NASA's Bolden: No American-Led Return To the Moon 'In My Lifetime'

MarkWhittington writes "A clash over the future course of American space exploration flared up at a recent joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. In one corner was Al Carnesale of UCLA, who headed the recent study issued by the National Research Council that found fault with the Obama administration's plan to send American astronauts to an asteroid. In the other corner was NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who has been charged with carrying out the policy condemned by the NRC report."

Comments

Harsh mistress

[roman_mir]

Obama said it:

... I just have to say pretty bluntly here: Weâ(TM)ve been there before. Buzz has been there. Thereâ(TM)s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe itâ(TM)s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach -- and operate at -- a series of increasingly demanding targets, while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward.

1st time ever I agree with Obama, there is no reason for government to spend money on a manned Moon mission. Of-course I would just dismantle all government programs, but that's a different story.

You can see my sig for a pretty good reason why USA cannot afford anything like the Moon program probably for a very very very long time.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

Including defence?

Re:Harsh mistress

[roman_mir]

Defence is not what USA does, it's not what USA has been doing since the end of WWII. Yes, including what passes for 'defence' nowadays, shutting down all military basis around the world, brining all troops back to America, getting rid of 90% of offence spending. Of-course legitimate defence is what Congress is authorised to collect taxes for in the first place, it's actually an appropriate role for gov't as per the Constitution (which I disagree with, by the way, I don't think central gov't should be running defence!)

Re:Harsh mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no, we can't see your sig, you insensitive clod.

Only logged in members can see sigs.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

here you go

Re:Harsh mistress

[hairyfeet]

Well yes and no. Yes in at this moment there really isn't a point, we simply don't have the tech to make going to the moon worth doing right now. Back then it was more about beating the USSR so the fact that they couldn't do much more than pick up a couple hundred pounds or rocks and doing a couple of basic experiments was fine, no reason for the flag waving today. If China or India want to blow a pile of money to say they did it? Knock yourselves out, been there and done that. As for the no part we know that Helium 3 is found to be plentiful there and since helium 3 looks like it might be good for fusion reactors in the future WHEN we can set up a base THEN it would be worth going, with a permanent base (most likely all robotic) one could make the case for the trip.

Frankly the one thing I see NO point in though is "meatbags is spaaace!" because the amount of resources you have to use to get a fragile meatbag into space with today's tech? Really not worth it. The robot doesn't need food, air, water, toilets, can be powered for decades with an RTG, its just better to send a machine to do it. Does that mean we shouldn't work on making new engines capable of moving us meatbags out there? Of course not, but as of right now with the tech we have the machines are just a better choice.

Re:Harsh mistress

[rossdee]

We need a D. D. Harriman . (yeah, I know its a different future history but still RAH)

Re:Harsh mistress

[khallow]

That all depends on what you use the meatbag for. People tend to forget that meatbags are still one of the most advanced machines on Earth (and you can always augment a meatbag, once robotics and cybernetics gets to that point). Sure, the robot doesn't need food, air, etc, but those aren't really that significant of needs. They're just mass in the end.

In exchange, you get capabilities that aren't reflected in robots, such as on site decision making and complex on site study of surface characteristics and high maneuverability even in a bulky space suit. The Moon incidentally is the only place where such capabilities don't shine due to its closeness to Earth.

Ever wonder why even forty years after the end of Apollo, that no one from the US government dares go back to the Moon? Aside from the "Been there. Done that." attitude so common in space advocacy and the public, it's because you can't top the manned activities (all from only two man-weeks on the Moon!) with a few robots, even forty years later. Instead, it'll take an extensive though not necessarily manned effort to do better.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

elon musk is him. We will be on the moon by 2020.

Re:Harsh mistress

[rmdingler]

A manned exploration for the purpose of establishing a settlement is one sound reason. There is yet much to learn about mankind's physical and psychological ability to exist outside of Mother Earth for extended periods, and a settlement on the lunar surface would help advance technology for a Martian adventure. Breaking the gravitational fields of both Earth and Luna in advance of a trip to Mars is obviously a terrible waste of fuel. Breaking gravity from Luna alone is practical enough to be considered.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to unleash Neil Tyson on this fellow.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Chickenlips]

But what if China actually develops the infrastructure to reach the Moon, pretty much at will, and then decides missile bases would be a good idea? Far fetched. But, how would/could the rest of the world respond?

Re:Harsh mistress

[roman_mir]

Missile bases on a Moon? To bomb Earth? But will they have a giant LASER? Really, will they hire a bold weird Canadian guy to do the job for ONE. MILLION. DOLLARS?

Re:Harsh mistress

[dryeo]

Helium 3 isn't really that common on the Moon, just more so then on Earth. According to wiki

The abundance of helium-3 is thought to be greater on the Moon (embedded in the upper layer of regolith by the solar wind over billions of years),[1] though still low in quantity (28 ppm of lunar regolith is helium-4 and from one ppb to 50 ppb is helium-3)

and is also much harder to fuse then isotopes of Hydrogen or Lithium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_3

Re:Harsh mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

Just send human controlled robots up there, the delay to the moon is according to internet 1.3seconds.
Will be hard to controls the bots at start, but you get used to planning 1.3 seconds in the future after a while :p

Re:Harsh mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "bald" you stupid fucking foreigner.

Re:Harsh mistress

[couchslug]

"it's because you can't top the manned activities (all from only two man-weeks on the Moon!) with a few robots"

Citation needed. Also, this argues for improving robots, which will be absolutely required for the conquest of space. That environment will be forever hostile to unprotected humans.

Why not spend a thousand years perfecting the machines we must have? We can send fleet after fleet of them to do our will, and they can be expendable. Humans are burdensome to support at our primitive level of technology. Let the whole of Terran tech catch up for a few centuries. The universe will still be there.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Grizzley9]

A manned exploration for the purpose of establishing a settlement is one sound reason. There is yet much to learn about mankind's physical and psychological ability to exist outside of Mother Earth for extended periods,

We already know plenty about mankind's physical and psychological abilities in space/moon. There is little data to be gained having had MIR, ISS, and other long term confinement scenarios and experiments here on earth.

and a settlement on the lunar surface would help advance technology for a Martian adventure.

Then you have to ask why you want to send meatbags to Mars anyway when we can explore that dead planet with much cheaper robots (and future androids). Sadly, in the current climate if there is no immediate payoff for sending humans then there is little reason to pursue it (even though we all understand the potential long term benefits of it).

Re:Harsh mistress

[hairyfeet]

Please God tell me you are joking, you are...right? Missiles on the moon would be the most RETARDED MOVE EVAR because by the time the fucking missiles reached earth the war would have been over for a couple of days. I don't know what the flight time to reach China is but I remember during the cold war that to reach pretty much anywhere in the USSR was less than an hour flight time and using the best rockets we have today a missile from the moon would take a MINIMUM of 3 days, and that is if everything was in perfect alignment.

So no Dr Evil, putting missiles on the moon would be beyond pointless. The whole point of nukes is MAD and MAD don't work if your shit won't get there for 3-4 days after the war is over. Hell you could wipe out China and then just send up some ICBMs to waste the nukes in space, they would be pretty damned useless as a threat or defense strategy.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Cito]

I guess Kennedy's "Report from Iron Mountain" was a hoax after all...

that the space program was created to be a distraction and economic prop.

Re:Harsh mistress

[khallow]

Also, this argues for improving robots, which will be absolutely required for the conquest of space. That environment will be forever hostile to unprotected humans.

Or it argues to the need of protecting or improving humans. We currently have the technology to protect humans.

Why not spend a thousand years perfecting the machines we must have?

Because you wouldn't have done anything to improve the lot of people living in between now and then. Or expand the horizons of human civilization. And there's a good chance we hit a road bump between now and "perfect machines".

For example, who's going to allow the launch of von Neumann robots in the midst of widespread public hysteria about artificial intelligence? Wouldn't it be a bit of irony to have developed "perfect" robotic probes only to have those blocked from use for millennia?

By using current technology rather than waiting and hoping for future technology, we avoid a big failure mode of space colonization that the future technology never comes.

Humans are burdensome to support at our primitive level of technology.

They aren't that much of a burden. Another aspect of the problem here is that it isn't that hard. The main obstacles are economic not technological.

Re:Harsh mistress

[khallow]

This is a very good point and one that I addressed when I wrote:

The Moon incidentally is the only place where such [human] capabilities don't shine due to its closeness to Earth.

We can build a lot of infrastructure and manufacturing capability on the Moon without a single person present. So why aren't we trying?

Re:Harsh mistress

[Chickenlips]

Even it took 2 days to return the favor of being nuked out of existence, the destruction would still be inevitable, and thus a credible threat, and would therefore act as a strong deterrent to a first strike. Since the moon nukes couldn't be quickly or easily preemptively destroyed in a first strike (or even sabotaged) without triggering the hour long destruction of the Earth, it's far from retarded. I assure you the U.S. would change its tune in an instant if it appeared the Chinese were going to colonize the moon. They aren't gong to ignore the militarization of the moon by anyone, friend or foe.
There are non-military advantages to having a permanent base on the moon, as well. Having the infrastructure to transport humans back and forth to the moon would serve as the foundation for eventually colonizing space, as well as sending out sophisticated deep space robotic exploration devices for pure science purposes. Right now the U.S. can't even put a man in orbit. Sending robots to Mars is awesome. Thankfully that ability hasn't been phased out (yet). Science is no longer a long term priority in the U.S. unless it can yield short term wealth. Other nations are more far sighted, and they will benefit accordingly.
There may well not be any short term return from colonizing the moon itself (although that may not be true once the moon is more thoroughly explored). It is assured that there would be side benefits, such as the numerous ones given to society by the 1960's space program.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Teancum]

The point of Helium-3 is that it is the one resource found on the Moon that can be extracted at a profit with current launch costs for shipping equipment to the Moon and sending fuel from the Earth to power the launch vehicles from the surface of the Moon to return back to the Earth. Extracting oxygen (and potentially hydrogen) from the surface of the Moon would be an added bonus... but the business case can be made without that added cost savings.

Unfortunately the global demand for Helium-3 is currently rather small. Besides fusion research, it is also used as a refrigerant as it is the coldest isotope of any element that any substance can be and remain a gas. It has some uses (especially for superconductor cooling), so there is some value to it.

BTW, I agree with your general assessment, especially for fusion fuel sources. The leading element that many fusion researchers are hoping for now is Boron, due to the lack of neutrons flying around as a product (something that He-3 unfortunately produces with its fusion).

Re:Harsh mistress

[dryeo]

It would probably be cheaper to mine it from the atmosphere of Saturn. Processing 150 million tons of lunar regolith (remembering it is only in the top layer) for a ton of He3 does not seem simple or cheap.

Re:Harsh mistress

[schnell]

But what if China actually develops the infrastructure to reach the Moon, pretty much at will, and then decides missile bases would be a good idea?

EPIC FAIL BAD IDEA!

Distance ICBMs need to travel from China to strike the US: ~12,000 miles. Distance IPBMs need to travel from moon to strike the US: ~230,000 miles. Most optimistic estimate I have seen of the cost on lifting mass from Earth to the moon with new launcher systems: $2400 per kg. Weight of one US LGM-30 Minuteman missile: 35,000 kg (but let's assume a missile launched fro the moon would need to only weigh 15,000 kg.) Weight of the materials for a launchpad on the moon and the materials needed for humans or robots to assemble them there: let's say 1,000,000 kg. Most optimistic cost for China to put 10 of these missiles + a launch pad on the moon so that they can take 20 x as long to reach the US as if they had been launched from China: $2.7B excluding the costs of developing, testing and maintaining the system which would likely be at least an order of magnitude greater.

If the US really considers China a strategic threat, we can only hope this would be the kind of astonishing boondoggle they would waste their money on.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Teancum]

Getting to Saturn is much harder than getting to the Moon, and nothing has ever gone to Saturn and returned back to the Earth (other than a few photons in the form of radio telemetry). Good luck with that. The technology might be developed to do just that if there was a demand though. Are you sure it would be cheaper and easier getting it from Saturn?

Helium-3 does have value and can be sold here on the Earth... so price is not a major problem. Trying to extract He-3 from sources here on the Earth (currently obtained as a by-product of nuclear bomb development and perhaps extraction from natural gas extraction efforts) is surprisingly much more difficult, hence the high value placed upon this substance. I have no idea what the current global demand for He-3 is right now, but it does have value and a market as a commodity. A few kilograms might be enough to make the whole effort worthwhile and might just satisfy global demand as well.

Note, this mining of stuff on the Moon is not science fiction and has been proposed by people who have the money to pull it off.

Re:Harsh mistress

[xQx]

Couldn't agree more.

Defense is generally when you respond to protect yourself from an attacker.

Defense is not what the USA has done for many years.

More accurate words that describe what the USA taxpayer's 'defense' funding is used for are words like: Invade, attack, assail, assault, occupy, enforcement, pressure, coerce, compel, spy, dominate, afflict, oppress, encumber, harass, plague, torment, torture, trample ... etc.

I'm all for the USA having the biggest, most sophisticated and competent army in the world, it comes in handy when the leaders of TPLAC's (or northern peninsula communist regimes) go off the rails - but if it were for "Defense", you would expect to see a lot more of it inside the states, and not so much of it in places that never posed a real threat to the states.

Places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia & Vietnam.

Re:Harsh mistress

[dryeo]

Actually getting to Saturn isn't much harder then getting to the Moon, at least if you don't mind spending a lot of time, getting back I'm not so sure of but probably not that much harder.. The time thing isn't too bad if you treat it like a pipeline, once the flow starts you keep it flowing. Either source in large amounts of tens of tons is going to be expensive and involve new engineering techniques which means lots of unknowns. Most people who talk about harvesting resources in space haven't put much thought into it and seem to think it'll be much like working on Earth with the addition of space suits. I think that all kinds of new engineering challenges are going to crop up and take time and money to learn to engineer around. Quite possible but a positive return on investment is likely to take a while.
According to wiki the current US demand is 60,000 litres a year. Not sure what that would mass, probably somewhat less then a ton. 10's of tons would be required for large scale fusion plants which is what I consider impractical to mine on the Moon.
With the price shooting up to $60,000+ a litre, small scale mining might be somewhat profitable but it still seems it would be simpler to create it here on Earth through nuclear synthesis. Of course if you're really just interested in going to the Moon then He3 might offset the costs but large scale production...

Re:Harsh mistress

[xQx]

Yeah, what obama said in so many words.

It's much more important for us to put missiles on geostationary satellites than on the moon.

Why would you travel 300,000km further than you have to.

Re:Harsh mistress

[hairyfeet]

Oh good God man, do you know NOTHING about how MAD even works? It is NOT a credible threat because you would have THREE DAYS to knock the damned things down, with that much lead time hell they could afford to miss every other shot and still knock out every missile in the bunch.

What you are attempting to describe, horribly wrongly I might add, is what is known as a "got you last" which again does NOT work if the things take up to a fricking week to get here! For an example of how a REAL "got you last" works you might want to read up on the US nuclear sub strategy or the Russian "dead hand" system but in BOTH of those cases they work as a deterrent because the enemy knows no matter how fast they are they WILL be hit. With the Dead Hand System if you nuked Moscow, managed to kill every single leader all of the missiles WILL launch and start raining on your cities in less than an hour. with the US "Nuclear Sub Strategy" there are nuclear subs constantly patrolling in the Atlantic and Pacific, even to this very day. If you managed to take out Washington, kill every leader from the POTUS to the most junior member of congress all it takes is a single American base to send the alert and when the subs can't contact Washington because its gone? Well no matter how well you bomb the land bases there are still enough sub based ICBMs to wipe out every major city in Russia.

So just quit while you're behind dude, because there is no way a moon base attack would fit into any kind of MAD strategy, fuck you could literally send up rockets filled with pebbles and just shred the damned things before they even got close. The ONLY reason why orbital platforms were a threat, and why everyone agreed not to build them, was with even a weak rocket you could use the Earth's gravity well to increase the speed and the first bombs would be blowing up in under 20 minutes flat which is why they were banned, both sides wouldn't even have the 30-45 minutes to make the call that they would have with an ICBM making it much more likely for one side to launch "just in case" thus making it too risky.

I'm sorry but other than Dr Evil nobody with a brain would build a nuclear moon base except to maybe attack another moon base, it would be just too easily defeated. The whole point of MAD is to have a weapon the enemy can't stop so if they attack you they too will be destroyed, the moon is just too damned far away for that to be the case. Hell you might as well say "What if they build nukes on Europa?" as it would make the same amount of sense there, in both cases you'd give the enemy so much reaction time it would just be completely pointless.

Re:Harsh mistress

[rioki]

The moon makes total sense as a mining platform for future mars missions (assembly in Moon-Earth L2). Sure probably fully or mostly automated with robots. But humans make some limited sense. The advantage of humans is that they can improvise, which robots can not. The other option is to have the capabilities to build new robots on the surface of the moon. But that only works because Earth-Moon real time communication is possible. That will fail for any other target. But the level of robots is probably going to significantly be higher than in the olden times of Apollo.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you know, Yugoslavia was going to invade and take over the White House, Senate and Congress.

On the second thought, maybe that's not such a terrible idea.

Re:Harsh mistress

[roman_mir]

If the US really considers China a strategic threat, we can only hope this would be the kind of astonishing boondoggle they would waste their money on.

- no, USA is perfectly happy with China wasting its money to subsidise American consumption, USA doesn't want Chinese to divert resources from that task at all.

Re:Harsh mistress

[delt0r]

If you can fuse 3He you can fuse D. Some of the ash from DD fusion is...3He. It would be cheaper and make far more sense to just breed 3He in DD fusion reactors that ever mine it from the moon. Its a desperate reason made up because even the biggest "man on the moon" fans can't come up with anything better.

Lets not forget that we can't fuse TD which is only about 60x easier and gives about 65x more power density. That is even if/when we can fuse 3He, that 1GW TD reactor is now a tiny 15MW! Still cost the same to build however.

Re:Harsh mistress

[delt0r]

..They're just mass in the end.

Mass is *everything* in space. Its not ever just mass. 1Ton of rover to mars is expensive. 50Tons is dreaming. And all that dead, useless life support system that absolutely cannot fail, could be another 40 odd rovers! And even then the rovers will be much cheaper.

Pound for pound, dollar for dollar humans suck at space exploration. Right now a meatbag on mars or the moon is nothing more that misguided nationalism.

Re:Harsh mistress

[warpuck]

One of my high school physics mid term questions: How much energy in joules required to launch a 100 ton mass from the earth to the moon? How much to launch the same mass from the earth to the moon? Since then I have known that the logistics problem lies in getting enough equipment there to establish & maintain a presence without need for further resupply from earth. Simply put mining equipment is not light.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Chickenlips]

If stopping a missile attack from outside the atmosphere were such child's play, we wouldn't have any worries about asteroids hitting the Earth's surface, would we?
Mutually assured destruction doesn't have a time limitation, unless you are really short sighted. You'd launch a first strike even if you knew that within forty eight hours your nation would be in the same condition as the one you attacked?
And, missiles are 20th century technology. What if a rail gun were on the moon, aimed at your abode. Feel confident that you could toss some pebbles into the air to deflect it? Weapons are evolving. Missiles may be what we have today, but with infrastructure on the moon, an adversary would have a great vantage point from which to launch future attacks, as well as observe (satellites would be knocked out of the sky pretty much in the first minutes of any belligerence.) Having infrastructure on the moon would be the equivalent to controlling the high ground.
In 1967, the U.K., the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. signed the "Outer Space Treaty" HTTP://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty. They lived in the shadow of the MAD doctrine, and had the foresight to see that weapons positioned in space could be quite advantageous.
You can't provide any credible proof that moon based ballistic missiles could be stopped as easily as you claim, let alone at all. When the technology exists to 1) reliably stop 100% of intercontinental missiles, and 2) prevent asteroids discovered within forty eight hours from striking the Earth, let me know.

Re:Harsh mistress

[hairyfeet]

The reason why we don't improve humans is the same reason there is no 6 million dollar man (would that be $600 million with inflation?) and that is because our immune systems suck. When you try to improve the human you end up with their immune system attacking the improvements, hell there are dozens of diseases that all come down to "their immune system fucked up" such as arthritis and if you are gonna have a human that can function well in space cyborg will be the way to go.

As for fear of AI? Totally justified IMHO. I'll never forget a little Q&A I read once with one of the guys that was building drones and robots for the military, he said "So we get invited into this meeting with a bunch of brass and one of them says 'so we asked you hear to find out what something would cost' so he slides over a picture...and its the T-800 from the Terminator. At first i thought it was some gag, just pulling our leg before they got down to what they really wanted but...nope, they saw the Terminator like a tech demo and just wanted it built". Coincidentally the same thing was said by the director of Blue Thunder who said he was shocked when the movie came out and his secretary started getting calls from every military and SWAT on the planet, all saying the same thing...how much do you want for it? So yeah, as long as militaries have a bigger hard on for guns than common sense any true AI will probably end up being misused. Hell even what we already have is being misused, I had to shake my head and say "Did nobody watch Robocop?" when it was reported they had a robot go nuts on a test in South Africa and shoot up the stands, it was pretty obvious like ED-209 they were more concerned by how big a gun they could mount than in safety.

And finally "meatbags in spaaace!" just doesn't make sense with current tech. Sure if you were to go "New World Order" so that one group ruled the planet so you could split the costs? Yeah you COULD do it, but why? For the SAME costs as sending 3 meatbags to the moon you could send a robot to the outer reaches and get a LOT more hard science done that will broaden our understanding of our system a LOT more than the meatbags will. I mean just look at all the data we have gotten from the Voyager probes, can you even imagine what it would cost to even go to half the places its gone with just a single meatbag? hell just to give the one schmuck enough supplies so that it isn't a suicide mission you'd probably need a ship the size of the Empire State Building, and that is just sending one poor bastard out there and back.

So I'm sorry but with our current level of tech its just not worth doing, it'd be like saying you had to build a 747 in 1912, the amount of resources it would take would be just insane and in this case we can get more done with less by just ditching the meatbags.

Re:Harsh mistress

[hairyfeet]

Again quit while you are behind dude. You are actually comparing stopping an asteroid that is 5+ miles across to taking out what is MAYBE 50 tons, REALLY? Surely to God you didn't honestly think about that comparison or were high when you wrote it because even 3 seconds worth of thought would have shown you the flaw in your logic. One is a million plus tons of solid iron and nickel moving at 36,000 miles an hour and carries enough force to make a crater the size of the gulf of Mexico, the other doesn't weigh squat by comparison, is fragile as hell, and again you have THREE DAYS to intercept.

I'm sorry dude but you can tapdance all you want but we have gotten to see pretty much ALL of the major crazy cold war plans by both sides since the wall fell, everything from nuclear bombs used to power rockets to actually building solid telephone pole sized rods of tungsten to throw at people from orbit so the freefall would generate enough speed it would be like a non nuclear nuclear bomb, and yet with ALL those crazy ideas on BOTH sides you won't find a single memo even floating the idea of missiles on the moon....why? Because it would be pointless, that's why.

Re:Harsh mistress

[Chickenlips]

"..and yet with ALL those crazy ideas on BOTH sides you won't find a single memo even floating the idea of missiles on the moon....why? Because it would be pointless, that's why."

Here's your final reality check of this thread. You can return to your Dr. Evil matinee reruns soon.
Headline - November 26th, 1959: "It Would Be Hard To Hit Missile Bases On The Moon".
Link: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19591128&id=NAkpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3NUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2514,2905067

The entire underlying reason for the "Space Race"? If anyone was going to have a missile base on the moon, it was going to be the United States. Find me a solitary shred of credible information that contradicts that statement. The viability of anti-ballistic missile defenses has not yet reached the ability to shoot down missiles moving far slower than those which would arrive from the moon.
Why you insist on arguing against a forgone conclusion, made by the governments of the (then) most powerful nations on Earth, before space travel was even technically feasible, is your business.

Unless you can post something credible that rises above just trying to belittle my posts, we are done here.

Hello, editors

[wonkey_monkey]

It's traditional for the summary to contain more pertinent information than the headline, not the other way around. Just sayin'.

Re:Hello, editors

[Anonymous Coward]

Only matters to those three or four people who read beyond the headline anyway. ;)

Re:Hello, editors

[roman_mir]

The way I see it if the first 12 letters don't do it, nothing will. It should be enough for everybody.

Re:Hello, editors

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I see it if the first 12 letters don't do it, nothing will. It should be enough for everybody.

The first 12 letters are: "NASAsBoldenN". I assume you are including the space, but if so why exclude the special characters which results in "NASA's Bolde". On /. you will have better luck with "first thirteen characters" or something like substring(0,12). Preferably, you would leave your political rants to an appropriate forum and not troll with cryptic, condescending remarks.

Lets go to Disneyland!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Carnesale, noting the conclusions of the NRC report, added that a great deal of enthusiasm existed for a return to the moon."

A great deal of enthusiasm exists for going to Disneyland, that's not a science reason, it's a marketing reason.

You know how to do that (put men on the moon), its been done, you don't have a reason to send men to the moon, the Bush idea of sending men to mars with a stopover on the moon was idiotic, and was rightly scrapped.

Make progress or die.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Feyshtey]

In an era of decreasing budgets, marketing is key to build support to perform any activity. If it's a choice of getting funds to return to the moon because the public is receptive to the idea, or getting nothing because the count of people interested in asteroid exploration is about 12 ...

There are actualy several fundimental reasons to return to the moon, not the least of which being the establishment of a launch platform there that could ease exploration of deeper space.

I actually waffle quite a bit on where I land on this topic, and I've not been convinced by anyone's conclusions either way, so I wont put forth more than that.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Anonymous Coward]

A great deal of enthusiasm exists for going to Disneyland, that's not a science reason, it's a marketing reason.

The original moon missions were justified with marketing as much, or more. It wasn't about the science, it was about getting one up on those filthy Russian Commies.

You know how to do that (put men on the moon), its been done, you don't have a reason to send men to the moon

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Just because you don't personally see a reason to send men to the moon doesn't mean there isn't one.
We would benefit greatly from establishing a permanent lunar base in a variety of ways. Yes, going there isn't all that difficult- but staying there is.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Anonymous Coward]

A great deal of enthusiasm exists for going to Disneyland, that's not a science reason, it's a marketing reason.

Let's put an amusement park on the Moon. We can call it the Happiest Place Orbiting the Earth.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Sperbels]

There are actualy several fundimental reasons to return to the moon, not the least of which being the establishment of a launch platform there that could ease exploration of deeper space.

I think this is ultimately futile in the near term. The only thing we should be doing on the moon right now is figuring out how to get robots to semi-autonomously manufacture habitats and simple materials from local resources. We simply can't afford to bring all that stuff with us. We should be trying to figure out how to live off the land out there. Sending a bunch of robots to build our habitats in advance is the only practical way we put people in space until some cheaper way to get a lot of mass into orbit is devised. Chemical rockets just aren't efficient enough to do the job.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Anonymous Coward]

An "era of decreasing budgets"? What the fuck are you smoking? Have you seen the bullshit that we are spending and proposing to spend money on, and how much? Please go look! There are no decreasing budgets, no matter what the propaganda machine is telling you! It is simply not factual.

I get your point, but put the blame in the right place man. They would rather beef up FEMA, DHS, TSA, etc.. so that they can make good slaves of people than spend money on the betterment of society. You just buy into the bullshit that they are saving money by doing so.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Feyshtey]

I all honesty, you are 100% right about the budgets. I still have this naive hope that Americans will wake up and recognize that a SIXTEEN TRILLION DOLLAR DEBT is unbelievably irresponsible and that taxes will never close a gap that huge.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be down on yourself for being naive, honestly we all start that way. Want to help? Really help? If you do then you must start waking people up. No, it's not a joke. Propaganda won't do it, their job is to keep people sleeping. Make it a point to try and wake up 1 person a day. _If_ you succeed, you ask them to wake 1 person and move to another.

It's extremely hard to wake people, they are brainwashed by media every day. Show them building 7, teach them about HAARPs capabilities, teach them about Fast & Furious, teach them about Kennedy and Eisenhower's deaths, anything it takes. Show them the released docs from COINTELPRO and teach them that the people in power want us fighting against each other instead of attacking them to remove their power. Point them to Alex Jones, Jesse Ventura, Gerald Cenente, Professor Grif, who ever it will take to wake them up!

The "fix" when enough people are awake is to vote people into offices that are not politicians, but people of high moral fiber. That means getting them on ballots, and walking the street to get their name out. Again, propaganda media won't help you.

I won't lie and tell you the road will be easy, it will be extremely difficult. However, if we want to remain free we have to stop being complacent.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Microlith]

Actually, taxes are the only way to pay back a 16 trillion dollar debt. After all, that's how the Federal Government gets its money. It will, of course take time. And taxes combined with spending cuts will cut the deficit.

The problem is two fold:

* We need to run a surplus to have any real hope of paying down the debt.
* No one will allow for cuts of any real substance.
* The richest in the nation and the corporations they own engage in concerted tax-evasion efforts.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Teancum]

Actually, taxes are the only way to pay back a 16 trillion dollar debt. After all, that's how the Federal Government gets its money. It will, of course take time. And taxes combined with spending cuts will cut the deficit.

The problem is two fold:

* We need to run a surplus to have any real hope of paying down the debt.

The current approach being done to pay off 16 trillion dollars in debt is to devalue the dollar so you can pay it off with a 1945 penny (melted down and sold for scrap metal prices of copper). Either that or paid off with Zimbabwe Dollars instead because they will have a more favorable exchange rate.

It doesn't have to be this way, and I would hope that your "solution" was used instead.... by trying to seek a balanced trade market for American goods and having the federal government only stick within its revenue stream. Unfortunately "discretionary spending" being cut 100% won't balance the federal budget... which is largely why most politicians don't even bother trying any more.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[TWiTfan]

Well, there were rumors that someone saw a whale there. Maybe we should send whalers first.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Feyshtey]

The richest in the nation utilize the tax code to their advantage. That's not tax-evasion, it's accounting. And you can damn well bet that every single liberal/lefty/anit-capitalist that's ever made a speach about the horrible rich and their corporations pays someone to do the exact same thing, or does the best they can on their own.

Bloomburg, Huffington, and Michael Moore aren't knowingly sending a single red cent more to the fed than they need to.

Want to solve this? Flat tax, straight sales tax, no loopholes, no subsidies. Close the shit down and make it absolutely even across the board. You are no more able to get the left to push this kind of reform than the right.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Anonymous Coward]

Flat tax screws the poor; can you say "regressive"?

>Bloomburg, Huffington, and Michael Moore aren't knowingly sending a single red cent more to the fed than they need to.

“To evade taxes is illegal, to avoid taxes is your legal right”-Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes

Fuck you.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Feyshtey]

Fine, dont tax food, rent or utiliities for any home making less than $50k?

Tax the shit out of luxuries. That way those rich bastards with 3 summer homes, 2 Bentley's and a private jet are sending cash to Washington daily. I'm good with that. Those living the most lavishly get taxed exponentially more. Great.

The point is, you STILL cant get the left to do this. You know why? Because there are so many RICH on the LEFT living like rockstars. They are hypocrits that love to bash those rich assholes you're hear condemning, and yet live very much like them and even mroe so in a great many examples. They will not vote to do the right thing because they would bend themselves over in the process. My point being that you love to demonize those corporations but instantly give a pass to the Hollywood elite and the political figures saying all the right things but acting the opposite.

Re:Lets go to Disneyland!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your credibility lasted right up until you mentioned Building 7. Chances are I would agree with you broadly on many things, but the WTC stuff and Building 7 is just dumb conspiracy mongering. I'm aware of all the claims and they DON'T stand up to scrutiny. If you'd like people like me to believe you, don't go down that route. Because it makes you sound like a nut. Maybe you are, I dunno.

That's what you get...

[Le Marteau]

... for electing Obama.

Check out what Obama want's Bolden to do. Direct quote from Bolden:

"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."

Their "foremost" task is to make Muslims feel good. He literally said that. Yet he still heads NASA

Thanks, jackasses, for electing Obama.

Re:That's what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to post a link to that quote. Here it is:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7875584/Barack-Obama-Nasa-must-try-to-make-Muslims-feel-good.html

Re:That's what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

What is wrong with inspiring people with science? Science is one of the best ways to bring disparate people together too, you just have to look at the nationalities of those working at the LHC to see that.

Re:That's what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly there was no real alternative to electing Obama.

Re:That's what you get...

[Attila Dimedici]

Several people replied with a question they thought was insightful but which was rather a non-sequitur. They wanted to know what was wrong with NASA inspiring children or expanding international relations. The answer is "Nothing." The problem is that none of those three things should be NASA's primary mission. NASA's primary mission should have something to do with the Aeronautics and/or Space. We have another agency that is tasked with expanding international relations, as a matter of fact that agency was established for the express purpose of managing the U.S. government's foreign relations. It is the State Department. If NASA is going to make foreign relations one of its primary goals, it is going to make itself redundant. Reaching out to Muslim nations also falls under the rubric of the State Department and NASA doing so is redundant. We also already have an agency that has one of its primary focuses as inspiring children to get into science and math (or at least it should). That is the Department of Education. Once again if NASA starts making that its focus it becomes redundant.
I will repeat, the head of NASA should see his primary missions as being involved with Aeronautics and Space, not foreign relations or education (although both of those may be secondary or tertiary objectives).

Re:That's what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds suspiciously like what Reagan had NASA do with the Russians. However, we know that everything Reagan did was great therefore Reagan either didn't do that, or he did and did it better. Either way, science and peace are not valid ways to reach out to the rest of the world (unless your Reagan). We need to bomb them some more till they love us. Commodus was the hero of Gladiator by the way.

You have a point, though. Remember when we spent trillions sending some Saudi prince into space as a "Payload Specialist?" Man, Obama is such a fucktard for trying to reach out to the Arabs this way. It's ridiculous! Of course, that was the Bush administration so here's you "peep peep peep." Obama said he wants to engage the Muslim world in science while Bush gave away pony rides on the Space Shuttle. Viva la Bush! Fuck Obama!

Face it, it's better to engage the middle east, a historically significant scientific hub, with science rather than violence. They won't change over night, but at least give them some reason to interact and develop instead of flinging poo.

Re:That's what you get...

[bondsbw]

Sadly there was no real alternative to electing Obama.

I'd like to see the Modern Whigs gain support, if for no other reason, because one of their goals is to reform the electoral process to reduce the ill effects of our plurality voting system.

Re:That's what you get...

[khallow]

I hear that pathetic excuse a lot. I voted for Romney because there was such an alternative. I thought it was better than voting Libertarian that election cycle which was yet another choice.

Re:That's what you get...

[bondsbw]

1) The Saudi prince flight was about a deployment of a satellite, and the prince was a trained representative of the Arab Satellite Communications Organization. He gained that role politically, of course, but are you judging the Arab world in who they decide is or is not an astronaut? I would say it's just a different culture; the blame you place on the Reagan Administration is unfounded.

2) There's a difference between Arabs and Muslims. As I said, Saudi prince officially represented Arabs. He is also Muslim.

3) Nobody has said that we shouldn't help Muslims, or that we should exclude Muslims. What we are saying is that Obama specifically targeted Muslims; take that how you will.

Re:That's what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you know, you can donate your money to the rich even when romney isn't a president. Go ahead.

Re:That's what you get...

[speedlaw]

I got George Bush lite....but it was still better than a vulture capitalist. Anyone notice that the core republicans stayed away, letting him take the fall alone ?

Re:That's what you get...

[Feyshtey]

If you want to argue that there is value in an organization for that, fine. Do so. See if you get support for it. But that's not what NASA is. NASA has never been a humanitarian effort, nor a social effort. It's mission has always been and should always be, to advance aeronautics and space sciences.

What Obama did by making such a ludicrous statement was the equivelent of saying that The Department of Education's primary mission is to advance nutritional standards, or that the IRS' primary mission is to study the effects of welfare in the inner cities. There might be a loose association with these other agencies and the suggested mission, but that's not what those agencies are designed to do, equipped to do, or tasked with.

Re:That's what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bush administration put him on the flight for political reasons. To chum up with the Saudis. Now you blame Obama as if we've never used NASA as a means of reaching out to the mid-east. If you really think he was there because he was the best of the best or some shit other than political gain I've got a bridge to sell you. He might be a great astronaut, but that still doesn't mean he needs to be hitching a ride with us. We put him on board as a political ploy to get buddy-buddy with Saudi Arabia. And hey, it's not that big of a deal. He didn't ruin anything. He was probably well trained, but that's not the point. The point is previous administrations, Republicans just like you, used NASA as outreach to foreigners. Bush did it as outreach to Muslims just like Obama, but only now you have a problem with it?

I used Reagan as an example of using NASA to reach out to our enemies/previous enemies/non friends. Reagan used NASA to reach out to Russians. Reagan used NASA to reach the Russians just like Obama is using NASA to reach the Muslim world. Though, probably not as much. What I am saying is that Reagan specifically targeted Russians; that that how you will. I'm not saying it's a bad idea; you are (but only in the case of Obama, Bush and Reagan were fine to use NASA as outreach). Except you ignore Reagan's use of NASA in attempt to hate Obama. I think the idea is fine. Reagan achieved some decent results (how much is directly attributed to NASA outreach cannot be exactly quantified).

The bottom line is this, the Obama administrations goal of using NASA as outreach is not new. Reagan did it with the Russians. Bush did it with Saudi Arabia/Muslims, and now Obama has continued that trend. Maybe his problem was admitting it? I don't "blame" any of these guys; I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of claiming Obama has whored out NASA as if it's never been done before. It has. The issue shouldn't really be should we use science for outreach, it should be is it working.

Re:That's what you get...

[teg]

... for electing Obama.

Check out what Obama want's Bolden to do. Direct quote from Bolden:

"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."

Their "foremost" task is to make Muslims feel good. He literally said that. Yet he still heads NASA

Thanks, jackasses, for electing Obama.

That is no direct quote from Bolden at all - that is a myth.

Re:That's what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

We see this argument a lot on /., and it seems quite popular, but when we apply it to for example global leader/superpower/hegemon, and say something like "there's no real alternative to the US", there's often a lot of push back by fellow Slashdotters.

Is criticizing the "best of the worst" acceptable in one situation but not in the other?

Re:That's what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really??? You Obama fan boys are as bad as Apple fan boys. Did you watch the video in YOUR link. He most definitely said the words in the quote.

Re:That's what you get...

[Grizzley9]

... for electing Obama.

Check out what Obama want's Bolden to do. Direct quote from Bolden:

"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."

Their "foremost" task is to make Muslims feel good. He literally said that. Yet he still heads NASA

Thanks, jackasses, for electing Obama.

That is no direct quote from Bolden at all - that is a myth.

Actually it is a direct quote in an interview with Al Jazeera (at the 1:20 ish mark) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e857ZcuIfnI

Re:That's what you get...

[cusco]

In all truthfulness, State doesn't seem to be doing a very good job at it, either.

Priorities

[argStyopa]

Let's remember:
"Mr Bolden said: "When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Mr Obama] charged me with three things.
"One, he wanted me to help reinspire 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.""

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7875584/Barack-Obama-Nasa-must-try-to-make-Muslims-feel-good.html

Unless there are muslims to assuage on the Moon, we're not going back.

Re:Priorities

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Bizarre, you would have thought none of these things were in the remit of NASA. One is education and the other two are diplomacy.

Re:Priorities

[0xdeadbeef]

Byron York, a conservative columnist for the Washington Examiner, characterised Mr Obama's space policy shift as moving "from moon landings to promoting self-esteem"

Um... that's not actually a shift.

Re:Priorities

[AmiMoJo]

There is a general perception in the Muslim world that America is opposed to Islam and doesn't value Islamic culture or lives. This is backed up by things like drone strikes that kill innocent Muslims with barely an apology, all in the name of making Christians safer. Perhaps that is a distorted view, but it isn't an uncommon one.

I'm going to assume you don't want to be murdered by Islamic terrorists, and would prefer not to be fighting wars in Muslim countries. Therefore America needs to improve relations with Muslims. Obama is trying to do that. I'm not sure what the problem is.

Your conclusion that NASA will only try to do things that please Muslims is ridiculous. It just means giving credit where credit is due, and perhaps trying to encourage Muslim nations to participate in space by training home-grown astronauts or including their scientific contributions in literature. FYI the Russian space agency has sent people from Muslim nations up into space before, and strangely enough now enjoys better relations with those countries than the US does.

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama doing it, great.

The "foremost" mission of NASA? WTF?
It's a "space agency" not a "kiss the ass of a formerly impressive culture that has now largely ground to savage barbarism" agency.

It's not MY conclusion. It's the words of NASAs head administrator.

BTW, I'm not entirely sure that the Russians enjoy better relations with the Arab states EXCEPT insofar that they were historically closer clients of the Soviets because they were more pliable despotisms than the messier democracies.

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we should help all muslims go into space.

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! I found watched that interview and he's clearly talking about Mr Obama's Cairo Initiative, not the entire NASA program. Nice try. Go spread your lies someplace people can't reply.

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also a mirror-imaged perception in the US that Muslims are opposed to America and don't value American culture or lives. This is backed up by constant terrorist attacks and attempted attacks that kill innocent civilians, with barely an apology, all in the name of making Muslims safer. Perhaps that is a distorted view, but it isn't an uncommon one.

As for the astronaut thing, how about you get you're own friggin' space program? Why do we have to give you rides "or else"? A Muslim did ride on the space shuttle back in 1985... lot of good that did for us.

Re:Priorities

[argStyopa]

Nonsense, so weak it doesn't even merit a "nice try".

"When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Mr Obama] charged me with three things. "One, he wanted me to help reinspire 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."

That has essentially no context implied. If he'd said "before he went to Cairo" or "in light of his visit to Egypt"...no, the context was "When I became (X), my BOSS told me three things....foremost being kissing the butt of people he's going to talk to tomorrow."

There's no misquoting here, as convenient as that would be for apologists.

Re:Priorities

[DigiShaman]

You're fucking kidding, right?! America is opposed to Islam for a very good God damned reason. We value freedom. Islamists see freedom as an act of Hurbis, punishable by death. The only law is Gods law. Or Sharia law. There is no "meeting in the middle on this". Pick up a Quran and read. Either you accept or you don't. These guys make Christian fundamentalists tame by comparison.

For get about America. In fact, forget about the whole Western world for that matter. The Muslim community needs to make peace with other Muslims first and foremost. And you know damn well as the rest of us that that will never happen in our lifetime. I will not sacrifice my American ideals just to placate a bunch of intolerant people that value very little of human life.

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

The best way to stop pissing off Muslims because we're sending drones to wipe out their wedding parties is to...you know...stop sending drones to wipe out their wedding parties. Call me silly, but if a US drone killed my wife and kids, sending a Muslim into space wouldn't engender very much good will from me.

FYI the Russian space agency has sent people from Muslim nations up into space before, and strangely enough now enjoys better relations with those countries than the US does.

Are you implying a causal relationship here? That's a pretty big leap.

Re:Priorities

[Maritz]

To an extent even greater than other religions e.g. Christianity, the 'moderate' muslims are the ones who aren't taking the book very seriously. Making concessions to them makes the problem worse in the long run.

Half colonized double planet

[An dochasac]

Look at this little planet Earth, its moon is HUGE. Only Jupiter and Saturn have bigger moons. Luna is nearly as big as Mercury, half as big as Mars but its home planet hasn't colonized it. Obviously there's no intelligent life there. Let's claim them both for the queen of the galactic empire.

Obama's plan is beyond daft. Asteroids are unstable, there is no place to hide from cosmic radiation or Bremstralung X-rays from solar wind. A mission failure in the lunar capture plan could lead to a global disaster. Could Columbus and Magellan have discovered the New World before they had ever sailed the Mediterranean? Could the Polynesians have found Hawaii and New Zealand if they weren't already experienced navigators amongst the nearby islands of Polynesia? What if the first of England had decided to capture Sumatra and bring the entire island home for the British crown before the British Navy had ever ventured as far as Ireland, would you have considered that to be a good plan? Its better than Obama's plan.

Re:Half colonized double planet

[khallow]

A mission failure in the lunar capture plan could lead to a global disaster.

The Moon has already been captured so no reason to capture it again.

Oh, you mean the global disaster that would be caused by the somewhat bright light and perhaps even slight noise (we must steel ourselves to consider worst case here) that would come from a tiny asteroid dissipating way up in Earth's atmosphere?

The greatest burden to humanity would be the possibility of an unmanageable swarm of 911 (or equivalent) calls, thousands even. This will probably completely overwhelm our delicate emergency infrastructure. It might even be a worse disaster than the average Manchester football game.

Would obtaining an asteroid be worth that terrible, fearsome risk? I... I... just don't know.

Re:Half colonized double planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Man City, or Man United?

Re:Half colonized double planet

[khallow]

I believe both groups have at one time or another claimed responsibility.

Re:Half colonized double planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we can think about it this way:
Choice A
1. China/India go for Moon colonizing tech
2. USA/ESA go for deep space tech
3. Steal each other's tech (gonna happen anyway), expand on all fronts.

Choice B
1. Everyone go for Moon colonizing tech
2. China/India decides it's cheaper to steal tech anyway
3. China/India leap ahead of everyone in actually colonizing Moon using the money they saved
3a. Still no deep space tech.

they're just talking about government programs

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA is not the only, or even the best, way for Americans to return to the moon - or go anywhere else. If there is value, there will be private exploration and exploitation. NASA will never provide real opportunity for Americans to go to space...for political reasons all they can conceive of is sending a few carefully chosen representatives of NASA...and what NASA represents doesn't have much in common with the rest of us.

So why should we care what the political do to NASA? NASA is not the future. NASA isn't even much of a past.

Re:they're just talking about government programs

[Pecisk]

Sorry to burst your Rep bubble, but private has been pouring insane amounts of money and they still can't get their launch right more than the NASA. Also while there's no real resources starvation on Earth initiative to go and explore for private money won't be enough - they will better rage costly war than trying to mine Moon. They never really plan in long term.

Only hope is that new initiative of mining asteroids. But it is also at least 20 years away, and probably will grab some gov grants along the way anyway.

Re:they're just talking about government programs

[khallow]

and they still can't get their launch right more than the NASA

NASA has no launch vehicle. And the few attempts to develop a replacement for the Space Shuttle have all failed hard.

Nothing's going to happen in any case

[rpbird]

We're not going to an asteroid, we're not going to Mars, and we're probably never going to the Moon, either. NASA is a toy of the executive branch. Every prez comes up with a hot new "plan" and it never gets past the the planning stage. Bolden will be out on his ass looking for work in less than four years, maybe sooner, and NASA will be back to square one - again.

Re:Nothing's going to happen in any case

[Pecisk]

Well, for last ten years NASA have been regularly on chopping block thanks to Republicans - but it is also institution about which general voting public don't care, and that's why it's first causality in austerity chill which like it or not will come anyway.

Re:Nothing's going to happen in any case

[khallow]

Well, for last ten years NASA have been regularly on chopping block thanks to Republicans

And thanks to the Democrats as well. Keep in mind that current debt as a fraction of GDP jumped up by 25% during the Democrat dominated Congress of 2009-2011.

Re:Nothing's going to happen in any case

[Pecisk]

Sorry, but check your facts first - current debt was built in by budget created by Bush Republicans.

Re:Nothing's going to happen in any case

[khallow]

Sorry, but check your facts first

I did. Imagine that. Maybe you should actually look at the debt accumulated during the Obama administration than make empty claims.

Re:Nothing's going to happen in any case

[Electricity Likes Me]

Just keep squeezing that stone, I'm sure you'll get blood from it someday.

I mean do you want to start with how the expenditure of Iraq and Afgahnistan was moved to being "on the books" for the Federal government under Obama (despite, you know, still being real money being blown away by Bush) or the GFC finally unfolding at the terminal stage of Bush's term and thus Obama (and said Democrat congress) inheriting the choice of "bail out the banks go bankrupt" or "let 90+% of Americans go bankrupt".

From your tone I assume you think we should've just let the banks go under, which is an easy sentiment when you foolishly believe you wouldn't have lost money.

Re:Nothing's going to happen in any case

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop blaming Republicans! This whole mentality of "them" vs. "us" is ludicrous! Look at what both sides have done and it's easy to see that it's the same team! As long as you buy into the BS of "them" and "us" nothing changes for the better!

Re:Nothing's going to happen in any case

[khallow]

was moved to being "on the books"

Which is completely irrelevant to debt growth. Off the book spending contribute as much as on the book spending.

From your tone I assume you think we should've just let the banks go under, which is an easy sentiment when you foolishly believe you wouldn't have lost money.

I take it you have no idea what "moral hazard" is.

Re:Nothing's going to happen in any case

[Howitzer86]

Agreed. If we can't maintain our weather sat coverage we shouldn't even be talking about this stuff.

Re:Nothing's going to happen in any case

[Tablizer]

Well, for last ten years NASA have been regularly on chopping block thanks to Republicans

Republicans whose jurisdiction receives NASA project money are generally "in favor of" manned missions.

It also seems they just want to do the opposite of what Obama plans just to be obstructionist. If he wants to go to an asteroid, then the GOP suddenly wants the moon, and vice versa.

NASA should try to focus on building a flexible platform because politics will dick around with any such plans. Thus, a general-purpose manned transport system may be the better option even if it's more expensive than a specific-destination design because the destinations will keep changing as politicians do battle with their cocks.

Challenging

[Pecisk]

It's difficult question - we could do manned missions again, but what's practical reason behind this? Research? Basics can be covered by robotics - probes, rovers, satellites. What would be more important though that NASA and others would work with research how to make actual flight to Mars (or return to Moon) as painless as possible. If that results in actual mission after let's say 10 years - I don't really mind, because sometimes it's better than once and right. NASA is still light years ahead of anyone else in the world anyway.

Enthusiam among NASA contractors

[Anonymous Coward]

"because the public is receptive to the idea, or getting nothing because the count of people interested in asteroid exploration is about 12"

Public? Who said anything about public? NRC is from the National Academy of Sciences, and unfortunately that's been corrupted by lobbyists:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Academy_of_Sciences

" not the least of which being the establishment of a launch platform there that could ease exploration of deeper space"
That's completely false. You'd waste energy breaking moon gravity. When Bush suggested sending men to mars with a stopover on the moon, he was being an idiot. The moon stopover would simply increase the fuel needed, delay the trip, and add a lot of dangerous unnecessary complexity. But then he never really wanted that, because he didn't fund it. It was a soundbite just after the successful unmanned mar mission, to get some of the kudos from that, but he set the schedule so it would be long after he was out of power.

Re:Enthusiam among NASA contractors

[Feyshtey]

....and unfortunately that's been corrupted by lobbyists.

You mean, the public?

That's completely false. You'd waste energy ...blahblah

I think that I mentioned that no one has convinced me of anything....

Re:Enthusiam among NASA contractors

[Feyshtey]

And just a little more fuel for thought; the public is who the government is supposed to work FOR. If the public doesnt want it, the government shouldnt even be attempting to ram it down our throats. But you are obviously one of those elitist pinheads that thinks you and a small group in Washington are better equipped to tell everyone everywhere how to live their lives.

Gave up!

[Anonymous Coward]

So that is why we had 180 plus chineese "spy's" working in NASA?

Re:Gave up!

[Anonymous Coward]

With NASA's "affirmative action" plans giving distinct advantages to those of non-Caucasian ethnicity, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of different nations are represented there...

This Just In...

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States, which presently has no human space flight capability, isn't sending men to the moon in the foreseeable future!

I know you're shocked, so I will pause for a moment to allow you to recompose yourself.

. . . .

He's retired

[Anonymous Coward]

" Yet he still heads NASA"

Nope, he's a retired army man. And why does NASA have an anti-muslim stance anyway? Why shouldn't they inspire children? Why shouldn't they expand international relationships to include muslim nations? Why not?

Fox News would be proud of you.

Re:He's retired

[Le Marteau]

" Yet he still heads NASA"

Nope, he's a retired army man

He is the current Administrator of NASA. http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/summer/home/bolden-soi-quote.html

Fox News would be proud of you.

You are a fucking retard. Whenever you, and the likes of you, encounter someone who dislikes Obama, it's the old "product of Faux News" slam. It's ridiculous by now... I'm sure it makes you feel better to spout such trite idiotic lines, but any thinking individual can see that you are simply an unthinking fucking retard.

Re:He's retired

[Anonymous Coward]

And why does NASA have an anti-muslim stance anyway? Why shouldn't they inspire children? Why shouldn't they expand international relationships to include muslim nations? Why not?

Because NASA's role is aeronautics and space, not public relations and making people "feel good."

Your question is based on the illogical premise that NASA is anti-Muslim. It is not anti-anything; its purpose is to promote human activities across the solar system and to expand scientific knowledge.

Your loaded questions are non-sequiturs based on illogical reasoning. Similar questions along this vein would include, "Why is Obama anti-science?" or "Why does Obama impede progress?"

Re:He's retired

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is saying they shouldn't do those things, but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's foremost task should be to expand United State's scientific and technological knowledge in the fields of space and aeronautics. The fact that all three of his primary tasks are essentially PR outreach programs with three different groups is telling; it seems to point that President Obama sees NASA as more of a good PR machine than the top-tier place for science and engineering that it once was.

Re:He's retired

[ceoyoyo]

One of NASA's major roles has always been public relations and/or propaganda. Why do you think the US went to the moon in the first place? It was to inspire Americans and scare Soviets.

Re:He's retired

[Electricity Likes Me]

The long-term strategic interests of the United States are most cost-effectively served by building goodwill to the US throughout the world. If that means we use NASA as one such vehicle to deliver outreach and some long-term interest in people moving to and supporting the US, why not? Money not spent bombing the Middle East is money that can go to NASA and other pure science programs which don't necessarily have immediate practical applications (but are frequently of the most value long term).

Re:He's retired

[Anonymous Coward]

One of NASA's major roles has always been public relations and/or propaganda. Why do you think the US went to the moon in the first place? It was to inspire Americans and scare Soviets.

That's a negatory, G.I. NASA's role has been space exploration and expanding scientific knowledge about the Earth. Administrations may use that as a vehicle for propaganda and inspiration, but that is not one of NASA's core competencies, and it never has been.

Look at the military. The infantry platoon does not care about politics or winning hearts and minds; its sole purpose is to seek out, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire maneuver. Public relations / propaganda is higher up in the executive branch, and unfortunately when they try to repurpose these tools beyond their scope, it proves ineffective (infantry platoons trying to negotiate tribal politics, NASA trying to play United Federation of Planets wrt Islamic science).

Re:He's retired

[Anonymous Coward]

He was not told to stop anti Muslim anything, and I don't believe for a second that NASA was anti Muslim. If you do believe that, then shame on you.

Your question "And why does NASA have an anti-muslim stance anyway?" is a straw man argument, as is the rest of your bullshit.

Re:He's retired

[cusco]

He can't be worse than Shrub's pick for the spot, a Pentagon bean-counter who thought that launching a 1960s-era Command Module on 1970s-era SSRBs was a cutting-edge program, and then named the mess 'Orion' so that everyone would forget the real Project Orion.

Re:He's retired

[Teancum]

Nope, he's a retired army man.

General Charles Bolden is a Marine, not a soldier. There is a huge difference.

If you are going to be critical of the guy because of his military service (including his service after he left NASA as an astronaut and went back to the USMC earning his stars), at least get the branch of service he served in correct. While General Bolden would likely be polite to you if you got the two confused, don't try that at any bar full of Marines. You might not survive to see the morning.

NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[ErnoWindt]

What Bolden is simply acknowledging is that NASA's manned spaceflight program is over. Sure, they're still recruiting and training astronauts, but that's so they can keep the ISS manned until it is retired. The future of manned space flight, including space stations, Moon bases and interplanetary and interstellar travel will belong to private industry. NASA will focus on scientific missions. There's nothing wrong with that - it represents the evolution of the space industry. Billionaires like Elon Musk can build, launch, and return space capsules today. Fifty years ago, Musk's approach would have been highly unlikely, if not completely impossible. The US government will help fund and provide frameworks - think DARPA's development of the Internet and now the 100-year starship project and the humanoid robotics initiative. Along with its own research and development, private industry will take the frameworks and ideas DARPA is developing now and leverage and exploit them in unimagined ways, just as with the Internet.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[Anonymous Coward]

"Billionaires like Elon Musk can build, launch, and return space capsules today. Fifty years ago, Musk's approach would have been highly unlikely, if not completely impossible."

2 words - Howard Hughes.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[kermidge]

What's the big deal with H.H.? He had a couple of semi-successful (and that, by some, is a stretch).

HK-1 -> H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose" never came close to contract, and it's only flight (mostly ground effect) was two years after the war ended. It was a remarkable aircraft, to be sure, but hardly a success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules

Glomar Explorer - along with a slew of project names - was indeed quite an achievement, but pretty much failed (depending on whose account you read, even after all this time) in its mission. Later attempts to use it for its ostensible purpose never, so far as I can see, got anywhere. Unlike the H-4, it was designed and built in good time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSF_Explorer

If you want to count his movie with Jane Russell, go ahead.

If you refer to later accomplishments of Hughes Aircraft/Medical/Aerospace, sure. There was the Galileo probe and the AIM-4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Aircraft_Company

Howard Hughes was many things but I don't see any purpose in comparing him to Elon Musk other than, maybe, grins.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[AmiMoJo]

In the US perhaps, but China's manned space programme is moving forwards nicely. My money would be on them to get to the moon next. What will be interesting is the reaction of the US when China has a firm date and looks likely to do it.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[kermidge]

If you want an example of someone who really did things in, for example, aviation, you might start with Igor Sikorsky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sikorsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_Russky_Vityaz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_Ilya_Muromets

First four-engine aircraft -> first four-engine operational airliner, first four-engine operational bomber (a conversion from the airliner.) He did this in 1913, 1914.

Later, he designed and built the first successful, operational helicopter.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[kermidge]

About the 100-year spaceship - if I recall a-rightly, the tasking involving DARPA was for one or more experiments to find out if humans were capable of conducting a concerted "long-range" effort at anything at all. The century spaceship effort is useful as it gathers interest, thought, and publicity - and who knows what it will bring in a hundred years? The real test is whether or not that project or any other can survive that long.

(sorry, I can't find the link I had to the original stuff; y'all with good search-fu ought to be able to find it)

Were it possible, I wouldn't mind sticking around long enough to see. The only long efforts that worked that come to mind off-hand are some of the cathedrals, unless you want to count Stonehenge and the Great Wall.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[khallow]

There was the lunar Surveyor program. The first vehicles that NASA landed on any other body in the Solar System were build by Hughes's company.

I think the point here is that if private enterprise had been encouraged in the 60s (or at least NASA and the government had stayed out of the way back then) to set up space launch business, it would be a radically different world today. And Hughes Aircraft Company might well have been one of the businesses that could exploit any such openings back then.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[khallow]

We'll see if they're still "moving forwards nicely" when they have some accidents. Part of the Devil's bargain here is that the Chinese program continues as long as it doesn't embarrass the political leadership. Sooner or later, they will lose crew or have other things fail.

Last time that happened with a rocket in 1996, the Chinese abandoned almost all commercial launches.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[khallow]

Railroad networks, stock markets, human society. There's some stuff out there, if you look.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[kermidge]

Ah, thanks for reminder on Surveyor, I'd quite forgotten. I followed the space program and related stuff a bit at the time, due to an abiding interest in it and similar things. Damn librarian quit on me years ago.

I take your point, but. While I agree that had it been thought of and encouraged, there could have been increased effort on the part of some of the companies and consortia involved. Boeing, Lockheed, McDonnell, Douglas, Sperry, Thiokol, and a raft of others likely would not have minded doing so IF they could have figured out how to make some money at it.

But there's the rub. While there were always some dreamers in the various companies, none of them (the companies) were about to put big bucks into something without obvious real and fairly quick payout likelihood. They were quite happy to contract with NASA et al but were not about to step out on their own.

Further, the culture and mindset were simply different - different enough to preclude the serious possibility. It wasn't a matter of gummint staying out of their way. On their own, they wouldn't have done any of the space stuff without NASA and Air Force contracts, excepting perhaps communications satellites and some of the weather and eventual other Earth-monitoring birds - and even then, not until the government had paved the way and proven their utility. An exception, I believe, was Telstar, put together by a consortium of biz and gov.

An example of aerospace companies' hesitance to get into things, Boeing didn't get serious about building the 707 until two things happened: the Brits showed that jetliners could make money; several airlines asked Boeing to build some and offered pre-orders as incentive.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[kermidge]

Sure, but none were started as long-term projects. Rail and stock were a way to make money. From the standpoint of ideas, both were obvious and simple as well. Rail was a large enough risk that the long lines and the Transcontinental weren't pursued in full until after massive government grants and concessions. Stock markets followed from the earlier exchanges (and the re-writing of some law, IIRC) and were but an extension of them.

Human society is as much happy and necessary accident as they are a self-organizing means of getting stuff done. It is by no means a planned project, unless you care to speculate on the possible machinations of the 1600 or so people who own the planet.

I have looked a bit, over the years; I already gave examples of the things that came to mind. No doubt I've forgotten some and there could easily be many I've never learned of. Please keep in mind that I'm concerned with projects, not ongoing activities.

Take trans-ocean communications cables, for example. People have been laying them since, what, the US Civil War? Done because there was a market, because subscribers were lined up, and some funding was gotten in addition to out-of-pocket and stock-and-bond speculative issue, and entirely separate companies formed for that single purpose. Continued because there is still a market for the cables. They didn't say, for example, "We're gonna run a telegraph cable to Britain and where-ever else for a century and then see where we stand." Nor was that said for any of the examples you gave.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[khallow]

Sure, but none were started as long-term projects.

That doesn't matter.

But since you mentioned that, I think universities and religions would examples of long term projects that started with that intent. Space exploration can be considered another example, if you're of the category of optimism that thinks humanity will eventually spread past Earth.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[kermidge]

Well, I think were at apples and oranges.

I might point out that I have no need to be optimistic about humans getting off planet in a self-sustaining way; I have only to recognize a perceived necessity for doing so, if, that is, one decides that it might be a good thing for us to continue for a while. Best estimates I've seen are that over 99% of all species that have ever existed are now gone; somewhere years back I came across an estimate that, dinos and roaches and ferns notwithstanding, the average lifespan of a species was only around 800,000 years or so, and that estimate could be way off.

As with the reversal of the magnetic field, we're maybe a bit overdue. Theoretically we've a choice but I think it's already been made through default by the self-deluded self-satisfied sanctimonious sonsabitches who think that rounded corners are patentable, LiLo's sideboob is worthy of mention on a national news show, that Steamboat Willie (appropriated from his author way back when) won't make public domain in my lifetime is somehow justified by a perverted notion of intellectual property rights, that being groped or radiated is required for flying safely, unless you're rich, that the bulk of the important parts of human genome (some 60% or so on the "A" side, last I looked) have been patented, and so on and on ad nauseum. I sometimes wonder what the 1500 or so people who own the planet think about all this, if at all; after considering the past few centuries or so I think maybe they haven't much mind past sly and cunning because that's all they need.

Nope, the smart folks have decided. We live and die right here where we're supposed to be.

But who knows, in a century or ten we might could transfer our consciousness into some memory and gallivant Universe aboard machines; a while longer, maybe transcend any material grasp and swan about as cohering bundles of thoughtful energy.

As for the 100-year starship folks, those silly, childish almost-smart people, it'll give 'em something to do to keep them out from underfoot of the grown-ups.

Re:NASA's manned spaceflight program is over

[khallow]

Well, I think were at apples and oranges.

You asked for examples, I provided quite a few. As to the rest of your post, I agree that is a possible failure mode of human civilization. But I don't think the "smart" people have the kind of control that you think they have.

Here's the Fox News video link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zin9RkGsXrY

Devils advocate, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the end of manned space flight really a bad thing? For the cost of 'putting a man on Mars' we could probably send a fleet of orbiters and landers to a dozen worlds in our solar system. Why does it continually seem necessary to push the goal of having a select few people get boots dirty on another world when we could have a dozen times the science and exploration payoff keeping them safe at home and sending ever more advanced rovers and orbiters to gather data?

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[khallow]

Is the end of manned space flight really a bad thing?

How are people going to get into space, if they stop going into space? The idea driving our exploration of space is that we will eventually be there. Get rid of that and there really isn't much reason to do anything aside from some commercial and military-based Earth-facing activities. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge just isn't that valuable.

Sure, we could explore a dozen new worlds that would never matter to us rather than extensive manned expeditions. But what would be the point?

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you describe what it will be we are "exploring" if someone is 0.1 Earth radii up? If we are exploring Mars by proxy by sending machines, what will the human floating around low earth orbit accomplish? He'll get the signal a few milliseconds before? Do you understand the size and scale of the universe? The nearest star is Alpha Centauri, at 4.7 light years away. In between is a harsh deadly vacuum many cubic light years in size. What will a human accomplish there, never mind the fact that he wouldn't live long enough anyways to get there with real actual technology?

So if you are all about "exploring", Alpha Centauri is 4.44644835 × 10^13 kilometers away. Low Earth orbit, is say 600 km up.

So you are 0.00000001% closer! Wow! We're totally gonna see better that way!

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[khallow]

There are a lot of things closer than Alpha Centauri. For example, there's our entire Solar System. Now, why someone would ignore Mars and talk about Alpha Centauri is beyond me.

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So please tell me, how is someone in low earth orbit helping to "explore" Mars if we already have machines on Mars? I also notice you conveniently brush aside my numbers. I know you space loons don't like facts when they show how ridiculous your fantasies are. The entire solar system is a few planets in a huge volume of NOTHING. How many more pictures of dead rocks or frozen wastelands do you need, and how will having humans floating around a tin can help?

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[Reality Man]

Ah, so you changed from "exploring space" to "exploring Mars". I see. When simple calculations showed you how utterly ridiculous and nonsensical your notions are, you cowered and scurried back into our solar system....

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

> How are people going to get into space, if they stop going into space?

I can think of a couple ways and there's probably a couple not yet invented. Considering you don't need to send a whole person every time. A robot with a meat or just connected to a meatbrain remotely is a good approach. Intentional genetic seeding for more remote locations. I imagine this is the most practical way to populate the stars.

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[khallow]

A robot with a meat or just connected to a meatbrain remotely is a good approach.

The former can be just an augmented human. The latter has little advantage over the current approach once the robot gets too far away from the meatbrain.

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[khallow]

At other times, I've changed to "exploring the Moon", "exploring nearby asteroids", or just "exploring the Solar System". My perfidy knows no bounds - well except those of time.

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[Reality Man]

Always leave yourself plenty of wiggling room when discussing things that make no sense.

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[khallow]

I also notice you conveniently brush aside my numbers.

The presence of numbers can't defend a massive non sequitur. For example, why speak of going to Alpha Centauri when there are many places in the Solar System that can be reached in less time than it takes light to reach Alpha Centauri? Mars can be reached in about six months; the Moon in three days; I think Venus is about four to five months; and Earth crossing asteroids in weeks.

Similarly, it's pretty irrelevant that there is a lot of volume in space. We're not trying to use every bit of volume in space.

Second, going to space traditionally means going to interesting places or doing something interesting in space, not going to a random nowhere in space. That has been true as long as people have spoken of the matter. I don't care why you're misrepresenting the meaning of "go to space". There's no point to it aside from annoying everyone on the internet.

The entire solar system is a few planets in a huge volume of NOTHING.

No one (at least outside of fiction) has ever characterized the Solar System as anything other than what it is. It's been known for a long time that distances in space are a bit longer than those to your neighborhood grocery store. It's also been known for a long time that the "space loons" have been talking about going to the "few planets" in space (and the many other interesting objects in space) not the "huge volume of NOTHING".

How many more pictures of dead rocks or frozen wastelands do you need

Well, why haven't we taken enough pictures of dead rocks and frozen wastelands on Earth?

how will having humans floating around a tin can help?

Why isn't everyone just living in the most optimal environments for humans? Why do we have people in the seas, living on mountains, arid deserts, and the frigid polar ice caps? Why did we make thousands of vast cities, some in rather hostile locations, rather than just live on a beach?

It's pretty clear you don't think about this. This is not the first time I've corrected such statements by you and yet you still insist on repeating the same grotesquely wrong statements without even a hint that you've read my previous rebuttals. It doesn't take that long to learn the point of view of people with whom you disagree. Yet you never bother to try.

Re:Devils advocate, but...

[DigiShaman]

Perhaps sending probes near FTL to other planets for the purpose of deploying teleportation devices. The first step mankind makes on another planet outside our solar system might in fact be through a teleporter (quantum fax) and not stepping down off a spaceship.

Fine

[waddgodd]

If Mankind won't return to the moon in your lifetime, don't think this can't be fixed relatively quickly

Re:Fine

[spyfrog]

"Mankind" doesn't only encompass the United States of America. I am quite sure that the Chinese don't give a rats ass of the lifetime of Bolden so it might be that US won't be going back to the moon but that doesn't say that mankind wont. My guess is that China will do it within my lifetime if they progress on the current course.

Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Sorry, but there's nothing useful in either place AND they're both at the bottom of another god damned gravity well. Orbital stations for spaced based solar would at least be *useful*. Satellite based internet would be useful. Is there something wrong with useful? Why is it that when we talk about space exploration, it always descends into some dick-waving "me there first" macho-chimpanzee rant.

We know how to get into space. We know there are useful and profitable things to do there. Can we just get on with it please?

The moon is useless and if there's life on Mars, it's not going anywhere. We can wait.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sorry, but there's nothing useful in either place"

The Space Nutters will skin you alive.

" AND they're both at the bottom of another god damned gravity well."

Oh no, god damn gravity! Keeping our bones dense and water and atmosphere where I need them!

"Orbital stations for spaced based solar would at least be *useful*."

Too bad they don't *make sense*, and we can't build them anyways.

" Satellite based internet would be useful."

No, it wouldn't. We can get ridiculously cheaper and faster internet with just fiber and cable everywhere. I know, it's at the bottom of a gravity well which the sci-fi authors of your childhood made fun of.

" Is there something wrong with useful?"

Is there something wrong with putting solar panels in the desert, or using fiber optics? You have a nostalgic 1970s view of space and technology.

"Why is it that when we talk about space exploration, it always descends into some dick-waving "me there first" macho-chimpanzee rant."

You didn't mention a single thing about "exploration", just a series of knee-jerk geek sci-fi fantasies with no basis in fact.

"We know how to get into space. We know there are useful and profitable things to do there. Can we just get on with it please?"

We already are. The satellites we do need for communication and observing and navigation are all already there. They're also fully automated because electronics got so much better so fast that the fantasies of the early Space Age are laughable.

"The moon is useless and if there's life on Mars, it's not going anywhere. We can wait."

Space isn't going anywhere either, and neither is the species. It was all a daydream.

As for "exploring", what is it exactly you think you'll be "exploring" when you are 0.1 Earth radii up? What will that change?

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Teckla]

Sorry, but there's nothing useful in either place AND they're both at the bottom of another god damned gravity well.

The whole point is having two homes in case of an extinction level event happening (asteroid, nuclear war, plague, etc.).

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

And there we go. The usual religious argument. Space as a kind of heaven, a reward for the species. Two homes! Oh my! All the comforts of home, but in space! Too bad there isn't a single place in the Solar System besides the Earth that even comes close to being a home for us! How will you prevent nuclear war and plagues in the second home, exactly? You think human nature will magically change in your second home?

Please, you're a child.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me a self contained environment which is completely self sufficient in the Arctic, underwater, or in Death Valley before rambling on about space colonies.

Speaking of which, how does a post nuclear/asteroid/plague event render Earth less hospitable than Mars or the freakin' moon?

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[rubycodez]

we can't build a hollow tin can big enough to serve that purpose in the next century; we can't travel to any such place either in the next century.

the only possible benefit to space exploration in the near term would be for resources, by automated system.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon is useless

You mean, What good is a new-born baby?

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

But we already know that babies grow into adults, it is a directly observable fact, and it's also fun to make babies, something you might find out yourself one day. We have never observed a dead hostile rock host life.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Is there something wrong with putting solar panels in the desert, or using fiber optics? You have a nostalgic 1970s view of space and technology.

Yes, I also have a 1970s nostalgic view of physics, as in, land area is limited and the energy falling on it is limited and by multiplying the two, you get available power and THAT, as they say, is IT.

However, before you squeal with delight and tell me how *much* that is, please expect that you'll also need to calculate and exclude land and sea areas that are not currently supporting food crops or working ecologies, as well as areas without significant weather, or property rights problems. Oh, and do exclude land with other other instalment, theft or maintenance problems (e.g. Brooklyn, Antarctica). Oh, and don't forget those line losses for your little desert energy-topia.

If you ever want to get more solar energy than what's available on earth, it's lots of space, Mylar mirrors and microwaves.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[camperdave]

All the useful stuff is at the bottom of gravity wells.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Jeremi]

The whole point is having two homes in case of an extinction level event happening (asteroid, nuclear war, plague, etc.).

The value of a "second home" isn't much if the second home can't sustain human life indefinitely. Why spend trillions of dollars just so that a few dozen humans can be miserable on some godforsaken rock for a few years until they die from lack of biosphere?

Even if the Earth was hit by an asteroid, a nuclear war, and a plague simultaneously, there would still be more chance for human survival on Earth than anywhere else.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Not sure about that. Comets have water. Asteroids have metals and who knows what else? Whether either can be made profitable and useful is another question.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

We do know what else. It's called the Periodic Table Of Elements. Or are you claiming there are elements out there that we don't know about? Water? That's your big "killer app" for comets? Look at how much water we have here in our god damn gravity well. Not sure what your point is here.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

Please calculate the total available energy from solar falling on Earth vs energy consumption of the entire species. Then calculate the light pressure and solar wind effect on your large orbital solar panel, then calculate the energy required to keep your solar panel in position. Then calculate the cost of your array vs even the most expensive electrical source on Earth. Then tell me what we are supposed to do with electricity considering that electricity isn't typically used as a fuel for rockets, cars, airplanes or boats.

Show me the numbers for this killer app you think you have.

I've done the numbers and it's clear that it makes no sense whatsoever, and the only way you'll understand that is if you run the numbers yourself.

I also notice you're far away from "exploring space" now.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

light pressure and solar wind effect on your large orbital solar panel
As the light panel orbits Earth away from the sun, you compensate for the solar wind with a space tether. The drag both slows down the sail and adds power to the system. You do have to extend it and retract it, which are admittedly non trivial problems.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

So you just doubled the amount of fantasy-level technology you need to get electricity, which we can get by having water fall through a turbine, thanks to our god damn gravity well. I also note the total lack of numbers and calculations. Fantasies is all you have. I'm sorry you believe so fervently the NASA PR tripe from your childhood, but as some point childhood has to end, and if your user name has to do with your hair color, I think the time to grow up is now.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Well, OK. Let's say we want to replace say, the world's oil consumption per year, which is about 160 exajoules. We *can* do it here on earth, and I suspect that we'll be eventually be shoved into about 2500 (or more) thorium nuclear plants because in about 50 years, we're fuck out of affordable net-energy positive hydrocarbons (1.3 trillion barrels of conventional crude at 30 billion barrels a year gives us a tetch over 40 years. Natural gas extends this by about 11 years ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_depletion ). Now remember that hydrocarbons are only 1/3 of the world's energy budget, so you'll have to go three times that to 480 exajoules from somewhere. That's 7500 thorium nuke plants. Tough, but doable.

As for the fantasy level of technology, the first electromagnetic tether was tested in February 25, 1996. It failed when the high voltage it generated melted the materials it was made of. I doubt that problem is insurmountable (e.g. an array of shorter EM tethers to distribute the voltage and drag would fix the problem).

FYI, I didn't have to look these numbers up. I remember them. To see what we're facing, I suggest you review the book referred to here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil.

FYI. I'm not recommending we do this yet. We have other strategies that will work, sort of, for awhile, but someday, we run out of thorium too.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's comments and sentiments like this that make some people around the world want the US to collapse faster. You guys are so similar to the old Sovient Union it is not funny.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

Our society will change so dramatically that none of your resource-intensive fantasies will even enter the picture. You're like a 19th century thinker imagining bigger and better steam engines. You're stuck in the past. Time will tell, but you are on the wrong side of things. Mega-scale engineering like you propose will never happen, ever.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[runeghost]

Sorry, but there's nothing useful in either place AND they're both at the bottom of another god damned gravity well. Orbital stations for spaced based solar would at least be *useful*. Satellite based internet would be useful. Is there something wrong with useful? Why is it that when we talk about space exploration, it always descends into some dick-waving "me there first" macho-chimpanzee rant.

We know how to get into space. We know there are useful and profitable things to do there. Can we just get on with it please?

The moon is useless and if there's life on Mars, it's not going anywhere. We can wait.

Life on Mars (if there is any) will be threatened with extinction (and/or contamination) as soon as any group of would-be terraformers can afford a Mars launch with a payload of bacteria, spores, molds, and fungus. As time goes on, the threshold of resources such a launch will require is likely only going to go down. We can wait, but every year we do, the odds go up that someone else won't.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never understood this logic.
If everyone dies, no one will be around to care.
Why is it so important to you that human life carries on?
I hate to tell you this, but once you're dead, you won't give a shit about ANYTHING.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Am more than willing to admit this. We may indeed enter a phase change collapse of interdependent supply chains which require cheap transportation energy. It's also possible that we will not recover from this collapse in our lifetime and that a severe die-off will result. I suspect that this is the highest probability.

Doesn't make it desirable.

Moreover, if it happens that way, the problem is moot. If, as I suspect, we slow-collapse at different rates in different regions and manage to hobble along with uranium, thorium and an ever expanding batch of renewables, it might be enough, at that point to sustain the many fewer remaining people. So, I suspect we will at least have electricity, locally at least, and the remaining folks will have more time to attack the problem and will be wonderfully motivated to do so.

Could anyone do a space program at that point? Hard to say. Hydrogen isn't hard to come by. Aluminum and other non-rusting metals won't be a problem either, for any humans on this planet, ever again. Energy will be the choke point they'll be trying to clever their way out of. Might take a thousand years, or two. Took about 1100 years for the renaissance to get going after Rome started deteriorating, and another few hundred for a tech build-up. Of course, that tech build up was entirely build on hydrocarbons (coal at first, then oil and natural gas). Difficult to predict what technologies can come from patience and energy restrictions.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

Was that so hard to admit? :) Seems to me, from what I am reading, that many people indulge in idle fantasies involving pseudo-technologies they read about as kids. Is that what is happening here? I used to do the same, but now I see the reality.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we even try? It's not like we can come up with better technologies from what we learn. /s

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ever want to get more solar energy than what's available on earth, it's lots of space, Mylar mirrors and microwaves.

Disregard all the cost issues, technology issues, and political will issues in this for a moment. If we start gathering solar energy that currently misses the Earth, and beam it to Earth, have we solved a problem? Or, have we just invented another way to increase the heat load that we currently seem to have trouble radiating back out into space? I never hear anyone talk about the down side of space based energy generation, but it seems to me that if we double the amount of solar energy arriving on the Earth, we still get hotter down here.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[swillden]

I hate to tell you this, but once you're dead, you won't give a shit about ANYTHING.

Well, damn, I guess I should go cancel my life insurance policy. Once I'm dead I won't care if my family has food and shelter.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Sort of. I don't believe that these are mutually exclusive scenarios. Depends on your time horizon.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[khallow]

Mega-scale engineering like you propose will never happen, ever.

We've already developed many of the technologies that will make them happen. I find it interesting how people can in the face of what we've already done claim something, which just isn't that much harder, will never happen.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

Well if you're not actively backing life extension research, your time horizon is a handful of decades. Three, tops. In three decades, you won't see much different than now. If you look back three decades, things aren't that much different either. We have better communications and electronics, that's it. I also don't see the many breakthroughs in fundamental physics that are required by so many of the delirious space prophecies. We'll never see another equivalent of the 19th century ultraviolet catastrophe and the overthrow of classical physics by quantum mechanics. We should know, we've never had more people looking.

Electrons, protons, neutrons and photons. That's pretty much it as far as what we can manipulate. 92 stable elements, that's it. There aren't any other ones, outside of technobabble and other sci-fi delusions.

We already run our jet engines hotter than the melting point of the materials inside, which are single-crystal turbine blades with active cooling. 3D printing won't improve that, neither will better computers. The only thing we've gotten better at is processing information faster and cheaper and with less and less energy.

That's because to represent a bit doesn't take much energy at all, and it took us decades to shrink our manufacturing processes *down* far enough to match that. When it took two vacuum tubes to store a bit, dissipating 20W just to store that one bit, that puts limits on what kind of computers you can build.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle

" Theoretically, roomtemperature computer memory operating at the Landauer limit could be changed at a rate of one billion bits per second with only 2.85 trillionths of a watt of power being expended in the memory media."

Hmm, a few orders of magnitude there for us to improve, eh?

Guess what, that's pretty much what's been going on for five or six decades. Do you see any other physical reality changing by that many orders of magnitude? Compare the thrust from the first jet engines to the latest ones. The physical world just isn't amenable to the same kind of improvements as information processing. Which is why it constantly amazes me that people compare hard drives to jet engines. There's no connection between the two. Our computers can get a thousand times faster and it still won't make that 747 fly across the Atlantic any faster.

And it won't make any of the space fantasies from the '60s and '70s any more possible either. So sorry.

The most probable things we'll do in the future won't be selecting the floor tiles for our Mars condos, it'll be figuring out if we can run the dishwasher once or twice this week.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

It just isn't that much harder, why is why no one else has continued doing so. The cognitive dissonance of the Space Nutter.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

I never hear anyone talk about the down side of space based energy generation,

Well, not in this Space Nutter echo chamber you won't. You'll get modded down for daring to question humanity's glorious future floating around in free-fall grabbing all those easy to get resources and limitless energy.

You wanna play a fun drinking game? In the next slashdot space story, spot the following Space Nutter tropes:

We must get off this rock/mud ball.

Extinction level event!

Explore the universe (although we are doing fine from the comfort of our computer chairs)

Space Elevator

He-3

asteroid/comet mining

We only have computers because of Apollo

Can you find more?

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your presumption that there might not be some material out there that we have not discovered, whether it be some new element or a compound that only forms under unique circumstances not found on earth is highly arrogant. Do you have even the tiniest idea how *huge* the universe is - Do you really think (Like each generation before us) that we are the generation that his finally discovered *everything*, please get over yourself.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[khallow]

The transportation systems of many large countries are megascale projects with most of the work done in the past few decades.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

Right there on Earth with real technologies.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[khallow]

Yep. And I imagine that when megascale projects are done in space, it'll be in space with real technologies too.

Re:Fuck the moon. Mars too.

[Reality Man]

Thing is, our real technologies are so limited, that nothing will happen in space. It's just a pipe dream. You don't HAVE any real technologies for mega-scale engineering in space! And here's the kicker: if we DID have such technologies, we wouldn't need them because they would imply that we have gotten better at many things right here on Earth!

Just as an example, suppose someone comes up with a thin, reliable, tough and cheap solar panel that's also 70%+ efficient. The Space Nutter promptly thinks "wow let's put it in space!". Reality says "well this means space will be competing against a much better Earth-based panel and we don't need dozens of untested and hypothetical and ridiculously expensive technologies that may not even exist. Let's just put the panels on roofs and deserts, and let's let a smart grid handle it instead of a large, old-fashioned mega project."

You're obsolete, mega-engineering is the past.

It's clear what we must do.

[mcmonkey]

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must be killed.

Then we can go back to the moon.

Re:It's clear what we must do.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is so important about some test pilots in rubber suits bouncing around on a dead, hostile radiation-blasted rock? So important that you think it's worth killing someone over?

Re:It's clear what we must do.

[Howitzer86]

Some of the technology you used to post what you did was developed as a direct result of the moon program.

Re:It's clear what we must do.

[Reality Man]

Name one.

Re:It's clear what we must do.

[runeghost]

Has anyone checked if he's recently taken out a large life insurance policy on himself? Perhaps one that pays out in case of assassination but not suicide?

Re:It's clear what we must do.

[Howitzer86]

I am unable to. This was told to me by someone else, and I accepted it as fact without merit or inquiry. To my credit though, there are some vague notions in that direction in our history texts about the value of the moon program.

Re:It's clear what we must do.

[Reality Man]

At least you can admit it. I used to believe the glossy NASA PR too, but it turns out that what NASA does a lot is take fully formed ideas from elsewhere, pump government money into it and develop it a bit more. Then NASA spins it so it looks like they invented it.

You also have the usual geek habit of self-aggrandizement of their pet delusions, like NASA inventing Velcro or Teflon, which NASA never claimed but it's part of the lore.

What do you call repeating what you heard without inquiry?

Religion.

Re:It's clear what we must do.

[Anonymous Coward]

integrated circuit computers
every weather report you've ever heard that uses data from weather satellites
every trans-continental phone call you've ever made and cable TV, too (comm sats)
infrared ear thermometers
Ventricular assist device
Structural analysis software
Powdered lubricants

fuck you.

Re:It's clear what we must do.

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must be killed.

Then we can go back to the moon.

I thought that was obvious from the headline. If his lifetime is over soon, we can begin the planning immediately for a return to the moon -- with or without the important muslim academic achievements.

Re:It's clear what we must do.

[Howitzer86]

There's some merit to it though. I think I know the angle you're coming from (libertarian perhaps?), but I can with certainty say that Apollo navigation computer was worth building! And that there is a benefit to government tech pushes like that in that their demand for new technology can reduce the price of said tech so that the commercial industries will feel better about picking them up (in this case, ICs).

Maybe it's just another political fundraiser?

[rmdingler]

Settle down. Since we've rung out the towel that is the American tax base, we're borrowing all we can already, and we lack the political will to cut ANY spending... NASA would have an easier time picking ticks off an angry bobcat than getting a significant budget increase. Perhaps they're angling for some riyals?

HALF(?) colonized

[Sloppy]

You need to take a second look at Earth if you think our "double-planet" is half-colonized. We can relatively trivially colonize the interior of the Sahara or Antarctica or the oceans, for an insignificant fraction of the cost of colonizing Luna.

To me, by suggesting the most expensive option, you seem to be talking about economic waste.

If you're going to advocate such waste, and that it be done compulsorily (i.e. funded through government) then I'd like to be persuaded that we're already in a post-scarcity economy. Show me our robot butlers, flying cars, closed-due-to-lack-of-sales strip mines, and nearly 100% unemployment rate, please. When we have those things, I'll believe there's no limit to the extravagance we can bear. Until then, though, colonizing the places I mentioned above, is way more sane.

I'm not convinced asteroid mining is profitable either, but at least on the face of it, it's not as guaranteed to be a net loss, as lunar colonization is.

can ho hung phat

[Anonymous Coward]

What ? http://thegioitaisan.com/chung-cu-can-ho/can-ho-hung-phat.html

wishing on a ramjet

[Anonymous Coward]

I am hoping the SLS gets killed, so there can be work on a mach 5 launch airplane that launches Falcon 1s.

Well then, he's left us no choice...

[Anonymous Coward]

We have to make sure he has as short a lifetime as possible.

Here's the actual video for non-morons

[0xdeadbeef]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e857ZcuIfnI

The point.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

If you want to stay in space so you can say... maintain a power generation station, and NOT haul heavy (and therefore expensive) materials up from a gravity well, like Earth then redirecting some comets and mining asteroids are your best bet.

Profits Uber Alles

[Tenebrousedge]

Right, because there's some sort of profit motive here that we should be serving. Some guy's business is going to get ahold of this and that will make all of us (shareholders) rich, rich, rich!

Let's point out that there are slightly bigger barriers to entry in the space exploration market than in the internet market. And if there's one thing in the world that isn't going to get smaller and more efficient with time, it's a gravity well. At least until we develop a space elevator. So the market is guaranteed to be in control of a few large players -- most likely only one -- and make most of its money off of government agents. The cynical part of me suggests that this is exactly the role that Musk wants to inhabit.

For any industry, the amount of competition is directly proportional to the cost to enter the market. Space exploration is at about the level where billionaires and people with the net worth of a small country can play around with it. More or less on the public dime. So, just like the internet.

I'll skip the discussion of what exactly there is in space to make money off of. Without the possibility of competition, a large profit potential would just make things worse.

Speaking as an American ...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I do not "oppose" JUST Islam - I "oppose" ALL use of such mythological nonsense as justification to enslave any human being, PERIOD. IF "your" specific mythology "fits the bill" ...

The founders of the nation of the United States of America understood the problems with such mythology used by the various kings, popes and other power mongers, and the first and second amendments make it clear that it IS my indivual right to use whatever means available to me to make such mythologies nothing more than historical curiosities.

No surrender, I will give no 'quarter', liberty or death.

Re:Speaking as an American ...

[Maritz]

Sadly those same mythologies proved very convenient in propping up and justifying slavery - in the complete absence of a king of any description. Shame really, and a missed opportunity.

ANYBODY wold have been better than Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are not gay (and therefore focused upon his policy changes on gay marriage/gays in the military) and not a Hospital (drooling over the possibility that everybody you serve will have his bills paid by Obamacare) then ANYBODY in politics would have been better than Obama. McCain would have been better (much more experience in military and foreign policy), Romney is a dirtbag but HE would have been better (Less golfing and celeb-hugging, more managing) John Kerry Would have been better (the man loves foreign policy), Hillary Clinton would have been better, Sarah Palin would have been better (she fought corruption by both Dems and Repubs in Alaska), Newt Gingrich would have been better (unlike most pols he has a functional brain and has read a few books), Joe the plumber would have been better ( ANY plumber would have been better ) the local pizza delivery guy would have been better (even HE would know the basic laws of economics etc). Obama want into the whitehouse with no experience running ANYTHING, and not even experience working for somebody who ran things... His resume was thinner than that of a burger flipper. While the press swooned over him and told us he was a genius (over at NBC one of the talking heads proclaimed Obama "the perfect American" and insisted that anybody opposed to him was a racist) the truth is that, unlike other candidates, we have never seen his college admissions papers, grades, etc. What classes did he take? What grades did he get? What's his IQ? The press HAMMERED Palin (only a VP candidate at the time) over a question about what she reads (the implication being that she was illiterate and not a reader even though she was a popular governor of a state at that time) but never even asked Obama what he reads... The truth is that we know very little about Obama even now in his 2nd term. We have no actual documentary proof he ever even graduated from college (NO, I'm NOT a "birther" I am only pointing out that we were sold a bill-of-goods with this guy based on the word of a bunch of "opinion makers" and without an actual record or records) This is not a racial thing... there are a HUGE number of black, hispanics, asians, etc in the US with excellent military records, business experience, state or local government experience etc ANY of whom would have been better than Obama. All Obama has is obnoxious arrogance and swagger...we let a pot-head run the country and the results are predictable... bad performance and he takes no responsibility for anything that goes wrong.

Why did anybody think Obama would be good at running ANYTHING? And further, why would anybody expect that, once put in charge if the massive federal government, he would care about a program that uses a fraction of 1% of the budget while being the best advertizement for "American exceptionalism" (a concept he hates) While campaigning for the Presidency in 2008, Obama promised the teachers unions that he would stall the Bush program to return to the moon by 5 years, and shift the NASA money to education; that's NOT a person who is interested in manned spaceflight or keeping the US at the forefront in aerospace activity.

Re:ANYBODY wold have been better than Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

So... You don't like Obama? Oh, and MOAR PARAGRAPHS PLEEZ

Learn to READ

[Anonymous Coward]

Bolden did indeed say that he was tasked with Muslim outreach, and unfortunately for you it was in a videotaped interview with Al Jazeera (I'm sure it's on YouTube).

You linked to Nasawatch, a site run by a lefty Obama supporter who hated the Bush administration's NASA efforts (he used to mislead people about that program by showing a post-staging photo of a test rocket where the discarded dummy stage which was unguided was at an odd orientation ... so the casual observer would see a "broken" rocket). The page you linked to was from the time when the Whitehouse was panicking because the video of the interview got out and people were asking questions about the subject. Supporters of the Obama admin "circled the wagons" and tried to pretend that Bolden had not said what he said, then they realized it was on tape and they changed it to two themes: "you misunderstood him" and "President Obama never told him that". That Nasawatch stuff is all about the denial that the president gave Bolden that assignment and NOT proof that Bolden never said it.

FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA has NOT been regularly on the chopping block (not by Republicans nor by Democrats). It's support in congress has been both bi-partisan and FLAT for many years. Try looking at actual budget numbers for the past 30 years and remember to account for inflation.

NASA is only being hit hard right now by sequestration because of Obama... HE came up with the idea (then lied about it during the 2012 campaign). This is no right-wing conspiracy theory ... Bob Woodward ( famous left-leaning journalist who exposed Nixon and Watergate ) has said this. The Republicans offered to pass a bill to let Obama re-arrange spending priorities to suit his preferences (as long as he stayed under the limits of HIS sequester idea) and Obama said he would veto any such bill; he does not want the authority because he does not want the responsibility and would lose the ability to point fingers. The sequester is a cut to NASA but only because Obama is unwilling to re-arrange the spending.... overall sequester is only a tiny cut in the rate of growth in the federal spending (approx 1/12th the cut needed to eventually get to a balanced budget).

You might know all this if you got your news from places other than late-night comics and comedy channel satirists

expensive mistress, high maintenance

[sanman2]

Because even shipping just a screw back from there would make it a $100K screw?

Re:expensive mistress, high maintenance

[khallow]

Because even shipping just a screw back from there would make it a $100K screw?

How about a million screws then? Economies of scale work, you know. An auto company doesn't build a factory just to make a single car. There's one common, highly demanded product for Earth orbit that currently costs about $5,000 to $10,000 per kg to launch into space - oxygen. The Moon has plenty of it. It can also provide several metals, aluminum, iron, titanium, to Earth orbit and elsewhere.

The presence of aluminum and oxygen even allows for metal-oxygen hybrid motors, a means for leaving the Moon from anywhere on its surface without requiring resource inputs from Earth.

Re:expensive mistress, high maintenance

[rioki]

One of the other nice things about the moon is it's total lack of atmosphere. This leads to the fact that you can build launch vehicles that trump the rocket equation. The simplest is a magnetic mass driver that is powered by solar power. Also along these lines, that photovolatic tech that is barely economically feasible on earth, works like a charm on the moon. The moon totally makes sense for future space exploration.

Pathetic

[Anonymous Coward]

Cannot even stare down North Korea
Much less lead humanity to space
Worthless country USA should be wiped off the map

He is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is, that America WILL be returning. It will be private space in 2020-2022. My guess is that NASA will be pulled into this around 2017. And it will be a number of nations that will want to go. Of course, they will not have the money to fund their own launch system/base, so they will simply buy it from private Space.

What Bolden SHOULD have said, is that NASA will not start an American-led project to go to the moon. THAT would be accurate.

Windbourne.

Slashdot poll: asteroid or moon?

[Tablizer]

I vote asteroid. We've already "done the moon thing". Let's boldly go where no human has gone before. Plus, it's better practice for Mars.

Your vote?

Re:Slashdot poll: asteroid or moon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Asteroid is the place for NASA to be. Private space will be doing the moon to sell to multiple nations and businesses. And yes, that will be SpaceX and Bigelow.

Trolling protip.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not in this Space Nutter echo chamber you won't.

No American uses the idiom "nutter". This exposes you as a Brit, and thus opens you for the attack that the US space program costs you nothing. Hell, does your country spend *any* money on a space program?

Secondly, you seem to forget to consistently post as AC or as your user. Are you trying to effect some sort of sockpuppet advantage? Just hork off some new user accounts and try to vary your linguistics a bit so it's not so apparent they are all sockpuppets. Idiomatic usage is a giveaway, so check your writing before posting.

HTH.

Re:Trolling protip.

[Reality Man]

"No American uses the idiom "nutter""

Welcome to the World Wide Web.

" This exposes you as a Brit"

This exposes you as an idiot, therefore an American. Guess what? Maybe I watched Red Dwarf years ago and "nutter" stuck with me? Is your mind so tiny you can't see that? Again, an American, and a Space Nutter too.

"Secondly, you seem to forget to consistently post as AC or as your user."

Since I just created that account yesterday ....

"Idiomatic usage is a giveaway, so check your writing before posting."

Oh wow, gee thanks Dick Tracy for your keen insight, you're a fucking moron.

How short sighted is that?

[borgheron]

Fine, no manned *GOVERNMENT* mission... If the government isn't going to do it could they, at least, get out of the way and give the approvals so that private industry CAN do it?

Sheesh...

GC

Hollywood

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a Hollywood script to me.

hmmm thats not quite right

[BigLonn]

We'll go back to the moon when there is an economic reason to go, I honestly suspect there will be some one there in 12 years, probably an Elon Musk funded venture. let the flame wars begin, ;P

Advanced Automation for Space MIssions

[Paul Fernhout]

"we simply don't have the tech to make going to the moon worth doing right now"

From the Carter years: http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/

Also at: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Advanced_Automation_for_Space_Missions

Also look up Gerard K. O'Neill and SSI.

Besides, the challenge of making a habitat work on the Moon would be a way to learn a lot about how to live more environmentally sustainably on Earth. Exploration can mean new things are learned and imagined and that learning can be more valuable to bring back than any physical resource. One of the biggest successes of Europe putting colonies in North America is that centuries later they could stop a devastaing war in Europe and Asia and reconstruct the most problematical social institutions there:
http://www.salon.com/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010/
"How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place? The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans."

And:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Japan
"The constitution was drawn up under the Allied occupation that followed World War II and was intended to replace Japan's previous militaristic and absolute monarchy system with a form of liberal democracy. Currently, it is a rigid document and no subsequent amendment has been made to it since its adoption."

Aren't ideas and examples for a better way of living worth more than physical stuff or energy? See also James P. Hogan's sci-fi novel "Voyage from Yesteryear".