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GRAIL-A Enters Lunar Orbit
NASA's twin-craft GRAIL mission, launched way back in September (more information here), has successfully reached its destination. Grail-A has now entered lunar orbit; GRAIL-B is expected to enter lunar orbit tomorrow.
Beware the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!
Three Squirrels
Happy New Moon!
More missions to the Moon!
Go NASA!
I know, I know it is the "M" stands for Magnetic not "Mass" anomaly but maybe they'll find something that indicates an extraterrestrial (intelligence) origin!
shut up
This is no doubt good news, but why should I care? Folks I know, even in the IT sector, need jobs, period! ....
These missions can wait till our economy gets better. What's wrong with that?
Yep, shut down NASA and cancel all future projects - that ought to create more jobs!
If you ever run for congress, I'm sure you'll have no problem getting elected.
There are only two reliable ways for a government to create jobs - either pay for people to do work or provide stability.
If you rule out paying for work due to being broke, the only thing you can possibly do is try to avoid making major changes. Shutting down projects in the name of saving money is a major change.
The crisis we find ourselves in was partly created by projects like these
NASA's budget represents less than 1% of the Federal budget. It peaked at around 5% during the Apollo years and has declined almost every year for the last two decades. If every Federal agency worked like that we wouldn't be worrying about turning into Greece.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The crisis we find ourselves in was partly created by projects like these, which do not create value at all, save for pride.
And now you've exposed yourself as a troll and a liar.
Well, either that, or you (in your original comment) meant to type "does not create any value" but accidentally slipped, fell, and while falling randomly hit a bunch of keys which just happened to spell out "this is no doubt good news". Personally, I'm going with the "liar" explanation.
The GRAIL mission costs ~$400B. The NASA budget is ~$17B/year.
If you could fix the economy/budget problems with that amount of money in a politically viable way, GO TELL SOMEONE! Seriously... thats chump change in terms of the federal budget.
Oops. $400M for GRAIL. If it were $400B you might have a better point.
The GRAIL mission costs ~$400B. The NASA budget is ~$17B/year.
If you could fix the economy/budget problems with that amount of money in a politically viable way, GO TELL SOMEONE! Seriously... thats chump change in terms of the federal budget.
If you can explain how a $400B project can be done on a $17B/year budget along with all of the other NASA projects, please figure out a way to scale this up to the national budget. The USA should be able to eliminate the national debt in no time. Or perhaps it's math like this that has us in the mess we're currently in. Regardless, you are right, it's but a small fraction of the federal budget.
...I've gone and confused my idioms.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
That's no moon...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If we listened to guys like you this would be a poorer world for it. Not all value in monetary. What is the value of information? It really is the source of all other value.
Anyway, the time to complain about the cost was at the start of the project in 2006. The project cost around $500 million. All that money was spent here on Earth paying the wages of the guys who built the satellites and rocket and the people who supplied them. If you're worried about the deficit the first thing to look at is the fact that we spend on much on the military as the next 15+ countries combined.and half of those are allies. The US spends 43% of all money spent on the military in the world.
What encourages new start-up companies is demand. Taxes have nothing to do with it.
Just to clarify: NASA's budget itself hasn't declined much at all since ~1970, only as a percentage of the total Federal budget. It has remained fairly steady at around 15 billion (with a significant dip at the late 1970-early 1980 period to around 11 billion.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget.2C_1958-2011
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
You can use the savings to feed the new population of homeless engineers!
You forgot: massively cutting taxes and regulation... which is the only reliable way to create long-term jobs.
That voodoo economics has been tried and failed. All it does is ensure the booms and busts are bigger. If you control the booms, you make billions more, if you are a regular person, you get screwed worse. Trickle up economics only benefits the 1%. The other 99% are screwed by the corporate handouts.
Learn to love Alaska
Why it took them so long to reach the Moon? Lunar transfer takes 3 days. Does anyone know?
Until some people ruined it completely!
All cows eat grass!
It's declined, if you dare take inflation into account. Declined probably by 20-30% since then? Way to go, Congress.
I read in another article that the slower approach allowed the team to better calibrate their craft for the orbit.
I love statements like this " we spend on much on the military as the next 15+ countries combined.and half of those are allies.". I need at least one mind boggler a day and this was the first. Now I may try to fact check, but my gut tells me you're correct...and how fucking sad is that.
I am all for a strong defense, I surely don't want my country invaded by 'fill in the blank evil people', but we seriously are over the top on our approach these days. We have enough nukes to ensure that any "major" country who tries to attack us will get melted, yet we still build airplanes (at mega-millions a pop) to fight against....who, what? China, blow them up. Russia? Blow them up, Yet these guys are not really an enemy, more like neutral antagonists. "Terrorists?", ignore them or if needed to do something, blow up a house or send them money. More people die driving our highways then what a dumb-ass with a bomb can do. Hell, even if North Korea was zany enough to attempt a nuke missile launch against us they would not last long (assuming we use all this crap we build). Today's enemy is not fought on the military battlefield, it is fought on the economic one.
Ah, here is where we see true power struggles. China owns more then half the US debt, talk about a strategic hill position. I wonder what senator will be willing to charge up "bond hill" against that type of economic position. The middle east controls oil prices (not oil per say, big difference). Want to bring the US to its knees, drive oil prices up by two in a week. This country cannot adapt to that type of economic attack, and it is this type of attack were we are most vulnerable too in this age.
Our leaders tell us to worry about Iraq having WMDs...because why? some idiot despot may use it against us? We got a lousy protection system (though we spend billions on it) if that's the case. We worry that Iran may have or will have a bomb...again so what? If they use it on Israel we have WWIII and the likes of China, Russia, and neighboring ME countries wont let that stand. All the major land is carved up, so now we rattle our very expensive swords, point fingers, and say "yo mamma can't touch this stuff". We have children running the show.
Were the United States to take all the Effin billions we spend in "defense" and begin translating it into defense of our economic and energy house then we would be stronger, and less likely for attack, both physical and economic. Take all those war dollars and begin investing back into education by providing more options for young minds to learn new things. Open space to commercial development and provide the framework to make it affordable. To paraphrase another poster "My God, there's jobs in space". Push hard on renewables (or nuke) and for God Sakes start changing the mind set that the only way to live is with two cars in the garage. Spend money on R&D. Instead of an enemy, find a goal that inspires people/inventors/scientists et al. (I could go on). I'll say it, because our most glorious leaders wont, We are a third world nation. We lag behind in education, in infrastructure, in care for our disadvantaged, and in economic growth. We lead in military spending, we open our doors to corporations for the exploitation of the land and its people, and our most exultant leaders are basically untouched by the laws they swear too. I love my country, I love the ideals written in our Constitution, so to see it crumble from within...a sad time indeed.
43% spent to "defend" against friends and a few foes...yep, boggles the mind.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
"Urgh!!! Because Obama's handouts have done so much to fix everything."
I had a friend comment (more like complain) that "We" spent all these millions of dollars in 1999 to change software....and nothing happened on Jan 1, 2000. "Really?" I exclaimed. "Nothing happened? So, like, all that money spent to avert a potential mess...worked?"
Would you like to ponder what could have happened had we not spent millions on coding against problems resulting from Y2K? "Ah fuggitabout, let the system work it out". (sigh).
President Obama felt the need to put money into the economy to stop it from tumbling into depression. Many economists certainly were stating that outcome pre TARP, pre Stimulus. So what did President Obama buy, a recession instead of a depression. He slammed the throttles full forward to avoid a crash, even though there was not much left in the tanks. Those that complain the most about stimulus are those least effected by either negative economic condition.
Now I would be glad to see him pull back on the throttle a little more these days. I'd love to see him divert our "gas" from one tank to another , but it seems that he not only battles external issues, but internal as well causing this plane to stagger and wallow in recovery. The formula for recovery is basic...
1 - Increase tax revenue (equitable)
2 - put people to work either through works programs or commercial incentive
3 - Adjust spending where needed and reduce where prudent.
4 - Deregulate to encourage growth, but strengthen regulations (through enforcement) relating to risk
When there were moderate, sensible thinking leaders these things were presented, debated, adjusted and passed. Reagan, Bush (I), and even Nixon raised taxes when it was needed. Clinton helped change welfare and medicaid. Today we have yahoo's (mainly in congress) who pontificate, posture, and do nothing to find common ground while they pad their pockets with lucre from insider trading.
So please, cut the crap about Obama buying a recession to avoid something worse, unless you enjoy living in chaos. I don't.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
You are ill informed. PLease check your stats on Chinese ownership of US debt. Your entire argument fails on this point, plus has the added benefit of making you look like an idiot.
Well said, Sir! Or Madam, as the case may be! Obama has made a single mistake since he took office, and it's a mistake that has been made before. He tackled health care before midterm elections, instead of devoting all of his considerable energies towards fixing the economy. True, it looked like the economy was "fixed" rather rapidly -- if you look at the Dow (for example) since it bottomed, it has been a steady, predictable ascent back to roughly where it should be, given the fact that Bush looted and lost 1.5 trillion dollars over the course of the Iraq war. We've amortized the debt and worked through it to a "predictable" market again. However, the cost of pushing health care first was the loss of congress, and now he cannot control the needed tax increases equitably or otherwise to restore balance to the Federal budget. This puts the Republicans in position to sabotage the economy and push it into a second soft dip of recession, aided by the near-collapse of the Euro, which is the only thing that could conceivably cost him re-election.
It won't, I don't think. Europe appears to have stabilized its own debt problem, and this Christmas appears to have produced a huge surge in consumer spending, indicating a lot of confidence that things are more or less back to predictable/normal. I expect unemployment numbers will continue to drop and the spending spree will extend much further into January than usual, which may actually lead to a small increase in Federal revenues in 2011 (as well as a drop in e.g. unemployment liabilities) just from the continued improvement in the economy. 2012 will continue to be tight, but barring a serious and unexpected hit, the economy should improve slowly all year, leaving Obama in a nearly unassailable position come November.
The only hope for Romney (or whoever) is a serious second recession, and I'm not seeing that.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Uhh.. because part of that several hundred million went to developing new technology to be able to make insanely difficult and precise measurements at the moon?
Because those measurements might tell us more about what's under the surface of the moon, which might be useful.
because I'd rather spend my tax dollars having engineers develop microwave equipment for peace, rather than war?
You DO know that the GPS in your smartphone comes from the same technology heritage (and by the work of a lot of the same people, over the years) that feeds into GRAIL? Oh, and that weather satellite that makes it possible to know the weather in California a few days before it happens? Or to evacuate people on the coast when a hurricane is coming? Yeah, NASA's non-human scientific missions don't really do much for your quality of life, do they?
Not all public works projects have to be shoveling money from one financial institution to another. Nor do they have to be ditch digging Hoover/Boulder dam projects, either. Overall, money that NASA spends is pretty evenly spread around the population... no 50% profit margins for shareholder value in the NASA space biz these days..
If we listened to guys like you this would be a poorer world for it. Not all value in monetary. What is the value of information? It really is the source of all other value.
Economic innumeracy rears its ugly head again. All value can be expressed in monetary value for a very simple reason. Because you choose to pay for it. Paying for such projects only with Other Peoples' Money is a strong indication that the project doesn't have inherent value.
Another guy who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I pay taxes so some of my money went into the GRAIL satellites and I have no problem with that.
Another guy who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I pay taxes so some of my money went into the GRAIL satellites and I have no problem with that.
Put your money where your mouth is. There are so many platitude-spouting layabouts who can tell us how important or valuable something is supposed to be, but can't be bothered to contribute to it with their own wealth and/or effort.
Ah, no, in constant 2007 dollars it hasn't declined (that is what the chart is in and what I was using as a metric). But feel free to continue being stupid!
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Watch out who you're calling a layabout. I first payed federal income taxes in about 1965. I own my own home, paid for by myself. My wealth and effort helps support this country.
Ok, I'm watching who I call a layabout. So what if you've paid taxes since 1965? I doubt you've paid hundreds of millions (in today's dollars) in taxes. Meaning most of this "valuable" project isn't being paid by you.
> But feel free to continue being stupid!
The rude remark was unnecessary. He may be ignorant, but at least he's not an asshole.
(No, I'm not the same Anonymous Coward as the parent.)
I was thinking of this particular phrase in an unrelated post. As I see it, a big part of the problem with the US's current space activities is the person who knows the value of everything and the cost of nothing. You have decided the GRAIL satellites have tremendous value, hence you support them, even though you have no idea how well that money is spent, whether it'll be spent to a useful purpose, or whether something better along these lines could be done.
To be blunt, US government space activities are remarkably wasteful even by the standards of the US government. There are documented cases (for example, SpaceShipOne vs. the X-15 program and SpaceX's development program) where a private business has spent at least an order of magnitude less than the US government would or did do for similar results.
Unmanned missions tend to be more efficient IMHO than manned, but there are still large inefficiencies in how things are done. The money spent on a GRAIL mission probably could have been spent on several GRAIL-class missions just by changing the conditions of the contract (say by removing the participation of the national NASA labs and not using cost plus contracts) and involving private enterprise.
Finally, it's near trivial to attach value to any government-based activity. Only those made stupid by greed can't manage that. The biggest problem with this is simply we can't have everything we want. We have to make these decisions on whether X justifies cost Y. Otherwise at some point we won't be able to pay for basic services because we don't get enough in taxes, present and future, to pay for everything we want.