As NASA Seeks Next Mission, Russia Holds the Trump Card

Geoffrey.landis (926948) writes "After the space shuttle retired in 2011, Russia has hiked the price of a trip to the International Space Station, to $71 million per seat. Less well recognized is the disparity in station crews. Before the shuttle stopped flying, an equal number of American and Russian crew members lived on board. But afterwards the bear began squeezing. For every two NASA astronauts that have flown to the station, three Russians have gone. Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?"

Comments

Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. We've shipped enough engineering jobs overseas that we, as a Nation, no longer possess the expertise required to design and build an occupied space vehicle.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not help that a certain administration has turned NASA, and to a great extent NOAA, into political mouthpieces for the global warming, sorry climate change, sorry climate disruption agenda.

NASA has not been focused on the "space" part in a great many years.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Nonsense! Dragon is beginnning its Man-Rating this year.

It should be qualified by the end of next year, unless NASA gets a big helping of "Not Invented Here" and decides to kill the man-rated Dragon in favour of its own design (which won't be ready this decade, if ever).

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in your imagination maybe. NASA and NOAA have been doing global warming/climate change research long before Obama was even a senator. But don't let facts get in your way.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[e3m4n]

regardless if it was the last 5 years or the last 14 years, its fairly obvious that they are a shadow of what they used to be.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Spy Handler]

Dragon is already reusable, and Falcon 9R first stage looks like it's gonna be reusable soon. (reusable 2nd stage seems more doubtful considering the enormous reentry speeds involved)

If or when they start doing regular launches with the reusable Dragon and F9R, how low do you think they can get the price per seat down to? Russians are charging $71m per seat, can SpaceX get it down to $1m per seat?

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[MightyMartian]

Translation: I hare science that makes me feel bad.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[MightyMartian]

Which has nothing to do with climate research. I can't think of organisations in a better position to do atmospheric research than NASA and NOAA.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[ColdWetDog]

And that little fact is almost entirely due to Congress' inability to think past pork and the next re election cycle. Yes, NASA has some internal issues (as does every human endevour with more than one person involved) but yo-yo funding and put-it-here thinking have really trashed the agency.

You reap what you sow. /grump

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Curunir_wolf]

It does not help that a certain administration has turned NASA, and to a great extent NOAA, into political mouthpieces for the global warming, sorry climate change, sorry climate disruption agenda.

NASA has not been focused on the "space" part in a great many years.

You may think it's flamebait, but it's 100% truth.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Curunir_wolf]

Translation: I hare science that makes me feel bad.

You wascawy wabbit!

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[mc6809e]

And that little fact is almost entirely due to Congress' inability to think past pork and the next re election cycle.

So much of the budget is off-limits (social security and medicare) that the only areas left vulnerable to cutting are things like NASA.

The USA has locked itself into forced spending in some areas and it's squeezing other areas.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[AK Marc]

Funding, not expertise. We spent so much on the shuttle, that "space" doesn't have good connotations anymore. It means waste and no results.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[nitehawk214]

Reusable and Man-Rating are different concepts here.

However reusable will cut the costs down dramatically. The Falcon 9 booster itself is less than 60m a launch. ISS resupply missions on Dragon are around 100m (I believe, I couldn't find the number.) Obviously a man-rated Dragon is going to cost quite a bit more. This means they could literally throw away the dragon capsule every time it flies and be cheaper than Soyuz.

Also, keep in mind that Dragon seats 7, Soyuz seats 3.

Also I would say that any cost savings from SpaceX have more to do wtih how efficient they are compared to how horrifically inefficient NASA contractors are.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[MildlyTangy]

I dont think the issue is how much money it costs sending US astronauts on Russian rockets, the issue is that the Russian rockets are the only option right now.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[meglon]

Yes, as it should be. What those who bring up SS and Medicare never seem to want to say is that there is a specific tax collected to pay for those items, and until the recent collapse a few years ago, that tax brought in a SURPLUS every year. Even with a few years of no surplus from revenue (it's reserves are still growing, however), the fund will be in the black for the next 20+ years. Try blaming something that isn't affecting the budget with a negative.

Here's an idea, lets gt rid of the F-35 program, a plane we don't need, is behind schedule, is massively over budget, and still can barely get off the ground. The cost projection for that one useless pork program, if given straight to NASA, would double their budget for the next 80 years.... of course, that's ignoring any MORE cost overruns that the F-35 will have in the future. It's odd, i don't find the phrase "create and maintain a global military hegemony" anywhere in the Constitution.

The answer to the question put forth, though, is pretty simple: congress has been inundated with complete fucking idiots who couldn't think their way out of a wet paper bag even if they had instructions. The complete idiots who are anti-science, anti-education, anti-intelligence... these people who rail against progress, all the while using and abusing their positions for their own political power. That's why we're in this situation. Every time you see someone on these boards who complain NASA isn't needed, or hasn't done anything useful.... those people exemplify is the reason why we're at this point: pure, unadulterated, stupidity.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Registered Coward v2]

Reusable and Man-Rating are different concepts here.

However reusable will cut the costs down dramatically.

Quite true. Reusable, for non-manned launches, can set a lower threshold for system failure resulting in mission failure; or in plain language reusing a part and blowing up a rocket and it's non-human payload is more acceptable than killing a crew.

Of course, risking destroying an expensive satellite because to save a few bucks on launch costs may be unacceptable a swell. Personally, I wouldn't base my launch cost model on reusability but view any cost savings from reuse a bonus.

However reusable will cut the costs down dramatically. The Falcon 9 booster itself is less than 60m a launch. ISS resupply missions on Dragon are around 100m (I believe, I couldn't find the number.) Obviously a man-rated Dragon is going to cost quite a bit more. This means they could literally throw away the dragon capsule every time it flies and be cheaper than Soyuz.

Also, keep in mind that Dragon seats 7, Soyuz seats 3.

Right now, your choice is Soyuz or don't go. Supply and demand dictates Russia can set prices as high as the market will bear, not on what it really costs.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

but , but they told us the magic hand would pick up the slack,

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[LWATCDR]

Because for the second time in my life the US has retired a working manned system long before the replacement was ready.
Can you imagine the Have retiring all the nuclear subs in service before the next generation was in service? We did it with Apollo and we did it with STS.
It just shows that manned space flight and space flight in general are not priorities which IMHO SUCKS!!!!!!!

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about as "truthful" as calling Obama a Kenyan Muslim.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Jeremy Erwin]

NASA's Earth Observing System produces a lot of data. NASA's landsat program began in the early 1970s, so the notion of launching satellites to observe the earth's surface is not especially new.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my last 37 years of experience in the space industry, "reusable" means "costs more per launch" in every single example. I haven't worked man-rated programs directly, but the goals are often similar between the two, but the Design Assurance Level for man-rated prevents re-use of components.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish I could mod you up more than once. Great analysis. I get tired of the ignorance on these subjects. Thanks for the post.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[njnnja]

that tax brought in a SURPLUS every year.

Only by a very limited definition of surplus, used by what is called pay-as-you-go accounting. Under accrual accounting ("generally accepted accounting principles"), which the government does not have to follow, SS and Medicare did not run surpluses. The difference is this: under pay as you go, as long as the cash that you pay to beneficiaries during the year is less than the cash taken in by the taxes taken in during the year, you are balanced. However, under accrual accounting, the things that must be balanced are not the cash flows, but rather, the promised benefits and the promised taxes.

As an example, If you get a $1000 paycheck at the end of the week, and you spend $900, then you have $100 at the end of the week, and under any definition you had a surplus. But if you get a $1000 paycheck, and you spend $1050, you did not run a surplus (and probably depleted some of your bank account). Lastly, if you get a $1000 paycheck, then you spend $1050, and you borrow $150 from a friend, you have $100 cash left over at the end of the week. But because you have promised $150 to your friend, which is more than the $100 cash you have left over, you have not run a surplus. That is the situation SS and Medicare have found themselves in - sound from a pay as you go basis, but not promising to tax enough/promising too many benefits to be sound on an accrual basis

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[jdschulteis]

So much of the budget is off-limits (social security and medicare) that the only areas left vulnerable to cutting are things like NASA.

The USA has locked itself into forced spending in some areas and it's squeezing other areas.

We could double NASA's budget and pay for it with a 3% cut to the military.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the original AC and I don't agree with the opinion (I think that it's more "He who pays the piper..."), but it's ridiculous to mark it as flamebait.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[AmiMoJo]

Russians are charging $71m per seat, can SpaceX get it down to $1m per seat?

Why would they do that? They will charge $69,999,999.95 and throw in a few airmiles. Seriously, do you really think price is determined by cost + margin, or "what the market will stand"?

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[CrimsonAvenger]

If or when they start doing regular launches with the reusable Dragon and F9R, how low do you think they can get the price per seat down to? Russians are charging $71m per seat, can SpaceX get it down to $1m per seat?

Hmm, Dragon seats seven in manned-mode. $133M per launch (which is what NASA is paying SpaceX now for flights to ISS. Double that for no other reason than that we can...

Hmm, $40M per person sound reasonable.

Of course, if Dragon and Falcon 9R are each good for, say, five flights, we can reduce the cost per flight by half easily (F9R first stage is 70% of the cost of the Falcon all by itself). Which could leave you at $20M per seat.

By and by, Falcon 9R's second stage will also be reusable. If they can get five launches out of that, we're talking an 80% reduction in cost of a Falcon/Dragon combo, which might let you put a man up for $4M per seat....

And that's assuming five launches per bird. Ten reduces cost by half again.

Yes, prices above (except for the base $133M that NASA is paying SpaceX now) are highly speculative. Point is that SpaceX can probably boost men for considerably less than Russia charges without even finishing up the "Reusable" part of Falcon-9, much less after they get Falcon 9R fully reusable.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[CrimsonAvenger]

And yet they're charging considerably less than their nearest competitor for unmanned launches. It's not really all that hard to find out how much SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are charging for CRS missions.

Hint: Orbital Sciences is being paid rather more for eight launches ($1.9B) than SpaceX is for twelve launches ($1.6B).

Even though a Dragon can loft ~50% more payload than a Cygnus can.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anubis IV]

Oh, for a mod point.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, do you really think price is determined by cost + margin, or "what the market will stand"?

The two are equivalent, if there is sufficient competition.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Nethemas the Great]

And return cargo. I don't believe any other system currently flying can do that.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[beltsbear]

Nothing else can return cargo in volume. Technically Soyuz can bring stuff back, but only a few hundred pounds.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Curunir_wolf]

NASA's Earth Observing System produces a lot of data. NASA's landsat program began in the early 1970s, so the notion of launching satellites to observe the earth's surface is not especially new.

Nope, what's new is ignoring all the observations to further a political agenda.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

so not reusable is a price of approximately 100 million for a man rated mission. divided by 7, that is 14 million a seat. with a reusable first stage booster that is used for say 5 missions, you can get the mission down to 45 million. this puts per seat down to 6 million.

for the cost of a single seat on a crap can soyuz, spacex could launch seven astronauts, with much of the charge to launch another 7 banked up. The russians can suck it. Hell, NASA could build a whole new station launched on spaceX launchers for cheaper then maintaining that clusterfuck, and sell the other parts to the russians so they can fuck around with that weird orbit. Invite the canadians, euros, canadians, and everybody not russian and chinese into the fold.

Re: Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

And they probably should not be priorities. Manned space flight is pointless except for raising ant farm colonies in space or whatever other "science" the ISS folks are doing to justify the cost of life support in an environment better suited to remote operations and robots. We have zero need for the ISS. Deorbit the albatross, send robots out to explore other planets, and let real science move on.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that you mention it, from the looks of things we'll either have to run the Ohio class three times their planned operational life or do just that.

Re: Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

But charging is not the same as cost. Whenever SpaceX is is ready to fly people into orbit russia will just lower its prize. I think russia has a huge margin on these flights at the moment.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[rogoshen1]

what i don't get is .. if these congress critters are so stupid and incompetent, how are they fucking up the country so quickly and effectively? Savant-ism? :(

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being realistic, the most likely menace to the US is not external, but internal. Historically, nations of this size have the habit of breaking up (already happened once in the US), devolving into anarchy, and/or only holding together under a brutal dictatorship.
What common interests or issues do California and Florida have? The only reason to stay together is that they are stronger together than apart. A strong army is both a price and a benefit of US unity.
My prediction: the US will break up precisely when they are no longer capable of winning wars. In other words, we'd all better hope the plane (or some other secret program) works.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[sconeu]

It is much easier to destroy than to build.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[LWATCDR]

They will run them until a replacement is ready. They have already started on the design for the replacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And they will not retire the first Ohio until the replacement is in service

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[dryeo]

When you're trying to move into a new market, you set your prices as low as possible, even running at below profitable. Once you get the market sown up, you raise prices to whatever the market will bear, being careful not to raise them enough to motivate competition entering the market.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[R3d M3rcury]

We did it with Apollo and we did it with STS. It just shows that manned space flight and space flight in general are not priorities which IMHO SUCKS!!!!!!!

Why?

Fine, you can go all "future of humanity" on me and I won't disagree. But why do we need to have a continuous manned space flight system? Is there some emergency where we need to get into orbit right now but we can't? Do you foresee one?

Look, they retired Apollo and built STS. We had no capability of sending men into orbit for 6 years. And, somehow, the nation survived it. So some scientists might have to wait a few years to get their experiments done on ISS. Somehow, I think we'll all survive.

Don't get me wrong--I have nothing against manned space flight. I think it's important scientifically and as a "future of humanity" thing. I also think that the technology isn't there yet. It won't get there unless we work on it, granted, but if we have atomic drives in 2039 instead of 2052, it doesn't matter that much. We're talking long-term here. Mars isn't going anywhere, so it's not like we have to get there next week or it'll be gone forever.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[dryeo]

Will SpaceX reuse manned launchers? At least in the immediate future. The worst that could happen to SpaceX is a disastrous failure on one of its early manned flights and they'd be smart to spend money to avoid that. Of course they could reuse for unmanned launches and still save money.

Re: Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[R3d M3rcury]

[...] send robots out to explore other planets, and let real science move on.

What's sad is that you figure that the robots are doing "real science."

Remember that "real science" is pretty boring to most people. The conclusions are interesting but the actual study, hypotheses, testing--y'know, that whole "scientific method" stuff--is pretty damn dull unless it's something you're specifically interested and knowledgeable about. There is plenty of "real science" happening on ISS but since most of us don't understand it, we poo-poo it. Heck, just look at the information returned on the last Dragon capsule. Boring shit, right?

The robots, as you imply, are doing exploration, which is a bit more exciting. "What's over the next hill?" is a far more exciting question than "Why is that hill there?" The first one is exploration. The second one is "real science."

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how people on /. are always able to come up with such simple solutions that obviously work when people doing this professionally cannot.

If only we could get /. people into bars late at night to further discuss this over a couple cold ones, even the sky wouldn't be a limit to what humankind could accomplish.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[meglon]

Yes, however because government can alter both revenue and expenditures every year, the point is moot. The difference in accounting needs to be applied to all things if you're going to apply it to one, and we can see the ridiculousness of the accrual method for a government by looking at the USPS. USPS is making a profit each year, until you factor in the pre-paid payments they've been forced to make for pensions for 75 years in advance. They are paying right now for the retirement of workers who will not be born for another 20-40 years.

And lets be sure to make people perfectly aware of the situation. Your statement "Under accrual accounting ("generally accepted accounting principles"), which the government does not have to follow, SS and Medicare did not run surpluses" tries to insinuate that somehow government has exempted themselves from using proper accounting methods. They have not. Both accounting methods are equally valid, and both are generally accepted. Because you would prefer them to use something other than what they use does not diminish the validity of what they are using.

Because we're talking about the US government, the big reasons a PAYG basis is not looked on favorably for businesses are moot. Cash flow changes are mostly immaterial, and the lack of security is moot; the worlds financial reserves are in dollars.... that alone is a form of security no other entity can hope to achieve. As for tax considerations, well, that's entirely moot to this specific discussion. So you're left with a valid accepted accounting practice.

So until the US government switches to an accrual basis, which will be never, what you've said is moot. In addition to that, it's not entirely a PAYG basis, as it does accumulate funds and is not limited in payouts purely on the revenues of a given year. The Social Security fund is in the black for 20+ years.

But lets go back to that F-35 program. Under your accrual method, that would be 1.4 trillion dollars taken out of the functioning budget of the US, and more every year as they reevaluate the cost of the program... and that program has ballooned in cost incredibly fast.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[meglon]

Not anymore; now we can do both at the same time! According to myth, the Earth was created in six days. Now, watch out! Here comes Genesis! We'll do it for you in six minutes! -- Bones

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

"but if we have atomic drives in 2039 instead of 2052, it doesn't matter that much. "

    It might if we start nuking each other in 2045.

" Mars isn't going anywhere, so it's not like we have to get there next week or it'll be gone forever."

    No, but we might be. Personally I'd like to see independent space colonies as soon as possible so the next time the earth leaders get childish the rest of the manned universe can say 'so what'.(bite my shiny metal ass)

celle

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[currently_awake]

Re-usability drives UP costs, not down. You have to take the whole thing apart and rebuild everything, and you have to make everything stronger to take repeated use. Both of those drive UP the cost of the equipment. It's like a reusable bottle costs more to make than a disposable one.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[currently_awake]

Competition drives down prices. If they underbid the Russians then they will also drop prices to regain the market. The only other option is SpaceX making a deal with the Russians to split the launches.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[currently_awake]

Your math doesn't include the cost of refurbishing the rocket after each flight. Expect that to be around 90% or more of the cost of building the thing in the first place.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing else can return cargo in volume. Technically Soyuz can bring stuff back, but only a few hundred pounds.

That's total BULLSHIT.
The Russians can bring back as much as they bring up, and they still aloft more payload per flight in the Soyuz/Progress than SpaceX Dragon (and at a LOWER cost until this current round of price increase).

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Teancum]

In my last 37 years of experience in the space industry, "reusable" means "costs more per launch" in every single example. I haven't worked man-rated programs directly, but the goals are often similar between the two, but the Design Assurance Level for man-rated prevents re-use of components.

The question is how that reusability is being performed. I would at least suggest to look at the Grasshopper & Falcon 9R program to respond so far as what reusability will bring in the context that SpaceX is proposing.

If there had to be a difference, it is because SpaceX is depending on the resue of the Falcon 9 to cut its operating costs.... either to increase profits or to increase its market share (and SpaceX has been doing plenty of both at the moment). They have a clear incentive for getting the launch costs down, something that is not as important with a cost-plus contract procured under base-line budgeting where any cost savings in a government program results in a lower budget the following year. There is a definite disincentive on the part of program managers to reduce actual costs in most government run programs.

That is also true for almost any other endeavor that the government is working in, but spaceflight only makes it much more pronounced.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Teancum]

The reason why SpaceX was founded in the first place is because the Russians at first agreed to sell an ICBM to Elon Musk, then later renigged on the agreement saying that he was just a stupid idiot who didn't really want to get into space in the first place and to leave that to people smarter than himself.

Yeah, this is very personal for Elon Musk, where undercutting the Russians so horribly that they are stuck only with Russian national security launches is sort of a personal goal.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Teancum]

In the near future will SpaceX reuse their launchers? Not likely, but it really doesn't matter. Even treating the Falcon 9 as a purely expendable vehicle is still cheaper than what any of their competition can do for sending people and cargo into space.

The only thing that is really biting SpaceX hard in the behind at the moment is simply their lack of clearing their manifest and crazy mishaps like the Helium leaks and problems they are facing right now to get their next launch into the sky. It should have happened about a week ago but apparently was a larger problem than anybody expected.... discovered during a "static fire" test where the whole rocket was tested at KSC in a dress rehearsal prior to launch.

At this point, I think a "disasterous failure" would be an "abort to orbit" scenerio where multiple engines fail just before orbital insertion. Critics would call it a failure but the SpaceX PR team would call it a success and everybody would be bitching about it for years.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[nitehawk214]

Falcon Heavy will be able to put kilos into orbit. The entire space station is listed at 419,455 k. So this thing could throw the entire space station up in just 8 launches. (including mass only, ignoring physical size limitations) AND Falcon Heavy will be the cheapest $/lbs rate of all time, at less than $1000/pound as compared to the shuttle's over $8000 per pound. It might have been able to do it for less than it cost to do a single shuttle mission.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[nitehawk214]

I guess it depends on how many times you reuse it. At some point the reusable bottle is cheaper when compared to 10 disposable ones. But with the stress these things are going through, I wonder how many times any single part will be able to be reused.

Re: Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[blancolioni]

Ob. Cyanide and Happiness

http://explosm.net/comics/3557...

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its kind of apples and oranges comparison, but which would you rather fly, an airplane on its maiden flight, or one that has done a few rounds? Reuse doesn't necessarily mean loss of reliability.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[FatLittleMonkey]

"It's like a reusable bottle costs more to make than a disposable one." However, SpaceX's reusable launcher is their expendable launcher. It's the same hardware. Essentially, they are just looking at how many times they can reuse their "disposable bottle".

The Shuttle has poisoned the idea of reusability, but the Shuttle was never really suited to be reusable. Every system pushed the state-of-the-art to its limit - engines, heat-shield, tank, boosters - rather than taking what was then known (Saturn II, Saturn V, etc) and saying, "Can we save money by recovering/reusing a first-stage/capsule?" and then spending a decade gradually working outwards from that.

"You have to take the whole thing apart and rebuild everything". The system has been designed for the engines to be quickly removed and swapped out. (For example, they've removed engines, fixed valves, restored everything and re-prepped for launch within a day. IIRC, they've swapped out an engine on a vehicle at the Cape in 5 hours.)

Once they regularly recover stages, the recovered engines will all go into an engine-pool, where they will be tested individually; nine working engines will be fitted to a first stage and test fired together. Then the full rocket is assembled, raised onto the launch-pad and test fired again the day before launch. But the thing is...

"and you have to make everything stronger to take repeated use." But the thing is... they do the same thing with new engines anyway! Every engine is test fired at least three times between manufacture and launch. It's how they are designed. So it's not an extra "reusability" procedure, an extra cost, it's what they already do; and, according to Musk, it's not only a small part of SpaceX's launch cost, it's one of the reasons their costs are so low. So if you have already designed them for multiple-uses, it's pretty unlikely they'll work exactly four times and then suddenly stop. (Apparently they've test fired the engines dozens of times. So the only issue is whether there's additional wear/damage during actual flight that shortens the life. And recovering a few first stages would be a great way to have a look, yes?)

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[FatLittleMonkey]

What on Earth (or in space) are you on about? Progress has a payload of less than 2.5 tonnes, and has no reentry vehicle. The Soyuz capsule has a cargo down-mass of 100kg in addition to the three crew. There's no pure cargo version of the Soyuz re-entry capsule, but the total down-mass looks like around 400kg including crew. The Soyuz (R7-based) launcher can lift over 7 tonnes to LEO. Is that what you are getting confused with?

By comparison, Dragon cargo capsule has a carrying capacity of 4.2 tonnes (3.3 tonnes to ISS), and can return 2.5 tonnes to Earth. F9 launcher can lift around 13 tonnes to LEO.

Cygnus can carry about 2 tonnes, but has no return vehicle. (Though, like Progress (and the Dragon trunk) it can burn up waste.) The Antares launcher can lift around 5 tonnes to LEO.

The ATV can carry about 7 tonnes to ISS. But also has no return vehicle. It also has systems to automatically transfer fuel, water, oxygen to the ISS storage tanks; and fully automated docking systems. The Ariane 5 launcher can put 21 tonnes into LEO.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[FatLittleMonkey]

In the near future will SpaceX reuse their launchers? Not likely,

Their current plan is apparently to recover (on land) a first stage before the end of the year, and attempt to re-fly some time next year. There's been speculation that they might initially mix recovered engines with new engines to reduce risk. But who knows.

(All ISS missions are contractually required to use new stages and new capsules. That will leave SpaceX with a bunch of left over used stages and capsules... and eventually someone will agree to pay, say, $10m in order to launch their experiment, or themselves.)

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[CrimsonAvenger]

So, your argument is that a fully reusable Falcon will reduce costs to launch by ~8%?

I'm curious, do you have any basis for this belief?

Obviously, SpaceX doesn't believe this to be true, or they wouldn't bother doing it - massive amounts of work for an 8% savings aren't worth the bother (it's not like their prices aren't already the lowest in the world).

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[AgentSmith]

It's easier to destroy then create. We march onward to Idiocracy.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[YoungHack]

I think it should count as a surplus in this case when revenue exceeds expenses. After all, the government really has nowhere to put the extra $100 if it takes in $1000 in taxes and only pays out $900 in benefits. They buy treasury bills perhaps, but that's just another way of spending the extra $100, since money you loan the government is spent.

I think, by the way that both democrats and republicans miscount these issues in their own ways. Democrats always want to point to the Social Security trust fund, for example, but that is silly. That money was loaned to the government, and it will require a reduction in spending elsewhere or a raise in taxes elsewhere to pay the money back.

So, while I would count it as surplus when revenue exceed expense (for one year) I would also count it as deficit when expense exceeds income. According to the SSA, that started happening in 2010, "Social Security’s total expenditures have exceeded non-interest income of its combined trust funds since 2010, and the Trustees estimate that Social Security cost will exceed non-interest income throughout the 75-year projection period."

On Social Security statements, they tell you what your benefit will be at your retirement age. They also predict what percentage of benefits will be covered by receipts on that date, based on population dynamics. For my retirement age, that's about 70%. Social Security taxes will only be able to pay a bit more than 2/3 of the benefits promised when I retire.

That's the amount I use for retirement planning, by the way. I don't think Social Security will "go away" but it's inevitable that the amount awarded can't indefinitely exceed the receipts, and I don't think it is sensible to plan for the full amount.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[njnnja]

The USPS is a bad comparison to make. The USPS pension fund is a public pension fund, whereas social security (OASDI) and Medicare are social insurance programs. There are good reasons why the accounting for these should be different. In fact, the issue that you point out with the USPS pension fund arose when they forced a public pension plan (the USPS) to check for actuarial balance similar to a social insurance program (the 75 year long-term actuarial balance), instead of the simple employer accounting basis under GASB 68 (which is similar to the FAS 87/88 standard for private firms)

I am not arguing that PAYG is the *worst* accounting for social insurance programs, and in fact I don't think that. There are many good reasons why PAYG with some sort of short term/long term checks of actuarial balance *can* be appropriate measures for the health of a social insurance plan. However, OP said OASDI and Medicare are in SURPLUS, full stop, and I think that greatly oversimplifies the issues involved.

Disclaimer: I am an actuary, but no longer in active practice.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Teancum]

The reflight of their 1st stage will simply not happen before the end of the year. Period. They are struggling far too much to simply get the current manifest going at the moment. Besides, SpaceX has an aggressive program with their Falcon 9R test project in New Mexico to perform well before they get a 1st stage ready for full reflight after landing a couple stages and then tearing them apart for engineering studies if they are even successful at landing those stages.

SpaceX doesn't even have clearance from the FAA-AST to land the 1st stage on land, nor is there any location at KSC for them to put the stage down. SpaceX is trying to find a spot and the Cape Canaveral Air Station staff is performing an assessment as to where they could put a landing pad for SpaceX to use, but let's see that built first before any further speculation as to a time table for when it might be used. The bureaucratic paper mill to get that landing pad will take more than a year alone, and that doesn't even include construction and FAA-AST certification for a process that simply lack regulations of any kind (yet more of a delay for just that).

Don't get me wrong, SpaceX will get that going with the progress they've been making, and I'm not trying to suggest SpaceX will fail with their landing attempts, just that it is going to take a whole lot more time to get all of that accomplished. Three to five years from now will we see the 1st stages reused? That is something I could see. Ten years from now that they could routinely be used for crewed flights perhaps as well. I wouldn't expect anything like that done earlier.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still I bet the NASA Muslim outreach program requested by Obama to show those peace loving Muslims are excelling in science is working well.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[FatLittleMonkey]

They had nine launches in 4 years. Of those the first 5 took 39 months. The next 4 took 8 months.

At that rate of acceleration, they should easily be down to 1 per month by the end of the year.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey FatLittleMonkey:
What I'm on about if real world data and performance.

Reading off from SpaceX marketing pamphlet doesn't make it magically happen on the launch pad.

Progress has a payload of less than 2.5 tonnes

It's just too bad NASA says the latest Falcon 9v1.1 CRS-3 had a payload of less than 2.1 tonnes (where did the missing 1.1 tonnes of payload disappeared to? Up Elon's anus?)
And as mentioned earlier, the Russians are cheaper than the $133million commanded by SpaceX.

The whole return payload issue is irrelevant.
The only return payload of any consequence is astronauts, most everything else is waste that can just burn up during reentry.
And my SpaceX marketing pamphlet says the Dragon is not capable of returning anything with a pulse.

So instead of reading off fro SpaceX marketing pamphlet, I suggest you put it to some real use like wiping your asshole after taking a shit.

Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

[Teancum]

It would be nice if such acceleration actually applied to human endeavors and logistics. I think the 4 launches per 8 months is likely the best you are going to see from SpaceX for awhile until they get pad 39A finished and/or the Brownsville site.

Trump

[rossdee]

Maybe we can persuade The Donald to invest in space exploration.
Then no Russians would be needed.

Re:Trump

[nitehawk214]

Maybe we can persuade The Donald to invest in space exploration.
Then no Russians would be needed.

In dollars, Musk is worth 5x Trump. Musk has made more money this year than Donald Trump's entire portfolio is worth.

In value to society, it is incalculable.

Re:Trump

[Jane Q. Public]

This.

PLUS, one of the reasons Musk made so much money was because: how did it really come to this? It came to this because NASA and Presidents and Congress all made BAD decisions.

Against better advice, I might add.

Re:Trump

[dbIII]

Why? He's got negative net worth. On paper a homeless person has more money than Trump and things like the todays IRS result against a Swiss bank may make that reality.
There's plenty like Gates, Buffet, Murdoch etc who didn't have to hide their money due to epic failures.

A Contest?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this a contest? Isn't it the International Space station, not a pissing match.

Re:A Contest?

[_Shad0w_]

Access to space has always been a pissing contest. You would even be in space if it wasn't.

Re:A Contest?

[tiberus]

Hmm, what part of the male anatomy does a rocket resemble? 'nuff said

Re:A Contest?

[sexconker]

Hmm, what part of the male anatomy does a rocket resemble? 'nuff said

The nothing? Go look at your penis. Then go look at a rocket. If they look alike to you, please see a urologist / plastic surgeon.
You may as well claim all spheres look like breasts.

Re:A Contest?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISS has outlived its usefulness. Just give the Russians the keys to it and NASA can use the saved money on new projects. Then it will be their albatross instead of ours.

Lets get more rovers to the planets and moons. Mass produce the suckers already. NASA can land them and provide tech support, but outsource the daily tasks to universities that will do it for free. In less than a decade the greatest era of space exploration will be in full swing. Seriously, guys, lets stop trying to send men into space until there is a compelling reason. Driven by science, not politics.

Re:A Contest?

[fuzznutz]

You may as well claim all spheres look like breasts.

They do if you squint hard enough.

Re:A Contest?

[Anonymous Coward]

A pissing contest and a military/colonial contest.

He/she who has control over space can rain down destruction on their enemies. They can also glean new scientific discoveries from the new environment. It's been like this since before the conquistadors.

On the other hand, I will bet you right now that there will always be at least one US astronaut on the ISS, to mitigate the risk of an attack. I'm sorry if this sounds tinfoil-hattish,but politics is politics.

Re:A Contest?

[I'm New Around Here]

Does the definition of the word "resemble" escape you?

And since female breasts are sometimes referred to as "melons", "mosquito bites", "scoops of vanilla ice cream", and so on, the literal comparison between a penis and a rocket is quite stupid.

Re:A Contest?

[Anonymous Coward]

"This rocket design meets all of our specifications for reaching orbit with minimal drag and fuel, but can we make it look more like a penis?" said no engineer ever. Stop projecting your penis obsession onto the rest of us.

Space X, you're up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia being Russia is the best thing that can happen to Space X if they have what it takes.

Re:Space X, you're up.

[Sir_Eptishous]

The undercover fomenters in Kiev were Space-X agents!

Re:Space X, you're up.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. At the very least, let this be a lesson to us, never to trust another country to be such an integral part of our space program.

Re:Space X, you're up.

[Nethemas the Great]

I think it will do wonders for those DoD contracts SpaceX was blocked from bidding on now that ULA can't get engines from the Russians for those kinds of missions any longer.

Re:Space X, you're up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia being Russia, Musk is one meal away from being poisoned.

Going to space is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

We did it in the 60s. We landed on the moon. ...unless we didn't do those things.

Re:Going to space is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not stay at home and say you went?

Achieve both ends.

Re:Going to space is easy

[Jeremy Erwin]

Scientific journals frown on fraud. Of course, manned missions tend to produce less important data than unmanned ones

Re:Going to space is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

We did it in the 60s. We landed on the moon. ...unless we didn't do those things [emphasis added].

You get a punch in the face from Buzz Aldrin!

Re:Going to space is easy

[AgentSmith]

It depends on your definition of important data. A thousand pages of unmanned data aren't worth one trip when we are truly trying to gauge how humans react in space.
The ultimate goal is trying to get humans in space for long term travel and colonization.

make up for proton losses

[Anonymous Coward]

increase revenue to make up for the loss of proton rockets. the situation is quick... awkward... for all parties involved.

I blame consumer product safety laws

[Thud457]

Not enough idiots killing themselves, now we have a surplus of lawyers overrunning our gubbamint. Simple cause and effect.

BRING BACK JARTS TO PROTECT THE FUTURE OF THE REPUBLIC!

Re:I blame consumer product safety laws

[budgenator]

You may have been modded flamebait, but I think insightfully funny would be more apropos.

Re:I blame consumer product safety laws

[Lije Baley]

Curse you! The mere suggestion brings a tear to my remaining eye.

How could it not come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who thought this was a good idea in the first place? Fortunately I love saying I told ya so!

How did it come to this?

[Banichi]

Same way it did every other time NASA failed in a major way.
Corruption, Incompetence, and Bureaucracy.

Re:How did it come to this?

[CanadianMacFan]

I would also include the politicians changing the direction that NASA is supposed to take every two to four years. They just get started on their priorities and their masters in Washington change bringing new orders that makes all of their previous work obsolete. It also doesn't help when NASA is also trying to be used as a jobs program so politicians try to create/keep positions in their ridings.

Re:How did it come to this?

[Nethemas the Great]

NASA's bureaucracy has had a long history driven into the ditch by Congress. No system can survive to function in any meaningful way when someone is constantly turning the steering wheel every which way while simultaneously and randomly jabbing the clutch, the brake, the accelerator, flipping switches and levers back and forth in the manner of a spastic three year old whom just finished downing the entire sugar bowl and six cans of Red Bull.

Re:How did it come to this?

[Virtucon]

horseshit. There was the X-33 which died because of costs and projected technical issues.

Then there was the Constellation Program which was proposed by Dubya after the Columbia disaster and proposed to re-use technologies learned from Apollo and the Shuttle. It was actually going quite well but budget concerns crept in and it was de-funded in the 2011 Federal Budget and with that we now have the situation where the Shuttles were retired, we have no manned capability and we were expected to spend $6Billion on ferrying astronauts using Russian rockets. Of course real American heroes (Armsrtrong, Lovell, Cernan that have been to the Moon argued against killing Constellation but we now have Bolden who couldn't find his ass in broad daylight with both hands and now we are where we are with just continuing the Orion capsule development and choosing a heavy lift engine by 2015..

It wasn't NASA not preparing for a replacement after the shuttle, it's more or less the large behemoth that is NASA for not getting something in place quicker.
In order to make significant investments like this for Space exploration, it takes substantial amounts of money and the political will to accomplish that if you're going after federal dollars. Unfortunately with continual trillion dollar plus deficits I fear we're going to have to get away from the NASA side of the equation and push to more private enterprise to get back to the moon or mars for that matter. Or we'll just watch the Chinese and Russians do it and say "woulda, shoulda, coulda"

 

Re:How did it come to this?

[Teancum]

Unfortunately with rocket development you deal with hard realities due to physics and the rocket equation. Those are things that Congress routinely tries to ignore and unfortunately don't really result in a usable rocket if they are ignored for other political considerations.

Khrushchev at least recognized he needed to give Sergei Korolev the money needed to put stuff into space, but then again even the Soviet Union fell to political games, hence at least one of the reasons why the N1 program (aka the "moon rocket" that should have put Russian cosmonauts on the Moon) fell apart and killed so many people. That disaster is still counted as one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history.

At least NASA and especially Werner Von Braun never had to deal with that kind of disaster.

Re:How did it come to this?

[Virtucon]

The N1 was a giant fiasco and it was doomed due to the same budgetary issues that plagued the US program. Unlike the US however if Von Braun and his team had failed, he probably wouldn't have been sent to Siberia to mine peat.

Also let's never associate members of congress with knowing anything about science or math or anything actually requiring much thought. That way we will never be disappointed when they cavalierly cut programs and focus on retarded issues that have no strategic bearing for the nation. As they say, "Bread and Circuses" right?

Re:How did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

My $.02. 1. The STS cost $5B per year to operate. Forget development costs. It launched 35 people per year. That equals $142.857M per person. thank you Russians for saving us $2.515B per year.
2. We are in the mess we are in now because NASA's propensity to platinum plate (wait what is the most expensive metal?) every project they get funded. After Apollo was cancelled, all the aerospace companies came out with studies on cheap dumb rockets to space. Google "cheap dumb rockets". Nasa had a "better" idea, the biggest economic disaster of space, the STS. All that has followed, is more of the same. That is why we cannot launch people into space not the Coggermen. I believe it was Orbital that offered to build a space station if NASA would be the anchor tenant. NASA said, we have a" better" idea, and gave us what eventually led to the ISS. Another series of BFs.
NASA has shown it's self to be incapable of developing either a transportation system or a station, and should be banned from doing so. I've had enough BFs thank you very much.

NASA jobs program

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISS has been nothing but a poorly disguised jobs program to keep a lot of NASA employees wealthily with huge salaries while accruing fabulous retirement benefits.

Re:NASA jobs program

[deadweight]

Normally I would not even look at AC comments, but WTF? I know plenty of NASA people and no one is getting rich over there.

Re:NASA jobs program

[Anonymous Coward]

Private government contractors, not NASA employees.

Re:NASA jobs program

[gatkinso]

I worked as a NASA contractor for a while, and there was not any getting rich on the green badge side of things I can assure you.

Re:NASA jobs program

[deadweight]

Maybe the OWNER of said contracting company is, but the worker bees on site surely are not.

So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

1. The ISS was a mistake in and of itself. The science its done wasn't worth the money. There were cheaper ways to attain the same knowledge. That money could have been better spent on other NASA projects.

2. Never trust the Russians. By all means do whatever in the name of diplomacy. But NEVER trust them. It goes back to the policy under Reagan... Trust but Verify... which really means we DO NOT trust them but we do business with them in a safe and sustainable way.

3. Allowing the US to lose its ability to go to space while the ISS remained active.

4. Not cultivating alternatives from spaceX etc that offered to fill the gap.

It goes without saying that the US is run badly these days. The politics being what they are about half the population will never admit it but such is the reality. As a people, we need to grow beyond our factionalism, find common ground, and hold our leaders to some reasonable standards. Otherwise, we'll just bounce between one faction's incompetents and the other's. Each side giving the profound incompetence of its own candidates a blind eye until they're out of political capital and then it shifts to the next guy. Back and forth.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Bodhammer]

Well said, wish I had mod points.

Re:So many mistakes.

[MightyMartian]

The point of the ISS wasn't really to do science in space, but rather to learn the problems and solutions of long term habitation.

Re:So many mistakes.

[ColdWetDog]

1. The ISS was a mistake in and of itself. The science its done wasn't worth the money.

The same can be said for any large, multi national project - science, engineering, 'sports'.

There were cheaper ways to attain the same knowledge.

Always. Especially in hindsight and especially before a project is started.

That money could have been better spent on other NASA projects.

See previous.

2. Never trust the Russians. By all means do whatever in the name of diplomacy. But NEVER trust them.

Don't trust ANYBODY. Including ourselves.

 

3. Allowing the US to lose its ability to go to space while the ISS remained active.

4. Not cultivating alternatives from spaceX etc that offered to fill the gap.

It goes without saying that the US is run badly these days.

Yep, Stupid. Stupid. Even for the US, it was stupid.

The politics being what they are about half the population will never admit it but such is the reality. As a people, we need to grow beyond our factionalism, find common ground, and hold our leaders to some reasonable standards. Otherwise, we'll just bounce between one faction's incompetents and the other's. Each side giving the profound incompetence of its own candidates a blind eye until they're out of political capital and then it shifts to the next guy. Back and forth.

While your goals are laudable, they are not likely achievable. Look back at the 10000 year history of 'modern' man and you see the same thing over and over again.

Might as well get used to it.

Re:So many mistakes.

[ArcherB]

The point of the ISS wasn't really to do science in space, but rather to learn the problems and solutions of long term habitation.

Right. And that is science!

I'm not disagreeing with you. The ISS is the only place to do that kind of science, which the parent you were responding to seems to think there is some cheaper way of doing.

Re:So many mistakes.

[nitehawk214]

I would call it more engineering than science. Learning how to build large structures in space is the only really going to be accomplished by getting up there and doing it.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

And all those problems turned out to be ground-based political ones...

Re:So many mistakes.

[AmiMoJo]

And to learn to cooperate with other countries. Remember that most of the ISS wasn't built by the US. Why shouldn't Russia send as many cosmonauts there as it likes, if the US is unwilling to pay the price any more?

It seems like the US wasn't really all that serious about cooperation from the start. From petty squabbling over the name of the core module (which was built by Russia) to blocking China.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's revisionist history. It is easy to say that now, after decades of failure for doing any substantive science. However, it was sold over and over and over again as the great science platform in the sky, promising cure what ails us all with the wonderful world of zero-G research. Since we had the "space bus" to rocket to orbit (every week because it would be so cheap and routine), we needed the ISS to have somewhere for the space bus to go. STS justified the ISS, and the ISS justified STS.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the point was to keep all those Russian rocket scientists employed so they wouldn't be off developing weapons systems for the highest bidders.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . the core module (which was built by Russia)

The Russians barely met their obligations. In fact, NASA had to build their own control module because it didn't look like the Russians were "really all that serious" in building and launching theirs. Also, NASA pushed hard to make it an international station because, quite simply, they couldn't foot the bill themselves. However, nobody else gave a shit either so NASA basically had to spend the lion's share to get it built.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Never trust the Russians. By all means do whatever in the name of diplomacy. But NEVER trust them. It goes back to the policy under Reagan... Trust but Verify...

I have no idea what you're saying here, other than declaring yourself xenophobic. And contradicting yourself.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Russians have a history of fucking people over we're xenophobic?

Fuck you.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Nethemas the Great]

Untrue, they could have played Kerbal Space Program.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Yes? Cheaper way of putting people in 0g for a year or more at a time?

2. What did Russia do? NASA stopped cooperating on everything non-ISS first. US puts sanctions on Russia.

Who was the first to pull the "protecting civilians" crap in Libya that somehow was equivalent to close air support for rebels?? Russia is not doing anything even remotely as outlandish as the US.

Russia is just retaliating on US sanctions. You might as well say "Don't trust US", same thing. Based on how US acts regarding IP laws (see Mega and Dotcom, for one), drone used for extrajudicial killings, etc. not sure who is more trustable anyway.

3. So who allowed US space program to deteriorate to this level?? Go ahead, look at yourselves.

4. There are alternatives, just Space X is the only one this much progressed.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=space+x+c...

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

It goes without saying that the US is run badly these days. The politics being what they are about half the population will never admit it but such is the reality. As a people, we need to grow beyond our factionalism, find common ground, and hold our leaders to some reasonable standards.

Spot on on this one at least. Too bad the system is rigged that only "acceptable" candidates to maintain the status-quo are ever nominated.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lawre...

Re:So many mistakes.

[Tom]

It goes without saying that the US is run badly these days.

The US? Have you opened your eyes recently? Most european countries have their worst governments since... idk, mad kings of the dark ages or something. They are either corrupt, incompetent, puppets or all three.

Russia may well be the best-run western(*) country these days. If you think badly about Putin, talk to some russian people about how it was before him. I did, and it was quite a learning experience.

(*) yes, I count Russia as western, by culture and economy. "west/east" doesn't make sense anymore, the alternatives to western culture are asian, african and south-american.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't trust the russians? How about the "not one inch closer" to russias borders, would NATO expand if Gorbachev followed suit?

How about the NSA is only recording terrorists?

Who should we not trust again?

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

>2. Never trust the Russians. By all means do whatever in the name of diplomacy. But NEVER trust them.

Oh and trust the americans right?

American treachery and double-facedness is well known and documented. Specially these days. Just today, with the NSA backdooring all cisco hardware and trying to cry wolf about the evil chinese.

And the russians are evil... why? Because they seemed evil in rocky? Or whatever movie you pick?

Yeah, keep drinking the koolaid soldier.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

The principle science was actually done by the russians long before the ISS was launched. Either way, there were better ways to accomplish the same thing.

Re:So many mistakes.

[dbIII]

Most european countries have their worst governments since

You should be old enough to remember when Greece was run by a fascist government. Then there's Spain, Romania was a horror story, and that's not even getting started on the bits of Yugoslavia when it first broke apart.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

Wrong. The ISS was largely a political stunt and as such was less about the science and more about forging a post cold war international union.

That clearly failed and the money that went into the project was largely wasted.

In hindsight, the real lesson was don't trust the Russians.

That said, any cold warrior could have told you that.

Re:So many mistakes.

[currently_awake]

The Russian station had already done that science. The purpose of the station was so NASA needed the space shuttle. Without the station you could have used all that money for probes and landers (real science).

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

Russia isn't western. Its eastern.

People seem to forget what western and eastern mean.

It refers to the western and eastern Roman empire.

We are the children of the western empire. Our script is latin script. Our religious organization was generally the Catholic church... prior to the protestants etc.

The Russians are of the Eastern empire. The Byzantines. Their script is Greek. Cyrillic. Their church is the Orthadox chruch.

Western and Eastern...

As to what you consider eastern and western... just come up with new terms. Eastern and western have a meaning you don't like... don't impose your meaning on terms that are already defined. You might as well redefine what the word "is" means. In this context, Western and Eastern refer to the old roman empire and the child nations that grew up in its ashes.

Yes, Asian countries are often referred to as eastern... but that's because they're east of the western empire. By the same token the Russians might call the Navajo or Eskimo's western. Its a different meaning.

When speaking of the Russians in reference to the West... they are definitely Eastern.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

Countries have a right to be free.

The Russians don't have a right to dictate how the rest of hte world must live.

If eastern europe wants to join NATO because they're afraid of Russian aggression then what right does Russia have to oppose it? IF Russia really wanted to avoid this situation they shouldn't have intimitated eastern europe and instead made friends of them. But they can't do that. They can't help themselves. They enter every situation swinging their dicks around pissing everyone off and it makes everyone want to lock them out.

And in any case, if we wanted to be sneaky on the issue, we could have just created another organization just like Nato but NOT nato that eastern europe and western europe could join.

Happy now?

At the end of the day, these countries have a right to associate how they please.

Russia's behavior is only dooming the country. They have started the cold war again and that means the west is going to start choking the life out of Russia.

We've played this game before. You wanted to back to the war... You have it. We'll squeeze until Russia breaks.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Jeremy Erwin]

Remember that most of the ISS wasn't built by the US.

Are you kidding?
5 Russian modules
7 US modules
2 Japanese modules
1 European module

NASA also built the Integrated Truss Structure, which provides most of the power to the station. In terms of mass dragged up into orbit, the shuttle did a lot more work than Russia's rockets. 257038 kilograms on the shuttle vs 49624 kilograms on russian craft. Sure, Nauka's going up soon, but it's only 20300 kg.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

You have a point with the NSA. That is a serious issue though its more complicated. It wasn't an attempt by the US to betray anyone so much as some intelligence agencies in the wake of 9/11 that became over zealous.

I do not think you can show bad faith in that situation so much a general lack of respect for the law.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

yes but we don't trust each other because we know that if we don't cling to our factions that rival factions will overwhelm and consume us.

So we stick with corrupt factions because for all their faults they're powerful enough to defend themselves while we individually are not.

to be comfortable taking a risk to disolve the factions the risk of a rival faction taking power would have to be reduced.

That cost of losing would have to go down.

For the cost of losing political power to go down the value of political power itself must be reduced. For that happen the government's power must be reduced.

For the government's power to be reduced you would have to go back to small government principles.

Small government principles are opposed by leftist factions and are seen as a trope of rightist factions. Therefore attempting to do this will simply irrtate the existing factional battle.

TLDR?

The only way to restore democratic principles is to go back to limited government. And the only way to do that is to defeat the factions that oppose limited government.

Effectively... the only way to fix the system is a giant populist wave to crush political insiders and restore constitutional order.

There are factions trying to do that already... but their chances of success are not looking too good these days. The forces that control this country thrive on the corruption.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Teancum]

The ISS was never about the science. That was a very distant afterthought and more of an excuse to slap on the appropriations legislation and to give a cover of legitimacy for why the money needed to be spent.

The real point of the ISS was to act as a "vehicle" to transfer orbital construction experience gained by the Soviet Union during the construction of the Almaz and Mir space stations and get NASA engineers into Star City to really pick apart how the Soviet Union made that equipment. Of significant importance was the idea of keeping rocket scientists in the broken up Soviet Union, at that point the Russian Federation, very busy with projects that they would not be tempted to build ICBMs for North Korea or Iran.

Perhaps spending $100-$150 billion to keep Los Angeles or Seattle from becoming a nuclear cinder was a good idea, and having NASA researchers basically get a blank check to explore in detail the entire Soviet space program is certainly of some major value. Post-Soviet Russia certainly was willing to open their archives and show almost everything.... at a price and a price NASA was willing to pay.

The numerous failed attempts to replace the Space Shuttle is something that should get some attention though, and the singular failure of NASA to come up with something besides the Shuttle is definitely something that should be shouted from every political soapbox. It is am embarrassment that all NASA can come up with is the SLS and Orion architecture.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

As to space city, I really question whether the russians really knew anything of significance that we didn't already know.

Remember... we landed on the moon. They didn't. Yes, they did some experiments that we probably didn't do. But did they honestly learn anything that we hadn't already figured out?

As to keeping Russian scientists busy, don't look now but Iran and north korea already went nuclear.

It was a waste of money and time.

Russia just needs to be crushed. They're irrational just like the Byzantines that birthed their whole branch of the civilizational tree.

The Byzantines could have united with the Western powers against the Turks. They spat in the face of the west. Literally tore the eyes out of a Venetian diplomat's head... and for that brought the Crusade down upon them instead of upon their enemies.

And so the Turk crushed Constantinople which is now Istanbul.

This stupidity from Russians is not new. Its a very old story that always works out the same way. The Russians are too stupid to learn from their history.

We offered them peace. We offered them membership in our fellowship of nations. They have decided to take the path of their ancestors of Byzantium.

It leads only to brutality, murder, and death.

Queue the music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:So many mistakes.

[Tom]

It refers to the western and eastern Roman empire.

Welcome to the 21st century. As I see, you've skipped the 20th, so you might want to read up on things like the "Cold War", which re-defined many things in Europe.

When speaking of the Russians in reference to the West... they are definitely Eastern.

Welcome to the real world as well. I have several close friends born and raised in Russia. I talk to Russians on Skype regularily. Culturally, they are definitely westernized. Spanish people are more different to me than russian people.

But in the end, I don't care about nitpicking. I put a footnote specifically to explain why I used the term this way, to avoid any confusion. If you want to redefine terms in your favorite way (and bringing Byzanz in there is sure a cute bit of nostalgia), you're welcome. I just won't care. In science and rational discourse, we explain the terms we use and then use them in the way we explained them. That way, we don't have to squabble over meanings.

Re:So many mistakes.

[GNious]

Don't underestimate people's ability to not remember the recent past.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

As to the 21st century, that is what those terms mean. If you don't like them then don't use them. You do not get to simply redefine things to mean something else simply because you find little things like "history" and "facts" inconvienent.

Grasp this... I am not saying Russia cannot belong to our little club of nations. It was after all the intention after the cold war that the Russians would be rehabilitated and allowed in...

However, Russia is less of a western country then is Japan. And japan's history is so divergent from what one might consider western as to be unrecognizable.

As to the cold war redefining things... the cold war did not define Russia as a western country. If anything it highlighted its status as something else.

As to Russians on skype being westernized, I don't think you know what that means. By this sort of logic about half the planet might be defined as westernized.

Our civilization is hegemonic on this planet and through its obvious modernity, wealth, military power, etc has influenced every culture on earth.

So yes... the Russians have been influenced by us but then so have the Chinese. Just because I play starcraft against chinese people every so often and they tell me jokes in english doesn't mean they're western. It just means the internet is a cultural melting pot.

As to Spanish people being more different to you then the Russians, that means literally nothing. First off, the Spanish are extremely western. Second off, what you personally consider to be one thing or another is utterly irrelevant.

As to not caring about nitpicking, then don't contradict established classifications and waste my time. Ask Putin if he thinks of himself as Western.

He'll give you one of his patiented "i'm a tough guy" stares and then say "nyet".

As to redefining terms, I didn't do that. You did. Shut up. Do not argue with me when you're wrong. No no... hush. That's what the word terms mean. Get over it. No no... Zip it.

As to "scientific" and rational discourse, we don't just randomly redefine terms or ignore history when it becomes inconvenient. Your attempt to claim science is behind you on this issue is frankly baffling since science has nothing to do with this discussion. And your attempt to pervert the meanings of words is hardly rational.

As to avoiding squabbling over meanings, the way it works is the first person to define a term defines it.. that was no me by the way, but people thousands of years before I was born. So... that's a fixed quality.

The terms remain fixed and if you want to express a different concept then you come up with a different term instead of just using their term improperly.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

Here is a classification system you might prefer... its from the cold war.

First world.

Second world.

Third world.

First world included all powers allied with the United States. This was Europe, Japan, South Korea, former british colonies, about half of South America, etc.

Second world included all powers allied with the Soviets. This would be Cuba, China, Vietnam, etc.

Third world included all powers not allied with either the United States or the Soviets.

So if you want a more modern classification you can use that one... unless you have of your own that you'd like to define.

But keep in mind, Russia is not associated with our civilization in any sense.

Eastern Europe is probably getting pulled into our sphere one way or the other. But the Russians like the Byzantines are going to piss into the wind until they drowned.

Re:So many mistakes.

[taiwanjohn]

If that is the case, then why haven't they done a single experiment in centrifugal "artificial gravity" yet? Heck, they wouldn't even need ISS for that. The idea has been around since the 60s (at least), but it's never even been tried by anyone that I know of.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Tom]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Oh, damn. Definitions change over time, who would have thought!

Maybe I'm ahead of the curve because I actually *gasp* have russian friends and talk to them not just about the weather but about politics and literature and arts and philosophy. We can just leave it at this and meet again in 10 years and maybe one of us has changed his mind.

I don't care about being right. The point I originally made didn't even rest on whether or not you classify Russia as western or not, it was just a convenient shortcut.

So, whatever you say, here's your victory token, hang it on your wall or whatever. :-)

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, never trust the Americans.

Re:So many mistakes.

[nitehawk214]

I am not sure if I would consider trail-by-error as valid engineering or science.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

None of those definitions cite Russia as western.

We're done here... you're clearly an idiot that is arrogant. There is no cure for that. I'm very sorry. The only cure for idiocy is education and the arrogant reject education assuming themselves to be superior.

Very sorry... would help you if I could.

Re:So many mistakes.

[unixisc]

Russia isn't western. Its eastern.

People seem to forget what western and eastern mean.

It refers to the western and eastern Roman empire.

We are the children of the western empire. Our script is latin script. Our religious organization was generally the Catholic church... prior to the protestants etc.

The Russians are of the Eastern empire. The Byzantines. Their script is Greek. Cyrillic. Their church is the Orthadox chruch.

Western and Eastern...

By that definition, the Greeks would be Eastern as well - except that Greece is a part of NATO and was even during the Cold War.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

Right, because look at how all our allies after WW2 were fucked over by association with us.

Oh wait, no they weren't... that was the Russians fucking over their allies.

Riddle me this, would you rather have been in eastern Germany or Western Germany?

Don't speak unless spoken to.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

if you're in asia you're likely eastern.

Russia is in asia... you're wrong... get over it.

Re:So many mistakes.

[unixisc]

75% of Russia's area is in Asia, but only 25% of their population is. 75% of the population is in the 25% that's in Europe. The Russians have more in common w/ the Slavonic people of Europe, as opposed to the Mongoloid people in Siberia.

Asia is definitely eastern, but Russians are not Asians. The Japanese, who you claimed as Western, are definitely not. They are modern, and they do have a different value system from the rest of Asia, but their value system is also different enough from the West as well.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

As to Europe and Asia, the point remains that Russia is not a western country.

Never have been. And while they were offered into our club they have spat in our faces. So they remain outside.

As to Japan, my only point was that by any rational modern reinterpretation of definitions Japan would be more likely to be considered western then would Russia.

What does western mean to you?

Lets stop dicking around here and you just tell me what you think western means. I assure you that you're going to find your definition either so expansive that lots of countries you didn't think qualified do qualify or you're going to find Russia not on the list.

I did this calculation already... here is your chance to do it yourself and come to the same conclusion.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a skewed perspective.

Besides already mentioned in Sister post Spain, Romania, Yugoslavia and Greece.
The Baltic states are free and independent doing good without the USSR. Poland passes 25 Years this year since it stopped being a puppet state of Moscow that suppressed protests with tanks and AKs. Germany is no longer divided between totalitarian communists bent on total surveillance and rehabilitated Nazis.

The current governments do have problems with with a slow slide towards more power with established power bases(corporations, industry, incumbent politicians ) that is still a log way from actively criminal regimes.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Tom]

Let's leave it here. Don't feel sorry for me, I feel sorry for you if you feel the need for personal attacks on people you don't even know. It's almost funny.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

I don't so much feel a need as feel it is deserved.

Re:So many mistakes.

[unixisc]

My definition of Western is the European and related countries. So it would be Europe, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa. Maybe a few more countries here & there, but not many. Note that I'm using cultural definitions here, not political. Like what the population at large is. All the above Western countries have an European language as their basis, are largely Christian (or Judeo-Christian).

Russia is in the list. Some wannabe Western countries, like the Middle East, are not. Some countries like Morocco & Turkey like to pretend that they're a part of Europe, but they're not. Neither are countries like Kazakhstan, Armenia and other former Soviet republics not based in Europe.

You could narrow the definition to include just countries whose laws are based on human rights & current standards of behavior, but then, countries in Asia that are perfectly democratic & pluralistic, such as Thailand, would be counted as Western, while authoritarian countries in Eastern Europe, like Belarus, would be excluded. But it makes no sense to think of any Asian country as Western, except Russia, whose bulk of the population is west of the Urals.

Re:So many mistakes.

[RogerWilco]

The point of the ISS was to figure out long term space habitation and how to build a big space station.

I don't know how to do that any other way, please enlighten me.

Re:So many mistakes.

[Karmashock]

Easy... launch five rats into space in an automated lab.

Seriously... why are people so thick? Use your brains.

What are they doing up there?

[sweatyboatman]

Maybe the reason more Russians are going up than Americans is because it costs $71Million to send an American.

NASA's 2014 budget is ~$17.5B, and they do a lot of really good stuff, the ISS is kinda low on that totem pole, if you ask me. There's a lot more to space exploration than sitting in the ISS, babysitting experiments, chatting with school kids and waiting for your ride

Re:What are they doing up there?

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA's 2014 budget is ~$17.5B, and they do a lot of really good stuff, the ISS is kinda low on that totem pole, if you ask me.

I know if I had my way the IIS money would have been spend on the Alan Shepard Exo-Planet Resolver space telescope instead. But that would have probably required an Ares V to launch it....... so no. Not this lifetime I guess. SLS is a paper rocket and we'll have blown up our currency before that gets built.

And no, the JWST isn't it. Nice mission and all, but lacking the resolution and other features needed to characterize the atmospheres and surfaces of exo-planets.

So fuck it. It's China's problem now. At least until they self-inflict their own decline by reverting China to a nature preserve.

Re:What are they doing up there?

[MildlyTangy]

17 bil? is that all? 17 measly billion dollars a year for all of NASA?

Shit guys, get your act together. You spend more money a year on air conditioning for the US Army ( ~$20bil )

Nice set of priorities you have there.

seriously, wtf!?

Re:What are they doing up there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, goofy, why don't you do something about it? Just setup a kickstarter project and give the funds to NASA. Have a new one each year "2014 NASA Fund", "2015 NASA Fund". Any interested individual or group can then give as much as they want. Hows that for easy? But you would rather complain and try to get more tax money.

Re:What are they doing up there?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Still, the FY 2015 request is 3.051 billion for the ISS.

Re:What are they doing up there?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised that Americans are still going up at all with the high tensions between USA and Russia this year.

Re:What are they doing up there?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much does your shitty country spend on space each year?

Re:What are they doing up there?

[MildlyTangy]

How much does your shitty country spend on space each year?

And this invalidates my argument how?

Simple

[TWX]

Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?

I think this one's pretty friggin' obvious. We discontinued our man-rated means to low earth orbit before we had a working replacement. It's the exact same way we lost Skylab, except we were theoretically cooperating with Russia this time, while last time we weren't. Obviously our degree of cooperation was misunderstood, and they have chosen to exploit our weakness.

Mind you, our man-rated means to low earth orbit was ridiculously inefficient compared to what it was supposed to cost, and the turnaround on our pretty little space planes was orders of magnitude worse than the week-or-two expected between launches. It was so expensive that our politicians wouldn't push for a small, inexpensive (relatively speaking) method to reach space for when we didn't need a crew of ten and a payload of ten tons. Had we spent the money to either refine the Saturn-series to make them less expensive and more efficient or started on a new project after the Shuttle finally got going then we probably wouldn't be in this predicament now.

At least it'll be good for a relative up-and-comer in SpaceX and to a lesser extent to Orbital/ATK.

This hopefully will be a lesson for not discontinuing one's own abilities before being ready with a new program, but you'd think that Skylab falling from orbit and burning up would have taught us that lesson.

Re:Simple

[mrchaotica]

Had we... started on a new project after the Shuttle finally got going then we probably wouldn't be in this predicament now.

We did. Over and over again, in fact. They all got killed off / restarted / killed off again due to politics and bureaucratic in-fighting.

Re:Simple

[cavreader]

The X-37 program run by the Air Force has delivered a re-usable but unmanned stealth vehicle that has been undertaking military missions for almost 4 years now with little fanfare and the manned version is close to being ready for testing. I am surprised that Russia or China isn't raising a stink over this vehicle that renders damn near every satellite in orbit vulnerable to being destroyed.

Re:Simple

[Zorpheus]

China already showed that it can destroy satellites too. They left a big mess behind, but that won't be their problem if the USA decides to block their access to space anyway.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

china is using missiles. the US can put people up there and use the x37 to do all sorts of interesting missions like orbital bombing runs, or capturing satellites.

Re:Simple

[TWX]

There wouldn't be any advantage in using people to make orbital bombing runs.

Come to think of it, there probably isn't even an advantage in making orbital bombing runs in the first place. If you want to get exotic, it would probably be far cheaper to float a rocket up to the edge of space with a balloon, then point it at the ground target and fire the engine.

And for capturing satellites, if the goal is to modify them in-place then humans might be better at it than an entirely robotic mission, but if the goal is to grab them to return them dirtside then I don't see humans being any better than a robot.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/663703main_flighttest1_fs_051812_0.pdf

This one is still going. Supposed to be test launched at the end of this year.

Ok, it should probably have been launched years ago, but still.

Re:Simple

[R3d M3rcury]

use the x37 to do all sorts of interesting missions like [...] capturing satellites.

And the use of capturing satellites is...?

Re:Simple

[R3d M3rcury]

I like the 2017 launch of the SLS. HA!

That said, I think Orion is interesting. Dragon is designed to deal with LEO whereas Orion is designed to deal with outside Earth orbit. This is the sort of thing that NASA should be working on. I think SLS is a waste--it sounds like Space-X will be able to do it faster and cheaper. But Orion is worthwhile.

Re:Simple

[currently_awake]

The Saturn 5 launched more cargo for less money than the shuttle. We didn't need to make them less expensive, we needed to stop throwing money away on the shuttle.

Re:Simple

[GNious]

Clean-up duty - apparently US got so envious of all the immigrants taking all the cleaning-jobs, that they created themselves a high-tech clean-up job.

Re:Simple

[Zorpheus]

What I meant is: if the USA would start capturing Chinese spying satellites China would probably retaliate by destroying one or more American satellites. Currently the USA has an advantage due to a higher number and quality of satellites in orbit, if it starts to attack satellites it will lose this advantage due to the counterreactions.
The Chinese method is simple and produces lots of debris in orbit. If this is done a few times orbits will become unusable because the danger of collisions becomes too high. The USA can not use this method since it will block itself with it, but for China it is ok, especially as a counter-threat.

Paypal

[Curunir_wolf]

Why do we need Russia if we now successfully can use Paypal?

Errr... I mean SpaceX.

Re:Paypal

[Richy_T]

We tried to but we kept getting a popup that tried to force us to sign up for "Launch me Later"

probably related to current events.

[nimbius]

But afterwards the bear began squeezing.

Bull. Shit. During the Russia Ukrane conflict America had a few choices.
1. Not our monkeys, not our circus. Avoid international diplomatic and military actions that may exacerbate the situation.
2. Military intervention.
3. Diplomatic intervention.

we avoided 1 entirely because this hasnt been our style since 1910. We avoided 2 because we have a 25 year track record of failed wars and coups, not to mention king georges debacle in iraq. we also dont pick fights with countries that possess a nuclear fleet or long range bombers. Three works, and it works because we're beholden as members of NATO to protect our allies. because we rely on russia very little (as does russia us) we expect to get away with what basically amounts to a great deal of symbolism.

If russia were sending more than just a shot across the bow for America to stop with the sanctions and rhetoric, it could...
1. categorically deny access to Baikonur for american companies who rely on inexpensive satellite lift services
2. gift Iran with a host of technical engineers and troops to help complete a functional nuclear powerplant.
3. Re-value or cease export of oil to the united states...its just 5% of our total consumption, but they could offer incentives to Venezuela who provide 10% of american oil to refuse service as well. still, 5% would be enough to send our stockmarkets into a brisk panic.

I very sincerely doubt Russia wants any part of a sincere challenge, so dicking with astronaut counts and the cost of a space toilet seems reasonable.

Re:probably related to current events.

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention king georges debacle in iraq

Given the military adventurism of Prince Obama, there's probably good reason nobody's mentioned King George's camping trip in Baghdad.

Mind you, I'm only annoyed at the useless, "Hurr Boosh" because...

we also dont pick fights with countries that possess a nuclear fleet or long range bombers.

This. This is the only actual reason why we're not throwing forces into the blender. Do not kid yourselves. Do not wave flags. Do not armchair general because you're pretty terrible at armchair generalling, American chickenshithawks.

No matter how retarded our politicians are, they do NOT want a straight up fight with a reasonably advanced power. This isn't the old days. Nobody - on either side - can afford that shit.

Re:probably related to current events.

[Gavagai80]

Three works, and it works because we're beholden as members of NATO to protect our allies.

Erm, no NATO countries have been threatened by Russia.

Re:probably related to current events.

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to ask Poland and especially the Baltic states. Russia has already reconquered a number of territories it lost when the USSR dissolved. Not just Crimea, but also parts of Georgia and (less formally) other parts of neighboring states, e.g. in Moldavia. The Baltic states also have Russian minorities, have been conquered by the Russians before, and are now NATO members for exactly that reason.

It's no coincidence that Russia floated their carrier just a few miles from London recently. Putin is sending a clear message that he will take what he wants, because the West won't stop him.

self-imposed sanctions

[mbkennel]

| I very sincerely doubt Russia wants any part of a sincere challenge, so dicking with astronaut counts and the cost of a space toilet seems reasonable

The Russians are imposing sanctions on themselves, to pre-empt the embarrassment of US doing it to them first.

"Oh, so you are thinking of ordering Lockheed to stop buying our RD-180 engine for hard currency? Nyet! We'll ban it first!"

Re:self-imposed sanctions

[Anonymous Coward]

Lockheed has already bought rights to build the RD-180; their profit goes up if the russians stick with this, and russia comes out behind without hard currency.

How did we get there? Washington DC bovine product

[Anonymous Coward]

The X34 was working. There were some issues with the fuel tank, but the engines worked great.

Smaller, easy to maintain, fewer moving parts...

Scrapped.

It must have worked too well.

Ask a stupid question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple... Americans are more interested in FPS than they are in SIMS

We already know the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Killing people, a whole industry and entire cities/towns built from it, and its population thoroughly dependant on it with current 15year olds not knowing anything else, as if War is the norm.

Only Americas society could spend trillions in resources in War and say it was a step forward civilisation of any measure, imagine if they applied such dedication to space and generally not being a douche :)

"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..."

[theodp]

JFK: We choose to go to the Moon

Re:"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..."

[NotDrWho]

Somewhat more inspiring than Nixon's "You know what, this whole moon thing is overrated. Let's scrap it" speech.

Re:"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..."

[Virtucon]

Of course we absolve LBJ from any of this considering he had to curtail most of NASA's activities to pay for Vietnam the Great Society. Even back in the mid 1960s Johnson's administration was looking for a way out and even contemplated doing joint missions with the Soviets. After the 1967 Outer Space treaty NASA's budget was cut, which was before old RMN was in office. Yeah, LBJ he fostered NASA for years in congress and nearly killed it in his own presidency.

Re:"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..."

[dbIII]

Johnson's administration was looking for a way out and even contemplated doing joint missions with the Soviets

Which would have been far better than Nixon deciding to let Skylab fall when it was still new and the end of the era. It's a pity LBJ decided to fuck around with a French Colonial War to try to get a cheap victory and be remembered as a "War Hero President" instead of doing something like joint missions. If we'd got a moonbase out of it would it really have mattered if it had two flags on it? Russia with the smaller stuff for orbital missions and the USA with the Saturn V for the really heavy lifting would have covered a huge range of possibilities.

Re:"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..."

[Virtucon]

What else were we supposed to do with it? We'd pretty much depleted our Saturn 1B launch systems, the last being used for the joint Apollo Soyuz mission and the shuttle wasn't going to fly for a few more years. The American public had already shown its propensity for being uninterested in the space program so congress wasn't willing to put funds towards keeping it in orbit and there were other problems with Skylab that needed to be fixed if it was going to be viable. This also happened during the Ford and Carter administrations, not the Nixon administration.

Re:"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..."

[dbIII]

If you go to Washington or Florida you can see the hardware that was available at the time to push it into a more stable orbit if they had been fuelled up and the missions not been cancelled.

The American public had already shown its propensity for being uninterested in the space program

If you had even seen newspaper clippings from the time you would not be under such a misapprehension.

Re:"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..."

[Virtucon]

I've been to DC, more times than I care to think about. I presume you're talking about the Udvar-Hazy museum and to KSC as well as JSC and yes there are a few rockets around but one rocket does not a program make and there were problems with Skylab and after the last mission the did push it further up and then vented the atmosphere inside. Skylab as a project was a last minute, "hey we have a few Saturn Vs and 1Bs hanging around" type of deal but studies had been conducted all the way back to 1960 on an orbital lab,

Sorry, I followed the the space program very carefully back then. I even followed it more closely when I worked for a NASA subcontractor on the shuttle but that was another life.

First there was Apollo 8 and the uproar that was created when they interrupted a football game. Never get between a football game and scientific discovery, we know who will lose that argument.

Despite being able to show this milestone in audio and visual communications, a spokesman for CBS said nearly 1,000 calls of protest were received in short order after the network left the game. The calls all were in the vein of “How dare you interrupt the game?” One person even said he hoped the astronauts “never came back,” according to the CBS spokesman.

Next congress took away funding for missions going to the moon, the typical "been there, done that" mentality crept in. We'd also gone to the moon, landed there etc. Many members of congress felt that there was little value to continue the moon landings. James Webb was no longer in charge of NASA and Johnson was out of office. Oddly, the public never spoke up or argued with that decision to stop the moon landings.

Even NASA's own statement on Apollo says this:

Finally, the Apollo program, while an enormous achievement, left a divided legacy for NASA and the aerospace community. The perceived "golden age" of Apollo created for the agency an expectation that the direction of any major space goal from the president would always bring NASA a broad consensus of support and provide it with the resources and license to dispense them as it saw fit. Something most NASA officials did not understand at the time of the Moon landing in 1969, however, was that Apollo had not been conducted under normal political circumstances and that the exceptional circumstances surrounding Apollo would not be repeated.

The Apollo decision was, therefore, an anomaly in the national decision-making process. The dilemma of the "golden age" of Apollo has been difficult to overcome, but moving beyond the Apollo program to embrace future opportunities has been an important goal of the agency's leadership in the recent past. Exploration of the Solar System and the universe remains as enticing a goal and as important an objective for humanity as it ever has been. Project Apollo was an important early step in that ongoing process of exploration.

An anomaly in the national decision-making process. That's why we can't seem to do anything "difficult" in this country unless it's war related.

As for keeping Skylab going, there's three 1Bs left and that's the only vehicle we had until 1981 to even get to Skylab. There were also two "could fly" Saturn V rockets, one's at KSC the other is at JSC on display. The one at the Rocket Center at MSFC was never flight ready it was for testing, that means two which were intended for moon landings. So that means we could have done at least 5 more missions to Skylab possibly until the shuttle came along. It could have been fixed, nursed, etc. but the costs of operating it and doing all of that outweighed the national priorities. There were also real world things going on like two interceding oil embargoes and double digit inflation that happened as well in the 1970s. Congress' attention and the public was focused on other matters.

Re:"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..."

[dbIII]

Only one more mission could have pushed it into a high enough orbit to keep it going as long as Mir did. From then it would have been reachable without a full Saturn V. However the appearance of saving money by doing nothing and throwing away such a huge sunk cost and a pile of NASA expertise by letting people go away over time was seen to be more politically viable than keeping it going. IMHO the decision to give up on Skylab and try for a cheap "space truck" was part of a decision to hand the baton of space manned space travel over to the USSR. It was a symptom of a failure of the political will. I think it's what we have to point to when people ask "why do we have to pay Russia for tickets to the ISS?".

Re:"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..."

[Virtucon]

It's already past history and while nobody likes it when a program comes to an end, get over it. Even the ISS has a useful life and with the recent statements by Russia that's about six years away now and I don't think we'll be pushing for another international cooperation effort like this again, not in my lifetime at least. The discontinuity in the space program as I previously pointed out is natural for our political landscape. We can't agree on anything and don't think beyond a 4 or 8 year presidency anymore and unless it's for the military industrial complex in this nation we don't do long term programs that involve anything of a scientific or technical nature. Why? Because new and innovative ways of killing the enemy is good politics because it's strong on defense and it creates jobs. The Space Race was an extension of the Cold War and it was synergistic in its goals to embarrass the Soviets who had previously embarrassed us with Sputnik and Gagarin. Also Kennedy wasn't looking so good after the whole "Bay of Pigs" thingy, so he had to distract folks away from that a bit. So a month after the bay of pigs we have the "We choose to go to the moon" speech. Spin doctors were alive and well in the 1960s.

If you asked the typical American citizen right now what the key goals or problems to solve in the country are right now I don't think Russian rockets ferrying US Astronauts to the ISS is in the top 10. You can lay the blame for paying the Russians to get to the ISS squarely on the current administration despite the objections of many members of congress and the public. It was and is a somewhat unholy alliance and current events makes it even more tenuous. If it gets much worse I'd suspect that the ISS will get shuttered here very very soon.

We look back at Apollo because it had unique set of circumstances backing it. You had Johnson who pushed for NASA before he was Vice President and then President and you had Webb who had an extremely long tenure as administrator pushing members of congress relentlessly. You also had the aura of an assassinated president who inspired the nation to shoot for the moon. What happened after July 20, 1969 became a cold bucket of water on everybody and congress felt that the mission had been accomplished. Sure, the moon landings were cut back but again that seems to be the norm. Skylab was only designed to be in space for 9 years and it could have been cobbled together and pushed into orbit etc. but even NASA wasn't going to the wall for it, they wanted the Shuttle and just about the time it came online Sklyab would have been end of life anyway. It doesn't make it right, it's just how things were done. NASA had priorities in the budget and fixing/keeping Skylab wasn't more important than the shuttle. The country had other priorities as well in the 70s. Vietnam, Watergate, Inflation, Oil Embargoes, 20+% interest rates and double digit inflation to name a few. With all those things going on it's amazing that we even had Skylab up there at all.

As for the Soviets (Russians), yes they have a great amount of LEO experience but I do believe we've played out that space. It's time to move on, I would love to have seen us back on the Moon, Mars maybe but I'm afraid that there's not the leadership and money available to go and do it. I would love to see the best and brightest all over the world go and do it but again, we have international politics involved and there's that money thing.

Since the Chinese and Oil producing nations are absorbing all of the cash in the world, maybe we'll see a joint Sino-Arab mission to mars that we'll be able to watch on our LG TVs or iPads which curiously enough aren't made in the US.

How did it come to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

New budgets every 4 years, cuts. You get what you pay for - the Russians did not cut back as much. Outsourcing seems cheap - in the beginning. Then you come to depend on it, then the prices go up and up. In space industry as in any other industry. It is the reason why outsourcing always is a loss - the other side will only work for you if they gain . . .

Americans seems to neither want the expense of developing a new rocket - or the expense of reviving older pre-shuttle designs. Fortunately, space will be explored. With or without Americans. . .

Stupid question

[msobkow]

It came to this because American politicians are short-sighted assholes who cut budgets.

Re:Stupid question

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Americans voted them in, so Americans in general are probably a bit stupid in general.

Re:Stupid question

[Nethemas the Great]

Educated by school systems managed by those same short-sighted a**holes. Lacking a proper education, it's somewhat unfair to blame the illiterate. Lacking a proper shepherd, it's somewhat unfair to blame the sheep.

Re:Stupid question

[Virtucon]

So you advocate the only place of knowledge is in schools? Can't people study on their own and learn without beneficent overlords turning them into good shoppers and voters? If you lack the ambition to continue to learn, study and question the issues that affect you then you deserve to be sheep.

Re:Stupid question

[Nethemas the Great]

I never said I advocated it. But, it is reality.

Re:Stupid question

[Virtucon]

Well then you're saying the sheep want to be sheep. If that's the case, let the sheep be the sheep. I prefer not to get distilled spin from the same morons who bring us Kim Kardashian, Honey Boo Boo, Sean Hannity or Bill Maher.

Re:Stupid question

[dbIII]

Can't people study on their own

Most people find that difficult. Even Feynman learned a lot at University.

Re:Stupid question

[Virtucon]

From... here.

In 1933, when he turned 15, he taught himself trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and both differential and integral calculus.

It seems like he had quite a propensity to go off and learn things on his own. Also at the time he was in school teachers were more focused on teaching rather than focused on political or union issues. Today teenagers at 15 are mostly consumed with worrying about their Facebook status.

Re:Stupid question

[dbIII]

That does not refute my statement and I do not know why you bothered to reply in such a way to my very clear example. He obviously gained more benefit from that assisted study than he did with his earlier self study.

Re:Stupid question

[Virtucon]

How do you know that? Were you there with him? Probably not. I pointed out that he had a lot of initiative and didn't wait around for somebody to "learn him somthin." I also was describing the education system, you focused on Universities where, let's face it, nowadays by and large it's all about churning out MBAs not great physicists. I'm also pretty sure that MIT has produced it's share of mundane graduates as well. Oh wait, I've worked with a couple one being a Project Manager.

Re:Stupid question

[dbIII]

How do you know that?

Biography.

A better question is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone want to send anybody to the ISS, including th Russians? The article sounds like another piece of russophobia but, seriously, who cares about the ISS. Is this just a lack of imagination on NASA's part. And enough with the praises to SpaceX already. It remains to be seen if what they do is cheaper or better, right now it is just a well substantiated pile of good intentions. Sustantiated, not proven yet.

they were unaware they were characters in a book

[Thud457]

I would put it past them. "Elon Musk" is a monocle and a white cat away from being a Ian Flemming villain. Youse guys really ought to hire a better quality script writer for your reality down there.

Re:How did we get there? Washington DC bovine prod

[NotDrWho]

More likely that its construction wasn't spread across enough (or the right) Congressional districts.

To $71million

[meerling]

They increased the price to $71 million.
From what?
If it was previously $70 million, so what. Sure that's a lot of money to use, but maybe it was justified.
On the other hand, if it was from something like $22 million, then some big flags should have been raised in the fraud dept.

Actually in 2006 is was $22 million, but if the article is going to use the new prices as a point, it needs to mention what the previous price was, otherwise it's just an unqualified statement. Speaking of which, why didn't anyone start yelling when they more than tripled the price?

Re:To $71million

[Jeremy Erwin]

From NASA's inspector general

After NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011, the Russian Soyuz became the only vehicle capable of transporting crew to the ISS. Between 2006 and 2008, NASA purchased one seat per year. Beginning in 2009, NASA started purchasing six seats per year. The price per seat has increased over the years from $22 million in 2006, to $25 million in 2010, to $28 million in the first half of 2011. During the second half of 2011, the price per seat jumped to $43 million.4 The price has continued to increase. For example, the price of purchased seats for launches in 2014 and 2015 are $55.6 million and $60 million, respectively. In April 2013, NASA signed another deal with Russia valued at $424 million for six additional seats to carry NASA astronauts to the Station during 2016 through June 2017, and the price per seat has increased to $71 million.

Re:To $71million

[Anonymous Coward]

When NASA agreed to the tripling of the price, the click through agreement required no negative reviews.

Re:To $71million

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Russia is learning business by watching what the NY, NJ Port Authority do to people using the GW Bridge, multiple huge increase in tolls
Want to cross the bridge ? Then pay us or walk across the river!
Want to go into space ? Show us the cash or try to bounce you ass into space!
Retiring the Shuttle before having a backup transport was beyond stupid.

Re:To $71million

[currently_awake]

So strike a deal with China for rides to the ISS. They have manned capability, and they would love the publicity. Even if they only launch 1 man per year it would drive down prices. If you believe in the free market, it's the logical solution.

Re:they were unaware they were characters in a boo

[Megane]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/AqycnaOCIAEuM9l.jpg

Monocoles are overrated.

Why do they call it a Station

[Richy_T]

When it is not Stationary?

Re:Why do they call it a Station

[Anonymous Coward]

Well AFAIK all stations are not stationary, unless our galaxy stops moving.
Stationary is a term you use when you are in a system not when you are observing it.
Kind of like centrifugal vs. centripetal.

Re:Why do they call it a Station

[Richy_T]

But if you are in a train traveling at a constant velocity, where do you stop?

Re:Why do they call it a Station

[Virtucon]

When the Amtrak funding runs out?

Re:Why do they call it a Station

[Anonymous Coward]

You stop where you (didn't) start.

Re:Why do they call it a Station

[PhilHibbs]

Because both "station" does not derive from "stationary", they both share a common root with the latin word "statio" meaning “standing, post, job, position”.
And depending on your frame of reference, every "station" on the planet is moving a million miles a day.

Re:Why do they call it a Station

[Richy_T]

Yeah, but typically, stations on Earth are stationary with respect to *something*, usually the immediate local environment. The space station is in orbit, not even geostationary orbit and is stationary only with respect to itself.

Russian or American?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Rogozin stated:

"The Russian segment can exist independently from the American one,” Rogozin said. “The U.S. one cannot."

The Russian boosted segments-- Zarya, Zvezda, Poisk Pirs total about 45,000 kg

The US boosted segments--mostly trusses, laboratories, docking modules, etc total 240,000 kg...

Now, the US paid for Zarya (the very module that enables Rogozin to claim operational independence) and the Europeans and the Japanese and the Canadians paid for various components that were lifted by NASA's shuttles. , but I'm thinking that the Russian ISS will be very much a Rump ISS.

Re:How did we get there? Washington DC bovine prod

[Anonymous Coward]

The X34 was working. There were some issues with the fuel tank, but the engines worked great.

Smaller, easy to maintain, fewer moving parts...

Scrapped.

It must have worked too well.

I think you mean the POS X-33. It was nowhere near "working".

We had a program, Obama cancelled it

[amightywind]

For every two NASA astronauts that have flown to the station, three Russians have gone.

Rest assured that nobody is accomplishing anything on the ISS. George Bush gave us a post shuttle program. Constellation. Obama cancelled it. The rest is a continuing train wreck.

Americans are the most gullible

[Anonymous Coward]

People on the planet. Oh Bush baby I looked into his eyes Republitards then Democraps lets reset.

Re:they were unaware they were characters in a boo

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh ... no .... it's not monocles.

Monukles. Or Monekuls. So he can't spell. The answer has been in front of us all this time! Rearrange these letters to make a well known phrase or space tycoon....

How did it come to this?

[lippydude]

Because politicians oversold the Shuttle as cheap and reusable, and NASA didn't prepare a suitable replacement before its retirement.

It's a simple choice.

[viperidaenz]

If you think you can do it cheaper USA, go for it. Otherwise don't complain about how much another country charges you.

To $71million

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not fraud, it's capitalism. Even if seats went from $22 to $71 million, it's up to us to decide how much we're willing to pay before we say it's too expensive. The cost of the launches to the Russians is irrelevant. They should be looking to price their launches as high as possible, up to the maximum we are willing to pay. Any less and they have lost potential profits. Any more and they would lose the sale. If we spend less using the Russians than we would have using the shuttles than it's a win win situation. If not, well, then we choose poorly.

Kiss my Vodka soaked Latex Doll's ass

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly the kind of news us AMERICANS love to hear.

In other news....

[Crypto Gnome]

Russia is enjoying all the benefits of a Capitalist Free Market and America is crying about it.

Swallow a teaspoon of cement and HARDEN UP people!

You VERY SUCCESSFULLY engineered yourself into a situation where you have NO OTHER OPTION and you ONLY NOW wonder why it's so freakin expensive?

THE WORLD IS FULL OF IDIOTS, POLITICIANS DON'T UNDERSTAND CONSEQUENCES BEYOND THE NEXT ELECTION, TANSTAAFL, YMMV, Murphy Rules.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I know if I had my way the IIS money would have been spend on the Alan Shepard Exo-Planet Resolver space telescope instead"

Now that is just DUMB

One of the biggest problems in our modern society is that people are not educated about SCALE. Most people know space is "big"... just like they "know" the US is in debt, and they "know" the US gets lots of power from wind and solar. It all sounds good until you understand SCALE. Wind and solar are a tiny fraction of our energy and never will be a significant fraction (absolutely never more than half). The US is DEEPLY in debt (twice as far down as when president Obama was sworn in). and finally: space is REALLY REALLY REALLY BIG.

Voyager I has been travelling for 37 YEARS and is the furthest man-made object from the Earth at about 126AU. Just ONE lightyear = 63241.077AU .... so basically it takes our best unmanned probe 18000+ years to go ONE lightyear. Given that Alpha Centauri is our nearest star and it is 4.37 light years away, a probe launched today would need 81,000 YEARS to get there..... and THAT is not even a star we think has interesting planets (THOSE stars are MUCH farther away). It does not even make rational sense to begin a mission outside of the solar system if you think we even MIGHT develop a faster technology within the next 10,000 YEARS.... because such a probe would be passed en-route by a better probe that was launched CENTURIES later! It certainly makes no sense to spend taxpayer dollars dreaming about such locations since not only no living taxpayer (or his great great grandchildren) will benefit, but even no existing nation or society willl likely still exist thousands of years from now when such a trip becomes feasible. Humanity is FAR better served for now to study wasy to (and then ACTUALLY) colonize other planets within THIS solar system. It makes NO sense to be looking outside our solar system until we have large colonies on Mars and perhaps moons of Jupiter and/or Saturn with regular, fast travel between those colonies. If we lack the [1] tech, [2] money or [3] political will for regular mars flights and a LARGE Mars colony, then we CERTAINLY lack those things for interstellar exploration.

We can occasionally throw a few dumb astronomers a bone in the form of Hubble or James Webb just so they go away and play in their little corner of the room amusing themselves and keeping their skillsets alive for the day when they might actually be useful (though ACTUALLY all their skills could be lost and then EASILY re-leaned over the next 10K years) ... but that's plenty of toys for a field of endeavor that has no practical application.

Moonbase FIRST! If we cannot easily afford it, or lack the tech for it, then we have no business trying Mars

Mars COLONY next! If we cannot easily afford it, or lack the tech for it, then we have no business trying Jupiter/Saturn/Mercury/Venus/Etc

Bases and then colonies on other worlds/moons in this solar system next! If we cannot easily afford it, or lack the tech for it, then we have no business trying ANYTHING interstellar

I'll leave the intergalactic argument to my distant, and probably not even human (therefore no concern of mine) descendents 100K years from now...

ERROR

[Anonymous Coward]

There IS no "manned version" of the X-37. The current airframe is too small to be retro-fitted for more than perhaps two people (you'd need to outfit the payload bay, which is about the size of a small pickup truckbed, to hold them and provide extra power and things like life support) and there ARE NO PLANS TO DO THAT. People have made drawings of a dreamed-for larger manned X-37, but THERE IS NO PROGRAM.

There's not likely to BE such a program any time soon. The X-37 is a Boeing project (they've built 2 airframes... might have a contract for another). To compete to provide crew transport to/from the ISS, Boeing chose NOT to enhance and scale-up the X-37; they're implementing (essentially) a modified version of their (losing) entry into the design competition for the Orion capsule of the Constellation program. The Boeing entry is (like Lockheed's Orion) a scaled-up Apollo-style capsule called the "CST-100"

If the US was REALLY gutsy and wanted to put a man on ISS via an American capsule it could do it this summer: Put a big block of ice in a bag aboard a Dragon (for thermal control - melting ice absorbs crew heat and ends-up as extra drinking water for ISS) and put a couple of people in a current cargo dragon wearing NASA orange ACES suits with CO2 Removal performed by a set of interchangeable navy SEAL-style re-breathers (would need multiple cannister change-outs - like shuttle but more-frequent), strapped-into mercury capsule type molded foam couches anchored in the cargo dragon like cargo currently is. It would be safer than the initial Mercury flights (NO launch escape system adds a bunch of risk, BUT the capsule's proven track record of flights to, weeks docked at ISS, and reentries and recoveries is FAR more testing than all Mercury capsules of the entire program combined). The Falcon has a track record as good as (or better than, depending on the metrics considered) the Atlas had when John Glenn rode it.

Alas, the current president (like his predecessor) has no intestinal fortitude where space is considered. Obama has, in fact, made this whole mess worse by waging war on congress; rather than asking for proper funds for his "commercial crew" derivative of Bush's successful "commercial cargo" program, he has asked for less money for NASA than NASA needs to do what's on his plate (an immitation of Bush's bad behavior) and THEN every year he has had his people at NASA try to shift funds from the project the congress (House AND Senate, Republicans AND Democrats) want: the SLS rocket + Orion to the commercial crew program. This causes a huge level of mistrust and anger where non needs to exist.... it's like a nasty little kid at the zoo mocking the monkeys (unnecessary stupid provocation).

Obama campaigned on this

[Anonymous Coward]

In early 2008, speaking to a teachers union group, Obama promised to stall NASA for 5 years and use the money for "education"

Of course, like so many things that happened in that campaign, his conflicting promises to different interest groups (like when months later, in August 2008, he went to Florida and promised to "close the [manned spaceflight] gap" and speed-up NASA'a next manned program) were not reported on the nightly national news so most people who do not pay close attention to politics did not see the extreme duplicity. The teachers were happy they were gonna get NASA's money, and the NASA workers were happy they'd be flying people from the cape on NASA rockets sooner. Those who WERE paying attention, knew those two promises were in direct conflict, just as his speeches to his base about single-payer healthcare were in complete opposition to his promises to middle-America that "you can keep your insurance, period" and "you can keep your doctor, period." I was not surprised in 2010 when Obama's budget proposal cancelled all US manned spaceflight programs, but a lot of NASA (and contractor) employees in Florida who'd believed him and voted for him were... and now many are at your local Wallmart greeting you at the door. Had congress not fought Obama (they voted his 2010 budget down unanimously - both Republicans and Democrats), NASA would not need any astronauts now.

You are in error

[Anonymous Coward]

The X-33 airframe was constructed and the launch facility at Edwards was built (X-33 was a subscale demonstrator that would have launched from Edwards and landed at a USAF base in Montana(?)). The Aerospike engines were built and test-fired. The composite cryotanks failed in testing. An alternate metal set of tanks were proposed and could have been used, but this added weight would have eliminated the margins for a payload, so NASA management stupidly cancelled the thing. Actually, they tried to get Lockheed to continue on at their own expense and the short-sighted folks there refused - but NASA bailed and the effect was cancellation. This was all so stupid though because everybody KNEW composite cryo tank tech would eventually lick the problems ... and now it HAS (NASA currently has web pages touting its new composite cryotank work!). Had the sub-scale X-33 worked (with the aluminum tanks) the scaled-up "Venture Star" could have proceeded and the composite cryotank tech would now be there ready for it - and Lockmar would not now need to fear Elon Mush and his re-usable Falcons...

The moral of the story is: Anybody who is a "manager" with no other marketable skills and no track record of stupendous insight should be "managing" the checkout at a McDonalds, NOT managing anything of national importance

probably related to current events.

[Anonymous Coward]

we avoided 1 entirely because this hasnt been our style since 1910. We avoided 2 because we have a 25 year track record of failed wars and coups, not to mention king georges debacle in iraq. we also dont pick fights with countries that possess a nuclear fleet or long range bombers. Three works, and it works because we're beholden as members of NATO to protect our allies. because we rely on russia very little (as does russia us) we expect to get away with what basically amounts to a great deal of symbolism.

Wait what? You haven't heard? It was just another oil grab, you Americans really don't know the real reason US went to Ukraine?

Holy shit, you guys are dumb, the WHOLE WORLD knows.

The Farce Is Complete: Joe Biden's Son Joins Board Of Largest Ukraine Gas Producer
  BidenÃ(TM)s Son Gets Ukrainian Oil Company Gig
  Vice President Joe Biden's son joins Ukraine gas company
  Joe BidenÃ(TM)s Son Appointed to Board of UkraineÃ(TM)s Largest Gas Producer

probably related to current events.

[Anonymous Coward]

During the Russia Ukrane
we avoided 1 entirely because this hasnt been our style since 1910. We avoided 2 because we have a 25 year track record of failed wars and coups, not to mention king georges debacle in iraq. we also dont pick fights with countries that possess a nuclear fleet or long range bombers. Three works, and it works because we're beholden as members of NATO to protect our allies. because we rely on russia very little (as does russia us) we expect to get away with what basically amounts to a great deal of symbolism.

Wrong, US participated because Biden needed to grab oil for his son. The Farce Is Complete: Joe Biden's Son Joins Board Of Largest Ukraine Gas Producer

Follow the oil.

A better question is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about the ISS? I care about the ISS.

Me and everyone else who aren't focused on the next episode of Idols while driving their big urban attack vehicle to the nearest fastfood chain store for their daily portion of dead cow tissue, dough-foam and potato starch fried in oil care about the ISS. ISS is the future of mankind even if dumb fucking dolts like you would like to kill it.

#thanksobie

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks a bunch...

Penny 4 NASA

[northernfrights]

Well, if there ever was a better time to plug Niel De Grass Tyson's "Penny 4 NASA" campaign, I can't think of one. http://www.penny4nasa.org/

What a FUCKING hypocrite you are

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom = multiple /. sockpuppet using scum - Let's let TOM speak shall we:

"I'm having great conversations on this site with one of my alias accounts" - by Tom (822) on Monday April 07, 2014 @02:29PM (#46686259) Homepage FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

APK

P.S.=> Tom *tried* to libel me & failed after I destroyed him in a technical debate on hosts files... result?

Tom ended up "eating his words" here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... spiced with "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" + HIS FOOT IN HIS MOUTH

... apk