meteorites in the last billion years. Habitats underground in the right locations would be likely to survive. After only a few months the environment will be less harsh than Mars' even if most of the plants and animals die out.
The most dangerous drug
Your mendacious trollery finally got the better of you. While I point out that Microsoft engaged in an active campaign to destroy any innovation and to control the pace of introduction of concepts developed elsewhere into the Microsoft product ecosystem, for which reams of court verified evidence exist and for which they lost multi-hundred million dollar lawsuits, you whine about which particular flavour of their anti-innovative techniques they applied where (and wrongly to boot, since Microsoft Word for DOS also refused to run on DR-DOS, long before Windows became popular).
You are an ignorant moron. So even if Apple did exactly what you claimed was such a great "innovation" at Microsoft (and which is pretty much a basic requirement of any consumer-grade OS) now you claim that it is somehow not so because "best results" were achieved with Apple printers? Never you mind that the EPSON ESC/P language was widely emulated in a lot of printers, all capable of working with a Mac and none "branded" by Apple (the only dot-matrix so branded were the ImageWriter series made by C. Itoh, all of which used the QuickDraw lanugage). The PostScript (the language used by actual LaserWriter Apple printers) was supported by HP and many other printer makers right from the beginning. In fact most Apple laser printer users ended up eventually with an HP laser printer which resulted in discontinuation of all printer efforts at Apple. Last Apple printer was produced in 1999.
In short Apple Mac OS did exactly what Windows later did, and which it had to as it is a basic requirement of a consumer-grade OS. Microsoft "innovation" my ass.
That depended on which Apple product you are referring to. Many had the capability for upgrades. A whole market for Apple add-ons existed as it did for the Wintel platform. You being too ignorant to know it, does not change the fact that it did. Even before McIntosh, Apple II had expansion slots (long before Windows was around). Original McIntosh was designed specifically as an "all-in-one" machine from the point of view of graphics because most of its target audience wished to be so at the time but its OS was fully capable of expansion via (then revolutionary) SCSI interfaces. McIntosh II, released shortly after the original (and with the same OS), had an ability to have video cards replaced and what not.
This of course is just focusing in Apple. Amiga OS was even more capable at the time, running circles around Windows with its true preemptive multi-tasking and 3rd party hardware support, making it the staple of video editing studios for more then a decade.
Microsoft did not "innovate" neither support for 3rd party hardware nor GUIs nor multi-tasking. Microsoft has always been a follower, not a leader and its main focus has always been on squashing innovative competitors and then appropriating their ideas.
Trollish sophistry. The discussion was about "innovation", not about who sold how many cookie-cutter products. If you went by that kind of logic, the greatest "innovators" ever would be the oil companies, whose product was created by geologic processes and hasn't changed from day one of their operation and yet who sell untold billions of it. Xerox labs (along with many universi