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Can the US Still Lead In Space Despite Shuttle's End?
Hugh Pickens writes "NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden says that the future is bright and promises that one day humans will land on Mars. 'American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we've laid the foundation for success,' the nation's space chief said in a speech at the National Press Club. 'When I hear people say that the final shuttle flight marks the end of U.S. human space flight, you all must be living on another planet. We are not ending human space flight. We are recommitting ourselves to it.' Bolden says within a year private companies can take over the process of sending cargo shipments into orbit and by 2015 industry can take over astronaut transport, freeing NASA to focus on the long-term goals of reaching beyond Earth's shadow. 'Do we want to keep repeating ourselves or do we want to look at the big horizon?' says Bolden. 'My generation touched the moon today, NASA, and the nation, wants to touch an asteroid, and eventually send a human to Mars.' A group of former astronauts and other critics have blasted the agency and the Obama administration for ending the 30-year-old shuttle program, once the cornerstone of NASA. 'NASA's human spaceflight program is in substantial disarray with no clear-cut mission in the offing. We will have no rockets to carry humans to low-Earth orbit and beyond for an indeterminate number of years,' write Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan. 'After a half-century of remarkable progress, a coherent plan for maintaining America's leadership in space exploration is no longer apparent.'"
I do believe that the majority of americans, myself included, support space travel and exploration. If you don't like your tax money funding that, move to another nation that doesn't do research (as that's what you seem to be against). Good luck. Also, you'll have to check all your nasa created technology at the gate.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
"Why does 'our nation' have to put a gun to my head and force me to fund the intellectual curiosity of others?"
You pay already more than the complete NASA budget just for the fuel to run the AC in the tents in Afghanistan.
Oh, look, it's the chiro-troll again. (Other readers should look at his posting history to understand -- and dismiss -- the point he makes.)
'American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we
- aha, keep dreaming.
The US bond crisis is coming, followed immediately by the currency crisis. I bet there will be more pressing needs, like more weapons to start resource wars against multiple countries much before the US will once again be able to go far into space in its new ships, never mind having humans on board there....
You can't handle the truth.
Space exploration may be a technological feat, but it is also a wonder of human intellect. By abandoning the shuttle, that human intellect is being dumped on the streets with nothing but promises for the future. Promises to the nation, though there will be very few promised to the people who will be pursuing other careers.
Even if things did start up again: within a year, most of those people would need to refresh their training. Within a decade, you would be training most of the workforce from scratch. Within 50 years, even most of the documentation would be lost or incomprehensible.
Don't believe me, just look at Apollo.
If you're a Canuck and don't believe me, look at the Avro Arrow.
Nations loose technical capabilities because those capabilities depend upon the people behind them.
The US seems to lean more and more into creationism and don't want interest in science and where the wold and Universe really is going.
Probably because they are afraid that science will say "There is no God".
As for the whole space program - a lot of it has been created for military reasons, and when the competition with the USSR ended then there's no longer a need for the "My Dick is bigger than Your" competition, which is sad. A lot of the science done has been done by tagging along.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Yep. SpaceX and Dragon are clearly the emerging future of American human spaceflight. This video is a pretty cool demonstration of how the system is evolving.
Armstrong, Lovell, and Cernan are -- knowingly or unknowingly -- lobbying for an old, failed model of government contracting, not for the continuation of the American space program.
The program continues -- it's just being done in a different (and from everything I can see, better) way.
There's a reason "alt-med" is despised by medical community. It's the simple fact that any "alternative medicine" that's been proven to work is called...medicine.
The US is changing its HUMAN space exploration program, but the space exploration program is returning far more knowledge than it ever has. We've sent robots to almost every planet. We've been to Mars many many times. That may not be as inspirational as landing on the moon, but it's produced a hell of a lot more knowledge than did putting people on the moon.
AccountKiller
>I'm not anti-science
One thing is for damn sure...
You're a loonie and a quack. Anyone who purports to cure cancer, colic, asthma, etc, with spinal manipulation is a fraud. And chelation therapy does not cure autism, no matter how many chemicals you pump through a kid. It just doesn't fucking work, you fraud. It's child abuse and defrauding the parents. And to suggest that it works either says you are a cynical liar, or you're "friggin retahdid" as we say here in the Northeast.
I don't know what psychoactive drugs you're taking, but increase or decrease the dosage, because whatever it is you're taking, it's incorrect.
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BMO
Riiiiiiiiiggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtt,the Chinese are way ahead. After all, they have rovers on Mars, orbiters at Mercury & Saturn, a probe heading to Pluto. and two probes entering interstellar space.
Oh wait, whups,sorry about that
The science is not going to say "There is no God" because that would be an untestable hypothesis. It could prove, however, that there is no major difference between various deities. That is, they could use statistics to show that believing in Jesus Christ over Mohammed or Buddha or Gandalf does not produce a detectable intrinsic benefit to a believer. A very long-term study could be conducted to show the same for entire nations. The end result will be much worse than any disproof of the existence of God: religions will be exposed as harmless superstitions at best, or deliberate scams at worst. And it is the biggest players who are also the biggest hustlers, so obviously they will not go quietly.
IMHO, there just got to be a better, more effective way to define ethics and morals than reading them out of a 2000 year old collection of letters written by a guy named Paul, or may be Saul. I will sound crazy, but we could reconsider norms which seem to produce effects opposite to the ones intended. We could start with that, I mean.
A specific part of a religious ritual may confer a benefit, but it's never the fairy tale part. It's usually something very simple, like "don't use toxic drugs". Mormons may be healthier than most Americans, but they can't blame Jesus for that. They are reaping the benefit of valid scientific reasoning: don't eat poison, and you will live longer.
May be what we need is an open-source approach to religion. A collection of moral, ritualistic, and scientific knowledge designed specifically to improve the life of every individual and of the humanity as a whole. Of course, what constitutes an improvement differs among people, so this amalgamated religion will contain a lot of contradictory material. But it will also contain a body of scientific evidence showing correlation (if any) between specific moral precepts and the observed results. Over time, a remarkable consensus may be achieved on what is "good". And I do believe that morals directly affect the way the society operates, so I do expect to see a lot of very interesting, and sometimes very surprising correlation.
Creationism is not a new idea and was much more prevalent and politically pandered to in the past.
Actually creationism as a force in American politics and education is VERY new, along with most other aspects of American Christian fundamentalism. Creationism was a direct response to the rise of Darwinian evolution as the key basis for 20th-century biology education. If species are shown to descend from earlier forms by means of natural selection, and if such phenomena can be shown to apply to hominids, then original sin -- the keystone of Christian theology -- is completely discredited.
The Catholic Church tends to shy away from the fight, having a long history of losing arguments with science-talking guys, but the American Protestant sects have no such history to learn from. They treat evolution as a threat to the survival of their faith, and rightly so.
From the perspective of virtually every right-of-center American politician, religion gets votes, so it has to be preserved at all costs. Spreading FUD about evolution is a tactic that the thumpers cannot afford to pass up.
You can help stop them.
Prior to the launch of Sputnik the US was still absorbed in licking its wounds from WW2 and Korea -- space exploration was the dream of a few. Then the Russians launched Sputnik and I came back from summer break to find that the wood shop had been transformed into a science lab. From then on it was just good old competition. I remember JFKs speach with particular fondness -- 'not because it was easy but because it was hard'. Our lives have been transformed by the things we have learned -- and yet our will to succeed has flagged. The US (and to a more limited extent Canada) prospered because of the challenge of new frontiers where one was constantly challenged and not continually fenced in by vested interests that made sure that 'the right people' made money and not just anybody. I doubt we could do the Manhatten project again or any other big project. We struggle to keep the water running and the bridges standing and argue vigorously in favor of the profits of the few. The largest frontier lies over our heads and is vast beyond comprehension. And it will be populated by some of us -- who understand the strategic value of owning the high ground. But as for the US and its leadership...we are legends in our own minds.