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NASA's Bolden Speaks On Future Mars Mission, Chinese Moon Landing
MarkWhittington writes "During an interview with USA Today on the eve of the arrival of the Mars Rover Curiosity, NASA administrator Charles Bolden had some interesting thoughts on why a humans-to-Mars mission should be international and not American-led, how the world should react positively to the Chinese beating America back to the moon, and what he would do (or rather not do) if NASA were to have an 'unlimited' budget."
Space
I want to go to there
But I lack the funds to go to there
When will I go to there?
From the article: In an interview conducted by USA Today on the eve of what is hopefully the successful soft landing of the Mars Rover Curiosity...
Did the meaning of the word eve change or is Curiosity no longer landing on the 6th?
In the even that China reaches a point that we achieved 40 years ago... and that we haven't been able to do again since? No, I will be disappointed in my government insisting we spend more putting bullets in the heads of children, bombs in jungles and scrub hillsides and bailing out incompetent, greedy industries. All the while idiot Republicans scream constantly that we need to cut even more government spending on irrelevant things while not raising taxes to pay for the debts accrued due to shitty spending policies over the last 30 years.
We could be going "Welcome to Armstrong Base!" to the Chinese taikonauts landing on the moon, and for a fraction of what we've spent slaughtering people and covering for the incompetent. Instead we've squandered what we had with only a death toll and debt to show for it.
I'd send all of Congress on a space mission. To land on the Sun. I'll tell them they'll go at night and land on the dark side.
unfortunately, you're right..
http://www.space.com/8725-nasa-chief-bolden-muslim-remark-al-jazeera-stir.html
stuff like this is where the right wing gets the whole 'democrats hate america' thing from. this guy should be working towards america becoming 'the' space authority in the world, not by force, necessarily, but by technology and drive.
Bolden speaks as though humanity will march toward the stars arm in arm, full of brotherly love. Like Kipling said though "When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not before." Putting concerns about international cooperation ahead of long term US interests is going to hurt in the future, especially since China and Russia will put their own interests first.
When it becomes feasible to extract resources from space, the space race will never end.
I think nationalism is one of the stupider elements of human culture, but separate competing organizations would be more a benefit than hindrance.There needs to be different teams, with different methods, and different failures and successes. Without that, people would never learn, and nothing would ever move forward.
When I became the NASA administrator, (President Obama) charged me with three things," Bolden said in the interview which aired last week. "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."
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Notice that there is no emphasis on actual science. None. Inspiring children to get into science is nice, but doing actual science should be thr primary goal. I can even see the international thing. But seriously, this is embarrassing.
> How the world should react positively to China beating America back to the moon.
Yes, "We, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords..."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Its nice to see NASA talking about international cooperation. Perhaps this will make ESA, and certain ESA member states who are notoriously tight fisted with contributions and refuse to participate in any manned flight *coughUKcough*, start to think seriously about how Europe can be involved. I know people who work for ESA and for EADS, and there is no shortage of will in the industry to start pushing out properly.
As far as I'm concerned, any non-international deep space exploration runs the risk of leading to conflict between nations in space, and that is a really dumb idea. We've seen, from ASAT tests and accidental collisions, what even a handful of destroyed satellites can do to the space debris situation. A full-on space war means we lose access to LEO entirely, for a very long time.
For anybody who wants to read the actual interview article with Bolden instead of just relying on MarkWhittington's distorted Yahoo summary, you can find the interview here:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2012-08-01/NASA-mars-rover/56656270/1
It is not the eve of the landing.
I am not playing grammar Nazi. There are likely grammatical errors in my post.
But as a news outlet, can we get facts right?????
By the way, the landing will be shown live on a jumbo-tron in Times Square!
http://www.space.com/16863-mars-rover-landing-nasa-events.html
Silence is a state of mime.
Reading the article leads me to the conclusion that Mr. Bolden pretty much represents everything I consider wrong with NASA. Instead of bold or inspiring visions, he appears to be thinking small and doing small, which is pretty much the opposite of what I would expect from a NASA administrator. Yes, sure, resources are always a constraint and not everything that would be cool can be done but he actively avoids even contemplating going beyond his quite limited horizon.
For starters, regarding Mars he says that it should be an international mission, which is not a bad choice per se, however, international projects are very difficult to pull off effectively. There will inevitably be bickering who pays how much, which country gets how many jobs and whose astronauts will be going. It's basically the issue of senators bringing in the pork via NASA but on a bigger (international) scale. Just negotiating the terms of such cooperation can take as long as the project itself and can easily exceed a decade (for comparison, see ITER which has been on the drawing board well over a decade before the international consortium green-lit it).
So, international projects make things more complicated and they take longer. Sure, you get all the feel-good humanity thing and the cost is born by a larger base but the frictional costs are much higher. Nevertheless, I would've given him a pass on it if he hadn't said that the "U.S. cannot always be the leader". I'm sorry, but why not? I'm not even an American but if I were and the resources could be mustered, why not go ahead, saving the decade-long negotiation cycle? To me, this sounded like an excuse not to do it at all by postponing it indefinitely ("We're working on it, look, we're already negotiating the terms for 5 years straight now!")
However, what really shocked me was his answer what he would do given an unlimited budget. That question was a softball to float some bold ideas to the public about what could be done. He could have suggested space habitats, moon/asteroid bases, thousands of robotic missions to map out the solar system, even more modest goals like developing new rockets and other lift capabilities. Instead what we get is literally "nothing". He would "complete Obama's plan" and "not use the extra money". In essence, he has no ideas at all and is only capable to follow instructions handed to him. I'm rather sure even NASA's janitorial staff has more creativity than that.
The Chinese are not beating the USA "back to the moon". They are going for the first time. The USA has already beaten them by more than forty years.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
More then likely, SpaceX will beat them to Mars.
Anybody who still recites this incident as actual policy rather than a gaffe induced by peer pressure, which was immediately retracted, is just trolling. Furthermore I defy you to identify any actual funds that Nasa has spent on Muslim outreach instead of space exploration in the two years since Bolden said that.
PS I am really looking forward to the most ambitious Mars landing yet, this Sunday.
stuff like this is where the right wing gets the whole 'democrats hate america' thing from
No, they get that from their campaign advisors, right-wing "entertainment" media, and carvings in bathroom stalls.
It's a gaff. Both sides have them.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Given an unlimited budget, he'd just do what he was told, go to Mars, and not do anything else. No matter what else he's done, that makes it sound like NASA needs a leader with some vision, not an administrator who simply carries out political commands.
I have no doubt that Charles Bolden was taken into the White House and that Barack Obama very likely said those things to him. For Bolden's tenure as NASA Administrator, those may even been seen as admirable things for him to accomplish while in that position.
I do think this is way overblown though. I'll also say that on the whole Bolden seems to be a very competent administrator over the agency in spite of the fact that he gets almost no support from the White House in terms of his agency's direction nor any sort of funding or support from the Democrats in terms of even funding the agency.
Space policy is dead last in terms of things that the Obama administration is concerned about, where the only thing that the White House is trying to make sure is that they don't lose votes in Florida or make it a clearly partisan issue over space policy. Bolden has been mostly successful in doing that too. About the only thing that the Republicans are doing for that matter is to make sure that Alabama and Utah get to keep their part of the NASA budget (thanks Shelby and Hatch!) I don't see a Romney administration making much of a difference in space policy either, unless he appoints Newt Gingrich as NASA administrator (which would make this gaffe by Bolden seem extremely trivial by comparison to almost anything which would leave Gingrich's mouth).
Perhaps some day there will be some serious space policy. I expect to wait a decade or more for that to happen though.
Which is not space travel or space science, but making Muslims feel better about themselves (I'm not joking he said it).
With "leadership" like that is it any wonder that China is going to kick our asses?
This you do not understand
With Muslims feeling better about themselves they won't come and blow up any NASA rocket, so we don't need to grief over another 9/11 episode of our Mars mission
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Holy shit, I didn't even realize how bad that was, and apparently this came straight from Obama himself. No wonder the right-wingers say Obama is a "closet Muslim"; with directives like this ("reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering") that's all the ammo they need. And what historic contribution anyway? Sure, the people living in those countries 1000 years ago did some pretty neat stuff with mathematics and astronomy, but that was a long time ago; 1000-1500 years before that, the ancient Romans and Greeks were doing some pretty neat stuff with mathematics and engineering too, but I don't see anyone saying we need to reach out to Italy and Greece to make them feel good about their historic contributions (and Italy is still making contributions to engineering, just look at Ferraris). Meanwhile, the Muslim world embraced fundamentalist around 500 years ago and it's been all down the shitter since then; this should serve as an important lesson for other countries, namely the USA.
I agree with this. There's no sign that Muslim outreach is sucking money from space-related endeavors. All Bolden did was give a spokesperson a little work to do.
Bolden doesn't belong on that list. From what I've read, he seems to be trying to get NASA doing something productive, not Muslim outreach.
And frankly, Holder shouldn't either. There's a good chance he is guilty of a couple hundred counts of accessory to murder in Mexico and the US, including a shooting of a federal law enforcement officer. That puts him in some scarce company, at least in the US.
This guy need to be replaced with somebody with a vision of the future.
To do that, you need to first elect some people with a good vision of the future to run the country. We have consistently shown that we are not interested in such a person.
well it's obvious bolden wants to mix politics with space exploration.. I'd rather have someone more results oriented.
"reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering"
The people who I have heard saying things like that are simply trying to encourage ME nations to be proud of their heritage the way that (say) Egypt and Turkey are, rather than blowing it up the way the Taliban do. Above and beyond petty religious/political struggles, the ME is the cradle of civilization, it's heritage is ours.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If the ME nations need the Americans to make them proud of their heritage, while simultaneously invading and occupying their countries, then they're hopeless. And the ME isn't the only cradle of civilization; there are two more in India and China that arose around the same time.
Stupid Slashdot, no edit function like Reddit....
Also, more pertinently, this stuff shouldn't be concerning NASA at all. Their mission is (or should be) to pursue space exploration for the USA, and that's it, not to do diplomatic shit. Leave that to the diplomats in the State Department. The only time NASA should be doing anything international is when they're working on projects together with foreign space agencies, which would be JAXA, ESA, the Russians, etc. The Islamic countries don't have any space agencies, so NASA shouldn't be concerned with them in the slightest way. Their budget is already way too small, the last thing they need is any more distractions.
I find it incredibly sad that the organisation I looked up to as a UK child (NASA) are pretty much falling from grace due to funding issues, and a lack of imagination by the powers that be. Yes, the North American Space Agency inspired this child from the UK. NASA, back in my day, were something to look up to, the pride of the WORLD - they were my Space Agency too even though they're from the USA, because they were doing stuff that no-one, not even the Soviets, could manage .... and now? Now that NASA have retired the Shuttles, it's as if the worlds space escapades have just been obliterated, at least to this uninformed mind. Noone else can even touch the escapades of NASA from 20, 30, 40 years ago. What's to celebrate now that that is gone?
NASA did a pretty good job back in the day of making people like me know about what they were doing, and while it might not have inspired every man on earth, it certainly did me and it's depressing that my kids won't grow up with the same sense of wonder as I did.
Shame.
--- Stop the world! I want to get off!
i am just so impressed with how much a virus-infested malware magnet windows has become, whilst linux users don't even need a virus scanner. i'm so glad that microsoft got rid of that pesky start menu, i mean why would they want to retain such a familiar interface element that has been a fairly consistent part of the windows user experience for nearly twenty years? microsoft's training partners must be creaming their pants at the prospect of the whole world needing to be retrained to use a computer all over again. the new metro ui may be the best thing ever invented for the pc, since it may lead to companies reevaluating their dependence on windows and office and giving more consideration to linux and openoffice.org. who wants to keep paying for software when they don't have to? i sure dont!
NASA has sucked at anything space-related since the collapse of the USSR
their measly budget is wasted trying to maintain a hugely overpopulated bureaucracy and academia
there's a lot of oil money in the muslim world, so why not reach out to muslims?
this overreaction is typical american hypocracy, where dropping bombs on other countries is perfectly acceptable, but dropping a religious comment is considered a capital offence
as far as aeronautics goes, nasa is pwned by the faa, who would be sure to drive up the cost of any aeronautics project 100 fold with regulatory red tape. red tape is what the faa does best.
inspirational leader through international cooperation
america is already a great inspiration... it is the perfect example of what other nations should aim to avoid becoming like
Standing on "virus free" is a bad idea, as Apple is now learning.
Criminals look for the biggest target they can find - it was Windows, but now the same basic malware strategies are turning out to work on Mac OS (since most users assume "virus free" means "protected from all malware"). The malware game though has been more or less the only game in software since Vista/7 closed up a lot of holes.
Widespread Linux (say, Android) is just as vulnerable to those tricks as anyone else.
Bolden needs to find a different job.
They'll mess it up royally. And no, I'm not being racist or patriotic or any other thing you'll throw at me. And I'm not hoping anyone dies or anything like that. It's that China wants to make a big push into space for some reason. The US and the Soviet Union did that back in the 60s, and a whole lot of bad stuff happened to both countries. Why? Because we were in "The Space Race." Even Cracked.com did an article on the Soviet's hushed up failures. So let someone else test out the technology before we even try it.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Criminals look for the biggest target they can find
problem with argument is that linux represents a decent portion of the biggest fish... including corporate datacenters and web services, and this has been the case for a long time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Servers
so what if there is a few million consumer boxes with windows on them?
at best they represent botnet hosts that can be used to attack more worthy targets
hacking is more of an important issue for linux admins because of its prolific use in server applications. an idiot managing a linux server could easily open himself up to a hacker, but he would still be fairly safe from viruses
linux malware still manages to fit neatly in a small section of a wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Viruses#Threats