NASA Chief Tells the Critics of Exploration Plan: "Get Over It"

mknewman (557587) writes "For years, critics have been taking shots at NASA's plans to corral a near-Earth asteroid before moving on to Mars — and now NASA's chief has a message for those critics: 'Get over it, to be blunt.' NASA Administrator Charles Bolden defended the space agency's 20-year timeline for sending astronauts to the Red Planet on Tuesday, during the opening session of this year's Humans 2 Mars Summit at George Washington University in the nation's capital."

Comments

Just say no to NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA, these days, is nothing but an organization designed to enrich top managers and engineers. It's a jobs program designed to pay out huge paychecks and accrue great retirement benefits.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[MorbidBBQ]

Interesting point. Back it up with some data, and get modded out of flamebait?

Re:Just say no to NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this do?

http://www.amazon.com/Dragonfl...

Re:Just say no to NASA

[NotDrWho]

You can mod the AC down if you like, but it's true. NASA basically does just enough to justify its budget each year. But it's really more of an employment program and funnel for government leech contractors than anything resembling what it was during the Space Race. So they play along with whatever fictional promises the latest President makes, send up some probes, and piddle around on ISS. But they know damn well that they aren't ever going to put a man on Mars (probably not ever even the moon again). Shit, they can't even put a man in LEO right now.

So every President makes his obligatory "We're going to Mars!!" speech. And every year we not only don't get any closer to that goal, we get further away.

A man may one day set foot on Mars, but he won't be wearing a NASA patch on his spacesuit.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, more batsh*t crazy nonsense from you.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[morgauxo]

>>NASA, these days, is nothing but an organization designed to enrich top managers and engineers. It's a jobs program designed to pay out huge >>paychecks and accrue great retirement benefits.

So what? It's not like funding rocket science for the benefit of exploration ever got us anywhere.

When people first started dreaming of traveling to space using rockets all the action was in little private rocket clubs. They did some groundbreaking work and deserve to be remembered for that but they had no chance of ever acruing the resources to build actual spacecraft.

Do you know how scientists with an interest in spaceflight finally got the resources to build something that might actually make it to space? By piggybacking on the ambitions of the Nazis. A team of some of the brightest German scientists had the Nazis pay the bill for building some of the first rockets that could just about make it to space. The catch of course being that they carried explosives and for the most part 'landed' on England.

After WWII the US and Russians nabbed as many of those scientists as they could. That's how the first two human space flight programs started. Now the scientists were getting funded because the two sides of the cold war were afraid that if they didn't develop space the other would. That got us pretty much everything mankind ever did in space up until very recently when the Chinese managed to launch a few people. Keep in mind of course that the Chinese based their work on the Russians.

So with the cold war over (or is it...) I'm glad to see any funding go towards spaceflight, even if it is mostly the product of politicians sending money to their friends.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[morgauxo]

>>NASA, these days, is nothing but an organization designed to enrich top managers and engineers. It's a jobs program designed to pay out huge paychecks
>>and accrue great retirement benefits.

I don't think this should be modded down. Not because it isn't flamebait (it is) but because it is flamebait that is likely to spark a decent discussion. It kind of sucks when you read a +5 but it's all out of context because the parent post is below your threshold!

Re:Just say no to NASA

[Kremmy]

Sounds like ... well... every government program and everything the president says. I thought we had covered that material by now. What are you on about again?

Re:Just say no to NASA

[OneAhead]

Not for me. It's still a far leap from the picture painted in that book to "an organization designed to enrich top managers and engineers" and "a jobs program designed to pay out huge paychecks and accrue great retirement benefits". There are shades of gray; the fact that an organization has significant issues doesn't automatically imply it's good for nothing.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[geekoid]

NO, it's not true at all. I'm sorry, but I know too any poeple working at NASA.

You got problems with NASA, talk to congress about getting them proper funding to accomplish what ever big goal you have in mind.

NASA generates a ton of revenue for the country. If they got all the tax dollar from industries the created, we would have outpost all through out the solar system ad probably be 2 decades ahead in technology.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[geekoid]

Except it isn't true at all. Looking at the budgets. government programs are more effcient and produce better results the the private sector by a large margin.Just look at the budget reports, and EOY financials.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

So what would evidence would you accept? Fine, you love rockets, you think astronauts are these incredible selfless heroes that sacrificed themselves for humanity's glorious future in space and we only have computers today because of NASA. It's all bullshit.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[Grishnakh]

It appears this way, but it's not by design. It's a necessary by-product of the way NASA is funded and run. Anything that NASA does has to be doable within just a few years, which is why it's done such great work with various rovers and probes; it's not that hard to build a small probe in a few years. Any project which is much larger in scope, budget, and time requirements is basically impossible, because things are going to change in 4 or 8 years when a new President is elected and a new Administration established, plus with Congress holding the purse-strings, and changing substantially every 2 years, their funding for any big project will be threatened before long.

There's nothing that can be done to change this as long as the government is set up the way it currently is. Space exploration needs to be left to countries which have governments with much longer-term visions, and that basically rules out democratic governments.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[Kremmy]

End of year financials? You mean the ever growing deficit? Tell me when they start being profitable again.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[OneAhead]

Some people just cannot be snapped out of the black-and-white thinking. I'm not glorifying NASA as the organization we have to thank for our present and future standard of living, that's just you setting up a strawman. Or what part of "significant issues" did you not understand? Nor am I willing to accept NASA is good for nothing, as the flamebait who started this thread implied. The truth lies in-between. HELLO, "SHADES OF GRAY"!

Re:Just say no to NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'd be willing to bet you're 100% for sending people to Mars, you uncritically repeat the space fantasies, you worry about the Death Asteroid, and think "the species" needs to "get off this rock", right? No gray there!

Re:Just say no to NASA

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Do you know how scientists with an interest in spaceflight finally got the resources to build something that might actually make it to space? By piggybacking on the ambitions of the Nazis. A team of some of the brightest German scientists had the Nazis pay the bill for building some of the first rockets that could just about make it to space. The catch of course being that they carried explosives and for the most part 'landed' on England.

Which from my point of view is absolutely awesome, because these scientists killed two birds with one stone: 1) they developed significant expertise in designing, manufacturing, and operating advanced (for the time) liquid-fueled guided rockets, which came in handy later for peace-time projects, and in doing so, 2) they diverted an equivalent of 150% of the whole Manhattan project budget from the German war-time economy to something absolutely useless for advancing the German war objectives.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[OneAhead]

Would it kill you to check from time to time whether your braindead stereotypes correspond to reality? It's not that you have to dig far through my posting history...

As you see, you lose the bet, so I get to keep on posting to slashdot, and you have to move your trolly ass elsewhere. That was what we were beting for, right? :-P

Re:Just say no to NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

You're arguing with the "Space Nutter" guy. Just give it up already.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[bhiestand]

Sure, just as soon as the government can raise rates as easily as Time Warner does.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[morgauxo]

Umm... The Manhattan project was US, not German. And... the rockets they made bombed the hell out of England.

Re:Just say no to NASA

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Yes, but the Reichsmarks wasted on that project *were* German (you *did* notice I was mentioning purchasing power, right?), and the rockets they made I'm sure made a great show when launched, and were frightening since you didn't know where they were going to hit next, but purely in terms of bang for the buck, they were actually peacemakers. Think about it: for each person killed with V2s, Germany could have built two fighter airplanes instead (which I'm sure are much more useful to a defending military than one dead enemy civilian). From a military point of view, at that stage of missile development, they were a useless money sink.

Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok.

What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Arker]

NBC News really needs to either figure out WWW technology, or die.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[_merlin]

lol coming from a guy posting in monospaced font

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, dumbass!

Browser settings. On your computer. Not his.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, dumbass!

Browser settings. On your computer. Not his.

Hey, dickhead!

I like to allow people to post code samples in monospace format. Arker abuses this function on this site by choosing the "code" option when he should not. There's no discriminator option in the browser for "Fix only Arker's jackass choice of posting format while leaving responsible users' posts alone".

I would settle for simply having his comment threads excised from the entire forum, but that's not an option in Slashcode.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[rioki]

Who the hell uses the tt tag?!

On that note, why is my browser even interpreting the tt tag...

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[brunes69]

Most highly read sites are using layouts like this now because they adapt well to both Mobile and Tablets, which is how more and more people are viewing the web nowadays. Browsing the web with a keyboard and mouse with a monitor is going the way of the dinosaur very rapidly.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I fail to see how taking up 40% of the screen real estate in landscape mode on a cell phone is "adapted well to mobile".

The asses who do this do not even give an optional close box on these overlays. I look forward to urinating on the grave of the software engineer who invented this monstrosity.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Anonymous Coward]

Your user name is misspelled, or it's an obscure reference...

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Flentil]

Who the hell uses the tt tag?

Arker does, every time he posts. He likes his posts to look different from everyone else, then he tries to convince people it's their browser settings that make his posts look strange and not his deliberate intent. He gets a lot of attention for it. He's getting it right now, again. It's tiresome. It's trolling.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Anonymous Coward]

Either that or he is deep in Asperger's Syndrome. He should read "Look me in the eye" by Robison and "Journal of best practices" by Finch.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[brunes69]

The layout is adaptive. Load it in your phone and see what it looks like. It will look at lot like browsing articles on Flipboard.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Arker]

"Most highly read sites are using layouts like this now because they adapt well to both Mobile and Tablets,"

Except that's bullshit. Absolute and total bullshit.

Platform agnosticism is a basic feature of the web for a reason. If you want to be widely accessible construct and send an actual webpage and let the user agent do its job. Offering an executable instead is bad enough - offering it in the name of accessibility is not a little lie.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Arker]

"Who the hell uses the tt tag?!"

I know, right? That was exactly what I thought when I found it. Slashdot is inserting it, not I.

"On that note, why is my browser even interpreting the tt tag"

That is a good question, and one my technologically illiterate stalker should ponder as well. It's probably good in that case for the browser to take the hint and use a monospace font, but it's certainly not required, and there is a reason we have the ability to change the default fonts. If a particular font looks bad on your browser the obvious answer is to choose a different font that does not have this problem.

I use monospaced fonts to render essentially all web content, which is why I see no difference in the font of my posts and yours. They both appear in a very clean easily readable font called anonymous pro. It's monospace so it does not mangle text elements that make use of positional cues, it has a proper '0' rather than a second 'O' misplaced in the numbers section, and these are critical requirements that default fonts lacked across the board.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Kremmy]

I know, right? That was exactly what I thought when I found it. Slashdot is inserting it, not I.
Curious.
I use monospaced fonts to render essentially all web content, which is why I see no difference in the font of my posts and yours.
Okay, so among the changes you've made to your terminal is the automatic insertion of a tag to make your slashdot posts monospace to others. But it's 'their browser settings'. Got it.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[geekoid]

He's another attention starved twit. I suspect an improper amount of praise from his mother.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Arker]

"Okay, so among the changes you've made to your terminal is the automatic insertion of a tag to make your slashdot posts monospace to others."

Uh, no. I'm inserting no tags. I have simply made sure my browser is configured to use fonts that work well with my combination of hardware, software, and wetware. A basic task preliminary to actually using the web which one would expect, especially on a supposedly technology oriented website, most people should have already accomplished before they got here.

"But it's 'their browser settings'."

Yes, it is. It's puzzling this seems difficult for you to understand, it's simply the obvious truth. My browser settings do not affect you (or you would see your own posts in my font, which you do not - you are seeing the fonts you have chosen and I am seeing the fonts I have chosen.) Browser settings are stored on the local computer, not on some server somewhere.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Fubari]

undoing unintended offtopic mod

Re: What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Anonymous Coward]

It renders in monospace on my fagPhone in Safari. Everyone else's posts do not. You are doing it yourself. Fag.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Anonymous Coward]

If by "way of the dinosaur", you mean that a subset of them (avians) became highly diverse and successful and continue to the present day, I agree. This kind of site design is more like the way of the trilobite: something similar will exist in the future (modern arthropods), while the world looks back and says "What the fuck was that all about?"

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Uh, no. I'm inserting no tags.

So are you telling me that these TT tags get inserted into your posts by themselves? Now how exactly does that happen?

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. I'm inserting no tags.

So are you telling me that these TT tags get inserted into your posts by themselves? Now how exactly does that happen?

Because wrapping the post in <tt> tags an automatic function of Slashcode when he elects to post using the "Code" option. He has some specious reasoning why he should be doing this, but the simple fact of the matter is that he is abusing a Slashdot site functionality intended to be used in rare instances to post code snippets or monospace-dependent content (which his typical posts are NOT).

Arker takes a minority position, i.e. abusing a little-used capability of this site, and has the gall to blame everyone else for why his posts look obnoxious. Here's a protip, Arker: when your choice of action annoys people and your "solution" is to blame everyone else but yourself, then you are the problem, not everyone else. I shouldn't have to choose between allowing other people to responsibly use the "code" post format to post code snippets and suppressing your obnoxiously formatted posts. "Oh, I just want to be idiosyncratic... don't worry, I'm just going to inconvenience thousands of other people to accommodate me."

In the end, it does not matter that it is Slashcode's "fault" that content posted using the "code" format gets wrapped in <tt> tags. He knows this is a consequence of posting using the code format and continues to do it anyway. It's a form of trolling. As I said before, there's no browser function to simply fix Arker's abuse while allowing responsible people to continue to post in "code" format.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[RockDoctor]

Browsing the web with a keyboard and mouse with a monitor is going the way of the dinosaur very rapidly.

What? You mean that it's got 63+ million years of abundance ahead of it?

Since I use an office, on a boat, which moves around the world, I don't see my keyboard and mouse going anywhere soon. And my favourite pocket computer (a Psion 5MX) had a keyboard, with a nice tactile response. They've not been made for over a decade now, so I have to downgrade to a modern tablet, but that has a keyboard too. It's a 3rd party add-on, but it makes the machine much more usable (as well as doubling up as a protective case). I just wish the tablet had the month of battery life that the Psion had, instead of 3-4 hours.

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[RockDoctor]

Sorry, forgot to add :

63+ million years of abundance

5,416 species of known mammals in 2006 ; Birds (with some quibbles about lumping or splitting diverse species) are about 10,000 species. The birds are not doing too badly in the "age of the mammals". Or even in the "anthropocene".

Re:What a monstrosity posing as a webpage

[rioki]

That is a good question, and one my technologically illiterate stalker should ponder as well. It's probably good in that case for the browser to take the hint and use a monospace font, but it's certainly not required, and there is a reason we have the ability to change the default fonts. If a particular font looks bad on your browser the obvious answer is to choose a different font that does not have this problem.

Actually you are mixing up concepts here. The tt tag is not part of the current HTML standard. This website sais it is compliant with that standard, why is my browser interpreting a tag that does not exist in the standard. If my browser stopped interpreting the blink why does it retain compatibility with the equally meaningless tt tag. If you wanted to denote code or preformed blocks, you would use the code or pre tags. These would then normally be formatted using a mono space font, you know in CSS as the standard describes...

Get over it!

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think is gonna happen, some engineer is gonna want to scrub the mission because something is out of tolerance and some managers are gonna override them?

Proposal.

[freeze128]

Can the astronaut be dead BEFORE they send him to Mars? ...because he certainly won't last long there.

Re:Proposal.

[pahles]

Him? He? This is 2014...

Re:Proposal.

[Anonymous Coward]

"He" is gender neutral in almost every other language, and this being 2014, English no longer gets to dominate the way humans do things. Like the NASA guy said: get over it.

Re:Proposal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but it ain't gender neutral in English. Ya know - the language you are using..

Re:Proposal.

[alex67500]

It ?

Re:Proposal.

[Anonymous Coward]

The language we are using (and you are using poorly) uses "he" as a default when the sex of the person is unknown. Yes, some people are using "they" or "he/she", but they are politically correct and not grammatically correct.

Re:Proposal.

[Talderas]

It's a shame people don't use the gender neutral it more often. Instead they feel they must come up with their own new unique methods of being gender neutral.

Re:Proposal.

[Trepidity]

The claim that "he" rather than "they" is the correct gender-neutral singular personal pronoun is mainly an innovation of 19th-century grammarians, not traditional English usage. Prior to the 19th century, both constructions were in use, depending on the preference of the author. Nowadays, they are again both in use, after a brief interlude in which "singular they" suffered a decline in usage.

Re:Proposal.

[Anonymous Coward]

"19th-century grammarians." Were these the same idiots that decided that splitting infinitives in English was bad because you can't do it in Latin?

Re:Proposal.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that 'it' is considered disrespectful to *both* traditional genders, and even more so to the less traditional ones. In modern English, 'it' is reserved for the inhuman (plants, animals, etc.), and inanimate (desks, rocks, etc.).

Re:Proposal.

[asylumx]

Yeah, but it ain't gender neutral in English. Ya know - the language you are using..

Actually, it technically is the gender neutral preposition. It is not, apparently, politically correct but it *is* grammatically correct.

Wikipedia Reference
Also, "Man" and "Mankind" still refer to all humans, not just male humans.

Re:Proposal.

[asylumx]

Pronoun, not preposition. Sorry. Need more coffee.

Re:Proposal.

[Trepidity]

Yeah, same people generally. There was a period in English prescriptivist grammar when people authors of grammar books would attempt to "rationalize" the language, often using Latin as a model (other times just using rules of their own invention).

Re:Proposal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks!

Re:Proposal.

[fahrbot-bot]

There was a period in English prescriptivist grammar when people authors of grammar books would attempt to "rationalize" the language...

In contrast to those non-people authors... ?

Re:Proposal.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never heard of a typo?

Re:Proposal.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It" implies non-human.

Re:Proposal.

[geekoid]

Woman is just a subset of mankind. A subset of better people :)

Re:Proposal.

[Anonymous Coward]

sigh, political correctness, once nessesary in a dark time of rampant prejudice now a tool of the weak minded and fragile to find fault in any conversation they wish to distract

Re:Proposal.

[asylumx]

I know better than to disagree ;-)

Re:Proposal.

[alex67500]

They, then.

How the west wasn't won

[terjeber]

This is a good analysis of NASA. It's a good oldie, but it should be read more often.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a junk argument. NASA is not this fictional NAFA and last time I checked people didn't need spacesuits or multi-billion dollar wagons to cross the desert. Too many differences for the analogy to be in any way valid. It's just a rant.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments solve problems by throwing money at it, that's the only thing they can do really. Problem with space technology is that it costs too much, throwing more money at it wont solve the issue.
Inherently to the problems nature governments cant solve it, they can only get in the way. Should be obvious.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[rioki]

I think the example of SpaceX begs to differ. How can SpaceX operate so much cheaper for the same payloads? Even cheaper than the Chinese? Granted some of the technology developed by SpaceX is based on NASA research, but why can't NASA come even close to SpaceX's operating costs?

Re:How the west wasn't won

[cyber-vandal]

And yet without governments there would be no space technology.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[MickLinux]

Not to overly criticrise your analogy, but I prefer nonfiction to fiction in my decision-making process.

This is a good analysis of NASA. It's a good oldie, but people should read it more often.

I would note that it was valid then, when it was written, it was valid when Columbia fell apart, and it is valid now.

And it is an EXCELLENT reason why Nasa shouldn't be messing with asteroid capture. Fortunately, it is more likely that our country will be glowing embers, than that NASA will see this accomplished. And I view that glowing embers bit as a negative, brought about by similar egos by similar wackos in OTHER government offices (including Putin's Russia).

But yes, I am very glad that other problems are likely to make this problem a moot point.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

If you wanted a better fictional story about why it was a bad idea, I might pose the story of a day when intelligent dinosaurs were living in Pangea, and a space agency went to 'get' an asteroid. whether through malfunction or deliberation doesn't matter, because the asteroid crashed into the southern part, and punched obliquely into the mantle right where there was a collection of Uranium-calcium georeactors. It pushed one to the center, causing a massive explosion that blew out the Scotia plate (below) and the Karoo (above), and like a bullet through glass also produced a 950-mile radius ring of Kimberlite dikes in one of the most spectacular explosions ever seen.

Meanwhile, a third of the way around the globe, under what would later become the New England Plume, the shock waves triggered another such explosion, blowing out the Hudson Bay (above) and the Carribean plate (below), and making it's own 850-mi radius ring of kimberlite explosion. (kimberlite explosions are violent enough to launch material into orbit, and bring diamonds up from below).

And on the line between the two explosions, the supercontinent split in two, with the break cutting over just where the two shatter rings intersected. 90% of the sea life died, the ground around both explosions was contaminated with extreme nuclear radioactivity... and the dinosaur civilization died as well.

Of course, that's just fiction. If it weren't there'd be evidence in the georecord. Indeed, our geologists would know to look for diamonds in an 850-mile ring around the Hudson, or on the west coast of Greenland...

Re:How the west wasn't won

[TwoUtes]

Of the multitude of reasons SpaceX can operate more cheaply I can think of, the biggies are: -NASA is a Government agency, beholden to the congress and the congress loves its pork, so only certain big-name contractors get NASA contracts. -SpaceX is not a federal agency and doesn't have to play by the same onerous, costly sets of rules as a federal agency (i.e purchasing requirements, safety requirements, etc.) -SpaceX has negotiated some sweet deals to use existing government facilities already paid for by NASA (taxpayers). -SpaceX has received a lot of seed money from NASA. There's more, but you get the idea. I'm not here to take away from what SpaceX are trying to accomplish, but they certainly have an advantage over a bloated government bureaucracy.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[taiwanjohn]

You can watch the speech on YouTube. It's 29 minutes with Q&A. The "blunt" remark comes around 25:40.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh! You'll ruin his Star Trek/Ayn Rand sci-fi world view!

Re:How the west wasn't won

[dcw3]

NASA doesn't have to compete, or show a ROI. NASA doesn't have to be accountable to anyone (except congress...ha, ha, ha!). NASA doesn't have to hire the brightest minds.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what else has a doomsday scenario and promises a solution? Religion.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[murdocj]

Damn... where are my mod points to mod you up when I need them :(

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh i wont argue that governments did a wonderful job at cold war pissing contest and got the space technology rolling. But that was half a century ago. What has happened since days of Gagarin and Apollo? Where are the huge developments you would expect to see in 50 years? Where is my lunar vacation? As development matures you would expect cost to drop, it hasn't.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[sycodon]

Because Space X doesn't have to dole out government dollars to various entities in the congressional districts of the appropriations committee members.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[terjeber]

Moron.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened? Apollo 13 happened. Sure, we sent a few manned missions up to the moon after that, but the emotional experience of nearly loosing the Apollo 13 crew in space pretty heavily soured the nation on the prospects of sending people to other worlds.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[ShanghaiBill]

And yet without governments there would be no space technology.

We don't know that. We can't rewind history, and try again without government involvement. But it is possible that we would be even further along if governments had never gotten involved. Up until about 1970, NASA made rapid progress, and had resources that no private enterprise could hope to match. But, then for the next 40 years, NASA lost its way, and drifted. No private company would or could have done that.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[terjeber]

..glowing embers ... brought about by similar egos

There is hardly anything man can do to seriously damage this planet. Honestly, there isn't. We can do unpleasant things to our environment and we can make the planet uncomfortable for a little while. If we go insane and blast off all of our nuclear weapons some day we can do a decent bit of damage, but nothing like what nature has in store for us. In fact, let's assume someone could detonate all the nuclear weapons on earth at the same time, it would be like a firecracker compared to the K-T Extinction Impact. Since nuclear weapons would be detonated in an all-out war, it is unlikely that more than half would actually explode (the rest being rendered useless by actions of war). Detonating all nuclear weapons would come nowhere near what the K-T Extinction Impact was, and that isn't even that big of an explosion in nature.

Don't believe the 1950s propaganda. An all-out nuclear war will not kill everybody on the planet, probably not even half of the humans on it. It will not cause decades or centuries of unlivable conditions on the earth. Human kind would recover at a reasonable rate and probably thrive in a moderate amount of time. Some places would probably not be seriously affected at all.

Here is a funny factoid to think about - Hiroshima took a direct hit by a nuclear weapon. How long did it take before it was perfectly save to live in Hiroshima after the nuke hit? Answer: a couple of months. It was reasonably safe in the days after the explosion. No serious radiation damage was done to humans in the days and weeks following the explosion. Fetuses in the womb of their mothers during the explosion were adversely affected by radiation, but few or no noticeable radiation damages are known from babies conceived in the time after the bomb dropped.

If you want to imagine a big explosion, think of a Gamma Ray burst in our neighborhood. A decent sized star would release many times more energy in less than a second than our sun will release in its entire lifetime of about 10 billion years.

Compared to "mother nature" the most insane murderous human being ever lived was positively a nice guy/gal.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Applehu Akbar]

Manned ventures into space beyond LEO involve a high degree of personal risk. The US and European governments, sensitive as they are to the feeeee-lings of anti-science Luddites, cannot expose their astronauts to high degrees of risk. If there is to be any future for Americans in space, it will have to be a private one.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Applehu Akbar]

So why does this system not prevent NASA's robotic missions from working so well?

Re:How the west wasn't won

[taiwanjohn]

SpaceX has negotiated some sweet deals to use existing government facilities

Sweet or not, those deals were negotiated in a competitive environment. SpaceX recently inked a 20-year lease on SLC-39A (intended for their upcoming Falcon Heavy), and in addition to the rent, they are paying for all the upgrades and renovations they have in mind. (IIRC, Bezos also wanted pad 39A, and they had a bit of a bidding war over it.)

SpaceX has received a lot of seed money from NASA

Not sure what you mean by "seed money" here. Yes, they got a COTS contract (also in a competitive bid) to develop their hardware, but so did Orbital. How is this different from, say, Grumman getting a contract to build the LEM back in the 60s?

I don't mean to imply that SpaceX did it all without any help. Musk knows full well he's standing on the shoulders of giants, and readily acknowledges that they couldn't have succeeded without NASA's help.

That said, I fully agree that being a private company is one of the main reasons why SpaceX is able to beat everyone else on price. I would also point to vertical integration as another reason. They're not trying to integrate thousands of parts and modules from a supplier in every Congressional district. Except for "commodity" parts, they make most stuff in-house. This alone gives them tremendous agility, compared to any gov't program.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[taiwanjohn]

The GP is talking specifically about price, not "quality" per se. It's hard to gauge NASA's robotic missions against the private sector, since nobody in the private sector is doing much yet in that space.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[twosat]

Here's an insider's view of flying fighter aircraft and working for NASA.

http://static.freelibr.net/fic...

Nook ebook:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are... diametrically opposed world views.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Skythe]

Sorry -- slightly unhelpful post in that I don't have a link, but according to some interviews I've seen with Elon Musk much of it is to do with modern engineering. One of the examples he gave (which was during a totally non-sciency talk show) was about how they processed and bent a particular type of metal used in the Falcon.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[geekoid]

That's stupid, ignorant and wildly inaccurate.

Fucking morons.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[geekoid]

Because NASA did all the heavy lifting.
SpaceX build on what NASA did.
SpaceX does 1 thing.
SpaceX still doesn't have a viable way to make a profit.
SpaceX is still at least a decade from getting someone to ISS.

It's like asking why Ford doesn't have the same operating costs as a mechanic shop.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[geekoid]

"-NASA is a Government agency,"
ug, that bogey man.

While pork is an issue, the biggest reason is the NASA does a shit done more stuff.

NASA is not bloated. Most government agencies are not bloated.
Disagree? site some actuals, budgetary, and long term reports and studies, then we can talk.
What's that? you haven't read any and done comparative analysis? well I have.
so STFU until you educate yourself.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

What *can* happen in a sucking deadly void with a few frozen rocks separated by a vast gulf of radiation? There's your answer. Government helped jet engines along during WWII. What has happened since those days? Oh yeah, jet engines are useful and we have commercial jet travel. Government helped computers/electronics/communication along during WWII. What has happened since those days? Get the picture?

Re:How the west wasn't won

[geekoid]

Absolutely we know that.

There was no driving factor for private interest.

NASA never lost it's way. NASA lost it's budget. IN spite of budget reductions, NASA has done amazing things, just without humans sitting in a flight deck.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[geekoid]

All out nuclear war will kill everyone on the planet. The math is pretty simple.
ALso, there would eb a lot of glowing embers for a while; which is what the poster was eluding to.

"Hiroshima took a direct hit by a nuclear weapon."
no. atomic weapon, not nuclear.

"How long did it take before it was perfectly save to live in Hiroshima after the nuke hit?Answer: a couple of months. "

years before it was safe, not months. Of course, you are comparing a tiny air burst atomic weapon to modern nuclear weapons. Amateur mistake.

Will we literally destroy the earth? as in a hunk of rock floating around a star? no, not literally. Can we figuratively destroy the earth? yes.
Run away greenhouse can kill everything on this planet eventually. I'd call that destroyed earth. Just like if you took a Lego building and destroyed it. sure, you still have all the pieces, but it sure as hell isn't the building you had made.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[terjeber]

Got out of the bed on the wrong side today? Then stepped on a Lego? What specifically was inaccurate and why?

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really think that, then youre an idiot.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

Bwaaaaaaahahahahahahaha!!!

Funniest troll post this month. Congrats!

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

Some good points were made in that link, but wow! I found this comment in it shocking in its naivete, and I am especially surprised that it comes from Feynman:

Since there are two rockets on the Shuttle, these rocket failure rates just be doubled to get Shuttle failure rates from Solid Rocket Booster failure.

Either he was really sloppy writing this (I would think he would be careful over something as important as this), dishonestly tried to make his argument sound stronger than it actually is (seems unnecessary as his argument is strong without it), or he doesn't understand basic applied statistics (seems unlikely given his background and reputation).

Explanation: Given that the solid rocket boosters are identical, it is unlikely that failure of an individual booster would be uncorrelated with the other. Their failure rates can not be approximated by naively adding them together. The actual failure rate of two boosters can be anywhere between one and two times the failure rate of a single booster.

After thinking it over, I figure the reason he wrote is probably that, like most people making an argument, truth and accuracy take a back seat to presenting to your audience shocking possibilities and worst case scenarios that can help convince them of the dangers if they don't go along with your point of view.

After seeing an error like this, it would be foolish to trust anything in that link and it should be read with a critical eye and each of the arguments presented should be verified independently by the reader.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

No private company would or could have done that.

I can't even imagine the Randian delusions it takes to make a statement like that. Private companies have and do lose their way and drift all the time.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[MickLinux]

Umm, Nice troll.

I'm sure that a nobel - Physics prizewinner who invented quantum chromodynamics for quark analysis knows statistics.

In fact, as we saw with the Challenger, the failure of one booster was enough to destroy the vehicle. The boosters were not redundant, and nowhere close to identical, especially since in the rocket design of that era, the ablation rates at any point in the solid-fuel rocket booster tended to be faster where it had progressed more.

I remember working on an experiment where they wanted to test the aerodynamics within a scalloped shape interior, in 1987, that was related to that problem.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[MickLinux]

Boy, this makes me feel so good about not working for NASA. People all the time used to say I ought to work there, and I didn't have a good reply. But I'd do better in industry, I think.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX build on what NASA did. -- and so far it seems they did a better job of it
SpaceX does 1 thing. -- having a well defined goal is a good thing
SpaceX still doesn't have a viable way to make a profit. -- Musk claims SpaceX is already profitable
SpaceX is still at least a decade from getting someone to ISS. -- I wouldn't be so sure, Dragon was meant from beginning to carry both dry and wet cargo, question is, will someone pay them to send astronauts to ISS.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[rdnetto]

It sounds more like an approximation. Given a failure rate of p and 2 (non-redundant) engines, the probability of system failure is 1 - (1 - p)^2 = 2*p - p^2. p > p^2, which means we can neglect the squared term, leaving just 2p.
It's not the sort of thing you'd do in a rigorous analysis without formally stating the justification, but it's exactly what I'd expect from a back of the envelope approximation or an informal explanation. Someone with a strong background in probability would probably do this sort of approximation almost subconciously.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of great things that don't make a profit, at least not in the time horizon necessary to please investors - in this country, that means quarterly. Yet some of these things may still (shockingly) be considered desirable. Some basic research is like that, space travel, arts, education, etc. Not saying there will never be a ROI, but not quickly enough to satisfy investors. That's where Gov't comes in. And, as with any investment, public or private, ROI is not guaranteed.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[RockDoctor]

SpaceX is not a federal agency and doesn't have to play by the same onerous, costly sets of rules as a federal agency (i.e purchasing requirements, safety requirements, etc.)

Are you implying that SpaceX are a dangerous operation for either their employees or the people their hardware flies over?

Are you prepared to back that up with specific claims? Like "they cut corners on their o-rings temperature tolerances" (as wrecked the Sea Launch launcher vessel during it's first lifetime, killing it's radio operator, Timothy Williams).

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct if the failures are uncorrelated. My point was that there is no justification for making any assumption about the relationship of the failures. It is not unreasonable that failures of the boosters are closely correlated, for instance if they are caused by environmental (temperature cycling) or usage patterns (power level), rather than by random occurrences.

Re:How the west wasn't won

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you have trouble understanding something doesn't make it a troll. My claim wasn't that Feynman did not know basic statistics, but that his calculation made an unjustified assumption: that failures of the boosters were uncorrelated. I think that some correlation is obvious since they are identical design and manufacture, that there needs to be some quantification of what this correlation is before assuming the probably of failure of either of two boosters is approximately twice that of one.

Feynman is not infallible. He is human. He makes mistakes. Despite his Nobel prize. This is one of those mistakes. I gave three possible reasons for it. You can either add to the discussion by providing information as to why those reasons are more or less likely, suggest other reasons, or you can continue to blindly worship Feyman and insist he did everything correctly because you think he's such a smart guy rather than talk about the specifics of the problem.

On, to Mars!

[JWSmythe]

I have one thing to say. Hurry the fuck up.

When I was a kid, there was so much "by the year 2000". Space stations. Moon bases. Mars colonies. Mining asteroids. Deep space missions. Fleets of spacecraft. Hypersonic travel around the earth.

The only thing resembling a real space ship has been retired. 1960s tech is back as the best thing anyone can come up with, and it's totally owned by the Russians.

I am impressed by probes. They are cool toys. But they can't replace a person standing there, making decisions. Asking "what if..." We learn from being and doing. The rover we have on Mars now has a mostly busted wheel. A wheel that a human could have riveted a patch over in a few minutes. Or maybe some duct tape. You know, what the Apollo astronauts did, because they were there. Where humans can improvise, and grab a roll of tape.

If we hadn't given up on the space race, maybe we'd have most of those things. So we slacked for 20 years, lets get back on track.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

go play kerbals and get to duna then you will understand why it takes time.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

News Flash: real life ain't Star Trek. If it's cheaper to send a probe/rover and it can accomplish most if not all of the same things as a human crew, then by all means. I'm a lot more concerned about finding and reaching a habitable world, since we're bound to fuck this one up.

Re:On, to Mars!

[kamapuaa]

On a similar note, I saw Star Wars and I'm really disappointed that we still don't have hyperdrives or laser guns or even translator droids! It's been all of 35 years!

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Hurry the fuck up.

How many extra tax dollars are you willing to spend on that?

Ah. Thought so.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a lot more concerned about finding and reaching a habitable world, since we're bound to fuck this one up.

I see what you mean, why not fuck another one up? Eventually, we'll run out of habitable worlds within our reach, ... oh wait!

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

translator droids! It's been all of 35 years!

Oh, switch off.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Space stations. Moon bases. Mars colonies. Mining asteroids. Deep space missions. Fleets of spacecraft. Hypersonic travel around the earth."
We have technical capabilities to do all of it, so why aren't we? Problem is cost, starting from orbital launch costs. Before orbital launch cost problem gets solved you will see none of it. Meanwhile NASA keep on dreaming about space stations, Moon bases, Mars colonies, mining asteroids, deep space missions, fleets of spacecraft, hypersonic travel around the earth etc without doing anything about the main reason why we cant have any of it.
Remove the cost barrier and everything else will follow, not a major leap of logic.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Sarius64]

Every single one of the dollars we don't charge billionaire sports team owners. How about that?

Re:On, to Mars!

[bradley13]

Orbital launch cost is a red herring; it's expensive, and this isn't going to change. We live in a whopping big gravity well.

The goal has to be building an infrastructure. Get mining and production infrastructure up there. That's going to be a huge investment, but once it's in place you can produce ever more of what you need directly, without having to haul it out of the well.

Re:On, to Mars!

[bored]

You mean like ~$180k? Because that is how much the fuel costs are for a falcon 9. If space-x can make the whole thing reusable and get the launch rate up to a couple times a week, the raw cost to put a human in orbit could be just a few times the cost of a first class intercontinental flight.

If the fuel costs is 30% of the total launch costs (about the same as the airline industry) then the expected 6 people per launch would be ~$100k per person, which matches the roughly $500/lb numbers musk has been quoting.

Its not at the level of buying a bus ticket, but its less than many corps are spending for their private aircraft to fly C level execs around.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would mod you up, but I'm a freakin AC too. Which is my point. I'm to lazy to hit the login button! Really. In the 23rd century, people work because they want to.and energy production is virtually limitless and everone speaks english.
Even the fuckin klingons speak english.
Nope, we may never get to mars. Not while we still have heteros, and illegal aliens and aids and pro lifers. We need to get our priorities in order. Can't be sending our spacemen to mars without life insurance, cause, well, you know, THEY ARE GOING TO FUCKIN DIE!
Nope, I'm afraid we're going to have to hold off on our little plan, at least until Brazil decides to ge5 on bon board, and the Indians switch the Nokia plant over to radiation shield production. Oh, and the last white man on earth commits suicide. - that's the big one.
dammit haven't had my first cup of coffee and I'm already trolling.

Re: On, to Mars!

[mknewman]

SpaceX is going to radically change launch costs with reusable fly-back boosters.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry you fell hook,line and sinker for the defense/military propaganda of the time. I was also told about the leisure society and life extension. What about those?

If we hadn't given up on the space race, maybe we'd have most of those things.

Has it ever occurred to you that none of these things made any sense? Do you also look at 1890s futurism and bemoan the lack of Victorian dirigibles? It was all just daydreaming. Space is hostile, empty, deadly and mostly useless.

Re:On, to Mars!

[MacTO]

Mildly off topic:

Until we can make vast improvements in launcher reliability, perhaps we should stick to 1960's technology for that aspect of space exploration. Getting off of and back onto Earth's surface is an extraordinarily difficult task and it will remain so for the decades to come.

Rather, in my opinion, we should be focusing upon building infrastructure in and beyond Earth orbit so that we can get people into space for longer durations. The infrastructure that we do develop needs to be fully repairable and upgradable in space, rather than retired after a relatively short duration. Simply put, it is too expensive (in terms of energy and dollars) to transport materials into orbit only to dump those materials back into Earth's atmosphere a decade or two later.

Once we get the foundations in place, developing reusable launchers will be necessary. Hopefully they will also be much more viable by that point in time.

Re:On, to Mars!

[MozeeToby]

What you don't understand is how close we came to all the things the parent post was talking about, every time a game changing technology shows up funding gets cut, or an accident occurs, or it doesn't work quite as well as expected in the trials (but still pretty darn well) so it gets shelved as too risky. NASA had plans drawn up for nuclear powered rockets when the space age started winding down (to be clear, this would be a rocket using a nuclear pile to heat exhaust, the exhaust itself would be non-nuclear). They had plans for a round trip to Venus using the cleaned out fuel tanks for living space. They had plans to boost the expended shuttle external fuel tanks into low earth orbit and join them up to create a space station (a single fuel tank would more than double the living space of the ISS).

Then comes the host of long burn engine technologies that are only just leaving the lab and getting set to space: ion engines were invented decades before they were used in flight, VASMIR has been in development since the 90's, Aerospike engines almost as long. My point isn't that all these technologies would have worked out at the time, my point is that we didn't get them anything like enough funding to find out.

Re:On, to Mars!

[nine-times]

When I was a kid, there was so much "by the year 2000". Space stations. Moon bases. Mars colonies. Mining asteroids. Deep space missions. Fleets of spacecraft. Hypersonic travel around the earth.

We were also supposed to have flying cars and hoverboards. Or depending on which movie you're going on: time machines, androids that could pass for human, and FTL travel.

But are you really getting angry at NASA because science fiction isn't a reality?

I am impressed by probes. They are cool toys. But they can't replace a person standing there, making decisions. Asking "what if..." We learn from being and doing. The rover we have on Mars now has a mostly busted wheel. A wheel that a human could have riveted a patch over in a few minutes.

I think you're overestimating the ease with which humans can do things. A human could have fixed the rover if he had all the right tools and replacement parts, assuming that we could get him to Mars, surviving the trip there in good health, surviving the years it takes for one of those rovers to break down. He would also need the mobility to go around on the surface of an uninhabitable landscape over distances long enough to find the rover, and then have the flexibility in his suit to enact the repairs without danger to himself. All of that stuff is hard.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to working on all of those problems, and trying to figure out how we can put a man on Mars. It's just that I don't think it's as simple as loading a guy into a rocket, pointing it at Mars, and hoping for the best. The fact that we've gotten the rovers there safely is an achievement in itself, and is paving the way for a potential manned mission. So I'd say let's figure it out, plan it out, and send a person to Mars when we feel semi-confident that we can do that.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Orbital launch cost is a red herring; it's expensive, and this isn't going to change. We live in a whopping big gravity well.

The goal has to be building an infrastructure. Get mining and production infrastructure up there. That's going to be a huge investment, but once it's in place you can produce ever more of what you need directly, without having to haul it out of the well.

Yes, it will always be expensive, but there is room for significant improvement. If it costs a trillion dollars to launch mining and production infrastructure, then it might make sense to spend some time and effort reducing launch costs by 50%. Half of expensive is still expensive, but half a trillion dollars is worth some consideration.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Applehu Akbar]

Throughout the twentieth century (and I lived through half of it) we couldn't see forward past 2000, Now we can no longer see backward past the fall of 2001.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Has it ever occurred to you that none of these things made any sense? Do you also look at 1890s futurism and bemoan the lack of Victorian dirigibles? It was all just daydreaming. Space is hostile, empty, deadly and mostly useless.

Useless to YOU, in your "me-first" mentality. Of course, many of your sympathizers would have said the same thing before we launched satellites, which, I don't know, are now the backbone of modern society?
Sure, its expensive for us to go from point A to point B but if we don't spend now we will never get there. And the vast untapped resources alone could be the very thing to propel society into a new age. Of what? Who knows, but its better to strive for something then collapse inwards on ourselves.

That said, you are correct. It is hostile and deadly but so was crossing the Oceans. I guess you would have been content for us to stay home on that one as well?

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Satellites are in our backyard at cosmic scales, and I'd point out the first sketches of communication satellites had *people* in them. I guess you miss that future too? You know, being the guy in charge of swapping vacuum tubes because no one predicted solid state electronics?

It is hostile and deadly but so was crossing the Oceans.

That you think the two are even remotely comparable is the problem here.

Re:On, to Mars!

[geekoid]

Nerd smack down!
BEGIN!

We have laser guns, but more importantly they didn't use LASER guns in Star Wars.

I sit next to a person who LITERALLY has a droid in his pocket that can act as a translator.
I have one, but it's nexus and not a droid. So it would only figuratively be one.

END!

Re:On, to Mars!

[geekoid]

are you high? try 55+ million per launch.

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

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single one of the dollars we don't charge billionaire sports team owners. How about that?

(Emphasis mine)
If we charged them 100% of their profits but didn't subsidize their losses, then sports teams would lose all value and "every single dollar" would turn to zero.

There are also moral issues with this. More people want to watch sports than want to watch launches. I know, dumb Joe Sixpack, right? You and I might have good reason to think launches are more important, but that doesn't justify imposing our decision on unwilling parties. If your justification for this kind of power is democratic, then the exact same majority would vote for more sports instead of more space.

Finally, I'd like to add an ounce of common sense - if we tax the hell out of sports team owners, that money is not going to NASA. It's going to corporate welfare recipients and the military. If you don't fix that, then none of this revenue would go to NASA, and if you do fix it, then we won't need to raise taxes at all.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

The $60 million is the total cost _NOW_.

You need only read a little about space-x to discover where those numbers come from:

"Ultimately, I believe $500 per pound or less is very achievable. "

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=12774

"fuel is only 0.3 percent of the total cost of a rocket" (currently)

and

"a rocket's first stage accounts for three-quarters of its total price tag, so a vehicle with a reusable first stage can be produced at far less cost "

http://www.space.com/21386-spacex-reusable-rockets-cost.html

Dig around before you decide that $60 million is some kind of minimum... That is the current cost, and space-x is _VERY_ clear that they intend to significantly reduce that.

Re:On, to Mars!

[rk]

If I hadn't just posted a comment here, that would've totally earned a +1 insightful from me.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

But are you really getting angry at NASA because science fiction isn't a reality?

You underestimate the earnest belief many people have about the space promises of the past. It is laced with nostalgia and romance and emotion, like this post :"Throughout the twentieth century (and I lived through half of it) we couldn't see forward past 2000, Now we can no longer see backward past the fall of 2001."

Oh shut up already...

Re:On, to Mars!

[Sarius64]

Bullshit. Sports owners get a sweet deal in exchange (read bribes) for political marketing. I'm not asking for anything extraordinary. Let them pay the same taxes I do. If they cannot survive on those profits, let them fail!

Re:On, to Mars!

[JWSmythe]

You're totally right. People complain about the NASA budget, but they don't realize how insignificant it is compared to other things. We've spent (and continue to spend) far more on killing people (or the
threat of) in other countries.

NASA's budget is less than 0.4% of the federal budget. The bank bailout was more than has ever been spent on NASA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:On, to Mars!

[antdude]

Fom Star Trek, where are our warp speeds, shuttle crafts, transporters, phaser guns, aliens (e.g., Orions and Vulcans), etc.? :P

Re:On, to Mars!

[JWSmythe]

Well, lets look at the federal budget, so we can judge on "extra tax dollars".

The 2015 spending budget is $6,293.7 billion.
NASA gets $16.6 billion, or 0.26%, or $52.13 per person.
Defense gets $820.2 billion or 13.1%, $2,575.37 per person.

The F-35 has $875 billion allocated to the project.

Our defense budget isn't just high. Our spending is 36% of the world's defense spending. The US spends about as much as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, India, and South Korea *combined*. If we reduced our military spending to the level of the country that spends the most (China), we could trim 452 billion from military spending, NASA could be paid 27 times over.

GE was paid about 10% of the NASA budget for avoiding paying taxes. The taxes they don't pay count for more than the entire NASA budget. GE makes most of it's money from the US government.

You know, I wouldn't mind 1% being dropped from killing people in other countries, or threatening to do it. I wouldn't mind if companies like GE weren't allowed to skip paying taxes, to reduce our tax burden, and double NASA's budget. I wouldn't mind if they skipped trying to build the F-35 fighter, and doubled NASA's budget.

So, which do you want? An airplane that we don't need? Wars that serve no good purposes? Paying corporations for avoiding taxes? Or to advance the knowledge and reach of the human species?

Re:On, to Mars!

[JWSmythe]

Well, what they're using now isn't exactly the safest either. Each generation of any technology improves on the last. Look at cars. In 1970s, when the shuttle design was finalized, you were rolling around in deathtraps. Now cars crumple on impact, airbags deploy all around us. We almost have auto-driving cars in the mainstream (i.e., they're doing road tests now).

If we knew nothing about the idea of cars, and engineers were requested to make every feature found in modern cars was requested, you'd get the same answer. "Impossible." Hell, you'd probably get the same answer in the 1970s.

The same applies to any technology. The PC you're using is nothing like a computer in 1974. I had prolonged arguments with people, who insisted that computers would never go up to 100MHz. They had all kinds of scientific reasons for it.

It's all up to figuring out how to do it. That takes time, it's not a one-shot deal.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no moral issue with spending more on research and less on entertainment. Thats what governments are for, to make the decisions that people are to stupid to make for themselves.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Sarius64]

I cannot even begin to fathom how you come to such a ludicrous position on that comment.

The singular premise that there is "no moral issue on research and less on entertainment" wasn't even a part of the discussion. There is a moral issue on enriching billionaire sports owners with hundreds of billions of dollars of tax-free benefits given out for simply running a sports franchise. Ultimately, gladiatorial activities do nothing for the common man. The activities don't solve disease, don't advance science, do promote dangerous drug use, and promote idiots to all think they can win the big one with their bookie.

I say let them have their franchises at their own expense. As a taxpayer, the only reason I'm paying for their taxes is some politician was bribed to structure the tax code in that manner. The moral thing to do would be to collect those taxes and use them to improve the lives of everyone over the long run. That means energy development, resources development, and education. I'm advocating they be focused on space frontiers so we have a chance (as a species) of not disappearing in the next extinction event.

As for letting governments make your decisions, I can't say I'm surprised.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Getting off of and back onto Earth's surface is an extraordinarily difficult task"
Public image of "rocket science" would make you think that wouldn't it? NASA expenditures would make you think that wouldn't they?
SpaceX put Falcon 1 on orbit in 2006, 4 years after company founding. They had about 200 employees at the time. That's on the order of developing a new cellphone.

The technology has been around for half a century, its quite a bit of work and money to develop a new launch vehicle, but as far as engineering tasks go its not extraordinarily difficult.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

From wiki link in question:
"Elon Musk stated that fuel and oxygen for the Falcon 9 v1.0 rocket total about $200,000 for the Falcon 9 rocket"

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single one of the dollars we don't charge billionaire sports team owners.

I'm not asking for anything extraordinary. Let them pay the same taxes I do.

Bullshit indeed.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

As for letting governments make your decisions, I can't say I'm surprised.

It's hilarious how you are fully aware our "democratic" governments are completely corrupt, but also want to give them more money.

Re:On, to Mars!

[cavebison]

If we hadn't given up on the space race, maybe we'd have most of those things.

You mean as opposed to world peace, enough food, housing and security for everyone on the planet?

Wait.. we don't have that either. What do we have? Oh yes, iPads.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Sarius64]

If I could put the money in the hands of Space X I would.

Re:On, to Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or even better, the Federal Government only spends money on items that are allowed by the Constitution, and 75% of the annual spending disappears!

Re:On, to Mars!

[JWSmythe]

We're getting pretty good at killing people though. Now we can do it without risking the lives of anyone on our side.

US and Science

[Spiked_Three]

Look a few articles down, and you will see one about FIRST robotics. Robotics is absolutely a requirement of any future space program.

Yet, slashdot, a web site for geeks, has a comment post count of 6.

This by itself is hugely important - there is little to no interest in a fundamental technology of the future.

Couple that with the US's current anti-science sentiment, and NASA being a science department of a funding challenged government, and the US days of space exploration is done for a while. Close NASA, sell the assets to the Chinese, let someone else take their rightful place as leaders.

Re:US and Science

[geekoid]

Is quitting something you do whenever things get tough? hard project? quit. Takes effort to change? quit! Painting the house is hard? Quit and sell the house!

Maybe it you generation of whiners and quitters that's the problem?

Re:US and Science

[Anonymous Coward]

So where are the underwater colonies? I guess they quit too when things got tough?

Re:US and Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarah Palin: Governing Alaska is hard; I quit!

Radiation...

[jklappenbach]

If I were planning a trip to Mars, solar and cosmic radiation would be one of my main concerns. And to date, I have not seen designs for a delivery system that would adequately protect crew members from what could be a catastrophic situation. We do not want to lose the first expedition to something like this. However, the shielding required dramatically alters the economics of the mission (lead's not cheap to shoot into orbit, let alone Mars). And that's just getting there. If we want to enjoy any duration of exploration or colonization, we should be looking for caves. Without a magnetosphere, it's going to be tough.

Radiation Rules Exploration

Re:Radiation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hollowing out asteroids was/is one proposed way to solve the shielding problem – no need to launch all mass up. Of course, we're far from being able to do that, but the asteroid redirection mission is a first step in that direction.

Re:Radiation...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were planning a trip to Mars, solar and cosmic radiation would be one of my main concerns.

Cosmic radiation is only a problem if you aim for zero tolerance.
The data given by Curiosity show that a Mars mission only increases your risk of cancer by 5%. That means that there are plenty of other hurdles far more dangerous when it comes to takeoff and landing.
To put that in perspective 5.5% of former smokers and 15.9% of active smokers get lung cancer. (24.4% for those who smoke more than 5 cigarettes a day.)

Unless you intend to set up a permanent base or have a mission where the astronauts stay more than two years on the surface the radiation can be handled by informing the astronaut of the danger and have them sign a paper.
If people should be allowed to smoke then I think people should be allowed to risk cancer with a Mars-trip too.

Re:Radiation...

[beheaderaswp]

A high energy electromagnetic field will do just fine. Works on earth... it will work in space.

You just need a fusion reactor. At the moment- we don't have one. Or some other high capacity, small size, energy source not yet envisioned.

NASA, while not saying it, is probably waiting on an energy technology.

Where is element 115 when you need it? Someone call Bob Lazar!!!

Re:Radiation...

[bored]

A high energy electromagnetic field will do just fine. Works on earth... it will work in space.

You just need a fusion reactor.

I don't think electromagnetic shielding is that far fetched anymore. http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

Seat of the pants calculation says, its probably smaller than an MRI machine and could be powered with with a similarly sized fission reactor.

Not small by any standard, but completely doable with today's technology.

Re:Radiation...

[Thanshin]

Someone must find out how to cheaply put lead in orbit.

I propose catapults.

Or Hitachi elevators.

Re:Radiation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hollowing out asteroids was/is one proposed way to solve the shielding problem

Another suggestion was to decide that the extra cancer risk is small compared to everything else and ignore the problem.

Re:Radiation...

[oic0]

If the magnet is super conducting, you can fire it up on earth and then just keep the cooling system going through the trip.

Re:Radiation...

[CrimsonAvenger]

(lead's not cheap to shoot into orbit, let alone Mars)

GIven the infrastructure, lunar regolith would be relatively much cheaper to get to LEO (deltaV required to reach LEO from the lunar surface is considerably less than half that required to reach LEO from the ground.

And lunar regolith is quite usable as radiation shielding. Hell, you can use it as reaction mass for a mass-driver to push off to Mars orbit.

Re:Radiation...

[mknewman]

True, or a plasma jet (highly charged) coming out the back toward the sun. Brussard Polywell Fusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... reactors that the Navy is building for next generation of ships (electromagnetic catapults and rail guns) would build a nice infrastructure not only for the interplanetary ship but also for the on-planet outpost.

Re:Radiation...

[Herder Of Code]

Like another poster mentioned, normal radiation levels are an "acceptable risk". So most of the designs Nasa or others came up with simply include a storm shelter design. Many such designs put the shelter in the middle of the water tank for the crew. To quote a website: "The only way to protect against radiation (besides magnetic shielding and other things that don't exist yet on the scale of a spaceship) is by putting as many atoms as you possibly can in between you and wherever that radiation is coming from."

Bravo!

[negablade]

Bravo, Mr Bolden! NASA does exceptional work. Sometimes the armchair critics should just STFU and let NASA get on with the fun stuff.

It doesn't take much

[bradley13]

Provide incentives for private industry, and get the fsck out of the way.

Promise $5 billion to the first company to send the same spaceship to orbit 10 times and return. $10 billion to the first company to send the same spaceship to geo-sync orbit 3 times. $20 billion to the first company to bring an asteroid above size X to a lagrange point. $50 billion to the first company to have people live on the moon for two weeks. Change the goals and figures to suit. Total cost will be a fraction of having the bloated NASA bureaucracy do the same things.

Then get rid of all possible regulations, and eliminate most liability. Space is hazardous - let's assume participants are adults who know what they are getting into.

Then get out of the way.

Re:It doesn't take much

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with "winner takes all" competitions like that is that unless you are fairly certain of winning there isn't much incentive to spend billions trying. The NASA model of creating a spec and then asking for tenders to do it is better, assuming you can resist cancelling or downsizing everything year to year.

Re:It doesn't take much

[Required Snark]

"Provide incentives for private industry". Really? I've never visited that universe.

Over here in the real world, "private industry" acts like the United Launch Alliance: an intrenched monopoly with zero incentive to bring down launch costs. The same for the other long time players, like ArianeSpace and the Russians.

The only disruption to this cozy international cartel is SpaceX and the like. Note that these are all privately funded by technocrats who made huge fortunes in software. No one had to go out and raise money for these ventures. The investors are the founders, and they have very deep pockets.

It is impossible to raise money for this kind of business in capital markets because it's easier and more profitable to make money the old fashioned way: steal it.

Just look at the example of the FCC deciding to squash net neutrality. Hire regulators via the revolving door, pay out some bribe/campaign contributions, get legislation that you wrote passed as laws: instant profit!!! Why waste time and money on something as iffy as outer space?

So real innovation and risk taking is not the product of "private industry", it's a hobby of a few individuals who succeeded in the past. They could have as easily bought a major league sports franchise like Mark Cuban.

Is it likely that the next generation of successful entrepreneurs will have the space bug? Because if they don't then the only way we'll get to Mars, or make use of space resources is through governments. Any near term profit in space comes from satellites at synchronous orbit or below. No profit or incentive for long term capital investment any further out.

The only other reason to go is nationalism. That's why the Chinese are going to the moon. The US will opt out because none of the entrenched "private industry" players see sufficient guaranteed profit in their pig trough. It's so much easier to raise prices for Netflicks.

Re:It doesn't take much

[asylumx]

let's assume participants are adults who know what they are getting into

What about the American public makes you think this is a reasonable assumption? We can't even assume that people who order hot coffee are adults who know that coffee is hot.

Re:It doesn't take much

[T.E.D.]

Provide incentives for private industry, and get the fsck out of the way.

That actually makes a lot of sense for things that actually hold some promise of being a profitable business in the near future, like near-earth orbit launch vehicles.

However, it makes no sense whatsoever for things with no possible commercial market at the forseable end of them, like pure space exploration. Since there will (most likely) be no commercial pot of gold at the end of these tasks, any "incentive" offered would have to cover the entire cost of the endeavor, plus some extra for profit. If taxpayers are going to be footing the entire bill, we might as well have (I'd say damn well ought to have) a big say in how the money is spent and things are run. If not, these so called "private companies" will have all the negative incentives of a government bureaucracy, but none of the positive incentives to keep them in line.

If we're paying the entire bill, we ought to have the ability to fire the "CEO". Otherwise its just corporate Welfare.

Re:It doesn't take much

[Anonymous Coward]

> bring an asteroid above size X ...
> Then get rid of all possible regulations,
> and eliminate most liability....
> Then get out of the way.

How are we supposed to get out of the way of your unregulated asteroid, again?

  Ya know, this didn't work out so well for the dinosaur 'ibertarians, when they ruled the planet.

Re:It doesn't take much

[Skythe]

NASA is providing incentives -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportation_Services
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development
Understandably these are to meet NASA's requirements (which makes since, since they would be the main customer for the services anyway), so they don't just want to dole it out without a decision process.
There's also stuff like the Lunar X prize, but none of this is in the magnitudes you are talking about (good luck getting that through congress).

Re:It doesn't take much

[Anonymous Coward]

> things with no possible commercial market ...
> like pure space exploration.

We must take the Marxist approach:

Groucho: "... there isn't any house next door?"
Chico: "Well, then, of course we got to build one."

Re:It doesn't take much

[Necreia]

You want private enterprise to own celestial objects? Because that's what would happen.

"Welcome to Mars, brought to you by AT&T"

Re:It doesn't take much

[geekoid]

not no it's dangerously hot. as in put you in the hospital for a week hot.

Seriously if you order a coffee would it be a reason expectation that it would be so hot that if yo dropped it in your lap you would be in the hospital for a week(may have been 10 days)

Ironically, you posting that is more of an example of what you are trying to show.

Re:It doesn't take much

[Hadlock]

The commercial crew program does this in a realistic way. For about $2 billion we ended up with the Dragon, the Dream Chaser and whatever cargo lump that Orbital built, plus Orion. Three out of four are designed to be human rated.
 
Blue Origin got some first and second round funding but they're way behind the curve compared to everyone else. Even Dream Chaser put down money for an Atlas V for a test launch already. Bigelow already has a "space station" in a near-polar orbit since 2006, but nobody's visited it yet.

Re:It doesn't take much

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh jeez. Really? Name the private industry, or entrepreneur, or collaboration, that will take that bet. It's a mugs game and the only takers you'll get are frauds, dreamers totally out of their depth, and renegades with something to prove and a chip on their shoulder. Most of all you'll halt all progress for decades to come.

The problem is that there is no long-term business model for space. Not yet and not on the horizon either. The only money on the table is your multi-billion dollar grand challenge prize. Too much has to be invented and built. Any private operator would go bankrupt before they got close to the prize money.

I'm all for private sector when there is a compelling case for it. This isn't such a situation. This is more like the settling of the West in the new world. Who did that? Not the private sector. It was driven by people who had bad situations back home, had little to lose, and saw a small chance at a brass ring in life. One of the only chances most of them actually had. And many of those settlers lost their bet to win a decent life.

Your "bloated NASA bureaucracy" is responsible for 80-90% of the space science achieved to date. The rest is mostly Russian, JAXA, ESA, Indian and Chinese. And it's a fantasy to suggest that "regulations" are responsible for the general absence of the private sector in space. If they wanted to go, they would be there already, regulations or no. And yeah, I know all about SpaceX, Bigelow and the rest. Great efforts, don't get me wrong, but very, very late to the space party.

The real problem is rockets.

[Anonymous Coward]

I take issue with the fact that NASA is not trying to seriously replace rockets or acknowledge that they need to be replaced. Rockets, are simply too delicate, too error prone, too slow, too heavy, too unforgiving, and just too impractical. Rockets will never allow for routine industrial or civilian spaceflight beyond Earth orbit. In this year 2014, half of NASA needs to be a physics based research organization dedicated to the development of new types of propulsion. Instead NASA seems to be more like a glorified rocket club dedicated to maintaining a death grip on an impractical method of propulsion. NASA should have its fingers in everything from nuclear reactor design such as MSRs to particle accelerators for manipulating the Higgs field. Lack of true vision.

Re:The real problem is rockets.

[MozeeToby]

The only "realistic" (and I use the term loosely) options other than rockets are:
Space Elevator: We just don't have the materials technology to do this yet, and even if we did the costs would be astronomical.
Launch Loop (or other kinetic energy structure): Might be possible with today's technology, but it would be fragile, error prone, delicate, etc. And if something goes wrong, you're not out a rocket, you're out your entire launch system.
Space Gun: Acceleration forces are too high for manned flight.
Space Plane: Probably doable, but the total lift capacity would be a fraction what a rocket can deliver.
Skyhook: Maybe possible today but there's a lot of unknowns. Not to mention a single skyhook wouldn't be enough to replace our rocket capacity, you'd need several, possibly as many as a dozen.
Laser propulsion: A ways off, and you'll have a lot of people concerned about you building a multi-megawatt laser installation. By definition if it can launch a rocket it can vaporize large amounts of metal in a mater of seconds.
Orbital airship: Actually merits a chuckle to me but someone somewhere thinks is a possibility. No word on how you're going to stabilize and maintain pressure on a kilometer long hypersonic blimp.
Orion Drive: Ok, I'm in. Just don't tell the environmentalists.

For the record, I agree with you. I'd like to see every one of these concepts receive real funding. But in the end rockets are always going to be part of the equation, at least for the next 100 years.

comparison is out of whack

[aepervius]

Those comparison human ability versus rover crack me up. The problem is that they are comparing one single rover against one human. What they should compare is the energy and material resource expanded to 1) launch a human 2) make sure it arrives alive 3) stay alive long enough to do stuff 4) we are not even considering it coming back alive 5) we are not even considering the horrendous cost of setting up a colony (when we aren't even a step nearer to do one on moon) 6) and we will also ignore that rover are expandable I.O.W. if the first rover crash and burn, resend another one. If you DO the comparison, then it is much cheaper to make a serie of automated vehicule which can gather stuff analyze it, and if you see you are missing info or one break, send another one.

Human on mars is only a question of fulfilling a dream, a dream which is completely cut off from the reality of cost. it is nice for you to have a dream, but some of us prefer practical solutions.

Re:comparison is out of whack

[JWSmythe]

That's funny that you express that there's no reason to put people on Mars, but you quote Carl Sagan in your tagline.

I ran across this a few days ago.

http://io9.com/5932534/carl-sa...

Maybe you're there because we've recognized we have to carefully move small asteroids around to avert the possibility of one impacting the Earth with catastrophic consequences, and, while we're up in near-Earth space, it's only a hop, skip and a jump to Mars. Or, maybe we're on Mars because we recognize that if there are human communities on many worlds, the chances of us being rendered extinct by some catastrophe on one world is much less. Or maybe we're on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there - the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we're on Mars because we have to be, because there's a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process, we come after all, from hunter gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we've been wanderers. And, the next place to wander to, is Mars. But whatever the reason you're on Mars is, I'm glad you're there. And I wish I was with you.

Re:comparison is out of whack

[Applehu Akbar]

150 years ago, the same set of economic constraints applied to California. Yet thousands of people signed up for one-way trips to it.

Re:comparison is out of whack

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny that know Sagan but don't apply the rule that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" to your space-addled fantasies.

Re:comparison is out of whack

[geekoid]

You nee to compare that to the cost of research and discovery. You would need to send 100s of robots to even come close to what 1 human could do in a day.

Frankly, it s a silly argument. It's not Human v Robots. It's humans and robots.

TI's funny when someone uses an irrational and flawed argument but has Sagan and randi.org in their sig.

Re:comparison is out of whack

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you don't die on the way and it's the same planet at destination? The most hostile parts of the Earth are orders of magnitude more hospitable than Mars. And what's on Mars that isn't already here?

Re:comparison is out of whack

[icer1024]

I disagree. Here's why... we have about 35 years of experience in sending probes to Mars. That's the collective investment of multiple generations of minds, congressional budgets , and political capital. We have 20+ years of a shuttle program stuck in LEO "helping us build the knowledge to go to Mars". And we're going to have another 20+ years on an "international" space station, also stuck in LEO. Now we're building a 1960's-era capsule, and a new space launch system to put us back on track where we were in the early 1970's. All so that we can spend yet another 20-years floating around an Asteroid... a destination that we're going to contrive... for the sole purpose of "learning what we'll need when we get to Mars". When you actually do the comparison though... it's infinitely more experience to literally spend generations of human potential preparing to maybe, someday go to Mars - than to just commit to it. It would be far... far less experience to just go to Mar. To go now. To go with existing technology. You know, something along the lines of what Robert Zubrin purposed in the mid-1990's... the Mars Direct program.

Humans on Mars is the dream, and the future of mankind. Humans stuck in the Earth-Moon system is the nightmare reality that poor leadership with no vision have thrust upon us.

Re:comparison is out of whack

[rk]

I have an anecdote related to this.

In my last life, I worked at a lab involved in the MER missions. After the 90 day nominal mission, somebody asked my boss, a highly respected planetary geologist, how long it would take for a human to accomplish the gathering of scientific data that the rover had accomplished thus far. His answer was "it would be about a solid afternoon of work."

So if anyone old there thinks "100s of robots" is an exaggeration, it's not.

I think NASA should go to Uranus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a problem with that?

Get Over It

Re:I think NASA should go to Uranus!

[imikem]

Ur already there.

Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

"For years, critics have been taking shots at NASA's plans to corral a near-Earth asteroid before moving on to Mars ...

Too bad there's no nearby celestial body they could practice building a base on without going to all the effort and expense of corralling an asteroid.

Oh, I don't know, like a moon or something.

Re:Too bad...

[Applehu Akbar]

if you're comparing manned missions, NASA's asteroid-first plan actually makes more sense than Mars-first. Our most urgent need in manned space missions beyond LEO is to develop ways of deflecting asteroids. Landing on a nearby one is an obvious first step.

Re:Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Our most urgent need in manned space missions beyond LEO is to develop ways of deflecting asteroids.

That's arguable.

I would say our most urgent need is to develop a base that can sustain itself in food production and waste treatment for long or indefinite periods of time.

Unlike the ISS that needs resupply and garbage collection every few weeks.

Building one on a nearby celestial body, not too close, not too far away, with gravity (almost everything's easier with gravity) and plenty of raw materials would be a sensible first step.

"only big-name contractors"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Congress is beholden to small business. We have to justify anythign that doesn't have a "small business set-aside". However, our experience is that there are only a few compenies with enough infrastructure, pooled experience and process controls to succeed at complex projects. We certainly entertain bids from all responsive bidders, but if you're bidding for a satellite design, you've got to convince us that you have a reasonable chance of succeeding. We're not paying to repeat your KSP experience; we did that in the 60's.

Renewable Energy Low Carbon Footprints

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA, what have you done for the world that really adds up to a hill of beans?

Re:Renewable Energy Low Carbon Footprints

[Anonymous Coward]

Freeze dried Ice Cream and those shiny blankets? =p

The Starship Enterprise had a five year mission

[Anonymous Coward]

The Starship Enterprise had a five year mission, to seek out new life and new civilizations.

NASA has a 20 year mission to go to Mars - the equivalent of going down to the local convenience store. Way to go, guys!

Bold words

[RetiredMidn]

Bold words from someone who probably be long gone from the job before NASA even tries to get someone into low earth orbit again.

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually astonished that NASA would have the balls to do this asteroid mission. It's exactly the right move at the right time, and honestly I expected far less from NASA, given that it's one giant Sisyphean mess of bureaucracy and ass-covering.

Mind you, Elon will still probably beat them to it!

Hail ceaser

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems consistent with Emperor Obama. I thoguht I was voting for change, not Bush3

*shrug*

[aepervius]

Me quoting the demon-haunted-world does not mean I would agree 100% on everything Sagan Said. I am not sure why it is surprising. I recommend the book as introduction of science, rational thinking and skepticism. Not because Sagan made a nice prosa on a Pale Blue Dot.

Requisite Quote:

[Virtucon]

"Get your ass to Mars!"

There are two NASA's: 1) Pork 2) Science

[Squidlips]

There are two NASA's: 1) There is the pork-laded manned mission NASA out of Houston with power friends on Capital Hill. Their mission is to keep the pork flowing for things like the ISS and the Space Launch System. Bolden is a Houston guy 2) Science: This is the Science Directorate which is JPL out of Pasadena. They are the guys who actually do scientifically meaningful missions such as the rovers on Mars or the Cassini orbiter around Saturn or the probes reaching Pluto and Ceres next year. They are politically weak and constantly have to fight Houston to restore their funding which is always being poached for pork. Carl Sagan started the Planetary Society to stop the poaching but it is stronger than ever.

Deal?

[argStyopa]

I'll "get over it" if you "get on with it", how about that?

NASA pronouncements about manned spaceflight haven't really meant shit since the 1970s. Well, aside from delays and cancellations. They've almost always been in earnest.

But everything else has been political window dressing for one president or another (both parties, thanks very much) to make some bold pronouncement that he either KNEW wasn't going to make it through an enemy congress (and thus he could blame on them) or that he quietly de-prioritized and let wither on the vine.

Life on mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows NASA is just trying to delay the revelation that there is intelligent life on mars. And dumb animals. And water. And a little vegetation. And we have teleporters.

See Andrew basiago's 39 part 6.5 hour long YouTube interview for a great listen. Good stuff even if you think it's fiction.

So where is JPL in all this?

[Squidlips]

I see no mention of the highly successful missions by NASA / JPL such as the Mars rovers and the Pluto & Ceres missions. All Bolden cares about is the manned pork missions that accomplish nothing scientifically. Of course, since is an ex-astronaut....

Get over it, to be blunt.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. It's the same statement they will say when it crashes to earth.

just like every other thing NASA has moved into LEO already has or is slated to do

Seriously, this is a fucktarded idea.

Whatever

[blanddragon]

They should change their name to National Aeronautics and Low Earth Orbit Space Administration.

Slow and steady beats fast and failing

[fluffynuts]

'nuff said.

How about we let the smart people tinker on their space toys until us dumb-uns can benefit?

We already have 2 Near Earth Objects

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have a space station & a Moon to get us to Mars. We also have the Vazimir engine, which it's inventor, Change Diaz, says can get us there in 39 days. I'm sorry, but this sounds like b¥llsh!t to me.