A Bittersweet Finale For Discovery Space Shuttle

Julie188 writes "The shuttle Discovery re-entered the Earth's atmosphere for the last time Wednesday to close out the space plane's 39th and final voyage. And so marks the beginning of the end for America's shuttle program. Everything about the last flight felt epic, from how it overcame a down-to-the-last-second problem to launch on its final mission in February, to its sunny final landing this week. As it coasted to a stop, Discovery's odometer stood at some 5,750 orbits covering nearly 150 million miles, during 39 flights spanning a full year in space — a record unrivaled in the history of manned rockets."

Comments

Longer video

[amicusNYCL]

Only 2:30, but here is NASA's landing video from their Youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision#p/a/724782A8B8BE3EE5/0/Drv0SS1rCpk

Don't worry...

[gront]

You'll soon be able to buy astronaut ice cream with a chinese space program theme. That and watch them go to the moon, then mars, all while NASA rocket scientists are driving cabs and eating government cheese.

Re:Don't worry...

[Grishnakh]

Don't be ridiculous. NASA rocket scientists will be able to get very well-paid jobs with the Chinese and Indian space programs.

Re:Don't worry...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? We can hire a team of a dozen rocket scientists in India or China for the price of ONE NASA scientist.

And it should be obvious that a dozen people can get the job done quicker and better than one.

Re:Don't worry...

[rwa2]

A bulk of NASA funding was tied up in the shuttle program and ISS commitments. Money that could be better spent on robotic space exploration and other exciting satellite missions.

Not that all that money won't still go towards contractually mandated corporate welfare. But restructuring NASA's budget is now a possibility.

Re:Don't worry...

[0123456]

And it should be obvious that a dozen people can get the job done quicker and better than one.

Why?

I'd note that Indian rockets seem to have shown a remarkable tendency to explode since they switched away from Russian engines. It may be unrelated -- after all, American rockets explode too -- but it does seem a bit of a coincidence.

Re:Don't worry...

[sconeu]

" Exciting satellite missions".

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Don't worry...

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Countertroll: Don't worry, the Christian Taliban can now engage Armageddon without their madness being outlived by any rational-minded "folks" on other planets.

All eggs in one handbasket; destination sulfurous.

Re:Don't worry...

[beckerist]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-29-2009/deep-space-naan -- This is what your comment reminded me of.

Re:Don't worry...

[hairyfeet]

What is with all this nationalism? I thought we were all supposed to be global now? Welcome to reality, where you can't outsource all your factories and then get enough tax money to blow on things like shuttles, which BTW was supposed to be a "space truck" which never actually fulfilled its mission.

We went from 80% factory jobs at the birth of NASA to now 80% service industry (with a severe cut in pay to boot!) and the simple fact is we're broke. We're the guy writing hot checks at the Walmart to pay for Chinese goods because the national bank account is nothing but red ink. Hell if we spent within our means we probably wouldn't even have a military as big as Brazil, and we sure as hell wouldn't be fighting two endless wars.

I personally wish China and India luck, as they will eventually find what we are gonna have to wake up and accept...capitalism doesn't work with technology. There was a good reason why nobody in Star Trek was waving money around, that is because as you reach a certain technical level you don't really need human labor anymore. You think we are in bad shape now? Wait until automation hits the service industry.

Despite our brilliant leader's idea that piling ever more debt to get ever more degrees (what are we up to now, a Bachelors is the new HS diploma?) to chase ever fewer jobs the simple fact is the way we've done things for the past 4000+ years is coming to an end. The machines are faster, smarter,more accurate, and they never tire or make mistakes.

We can't all be CxOs, doctors, or IP lawyers, so you either make up BS "make work" programs to give you an excuse to cut all these people a check, you have massive unemployment and underemployment like we have now, or you find a new way. The only question is whether that new way will come peacefully or with massive riots and destruction.

So don't look at the shuttle as the end, look at it as a scary and exciting new world beginning. The old ways of doing things have failed, as evidenced by 22%+ unemployment and the fed drowning in red ink while the presses smoke from all the money being cranked out, the odds of giving the huge masses of poor jobs they can actually do is virtually nil since the machines can do them better, and outsourcing has taken most of the rest. Now the question becomes, what to do next? Do we stay on the failing road of capitalism, where the top 1% get fatter until we have another revolution, or do we try something else?

Because like it or not folks we're broke, and whether the talking heads want to admit it or not for huge masses of your fellow Americans this IS another depression. Only as we have seen we can't use war production to get us out of this one, since nothing is built here anymore.

Re:Don't worry...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Cue Leonard Nimoy, singing "Maiden Wine".

"Ah-ah, Bitter Dregs!"

Re:Don't worry...

[khallow]

Good. That means we can focus our resources on real space science, while the Chinese discover for themselves that there's no valid reason to send humans into space for the foreseeable future.

I roll my eyes whenever I hear phrases like "real space science". Nobody in the world does it or has done it with a space program.

For example, there have been a number of robotic missions to Mars which have uncovered something interesting within a short period of the start of the mission, but which the mission did not have the tools to follow up on. For example, the Viking missions attempted to test for life with mixed (though thought to be negative due to the high risk of false positives) results. In particular, it's taken us about four decades to repeat the "labeled release" experiment.

Similarly, the Phoenix mission imaged some sort of white deposit on the legs of the vehicle which appeared to sublimate like water ice. But no means was available to figure out what the substance was. We'd have to duplicate the landing of Phoenix with instruments positioned to take that measurement. Who knows when that will happen?

Where are all the space telescopes? On Earth there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of research quality scopes, just in visible light, and a significant number of instruments in radio frequency. According to Wikipedia, there are something like 35 active observatories (I count probes with multiple instruments in difference frequencies such as Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer, as many times as they appear in the list) throughout the spectrum, many operating past their expected life times and another 15 planned for the next ten or so years.

For my final example, consider the remarkable lack of space science on or around the Moon since the end of Apollo. It was twenty years before anyone tried to image the Moon again. Back in 1961, they first hypothesized there might be water in the polar regions of the Moon. Even now, fifty years later, we don't know the extent or accessibility of this water (and other volative compounds). And it's only now that any missions to investigate the polar regions of the Moon have been proposed (which I note will be the first sample return missions in forty years).

This is the problem with so-called "real" space science. We have simple questions which can't be addressed for decades or longer, because the probe doesn't have the capability to do more than a few little things. The investigators will die of old age before resolving some of these issues. We have small numbers of orbital instruments working in any given spectrum or role, so there is intense competition for access.

What humanity really has here, is minimal space science. This is what you'd expect to see, if space science were being managed almost solely for appearance's sake.

I see it as like most recent space related activities as being remarkably lacking both in ambition and sense. In the long term, you need to shorten decision cycles from decades to minutes or hours. If you have instruments with huge pent up demand, you need to provide more of those instruments.

Economic sense is lacking. Building one-off objects just makes a series of very expensive projects. Generally, if the scientific purpose was important enough to make one probe or observatory, it's important enough to make half a dozen. You can split development costs across a larger number of missions.

Some probes such as the Europa Astrobiology Lander or Hayabusa Sample Return, could literally be repurposed for dozens, perhaps hundreds of icy moons, asteroids, and comets throughout the Solar System. Imaging satellites could be used almost anywhere. There's no real reason we couldn't have dozens of small space probes voyaging forth to image every major space body in the Solar System out to say the orbit of Neptune, right now. The first probe might cost a lot, but the 50th pro

Re:Don't worry...

[More_Cowbell]

Ignoring the rest of your post - there is no more government cheese... it stopped in the 90's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese

Re:Don't worry...

[Waffle Iron]

I do agree with much of what you're saying. IMO, the last 40 years of NASA human space expenditures has been totally wasted. If it had instead been spent on producing standardized probe designs in larger quantities, we probably could have had 10X the number of unmanned missions by now on the same space budget.

I don't agree that humans are the best decision makers in deep space missions. 99% of the resources of any such mission will be dedicated to simply keeping the humans alive, and such missions will always be rushed due to supply, radiation and psychological issues. Even pulling off a single human mission to mars would probably suck dry NASA's funding for two decades, just to pull off little more than a flag planting stunt.

People tend to assume that robotic missions can't achieve much because they always think in terms of a solitary self-contained lander or rover. However, on Mars for example, what if a complete robotic base station were built up over time, including a nuclear power generator, general-purpose lab/maintenance robots, and a fleet of exploratory rovers. Without the time constraints of human missions, you wouldn't even need that much AI. Everything could happen in slow motion like the current mars rovers. The time to real results would still probably be faster than trying ramp up a human mission, and the science could go on continuously for decades.

Re:Don't worry...

[khallow]

I don't agree that humans are the best decision makers in deep space missions. 99% of the resources of any such mission will be dedicated to simply keeping the humans alive, and such missions will always be rushed due to supply, radiation and psychological issues. Even pulling off a single human mission to mars would probably suck dry NASA's funding for two decades, just to pull off little more than a flag planting stunt.

Even if we assume the best case, that 100% of a robotic mission is devoted to space science while 1% of a manned mission would be, the humans still only need to outperform robotic missions in scientific output by two orders of magnitude. It's not that hard, especially given that you vastly shorten the question/answer cycle from decades to anywhere from minutes to weeks.

Sure, I'm being a bit glib. But if you look at the moment to moment activities of lunar excursions during Apollo missions and compare them to Mars missions, such as Phoenix or MER, you see that a vast amount of work was crammed into a few days while the probes simply are snail-slow.

My view is that if we tried to duplicate the successes of Apollo with robots, we'd end up spending a similar amount of money, perhaps a third to half as much. Despite the program not being very focused on science and astronauts lingering at most a few days, these missions still accomplished a remarkable amount of science.

People tend to assume that robotic missions can't achieve much because they always think in terms of a solitary self-contained lander or rover. However, on Mars for example, what if a complete robotic base station were built up over time, including a nuclear power generator, general-purpose lab/maintenance robots, and a fleet of exploratory rovers. Without the time constraints of human missions, you wouldn't even need that much AI. Everything could happen in slow motion like the current mars rovers. The time to real results would still probably be faster than trying ramp up a human mission, and the science could go on continuously for decades.

It's also sexy from a human-oriented point of view because it establishes a base and infrastructure in advance of any human presence. I see it as a very useful intermediate step along with sample return missions.

But in summary, I strongly disagree that any type of unmanned missions, even robotic bases with good infrastructure, can accomplish what a dedicated sequence of manned missions (especially a manned settlement) can accomplish. While a lot of places won't be sufficiently interesting to warrant a nearby human presence, Mars and the Moon are sufficiently high value to justify human investigation this century.

Re:Don't worry...

[Waffle Iron]

My view is that if we tried to duplicate the successes of Apollo with robots, we'd end up spending a similar amount of money, perhaps a third to half as much. Despite the program not being very focused on science and astronauts lingering at most a few days, these missions still accomplished a remarkable amount of science.

I totally disagree with that assessment. With current situation, we couldn't get people back to the moon within 10 years if we wanted to. Getting a probe on the moon could be done in a couple of years with almost all off-the-shelf technology. I would peg the cost at 1% of a manned mission.

Almost all of the science Apollo accomplished was a result of either earthbound analysis of returned rock samples, or astronauts plopping instruments out on the lunar surface. A sample return mission plus a few small instrument landers would replicate all of those tasks. All you need is a radio controlled gocart with some high-def cameras to pick out good rocks and dump them in a can. Launching them back to earth is the only thing that's unconventional, and from the moon it's not that hard of a problem.

Re:Don't worry...

[PyroMosh]

Hubble, Chandra, Fermi, Kepler, SWIFT.

They're all satellites (though Kepler orbits the sun, not Earth) that are producing exciting science.

And when The James Webb Space telescope goes online, we're expecting to be able to have access to even more exciting data that we simply can't collect with the instruments already up there.

I like the Princess Bride as much as the next guy, but satellites can be exciting too.

Re:Don't worry...

[KeensMustard]

Seems to conform to the standard meaning - not everybody gets excited by historical re-enactment (aka 'manned' missions). Some find that actual discovery excites.

Re:Don't worry...

[hairyfeet]

Won't work, because no matter how you slice it the machine is better than you so unless you are gonna "cull" something like 85%+ of the population (which I kinda doubt they'll go along with) or you accept the fact that capitalism dies in the face of technology and find another way.

Look it is VERY simple, yet kinda scary, but follow along. You have HALF the population at IQ x, lets say 105 IQ. Now this group will be qualified for factory, general labor, hell you might get middle manager but nearly all those jobs can be done by the machine so there is simply NO NEED for him or her anymore. And each year that number is gonna inch higher on the "we don't need people below IQ X" because the ONLY jobs left will be research into new machines which frankly VERY few are gonna be qualified for.

You see for the entire 4000+ years of recorded history the whole society has been based on trading labor for pay but what if that labor isn't needed? You used to have entire factories filled with workers, now three guys can run the plant. The ONLY reason the Chinese have a job now is they are cheaper than the machines, but what happens when they are not? same thing that happened here.

The simple fact is unless you want to base a large portion of your society on "make work" or deal with riots because an honest man can't even feed himself simply because the machines do it better, well then something has to change. You can't turn your population into CxOs, or all IP lawyers. You will have masses whose tasks have been replaced by tech and simply aren't qualified and never will be qualified for the ever shrinking musical chairs that is "jobs not done by machines".

Think it would be hard to make an automated McDonald's? Of course not. The service industry will be the next to go, and frankly for many that is all that is left. What's next? THAT is the scary part, nobody knows. We can simply tell by history this way is ending, it is as behind the times as paying someone to deliver letters by horseback. The industrial revolution ended up wiping out our factories, the tech revolution will finish the jobs for most manual labor. What do you do with the millions with no job? That is the question.

Re:Don't worry...

[khallow]

A sample return mission plus a few small instrument landers would replicate all of those tasks.

Not just any sample return would duplicate that. The astronauts also traveled several dozen kilometers and took hundreds of samples (about 380 kg mass in total) that were returned.

All you need is a radio controlled gocart with some high-def cameras to pick out good rocks and dump them in a can.

Hence, the price I mentioned. Unless radio controlled gocarts or return vehicles to Earth have gone down recently, we're still talking tens of billions for the set of missions.

Re:Don't worry...

[Jeremi]

Because like it or not folks we're broke

I'll believe we're broke after I see Congress vote to rescind Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and/or cut the defense budget by double digits. Until then, I can only interpret the constant refrain of "we're broke" as meaning "we're going to use the deficit as an excuse to stick it to poor people; but not we're not SO worried as to consider doing anything that might anger our valued campaign contributors".

Re:Don't worry...

[Jeremi]

The simple fact is unless you want to base a large portion of your society on "make work" or deal with riots because an honest man can't even feed himself simply because the machines do it better, well then something has to change

I think you are only looking at half of the analysis. The other thing that automation does, by way of improving productivity, is to make products cheaper. So perhaps the average honest man can't get high-paying work anymore; but on the other hand, he can still support himself on lower wages because the products and services he needs are available more cheaply. I won't predict that it will all balance out in the end, but there are some upsides.

What do you do with the millions with no job? That is the question.

In the ideal case, you've invented nuclear fusion and matter assemblers, and everything a person needs for an adequate lifestyle is available for close to free. In that case, the millions can do whatever they like; they're effectively retired, so they can take up a hobby or do charity work or etc.

In a more likely scenario, you might have to raise a tax on robots, that would be used to pay welfare checks to the unemployed humans. (Or, if you prefer dystopias, you invent a model of human-eating robot that feeds on the unemployed... that's a little too right-wing for my tastes though)

Re:Don't worry...

[Jeremi]

All eggs in one handbasket; destination sulfurous.

Counter-counter-troll: That would have been the case anyway, because there simply are no other handbaskets available. In the long run, Humans need an ecosystem to survive.

Re:Don't worry...

[Waffle Iron]

Tens of billions? The current mars rovers cost less than $1B each, and lunar rovers would be vastly simpler: far smaller launch vehicle, no deceleration from interplanetary speeds, 1 second control delay vs. 20 minutes (which allows direct interactive remote control like a kid's toy). Even the USSR was able to operate rudimentary rovers on the moon back in the 1970s (which also traveled dozens of kilometers) after their manned moon project tanked.

Re:Don't worry...

[khallow]

The current mars rovers cost less than $1B each, and lunar rovers would be vastly simpler

No, wouldn't be the case. They have to pick up and bring tens of kilograms of samples to the departure vehicle (which incidentally is another significant part of the cost of the mission), each in its own labeled can.

And the delta v to the lunar surface is similar to what is required to reach Mars (minus delta v shed through aerobraking). The mass of the missions would still be very significant since we're still bringing the gear, rover, and departure vehicle.

Finally, you have the constraint of lunar night. Either the vehicle is engineered to survive it (involving heating and insulation beyond anything the MER had to do) or it has to get all the activities done in less than the two week lunar day. Either way drives up cost.

You really haven't thought this through. And you have six such complex missions. PLUS you have 21 unmanned missions from earlier in the Apollo program.

Re:Don't worry...

[tehcyder]

In which case they should be charged with treason and thrown in jail for eighty years...oh wait, that's only if you show your government's dirty laundry in public, nothing as trivial as helping other countries control the skies above you and the stars your destination no longer.

Re:Don't worry...

[Waffle Iron]

The USSR managed to land their tank-like lunar rovers on the moon with a Proton rocket. That rocket is still available for < $100M per launch. Six identical copies of a probe system just aren't going to cost massive amounts of money, considering that almost everything in the mission has been done before.

The US Surveyor program, which landed 5 probes on the moon, cost less than $500M ($3.5B today). Considering that almost nothing of what they did had ever been done before by the US, that kind of puts an upper limit on the cost.

In stark contrast, any manned return to the moon would have severe new political constraints. The cold war is over: The public will no longer tolerate the incredible risk levels associated with the Apollo program just to collect some rocks. Sending people to the moon *safely* will require starting from scratch to develop a new manned spacecraft system, and will costs hundreds of billions of dollars (see Constellation program).

Re:Don't worry...

[khallow]

As I noted earlier, the examples you cite have nothing like the capabilities of the manned part of Apollo. The key factor is simply that they don't return anything from the Moon. I think my original estimate still holds.

As to your claim about sending people to the Moon "safely", A few hundred billion dollars wouldn't buy safety. It's fundamentally unserious. The key factor is frequency of lunar excursions and at that price, you simply can't do it very often.

Further, I disagree that Apollo supports your contention of higher cost. The Apollo program, for example, cost well over $100 billion (perhaps $120-150 billion), but it was very expensive because of the rushed effort. While you claim a safer effort would be several times more expensive, I see no indication that Apollo's acceptance of higher risk saved it any money.

I can't help but notice that there are plans for a manned trip around the Moon which goes for somewhere over, but not a lot over, $100 million in 2004 dollars. It's not landing people on the Moon, but it is worth noting that Apollo spent several billion doing the same thing with Apollo 8.

In my view, something very similar to a manned Apollo ("lunar sortie") mission could be put up with 4 Falcon 9 launches, only one which needs be crewed. Put up a booster stage, lunar landing module, fuel, and crewed module with its own booster. Assemble in LEO. I'll have to do the math to see if it's viable with 100 tons of cargo space on the Falcon 9 or not (I'd probably use kerosene/LOX for propellant on the booster stages which has rather weak ISP and hence, high mass fraction).

No idea how much it'd cost to develop, but launch costs to put that in orbit would probably be under half a billion dollars. That right there is a significant drop in cost over Apollo. And we have partial development toward useful vehicles and infrastructure.

Re:Don't worry...

[Vectormatic]

The soviets did several robotic sample returns, luna 16, 20 and 24 (there were more attempts, but they failed because of engines failing to ignite in various stages of the system), granted these probes just scooped some shit up from whereever they landed, but the land-collect-launch sample back to earth thing has been done

Re:Don't worry...

[Grishnakh]

How is helping China with their space program treasonous, especially if your own country is so stupid that it doesn't want to bother with a serious space program any more? Would you say the same thing about, say, a Zimbabwean rocket scientist (assuming one existed)? After all, Zimbabwe doesn't have a space program at all, so if he wants to work as a rocket scientist, his only hope is to go to a country that actually has a space program. Same here.

Working on a space program has nothing to do with "controlling the skies"; that's what air forces and fighter jets do. So far, the only military use of space is with surveillance satellites, and that's old hat now, done with unmanned rockets. Helping to send Taikonauts to the moon has no military application, though it could very well have an economic one.

Re:Don't worry...

[turgid]

You think we are in bad shape now? Wait until automation hits the service industry.

Congratulations, you have just won the Internet!

Watched it live on NASA TV's Website

[flyboy974]

I have to give credit to NASA. Their HD real-time stream was great! I was able to put it full screen on my 23" monitor, sit back, and enjoy the whole thing!

Re:Watched it live on NASA TV's Website

[vlm]

I have to give credit to NASA. Their HD real-time stream was great! I was able to put it full screen on my 23" monitor, sit back, and enjoy the whole thing!

Note that the first orbital shuttle flight was right about the time my father brought home our first computer, a TRS-80 model III. What I do with computers has changed a bit, but the enjoyment level is about the same (maybe a little lower now). Want to see something really weird? Wikipedia classifies the -3 as a business system. I guess I should just be thankful it hasn't been deleted (yet).

Re:Watched it live on NASA TV's Website

[SuperTechnoNerd]

It is really sharp stream. It's unfortunate this HD stream comes just in time for the end of the shuttle program. :(

They Do It Every Time!

[Thud457]

yeah, just watch, the odometer'll read 750 orbits when they trade it in!

Thanks Hollywood

[Lyrata]

Don't wanna close my eyes, don't wanna fall asleep, cause I'd miss you baby, and DON'T WANNA MISS A THIIIING

Re:Thanks Hollywood

[MikeDirnt69]

I hope you die with a meteorite in your head for making me remember this crappy movie (and this crappy song).

Re:Thanks Hollywood

[NoSleepDemon]

Not if your mind will neither let you give it up, nor let it go. You ought to be careful, such memories could come around to hurt you.

Bittersweet indeed

[flaming error]

If only we knew what comes next.

It seems every 4-8 years a new 20 year plan is given to NASA that may or may not have anything to do with the last 20 year plan. Between politics and NASA's own bureacracy, it seems that the US manned space program is stalled. Thank goodness we still have JPL and its hardy unmanned probes.

While we are getting rides from Russia to install experiments from the EU and Japan, perhaps our private sector will advance enough to pick up where NASA left off. Here's to you, Burt Rutan.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Cheeko]

JPL isn't without its issues either, but at least they accomplish stuff. My brother worked for them for 5 years until the bureaucratic mess became too much. To hear him describe it, they have a serious brain drain issue where the lure of the private sector takes a lot of their best and brightest. Its a hearty bunch that stay for the long term and manage to get past the politicking.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[timeOday]

To hear him describe it, they have a serious brain drain issue where the lure of the private sector takes a lot of their best and brightest.

But I thought all government workers were spoiled, lazy, and overpaid? And there would be no consequences if we slash their salaries whenever we need to close a deficit?

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Grishnakh]

People who want to be spoiled and lazy don't get difficult degrees in aerospace engineering, physics, etc. and go to work doing serious science work at someplace like JPL. People like that want a good work environment and rewarding work, regardless of the pay. There's lots of engineers who quit their well-paying jobs because the office politics are toxic, the work environment bad, they're tired of all their projects being shit-canned, etc.

Yes, there's lots of spoiled, lazy, overpaid government workers, but they're in places like the IRS, not JPL.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Leebert]

Thank goodness we still have JPL and its hardy unmanned probes.

Where's the love for the JHU APL? (Note that MESSENGER is just a few days from its Mercury orbital insertion)

As to Discovery, it's particularly bittersweet to watch her retirement. I saw her launch firsthand as a kid in '85 (STS-51D), which had a big impact on me. A good part of the reason I'm (still*) at NASA today. Discovery was the orbiter for both return to flight missions. She launched HST.

I also had the privilege to watch her last launch. I admit, it almost brings a tear to my eye.

* Working at NASA was more of a right-place-right-time opportunity for me. Not leaving NASA in disgust years ago is largely due to the love of the program I have, largely instilled by that early shuttle launch.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Beelzebud]

I'm not sure I'll be cheering for the private sector, over NASA, anytime soon. If you think those guys wouldn't take government money, you're high, and I'd rather see that money go to NASA than some guy that will ultimately use it for self-enrichment.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Beelzebud]

I get so tired of you pseudo intellectual libertarians constant whining about the IRS and taxes. Go live in a 3rd world country if you hate paying your damned taxes so much.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Lumpy]

The spoiled and lazy career track is the Political Science major.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

Maybe the lure is not having to deal with all the Powerpoint happy middle managers that keep the program mired in bureaucracy. Just because 'the best and the brightest' want to leave doesn't mean there isn't a fuck-ton of 'mediocre and not so smart' left behind.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Stenchwarrior]

I don't think taxes are the issue. It's all the stupid laws and loopholes that make it so you have to hire a tax expert at $250/hr so you can avoid having to pay out the ass every April and October.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[geekoid]

No true Scottsman fallacy, eh?

Maybe there not really that many fat lazy government workers?

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[geekoid]

Scottsman? SCOTTSMAN?

Um..the extra T is for golf.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Stenchwarrior]

Extensions are due on October 15th. For normal plebs as well as corporations.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[BSDimwit]

Therein lies the rub. Self-enrichment is a powerful motivator which often times spurs creativity which can not only reduce costs, but can also produce a superior product. It's a rare thing when the government actually does something well or efficiently, so I say lets give private enterprise a try and see what happens. Granted, it's not a sure thing... especially when the government starts messing with requirements and regulations and various inefficient procurement rules (ie, parts must be made in Alabama, assembled in North Dakota, and 47% of the parts must be from minority women owned businesses), but if they can mostly keep their hands off, it might just work.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[killkillkill]

Because the 3rd world is the only option to paying our level of taxes. I mean, the US was a 3rd world country until we arrived at our current tax rates.

I know of no libertarian that argues we should pay no taxes. They just don't want to fund roles that they don't believe the government should fulfill. The roles that they do think government should fulfill would keep a country safely out of the category of 3rd world.

Perhaps you meant pseudo intellectual anarchists.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[shadowfaxcrx]

Huh. Imagine that! Every 4-8 years NASA gets new marching orders that force it to waste the money it spent on the last marching orders by axing those projects.

And every 4-8 years we get a new President.

What an astonishing coincidence!

What really needs to happen is that we need to somehow enact a law that says the President isn't in charge of NASA and can't order them to drop everything in favor of something else on a whim. The history of NASA from the shuttle onward is pretty tragic, and not because NASA or the idea of a national space agency sucks, but because idiots keep screwing with their budget. The shuttle itself was supposed to be a proof of concept - - Let's show that we can build a space plane with this prototype and then go build a production model that's cheaper and works better. But budget restraints canned that.

Then they got new budgets and were going to try for a good space plane again, and then W got into office and decided to go to Mars, so NASA had to drop everything and start working on the Mars trip. Then Obama took office and killed the Mars trip - not that I entirely fault Obama for doing that since the Mars trip was unworkable as ordered, but the point still stands. NASA has become a huge waste of taxpayer money not because of NASA mismanagement, but because of mismanagement of NASA. It really does need some independence, because we've progressed beyond the point where viable programs can be ordered and delivered in 8 years, so all we have is NASA working for at most 8 years on something and then being told to throw everything from that program away because the new President isn't interested in it.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[nametaken]

But I thought all government workers were spoiled, lazy, and overpaid?

You make a good point... clearly there's an exception to every rule!

I kid, I kid. Please don't audit me.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[sqrt(2)]

The problem I have is that people complaining about the tax code needing to be simplified are usually the ones saying the solution should be a flat tax, "fair" tax, or some sort of national sales tax (in lieu of an income tax). I'll admit, that would be a lot simpler, but so would a simple function. Our tax code can be both simple AND steeply curved so that the very wealthy in society pay their share based on notions of social justice and the fact that they are only wealthy because they exist within a larger society that has allowed them to become so and must pay back into accordingly. Yes, we need to simplify the tax code, but the top marginal rate needs to be much, much higher than it is now--think close to 90+%. While the income level where the lowest rate kicks in needs to be brought up, so that families who actually work pay less or nothing at all for the majority of their income. While we're at it, we absolutely need to get rid of the most regressive taxes we have which are sales and use taxes that disproportionately fall on the poor and working class. We won't need them anyway once we rationalize our tax code. There are other numerous things we can do, like not tax (or tax at a very low rate) a family's first home as long as they live there. If you can afford a second home, you need to pay a lot in taxes for it because there are people who can't even afford a first one.

I would also be eying the obscenely bloated defense budget as the primary target for spending reduction and redirection. Reduce it by 5% each year for at least 10 years. This would gradually step us down to reasonable levels considering there are no global threats left that can be defeated or challenged militarily or by throwing money at it in an age of nuclear weapons. The war on terror is absolutely a war of choice, and we'd stop being a target if we minded our own business, left the Muslim and Arab world to run their own affairs, abandoned our support for Israel regardless of their atrocities, and didn't attempt to impose Western style democracy on other people.

With all that money I've just freed up, funding a robust, manned presence in space, Mars, and beyond would be a major goal. It must become THE goal for mankind if we are to survive to see the turn of another millennium.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[icebrain]

The "we shouldn't pay any taxes at all" group is actually a very tiny minority. Most grumbling on taxes comes about from:

Inefficiency (when money being spent on project X greatly exceeds what it should cost)

Waste (eg, having to spend all the budget this year to ensure it doesn't get cut next year, so things are bought and then immediately thrown away)

Irrresponsibility/abuse (like vacations and luxury for lawmakers under the guise of official business)

Superfluous projects (ie, government spending money to do things that it shouldn't be doing in the first place)

There's a big continuum between "I don't want to pay any taxes" and "here's my open wallet and a blank checkbook, take everything you'd like", and trying to portray everyone who's not at the one end as being at the other is childish at best.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[sqrt(2)]

I resemble that remark.

Seriously though, as a political science major, I do take exception to that. There are plenty of people in the field doing good research that widens our view of how government operates, when and how it fails, how to avoid the problems of the past, and give us new ideas and models to use in the future. Society is sufficiently complex that we need people trained specifically to write, analyze, and revise policy that implements the will of the people. It is capable of being just as rigorous, worthwhile, and beneficial to society as a career track in any of the hard sciences.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

So how did you come about this opinion of the lazy, spoiled, overpaid, and overly-secure government workers in general and the IRS in particular? How many years did you spend working for the IRS or another government function? If you have never been a government worker yourself, tell me about the experiences of your spouse/children/parents/other close relatives or long standing close friends. If you have no examples here, how much interaction have you had with government agencies, which ones, when, for how long, and on what problems? Please do tell me all about your experiences with government workers that allows you to describe all of them under such harsh terms.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Grishnakh]

The problem I have is that people complaining about the tax code needing to be simplified are usually the ones saying the solution should be ...

How about we just look at what other countries are doing and copy them? Why is that never considered in America?

There's lots of room to simplify the tax code while keeping it progressive. For instance, look at the stupid new "Making Work Pay" tax credit, Form 1040 Schedule M. It's nothing more than a tax credit for having a job. Why not just roll it into the tax tables, instead of making a separate form people have to fill out and account for? This is a perfect example of needless complexity. It's a lot like today's stupid "fuel surcharges" charged by airlines and other companies: instead of just raising their prices to account for their expenses, they want to add a separate fee so they can advertise a lower initial price, and then hit you with hidden fees later. Similarly, the stupid Schedule M is all about trying to make people feel happy because they got a $400 (or $800 filing joint) tax credit, instead of just decreasing the actual tax by that much, and also to try to screw over some people (just like mail-in rebates) by hoping some percentage won't remember to file Sch. M, and then the IRS can keep that $400.

As for the bloated defense budget, you're absolutely right. So why are Obama and all the other politicians talking about cutting all kinds of other, tiny programs, but no one ever mentions cutting the defense budget? Maybe if we didn't have 100+ military bases in countries around the world, we could cut the defense budget in half.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[MacGyver2210]

It's fun that everything you said is in the past tense...

Sure, they were useful and did beneficial research. Before. When they still had money and cared.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Stenchwarrior]

I guess if you're a Grammar Nazi then yes, that's what I was implying. If not, then I was saying that those are the two busy times of the year for a tax professional.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Chris Burke]

It seems every 4-8 years a new 20 year plan is given to NASA that may or may not have anything to do with the last 20 year plan. Between politics and NASA's own bureacracy, it seems that the US manned space program is stalled. Thank goodness we still have JPL and its hardy unmanned probes.

Gee, good thing then that the new plan is smaller missions involving the development of specific technologies and capabilities, rather than a 20 year plan requiring single-purpose development, so that when the next cycle comes, even if the new guy changes plans, we still have what we already built.

BTW, Burt Rutan is awesome, but it's Elon Musk who is going to be providing the rides first.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[flaming error]

The law you want already exists. Congress is in charge of NASA.

But Congress can barely manage their own cafeteria.

Laws often originate with either a lobbyist or POTUS.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Cheeko]

I still know people (through my brother), working on MSL, the next rover. They are still doing cool stuff, but all the oversight and funding debates don't help things. Plus internally it sounded like every project is a massive political game for people to work on what they want to work on, or to work on things that are rewarding.

More and more it sounded like they are also contracting parts of missions to private companies, Boeing for this, some tool manufacturer for that, an instrument company for this sensor, etc. If you can work at one of those companies you get to do the same stuff without the headaches.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[smelch]

Small (and multi-million-dollar) business owners have to pay estimated taxes quarterly, normal people pay taxes every time they get paid, contractors usually pay in April (or October).

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[khallow]

You might have missed it, since it happened in the 70s and 80s, but NASA long ago degenerated into a organization whose purpose is to enrich government contractors. Private sector is the only game in town when it comes to access to space. Either NASA pays them directly for service, or NASA contracts them to run the program.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[khallow]

What really needs to happen is that we need to somehow enact a law that says the President isn't in charge of NASA and can't order them to drop everything in favor of something else on a whim.

We already have that. It's called the Constitution. Sure, the President has considerable influence over the budget and other things, but it's Congress who decides how the money is burned.

Now, Congress goes through these cycles as well. So if you want that to change, you'll have to change what NASA is. A simple change that would help a little is to make NASA a public corporation. You still have the problem that virtually all funding comes from Congress, but it smooths over leadership changes a little.

If you really want a entity that is not a slave to the whims of politicians, then you'll need to go privately funded. A non-profit would probably be the way to go.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Azaril]

Two comments:

Negative Income Tax, google it.

If you tax the top income bracket at 90% where do you think the top income bracket will file taxes? For an example of this in action, see Britain in the 70s.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[witherstaff]

The loopsholes are a huge problem. As we saw last year, Google paid a 2.4% income tax. Sure all big corps have piles of tax lawyers on staff to pay the least tax possible, Google is staying competitive. However there's some serious inequity to all of the smaller companies that can't afford to find the loopholes or pay the politicians to create loopholes for them.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[jacinda]

The problem is the level of bureaucracy in who gets paid what. Pay raises and promotions in the government are heavily biased toward years in service above actual contributions. The best and the brightest see that they would be getting paid 20, 50 or 100 thousand more in the private sector and that they would have the potential to earn more based on the work they do. So they leave, unless they are extremely loyal or disinterested monetarily. Meanwhile, people who would be making far less in the private sector stay in because of the job security and the fact that they can count on sustained pay raises throughout their career. Granted, this is a vast oversimplification, but in general, technically skilled government employees are paid far too little and given far too little respect, while those who are less technical are generally overpaid compared to the private sector.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Jeremi]

Waste

All too often, the libertarian's working definition of "waste" is "any program that doesn't benefit me personally". The magic of this line of thinking is that everybody can agree that there's enormous waste in government spending.... and as long as you don't ask them to point out exactly what that waste is, they'll never notice that they're all talking about each others' sacred cows.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[sqrt(2)]

I think it is very short sighted indeed to think that you cannot eliminate the worst forms of human suffering in society while at the same time allowing individuals to flourish and prosper due to their hard work and merit. Making sure that no one goes hungry, unclothed, or unsheltered is not an impossible task, and it can be accomplished with minimal sacrifice by the rest of society.

As to the flat tax being fair, it's simply not for an easy to understand but often dismissed reason. Simply put, the more money you have, the less impact you feel from losing n amount. 10% for a person making 25k a year is HUGE, that's the difference between losing his home or being evicted, making several car payments, keeping himself fed for a month, paying for medicine, etc. 10% for someone making 25 million is the difference between a second vacation home or a new private jet. The two scenarios are simply not comparable on any terms, and it's lunacy to suggest it's fair to ask the same percent from both of those people.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[operagost]

First of all, thanks for replying to my post, instead of modding it down like the leftist moderators.
The problem people have is thinking that they're somehow entitled to other people's money. If you have money, it is your duty as a human being to help out those less fortunate. Using the state to force others to contribute to a cause is wrong. It's also nonsense, as ultimately the state answers to its own desires and is not a benefactor.
A person making as little as $25K needs to live someplace where the living costs are reasonable and manage their finances. If they're not able to make it on this amount, they need to do something to improve the situation. I am OK with public assistance for TEMPORARY issues such as this caused by poor educational opportunities, single parenthood, and other solvable problems. I also favor entitlements where one has to contribute, such as UI.
A percentage is a proportion and is thus mathematically fair. If you want to make things UNFAIR by taking from the successful and giving it to the less successful, please say so and stop with the deception.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[sqrt(2)]

The impasse seems to be then, that I don't believe anyone is entitled to keep all that they make. I don't believe that anyone in society is genuinely successful 100% by their own hard work. Everyone who is rich benefited from the rest of society, and society has the right to take back from them.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Grishnakh]

You seem to be forgetting something: if someone is making, say, $250k/year, and someone else is making $25k/year or less, what is to stop the poor person from simply beating the rich person over the head and taking his stuff? Simple: police. Who pays for that? Taxes do. In fact, taxes pay for all of society. If you want to eliminate taxes, you could have a society like Mexico's, where a few rich people have all the money, and everyone else is getting shot and beheaded.

The rich are only rich because they enjoy the protections our society gives them: military protection, police protection, etc. Those things all cost money, and they cost more if you want better quality protection.

Personally, I think rich people who don't want to pay taxes shouldn't have to. However, they shouldn't be entitled to any protection services either, and anyone who wants to take their stuff by force, or kidnap and ransom their family members, should be allowed to do so.

Simply put, the fundamental reason that rich people pay more taxes in a fair society is because they receive more benefit from the society than other people, as they have more to lose.

Definitely a nail biter

[dgatwood]

As someone who was there watching the launch in person, it was definitely a nail biter. Forty seconds left in the launch window, though I suppose they could have waited a day and gone up then.

It almost got delayed a day anyway. There's a minimum separation time between when one ship leaves ISS and another one docks, and if they had held fast to that schedule, it would have been delayed until Friday because of the late departure of... I think it was a Soyuz mission. They decided to override that and go on Thursday anyway. Either way, there presumably was an alternate launch window already planned for Friday.

The best part was how many people reacted to the original mission schedule in the same way. NASA's banners said that it would be up for 10 days and spend 363 days in orbit. Immediately, my reaction was, "Wait... you're within two days of being up there for a year, and you're not going to do it?" Well, they extended the mission by two days.

And just to anthropomorphize the shuttle a bit, I don't think general purpose computer 5 was ready to go to a museum. It failed to shut off. I particularly liked the controller's comment when he said that they'd be sure not to use that switch on the next flight. Hilarious.

Wow. Just... wow.

Re:Definitely a nail biter

[ginbot462]

>> Discovery's odometer stood at some 5,750 orbits covering nearly 150 million miles, during 39 flights spanning a full year in space

That's nothing, my Yugo once drove 150 CONSECUTIVE miles without catching on fire or breaking down!

Re:Definitely a nail biter

[stealth_finger]

That's nothing, my Yugo once drove 150 CONSECUTIVE miles without catching on fire or breaking down!

You must've had it in H.

Re:Definitely a nail biter

[nbvb]

Is that you Vaclav? How many hectares to a tank of kerosene?

Re:Definitely a nail biter

[log0n]

Slashdot needs a +like.

Best reference ever!

Re:Definitely a nail biter

[Morty]

There's a minimum separation time between when one ship leaves ISS and another one docks, and if they had held fast to that schedule, it would have been delayed until Friday because of the late departure of... I think it was a Soyuz mission.

The launch that almost delayed STS-133 was ATV2. And it wasn't about separation between leaving and docking, it was separations between dockings. ATV2 was scheduled to launch Feb 15, but scrubbed to launch Feb 16. It was scheduled to dock on the same day as STS-133 was scheduled to launch. In the end the shuttle folks decided to launch anyway.

http://spaceflightnow.com/tracking/launchlog.html

http://insideksc.com/content.php/250-STS-133-Launch-Preps-Move-Ahead-ATV-2-Aims-to-Launch-Today

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-133#Johannes_Kepler_ATV_rescheduled

And my face was in space.

[93,000]

I just thought I should point that out. The picture of me aboard the shuttle totally added to the epicness of it all.

(And yes, I printed out my flight certificate already, though no one in my office was nearly as impressed with it as I.)

Alas

[SnarfQuest]

I have been feeling that the shuttle program was a big mistake for NASA. It's had too many problems, never flew as often as it was supposed to, and couldn't get out of low orbit, and has been shut down too many times, and cost more than it should have per launch. It might have been ok if they could have flown monthly as was originally planned, but it never even approached that ideal.

What would have happened if they dropped the shuttle program early on, and did anything different for manned flight. The shuttle program is known more for its problems than for its successes. It never grabbed much public attention, and became more of a "another shuttle launched? when did that happen?". It didn't have a plan to evolve, so we have been stuck with the same technology for these long years. A non-reusable program would, at least, give us more chances to evolve the design.

Re:Alas

[GodfatherofSoul]

Two tragic accidents, yes. But a mistake? I'd call it pretty remarkable for our first partially-reusable spacecraft. It did things nothing else could pull of, like bringing back satellites. Hopefully, the next generation will figure out how to do it with a totally and *legitimately* reusable system.

Re:Alas

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Did the shuttle, indeed, ever return a satellite? I don't recall that it ever did - or what the point of that would be. Mind you, I do recall that being one of the bullet points in the sales brochure.

Re:Alas

[Grishnakh]

The whole thing was a bad idea, and it was all driven by a stupid military requirement to be able to bring back satellites from space. If it weren't for that requirement, they could have done something just like the Russians: a small capsule for people (Soyuz), and a big disposable pod for cargo (Progress). The total costs of this type of system are much lower than the Shuttle. There is absolutely NO reason to ever bring large cargo back from orbit (unless maybe you've recovered an alien artifact!). If a satellite is bad, just steer it to burn up in the atmosphere, and build another one; it's cheaper and safer than trying to bring it back to earth.

Re:Alas

[amicusNYCL]

It did capture several satellites, Hubble being one of them. I'm not sure if it ever pulled one into its bay, shut the doors, and came home though.

Re:Alas

[Grishnakh]

So what? What use is there in bringing back satellites? That's an utterly stupid requirement. If a satellite is bad, then let it burn up in the atmosphere, and build and launch another one on a Titan rocket. It's safer and cheaper than trying to salvage a bad one. Why should people risk their lives trying to salvage bad satellites when it's easy to just build new ones? What's more, the Shuttle can't even reach many satellites (such as ones in GEO).

Re:Alas

[0123456]

Did the shuttle, indeed, ever return a satellite?

At least two, I believe. From what I remember they were launched on a shuttle but the upper stages didn't fire, so they were recovered on a later flight and then launched again by expendable rockets?

Re:Alas

[blair1q]

The antonym of Progress.

Re:Alas

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Of course it captured Hubble (several times - after an extra day and a half boosting to a higher orbit - yay lower LEO) - the question was - did it RETURN any satellites?

Re:Alas

[blair1q]

Some satellites cost a couple of billion dollars to build and deploy. Spending a couple of hundred million to retrieve and refurbish them, then a couple hundred million to put them back into orbit, is a bargain compared to building a new one.

As for GEO, we need only make a GEO-capable shuttle.

I really don't get why people get hung up on $/kg when the major expense of most projects is in design and inventing and testing and building of manufacturing and support facilities. But in a lot of vehicles, the size parameter is allowed to bleed into the rest of the performance and infrastructure requirements. Decouple that and standardize on a scalable design, and you can have a fleet of vehicles for marginal cost per unit. Making the rocket bigger and using more fuel is the easiest and cheapest way to make it more useful. And making it general-purpose instead of constantly doing bespoke projects is expensive as well.

That said, for all the carping people do about the complexity and expense of shuttle program, its reusability and versatility has made it an order of magnitude less expensive than building rockets for all those missions.

So what we need here is a scalable shuttle design. Who's in?

Re:Alas

[vlm]

So what? What use is there in bringing back satellites? That's an utterly stupid requirement

You have to realize it was a cold war requirement to F with the soviets low altitude photorecon satellites. Back then they launched with actual photographic film, you know, like light sensitive celluloid or whatever. So the threat that we could scoop them up:

1) Made them launch higher, thus lower res, less payload = less film.

2) Made them threaten to put a little self destruct mechanism in the satellites, making them waste payload mass (and volume, I suppose)

Another idea was we'd deploy military sats, and if they didn't work, rather than leaving them up there for the soviets to mess with, or even worse, having them land on soviet territory, we'd just pick em up and take em home.

The last idea was, of course, being all things to all people all the time, some doofus promised we'd have 100 launches per year, so if we're up there on a .mil mission anyway every 3 days or whatever, why not stick to high res chemical photography for our own sats? Kind of like a mini-orbital unmanned space station.

So there were very solid cold war reasons to bring back sats.

You have to realize, all the design work was done in the early 70s, forty years ago. Very few electronic products have forty year runs.

Re:Alas

[icebrain]

Yes. Plus, it also picked up the LDEF (Long-Duration Exposure Facility) launched by a previous mission and returned it as well (on a separate mission).

Re:Alas

[blair1q]

The Soviets copied our space shuttle, and put it into orbit. But Buran sucked, the Soviet space program is dog-slow, and the fall of the Soviet Union intervened, so they mothballed it after the one (unmanned) flight and fell back on Soyuz.

That's the only reason the manned space program is still based on capsules. If the Buran program had a clue nobody would know what a Soyuz was today. And the Russians are thinking of redoing Buran from scratch.

If they do, in a few years you may be back here wondering why we didn't just keep using our shuttles, which at this point are marginal cost to fly.

Re:Alas

[amicusNYCL]

I don't think it ever returned with one. It also captured intelset VI for repairs, and released it again.

Re:Alas

[blair1q]

According to whom?

The Soviets? Who didn't even dare put a cosmonaut in one?

Re:Alas

[Jeremi]

There is absolutely NO reason to ever bring large cargo back from orbit (unless maybe you've recovered an alien artifact!).

AHA! So, the retirement of the shuttle fleet means that they must have recovered all of them by now!

With thanks to the US Air Force

[$RANDOMLUSER]

If it hadn't been for all their schizophrenic dipshit specifications (polar orbit launches from Vandenburg, etc.) the Shuttle might have been designed to live up to the hype, instead of the camel-by-committee it turned out to be. As it is, we're retiring a 27 year-old vehicle which spent 365 days on orbit. The "space pickup truck" flew 39 missions - that's not even close to two a year. Still, a decent ship we learned a lot from. Maybe the commercial people will learn to stick to a single mission criteria envelope.

Re:With thanks to the US Air Force

[geekoid]

Not 2 a year per shuttle, two shuttles a year.

Re:With thanks to the US Air Force

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I probably should have written that better. Discovery flew 39 missions in 27 years, which is less than 2 per year. A little short of the two week turnaround promised.

Re:With thanks to the US Air Force

[blair1q]

The 2 week turnaround was a little aggressive, but it's not the reason each shuttle didn't fly more often. Lack of missions and the existence of the other shuttles made the rapid turnaround unnecessary. Although the fact that the 2-week number was bollocks from the start is one of the reasons there are so many shuttles.

Re:With thanks to the US Air Force

[fremsley471]

Just to expand the above Vandenburg/polar info, it was a crucial decision in the Shuttle design. If there was a problem a single orbit after a launch from Florida, the Earth has turned and it could land in the continental US. Vandenberg and polar meant it was out in the Pacific and needed to glide. This meant wings, not something envisaged for the lifting-body designs. These totally changed the design ethos; wings are weighty and a structural weakpoint. They turned the spacebus into an armoured car.

Really makes you want to scream at those fools

[Shivetya]

who occupy the White House and Congress. Who are more concerned with staying in power and therefor buying off friends, family, and supporters, with our money instead of keeping America great. America has become their second priority behind themselves. Where we have such a convoluted tax system that the IRS's budget is two thirds of NASA's.

While I was not a fan of the shuttle program for many years it is the image people most associate with the American space program. They were big, bold, and beautiful, compared to simple rockets. Each launch was impressive. Unfortunately tragedy and money being directed at buying off people for votes will keep us from getting back to the good days of NASA. Sure we still fly the occasional probe and such but they don't inspire me at least, not like seeing men do something up "there".

Re:Really makes you want to scream at those fools

[Jeremi]

Much as I love space exploration, I don't know that giving nationalists and space-geeks a shot of vicarious self-esteem is a valid reason (on its own) to spend taxpayer dollars on manned space flight.

There are good reasons to do space exploration, but if all we wanted was a warm fuzzy from "seeing men do something up there", we could accomplish that much more cheaply and safely on a sound stage. And if it turns out that unmanned space exploration is the way to go, so be it; we'll just have to get our entertainment elsewhere.

ack

[Trailer Trash]

150 million miles

Hopefully NASA can roll it back a few million before putting it up for sale. What's the KBB on a used space shuttle?

Re:ack

[networkBoy]

$0.00 or $billions depending if you're a museum or not.

Re:NASA - Not A Space Agency

[$RANDOMLUSER]

You're an idiot and a troll. You have no appreciation whatsoever for the engineering or contingency planning involved. If you want to bitch about government waste, take a look at the Defense Department, which gets more like 50% of the budget, rather than at NASA, which gets more like 1%.

Re:I blame Bush

[jandrese]

To be fair, the Shuttles had proven to be somewhat accident prone (about 1 flight in 100 ends in disaster) so shutting down the project isn't that crazy. What is crazy is that they're being shut down before any sort of replacement is even close to ready. Then just go "well, I guess the private sector can do it, right?"

Another Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that so many "the space shuttle was a waste" commentors forget is that the effect that it has on the imaginations of the children and youth world wide. I changed my entire career path because I wanted to be an astronaut. My children would not have been born other wise. (I wouldn't have gone to Naval flight school and would not have met my then wife) And that's just one family. The manned space program shows what we can do when we strive and work together. The intangible benefits and the knowledge learned are worth as much, if not more, than the actual accomplishments. We pushed back the boundries of the possible. We showed what can be done when we work together.

Its WAY more than just an economic proposition.

Of course there is definitely a place for unmanned missions, but its not an either or, its a balance.

So yes I guess I WAS a BIG fan of the shuttle and the space program in general.
I will miss them, but I do look forward to whats next.

And so begins the American decline

[assemblerex]

We have lost our ambitions for spaceflight. Drones and unmanned craft will be a hollow replacement for the human experience.

Re:And so begins the American decline

[0123456]

We have lost our ambitions for spaceflight.

That seems like a bizarre claim when there's probably more commercial interest in spaceflight today than ever before in the history of the human race. Dozens of groups are building suborbital rockets, SpaceX has built and flown two new orbital launchers with new engines for less than the cost of NASA putting a dummy upper stage on top of a shuttle SRB, and at least some of those groups will come up with innovative ways of reducing the cost of spaceflight as a result.

Re:And so begins the American decline

[sconeu]

John F. Kennedy:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

America today:

We choose not to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Because they are not easy, they are hard.

Re:And so begins the American decline

[blair1q]

Lack of a cold war to rattle your sabers in will do that to a country.

Re:And so begins the American decline

[rubycodez]

manned spaceflight is a waste of resources, much more cost effective to do things remotely. Nothing of our current "primate-in-a-can" approach to space stations proves much other than that weightlessness is VERY unhealthy. All the experiments can be done much more cheaply remotely. We should develop propulsion and probe tech until we have breakthroughs such as controlled fusion that will allow us to make serious colonies and spacecraft that are inhabitable indefinitely.

Re:And so begins the American decline

[couchslug]

"Drones and unmanned craft will be a hollow replacement for the human experience."

Remotely manned craft will be much better TOOLS for the WORK ahead, with more rapid development cycles unconstrained by the romance of sending meat tourists.

Never forget that dangerous terrestrial exploration was done when humans and ships were cheap enough to throw away in droves, and because there was no alternative.

Human passengers are a barrier to rapid space exploration.

Re:I blame Bush

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Much as I hate(d) Bush, you have to admit that the Shuttle is/was due to be EOL'd before more people got killed. Besides, the budget for it really was stifling any new projects. And Orion was more like the "successor" to Apollo than to Shuttle.

Re:NASA

[blair1q]

NASA are boring.

Yep. They're also chamfering, planing, adhering, and vibration-testing. Among about 10,000 other things.

Parasite / Host relationship

[vlm]

So the only reason the shuttle remained was to get to the station, and the only reason the station remained was to have a place for the shuttle to go.

Almost everything else got cut for budget reasons, etc.

So, now that the shuttle is all done, that means the station is all done and will be deorbited rather soon, correct?

Re:Parasite / Host relationship

[camperdave]

If it was America's alone, no doubt. However, many countries have put a lot of time and money into the ISS, and will keep it running. It isn't scheduled to be splashed until 2020.

Why not leave it at the ISS?

[garyrich]

There has to be a simple reason why they don't leave it up there, but I don't know what it is. It costs $$$ for every kilo that goes into orbit. It's an airtight space full of equipment and other useful things. It has engines and a bit of leftover fuel that could be used for station keeping.

What aren't the shuttles just made a permanent part of the station and source of parts and the crew just sent down via MIR or something?

Re:Why not leave it at the ISS?

[0123456]

It's an airtight space full of equipment and other useful things.

It's far from airtight and is only designed to operate in space for a couple of weeks (which is why they didn't go to a great deal of trouble to make it airtight). Cooling and power would be problematice and the interior space is small compared to a space station module.

A number of people have suggested this and there's no good reason to do it and lots of good reasons not to do it.

Re:Why not leave it at the ISS?

[garyrich]

So you'd use it as somewhat leaky storage and a source of spares and raw materials. Still seems way more valuable up there than sitting in a museum.

Re:Why not leave it at the ISS?

[Samedi1971]

What aren't the shuttles just made a permanent part of the station and source of parts and the crew just sent down via MIR or something?

The Mir didn't make a very good re-entry vehicle.

Re:Why not leave it at the ISS?

[0123456]

So you'd use it as somewhat leaky storage and a source of spares and raw materials.

There's little commonality between shuttle parts and ISS parts, no-one is going to be melting down the shuttle's aluminum for raw materials to build new space station parts, and you'd need to bring more supplies into space to keep the atmosphere from leaking out (plus more fuel to raise the orbit since you'd have another hundred tons of mass). It's simply a lose-lose proposition.

Re:Why not leave it at the ISS?

[FatAlb3rt]

The Mir didn't make a very good re-entry vehicle.

Arguably better than SkyLab?

Re:Why not leave it at the ISS?

[garyrich]

Like I said, I'm sure this has been thought through, but it still doesn't make sense. I wasn't thinking plug and play spare parts. More along the lines of "gee I could make this cool thing if only we had a few spare pieces of lexan" or "we might survive this very bad problem if only we had a few #5 bolts. That shuttle that used to be up here had hundreds, but now it's in a freakin' museum." I know NASA frowns on improvisation and using parts for things other what they were specifically designed for, but at some point we need to get over that.

Filling it with enough waste gas (space farts for all it matters) to maintain a "soft" vacuum for storage also doesn't seem like a big drain.

At some point it would a net negative for fuel. the additional mass is there forever, while the additional fuel left in the shuttle will be used up at some point.

Re:Why not leave it at the ISS?

[Samedi1971]

The Mir didn't make a very good re-entry vehicle.

Arguably better than SkyLab?

I'd argue that. Skylab parts were successfully retrieved for posterity. As far as I know nobody has recovered any Mir parts from the bottom of the Pacific. So in terms of bringing random bits of scrap back from orbit, good ol' american "let it fall and hope it doesn't hit anything expensive" beat russian planning and execution.

Re:I blame Bush

[camperdave]

The "replacement" was looking even more accident prone on paper than the Shuttle itself: Negative perigee, pogoing, launch abort system not being able to clear the predicted debris field.

Re:I blame Bush

[0123456]

He'll be remembered as the anti-Kennedy for shutting down the US manned space program.

The Columbia investigation committee decided that the shuttle should be recertified if NASA wanted it to fly past 2010. No-one thought that going through that process made any sense, so that was the end of the program. Bush just happened to be President at the time.

The shuttles were only 35% through their rated lifespan.

There are concerns about aging of a number of parts which were never designed to be replaced because the shuttles weren't supposed to fly for thirty years; you'd have to take the airframe apart to replace them and then you might as well build a new vehicle instead.

Obama didnt help much by shutting down its successor.

That's probably the best thing Obama has ever done. If NASA replaces expensive NASA-only launchers with launch services purchased on the open market, they can concentrate on developing new technologies and travel to places beyond Earth orbit which commercial organisations won't be doing any time soon.

Re:I blame Bush

[MaWeiTao]

Of course, the money saved by no longer operating the Shuttle isn't going back into the space program.

Fuck the Government and it's bogus system

[MacGyver2210]

US Government's Plan for Nasa - 2011 to 2031:
-Gradually close down the US space program and subcontract all spaceflight to private sector companies
-Sell off the shuttles so we can finally pay off our pawn loan and get that sweet guitar back
-Lose edge on space-based achievements and discoveries to other more honest nations that don't have need to over-fund stealing oil from the middle east
-Divert all space funding to an illegitimate war for control of a doomed source of fuel
-Gradually divert all science, math, reading, arts, and education funding to the same false war
-Lose all respect from your citizens
(Present)
-Give up once China, the UK, and various other countries with their shit together own our giant slab of faux democracy, only to be turned into a hovercar parking lot by the Japanese

Depressing.

[pclminion]

My three year old is fanatical about space, planets, the moon, astronauts, everything. How am I supposed to explain to him that our "great" country doesn't do any of that stuff any more? What sort of answer can I give him that doesn't sound a complete fucking cop-out? I have yet to think of one.

Re:Depressing.

[Anonymous Coward]

How am I supposed to explain to him that our "great" country doesn't do any of that stuff any more?

Sincere condolences from ex-Soviet Union. Here we hear it every day.

Re:Depressing.

[nhaehnle]

What about the truth?

I have to admit that that's a pretty harsh thing to tell a three year old, but what good is a lie going to do?

Re:Depressing.

[pclminion]

I'm not going to make something up, if that's what you mean. I'm just not sure that I can tell him, "Kid, what it boils down to is we're a nation of quitters who are no longer interested in creating the most advanced technology on the planet or doing the most amazing things that humans can do." That would completely fuck him up.

Re:Depressing.

[Groovus]

Tell him he, and his generation, will take us there again. Then start selling him on the positives of a strong math and science education as the path that leads there. We got complacent because we had something that ran, now we'll have to go without for a bit. I figure right about the time your boy is leaving high school people will be hungry for manned space exploration again.

Re:Depressing.

[SleazyRidr]

Tell him the truth: that we are making huge advances using unmanned probes, and that our telescopes are finding planets way outside our solar system that could sustain life. Maybe someday in the future it'll be worth our while to go up there ourselves.

Re:Depressing.

[Jeremi]

I suppose you could point out that "the government" and "the nation" are two different things -- even if NASA never launches another manned mission to anywhere, there is no reason why private companies can't do it better and cheaper. Or at least, that's what the conservatives keep telling me... we'll see if they are right.

Re:Depressing.

[Paul Fernhout]

Buy him a MakerBot to print his own Thunderbirds vehicles. I just did that for my somewhat somewhat older kid: :-)
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/4ce4ae8f1b60c810

Pseudo-Intellectuals

[flaming error]

There are pseudo-intellectuals, and then there are anti-intellectuals. You know, the people who make hasty generalizations, talk to stereotypes, and defend what is against their own interests with play yard tactics like name-calling and ordering others to go live somewhere else.

Re:Pseudo-Intellectuals

[Beelzebud]

Yeah because making a blanket statement about "lazy" IRS workers is really intellectual. I responded in kind.

Re:I blame Bush

[IrquiM]

And what do they do? They (a couple of senators) want to reuse the most dangerous part of the shuttle system as part of the new solution - the SRBs. I don't think "getting people killed" or not was on the table when the decisions were made.

Re:I blame Bush

[WrongMonkey]

A thousand years from now the American space program will be a historical footnote, like the Viking discovery of North America. A few hundred years from now, some other country will do a space program right. Probably by using nuclear propulsion instead of chemical rockets. And that will be the real space age.

Re:I blame Bush

[oni]

> The shuttles were only 35% through their rated lifespan.

[citation needed]

It's my understanding that the shuttles were way past their life expectancy. I think your opinion (and a lot of people's opinions) on this issue is clouded by your hatred for Bush. It's not like he personally designed Constellation. It wasn't perfect, but it was doable - and Obama canceled it. Constellation could have been fully funded with just a 1% cut to the department of defense.

Wheel Stop

[PingXao]

When a shuttle lands and rolls to a stop, does the crew call out "Wheels Stopped", or is it "Wheel Stop"? I always thought it was the latter, and it bugs me to no end that most transcripts and news stories about landings always print the former. Yeah, it's a small nitpick, but as the shuttle program winds down it's time to get all the little stuff put to bed.

Congratulations to Discovery and all who built, flew and maintained her lo these many years. You will be missed.

Astronaut layoffs

[Animats]

NASA still has about 58 "active astronauts". NASA had 95 in 2005, which was far too many for the number of flights.. Downsizing will continue.

One ex-astronaut was recently annoyed that JSC pulled his pass. Ex-astronauts used to be entitled to visit NASA installations.

Sell it.

[slapout]

I wonder if it's worth more whole or if they break it up and sell the parts.

Re:I blame Bush

[peter303]

Shuttles were rated for 100 flights over 25 years. There was supposed a monthly launches (4 month turn-around). But I recall the busiest year was five flights. At the recent rate they could have made it to 2050. We still use 70 year old B-52s for important military missions. They've been refurbished multiple times.

Re:Don't worry... I work for US

[OldHawk777]

It damn sure ain't obvious that a dozen people can get the job done quicker and/or better than one, when all are nodding after drinking the same kool-aid and marching like lemmings to the same death-drummer perfect decisions.

US excel at irrational consensus, blame-storming, and career-management.
CN excel at irrational obedience, blame-covering, and career-management.

Not much damn difference in the box, the labeling for US is prettier.

Adieu

[Tanispyre]

I am truly sad at this great moment in history. Farewell Discovery. You have flown well. You have carried our greatest dreams, lifted us up after tragedy, and inspired the hearts and minds of millions. Adieu. We will always remember you.

bye bye shuttle

[strack]

never was so much spent to put so little into space so riskily as with the shuttle. bye bye. and dont let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. time to bring back something akin to the saturn v. it cost about the same as the shuttle, and put 6 times the payload into orbit, without a single failure, all before the shuttles time. falcon XX would be about right

So Long

[simoncpu was here]

...and thanks for all the fish!

You seem to be

[ThatsNotPudding]

long-windedly, tl;dr-ingly stumping for the time-tested, well-proven system known as Communism. GoodLuckWithThat.

End of failure

[gerardrj]

39 missions. The design goal we were sold on was a lifespan of 100 missions and that should have taken just a few years to accomplish.
And how many of the parts in the current parts on Discovery are still original? Reusable? I don't think these things fit that description.

Yes, many neat and interesting things have come of the space shuttle program, but it was a failure when measured against of the original design goals. It was more expensive, less reliable, less repairable, and flew fewer missions and less often than it was supposed to.

To put it in perspective, would you call your car re-usable if you could only drive it every third day instead of whenever you wanted? Would you consider it a good value if it came promised with a 100,000 mile useful life and you had to retire it after on 30,000 miles? Would you spend the money to have it completely overhauled every time you used it?

I'm for happy to see the shuttle program go, lets invest the money in a space vehicle program than can deliver what SST promised 30 years ago.

Re:Big Talker, it's NOT that "easy"... apk

[hairyfeet]

Well if it isn't little poor wittle Petey, aka the HOPES guy, aka the legend in his own mind. Did you program the space shuttle in your badly written Delphi as well? Hell you make VB coders look like kernel developers Petey, that is why everyone made fun of your "apps" on Ars. Any apps in the app store? Oh thats right Apple takes fart apps but not "batshit crazy" apps, sorry Petey.

And I guess you're afraid to touch any of my comments that are attached to current stories huh? Must make you awful sad at how many laughed their asses off at your little HOPES rants last time, but that's what you get when you tie your crazy to a tech older than an 8-track and just about as useful. You really should talk to Twitter, he does it SOOOO much better than you do, pretty sad to be third rate even as a troll.

The simple fact is this: no matter how many times Petey says "1+1 = 3" the math simply proves you wrong and THAT is why all you can do is throw insults. You have 190,000 to 340,000 infected websites at this very moment and that list will change by the thousands per minute as sites are cleaned, new sites are infected, new vulnerabilities found, etc. Now for his HOPES file to actually be a REAL protection and not just a woobie? It will have to dynamically scale and keep up with that ever changing list of infections. Now even if he had twenty fingers and subscribed to every security list on the planet his HOPES file will ALWAYS BE OUT OF DATE and behind the curve. Always.

So please, keep posting APK, I do so enjoy pointing out the total uber fail of your magical woobie so. I also personally consider it a public service to point people to solutions that actually work instead of relying on magical woobies and anecdotes. And of course bitch slapping your around is also quite fun!