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.'"

Comments

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Lanteran]

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.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[nospam007]

"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.

Re:Science is good but we need more research.

[CRCulver]

Oh, look, it's the chiro-troll again. (Other readers should look at his posting history to understand -- and dismiss -- the point he makes.)

One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[TooMuchToDo]

SpaceX's Dragon Capsule is going to be on display until July 10th at the Kennedy Space Center Air Force air/space museum, right down the street from the last shuttle launch (disclaimer: I'm going to see the last shuttle launch, and to see the Dragon capsule that has been to space and back). This is no accident.

The shuttle has been NASA's workhorse for the last 30 years, but its time for it to make way for the next generation of orbital launch vehicles. Goodbye Shuttle, and thanks for all the hard work.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[impaledsunset]

They are asking the wrong question. The question is "Can the US lead in space thanks to shuttle's end?" The Shuttle program was too expensive for what it actually brought on the table, and it was already too old. Replacing it with something like the Dragon capsule (and the other lifting capabilities in development by private companies) would only be an improvement. It's going to be more efficient, it will allow for more space project to be done with the money that would be saved, it will fund the private industry to develop space-faring technologies. The end of the shuttle will be good for the US space program and the human space program in general. Will the US lead? I doubt it, my bet is on China, but the shuttle going away is the biggest improvement.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Artifice_Eternity]

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.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[queazocotal]

The shuttle was not a shining example of the US doing well.
It was a shining example of how much pork you can pack into one project and have it stumble along and achieve a bare fraction of the aims at huge cost.

For example.
Do you know why the shuttle has large wings?
It's largely so that it can take off, launch a military satellite into a polar orbit, and land back in the continental united states, without overflying russian territory.

Needless to say, it's never actually needed to do this.
But the requirement to do so meant the need for SRBs, and the complex thermal protection system. This was so that the DOD would kick in some funding into the project early on.

A shuttle launch costs a really, really large slice of a billion dollars.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy is currently selling twice the amount of payload to low earth orbit, for well under a quarter of the price.

Yes, it's not quite as nice, as you need a few percent of that to be able to push it around a bit to match orbits you can reach with the shuttle.

And you need a bit more payload sacrificed if you actually want anything of significant weight recovered.
But the shuttle has only done that task perhaps half a dozen times, for payloads where in many cases it was debatable as to the value of doing so.

The shuttle has basically been the shining light akin to the caver that finds his way by periodically lighting his hair on fire.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[BeanThere]

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.

Yup, what I was going to say, but better said.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[demonlapin]

It's largely so that it can take off, launch a military satellite into a polar orbit, and land back in the continental united states, without overflying russian territory.

I enjoyed your post, but I'm a little fuzzy on this. The only place I can see that you could do a polar orbit starting on US territory and not end up overflying former Soviet territory would be from Hawaii, and the only proposed military launch location I know of was Vandenberg AFB. Would you mind explaining?

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[rerogo]

The idea wasn't to not overfly the Soviets, it was to only overfly them once.

Any second orbit would have been extremely predictable and run the risk of being intercepted.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[bmo]

>Do you know why the shuttle has large wings?
It's largely so that it can take off, launch a military satellite into a polar orbit, and land back in the continental united states, without overflying russian territory.

I don't know where you picked this up from, but this is bullshit.

The precedent for flying over a country with a spacecraft was established with Sputnik. Go torrent the Nova episode "Sputnik Declassified."

--
BMO

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[TooMuchToDo]

Why the shuttle has wings at all:

http://history.nasa.gov/sts1/pages/scot.html

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Midnight Thunder]

Whatever the issues the shuttle may have had, it certainly helped fuel the public imagination. When conceived it was ahead of it's time and we were dealing with the a cutting edge which no one had explored before.

I also wonder how much the contractor oriented obligations NASA has hurt the shuttle.

It is a shame no direct funding has been given to focus on single stage to orbit space vehicles, that can be put back into service within a week. The lifting body is certainly a sound idea, but while we need to depend on replaceable heat tiles, then it will be difficult to achieve the quick turn-around.

With the way funding is organised today, it will be a skunk works military project that will provide us the real successor to the shuttle. NASA has it's hands tied in too many ways - such as the obligation to involve every state in a project.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Anonymous Coward]

The shuttle is in it's current form because:

  SRBs are used because the fly-back booster (think bigger shuttle to carry little shuttle to altitude and Mach 6) cost too much.

    The large delta-wings are to give the shuttle the 1500 mile cross range it needed to land at it's point of launch from a single polar orbit, from Vandenburgh (KSC is only suitable for conventional orbits as these launch over water).

    The 60 foot long cargo bay was to accommodate military satellites - think HST looking down. The shuttle was to take all of the military payloads in order to get sufficient payloads to reduce the cost-per-flight.

  The space shuttle concept existed as a low cost shuttle to and from orbit. It's mission was to service a couple of 50 man space stations in low orbit, interplanetary vehicles and a space tug, servicing geosynchronous and the moon space station and colony. With the cancellation of these missions (inc. Saturn & Skylab), it fell back on delivering all other payloads. This also mandated the 15 foot diameter payload bay to accommodate space station sections sufficiently large to be habitable.

The shuttle's main failures were:
    The turnaround time for an orbiter was supposed to be 14 weeks. Unable to do that, costs skyrocketed.
        To illustrate, the original mission rate would have meant more missions that have ever flown in the past 30 years would have been flown in the first three years.
    Its original mission came late - the space station. Rather than appearing towards the end of the shuttle's life, it should have been at the beginning.

The programme's main failures were:
    Its requirements were skewed just so that the US would have something for manned spaceflight. This compromised the overall vehicle.
    The space shuttle was only to be small, although necessary, part of the manned space programme. It didn't make sense to be all of it.
    Not enough active development was done, Arguably the shuttles should have been developed and replaced with better concepts as experience was gained. This was done to some extent with upgrades and newer shuttles.
    The major, major failing was with the shuttle operations. The shuttle should not be operated when it is too cold, and it should have been grounded when it was behaving in ways that weren't tested. i.e. foam shedding was something the TPS was never designed to cope with. They should have redesigned and tested.

  The Space Shuttle is a spectacularly impressive piece of engineering, it will be missed. To be properly replaced there have to be missions that the US is willing to commit to seriously, with the appropriate levels of funding. Without the appropriate missions, and hence requirements, there is the risk of producing another compromised vehicle.

To conclude, we shouldn't focus on the vehicles, it is the missions that are important.
   

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[queazocotal]

The precedent - yes.
However in times of war you don't want to overfly as for one that'll give them a really accurate position on where the satellite is.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[MacGyver2210]

Why couldn't they have redesigned a shuttle-type vehicle using more modern technology and components to 'update' the shuttle program? It would be an improvement over shutting it down completely and replacing it with some ho-hum lifting rockets that will get stuff to the ISS and back, but not much else.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[queazocotal]

The space telescope was not actually recovered, it was serviced in orbit.

Was the shuttle a good platform for those servicing missions - possibly.

Did it make sense to spend well over the cost of the telescope servicing it, rather than launching a new telescope - questionable.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Truth is life]

There are a few reasons for that. First, the entire Shuttle paradigm--a big vehicle that carries humans and a pretty good amount of cargo, and is reusable--has been pretty well discredited by Shuttle's poor performance. Carrying cargo and humans together has been shown to be inefficient, since the safety standards for each are so different, and cargo just doesn't need people around to manage it, high-profile failures like Skylab, Hubble, or Palapa 2/Westar 6 notwithstanding. People would be (rightly) very skeptical that a follow-on vehicle with the same design could perform much better, even with better technology. That means that any follow-on would probably be much smaller, just a crew transport, IOW similar to the vehicles proposed during the Orbital Space Plane project back before Columbia, or Orion and the other proposed crew transport vehicles.

Second, many of the details of the Shuttle design have proven unsafe. Any follow-on vehicle, for example, would have to be a series-staged vehicle, like most rockets, as opposed to the Shuttle's parallel-staged design in order to avoid damage from foam shedding, as with the Columbia accident, or booster failure, as with the Challenger disaster. Along with the above point, this means that any new vehicle would basically be a completely new design, rather than just a copy of the Shuttle aeroframe.

Third, we've had advances in materials science and aerospace engineering that mean we could do better now in terms of the details of the Shuttle's design that they could back then, many of them gained due to Shuttle experience. We've flown a winged vehicle through high-Mach regimes at very high altitudes in the Shuttle program, something that hadn't been done before. So, by using a new design, we could produce a vehicle that did better than Shuttle. Again, a reason to simply not copy Shuttle with better internals.

Fourth, doing so would be very expensive. Since, as noted above, the Shuttles have not been particularly successful, there's no reason to spend a lot of money copying them. Instead, people are spending money on copying Shuttle's big unique capability--ie., crew transport--while cutting out all the irrelevancies that cost a lot of money. Even then it's expensive, but you skip the need to design a lot of stuff and it works out to be cheaper than trying to also build the carrier rocket, a big payload bay, etc.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

Right, because those guys have no idea that such a government program could never achieve anything like, say, putting men on the moon.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Lanteran]

Well, the shining examples of the US are already not "shuttle powered", Cassini-Huygens launched on a titan, the rovers launched on a delta II heavy, as did messenger, and deep space 1 (first ship with an ion drive), and many more. The shuttle? The ISS though parts are Russian, and it's an international effort. Galileo, too, but not much recently.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[demonlapin]

Yeah, that makes a bit more sense.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[underlord_999]

The shuttle has an outstanding track record of success if measured as 'getting the job done'. And to those who want to call it a failure because of Challenger or Columbia, I have a few words to say:

FIFTY-THREE DEGREES (Farenheit).

Example 1: Challenger, 18 degrees Farenheit all night along and management is getting a lot of political heat to launch in the morning (which would barely be above 32 degrees F).

Solid rocket engineers: "Do not launch below 53 degrees!" You're asking a vehicle system with THIRTEEN TIMES the power output of Hoover Damn to function in an area it was not designed to! Yes the booster seals were later redesigned and augmented for safer operation, but failure became an option for Challenger because the managers jumped down a well with their fingers in their ears, "If I can't hear you, it must be safe!"

There are things the shuttle can do that the 'future' crafts (those currently in the works) will not have the ability to do. The shuttle orbiter can bring things back from space like the failed ammonia refrigerant pump on from the ISS (STS-135). The orbiter can repair things in space via use of the airlock and robotic arm (e.g. as done multiple times for Hubble -- one of the most useful scientific instruments of our time).

The US giving up the shuttle is like a construction contractor junking a working pickup truck because he might be buying a sports car and a shipping container.
++ Oh and the sports car may or may not work until we work out all the details
++ The shipping container can't bring anything back...one way only.
++ But that's okay because his buddy has a bicycle and has sorta agreed to letting him hop on every once in a while.

And while riding on the bike is only slightly cheaper (per man) than the truck, should the buddy decide not to let the construction contractor ride, there's no other way for him to perform his job.

Now, should we not also develop more modern vehicles at the same time? Of course we should! We should take the hundred billion from our useless foreign wars and put that into a new launch system, new shielding, new crew vehicles. But retiring the Shuttle ahead of having even a definitive timeline plus man-rated and proven equipment to replace it, means we are going backwards in our ability to work in and colonize space, not to mention the ability to research and improve our equipment that we've used in space by returning it and examining it back here on the ground.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[demonlapin]

Single-orbit flight is the idea here, in which case launch site does matter quite a bit.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Runaway1956]

Wow, a sane post that is on subject. (Sorry - theism and chiro takes far to much of the page!)

I remember watching the space flights on television in school. All us little kids sitting there, "Ooooh!" "Ahhhh!" And, our teachers were oohing and aaahing right along with us.

And, I remember arguing against that space shuttle when it was first proposed, and publicized. The object of going in to space is to go into SPACE. Low earth orbit isn't space. A space plane that never had the capability of going into deep space was just a distraction from the real goals. Although they did carry out some scientific experiments aboard the shuttles, basically they were just so much bread and circus.

There have been some damned good posts made here in the past, suggesting alternatives to those damned shuttles. Space elevators, rail guns, bigger badder Apollos, and more. Today, I really think that private enterprise has the best possible chance of accomplishing anything in space. They better, or it will be China that finally leads the way.

Who wants to bet that China will have difficulty finding hundreds of serious volunteers to take that one way flight to Mars? If the top dogs in China say that a colony will be established, then it will, by God, be established. Unlike the United States, where seemingly intelligent men and women argue "Why?"

I'm no Trekkie, and I was only a Star Wars fan for a short time - but dammit, the future is in space. Mankind needs to get off it's collective ass, and get out there!

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[0123456]

Right, because those guys have no idea that such a government program could never achieve anything like, say, putting men on the moon.

Of course it could. But it will never reduce the cost enough for me to take a vacation to the Moon.

The first private moon landing will probably cost about 1% as much as the government version.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Runaway1956]

That is the problem in a nutshell. The government's highest achievement was to put a few men on the moon. And, that is only a small first step on the road to space. Putting MEN AND WOMEN on the moon, and leaving them there to accomplish a mission, would have been a remarkable achievement. Putting a few men there, then bringing them home, not so much.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[hairyfeet]

Because if you look at the original mission statement it was a big fat failure? The way NASA sold it was the shuttle was supposed to be a "space truck" that would allow the USA to easily and cheaply carry large loads into space, work on damaged sats (again lowering costs) and even bring damaged birds home to be worked on.

Instead what we got was a ship that couldn't carry the loads the military or commercial needed (which is why they have the Delta V) and was insanely expensive to maintain. Finally Sen porkman and Con kickbackus made sure they could "bring home the bacon" by spreading work on the thing as far and wide as they possibly could (it ended up something like 23 states were working on shuttle parts IIRC) which just made it more inefficient to keep.

No what we need to do is either let commercial interests take care of it or to have the Delta V man rated. Either option would be better than now where since the end of the space race Sen Porkman and Con Kickbackus have used the NASA programs as a personal reelection machine. Now sadly NASA is more about how many jobs can embattled congressman X get sent to his district to buy some votes. Personally I'm starting to think we would be better off to do like India and just cut out the middle men so that the Senators can just buy the votes outright with cell phones and TVs like I heard they do over there.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Anonymous Coward]

He is partially right.

One of the "user stories" for the Shuttle was called a "once around mission" where the Shuttle would launch out of Vandenburg, and quickly deploy or retrieve a 50,000 lbs satellite over the South Pole (equivalent to 65,000 lbs due east out of KSC) then quickly land before an orbital track could be established (one thought was a short lived idea to capture or inspect a Soviet spy Satellite). Since the Earth rotates eastward during the 1 orbit the Shuttle would have to maneuver extensively in the upper atmosphere (a high cross-range design) in order to land back in the continental US. This requirement both defined the Shuttles payload capacity (NASA was originally planning a 25,000lbs - 40,000 lbs payload shuttle), and its thermal protection requirements (The high cross-range made for much higher heating rates).

Basically NASA was asked to build a Shuttle with twice the payload for half the budget ($5 billion vs. the $10 billion original estimate). It's a miracle we got what we did, but no surprise it turned into a white elephant. Many of the systems designed to reduce turn around time and increase re-usability (such as internal work platforms, diagnostic systems, and the flyback booster) were cut in favor of keeping to the budget (which the Shuttle did a reasonably good job of sticking to). Instead of spending $5 billion in the 70's the US ended up spending $60-70 billion over the life of the program.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Chairboy]

Sorry, friend, but you're mistaken. The wings gave the shuttle the crossrange needed to launch, release a payload, then de-orbit back at the launch spot (which has at this point rotated a thousand plus miles away from where the orbit ended.

The wings were needed so they could re-enter, then glide back to Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Teancum]

A shuttle launch costs a really, really large slice of a billion dollars.

The estimates about how much a shuttle launch costs are figures that I've seen vary by a whole order of magnitude and more.... with surprisingly all of those figures spot on too, depending on the methodology being used to pull those numbers out. You can quote recurring costs, add in processing costs, infrastructure costs, development costs (including the two "return to flight" efforts), and other ongoing costs that may or may not be included depending on who is being quoted.

All in all, the problem with the Shuttle is that a version 2.0 of the Space Shuttle was never made. All of the things you are complaining about here could have been solved with another iteration of the shuttle philosophy to cut out the things that obviously were never needed. When the Endeavor was built, they actually went back to a prototype test article rather than trying to build a new airframe. Essentially it is like a software developer who has bugs with their design to go back to the 0.5 version of the software and then re-fix a couple of bugs all over again to make it work right.

Yeah, I know that isn't completely fair, but there certainly was no attempt realistically to move the design forward. There is the X-37 (not even a NASA program sadly) and of course the cancelled CRV program that could have been something akin to a "Shuttle 2.0". Add in other projects like DC-X and a whole plethora of other cancelled NASA launcher programs which could have pushed the technology much further. Instead the prototype version is the only one that stuck.

How many people would be using computers today if the only operating system option they had available was PC-DOS 1.0?

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[lennier]

The object of going in to space is to go into SPACE.

And the object of going into SPACE is....?

There's some rocks and a lot of hard vacuum out there, but nothing halfway as habitable as the Antarctic and Sahara. What, exactly, do we achieve by putting people in Spam cans on the moon or Mars or in the radiation hell of Jupiter orbit that we can't achieve by putting people in Spam cans at the bottom of the Mariana Trench?

The one thing we don't get out of space is anything approaching Star Trek. There's no lifeforms that we can see, let alone sentients, so no opportunity for trade in anything except raw minerals (and good luck cheaply de-orbiting those to Earth without them becoming continent-wrecking impacts) and no stimulation to science that we can't get from our existing automated probes.

What exactly is the upside of the human spaceflight future, except for a lifetime of sunlight deficiency, CO2 poisoning, bone calcium depletion and radiation sickness?

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[DerekLyons]

Replacing it with something like the Dragon capsule (and the other lifting capabilities in development by private companies) would only be an improvement. It's going to be more efficient

That's like saying it's 'more efficient' to replace a pickup truck with a subcompact. Sure, you burn less gas and have a smaller payment - but you also lose a hell of a lot of capability.
 

it will allow for more space project to be done with the money that would be saved

Not really. You still have to pay for cargo and module delivery - but in the future they'll require single use (and quite expensive) support systems rather than being able to ride in the Shuttle's cargo bay. Now, instead of being able to toss a sheet of plywood or a couch into the back of the pickup, you'll have to rent one - and they don't come cheap. At the costs the Russians charge, a fraction of what providers in the West charge, you end up paying about 110% of the cost of a Shuttle mission - to get about 80% of the capacity. (It only costs $100 million to add a shuttle flight to the manifest.)
 

it will fund the private industry to develop space-faring technologies.

The problem is finding buyers for those technologies that aren't the government.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[tsa]

Why did we go to the moon? Certainly not for sane reasons like science or economy. People go into space because it's there. Exploring is part of human nature. And since we have explored most of the earth by now, it's time to go somewhere else. There doesn't have to be an object of doing things.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[DerekLyons]

For example.
Do you know why the shuttle has large wings?
It's largely so that it can take off, launch a military satellite into a polar orbit, and land back in the continental united states, without overflying russian territory.

I do. It's obvious you don't - The Shuttle has wings because it's a friggin' aircraft. Period.
 
Nor, contrary to urban legend, are the wings only as big as they are to support DoD missions. By the time the DoD came onboard, the wings of the Shuttle-to-be were already growing because crossrange capability increases safety dramatically by increasing abort options and increasing the number of landing opportunities available on any given orbit.
 

But the requirement to do so meant the need for SRBs, and the complex thermal protection system. This was so that the DOD would kick in some funding into the project early on.

The DoD, across the history of the Shuttle, has kicked in precisely zero dollars. SRB's and the thermal tiles were already part of the design baseline by the time the DoD came onboard. Liquid boosters, disposable or flyback, were too expensive. The metallic thermal protection system considered as an alternate was too heavy, had considerable problems, and was seen to pose severe development risks.
 

A shuttle launch costs a really, really large slice of a billion dollars.

A Shuttle launch costs around $100 million per launch. That's how much it costs to add a flight to the manifest - the balance are fixed costs that are paid no matter how many times you fly.
 

And you need a bit more payload sacrificed if you actually want anything of significant weight recovered.
But the shuttle has only done that task perhaps half a dozen times, for payloads where in many cases it was debatable as to the value of doing so.

Half a dozen times? Heck, it returned significant payload five times just for Hubble. Another 25 times for Spacelab...

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[hairyfeet]

HAY GUYZ, its Alex again, the full retard that even after being given example after example after example of why retailers like me refuse to carry his product, or how even Torvalds the great says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans! written in nice little words small enough for his little mind to understand all he can do is clutch his Tux blankie and go "Waah! He won't drink the kooliad! Waaah, he won't accept fucked up drivers and give them to his customers! Waahhh he must part of the global conspiracy!

.

But what can you expect from a koolaid drinking freetard, that has completely accepted the "shit sandwich" design, as in "Here is a shit sandwich and since its free you have NO RIGHT to complain about the smell! Or the taste! Errr..or the fact that its a shit sandwich!" This is why there is a whole website dedicated To his bullshit and excuses and those like them. He reminds me of a small child that sticks his fingers in his ears and goes "La la la I can't hear you" as everytime this little Lintard troll shows up following me I post link after link proving my point and ALL he can say is that I must secretly be getting giant checks from MSFT. This is why even Penny Arcade writes cartoons about him and his pals.

Want to know why retailers won't carry your product, even though it is "free" and would save us licensing fees? Feel free to look at the above links, or Lintards like Alex who REALLY doesn't help your case any with their "La la la everything works and ur a shill!" kiddie bullshit. No go compile something sonny the men are trying to talk here

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Patch86]

Whatever the issues the shuttle may have had, it certainly helped fuel the public imagination. When conceived it was ahead of it's time and we were dealing with the a cutting edge which no one had explored before.

Arguably (that is to say, using the argument that the Shuttle programme cost considerably more to operate than expected), the Shuttle programme is the reason we've never been back to the moon, or on to Mars or a NEA. If so, it has done more to disenchant the public with spaceflight than any other NASA programme.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Alex Belits]

And this is why hairyfeet is here -- to shill for Microsoft. The rest is karma whoring -- it's not like he adds anything new, he just posts popular opinions expecting to be modded up. He and his employers don't realize that it's long past the point when existence of loud assholes promoting their corporate masters' talking point meant anything -- they are discredited, and I am one of the people who will keep them discredited.

Go, write more offtopic rebuttals in a completely unrelated thread, attract attention of everyone you hoped to influence, then create another account for new batch of bullshit.

ALL he can say is that I must secretly be getting giant checks from MSFT.

Why secretly? This is his job.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Urkki]

The shuttle was not a shining example of the US doing well.

Yet the shuttle has gotten shit done, shit that would not have gotten done otherwise. I'm sure things could have been done much much better, not only in hindsight but also in foresight. However, the problem is not the shuttle, the problem is political reality. And, well... if there wouldn't have been shuttle, it's uncertain if there would have been something else even nearly as good.

Hindsight doesn't show alternate histories. Without the shuttle, we (people of Earth, as I'm not a USian) could have moon bases and people on Mars now, but it's also possible we wouldn't have any manned space presence at all (whether that'd be a good thing or not, that's entirely different debate). So better be careful what to wish for, even in hindsight.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[hairyfeet]

You are like those full retards that think the moon landing was faked, you realize this right? Where is your proof? CITATION PLEASE or go back to blowing Linus and the gang. Because unless MSFT suddenly moved their HQ to the middle of AR without telling anyone (and since it has been over 100 all week with a heat index of 106+ it sure as fuck ain't WA) then you are once again showing what a pathetic little cunt you are.

Where is your response to the links? To the retailers leaving in droves? To Linus himself? Can you not read, is that it? Is words on a page that say something other than "herp derp deh lunix is teh roxorz LOL!" more than your teeny tiny mind able to comprehend? I've actually written articles on what retailers need to sell your product, where's yours? Where have you contributed ANYTHING but mindless Linus blowing, ehh?

Kill yourself. Make this world a better place. You are alone because nobody wants you, it isn't gonna get any better, tomorrow your life will be just as empty as it is right now....kill yourself. Will your worldly goods (although what they'll want with a cardboard box and a tux blankie is beyond me) to the Linux foundation and walk in front of that train. You know you want to, you know the loneliness is eating you alive...kill yourself.

Me I have to get the beef ready for the BBQ, my sweet little half Cherokee GF has as usual invited every kinfolk she has and good BBQ takes tim to do it right. Of course you wouldn't know of such things, having never know a woman's touch or had anything other than MickeyD's. How sad, such a sad and pitiful little creature. I find that....delightful. Make the world a better place, remove yourself from it.Oh and in case you need the links again so you can cry before you get the rope, and for the elucidation of others (I know its a big word, look it up) I'll be happy to paste the paragraphs that makes you so mad, just as a special gift for the holidays.

Isn't it sad, how like a frightened child afraid to look under the bed, you cower at the truth? if your driver model isn't shit then why does Dell have to run their own repos even though we are talking a teeny tiny subset of hardware? Oh right because Linux shits itself and dies if you use the default repos! Man that is some excellent product you got there! you think I can get better QA than the third largest OEM on the planet? What, you expect me to tell paying customers "Go to the forum, kiss some loser ass, and maybe, just maybe, in a few days someone will have mercy and give you a big pile of bullshit that may or may not make your sound work again"?

Bleeding yet douchey? want some more? nice thing about having the truth on your side, you can keep throwing punches all day! How about how a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or how ASUS has given up on your bullshit or how about Walmart running away from linux as fast as it can? You got the crazy koolaid drunk enough to say they ALL are paid shills because they won't do your forum dance or CLI horseshit? Meanwhile your "hero" Torvalds the great says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!. Why don't you tell them that at work next week, see how quick you get a pink slip? More? How about you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share while you are actually lower than JavaME and there is a whole website dedicated To your bullshit and

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Teancum]

When will there be commercial spaceflights?

It is already happening. If you mean when will there be astronauts sitting in a pilot seat of a commercial capsule capable of making it into orbit and staying in orbit for a sustainable period of time, that hasn't yet happened..... but that is also a much larger hurdle to be met.

Don't blame the commercial entities for not getting up there, as there are several who are trying and have made some remarkable progress. SpaceX of course has their Dragon capsule, where manned flights may happen as early as next year, perhaps the year after that. Boeing has their CST-100 capsule, Orbital has their Taurus II capsule, and there are numerous other companies who have other similar vehicles, some of which are intended for human orbital spaceflight. There are also about a dozen other companies working on sub-orbital vehicles as well that I won't bother going into right now.

If you really want a more extensive list, see it on the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies

It is not a tiny list, and most of the vehicles on this list have not been developed with taxpayer money. There has been some government money, but the big systems that define NASA are not on this list.

Is it a tall order to make a business case to go into space? Absolutely. The largest culprit in terms of why commercial spaceflight, at least in America and Europe, is at its current dismal state is largely due to the Space Shuttle. Congress and the NASA administrators in the early 1980s ripped the rug out of would-be commercial spaceflight companies by substantially underbidding commercial spaceflight projects and unrealistically claiming price points that the Shuttle was never able to deliver. As a result of these very public disasters in space policy, it has taken literally decades for gun-shy investors to be willing to get back into the game and put the big money necessary with a reasonable shot at being able to recover that money.

It wasn't until the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 that the legal recognition that this activity was even going to be considered an acceptable activity for Americans even happened. Note the date, and note that not only has it been less than a decade, before this became law there literally were no laws that really governed commercial spaceflight. You don't invest into a company where the government can arbitrarily shut you down because the "regulators" don't know what the heck you are doing.

It all takes time, and spouting off ignorant thinking like somebody should have been able to get something going by now is simply forgetting that this is, of course, rocket science too.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[queazocotal]

Sure - which is why I wasn't qualifying how large.
The fixed costs of the shuttle program are somewhat a factor of launch rate - though design is a big elephant in the budget too.

If you have to completely tear down the main engines every flight, it doesn't help, nor does stuff like the toxic propellants used for the reaction control system.

NASAs attempts at cheaper launch have largely been comedic.
For example - DCX was promising.
But it was canned in favour of X33 - which was going to reduce access to space. (well, the evolved form was).
It was to do this by trying out three completely untried technologies on the same vehicle.

Needless to say, it diddn't get far.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Teancum]

There were groups that tried. The X-37 is perhaps the most successful Shuttle-derived vehicle that has flown, but note that it is an Air Force project that has absolutely nothing to do with NASA other than it used the runway at KSC as a landing facility. The X-38 was a prototype that could have been developed into what was to be the Crew Return Vehicle but was cancelled. There is also the DIRECT launch system that actually was designed to re-use most of the parts and pieces of the Shuttle program with a minimal of fuss.

Of the various proposals that have come forward, I find it especially sad that DIRECT was never really followed. It sure would have been more likely to be flying now than the monster that was called the Constellation program, which really wasn't a shuttle-derived vehicle in spite of claims to the contrary. This also should show why the Shuttle wasn't redeveloped is because in spite of various attempts to try and get something going, the programs keep getting cut time after time after time again. The focus to get something done simply isn't at NASA any more.

Yeah, it is very sad that a "redsigned shuttle-type vehicle" has not been developed, in spite of some very valiant efforts and years of work on the part of a whole army of engineers on multiple occasions that tried over the past 30 years. In most cases, "metal was bent" to even see if the concepts would work so it wasn't just a paper study either.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Teancum]

On the plus side, the DC-X concept has been refined by Blue Origin. Jeff Bezos has dumped a fairly large chunk of his private fortune to see that the ideas as explored by the DC-X might have at least a follow-up. They have had enough success that they qualified for a share of the money in the 2nd round of the CCDEV commercial rocket contracts.

Jerry Pournelle has also commented a fair bit on the DC-X program as he was an advisor on the National Space Council at about the time the DC-X was cancelled. They very nearly got the thing working, but it suffered a sort of "not invented here" syndrome that is common unfortunately within NASA. Also, the Shuttle program simply gobbled up this and other similar projects over time.

The list of projects that NASA got almost there but then cancelled is astonishingly huge.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[flyingrobots]

It will be missed. The space shuttle had amazing capabilities. We should have improved on this design. We are going backwards not forward with these new Apollo like designs. We need a space shuttle, we need to improve the space shuttle by learning to use the atmosphere to aid in lifting things into orbit. This requires wings.

The payload capability of the space shuttle is incredible. As far as I know, we don't have anything on the drawing board to match it.

I agree with the cancellation of the shuttle program, it was very expensive, but the problem comes from not having the guts to go and improve on the shuttle concept. We are taking a step backwards.

I don't know if we'd have the images and science we have today w/o the shuttle. Look at the Hubble. How many times was that thing fixed because we had the shuttle? I mean, we pulled up along side a satellite, pulled it into our flying repair shop, fixed it and redeployed it. How cool is that?

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[khallow]

Now, should we not also develop more modern vehicles at the same time? Of course we should! We should take the hundred billion from our useless foreign wars and put that into a new launch system, new shielding, new crew vehicles. But retiring the Shuttle ahead of having even a definitive timeline plus man-rated and proven equipment to replace it, means we are going backwards in our ability to work in and colonize space, not to mention the ability to research and improve our equipment that we've used in space by returning it and examining it back here on the ground.

I disagree. What's the point of having "capability" if you don't use the capability? At least the US military has a considerable amount of "soft power" (generates influence over US allies and enemies) even when it isn't being used for war. The Shuttle doesn't have that. And frankly, NASA has demonstrated that it can squander $100 billion quite nicely with the Shuttle and ISS programs.

Companies like SpaceX have demonstrated some remarkable efficiencies over NASA's old way of doing things. For example, a NASA group recently estimated how much a NASA contract for what SpaceX had done (development and test launches over the last eight or so years, the life of SpaceX) would cost. It ended up being a factor of ten higher than what SpaceX actually spent.

This doesn't mean that commercial space flight will magically be cheaper or faster. Consider that most of NASA's activities are already contracted to commercial vendors. But it's a sign to me that we can do a lot better than we have and that our ambitions can be greater, just for the money we currently spend, than they are.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[deathguppie]

Goodbye Shuttle, and thanks for all the fish!

There fixed that for you..

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[sznupi]

The biggest[*] irony of history - the capability was to a fullest degree demonstrated in the one flight of the Soviet shuttle Buran...

* With the possible exception of how the STS fleet, essentially, maintained and expanded two LEO space stations meant for Buran.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[sznupi]

The payload capability of the space shuttle is incredible.

The payload capability of the Shuttle is in the range of many expendable launchers. Proton, Ariane 5, Delta IV, Atlas V, Falcon, Long March, Angara, Rus. Pick one.

Oh, you include the wasted upmass of airframe? A lot of good that does in space... The last rocket really having such capability was Energia (hm, and 7x stack of heavy Angara core stages won't be far).

Generally, describing abandonment of spaceplanes in favour of capsules as "a step backwards" is at odds with basic chronology; plus when you really seriously do the math (like they did with HOTOL, for example), winged vehicles using the atmosphere turn out not really better than a "dumb rocket" using comparable materials ...which for a spaceplane are required to make it even barely feasible.

The non-problem is that we have the guts to abandon a wrong approach; it doesn't matter how "sleek" something looks. We generally build ships, trains, airplanes, all in a very different way. Making a spacecraft look like an aircraft demonstrably doesn't do much good (and by the time it maybe-who-knows might, we could be on our way to in-situ manufacturing and making the "from reactive atmosphere to low orbit" problem uninteresting)

The largest user of Hubble-like (but looking down) sats launched them on not-Shuttle for some time now; it's more efficient to launch a new one. Plus the number of times not-Shuttle did a rendezvous with another sat, docked with it, and delivered spare parts or fuel ...absolutely dwarfs the number of times Shuttle did it.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[speederaser]

Arguably (that is to say, using the argument that the Shuttle programme cost considerably more to operate than expected), the Shuttle programme is the reason we've never been back to the moon, or on to Mars or a NEA. If so, it has done more to disenchant the public with spaceflight than any other NASA programme.

Hmmm... U.K. spelling of the word "program" coupled with a "we've never been back to the moon". Curious, but I'm guessing you're an English ex-pat living in the US? Or is it "we" as in "humanity"?

Either way I agree with you (with my super-accurate 20-20 hindsight). Most Americans think we spend as much money on Space as we do on Defense. If we actually were, the Shuttle would only be small part of a true "Space Transportation System" and no one would be all that concerned about the cost.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[Patch86]

As in humanity. Surprisingly common usage here in the UK, where we can but bask in the reflected glory of NASA.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[sourcerror]

"Besides, what does NASA do for me anyway?"
Don't ask what NASA can do for you, but what you can do for NASA.

But to seriously answer your question: the aqueduct, sanitation, irragation, education, medicine, roads and peace.

keep dreaming

[roman_mir]

'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....

Re:keep dreaming

[BeanThere]

Can't start wars without money, and after the abovementioned, who would lend it?

Re:keep dreaming

[roman_mir]

Oh, it's easy. You just have to do what USSR did - use the people as slave labor, then you need much less money, as long as you are OK sacrificing large numbers of people...

Re:keep dreaming

[ColdWetDog]

'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....

While you may well be correct, remember that the percentage of the GDP that the US expends for space exploration is pretty much a rounding error. We can afford it.

Re:keep dreaming

[phantomfive]

There's an alternate view presented by some professor of foreign affairs that I have been pondering since I read it.

Basically he says, yeah, America faces some crisis in the near future, but so does every other country, and a lot of them are worse. China for example, will face the fallout of the bond/currency crisis, and on top of it they face the constant 'threat' of the populace demanding democracy, and a rapidly aging population that results with a one-child policy.

He suggests that the thing of most importance in the next century is change.....the world will be drastically different in a decade than it is now, and that Americans are very good at dealing with change.

His first point makes a lot of sense, but the most interesting point is his second, and I'm not sure what I think about it. Is America really that good at adapting to change?

Re:keep dreaming

[Midnight Thunder]

Isn't this what we call the prison system in the USA? ;) Okay, it not slave labour, but it is close enough in principle.

Re:keep dreaming

[DesScorp]

'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....

While everything you say is true... there IS an economic storm coming... it's coming everywhere, not just the US. China has some very structurally deep financial problems that are obscured by all of the trinkets they sell abroad. There's a reckoning coming, but the US will probably be better off than most when it comes.

Re:keep dreaming

[roman_mir]

Wishful thinking.

US lost so much capital (tools/manufacturing capacity) to other nations and it owes so much, and is willing to monetize the debt, that when the crisis actually hits, it will hit US and other Western nations the strongest, and I actually truly believe that those with manufacturing capacity will fair very well, even though they won't get their loans back in any meaningful way. But once they stop subsidizing the welfare states, they'll be able to grow much faster, their currencies will go through the roof and they'll enjoy highest standard of life compared to anybody else on the planet.

Re:keep dreaming

[Anonymous Coward]

The US bond crisis is coming, followed immediately by the currency crisis.

No worries, we'll just switch to a Bitcoin-based economy. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:keep dreaming

[roman_mir]

so, what's the conspiracy here? The inflation via printing or is it the bond bubble?

Re:keep dreaming

[rubycodez]

don't forget the other time-tested method of using war to steal other people's shit. I'd say the U.S. is getting itself in great shape to do both our wonderful ideas for cutting costs and getting stuff.

Re:keep dreaming

[camperdave]

Ah! But it is a very public "rounding error" with a high perceived price tag. Sure, you could cut military spending back to pre-9-11 levels, when it was merely the largest in the world, but you have to protect the country from $EnemyOfTheMonth (whose military spending is 1/5th the US's).

Re:keep dreaming

[Grishnakh]

Isn't that basically what Nazi Germany did? Their economy was in the toilet before WWII, and they very quickly built up a giant new war machine.

Re:keep dreaming

[Solar-Powered Rocket]

- aha, keep dreaming.

Not dreaming. For very practical reasons, the US is likely to keep its leadership in space for as long as it keeps its status as the world's top military power. Do you think the DoD will allow the US to become second place in space to let some neo-superpower gain the high ground?

So the question is, can the US keep its military superiority? Who knows, maybe in the future a cash-strapped US will hire out its armies to the highest non-hostile bidder (i.e. anybody but China, Russia, and certain socialist or theocratic states) and earn the money it has lost from the outsourcing of its non-military industries.

Re:keep dreaming

[roman_mir]

first: since March US Fed was buying 100% of new bonds and most of the bonds that were not rolled over.

second: can you even read your graph? Do you even understand how bonds work? As prices for coupons fall, the yield automatically goes up, because each bond pays a fixed amount per year, so interest rates rise in complete tandem with prices falling.

So the Fed buys all the outstanding bonds to keep prices from falling further thus creating more inflation (QE).

As to those who buy bonds - who is that? Bill Gross sold off his entire position, and he was the largest private holder.

Re:keep dreaming

[roman_mir]

There's an alternate view presented by some professor of foreign affairs that I have been pondering since I read it.

- I am sorry, I just read that, and that's why I am sorry. Why did you make me read that? Ok, ok, you didn't make me do anything, but I still want to hold somebody accountable.
---

Seriously though, they guy says absolutely nothing beyond: we are in trouble, but so are other guys, and we will invent something that will help us to get out of our trouble.

Well, there is a remote possibility that somebody in US will invent something, but with the destruction of capital, caused by US government do you even think that even if something was invented in US, somebody will be able to get credit to build a real product out of that? Besides, if US can build something, others can too, right, that's the premise behind that piece, that US is in trouble but so are others?

Seriously though, US won't be building anything much beyond iPods and iPads (and don't get me wrong, Jobs is great, all hail Jobs.)

But even more seriously: to compare the US problems to Chinese problems is like to compare the oceans of Titan to the fiery core of the Sun. Because China has the production capacity, it has the capital, it makes the tools, because of that it needs more and more engineers and scientists, while US doesn't need any, US only really produces weapons. Well, I guess maybe US can use the weapons to take things away from others, but others also have weapons, and fighting wars on many fronts doesn't end well, historically speaking.

US has the problem that is not just debt. US has 14T USD debt, but also all the pension funds and all the SS and Medicare liabilities, and then 1/3 of all mortgages in US are debt owned by the Treasury as well, don't forget, that's how they kept the financial industry from disappearing (which it should have done.)

Chinese will shrug off their US denominated debt even if it is reduced into absolute nothingness, but they will keep the capital that lets them build, manufacture things, products that people need. THAT is the real wealth, not fake money and not foreign debt.

I am afraid that before it gets better for the West, the West will go through a dark period of time, where it will have to learn that it must be productive again, and to be productive it must abolish its gigantic government structures and so called 'social obligations' and wars.

Re:keep dreaming

[roman_mir]

You know, this entire metric of 'debt to GDP' or the way you used it: 'nasa to GDP' should make you extremely uncomfortable, shouldn't it?

Because GDP is not something that is true measurement of the taxes, that government collects and it's certainly not the true measurement of the production capacity of the economy, especially now, that GDP numbers are highly inflated basically that the dollar valuation and bonds are inflated and the transactions dealing with these papers by all the financial institutions, who are turned into a 'market' for holding US Treasury bonds are backed by counterfeit money basically, and also that US Fed and Treasury are playing politics, trying to keep the valuations of all the bad debt, that needs to be restructured up, keeping the mortgage values up by inflating money supply and thus causing rising prices for things people actually need to buy every day - food, energy, goods, etc. This GDP number is not a useful metric, it's highly manipulated, just like core inflation or unemployment numbers are.

Re:keep dreaming

[phantomfive]

You should really go look at what the US actually produces before speculating like that. Who do you think is the biggest producer in the world? Who is the world's biggest exporter? It's really not all weapons.

Secondly, China has a lot of PhDs, but so what? What have they actually done?

Thirdly, it is true the US faces problems taking care of the aging, but in that regard ours is a minuscule problem compared to China's.....it's a side effect of a one-child policy.

Finally, you completely missed his main point: it wasn't about inventing, it was that the future is going to change a lot, and America is good at handling change. Do you think America is not good at handling change? Or do you think that the future will not be changing a lot? Or do you actually agree with his main point?

Anyway, thanks for your comments.

Stop or Go?

[Garrett Fox]

It's underwhelming to slowly, ambiguously plan for maybe going to an unspecified asteroid someday. There won't be much excitement from the general public for such a plan, especially with the way it's been marketed so far. Say "in 10 years we'll have people on the way to Mars [or to a lesser extent, the Moon] to build a permanent base" and it becomes a different story.

We're in a budget crisis right now though, with fundamental moral, legal and philosophical disputes over the proper role of the US government. We already have a majority of the states openly challenging federal authority, and the federal government openly scoffing at the idea that there are limits to its lawful power. (Pelosi: "Are you serious?!") It's hard to justify any new government programs while that dispute is unresolved, even as relatively small as the funding would be. Figure out first whether it's okay to have a self-proclaimed "radical communist" serving as a White House adviser, for instance, before deciding relatively minor things like whether to increase one agency's funding. Otherwise we'll just be arguing past each other from completely different premises.

I'm definitely not taking the common position, "Let's solve our problems on Earth before we go to space." This is more like, "Let's figure out what we're trying to accomplish before we set out."

Re:Stop or Go?

[Nyeerrmm]

I hear this a lot, and I think the destination-oriented approach to the problem is the wrong way. As part of the Frontier movement, who whole-heartedly argue that settlement is the only economically justifiable reason for human exploration, we don't just want to go to the Moon, or an asteroid, or anywhere else. We want to go to all of these places, and more.

Destination-oriented approaches aren't going to open the solar system to us. They may ramp up public excitement a bit, but lets be honest, public excitement never got us very far. Don't fall for the myth that Apollo happened because of overwhelming public support, or because Kennedy really believed in it, or anything else -- it served a geopolitical agenda of demonstrating the superiority of the American model during the struggle to win the allegiances of the third world. As advocates of opening the frontier we need to learn to take what we're given and do the most we can with it.

And quite frankly, the ambiguous flexible path approach is the best way to do that. More than anything else, it doesn't require the critical step of "Get more money from congress." If we rebuild a solid infrastructure of multiple launch vehicles to get to LEO (with competitive pressures to improve performance and reduce cost) then in 5 years when a new administration may point in a new direction, they'll have a good starting point from which to redirect the program to accomplish something within 4-5 years (a new administration won't cancel something thats almost done). If in the process we find more new and profitable things to do further away from the Earth's economic sphere, then all the better, because commerce is always going to form a more stable base than the fickleness of feel-good politics. If our systems aren't designed only for the Moon, or for Mars or anywhere else, then we can go wherever it makes the most sense to go at the time.

30-year programs and custom one-off systems for a single mission are far more detrimental to human spaceflight than the passing political pressures or the vagaries of public opinion.

Re:Stop or Go?

[TarPitt]

The founding fathers clearly never intended a program such as civilian space flight to be a function of the Federal government. Under the 10th amendment, this is clearly the state's responsibility. Given its existing space infrastructure along with business-friendly tax and regulatory environment, I would expect a privately organized for-profit Texas space authority to assume a leadership role.

The economic miracle that is Texas deserves no less.

Yes it is the end ...

[MacTO]

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.

Re:Yes it is the end ...

[shess]

And yet ... with all that awesome technical know-how, we were unable to replace it with a next-gen manned launch vehicle before end-of-lifing it.

I'm not saying your wrong about knowledge bit-rot, but it is entirely possible that the vast experience we had developed was hindering future developments rather than helping them. It's also likely that expecting coherent development from a political program is expecting too much.

Re:Yes it is the end ...

[Kjella]

We're not quitting space exploration, last I checked there was plenty probes and rovers and telescopes on the drawing board that'd go into space or observe space. The question is the cost/benefit of sending humans out there to do the exploring. To make an analogy, does submarines bring us any closer to building underwater cities? Or are we just really travelling around in a big tin can burning resources to make the submerged life like surface life? In the same way I don't think we'll get any closer to a Mars colony just doing more loops in a shuttle. Obviously a manned mission to Mars can do more than the rovers we have there today, but for the cost we could probably send a hundred more with various instruments.

Most the hard tech challenges are the same for improving robot exploration.as they are for manned exploration, we want better instruments, better communication, better solar panels, reliable rockets, lighter spacecraft, better propulsion and so on. The challenges of adding a crew section with low g-force launch/entry, radiation shielding, breathable air composition and pressure, livable temperature, food and water is not fundamentally different from the Apollo days and won't change in the foreseeable future. What we will miss is the technology that'll eventually result in a colonization of space, but there we lack a lot of earth-based research. We need to learn how to make an ecosystem in a can, a small self-sustained system that'll function over time.

Once we have that, once we can say "if only we had the technology to place this on the Martian surface, we'd have an extraterrestrial colony" then we should pick up that thread again. Right now my impression is not that the humans would enhance the robots, but rather that pretty much the whole mission would exist to sustain the humans. I guess there's a point to doing it to prove that we can, but we've sort of already proved that. If the conditions on the inside are right, it doesn't matter if it's on a submarine or a research base in the Antarctic or on the Moon, people will survive and so they will on Mars too. It's just a matter of how strong the shielding must be.

Quite frankly in my opinion the most interesting part of space exploration happening right now is something we haven't got a snowflake's chance in hell of exploring with current technology, manned or not. By finding exoplanets we're really mapping unexplored territory, getting closer and closer to finding planets like Earth. The only thing that'd come close in this solar system is if we found traces of life (extinct or otherwise) on Mars. Don't get me wrong, the rovers are really cool but the planet is still just a big barren, lifeless rock until proven otherwise. Or until we learn terraforming, but that's a long ways off.

Re:Yes it is the end ...

[0123456]

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.

No-one would build another rocket like the shuttle, and NASA hasn't designed a new rocket in forty years; most of the people who designed it retired years ago.

If that 'intellect' was so valuable, private space companies would be lining up to hire them, yet in reality they seem to avoid hiring NASA's cast-offs. Probably because NASA engineers spent about as much to put a fake upper stage on top of an SRB and launch it into the sea as SpaceX did to build two new launchers from scratch and fly them into orbit.

Re:Yes it is the end ...

[yesterdaystomorrow]

"By abandoning the shuttle, that human intellect is being dumped on the streets with nothing but promises for the future."

How can abandoning the most expensive engineering *failure* in human history be considered dumping human intellect on the streets?

Re:Yes it is the end ...

[bananaquackmoo]

Your interest is clearly in space exploration. Good for you. My interest is exactly in the other approach you mention, putting humans on other planets. Baby steps. Live on other planets we know about first, then find more of them later.

Re:Yes it is the end ...

[Morty]

NASA only has so much funding to go around. Shuttle operations are expensive -- each launch costs hundreds of millions of dollars. Development of manned spacecraft is also expensive. So the theory was that NASA would discontinue shuttle, freeing up lots of funding to build shuttle's replacement, and after a few years, we would have a replacement, without need to temporarily increase NASA's budget. In different terms, the gap between shuttle and its replacement was very much a feature. This is the same way that the transition from Apollo to Shuttle was funded, to include the same sort of gap between Apollo-Soyuz and STS-1.

Not the end of HUMAN spaceflight...just AMERICAN

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the end of HUMAN spaceflight...just AMERICAN spaceflight. You can't lead anyone anywhere if you have to hitch a ride to get there yourself.

Provided it is given it the means to stay ahead

[youn]

_ Chinese are planning multiple mir like station, yes at first they will suck but with big budgets, they could have their sputnik moment
_ if aerobreathing engines like the one planned on the skylon are operational, they too could be a game changer. yes it is unmanned but drastically decreases costs
_ jaxa is planning a robotic base on the moon... and japanese definitely know their robots
_ if multiple changes mid programs don't cause nasa to redevelop the wheel, it will fall behind ....

maybe it can stay ahead... and I really hope it will get a big boost but I don't see that happening, especially with cost saving measures in budget... nasa is definitely not a priority

What I would love is all space faring countries to combine efforts and launch some big ass missions and really get the space race going... but because of pride never gonna happen :(

Re:Provided it is given it the means to stay ahead

[0123456]

if aerobreathing engines like the one planned on the skylon are operational, they too could be a game changer. yes it is unmanned but drastically decreases costs

If I remember correctly, Skylon's estimated cost per kilo is about the same as Falcon 9 Heavy, which should be flying soon for far less than the tens of billions of dollars required to build Skylon.

Skylon used to look like a great idea, but now that governments are getting out of the space business and leaving it to private corporations, it's starting to look like another expensive white elephant designed around 'cost no object' government funding.

Re:Provided it is given it the means to stay ahead

[damburger]

The idea that Falcon 9 is inherently cheaper than Skylon is laughable.

Skylon's numbers have been independently analysed. The Falcon 9 estimates are just overhyped numbers to draw in shareholders. US business culture is notorious for its level of hype.

Re:Provided it is given it the means to stay ahead

[strack]

skylon does not, at the moment, carry the burden of actually existing, whereas the falcon 9 has completed 2 launches, and has a set price, and realistic methods to reduce that price, for example ramping up production to take advantage of economies of scale. they have matched their 'hype' with results, and are making, in my opinion, entirely credible claims about their future plans.

Re:Provided it is given it the means to stay ahead

[damburger]

Its completed 2 launches and its price is set? Without any subsidy at all from the US government? (Read the article, because some fairly senior astronauts think it does).

Re:Provided it is given it the means to stay ahead

[damburger]

Falcon 9, according to current SpaceX numbers on their site, is ~$6000/kg, and Falcon 9 Heavy is over ~$2000/kg. The talk of less than $1000/kg is just that; talk.

All SpaceX has done is shown what a conventional, staged rocket should cost rather than what Boeing et al like to tell NASA it costs. This is useful in itself, but rockets are still fundamentally limited.

Re:Provided it is given it the means to stay ahead

[0123456]

Falcon 9, according to current SpaceX numbers on their site, is ~$6000/kg, and Falcon 9 Heavy is over ~$2000/kg. The talk of less than $1000/kg is just that; talk.

According to Wikipedia, Reaction engines are claiming around $1000/kg for Skylon, and that's just talk too. Given that no hardware exists and they want over ten billion dollars to build one, those numbers are extremely dubious; I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it costs twice as much if it ever flies.

SpaceX, meanwhile, have actually built hardware with their own money and flown it into space.

Re:Provided it is given it the means to stay ahead

[damburger]

According to their website, $1000/kg is the pessimistic end of their estimates (which, as I have stressed, have been verified by outside experts) and the same price is the very optimistic end of SpaceX estimates.

Space is too big for one nation

[hackertourist]

The 'next big thing', manned missions to Mars and beyond, is going to be so expensive no single nation can afford to do it. International cooperation is IMO the only way forward. The ISS was a decent first effort in that direction, but also shows the problems that will crop up in such a cooperation. The weird orbit dictated by the requirement that it can be reached from both Canaveral and Baikonur, different docking systems being used, etc.
Nations will have to put the cooperative effort above petty nationalism if these missions are going to succeed.
Even then, we're stuck to our local neighborhood unless there's a quantum leap in space technology.

Re:Space is too big for one nation

[0123456]

The 'next big thing', manned missions to Mars and beyond, is going to be so expensive no single nation can afford to do it.

Bollocks. Spaceflight is expensive because governments will pay a billion dollars a time to fly seven astronauts and a few tons of pizza and toilet paper to a space station which serves no purpose that anyone can adequately explain.

I'd bet $10 that the first human to walk on the surface of Mars will be a billionaire tourist, not a government bureaucrat.

Re:Space is too big for one nation

[damburger]

No human has ever lived in space for a single stretch equal to the length of mission to Mars.

There, that one sentence encapsulated just ONE of the many reasons for the ISS. Don't mistake your churlish lack of imagination for a disproof of a concept.

Re:Space is too big for one nation

[Patch86]

... to a space station which serves no purpose that anyone can adequately explain.

Science!

Knock yourself out my friend:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_research_on_the_ISS

I'm not sure what other purpose you would want from an orbital lab...

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Z00L00K]

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.

Re:Not the end of HUMAN spaceflight...just AMERICA

[Artifice_Eternity]

SpaceX has already sent an unmanned Dragon capsule into orbit around the Earth. They have a contract with NASA for cargo flights to the ISS, and are developing the manned version of the Dragon with an integrated abort system (see this video for a demonstration).

American spaceflight is NOT coming to an end. It's just not going to be a NASA monopoly any more.

Not having a Nasa rocket != not having a US rocket

[phayes]

How is the coming hiatus any different that that between the end of Saturn V & the first Shuttle or for that matter the multi-year launch stoppage after Columbia? Why MUST it be a NASA developped rocket? Is it because parts NASA have turned into the aerospace work assurance administration?

I'm a manned space exploration fan but I have come to the conclusion that it would be better off for Manned space explorattion were Nasa to get out of the development of it's own launchers & buy from SpaceX or whoever else develops a reliable launcher without falling into the trap of growing a self justifying administration.

Re:Science is good but we need more research.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Human space flight is one part of space exploratio

[Vellmont]

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.

we have more probes on mars then any other

[Joe_Dragon]

we have more probes on mars then any other nation.

And look at mars rover that lasted for YEARS longer then planned.

Re:we have more probes on mars then any other

[Anonymous Coward]

Than. THAN.

Re:Science is good but we need more research.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I thought that you wre just being a jerk, but that is entirely correct. His page is nothing but "seeing a chiropractor cures everything!", "you are an industry shill!", and "slashdot won't let me post very often because I'm a troll".

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[houghi]

I do believe that the majority of Americans also support free speech. If you don't like people having another opinion move to another nation(as that's what you seem to be against). Good luck. Also you'll have to check all your own opinions at the gate.

Re:Science is good but we need more research.

[bmo]

>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.

--
BMO

Joyriding astronauts != space exploration

[yesterdaystomorrow]

*Real* space exploration these days is performed by robots. Humans have the wrong senses, the wrong body form, and needs that are very difficult to satisfy in space. But we're very good at building and directing robots, and getting better very fast.

The shuttle? Absolute garbage engineering. Sold as the cheapest way to get to space, it wound up the most expensive of all time. It was supposed to be as safe and easy to operate as an airliner, but it proved extremely dangerous. It proved the capability of the USA only in the sense that no other entity could possibly have thrown enough resources at it to make it work at all. NASA has finally come to its collective senses and decided to quit "throwing good money after bad", a decision that's about 35 years too late.

Human beings will have a future in space when the resources and infrastructure to support them can be gathered, constructed, and maintained by robots. But we have proven beyond any reasonable argument that using human beings as "space laborers" is hyper-expensive and counterproductive.

Re:Joyriding astronauts != space exploration

[cratermoon]

The shuttle? Absolute garbage engineering.

I have to confess to mixed feelings about this. Given the engineering problems they were tasked to solve, I credit the guys working on the shuttle program with some terrific work. Unfortunately, they were given plates of shit to engineer with.

What I'm saying is that on the one hand, STS is an engineering marvel for things like the thermal tiles and the cross-range glider landing of the orbiter, the re-usability and throttle-ability of the SSME, especially for their weight and isp, and the SRBs... ok, well, nevermind about the SRBs.

On the other hand, all those capabilities have almost nothing to do with getting people or cargo into space and safely home efficiently at low cost. The tiles, for instance, were used in response to a requirement for a reusable winged spaceplane, which itself was driven by other requirements for the Air Force. The shuttle engines are great if you need them to work in a vacuum, but are really pretty lousy for engines running at sea level that can't be restarted.

So, in short, congratulations to the engineers over the years in the shuttle program for solving some huge problems, but apologies for making you work on crap that was tangential to real goal.

Re:Joyriding astronauts != space exploration

[yesterdaystomorrow]

The shuttle? Absolute garbage engineering.

I have to confess to mixed feelings about this. Given the engineering problems they were tasked to solve, I credit the guys working on the shuttle program with some terrific work.

Terrific work that solves the wrong problem is not good engineering.

What I'm saying is that on the one hand, STS is an engineering marvel for things like the thermal tiles

The tiles are a kludge to make up for the fact that the planned superalloy skin didn't work out. They have been an expensive, fragile nightmare. A killer. Competent engineering management would have recognized this as a show-stopper early. But this was NASA.

and the cross-range glider landing of the orbiter, the re-usability and throttle-ability of the SSME, especially for their weight and isp, and the SRBs... ok, well, nevermind about the SRBs.

On the other hand, all those capabilities have almost nothing to do with getting people or cargo into space and safely home efficiently at low cost. The tiles, for instance, were used in response to a requirement for a reusable winged spaceplane, which itself was driven by other requirements for the Air Force. The shuttle engines are great if you need them to work in a vacuum, but are really pretty lousy for engines running at sea level that can't be restarted.

So, in short, congratulations to the engineers over the years in the shuttle program for solving some huge problems, but apologies for making you work on crap that was tangential to real goal.

Exactly. All of these things failed to serve the top level requirements: safety and affordability. Indeed, together they comprehensibly prevented safety and affordability.

Some years ago, I was in a meeting at a NASA center, and a manager got up and tried to sell a particularly nonsensical solution to a problem. I stood up and picked it apart. Afterward, a couple of engineers called me aside.

First NASA engineer: "Thanks for saying those things. They needed to be said, but we can't say them."
Second NASA engineer: "Yeah, there's too much retribution around here."

And that's the *real* source of NASA's troubles.

Re:Joyriding astronauts != space exploration

[cratermoon]

I believe we are in vehement agreement here. While safety and affordability might have been the supposed top level requirements publicly, within management and contractors, the real requirements had more to do with making jobs in key states like Utah.

In your comment you mention 'engineering management' and 'manager'. I stand by my admittedly compromised position that some very smart and capable engineers came up with some ingenious things. The fact that the silica thermal tiles were a very poor alternative to a problem that had no solution (the superalloy skin) and that management directed they be employed regardless doesn't diminish the fact that the stuff is an amazing material that is useful in a variety of situations -- none of which involved the orbiter underbelly. Management decided they should be employed in a hostile environment (side-mounted orbiter with debris from the ET insulation impacting), but engineers didn't solve for that problem.

There's plenty of evidence that management at NASA may have had political considerations and the profits of contractors in mind ahead of good engineering, I won't deny that. I also don't want to detract from the honest work of folks who dedicated their efforts to a cause only to have the results subverted.

Re:Joyriding astronauts != space exploration

[Strider-]

*Real* space exploration these days is performed by robots. Humans have the wrong senses, the wrong body form, and needs that are very difficult to satisfy in space. But we're very good at building and directing robots, and getting better very fast.

Let's be honest, a trained geologist with a quad-bike type vehicle could have done all the work that the MERs have done in the course of their mission within a couple of days. I'm not trying to discount the work that the rovers and their controllers here on earth have done, but you simply can not equate their capabilities with what a living, breathing human could do in the same location. MSL (assuming the somewhat rube goldberg-esq landing system works) will be an amazing machine, and well worth the investment, but again the machine has no on board intuition or observational skills.

On the other hand, I'm a realist. The only reason why humans will ever set foot on Mars (or any other celestial body) is because some government decides that it is politically expedient for their citizens (or allies) to do so. Why did the USA go to the moon? not because it was hard, not because of the science, but to beat the Russians. The thing is, the only thing you can really do when you get there is good, hard science.

Re:Joyriding astronauts != space exploration

[yesterdaystomorrow]

*Real* space exploration these days is performed by robots. Humans have the wrong senses, the wrong body form, and needs that are very difficult to satisfy in space. But we're very good at building and directing robots, and getting better very fast.

Let's be honest, a trained geologist with a quad-bike type vehicle could have done all the work that the MERs have done in the course of their mission within a couple of days.

But it's impossible for a geologist to survive on Mars. And nobody, especially NASA, has any credible plan to make it possible for a geologist to survive on Mars within a finite budget. But the rovers are well adapted to the job, and are getting it done.

Even sending a human into low Earth orbit takes thousands of man-hours of effort on the ground for every hour somebody spends in space. So the apparent efficiency of humans in space is an illusion. Now, if you look at, say, Magellan's budget back in 1519, the ratio of effort on land to effort at sea was more like 1:1. At that ratio, the European exploration and colonization of the world was possible. At 1000:1 it never could have been. The only way to reduce that ratio and make human activities in space truly practical is to make maximum use of robotic technology, both on the ground and in space.

I'm not trying to discount the work that the rovers and their controllers here on earth have done, but you simply can not equate their capabilities with what a living, breathing human could do in the same location.

Yeah, but that breathing business is an insoluble problem, given the institutions that would have to solve it.

Re:Joyriding astronauts != space exploration

[Ol Olsoc]

No human presence, no budget.

Wanna send robots only? Take up a collection and finance it yourselves. Wanna do science? Piggyback it with Human presence. I've heard all the arguments, but I don't care.

Re:Joyriding astronauts != space exploration

[Urkki]

*Real* space exploration these days is performed by robots.

Done with, not done by. I'm sure some day, possibly quite soon, robots will do real exploration, but for now, they're just remote instruments.

The shuttle? Absolute garbage engineering.

Now now, let's leave "absolute garbage" for things which don't have a proven track record like the shuttle has. "Absolute garbage engineering" wouldn't have been able to do the stuff shuttle did. In my understanding, even the accidents were a case of garbage mission management decisions, done against engineering wisdom.

Can the US Still Lead In Space?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can the US Still Lead In Space Despite Shuttle's End? - Yes
Will the US Still Lead In Space Despite Shuttle's End? - Answer unclear. Ask again later

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Wansu]

I do believe that the majority of americans, myself included, support space travel and exploration.

Hell yeah and I'd rather see tax money spent on space exploration than thrown down a rat hole on these wars.

Re:Wait a minute

[murdocj]

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

Ending the Shuttle program is a good thing

[drgould]

The Shuttle and ISS are black holes in NASA's budget sucking all the money away from almost every other project. Everything at NASA has been secondary to maintaining the Shuttle and ISS.

The best thing that could happen is that shutting down the Shuttle program will free up budget money to develop better, cheaper, faster manned and unmanned space programs.

The worst thing that could happen is that NASA decides to create another white elephant space program simply to keep the massive army of NASA employees and contractors who worked on the Shuttle program employed.

Re:Ending the Shuttle program is a good thing

[MacGyver2210]

Or they could always, I don't know, end some bullshit wars across the globe and put a little MORE money into NASA? Develop a more efficient shuttle BEFORE dismantling the old program? Not rely on a single barely-tested ballistic rocket to achieve everything their space program wants?

Rockets are just too inefficient

[Rande]

We need to come up with a way of keeping most of the fuel for lift on the ground instead of carrying it up too.
There's several ways.
Space Elevator - awaiting the materials tech. Also be a terrorist attack target.
Lasers - awaiting laser tech.
Magnetic acceleration - This would work now. Except that to launch people at a acceptable Gs would require a track 3 miles long. It would also be politically problematic because the same tech could be used to drop a bomb anywhere on the planet and be a terrorist target.

Re:Rockets are just too inefficient

[farble1670]

we can drop a bomb anywhere on the planet now, it's called an ICBM.

Re:Rockets are just too inefficient

[isorox]

Also be a terrorist attack target.

When did Americans become such pussies?

Re:Rockets are just too inefficient

[MacGyver2210]

When did Americans become such pussies?

September 11, 2001. Just FYI.

Re:Rockets are just too inefficient

[The O Rly Factor]

Agreed. It seems these days you can't even design a little league baseball field without some zealot right-wing bureaucrat stepping in and requiring you to audit its potential of being a target for the big bad terrorist bogeyman.

Re:Rockets are just too inefficient

[dkf]

Either that or a link to something explaining how lasers will launch a vehicle.

Well, duh! Isn't it obvious? You run the lasers in reverse so that you instantaneously vaporize the sharks, creating a large volume of rapidly expanding gases, which propel the vehicle. Easy!

Re:Rockets are just too inefficient

[currently_awake]

A three mile long railgun isn't re-targetable. You can't just swing it over to hit somewhere else, it's fixed. It's also easy to target and hard to guard.

Re:Rockets are just too inefficient

[Patch86]

My guess is that he means this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion

Re:Rockets are just too inefficient

[VanessaE]

It's also easy to target and hard to guard.

*shrug* And this is a problem....why? The same could be said for any comparable stretch of Interstate highway, except to hit one of those at the right time of day would cause far more damage.

No. The whole terrorism claim is old and tired.

50 years??

[chiph]

Following my usual policy of dividing any optimistic-sounding number quoted by a government official in half, I give it 25 years before someone else (Russia? China? Uzbekistan?) takes the lead.

Re:50 years??

[farble1670]

russia has massive natural resources and a good base in the technology, but they will never be as razor focused as they were during the cold war. decision makers in russia now have to worry about things like getting votes and political upheaval, like the US and other western nations.

china on the other hand is ripe for political revolution. do you expect chinese citizens to put up with longer work hours in poorer conditions with less compensation than other countries, with less political and personal freedom, for the next 25+ years? those are the things that are driving china today.

Re:50 years??

[ch0knuti]

china on the other hand is ripe for political revolution. do you expect chinese citizens to put up with longer work hours in poorer conditions with less compensation than other countries, with less political and personal freedom, for the next 25+ years? those are the things that are driving china today.

Do not underestimate the value of a PR stunt like that. Putting someone on the moon could make people forget their other problems.

We have no money for space flight.

[bmo]

We're too busy bombing democracy into people in foreign lands and spending billions of dollars per month to do so.

You got an 8 year old girl that wants to go into space?

Have her study her math, physics, *RUSSIAN* and *MANDARIN CHINESE*

Because the only way she's going to get there is with the countries that have the launch facilities and vehicles. We have *nothing* man-rated after STS-135. We don't even have spam-in-a-can on top of a fucking Titan, or Atlas like Gemini to get to the ISS.

But we sure have fucking cash to bomb the Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Libyans, and Yemenis. Did I miss anyone there? I'm not entirely sure. Have we been bombing Somalia? What about Syria? Are we going to go there too? We certainly had plans as far back as 1991.

We certainly don't have money to subcontract it out to fucking Space-X. The bombs are worth more.

Fuckit. US space exploration is done. Throw dirt over the casket.

--
BMO - whose internal 7 year old is going to go cry in a corner because he'll never see anything inspiring like Apollo again.

Re:We have no money for space flight.

[TheDarkMaster]

Shhhh... The north-american people do not like the truth. She is too ugly.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[JohnRoss1968]

"Besides, what does NASA do for me anyway?"
Wow, I know they say there are no stupid questions but there sure seem to be a lot of inquisitive idiots.
You want to know what NASA and the space race has done for you....Look down at your keyboard, its attached to a computer.
Microprocessors were derived from the space race. As well as the satellite communications that you may use to connect with other idiots.
Not enough for you...heres some more things that were by-products of the space race and the space age.
Kidney dialysis machines
Computer-Aided Tomography (CAT) scan
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Freeze-dried food
Cordless power tools & appliances
Disposable diapers
Rotary blood pump
Fiber optics
Satellite dish
Bar codes
Ear thermometer
Fire-resistant fabrics
Smoke detector
Thermal gloves and boots
New techniques for machining and casting exotic metals like magnesium and titanium.
Carbon fiber epoxy, and all kinds of composite materials
CNC machining.
Microwave communications.
Huge improvements in photovoltaics (solar cells to generate electricty).
Solid state memory
Satellite photography
velcro.
And about 1,400 documented NASA inventions that have benefited U.S. industry.
Oh yeah did I mention TANG!!!!

I called you an idiot several times above. I may be wrong. You may just be an ungrateful, unimaginative Luddite. But I'm betting your both an an ungrateful, unimaginative Luddite and an idiot.
If you dont like it, you can always turn off your computer since NASA and the space race never did anything for you any damn way.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[JohnRoss1968]

Damn....I just fed a troll. :(

Re:Human space flight is one part of space explora

[ColdWetDog]

Good point. Tends to get lost in the discussion.

Re:USA: best science for the buck

[ColdWetDog]

i could care less if the US is seen as the "leader" in space exploration.

Why do you hate America?

Takes the lead

[petes_PoV]

I give it 25 years before someone else takes the lead.

I suppose it depends which lead you mean. There are several.

Sure, the USA is about to give up it's manned flight capabilities - though whether the scuttle represented a lead in that field is open to question. However, it still has a lot of capabilities in military launches (the military space budget is at least the size of NASA's - that's not going to be cut) and civil satellite operations.
You probably can't assign the non-governmental space business as "american" as it's, well, non-governmental so doesn't really carry a national identity.

Personally I doubt that there's going to be much manned activity past LEO for at least 100 years, as there's no real need for it. There might be some "gestures" by the chinese, but there's no need for a permanent manned base, or manned expeditions - unless it's for reasons of prestige and few people are willing to pay for that any more.

Re:Takes the lead

[MacGyver2210]

the military space budget is at least the size of NASA's

As usual, a lot more than NASA's budget. $22.5 Billion as of 2006 (compared to NASA's $15.125 Billion), and increasing every year.

Why is it that the US always places killing people above all other goals? It's really wearing on my nerves and is about to drive me out of this violence-hungry shithole.

(Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget , http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/space/RL33601.pdf )

NASA forced to end the Shuttle Program

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2006, the decision was made to end the Shuttle program by 2010 and put focus on Orion. NASA Administrator Griffin was not in favor of ending the Shuttle, but he had no real choice. The politicians in Washington made the call and Griffin nodded in return.

The ambitious goal of Orion was to launch in 2014, four years after the end of the Shuttle. Technical hurdles, over-promises, political jostling, and financial limits put Orion far behind schedule and it was apparent that the project had to make major changes or be scrapped. NASA can get back on track, but not without necessary funding, which has been made much more difficult thanks to an expensive and ill-advised war, overspending by Democrats and Republicans, and an economic recession caused by greedy bankers and investors.

Sure, we can send a human to the moon again or to Mars, but just like the first moon program, people will pay attention for the first few flights, then lose interest. Americans are more interested in American Idol, reality TV, smartphones, and YouTube than they are about human space flight today.

p.s. Sorry about the mindless rant.

Re:NASA forced to end the Shuttle Program

[0123456]

In 2006, the decision was made to end the Shuttle program by 2010 and put focus on Orion.

I don't believe that's true. If I remember correctly, the committee said that the shuttle had to be recertified or stop flying and there was no requirement that it be followed by another pork-barrel program to keep shuttle contractors employed.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Midnight Thunder]

That is a little narrow minded, I believe. With this type of thinking there would never be the USA, since Columbus would never have got the funding to go and set sail.

The space program is part of government sponsored research, providing means to keep the country at the forefront of science and technology. It is also a long term goal, with short term returns at certain levels. It also provides a means of political influence.

While you could simply make a military program out of it, there are plenty of scientists which would not sign up if that was the focus. If we stop funding things like the space program then you risk giving other countries an advantage in the future.

We can't delegate all this to the private sector either, since some points of research would bankrupt a company before it even stands the chance of providing a return on investment.

How would you feel if Russia, China or the European Union were the first to land on Mars, while the USA has lagged back into a creationist backwater with little input into the future of mankind.

Re:USA: best science for the buck

[93 Escort Wagon]

i could care less if the US is seen as the "leader" in space exploration.

That would imply you do care about how the US is perceived. Looking at the context within the rest of your post, though... the correct phrase would've been "I couldn't care less".

Signed,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Grammar Nazi

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[SomePgmr]

To be fair to the other guy, he didn't say he supported the war[s] either.

Personally, I'd rather we allocated considerably more to NASA and perhaps more importantly, gave them a clear and consistent mission. It seems like our political machine changes its mind every few years about what NASA should be working on.

Build out Constellation and put us back on the moon. Why are we stuck using the shuttle for short jogs, decades later?
No, nevermind, that's getting expensive... use commercial options for manned flight, scrap that program and focus on research.
Hey, we should have a manned flight program, how else are we going to get to mars?

I can't help but wonder if the folks over there get a little peeved about starting and stopping programs on fleeting political whims. But maybe I've got it wrong and it just looks that way to the casual observer.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Midnight Thunder]

The percentage of tax revenue spent on NASA is pocket change when you consider what else takes the lion's share.

If you don't want to have your money spent on space or any other research for that matter, then I suggest you turn off you computer and any other technology you may have. Chances are government sponsored research helped contribute to the lifestyle you have today.

Space is what I would describe of itself 'indirect research', in that the technology that you and I benefit from was a result of something done in space research, even if that wasn't the initial intent.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[anagama]

There's anti-science out there, but there's also budget constraints. For example, we have important work to do blowing up people in the middle east and we can't afford to use drones to blow up innocents and advance science. So science has to go.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unimaginative is believing that only a government entity can invent things. The ROI on NASA is so low that no private enterprise would operate on their insanity. The majority of the money spent on NASA has nothing to do with R&D. I also challenge you to investigate the claims that all of those things you list are NASA inventions. I randomly selected two items, CNC machining and microprocessors, and the Wikipedia articles state nothing about NASA (and, in fact, the article on the microprocessor states that it was developed based on demand for calculators). Years ago I visited the museum at Intel's headquarters and I don't recall anything there about NASA. That's as far as I need to go to know that you are full of shit.

End of a disastrous era

[Baldrson]

The Shuttle program set back access to space and kept it from recovering. It's been a decades-long effort to get NASA out of the space transportation business but it may finally be happening due in no small part to the fact that NASA is perceived by the Obama administration, however inaccurately, as competing for minority preference civil service jobs.

Re:End of a disastrous era

[MacGyver2210]

That's absolutely false.

The shuttle may not have been optimal for space flight, but it was far from setting back access or progress with regards to space. The ISS missions alone provided countless invaluable insights into space habitation and docking, as well as microgravity physiological changes.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[DRJlaw]

Why does 'our nation' have to put a gun to my head and force me to fund the intellectual curiosity of others?

As republican as I tend to be, the "all money is fungible" meme needs to die a quick, very ugly death. The modern republican party needs to get its act together and stop with this nonsense -- I can and have voted for 'the lesser of two evils' where the lesser evil was a democrat and the greater idiot was an ultraconservative, evangelical zealot.

You are not forced to fund the intellectual curiosity of others. You are forced to pay taxes to a government which represents a pluralistic society that is reasonably evenly split politically, and quite fractured philosophically.

That government engages in compromise. Nobody get everything they want, some causes that you oppose get something because a good fraction of the population wants it, and some worthy causes get nothing because of insufficient support.

Grow up. Deal with it.

Why don't one of you smarmy assholes head over to Compton and take a poll on how many people in this part of 'the nation' give a flying fuck about landing on an asteroid.

Because Compton is not the entire nation. Why don't you head over to the Cape or Houston or Seattle and ask them? How big a group do you have to be to get a veto? How does anything get done if it only takes 15% of the population to veto something? Make that the standard, and I guarantee that the people of Compton won't be getting anything from the government either.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[0123456]

Space is what I would describe of itself 'indirect research', in that the technology that you and I benefit from was a result of something done in space research, even if that wasn't the initial intent.

If that's the only argument you can come up with for funding NASA then you're screwed, because you could have done those things far more cheaply by, you know, funding research into them and forgetting the whole space thing.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Z00L00K]

I have a feeling that the people in the middle east are doing a pretty good job themselves blowing each other up.

Obama didn't cancel the Shuttle, Bush did

[The Bad Astronomer]

Oh for Pete's sake. Obama did NOT cancel the Shuttle program, George W Bush did! Obama canceled Constellation, the rocket program to followup on the Shuttle, but he did so because it was overbudget and behind schedule. I have a long-ish article about this in the New York Post today. NASA has some serious problems right now, mostly due to lack of a strong vision and the ridiculous turf wars between the White House and Congress. Most of these problems aren't hard to solve in theory, but in practice, with the rabid partisonship going on right now? Hmph.

Re:Obama didn't cancel the Shuttle, Bush did

[Myopic]

Holy shit, Plait reads Slashdot? Wow, that's a real injection of relevance for this shady corner of the old Internet.

Re:Obama didn't cancel the Shuttle, Bush did

[JockTroll]

The real question should be, why does Plait waste time on the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is Slashdot? He should be careful.

Re:Obama didn't cancel the Shuttle, Bush did

[tsotha]

NASA has some serious problems right now, mostly due to lack of a strong vision and the ridiculous turf wars between the White House and Congress. Most of these problems aren't hard to solve in theory, but in practice, with the rabid partisonship going on right now? Hmph.

NASA's problems go far deeper than that, because it isn't a space agency. It's a jobs program. We needed to keep the STS to supply the space station. Why did we need the space station? Well, because without it there would have been nothing for STS to do. Are we doing anything useful up there? Sure, a tiny bit, but it's not even close to justifying the cost, and could anyway be done more cheaply with temporary unmanned labs. So why are we flying an expensive, antiquated craft to an expensive space station where there's not much to do? Because 20,000 jobs are involved in districts with powerful congressmen.

Manned space isn't exploration. The real exploration is done by machines even as manned space has taken larger and larger percentages of the overall NASA budget. There's a whole lot we don't know about the solar system, and every dollar spent on vanity projects is a dollar that could have been spent on something useful.

Re:Obama didn't cancel the Shuttle, Bush did

[DerekLyons]

NASA has some serious problems right now, mostly due to lack of a strong vision

NASA ISN'T SUPPOSED TO HAVE 'VISION'.
 
Yes, I'm shouting - because I'm good and G-d d-mmed tired of this bullshit about NASA's vision. NASA is an arm of the Executive Branch - it doesn't have 'vision', it carries out *policies*. And for forty years now, it's been largely benignly ignored except when an Administration needs some future technological triumph (a la Kennedy) to trumpet or Congress needs to siphon money to those who donated to their campaigns.

Re:Obama didn't cancel the Shuttle, Bush did

[oni]

Yes but people who *think* Obama canceled the shuttle say it was a great decision because they love Obama. Then you tell them that Bush canceled it so that they can go, "omfg bush is teh idiot!!"

> he did so because it was overbudget and behind schedule

How is this any different from any other rocket development program?

Tell me BA, how do you respond to the following hypothetical scenario: It's 1965 and President Johnson cancels the Apollo program. He does this because the Saturn V is over budget and behind schedule and has severe technological issues, include combustion instability, pogo, and the general unreliability of the J-2 engine. As a result, history remembers the Saturn V as a complete failure.

Do you not see that this has been the case with every large launcher ever developed? Everything seems like a failure if you give up on it. The fact is, there was nothing wrong with Constellation that would have prevented it from working just fine. The real underlying issue is entirely political. We all hate Bush, so we had to get rid of constellation. And I promise you, whatever Obama ends up supporting is going to be canceled by President Palin. Space X will have its funding pulled and will eventually die. You wont like that, because Obama is your guy. But then Palin will support some other private company and you'll invent an excuse to say it's no good. But don't worry, President Chelsea Clinton will cancel it - and you'll write a long-ish article about it the New York Post telling us all why that's the right decision.

Leadership in space

[Myopic]

Uh, America hasn't led in space since around the time I was in third grade, in the 80s. Sorry to burst your bubble NASA, but you've been irrelevant and anachronistic since the end of the Apollo program. America hasn't led in space since that time because nobody has led in space since that time.

If America wants to lead in space, it should remember: HUMANS ON OTHER WORLDS, OR NOTHING. Low-earth orbit doesn't count. Telescopes don't count. Robots on Mars, though cool, don't count.

Re:Leadership in space

[MacGyver2210]

Lol, Troll.

I would like to have seen the ISS constructed without the Shuttle. I would like to see any major space-related progress that NASA and/or the shuttle didn't play a part in since the 80s.

The fact is, there isn't one.

Re:Leadership in space

[taxman_10m]

Why don't robots count?

Re:Leadership in space

[dkf]

America hasn't led in space since around the time I was in third grade, in the 80s.

America's doing fine with leading in space, provided you're satisfied with robots of one kind or another. There's been some truly wonderful scientific work done over the past 30 years, both in Earth orbit and further away, and America's absolutely been leading that.

What there hasn't been is much about anything to do with putting people anywhere beyond LEO, and what we've learned there has been mostly that space is a hostile place to be. In particular, the radiation levels mean that it is critical that better robotics and propulsion systems be developed, so that you can build bases on other worlds before people get there, and so that you can get people there and back faster. Either that or we need a way to launch mass much more cheaply so that we can put up adequate shielding, but the only vaguely practical solution (i.e., that doesn't involve significantly new technology or science) to date there has been Orion, which is shelved for all sorts of reasons.

Crack those three problems (robotic base building, better in-space propulsion and a way to put plenty of mass in space) and manned exploration will happen, as pretty much all other problems can be tackled by a combination of having more mass, going faster, or having things set up before you arrive. (For example, the problems of microgravity can be dealt with by spinning the ship provided you have enough mass for strength, and by keeping the in-space parts of missions short.) Alas, they're the hard ones. Robotics is getting close to being able to tackle the base-building challenge, provided you can get the mass there; it's come on hugely in the past 30 years. There's also hope on the propulsion front. Getting the mass up without bankrupting us? That's still hard.

Re:Leadership in space

[0123456]

I would like to have seen the ISS constructed without the Shuttle.

The ISS is a huge boondoggle which was built to give the shuttle boondoggle something to do after it turned out to be too dangerous and expensive to use for launching satellites.

Re:Leadership in space

[TheDarkMaster]

Because robots are limited. With current technology, they can not overcome obstacles that any ordinary person could. Imagine the Spirit rover climbing an irregular stone stairs or a steep rock. A robot may not have decision-making capacity to protect himself against unforeseen risks in time, nor do they have in particular the ability to improvise of the human being, which is vital in a new and hostile environment. And finally, we cannot fully learn how to leave our home (the Earth) to colonize new worlds only sending robots. Of course, one could invest more money to make robots more capable, but the U.S. government prefers to fill the belly of the bankers than investing in exploring space.

Re:Leadership in space

[currently_awake]

An updated saturn 5 could have built the ISS cheaper, faster, safer. Manned space flight is a waste of resources that should be spent on exploration and science.

Re:Leadership in space

[currently_awake]

Robots are only good for science. Manned spaceflight is good for pork barrel politics. If congress can't count the pork then it doesn't count.

Re:Leadership in space

[Myopic]

I would like to see any major space-related progress that NASA and/or the shuttle didn't play a part in since the 80s.

I'm saying there wasn't any major space-related progress since the 80s. All there was, was minor space-related progress.

I want human feet walking on asteroids, planets, and moons -- or save the money for other endeavors.

Re:Leadership in space

[Myopic]

Well, basically because I'm not a robot. It's an emotional argument.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Smallpond]

Besides, what does NASA do for me anyway? Why does 'our nation' have to put a gun to my head and force me to fund the intellectual curiosity of others?

"NASA, and the nation, wants to touch an asteroid." I can think of at least 9.1-15.8% of 'the nation' that would prefer we spend that money some place else, like productive jobs that contribute to reality.

Why don't one of you smarmy assholes head over to Compton and take a poll on how many people in this part of 'the nation' give a flying fuck about landing on an asteroid.

Yeah. Too bad they just dig a hole and bury that money instead of spending it on US companies that hire people.

I'd say manned space program is what is wrng w USA

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a nice PBS program called "The Astrospies". It reveals that a major purpose of the manned space program was to operate space stations to take pictures of enemy nations, much like the U-2 spy plane. By the late sixties, unmanned spy satellites were comparable to manned spy satellites. The manned space program then received major cuts. The use of manned spy satellites was classified in the US of course for a long time, and I bet major parts are still classified.

In the early 90s, Congress was ready to kill the fledgling space station, but thanks to lobbying and spreading out of pork, it lived. The Clinton administration tried to use it as an international relations ploy. $100 billion later, not much science has been done. What science will ever be done on the ISS?

The American public still doesn't know the original purpose of putting people into outer space, but the ISS and Shuttle consume more than half of NASA's budget. Would the average American notice if they disappeared? Does the average American even care about space science? The 40 meter European optical telescope is expected to cost $1.5 billion. How big of a telescope could $100 billion buy?

If the purpose of the manned space program is colonization, why didn't NASA build something like Biosphere 2 for experimentation? Why isn't NASA using Biosphere 2 more aggressively? How much will it cost to build buildings for growing food in outer space? People on Earth have a hard time affording housing. What makes you think they will be able to afford the much more expensive Mars and Lunar counterpart?

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[pubwvj]

Actually, a tremendous amount of good and consumer goods, have come out of NASA research. Projects that NASA has funded, both public and private, have resulted in pushing forward sciences. Like your cellphone, MP3 player, television, etc? Thank NASA and our mighty military which "wastes" so much on research. That "waste" comes back as great rewards that just aren't recognized immediately.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[queazocotal]

This list seems at best dubious in many aspects.
MRI, for example, was an outgrowth of magnetic resonance studies on chemicals that had been going on for a long time, which was invented in england in the university of Nottingham.

I'd like to know how NASA influenced velcro - which was patented in 1948 in switzerland.
Thermal gloves and boots - what? I think you'll find the Eskimo (inuit) got there first.

The incas did freeze drying naturally hundreds of years ago, and freeze dried coffee was available around WWII.
Disposable diapers have a long history, and were around well before the 60s.

Kidney dialysis was done in WWII.

These are just some examples that jumped out at me as unlikely.

Embrace, Innovate, Outsource

[VortexCortex]

Nations loose technical capabilities because those capabilities depend upon the people behind them.

It's not really that big of a deal. We can just outsource those capability requiring positions to India or China.

Hint: Telemarketing, Tech Support, and now IT has never been stronger in the US. A friend of mine works in the Mortgage industry, her company is owned by an Indian company and much of the paper work is outsourced overseas. Just look how well the Mortgage industry is doing...

Manufacturing jobs only provide lower income positions -- It's not like we can't manufacture our own goods any more; It's not like we have a shortage of work or an abundance of unemployed folks. High Tech jobs are the same, just because we won't have a government funded manned space program doesn't mean our government won't be able to fund manned space programs...

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[cavreader]

You were dropped on your head when you were a baby weren't you? Blaming creationists for turning the country away from technology advancement is BS. If this was true we would not have any technology right now. Creationism is not a new idea and was much more prevalent and politically pandered to in the past. The main impetus for technology advancement is and always will be for the foreseeable future the military. The US has the new vehicle (X37) capable of reaching orbit, maneuvering, and landing. From a military standpoint having the capability to destroy or commandeer other countries satellites or create orbital kinetic weapons is fantastic. If it appears any other country would gain these capabilities before the US you can expect the government to increase more than enough funding and support.

Cheap shot at Obama Administration

[Required Snark]

A group of former astronauts and other critics have blasted the agency and the Obama administration for ending the 30-year-old shuttle program,

So the Obama administration was in charge when the program ended. He's been in office the last three years of a thirty year program. Is it credible to blame it all on him? Of course not.

These programs have huge momentum. They take a long time to ramp up and to ramp down. Years. If the Bush administration had enabled a meaningful strategy then the future at NASA, including manned missions, would be well defined. They are responsible for the lack of a clear path for US manned space flight.

It's not really surprising, given the Bush track record. The Wall St. meltdown, the failed Katrina response, the invasion of Iraq. Leaving NASA in the lurch is small potatoes compared to the big time screw ups. Still, they were consistent in screwing up everything they touched.

Re:Cheap shot at Obama Administration

[hovelander]

I've been hearing this argument lately and don't agree with the sentiment. Being blind or blase about how 1 President crushed his own country with 8 years of record setting spending is not a cliche. It is a tragedy that will unfold over generations.

America seems quite practiced at continually taking it up the money hole and then blaming the wrong people.

Re:Not the end of HUMAN spaceflight...just AMERICA

[MacGyver2210]

You say "NASA monopoly" like there were any valid other options out there for the US. Sorry, but SpaceX's Dragon rocket is not going to be the end-all be-all answer to the US's space needs. It's a moderately-capable lifting rocket, but under no circumstances does it have, say, what is required to go to the moon, or mars, or anywhere but around our rock.

Exploration implies that we will be going SOMEWHERE else in the future, which this contingency does not allow for as it stands.

Re:Not having a Nasa rocket != not having a US roc

[MacGyver2210]

"Why MUST it be a NASA developed rocket?"

Because NASA is the only group who has gotten it right so far. I don't see an ESA shuttle, or a JAXA shuttle...I don't see their own independent space stations.

The fact is, the WORLD came to NASA for the ISS project, because they knew what they were doing. This hasn't changed. NASA still has far more experience and information about space travel than ANYONE else in the world.

The worry for me is that if they just shut down, as they're doing, they will lag behind and others will garner superior knowledge and technology in the area of space travel. We will then be subject to whatever prices and political bullshit they want to pull in order to 'use' their technology. I really hope Vatican City never develops a space program, or we're all fucked.

Re:Not the end of HUMAN spaceflight...just AMERICA

[0123456]

You say "NASA monopoly" like there were any valid other options out there for the US. Sorry, but SpaceX's Dragon rocket is not going to be the end-all be-all answer to the US's space needs. It's a moderately-capable lifting rocket, but under no circumstances does it have, say, what is required to go to the moon, or mars, or anywhere but around our rock.

You can easily build a long-range spacecraft from components that can be launched on a Falcon-9, and it's just about capable of putting a Dragon capsule on a free-return lunar flyby trajectory if you want an exciting vacation. The Heavy variety could do a lot more.

The idea that you can't go anywhere other than Earth orbit unless you have a Saturn-V is just silly.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[0123456]

Projects that NASA has funded, both public and private, have resulted in pushing forward sciences. Like your cellphone, MP3 player, television, etc?

This must be one of the silliest posts I've ever seen here on Slashdot. You're seriously claiming that we wouldn't have cellphones and MP3 players if not for NASA?

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[damburger]

Are you saying that if a person is poor/black, they can't possibly be interested in space travel?

Per Aspera Ad Astra

[strangedays]

NASA has done a great job, they got us all to this point.
Now, NASA's strategy and role needs to change, their funding must change, it's way overdue, they know it, we know it.

To their great credit, they are doing it, they are adapting and embracing the change; it's hard for them, an era is ending.

Space is big, the opportunities are literally infinite, but science budgets are always way too small, efficiency matters.

So we cut the well known tech and commercially viable elements loose from the taxpayers dollar.

Let whatever NASA morphs into, fund and guide the basic research and science, spend more on that, less on vehicles.
That's the stuff NASA does well, the right stuff, basic research, initial exploration, the stuff that shareholders and businessmen looking at next quarters results typically do poorly.

NASA exploration vehicles and science packages can buy rides on whatever commercial launchers they need, at the going rate.
We buy planes and ships, trains and trucks from commercial vendors, shipyards, and aviation companies, so whats different?

Clear out the cold war, legacy buck rogers, pointy spaceship with fins thinking, and move onto real space-drives, profitable commercialization and real sustainable colonization.

As for the shuttle.... well I am as jingoistic as the next fella, I admire their bravery just getting into the thing (i think i would be terrified, but i'd also go...)
However... continually launching the mass of 7 people crammed into a vehicle that has twice failed, killing the entire crew...

Empirically, it seems obvious that the efficient way to do successful science in space is, small fast vehicles, robotics and AI's; humans should only boldly go... when their is a proven and compelling reason to do so, and little expectation of them making it back alive if anything fails.
Spirit and Opportunity did more, for far less, for far longer... than any human crew could likely have done.

That's the kind of research I want my tax-money to fund. Efficient hard science.

So lets figure out how to mine and move asteroids, survive indefinitely in deep space, harvest the oort cloud, build CHON Food factories, go where the resources are available, easy pickings...

If we want to get off this unguided mud-ball, we must adapt to new strategies as necessary, however hard they may be.

http://youtu.be/zxsJeND_D-k

Dear former colonials...

[damburger]

If you hang on a few years, we might have something for you:

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/skylon.html

Its a unique vehicle, not only for running on air breathing rockets (currently being tested; I'm sure slashdot will carry the story when the results are out) but also because the people who want to build it have no intention of operating it - they will sell it freely to any operator. NASA could easily buy a couple and run them from the US.

Re:Dear former colonials...

[rubycodez]

why does anyone need to be called "former colonists" if the future is relying on private systems such as the one you linked? Maybe if mankind were more focused on common goals like space exploration and developing technologies to do it right (e.g. fusion power, recycling, mining asteroids and moon) instead of wars and "patriotism" (religion whereby one group of humans believes itself superior to others) the earth would be better place

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Lanteran]

I oppose a position that someone else takes- that means I oppose positions and free speech? Interesting....

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[melikamp]

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.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[zippthorne]

I do believe that you are wrong. How much money or time have you donated to NASA? For most americans, the answer is, "none." Have you even bought any swag at the gift shop?

What kind of support do you give? Blog posts don't pay for an engineer's kids braces.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[zippthorne]

The problem is the trap you've fallen into. Once we don't need to pay for the wars, taxes should go down (or at least borrowing should go down. But inflation is a kind of tax...). Each item in the budget should stand on it's own, not as a way of padding the baseline budgeting.

Wrong question

[macraig]

CAN the United States "lead" in space exploration? Certainly... but that's the wrong question, not the one to be asking. The useful question is: does the United States WANT to lead in space exploration? It doesn't matter what some bureaucrat or politician proclaims; what do the office clerks and farm hands and factory workers and service industry people think? Do THEY want to colonize Mars or the Moon or even L-5? Do THEY anticipate the benefits or necessity of doing so?

Further, there's that whole sickening competition thing again. How about we evolve the confidence to fully cooperate in exploring space, rather than once again setting the ultimate goals as dominance and some form of monopoly?

I wonder... what was it about the fictional Borg that so terrified people? Was it really the whole assimilation thing, or was it perhaps their ability to operate in perfect unison and harmony like a colony of ants? We could learn something useful from both.

Naive opinion

[Iron (III) Chloride]

This is just my naive opinion as a biologist rather than say, an aeronautical engineer, but it would seem to me that the role of government is to sponsor and conduct high-risk, high-reward research that has little or no probability of foreseeable commercial payoff while the role of corporations is to sponsor and conduct research that has been sufficient well-established in such a way so as to commercialize it for the general public and to reduce its cost to a minimum? (And yes, I consider space exploration to be a form of research.) We've been doing loops around the Earth for about five decades now, so don't you think that low Earth orbit is sufficiently well understood for it to be outsourced to the private sector, while NASA focuses on loftier goals?

I realize I may be drastically oversimplifying the issue, but it seems to me that NASA is on the right track. Wouldn't American space exploration stagnate if we continue to fixate on the space shuttle (whose success has not been entirely unequivocal, imho)? Just my two cents.

Good riddance...!

[theNAM666]

NASA has been a bloated government bureaucracy standing in the way of progress a half-century.

When did Goddard want to make it to Saturn? The 1970s! And we could have -- maybe if Goddard had lived, he would have pushed the US forward.

As it is, the US focused on a very narrow set of launch engine technologies-- essentially, nothing changed in engine design from Goddard's death until the mid-90s.

The shuttle, like everything else at NASA, was just squeezing these designs into new form-- not doing anything new. What do you expect from a government bureaucracy? It rewards mediocrity!

Now that NASA's big mouth is out of the way and not eating up all available resources, and there are other players out there, humanity may actually make it somewhere.

But all this concern about the "loss" is utter crud. What has NASA actually done? Engage in a political showmanship trip to the moon-- a half-century ago? I'm sure it played well to jingoist audiences back in the States, but big deal.

Re:Good riddance...!

[rubycodez]

Rocket science not your thing? Goddard's highest and fastest rocket went to 1.6 miles at 550 MPH. The aerodynamic issues alone took a couple decades beyond his knowledge to solve. Then there were solid fuel rockets in the 70s and beyond, and ion and plasma and sail drives.......plenty of progress and development which is still ongoing.

Re:Good riddance...!

[theNAM666]

History of flight not your thing?

Goddard is the father of spaceflight for a reason. I won't explain it to you-- go read his patents, then read the interviews of the captured members of von Braun's team members when they were captured, and then look at the posthumous patents Goddard's wife published.

The US destroyed progress in rocket science after WWII, by making the international co-operation that drove it into treason, and then sending their resources down the terrible path dependency of massive rocket/engine design.

Centralized idiocracy-- only the Soviets could beat the US at that.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[anagama]

Right -- so we have to spend our money helping them accomplish that because why?

Re:Not having a Nasa rocket != not having a US roc

[ch0knuti]

Because NASA is the only group who has gotten it right so far. I don't see an ESA shuttle, or a JAXA shuttle...I don't see their own independent space stations.

Interesting point of view. So the Soviet/Russian space achievements are just written off or are they also a part of NASA ;) . Just a reminder it was just 50 years ago the Yuri Gagarin completed his first orbit. (April 1961)

Yes

[Wyatt Earp]

NASA isn't just about space and the US is developing a lot more commercial space ventures than the rest of the world put together.

The US has more earth sensing satellites, space probes, commercial communication, government communication and scientific satellites up there and more in development than the rest of the world.

The US has more deep space probes out and more in development than anyone else.

The Russians can do one thing well, launch to LEO, the Europeans can launch to LEO well, the Chinese, Indians, Japanese are just getting the hang of reliably LEO payloads. The Russians, Indians, Chinese and Japanese have all these plans for the Moon, meanwhile the US sends probes to the Moon, is getting ready for a lander/rover on Mars, another mission to Jupiter, has a mission at Saturn, has a mission at Mercury, has a mission going to Pluto, is working on a mission to Titan.

Even with the retirement of Shuttle, the US is still being more active in space for the next 10 years than the US was from '72-81.

Re:Yes

[shutdown -p now]

The Russians, Indians, Chinese and Japanese have all these plans for the Moon, meanwhile the US sends probes to the Moon, is getting ready for a lander/rover on Mars

Just to remind you, the first operational rover was Soviet Lunokhod-1, and they had some other nifty stuff (such as Venus probes). Soviet/Russian space programme folded earlier than US one because of economic collapse, but aside from that, their plans today - also like US - are to a large part rehashing of what's already been done.

Re:Yes

[Wyatt Earp]

If you've not seen it, try and find Tanks on the Moon, it's all about the Soviet rover program.

http://science.discovery.com/tv/tank/tank.html

Ignoramous

[Baldrson]

The Shuttle payload was 23,000kg to LEO and by NASA's own estimate, that 23,000kg to LEO cost $(2011)450billion.

Ignoring the entirely rational argument that a private launch service industry, without fear of government-subsidized competition supported against bankruptcy by fear of political embarrassment and loss of special interest votes, would follow a normal industrial learning curve: We here speak merely of the government launch capability was at the end of the Apollo program:

The Saturn V payload was 120,000kg to LEO and, again, by NASA's own estimate, that 120,000kg to LEO cost $(2011)1.11billion ($(1969)185billion).

Doing the math for you, just in case you are stupid as well as ignorant:

• $19k/kg to LEO for the Shuttle in 2011
• $9k/kg to LEO for the Saturn V in 1969

Re:Ignoramous

[camperdave]

And what happens when you convert $9k/kg from 1969 dollars into 2011 dollars. It turns into $53k/kg. In other words, the shuttle is cheaper to run.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[countertrolling]

While Obama does the same for the republicans :-) Tag team politics is putting us all into the poor house

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[countertrolling]

I didn't know the ancient Romans had a space program...

No, but it can lead in Bitcoin development

[turkeyfeathers]

Why waste R&D funding flying to the moon, when you can develop an alternate currency here on earth.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Lanteran]

Depressingly, yes, at least 10-30% of the people I know are highly religious to the point of young earth creationism (though the actual percentage is probably much higher as I usually avoid the religious nuts). As for the space program, hopefully china will replace the USSR as far as a political contest in space goes, or private companies will take over and prices will be low, but I doubt either of those is going to happen. As is, in a few decades china might have a soaring space program while the US is in crushing debt.

countertrolling & the trolltalk.com crew

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheat the moderation system - here's where countertrolling explains what he's doing while he trolls others (to his fellow trolltalk.com friends) to downmod them via his registered account, logout, & ac stalk, harass, and troll them:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2245866&cid=36491652

Here's where countertrolling's "troll mechanics" for downmodding others is explained in detail by someone that got sick of it happening:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2271908&cid=36579618

As far as bogus up moderations, the trolltalk.com bunch (tomhudson, countertrolling, & others) collectively "team up" to upmod one another, in teams, as favors to one another.

(Talk about low, and bogus!)

---

In fact, here's what countertrolling says about it, why he does it, and to all of us here:

"What the skiddies here don't understand is that I don't give a shit about dumbass 'karma' on the internet.. I'm here for the jollies with nothing to lose or fight for.. watching them destroy their world.. They can go absolutely nuts as far as I'm concerned.. It's nothing but pure entertainment (and data points) for me and mine... Tragicomedy is probably the best word I can think of to describe it" - by countertrolling (1585477) on Thursday June 30, @10:26AM (#36622502) Journal

QUOTED VERBATIM FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2281808&cid=36622502

Sounds like a sick individual to me.

(Don't get lured into their journals either. That's their main goal along with getting these data points that way. Just ignore them and they will be powerless before you know it (no mod points)).

Re:countertrolling & the trolltalk.com crew

[jon_doh2.0]

Leave, troll.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[whereiswaldo]

Another thing is, once you have all this infrastructure in place to upkeep roads, military, etc... it is extremely disruptive to the economy to make sweeping changes. Imagine cutting road budgets in 1/2, military budgets in 1/2, and watch the economy fall and unemployment rise. Look at how "too big to fail" industry gets propped up with bailouts, and even protection against fair competition.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Lanteran]

Er- I support NASA, but I think you seem very misinformed about them, and the advancement of certain electronic technologies in particular.Television was available, albeit expensive, in one form or another since before the great depression, 30+ years before nasa was even formed. MP3 technology was created by a private company, as were cellphones which were initially developed in the conventional military (world war two bag/case radios and stuff). I would have picked more basic and credible technologies, miniaturized electronics, heavily ruggedized electronics, better computers in general, and I'm thinking that the apollo guidance computer was one of the first few using transistor based integrated circuits instead of the then normal vacuum tubes, so you can thank them for that too. Basically if not for NASA, many of our computer products might have been stunted in development, non-portable and fragile as they were in the 60's and 70's, today, but don't credit them with something they had no involvement in, e.g. MP3 players.

No.

[hackus]

For the simple reason, human presence defines empires and civilization and freedom and tyranny.

You can't flee disaster whether it be man made or nature made with robots.

The single driving goal should be manned colonization of space, and building the science and technology to make it happen.

If you really are a proponent of man made global warming, you wouldn't be wasting time like Al Gore and his billionaire pals proclaiming we have to pay taxes to him and his pals or Man Made global warming will doom the planet.

You also wouldn't be meeting in secret places like Bill Gates does to discuss how we can kill off 2/3rd's of the "useless eaters" because it is just too hard to put 6 billion people under your thumb to rule them.

If anyone is serious about what are future is, what we are and actually believe in the future of humanity in a compassionate way, we would have given 27 trillion dollars to start a new era or Golden Age of space exploration to tap the limitless materials and energy which space holds.

Instead, we decided to give it to a bunch of bankers.

Humanity is running out of chances and missed opportunities. Time and time again throughout history, we have had civilizations rise to our level and beyond and we have squandered the chance to remove the tyranny and injustice which plague our world. Instead, a handful of people end up torching the entire surface of the globe into lifeless soot, or just end up burning libraries because the fire looks "glorious" as entire human lifetimes are wasted in pursuit of knowledge.

Only to end up getting burned and having to be "rediscovered" all over again.....well....in between centuries or eons dark ages at least.

I doubt the Universe or God or whatever you believe in is going to let this nonsense go on indefinitely. The next Dark Age may find us in a bit of a disadvantage when we sit around the fire in the grass hut village and the elders talk about a time when men flew in the skies and walked like Gods on the moon.

Or when Men hurled "thunderbolts charged with the energy of the universe" and obliterated whole countries in a single hour.

And what will children say when they look at the sky at night and point out to the elders the new star?

Will they know that the new star up in the sky that night they notice spells DOOM for the human species as a rock 23km in diameter heads for Asia and wipes out anything larger than a mouse on the surface.

Too bad too. Because we have had many attempts to get off and stay off this planet and they have all been squandered by a few very foolish people who always tend to get in the way.

-Hackus

Re:No.

[TheDarkMaster]

I wish I had mod points. Because the above is the best comment I saw on the question.

Re:No.

[lennier]

First huge step, fusion power. If we have that, we have interstellar space flight.

No, we really don't. We already have "interstellar space flight" with chemical rockets in the sense that the Voyager probes are leaving Sol System... they'll eventually get to another star, it will just take a really long time (50,000 years I think at last count, if they were aimed correctly?) Fusion rockets will also take a really long time that's not appreciably shorter when compared with human lifespans.

What most people think of as "interstellar space flight" is "travel to another star within at least 70 years subjective time so I'm still alive when I get there", and while if you went at a high fraction of C you might be able to get to the next star over in 10 years or, the amount of energy needed to do that would be ridiculous. I don't think even fusion would cut it. Antimatter annihilation, maybe - assuming you have some kind of solar-powered antimatter production station, and good luck siting one of those in anyone's back yard.

Though I'd be really interested to see the results of a real test of the Twin Paradox when someone finally builds a high-C interstellar probe. I haven't found many theoretically coherent textbook resolutions of the paradox, and there are a lot of different incompatible approaches. (Ie, is it the spaceship or NASA who stop aging? A naive reading of SR would say "both and neither, because they're both moving relative to each other."; this is usually handwaved away by saying that acceleration changes things, or that a velocity vector in an opposite direction should have the opposite effect on time dilation, but neither of these approaches seem entirely clear.)

Re:No.

[Teancum]

In all seriousness, do you really believe that mankind should never even try to reach out and attempt to go into space at all, or are you merely against spending your hard-earned tax dollars towards that goal?

I can understand an objection to having me force you at gunpoint to support my dreams for such nonsense if you don't like the idea, but I do have problems with people who are telling me that I can't dream and stretch my imagination to attempt such an endeavor on my own dime. I do think that mankind can and should get at least off of this planet to expand our horizons.

As far as the habitability of places off of the Earth, I can think of some rather inhospitable places where in the past entire cities died out to the last person due to being ill prepared to cope with the environment at that location. Surprisingly, cities like Los Angeles have millions of people now living in such a place that earlier generations couldn't make support even a village of just a couple hundred people.

In terms of planetary-scale disasters, about the worst is a massive meteor impact. We know such events happened in the past and that mass extinctions took place as a result of those events. Super volcanoes like having Yellowstone erupt certainly can cause planetary-scale disasters too that can certainly cause millions or even billions of people to die and make life very miserable for any survivor. Having the Sun go supernova is not the only significant disaster to worry about. If you are worried about the supernova thing, I'd be more worried about a start like Sirius going hypernova (a much more realistic event) or even Betelgeuse going super nova. If Sirius went hypernova, life in the solar system and even anything near most nearby stars would simply cease to exist so even interstellar spaceflight might not be sufficient to cope with the consequence. If a cluster of stars the size of Sirius fell into the galactic black hole, it could be a galactic event that would kill you no matter where you went at least within the Milky Way. For the paranoid, there is far worse that could happen that you couldn't really outrun, but then again we can conjecture that such events are quite rare as we still exist.

As for FTL travel, the one physical science theory that might permit such travel is the Alcubierre drive that at least offers the potential for such a spacecraft. There are some hard limits to its use and causality may still be an issue to cope with along with other problems that result from such a device. Still, it at least offers a glimmer of hope that perhaps something could be devised to get past the luminal speed limit.

Re:No.

[rubycodez]

A fusion ship of a size within the realm of reality can reach 10% of the speed of light or more. That gets transit time within the human lifespan to near stars.

Re:No.

[rubycodez]

There aren't any elements that undergo fusion? There aren't needed elements for civilization in asteroids or on the moon? There are not new propulsion systems besides chemical rockets being used for space exploration right now? There are not useful devices in space being used for communication?

You are ignorant with neither understanding of engineering nor imagination, no wonder you post AC

Re:No.

[rubycodez]

also, time dilation for moving object in the "Twin Paradox" is already proven with atomic clock pairs, one of them carried on airplane. It is not in any way an unproven or untested assertion, it is a reality.

Re:No.

[TheDarkMaster]

Well, to understand you need to put down the reality distortion googles® and do a reality check. Oh, Wait! You are a north-american? Well... Sorry, good luck for you.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Lanteran]

Blame the MSM for that, most americans I know are pitifully misinformed.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Lanteran]

Well, I generally prefer to vote for those in favor of extending NASA's budget, but in reality, I haven't donated much besides my vote. After I've got the necessary education, though, I'd like to work there assuming it's still relevant to space travel.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Lanteran]

If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably due to NASA project arcs and development cycles being longer than the usual politician's, and certainly president's, stay in office. Everyone has their own opinions about what NASA should do, and they get funding accordingly.

Bill Hicks

[Forty Two Tenfold]

Had something to say.

Re:Space exploration

[0123456]

A robotic craft to Mars could do so much more than a human could

Humans could do more in a week on Mars than the Mars Rovers have in years. Of course they'd cost far more, so you could probably launch a hundred rovers to a hundred different locations for the same price.

Cave dwellers

[Runaway1956]

I posted just above - but the whole shuttle idea is a distraction. The shuttle should have been a subordinate project to the real goal of putting mankind into deep space, and onto other planets, and into some kind of space habitat. The shuttle is only a support mechanism for serious space exploration. NASA, Washington, and the United States forgot what space exploration is all about when they got hung up on a shuttle program.

Low earth orbit is not space. Geosynchronous orbit isn't space. Real space doesn't begin until you're about 3/4 of the way to the moon, where the gravity of another body begins to influence you almost as much as earth's gravity.

Look at it like a well. Here, we are at the bottom of a huge gravity well - let's say it's a 1000 foot deep well. We've climbed up the sides of the well several times, to an elevation of maybe 400 to 600 feet. We see more and more light, the closer we get to the top of the well, but we always stop short of the top. We never climb out of the well, and start exploring. Only a couple times have we actually sent men to stand just at the top of the well - then like frightened cave dwellers, we brought them back down to the bottom.

Frigging cave men. Maybe mankind really are a bunch of bottom feeders.

Re:Cave dwellers

[hairyfeet]

The problem with your idea is this: Our engines suck the big wet titty. What you are proposing is trying to drive to the top of Everest with a Model A-sure theoretically it could do it, but it wouldn't be safe, or fast, or even practical.

So until we can come with something better than the equivalent of tying a giant bottle rocket to our asses going past the moon simply isn't practical. Now I would be more than happy to support research into those new motors, especially if at the same time we ended the 3 wars we have going and quit building aircraft carriers and new super jets like we have WWIII planned for next Tuesday, but so far we just haven't found anything that makes going to other planets and back, even to Mars, anywhere near a reality. You just have to haul too much for too long because we are so slow.

Re:Cave dwellers

[Runaway1956]

Granted, our engines suck. But, using that Model A as an example - when, and how did we improve on those engines? We used what we had, and implemented small, minor improvements along the way. Fuel delivery and fuel pressure on one hand, and oxygen supply on another hand, exhaust was another issue, better timing, overall balance of the engine's moving parts - one problem solved at a time, then solved again for even better improvements. How old is the gasoline engine now? 120 years? And, how many billions of miles have they been driven?

Constant use, with millions of people thinking about and playing with those engines, striving for better performance, and better fuel mileage has gotten us where we are today.

Re:Cave dwellers

[Maury Markowitz]

> NASA, Washington, and the United States forgot what space exploration
> is all about when they got hung up on a shuttle program.

No, only NASA. As "The Space Shuttle Decision" illustrates in tedious but deep detail, NASA's internal bureaucracy created the monster of the Shuttle by relentlessly eating up every other good idea that came along. Inputs included:

1) the astronaut corp's demand-on-the-verge-of-striking that the craft absolutely not be able to fly without a human onboard

2) in-fighting between the old and new design bureaux, notably between Faget and the mainline shuttle teams at MFC and the groups at Huntsville and Langley.

3) the AF's demands for landing-once-around (which demanded 650 mile cross-range) and the launch capacity for a hypothetical 40,000 lb spy sat (Onyx?)

4) the Mathematica report that said an AF-type shuttle would only work at high launch rates

5) the OMB's demands that year-to-year development costs be held low

So basically, given these inputs, it was impossible the Shuttle would ever be useful. If you want to understand why, go google up "Chrysler SERV", which met and exceeded all of the requirements but had only 150 miles cross-range, or the North American DC-3, which was completely reusable but had a "stalled spin" re-entry mode that the AF refused to consider. It's all very sad.

Re:Cave dwellers

[Teancum]

One thing that was painfully obvious when NASA started to look at alternative architectures to the capsule on an ICBM was that spaceflight simply had to get cheaper. The Apollo program was bleeding America dry and was really not sustainable in terms of cheaply and efficiently sending people to space. The Space Shuttle was sold to Congress and to the American people as something which would eventually bring the price of spaceflight down to the level that ordinary people might be able to go into space. That is one of the reasons for the "Teacher in Space" program, where NASA also wanted to send up poets, songwriters, and even managed to send a couple of senators into space on junkets.

Sadly, if that ever really could have been said was a design goal for the Shuttle program, it failed miserably on that point. The technology to be able to get into space for far less cost has been available for some time. It should be noted that the cost of the catering services to the press corps alone for this upcoming Shuttle launch is going to be more than the price of the fuel needed to send the Space Shuttle into orbit. It isn't the issue of fuel efficiency, but of simply throwing away most of the spacecraft each time it flies and the huge standing army that is needed to keep it going for just another flight.

In this sense I strongly disagree with your notion that the problem was strictly getting beyond LEO, but rather that nobody can afford to "get up there" in the first place. Once in LEO, you are literally half-way to the rest of the solar system (to paraphrase Robert Heinlein). The trick is to get up there with a spacecraft that has enough fuel and that the spacecraft can be built & refueled cheap enough so that you can afford a trip to Mars, Jupiter, or wherever else you care to go.

Once people get into space in significant numbers (even if just in LEO), I assert that it will take deliberate action on the part of the world's governments to keep humanity from spreading out and even engaging in permanent settlements throughout the solar system and beyond. By deliberate action, I'm talking governments using weapons and killing people in space if they stray from the "authorized" routes. There certainly will be a role for government employees to be leading major voyages of exploration, but the real key is to make it cheap and reliable in terms of getting into space in any form at all. Once that happens, the rest will happen on its own.

Sadly, making spaceflight affordable is not a current goal for NASA, where the next generation of spacecraft are going to be even more expensive than the Shuttle program, as awful as that has been in terms of cutting costs.

Re:Not having a Nasa rocket != not having a US roc

[Nyeerrmm]

The shuttle was designed and built in the 1970s. NASA (or more precisely the STS model of one vehicle to rule them all with politicians at the helm) has consistently failed to develop a replacement vehicle in the 40 years since then.

Time to try something new.

Re:Human space flight is one part of space explora

[bananaquackmoo]

While I can't speak for the robots, as a HUMAN, I want to go to another planet. I don't care about the knowledge the robots return, I care about how much longer until I can live on mars, the moon, or somewhere else.

haha, usolvable poverty problem

[rubycodez]

Both parties in our government are creating poverty by sucking away wealth to line the mega-corporate pocket, including a profitable prison system and laws to fill it (this would include fighting both sides of "the war on drugs" with the growing, guarding and selling narcotics to help fuel it).

Re:Who needs the universe?

[rubycodez]

I would argue the USA is a continuation of the Roman Empire, seat of power just moved to Washington D.C. (thank you Frank Herbert for pointing that out)

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[no-body]

US folks need to get off their obsession to be leaders or trying to dominate other's - openly or hidden.
It's not perceived well by members of other nations - openly or hidden.
There is absolutely no accomplishment performed by being born in a certain location or with a certain ancestry and anyone taking this as something s/he can take credit for is just fooling themselves.

Your Q: "How would you feel if Russia, China or the European Union were the first to land on Mars"

If it's a useful undertaking (if it can be done at all) and not only a show-off carrot of politicians to mollify people and distract from needed issues, I could congratulate them.

Things are not going too great lately - globally - and putting a new carrot up front may motivate the donkey to move on and not rebel.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[SomeKDEUser]

See, this is wrong. "the gubmint is always less efficient" is an inane opinion. Basically because the government is run not-for-profit, so it only need to be more efficient than a corporation with no margins, and no marketing. Also in many cases that lead inevitably to market failures (roads, railways, utilities) it only need to be more efficient (for the consumer) than a for-profit monopoly...

So even if the government were in fact systematically less efficient (it is not), it would still always be the preferable option in many cases. The case for public health care is notably extremely strong: countries with public, nationalised, health care all have much lower cost and better outcomes than the US.

Another thing for which the government is much better than corporations is very long term investment, blue sky research and the like. These very long odds always are good in the long run (no major scientific discovery of a fundamental nature ever came from a private for-profit research venture) but almost never in the short run.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Thunderstruck]

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.

I see two problems with this assertion:

1. It assumes that the study would demonstrate that there is no difference. Define "intrinsic benefit" by specific standards, and certain faiths will probably do better than others. For example, if I followed Jewish dietary restrictions, I'd probably live longer.

2. Most "believers" expect that they will be persecuted for their faith. They go into it knowing full well that they may be worse-off this side of heaven. How would the study change this?

Good luck on starting your religion!

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[ATMAvatar]

There are plenty of examples where a technology developed to fill a need in one area was later applied elsewhere to provide various benefits. I am quite sure there are a number of NASA inventions that simply would never have happened if not for NASA (e.g. memory foam).

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[no-body]

Wow - didn't know they had all that gear on the space station.

There is absolutely no proof that all the gadgets/inventions you list would not have been invented/created otherwise, possibly at a lesser expense.
You use 20/20 hindsight and pick what fits your ideas.
If new things came out of space "races", they are byproducts now used to justify the whole little boys game of politicians bumping their egos on each other at a tremendous expense for the rest of the population.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[dbIII]

At least you fed them tang :)

Flying into space is much cheaper than wars...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that cannot be won & the [alleged] end game of which can be accomplished by a couple of well placed cruise missiles.

Re:US losing technological advantage

[rubycodez]

oooo, devils advocate and troll time. military science drives engineering and science. U.S. liquid rockets came from Nazi missile program, . Solid fuel rockets on shuttle - ICBMs. civilian nuclear power from nuclear weapons research and reactors. Jet engines, electronic computers, integrated circuitry both analog and digital, frequency agile RF transmissions.... thank the waaah machine, baby.

Re:Wait a minute

[damburger]

The fear of the Chinese is not their position but their velocity. Their space program is slow, but its got a definite trajectory it has been following, pretty much dead on schedule, since the 1990s.

This is whilst the US government has used all means in its power to hobble their space program, such as making it illegal for US companies to put their satellites on Chinese rockets and tightly controlling the export of critical technology.

Right now they are a few years from overtaking the Russians (who are still largely powered by Soviet momentum) on manned space flight, and then a few years after that they will match ESA for robotic flight. It will be a decade at least before they are nipping at NASA heels. But nobody, apart from some fairly fringe economists predicting economic collapse, doubts they will get there.

The US doesn't have any real goal, at least in space flight. Every president sets a date for Mars so far in the future he will be long out of office before anyone demands to see progress, and then the next guy cancels the clearly unworkable plan he has been left.

I completely agree with current direction

[BlueCoder]

Disclaimer, I am a progressive libertarian..

I don't see the bang for the buck when it comes to the shuttle system. It should have been replaced with a new model in 1995
anyway but politics and lucrative Nasa contracts got in the way. Nasa is an inefficient government agency. It can't afford mistakes so it throws money at problems. When it came to getting to the moon that is what was needed.

We are far better off gutting the Nasa budget and stop building ships and reinvest in R&D for ten years. The aerospace industry is more than capable of designing more efficient and safer vehicles. It is far more beneficial to just give grants away and fund development races like the xprize for actual achievements. And it doesn't matter if we no longer have a functioning space shuttle, the nuclear arsenal is slowly reducing all the time; we have more space capable rockets than we know what to do with at the moment. Nasa served it's purpose and proved what can be done. Quite frankly it's time an international coalition took over exploration with Nasa managing the purse strings. It will be 75% American anyway.

The goal for solar system development means private corporations. Manufacturing and power systems. We need to get them up there.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[0123456]

I am quite sure there are a number of NASA inventions that simply would never have happened if not for NASA (e.g. memory foam).

Yeah, that definitely sounds like it was worth the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on NASA in the last few decades.

Re:I'd say manned space program is what is wrng w

[tftp]

Does the average American even care about space science?

The average American doesn't care about Slashdot, and he most certainly doesn't know or care about a certain AC. This doesn't mean that /. or that AC are worthless. It only means that the average American is not omniscient; he is not even smarter than the average :-)

Re:Not having a Nasa rocket != not having a US roc

[LtGordon]

\Why MUST it be a NASA developped rocket? Is it because parts NASA have turned into the aerospace work assurance administration?

I'm a manned space exploration fan but I have come to the conclusion that it would be better off for Manned space explorattion were Nasa to get out of the development of it's own launchers & buy from SpaceX or whoever else develops a reliable launcher without falling into the trap of growing a self justifying administration.

I don't see why NASA couldn't follow the same development model as the United States military has. For example, the Air Force doesn't develop its own aircraft; they simply announce what they want and let contractors do the engineering. Add in multiple competing contractors and you get some of the best technology being actively used in the world.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Teancum]

Space is what I would describe of itself 'indirect research', in that the technology that you and I benefit from was a result of something done in space research, even if that wasn't the initial intent.

If that's the only argument you can come up with for funding NASA then you're screwed, because you could have done those things far more cheaply by, you know, funding research into them and forgetting the whole space thing.

Such research would never have happened because the design problems that resulted in the development of those concepts would never have been encountered. That is the whole point to space exploration, where completely new challenges will happen that have never been experienced before. Somebody who is in that environment or having to work with that environment will then be forced by necessity to deal with those situations. Only afterward can somebody say "oh, what if I did the same thing over here too!" That is where the real benefits of pushing frontiers can make a huge difference.

As to if the money spent by NASA over the past 30 years has been wisely spent, that is a whole separate discussion. I certainly can suggest that the payback from NASA diminished over the course of the past several decades where it certainly as big of a payoff as compared to the Apollo program in terms of how beneficial it has been. I'm really not convinced that the current programs, particularly the SLS, is going to be of any benefit to the country especially as they are doing a retread program to "boldly go where hundreds have gone before" and do so on gilded spacecraft on top of that.

the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

start a new cold war... that'll get things moving again

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Lanteran]

Will you quit? It'd be contributing to their research, and more of a contribution than you likely make. Inferior troll is inferior.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[SnarfQuest]

Umm, sorry, but all those "inventions" came from Area 51, from reverse engineering the numerous UFO's they have collected there. Including TANG! Does that stuff really taste like anything that was grown on earth?

Re:I'd say manned space program is what is wrng w

[Ol Olsoc]

But you see, I guess I'm one of those dupes that just don't understand.

With manned presence, I support a good healthy budget. And I'm happy to let my representatives know that.

If we're just going to launch unmanned science probes, with no concept of a human ever going there, I support a budget of exactly $0.00 And I'm happy to let my representatives know that too

If we are never leaving our cradle, we can just stay here, and look at the universe from the ground. Spending money just to have rovers run around on Mars or find the heliopause is just wasted taxpayer dollars in that case.

Re:Human space flight is one part of space explora

[Ol Olsoc]

If we're never going to go to Mars, what is the point of all that knowledge?

The issue I have, is the arrogance of people wanting my money to perform science of dubious worth.

Just taking Mars for instance, I'm antsy with anticipation that we might find proof of life there. But it would make me want to send humans there all that much more.

So if we're just going to send little robots there, and never send humans, all it is is the biggest tease-job ever performed.

Re:Not the end of HUMAN spaceflight...just AMERICA

[SnarfQuest]

SpaceX is not designed to be an exploration company, they are expecting to make a profit on their spacecrafts. They are developing vehicles that will be profitable. That means that every time they go into orbit, someone is going to be paying for it. They are probably not planning on circling the Earth with a schoolteacher on board so they can televise a "class in space". If they don't go commercial, then they will run out of money and go out of business really fast.

Flying around in space is expensive, and if you don't have a government behind you to confiscate other peoples money to pay for it, then you need to find another way to pay for it.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[camperdave]

...And that's just the Space part of NASA. Let's not forget the Aeronautics part.

Re:US losing technological advantage

[rally2xs]

No, to fix this, the USA has to develop a business-friendly economy, with features like zero business taxes in order to bring back manufacturing in order to have jobs for people that make great welders and electricians, but don't and won't work in labs testing people's PSA levels. Getting manufacturing back, in seriously biblical proportions, is key to American prosperity. Pass the Fair Tax - no more income tax of any kind - and manufacturing will come back like a tidal wave. Then the US can lead in many areas again.

Re:Human space flight is one part of space explora

[SnarfQuest]

The US is abandoning its HUMAN space exploration program,

FTFY

Re:Space exploration

[rally2xs]

We're not going to have the $$$ to send the robots, either.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Man On Pink Corner]

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.

Idiot

[Baldrson]

Read the post again, idiot.

Re:Idiot

[camperdave]

I did. It still says:

* $19k/kg to LEO for the Shuttle in 2011
* $9k/kg to LEO for the Saturn V in 1969

Perhaps if you spent less time insulting people, and more time writing clearly...

Re:Idiot

[Interfacer]

Perhaps if you read the post in its entirety, you wouldn't have made yourself look foolish twice.

that 120,000kg to LEO cost $(2011)1.11billion ($(1969)185billion).

Re:Idiot

[camperdave]

Perhaps if you read the post in its entirety, you wouldn't have made yourself look foolish twice.

that 120,000kg to LEO cost $(2011)1.11billion ($(1969)185billion).

185 billion dollars in 1969 is NOT equivalent to 1.11 billion dollars today.

Ignoring the million/billion typo, the post clearly says $9k/kg to LEO for the Saturn V in 1969. This is false. In 1969 it only cost about $1.5k/kg. In today's prices that is $9k/kg.

I understand (and agree with) Baldrson's point that the shuttle is more expensive per kilo of payload. However, the way the post is written implies the opposite.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[cavreader]

Creationism is basically the belief that god is responsible for mankind's existence and any other explanation is heresy. The political application in the modern era may be relatively new but the belief system itself has been around for ages. This type of ideology and behavior has been practiced since the founding of civilization using one god or another. Way back it was not that big of a deal because there was no proof that god didn't create everything. Today we can use science and the accumulated knowledge base to prove that man already existed way before 6000 years ago which is the timeline of creationism is based upon. How people can deny the evidence is beyond me but religion seems to lower the intelligence level of the "true believers" to a point where proof is not necessary to support their delusions. The post that started this discussion claimed it was creationism that is holding back technology advancements and that is just not true.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[pablo_max]

Are you suggesting that because he does not have the same ideas as you regarding what his tax dollars are used for that he should leave the country? I think it is you Sir, with your clear lack of understanding of the US system who should leave.
Attitudes like yours is why the constitution was written the way it was. To protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Man On Pink Corner]

The political application in the modern era may be relatively new

True, and that's when it became a problem for the rest of us.

The post that started this discussion claimed it was creationism that is holding back technology advancements and that is just not true.

I'd like to agree with you but I have deeper misgivings. Science isn't a collection of knowledge and facts, it's a process for acquiring and understanding them -- the only one that works. Those who would bring religion into science classrooms can have only one goal -- to teach kids that reality isn't all that interesting and important, and that objective truth plays second fiddle to spirituality.

And it's working. It's 2011, and 59% of U.S. physicians believe in an afterlife (or at least they did in 2005 when the survey was conducted). A similar percentage favor 'intelligent design' over Darwinian models of evolution.

Are those figures in line with what you'd have guessed? You may disagree but IMHO those surveys are a big deal, even though they involve medical doctors rather than technologists and engineers. They tell me that respect for science as the only valid process for learning about our Universe, our world, and our bodies is in decline. There's no way you would have gotten results like these in the Sputnik era, or even in the 1930s.

The more science does for people -- and the less religion does for them -- the more they seem to cling to the latter. That's not entirely the fault of public education but it damned sure should be a big concern for it.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Teancum]

Yeah. Too bad they just dig a hole and bury that money instead of spending it on US companies that hire people.

For all the good that does. You might want to study this link if you think that does any good:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy

Yeah, NASA contractors may be getting piles of money and spinning their wheels, but they aren't getting anything accomplished. They might as well simply hire a bunch of people to bury the money in a hole, hire another group to dig it up and move it into an even bigger hole before they are done, then simply move it back before it is finally all spent.

If something useful was happening at NASA, if they actually were getting into space instead of cancelling program after program after program, if they were actually trying to make spaceflight affordable, if NASA was actually exploring space and doing something useful instead of repeating the same missions over again even when they finally get a hunk of metal flying, I might be much more supportive. Instead they are simply in a death spiral where the only thing that matters is whose congressional district or state gets the most of the ever dwindling amount of money they are receiving.

As if that mattered.

While the Democrats are hardly the most thrifty folks and the current round of supporting commercial spaceflight is mainly because previous administrations didn't go that route (Bush didn't do it, therefore it must by definition be good), I'm particularly galled at the Republican leadership in congress for essentially killing NASA.

Thankfully NASA isn't the only "space agency" in the federal government. Perhaps if a strong NASA administrator actually set some real goals and perhaps if the presidential administration actually backed him up, some good might come. But first of all they actually have to do something rather than throwing bad money after even worse money.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Teancum]

Projects that NASA has funded, both public and private, have resulted in pushing forward sciences. Like your cellphone, MP3 player, television, etc?

This must be one of the silliest posts I've ever seen here on Slashdot. You're seriously claiming that we wouldn't have cellphones and MP3 players if not for NASA?

I suppose that NASA was helping to finance the Diamond Rio, as obviously the astronauts who took a couple of them up in the Space Shuttle had them made just for the space program. Oh, and NASA lawyers defended them against the RIAA too, didn't they?

That makes as much sense as the "Space Pen" made by Fisher. At least they did make that for the astronauts, even if it was a marketing ploy and NASA never asked for it in the first place.

NASA did help jump-start the integrated circuit production industry as a result of buying nearly the entire world's production capacity of them when building the Apollo Guidance Computer back in the late 1960's. But that is pretty much the extent of what they had with the development of microelectronics. Other than that initial infusion of cash, NASA computers for spaceflight have actually been lagging significantly behind the rest of the computer industry. They certainly don't go for bleeding edge computers or push the technology much.

Re:USA: best science for the buck

[Patch86]

The fact that got an "Insightful" mod is unbelievably depressing.

He didn't say he hated America. He just said he doesn't care about dick-waving patriotism. Does it matter if the US is "seen" to be a leader (by who?), or "seen" not to be a leader? Surely all that matters is whether the government-funded space programme is producing good results (good science, good technological breakthroughs). Let China (who seem to have a Cold War "space race" mentality going on in terms of proving themselves) muck around with the headline grabbers; the US is a mature enough superpower now that it can just get about its business without worrying about keeping up with the Joneses.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Mr2cents]

It's just a way to get poor people off american streets, into iraqi streets. Garbage disposal, you might say. And it's cheap too, even profitable! (according to Dick Cheney).

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[queazocotal]

By living in a very, very high cold place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_civilization#Agriculture_and_farming

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Teancum]

If governments were small, localized, and you were free to trade one government for another, I might buy your argument.

Oh wait, there is this crazy idea of "federalism" where that is exactly what was supposed to happen. Where a "federation" of "states" would allow citizens of one state to freely move to another "state", but still enjoy the rights of citizenship among all of the members of that federation. That experiment was called the "United States of America".

Sadly, when the United States stopped being a union of states and instead because a country with highly centralized planning and a single oppressive government, it no longer became possible to simply leave a place with high taxes (California) or a government-run health care system (Massachusetts) in exchange for a place that allows you substantial freedom with firearms (Texas).

You can choose between big box retailers like K-Mart or Wal-Mart, or perhaps even be able to choose between different soft drink brands or other kinds of choices. If the government gets into the business, you have one choice or you must exchange your whole lifestyle, language, culture, and often even religion if you want to have another way of doing things.... assuming that the government will even let you leave without a bullet going through your skull. That is also assuming too that the country you want to leave to will even accept you.

THAT is the problem with government solutions, as once a government monopoly has been established you have no option or choice other than to live with the government solution or die. That governments are also by definition not really required to accept competition, there is also no incentive to improve efficiencies either, but that is more of a side effect than the real problem.

I had lunch with an astronaut last week...

[Vandil X]

Astronaut John Blaha was available for a group lunch last week at KSC and I attended. When asked about the end of the Space Shuttle program, his disgust and frustration was clearly communicated in his response. He blamed politicians Washington. When asked about life in a post-STS world, he said: "We need another Kennedy to get us (humankind) further. It doesn't have to be a U.S. figure, just any Kennedy-like person somewhere who can get the ball rolling."

Re:I had lunch with an astronaut last week...

[jwhitener]

I wonder how successful Kennedy would have been without the Soviet 'threat' (red scare).

I would argue that our problem isn't the lack of a visionary leader, but a lack of long term motivating factor so that a program can maintain progress for 15+ years. Congress and the Presidency change too often for long term projects to survive.

And unfortunately, the only long term motivating factor that I can see working in our political climate is something like a cold war with China.

The US has to want to.

[glatiak]

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.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[DarthVain]

You say that as sort of a joke I know, but I was watching TV the other day, and there were elected officials (not sure of they were senators or what) quoting bible verses as to how the US budget should be spent, as well as a letter writing campaign from apparently every professor from catholic colleges in the US.

I recall thinking, wow you are actually going to let a faerie tale book decide you fiscal plan and write your budget policy? Pardon the pun, but Jesus!

Idiots making up their own definitions

[dbIII]

That's not freeze drying as the rest of the world knows it.

Re:Idiots making up their own definitions

[queazocotal]

Perhaps not, but the result is freeze dried food.
'conventional' freeze drying has been around since 1930.
Nescafe commercialised freeze-dried coffee before WWII.

Re:Not having a Nasa rocket != not having a US roc

[phayes]

The reason it is called ISS is because it an International Space Station & not just to avoid offending... In the same narrow minded vein you display I point out that ISS's heart is russian, so I fail to see an American Space station.

The fact is, after having wasted billions & failing to produce flying hardware, Nasa went hat in hand to the rest of the world to help them define a space station & exit the design/redesign/redesign/redesign/redesign/... infinite loop they had fallen into. It's THAT political bullshit that has cost the US trillions & decades. It's a major part of why Nasa should no longer be developing their own launch hardware. Redesigning for the sake of redesigning is for haute couture, not for flying hardware. Move Nasa out of the way & let the US commercial space launchers find ways to bring the kg/$ to orbit down. That way what is left of Nasa's knowhow of how to get the most science out of the smallest budget (aka the people working on payloads) will be free to flower once again.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[sznupi]

As to if the money spent by NASA over the past 30 years has been wisely spent, that is a whole separate discussion.

The Shuttle appears to make more sense if you look at it as a geopolitical engineering project (more like over the past 40 years, BTW), to provoke the ignorant Soviet generals[1] into pushing for a rampant spending of their counterpart, to have a parity for (non-existent) "strategic advantage" of the STS. Of course, then one has to ask why was it allowed to continue sucking NASA dry for the past two decades?... there even was a good opportunity to terminate the program post-Challenger (of course, that in turn could be also a "revenge of the Buran" of sorts - it was essentially being prepped on its launchpad at the time, and of course the Soviets couldn't be allowed to be the only ones with a shuttle[2])

1. Their engineers very much didn't want to go there, preferring Spiral approach. With the vehicle being just a payload ...ultimately, when forced, also doing it with STS-class vehicle (Energia was a more sensible Ares V-like approach from the start) - but it bled them dry, killed what they really wanted (Zarya "super Soyuz")

2. Who knows, the history might judge the last laugh was even more on Buran - in its only flight, it demonstared the whole main "point" behind a shuttle (its flight profile) to a much fuller degree than any of STS vehicles ever did. With the secondary point (LEO space station) being essentially, for STS fleet, in the form of maintenance and expansion of two space stations meant for Buran...

as compared to the Apollo program in terms of how beneficial it has been

Apollo might be not the best counterexample (vs. the dick-waving reasons alluded to in the posts above); at its core it was a crazy unsustainable crash project, with scientific benefits demonstrably more or less equalled by unmanned probes of the time (especially considering that of the twelve people, only one was a geologist, during the last mission - how the hell did we manage that / one of the saddest testimonies about the mindset of humanity IMHO). "Structural" / educational / etc. benefits revving up already after Sputnik.

I'm really not convinced that the current programs, particularly the SLS, is going to be of any benefit to the country especially as they are doing a retread program to "boldly go where hundreds have gone before" and do so on gilded spacecraft on top of that.

It's debatable if "retreat" fits more to current programs or to... the Shuttle (heck, the ISS can be soon raised a bit, to its intended orbit, finally unconstrained by STS limitations) - everybody at first expected "aerodynamic" or "spaceplane-ish" shapes from reentry vehicles, and worked towards it hard. They proved pretty much unworkable. Blunt shape entry capsule was a relatively late innovation, an improvement; and a bit of a surprise. There's nothing wrong with capsules; physics, rocket equation, are a bitch.

It's simply how dreams about expected modes of space travel turned out to be wrong; dreams extrapolating (not understanding, generally) rates and directions of observed progress. Look at those airplanes from "our" times (imagined during rapid advances of marine tech; and we can even build them - take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy... still a horrible idea vs. "boring" reality).

Consider how the "spaceplanes" came to dominate scifi... around the 40s, during rapid advances of airplane tech (I can see a pattern...); how the designers and decision-makers of the Shuttle were undoubtedly raised on those works of fiction. And how they gave us an analogue of Catalina, at best (Spruce Goose, at worst); but something which looked very soothing and "inspiring"

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[KingMotley]

Ok, how about things like... "Invisible" Braces, Cell Phones, Ball Point pens, water filters, smoke detectors, long distance telecommunications, ear thermometers, weather satellites, laptops (portable battery technologies), kidney dialysis machines, CAT scanners, freeze dried foods, car mufflers, cordless power tools, MRI machines, etc etc.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Teancum]

The proof that NASA has been unable to really get its act together, that R&D efforts are essentially futile except for the "pure research" aspects, is that program after program keep getting started and have been cancelled over the years, starting with the "Big G" Gemini II program to the Constellation program, and a whole bunch of other train wrecks in between. Some like the "Big G" program was more of an insurance policy in case stuff didn't work out with Apollo, but there certainly have been some very promising programs where I might argue that political considerations alone were the reasons why they were cancelled, not technical issues. Others like Constellation simply were doomed from the beginning to be a colossal failure.

Good examples of a program that really was promising but then was dumped include the "Trans-Hab" module that has been refined by Robert Bigelow. The DC-X project has been picked up by Jeff Bezos (yes, that Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com). That such projects have been picked up by private individuals is only more of a testament of the string of failures NASA has had to endure and the insane amount of wealth squandered for what were mainly political considerations. Those considerations were usually to grease some congressman to re-election so he could say "look at all of the pretty NASA projects in my district.". Bringing the bacon home is no excuse for the paltry results that have come from such actions. Billions are being squandered right now on the SLS program, and there isn't really a geo-political benefit that is going to come from that program in particular.

If anything, the Chinese are still scratching their head trying to figure out how some rich dude in California was able to pull off beating them by an order of magnitude in terms of production costs for building launchers to orbit, in spite of the labor costs of southern California. That company is doing more to impact the geo-political balance of power than anything NASA is currently doing.

Re:I'm not a nationalist, so I really don't care.

[Smallpond]

The broken window analogy is apt. I particularly liked the idea of the glazier hiring the boy to break windows - I can see parallels to US foreign policy. Money spent on deliberate damage is a loss, while money spent improving or discovering is well spent. So if I had my choice of sending pallets of cash to Iraq or to JPL, I'm pretty sure I know which I would choose. There may be a dozen other things that you can name which have a more immediate payoff, or are more likely to help mankind than NASA, but NASA still beats where a huge portion of the federal budget goes.

Why do they even bother?

[JohnVKaravitis]

John V. Karavitis Why does America even bother anymore? We see this funding idiocy re NASA all the time. NASA must have a neon sign outside its front doors that say "Slash Our Budget", which is what happens every time Congress needs to find ways to slash spending. Aren't our politicians aware that NASA's needs have driven basic research into a number of areas, and that this basic research has benefited everyone? This latest blow to NASA will mean that, as one recent article put it, there will be a "brain drain" of people leaving NASA (altough where they will end up is a difficult question, given the flatlined economy and the dead job market). This "brain drain" will leave NASA with only the "B players" (in the word of this article). AMericans should face facts, no one cares about the space program except Europe, Japan, China and India. America certainly does not. And as for the Shuttle, it was designed by committee, and thus has never really performed any of its functions well. And as for the heat-resistant tiles, they've been more problematic than they were worth. America needs to commit to space exploration or let the military take that over. Enough nonsense. John V. Karavitis