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NASA And The UAE Will Collaborate On A Journey To Mars (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader quotes an article from Gizmodo: The United States and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced an agreement Sunday that would allow the two nations to collaborate on matters of space and aeronautics research, including the potential journey to Mars... "NASA is leading an ambitious journey to Mars that includes partnerships with the private sector and many international partners," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "I am confident this new framework agreement with the UAE Space Agency will help advance this journey."
Bolden recently wrote on his blog that "Every single nation can play a part in our journey to Mars, in our scientific journey of discovery and in the next phase of humanity's development as a spacefaring people." UAE Space Agency Chairman Dr. Khalifa Al Romaithi added today that "we believe that working alongside international partners is the best way to accelerate the development of space technologies and the space sector within the UAE." Vice notes that the UAE has had a small "presence" in outer space for about 30 years, and had been working on becoming the first Arab Islamic country to send an unmanned probe to Mars.

39 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Will women be banned or will nasa force the UAE to by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Will women be banned or will nasa force the UAE to be more open?

  2. Hang on to your passport. by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    UAE will want to keep it until you paid off your traveling expenses

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  3. Re:Slashdot likes Muslim terrorists by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Well, you give us a pretty good reason to.

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Re:Will women be banned or will nasa force the UAE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    No, but they will be limited to serving the men and will make sure the ship is pointed to Mecca at all times.

  5. Re:Will women be banned or will nasa force the UAE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What about gays?

  6. Show me the money by Jedi+Holocron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, basically, NASA just found their Sugar Daddy...

    1. Re:Show me the money by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      NASA just found their Sugar Daddy

      Excellent! If UAE wants to help pay for it and share some credit in exchange, as an American taxpayer I find that a good deal, if it plays out right.

      The risk, though, is that political entanglements will get in the way someday, and delay things.

  7. Will the vessel be named "Rocket Khalifa"? by ffkom · · Score: 1

    Remember when Dubai had to rename what they intended to name "Burj Dubai" into "Burj Khalifa"? That was because at some point, financing this big pointy status symbol became difficult to finance for Dubai. For the small favor of renaming the tower, the UAE helped to fill in the budget holes. Now when NASA will compete for budget with the building of the wall at the Mexican border, UAE helping to finance the Mars voyage will certainly also come at some price...

  8. Re: Will women be banned or will nasa force the UA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As lon as women have the same rights as men, it's totally fine. If not, your religion is shit and your prophet a goat.

  9. Re: Will women be banned or will nasa force the UA by slazzy · · Score: 2

    Fly EMIRATES

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  10. I thought by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought they were going to use an Amiga emulator to go to Mars!!!

  11. Re:Will women be banned or will nasa force the UAE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Western nations need to recognize that they are not alone in the world and they should treat foreign cultures with the dignity and respect they expect to be treated with.

    what, so islamic nations want respect from women & gay people that they dont give back? give me a break. we only offer some freedoms - one freedom we dont allow here in the west is to restrict the rights of others. you dont get to play the 'give me tolerance so i can be intolerant' card.

    get that through your head, then you will be less confused.

  12. Re:Will women be banned or will nasa force the UAE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They are usually thrown off building roofs but it might be acceptable to drop them from the stratosphere. There is no exact rule on this and no scholar ruling that I'm aware.

  13. Re:Will women be banned or will nasa force the UAE by rainwalker · · Score: 1

    I imagine they're just going to contribute a bunch of slave labor.

    Really, this is the best international collaboration you could announce?

  14. Re:Will women be banned or will nasa force the UAE by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

    They are usually thrown off building roofs but it might be acceptable to drop them from the stratosphere. There is no exact rule on this and no scholar ruling that I'm aware.

    Fortunately, when you throw a person off a building in space, nothing happens.

  15. Re: Will women be banned or will nasa force the UA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Asteroided to death?

  16. SpaceX by surfdaddy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The aggressive program to Mars is from SpaceX, not NASA. Unfortunately NASA is ossified and pupetted by Congress.

    1. Re:SpaceX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately NASA is ossified and pupetted by Congress.

      Probably with Musk greasing politician pockets to avoid the competition.

  17. Is this what Bolden meant by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    when he said his job description included outreach to the Muslim world?

    Seriously. Why the fuck should NASA be sucking up to guys who were half a notch below 'desert savages' fifty years ago when we were already in space. There is no good explanation for this. It's either an act of gutless PC to make good on the 'promise' of Muslim outreach or its whoring out what are supposed to be our best and brightest to some tin-pot dictator in the desert.

    I thought Bolden was an idiot from day one. Now I have incontrovertible proof.

    1. Re:Is this what Bolden meant by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 2

      UAE knows that oil is the past, space is the future, and why not buy expertise from the best? USA gets funding in the form of a small percentage of our gas money back.

      It's win win for everyone, except for right wing nutjobs who believe in phrases like "glass parking lot", which I'm only barely surprised you omitted, so as not to be immediately modded Troll.

      A funding bill from congress is good for this year only, and external support seems to be a far more predictable way to budget.

    2. Re:Is this what Bolden meant by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Seriously. Why the fuck should NASA be sucking up to guys who were half a notch below 'desert savages' fifty years ago when we were already in space

      Because NASA has had it's funding cut since then and they are following the example of half the Presidents in the last few decades who have been sucking up to 'desert savages'. Working Bush, vacation Bush, Reagan and even Clinton would do whatever the House of Saud wanted and the UAE bunch are closely connected.

    3. Re:Is this what Bolden meant by MattskEE · · Score: 2

      There are big human rights issues in the UAE, and so I think NASA should tread carefully in what technology and knowledge they contribute to a country with such a record.

      But beginning cooperation is probably a better method of effecting change than being antagonistic and trying to impose our views from the outside. Give them a better glimpse of what a country like ours is like and it might slowly shift views to be more tolerant, get religion out of government, respect human rights, and increase women's rights. The alternative is to shut the door to them and let them collaborate only with countries that have similar viewpoints.

    4. Re:Is this what Bolden meant by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Ok.
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      Apostrophe fixed!

  18. Re: Will women be banned or will nasa force the UA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Fuck you, follower of a pedophile prophet, and your imaginary sky friend as well. You contribute nothing to a modern world, only examples to show students of history how the great Arab scholars of old were replaced by hooded savages.

  19. Re: Will women be banned or will nasa force the UA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "In 2008, an Australian woman said she was jailed for eight months after reporting that she was gang-raped at a hotel in the United Arab Emirates. In 2013, a Norwegian woman who reported being raped in Dubai received a 16-month sentence for having sex outside of marriage, though she was pardoned and allowed to leave the country."
    Such a progressive country! She was locked up until the Australian government and US strongly suggested she be let go.

  20. Uh huh by DerekLyons · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The aggressive program to Mars is from SpaceX, not NASA.

    o.0 Seriously? SpaceX has produced nothing Mars related to date but hot air and stroke material for the fanboys. The only concrete result has been an increase in demand for tissue paper.

    Meanwhile, NASA has actual functioning spacecraft in orbit around Mars, and actual functioning rovers on the surface of Mars. They're bending metal on the next generation, and planning the generation after that.

    1. Re:Uh huh by surfdaddy · · Score: 1

      You are looking backwards, not forwards. SpaceX has plans for many more missions than NASA over the NEXT 10 years.

    2. Re:Uh huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      NASA is doing Mars stuff *with public funds*. That's unjustifiable because nothing on Mars, or about Mars, will be of any use to the rest of humanity here on Earth in the foreseeable future. Nothing discovered on Mars will help us to address a single pressing or practical problem here on Earth in the foreseeable future.

    3. Re:Uh huh by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      You are looking backwards, not forwards. SpaceX has plans for many more missions than NASA over the NEXT 10 years.

      0.o Child, did you even read what I wrote before posting?

    4. Re: Uh huh by Midas+Beurling · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > Public funds can only be used for the public good.

      Yep

      > How about "war"? That's for the public good?

      If not, we should protest that use of public funds too.

      > What public good were roads developed for?

      You're asking that seriously?

    5. Re:Uh huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > Have you considered the fact that our entire species and everything on Earth could be wiped out by a catastrophe like a giant asteroid striking our planet?

      Yep, and that's not a realistic scenario. Firstly, such an event has virtually zero probability of occurring in the foreseeable future (hundreds of years, if not thousands). Secondly, public funds should instead be spent on *detection and deflection*. *That* would help humanity on Earth -- by saving Earth's population.

      > Living on another planet would at least give us a 'backup' ...

      It would "give a backup" to only *a small number of people*.

      > I would call that a pretty pressing problem.

      Not at all. Firstly, the odds of a serious strike in the foreseeable future are close to zero. So dealing with that eventuality *is not* a pressing problem for now.

      Secondly, what *could* be justified as pressing, somewhat, would be *detection and deflection*.

      > We have the technology to do something about it ...

      On the contrary, right now, no. Nothing at all.

      > ... it benefits all of humanity ...

      A small group of people going to Mars? No. Detection and deflection? Yes.

  21. UAE had presence in outer space for 30 years by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    Summary and TFA says "UAE has had a small "presence" in outer space for about 30 years". The source is a link to spacesafetymagazine.com, which tells about the UAE first satellite launched in 2009, which does not make 30 years.

    Same article notes UAE space agency was created in the 1990s, hence we should probably read "UAE has been engaging space activities for 30 years".

  22. Re: in before by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    This is/. We hate anyone who is having sex (in any form) because we don't get any...

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  23. You think you are making a point you are not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "you dont[sic] get to play the 'give me tolerance so i can be intolerant' card."

    Sure you do, it's the current predominant meme.

    Just ask Brendan Eich. After society became tolerant of gays, the gay community was not magnanimous, rewarding tolerance with tolerance, - it went after Eich and got him fired from his job over his political beliefs (which were the same political beliefs both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigned on when running for president in 2008. The community made it known that anybody opposed would be driven from the public square, lose his job, his business, etc. The idea of tolerance was only camouflage for flipping WHO would be discriminated against, inverting the nation's moral sense rather than broadening it.

    Supporters of the attack on Eich will, of course, say "but HE was the one being intolerant!".... which only makes the point: Most people who worship at the altar of "tolerance" are actually talking about the opposite; they are only tolerant of the things they personally agree with and THAT is NOT tolerance at all. They demand that everyone tolerate them, but the do not tolerate everybody else, so we are really only arguing about WHOSE standards apply.

    The person you were responding to will clearly see through this and know that your rather confused defense of the West is not a defense of the West at all. You are pretending that a defect of the (recent) west is a selling point when it's just a veneer of dishonesty applied to a mountain of increasingly dysfunctional and self-contradictory political correctness.

  24. Well, NASA is finally accomplishing its mission by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In June of 2010 Obama's NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden went on Al Jazeera TV and stated that Obama had given him three goals as administrator of the space agency that one put men on the moon:

    1. Inspire children to study math and science

    2. Expand our international relationships

    3. "Third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and, ah, engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations, ah, to help them, ah, feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering"

    More astute readers will note that Obama charged Charlie with NOTHING related to putting Americans in space, going mack to the moon, going to an asteroid, going to Mars, etc. At the time he was vetting charlie for the Job, Obama was working to end US Manned spaceflight as he had promised the teachers unions he would do while on the campaign trail in 2007. His actual official campaign plan for NASA (still available online) was right there for anybody to read, even though he counted on geeks/nerds/etc to ignore documents and just get on the waves of "hope and change" hype and campaign happy talk about STEM. Obama's 2010 NASA budget eliminated all funding for the Shuttle program, the Constellation program for got back to the moon and on to Mars, put a finite end-date for ISS, funded the destruction and/or mothballing of numerous NASA facilities and vehicles, etc and caused such a panic in a bitterly partisan congress that nearly the only bi-partisan act of that congress was the defeat of Obama's NASA budget.

    In 2007 before the campaign for the White House was in full swing, Obama had already promised one of the core constituencies of his party (unionized school teachers) that he would take five years of funding from NASA and put it into their schools (not for any specific new construction plans or anything, just into the slush-fund - thereby effectively just helping states fund their pension plans). Such a multi-year de-funding of a government agency like NASA would have eliminated a wide swath of the most-talented/experienced personnel, put systems into unmaintained conditions, and introduced an issue liberals in the Democrat party had been trying to achieve since Walter Mondale nearly succeeded in the aftermath of the 1967 Apollo 1 fire: putting the idea before congress of shutting NASA down as unnecessary and shifting all its funds to schools and social programs. Oh, and remember that without NASA running ISS, there would be no need for NASA to pay SpaceX to haul cargo and crew to it, and therefore SpaceX would have failed, no matter how much pro-SpaceX happy-talk Obama sycophants spout. Unfortunately, people in the tech community think of themselves as so smart and well-educated that they can be really fundamentally stupid.

  25. Re: Will women be banned or will nasa force the UA by michelcolman · · Score: 2

    And there's a Dutch woman in jail in Qatar right now, after having gone to the police to report that she had been raped. Meanwhile the female friend she was traveling with is missing, which seems to confirm that this was not just a case of some women getting drunk and doing something they regretted later.

    At least the rapist is in jail too, at least for now. But the authorities very helpfully proposed that if she married him, they could both get out of jail.

    And we are supposed to be tolerant of those retards?

  26. Surprising... by jandersen · · Score: 1

    The US, yes, I can understand that, but UAE? It is a tiny nation - if you fart and spit at the same time, you risk breaching border security in two places at the same time.

  27. Does it matter? by dbIII · · Score: 1

    How many of NASA's rockets so they even produce themselves?

    Does it matter? The spacecraft called Eagle that landed on the moon was build by Grumman in New York State and not next to the launch pad by NASA themselves. Why should they change now to doing everything internally when they didn't do that at their peak?

  28. While not all of Islam is extremist... by martinfb · · Score: 1

    While not all of Islam is extremist, it seems prudent to be sure we keep those dangerous, ignorant jihadists from (ultimately) hurting mankind's scientific endeavors. This goes for ANY extremist religion or belief system (that is not based in real facts). It boggles the mind to ponder that mankind has gotten so far with science and technology yet still has perhaps half of our population stuck in ignorant (as in uneducated and narcissistic) beliefs; which hurt our civilization.

    --


    Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.