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How President Jimmy Carter Saved The Space Shuttle (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Eric Berger has published an account in Ars Technica about how President Jimmy Carter saved the space shuttle program. The article is well worth reading for its detail. In essence, around 1978 the space shuttle program had undergone a crisis with technical challenges surrounding its heat-resistant tiles and its reusable rocket engines and cost overruns. President Carter was not all that enthused about human space flight to begin with, adhering to the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe. His vice president, Walter Mondale, was a vehement foe of human space flight programs, maintaining that money spent on them were better used for social programs.
If it weren't for pussy weakling Republicans willing to sellout to Iran he would have had a second term and our great Nation would be on a solid progressive course.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Star Trek is fiction, you realize. That ship taking pictures of Jupiter right now? Kirk isn't on it.
Never pet a burning dog.
Since discredited by what? I think there might be some bias in the reporting there, because it should say "since credited by 4 decades of remote robotic exploration"
the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe
Hah. What? Robotic space probes are bloody brilliant for exploring the universe, and they've done far more of it than could have been achieved if we'd had to send a meatbag along for the ride.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
... held back usable, affordable space flight for several decades, this was one program that was not worth saving.
Unless, of course, all you care about in space flight is the feeling of awesomeness while getting exactly nowhere. Then the 250mn per "reusable space vehicle" flight might be well worth it?
“You’d have to be an idiot to get up in front of people and say, ‘I’m now going to trash $5 billion even though we’re that close to the finish line, and I’m going to quit human spaceflight.’
Carter was not such an idiot.
It would take Baby Bush to be that idiot and leave manned flight to the Russians.
Maybe Obama is also an idiot for not trying to revive a gutted NASA while the capability was still there, but he would have had to fight being blocked all the way.
The shuttle was a terrible program. It set the space program back thirty years by cementing in the public mind the idea manned spaceflight must always be far more expensive than the value of any possible benefit.
And the idea Carter is some sort of hero because he was too weak to say "Let's not throw good money after bad..."? Ugh.
poor choice of words.
In fact, when I look for any successes in space exploration (and no, low earth orbit does not count as "exploration"), all I see is robots and what I see is that many of them are wildly successful.
It seems the story writer is an idiot.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
As President Jimmy Carter cut the B-1 bomber program for a new and very superior but also very secret technology called "Stealth." Because it was secret no one was allowed to tell the public. As a presidential candidate Reagan knew about "Stealth" and that it was the reason for the B-1 cutbacks, but he attacked Carter over the B-1 cutbacks anyway. Carter couldn't come out and say why. Well he could have, but he would have been an asshole. Carter was no asshole. As for the other guy... https://www.vice.com/read/list...
First, Jimmy as a non-fan of space, chokes the shuttle rpogram for cash for three years. Then one year out from re-election when his opponents were already accusing him of being weak on national security (disclaimer: I was in the US Navy and IMHO he was appallingly weak - half our ships were sailing unarmend) he needs the shuttle to claim he will be ableto verify an arms treaty he knows his opponents will use against him as the latest example of his weakness. To be clear: Carter did not "save the shuttle" as a supporter of NASA - he did it as a fig leaf for his horrific weakness on national security. This was about in the same time frame that he tried to cover for his obvious neglect of the US Air Force be leaking to the press that he was funding an "invisible plane" (most presidents fund military R&D that will reach usefulness after they are gone, but most do not leak it for political benefit. In fact Eisenhower and his V.P. Nixon kept their mouths shut about ICBM stuff during the 1960 campaign as JFK, then a Senator with a security clearance who KNEW better was running around campaigning on a "missile gap" he knew to be untrue and knew Nixon and Eisenhower would be unwilling to debunk).
Second, his Vice President (Walter Mondale) was a life-long nasty opponent of NASA specifically and government science programs generally. In the immediate aftermath of the Apollo 1 fire, Walter (then a Senator) sought to use that disaster as a weapon to de-fund NASA and shift the money to his buy-votes-from-poor-people programs. Even Hollywood had to admit this, and you see it (portrayed mildly) in the HBO series "From The Earth to The Moon". Tom Hanks who did the series, as a lefty himself, is certainly not guilty of trying to have his actor portray Walter unfairly. The portrayal is mild but none-the-less unflattering.
Some Democrats have done amazing things for NASA and space flight, but Jimmy is not one of them. LBJ (somebody I am politically inclined to oppose) was half of the team (with President Eisenhower) that wisely created NASA, and LBJ was a spectacular supporter of it. JFK was an enthusiast and famoulsy aimed it at the moon. What's less known is how he personally enjoyed updates on its progress, there's an interview with Jackie after Jack died where this is exposed. Senator Barbara Mikulski has been a fierce defender, though arguably becase Goddard is vital to her politics. Obama and Clinton clearly care/d little. If one wants to like a Democrat for space, Carter's not your boy. It's probably LBJ at #1 and JFK at #2.
The Republicans have been quite a mixed bag. Eisenhower created NASA but wasnot interested in manned spaceflight - as a WWII general he wasmostly concerned about space for weather and strategic intelligence. Nixon liked NASA but wanted it on-the-cheap (which is how we got a shuttle cheaper to develop (on HIS time in office) but more expensive and risky to operate, for his successors to suck on). Reagan loved NASA and the shuttles, seeing them as symbols of American capability and resources for the American economy, diplomacy, etc. Bush41 just did not get "the vision thing" as he put it. Bush43 was offered the opportunity to (and was heavily lobbied to) kill NASA in the aftermath of the Columbia loss, but instead announced that NASA should send humans into space, but on missions whose risks made it worthwhile. He announced and started the program to go back to the moon and then on to Mars, before getting bogged-down in the middle east and underfunding it. He gats a good B+ for vision and a D- or worse for comittment and follow-through. It's probably RR at #1 and a tie between Ike and Bush43 for #2.
"Enthused" is a verb. "Enthusiastic" is the word you were looking for.
As bad as the shuttle was we did get something back.
"Social Programs" is code speak for graft corruption and patronage. Would have been better to stack up the money and burn it.
adhering to the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe.
What idiotic space cadet wrote this?
What part of the universe has manned spaceflight explored since the 1980's?
And what have unmanned probes done?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Pres carter won the nobel peace prize for his work in the hospital/carter centre. he might get the international prize for aviation/travel, hopefully we get a mars exploration centre ready soon!
... held back usable, affordable space flight for several decades, this was one program that was not worth saving.
That's obvious in hindsight. For those of us old enough to remember the shuttle when it was new I can tell you anyone who thought that about the shuttle at the time was mostly keeping it to themselves. Yes it was a dead end but it took a while to realize that. That happens sometimes. At the time the shuttle seemed like the next logical evolution of spaceflight.
Unless, of course, all you care about in space flight is the feeling of awesomeness while getting exactly nowhere.
Manned spaceflight has had tremendous benefit to humanity. The amount of technology development that has come from the manned program has been tremendous due to the challenge of the task. The information value of manned spaceflight is easy to overlook but it should not be. We've probably gotten more economic benefit from manned spaceflight than from probes and I would argue that the scientific value has been at least equal.
The argument of probe vs manned space flight is an idiotic one. We need both. Probes can tell us things that would be hard to learn or take MUCH longer and are quite economical for many mission profiles. But there are many things we can only learn though manned spaceflight and the technology and economic side benefits tend to be bigger as well. We need both and to present it as an either/or really is doing all of us a huge disservice in the long run.
low earth orbit does not count as "exploration"
Disagree. With the caveat that it is exploration as long as you learn something. And we've learned a lot from our activities in nearby space. It doesn't have the pretty pictures we get from planetary probes but the technology and economic benefits we get from spaceflight are almost entirely from our activities in low to geosync orbit as is virtually all of what we have learned about biology in space. Those probes we send to Jupiter and Pluto have their technology developed and proven in our low earth orbit activities. What we are doing there is definitely exploration unless you are using a needlessly restricted definition of the word.
It seems the story writer is an idiot.
Saying robotic probes are "discredited" is clearly wrong. They have clear and substantial scientific value and they account for a large portion of our understanding of our solar system and astronomy data.
Why are robotic probes discredited?
Getting humans into space is ok, but we can probably get shit loads of robotic probes all over the solar system for a fraction of the cost to get 1 human to mars...
One thing that will help with humans is for us to come up with a commercial reason to have people living on the moon, as once its profitable then we'll find ourselves with a rapidly expanding colony (which will be amazing).
SURELY NOT!!!!!
The reason manned spaceflight developed better technologies is that more money was thrown at it.
R&D doesn't work quite like that. More money thrown into research does not automatically equal better results. It helps but the relationship isn't causal. The relationship is more of a correlation. You can throw a LOT of money into R&D and get very little to show for it sometimes. Similarly you often can get very good results without spending a fortune. What technology you get out of the R&D depends heavily on the problem domain. Some areas of research are more fertile ground for technology spinoffs than others. I have no doubt that more money thrown into space R&D (manned or unmanned) would result in better and faster advances but the reason manned spaceflight developed (generally) better tech had probably more to do with the problem domain and the ease of transfer to commercial applications than it did the budget.
Give robotic space exploration an Apollo-sized budget and we might see even greater technological advances.
We almost certainly would see greater advances. No argument there. But the thing is that the manned program necessarily develops technologies that are generally more transferable to human needs. The reasons for this should be obvious. Furthermore the Apollo budgets ended 40 years ago and despite substantially reduced budgets for manned spaceflight it has continued to be a treasure trove of valuable research and technology advances. I'd love to see both robotic and manned spaceflight go back to Apollo era budgets but to be frank that kind of misses the point. Whatever we do it is important to do both manned and unmanned space exploration. We would be negligent if we neglect one or the other.
Imagine the tech we'd have to develop to drill into Europa, make submarines for Titan, construct rovers that can survive on Venus, or reach other star systems.
And imagine the tech we would have to develop to GO to Europe or be in that submarine on Titan. You seem to have missed the point. I'm not arguing for manned or robotic spaceflight. I'm pointing out that we get a huge amount of benefit in the form of technology from our manned program AND our robotic programs and we'd be idiots to neglect either one. The benefits from each are different but I don't see one as more important than the other.
First of all, define "explore". The ancients looked up with the NAKED EYE and figured out we had other planets! They didn't even know for sure about the atom or even mastered basic high school chemistry!
Then we had people with telescopes who figured out these planets had moons of their own. All while sitting in their field stone houses in Medieval Europe.
The universe is billions of light years across, we "explore" it by taking pictures.
Sometimes we take better pictures by sending cameras in a box on top of a rocket.
Once in a while, we need to make a big fireworks spectacle to scare the neighbors so we send test pilots on the Moon, or more test pilots to fly around in a tin can.
So what?
Manned space exploration has always been about sitting on your chair and thinking.
Space emotion has always been about test pilots in orange jump suits and Depends.
Star Wars uses cheap probe droids. Star Trek uses expensive ships, with human crews.... Star Wars seems more realistic. Advanced robotics, but still poor people in the backwater planets. Use of limited AIs for slave duty.... Maybe Starfleet is really like the military industrial complex of the US, seeking to extract wealth if possible.
In 2015, only 12 people went to outer space on 4 Soyuz flights. There are 2 operational astronaut rockets & capsules in the world right now: The Russian Soyuz-FG, and the Chinese Long March 2F with Shenzhou. India is developing their own capusle. The United States has a modified Dragon, the Orion, and CST-100... Me thinks America should be willing to buy capsules from China, and later India, and use criminals...
Pretty amazing what a fella can do with only 4 years to do it in.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
'discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for convincing Americans to fund NASA on a grand scale.'
Since discredited? Been to Mars lately?
Mars is a planet entirely populated by robots.
We built the robots and sent them there, but it is still a planet entirely populated by robots.
So it was Jimmy Carter that delayed the privatization of commercial launch services by decades?
What a legacy!
Seastead this.
No, Iran contra was half a dozen years later. Do you idiots even wiki this shit?
The scandal was revealed later. The Reagan administration started trading arms for hostages somewhat earlier (exactly how much earlier depending on which sources you think reliable). Their public posture was "no negotiating with hostage takers." Their private position, however, was "do anything it takes to avoid major public relations failure, so keep all negotiations with hostage takers secret."
There are people who say that the Reagan administration was negotiating arms to Iran as early as 1980-- here, for example: www.nytimes.com/1991/04/15/world/new-reports-say-1980-reagan-campaign-tried-to-delay-hostage-release.html
This is sometimes called the "October Surprise Conspiracy Theory":
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_theory
Unless you mean Tang there is nothing that resulted only from manned space flight that had any benefit on man-kind. It's a loss leader.
First off, Tang didn't come from the space program. It was developed by General Foods in 1957. It was used in the space program which popularized it but NASA had nothing to do with its creation.
Second, you couldn't be more wrong that nothing came out of the manned program. Here are just a few of the highlights from the manned program: Infrared ear thermometers, ventricular assist devices, advanced artificial limbs, LEDs in medical therapies, invisible braces, temper foam, enriched baby food, portable cordless vacuums, water purification, pollution remediation, improved food safety, lightweight breathing systems, safety grooving on runways, scratch resistant lenses, remote controlled ovens, and the list goes on and on.
I will suggest instead that the problem with the shuttle was that it was kept in service so long.
In the 1960s, we went from launching humans on Redstone, to Titan-II, to Saturn 1B, to Saturn V. Four generations of human launch vehicles in ten years.
In the 1970s, we developed: shuttle. One vehicle in a decade.
In the 1980s, we developed-- nothing new.
The problem isn't that the shuttle didn't turn out to be as cheap and as reliable as it had been expected to be. The problem is that we stopped the practice of try something, learn what works and what doesn't, and then design something new.
You learn by doing. It's no flaw if something doesn't work as well as you hoped... that's the way to find out, to try it. But that only works as long as you can learn from it and design something better the next time.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Worst mistake NASA ever made. The Space Shuttle, as DESIGNED would have been much safer that what actually came about. The biggest issue, was the shuttle DID NOT EXPLORE. We'd just come off the moon program, the F-1 engines in the Saturn V launch vehicle were so damn good, out of all of the flights of the Saturn V (each booster had 5 engines), only ONE failed during flight. Had development continued, we would have explored the moon like we should have, established a "base" for research and could possibly used it as a jumping off point for Mars, but, once we "beat the Russians" to the moon, the public pretty much turned a blind eye to space, dealing with Vietnam, the Watergate scandal and on and on. Nasa took a backseat, and wanted something "exciting". Talks of building a space station, using the shuttle banded about. It's a shame the Apollo program was left to die on the vine, the potential was very good, we'd have a permanent station on the moon now. I was 10 years old when we landed on the moon...just wonder what might have been.
He's history's greatest monster! https://frinkiac.com/meme/S04E21/1220535.jpg?b64lines=IEhFJ1MgSElTVE9SWSdTIEdSRUFURVNUCiBNT05TVEVSIQ==
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Walter Mondale, was a vehement foe of human space flight programs, maintaining that money spent on them were better used for social programs.
Real science, not to be confused with sociology much less various protected group studies, results in so much return on investment that it boggles the mind that the government doesn't do more of it. Social programs on the other hand tend to beget more social problems. Particularly as they are formed to suppress a disliked group and elevate a protected class. I have no problem with safety nets. I have huge problems with people being idle and unproductive.
There is a bit of hindsight
You got it. Hindsight is perfect.
but it's not entirely because even by the late 90s there were jokes how Russia's shuttle was nothing but a copy of the American shuttle, but the difference between the Russians and the Americans was that the Russians had the good sense to see it as the enormous money waste it was and cancel it long before the Americans did.
The Russians cancelled Buran in 1993. If it had been obvious without the clarity of hindsight that the shuttle had been a bad idea, they wouldn't have started the program in the first place. Cancelling Buran in 1993 is no evidence that it was obvious in 1976 that the shuttle would be a terrible idea.
If you're suggesting that it was obvious that it was a terrible idea in 1976, you need to show this using what was known in 1976.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The problem is that you hit material and physical limits. That's the end of the space fantasies, you neck-bearded virgin. Look at air travel, same thing there too, a lot of development in a short period, then... coasting. We don't even have the Concorde anymore, you four-eyed sci-fi writing nerd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function
I'm sorry you're so emotionally invested in dead fantasies and metal boxes that go into space that you can't see the reality that's right in front of you.
And in case you don't get it, here are those realities:
1) Manned "space exploration" is a joke, it always was. Vannevar Bush knew it, why don't you?
2) Space is a dead end, it's a deadly empty radiation-blasted vacuum with less in it than a vacuum tube.
3) There are no space spinoffs, the technology came first.
4) It's over, finished, done. The Space Age fantasies will never, ever happen. Ever.
Disclaimer: I voted for him both times.
It isn't even a matter of manned vs. unmanned exploration. The Space Shuttle was the Universe's most cost-overridden project ( until the F35 came along). The original promise was that the materials scientists would produce a monohull insulating layer. The moment they gave up and announced it would take 70-zillion separate, custom "bricks" , the program should have been shut down. Heck, it would have been cheaper to shoot astronauts 3 at a time on Sat-Vs, shoot up some payloads & return vehicles (modded Apollo3s) etc. than what it cost to build and maintain the shuttle fleet.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
saving something not worth saving is not worth praising.
the shuttle was fail writ large.
"adhering to the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe." Uh, forgot a source for this one. :) Not only are robotic probes "adequate" but they are essential, since humans are fragile bags of water that can't withstand heat, cold, radiation, or lack of oxygen.
I wonder how much more knowledge about our solar system we would have if we hadn't wasted so much money and political capital on human space flight. And please don't tell me we are going to send humans on a generation ship to Wolf 1061c. (maybe frozen embryo's to be raised by an AI but that's it)
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Reagan scared the crap out of a lot of the rest of the world.
Which only a fool thinks is a good thing. But there are a lot of fools who fantasize about other people being submissive toward them because they're scared. The problem is that scared people don't necessarily act submissively. They often respond aggressively as well.
Put in a Cold War context, the Soviets and the US were in a Mexican standoff, with both sides having their hammers cocked and fingers on the nuclear trigger. In that situation you don't want to alarm anyone, but that is exactly what the senile fool did.
That summed up the election right there, Americans didn't want another 4 more years of someone who could be attacked by a rabbit.
I voted in that election, and I remember it well. You capture the way people were thinking accurately, but not critically. Anyone can be attacked by a (possibly rabid) animal; it wasn't a real issue. There were three actual substantive things people were reacting to in the election: (1) stagflation, (2) the Iran hostage crisis, (3) the energy crisis. While Carter's leadership style might leave a lot to be desired, it's hard to criticize his actions in any of these situations.
(1) Stagflation was the result of his and Paul Volker's successful attempt to ward off imminent hyperinflation by a combination of austerity (reducing the federal debt-to-gdp ratio of 3.3%) and sky high Federal Funds rates. Economic growth resumed pretty much in sync with the reductions in Fed interest rates, in fact under the last Carter budget (Presidents in their first year govern under their predecessor's last budget). Arguably milder steps might have done the job without causing the recession, but the fact that inflation continued even as the Federal Funds rate hit 20% suggest that weaker measures wouldn't have worked.
(2) Carter's handling of the Iran crisis is probably what brought his presidency down, but it came down to this: the military was still dealing with the aftermath of the Vietnam war and couldn't execute the rescue mission successfully. Contrary to popular myth Carter actually raised military spending, from 282 billion under the last Ford budget to 303 billion under the last Carter budget. Yes, some big programs were eliminated or trimmed, but ironically operations and maintenance was a major area of increased spending in Carter's budgets.
(3) The second oil crisis was caused by the Iran Iraq War. In response Carter deregulated oil prices, which caused domestic production to rise and imports to fall.
In short, Carter was the kind of president people think they want: honest, prudent, and responsible willing to do unpopular things because they were right. Had two of the eight helicopters in Operation Eagle Claw failed instead of three, he'd be remembered very differently.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Advisor claims Obama "revitalized" planetary science, but the opposite is true.
Casey Dreier, director of space policy for The Planetary Society
Please describe the causal link between having to put a man into a metal tube and your list of supposed spinoffs?
Go research it yourself. There is a great article on wikipedia to get you started regarding NASA spinoffs.
How much cheaper would it have been to subsidize students or engineers directly?
It wouldn't be cheaper. It would be substantially more expensive because the research was undirected. Spinoffs come from solving one problem and finding a use for the technology elsewhere. If you don't solve the original problem you don't develop the technology to spin off. It's not the only way to do things but undirected research is difficult to fund and justify. Engineers don't go around solving problems at random as a general proposition. Students rarely solve serious engineering problems at all.
It's a pretty convoluted way to develop things, don't you think?
Not at all. It's exactly how it is done in pretty much all universities and government research labs and it works tremendously well. Go talk to anyone at a technology transfer office at a university if you need clarification.
And how did people invent things before rockets?
Rather a stupid question I think. Not going to bother with this one either.
I was there. In 1978 my ship had to arm at Seal Beach CA with weapons on the way out on westpac from a returning ship disarming as it reached the west coast.This was unusual in the good sense for that time. Many ships includng ones aboard which I had friends, were returning to Pearl Harbor from Subic Bay, from Japan, and from other westpac activities, unloading their ordnance there and returning to CONUS unarmed. Outbound ships between CA and Hawaii were often unarmed, picking up the ordnance they were sharing when they got to Pearl. This included air-launched ordnance, surface-to-air missiles and vulcan ammunition. When you added the unarmed ships in the pacific between Pearl and the west coast to the ships on the west coast undergoing maintenance, training, etc this meant a huge part of the fleet was unarmed and would have been caught flat-footed had war broken out. It was a distater in the making. Morale also was awful and drug use aboard ships was rampant. I was still in the Navy when Reagan took over and things changed rapidly. People hooked on hard drugs were drummed-out. People just using pot but otherwise clean were allowed to get off the drugs if they wanted to stay in. by the middle of the 1st Reagan term ships had enough ordnance to go around. I will NEVER forget the amazing transormation and no runt in mommy's basement trying to re-write history will convince me to believe his revisionist lies based on the flinging of a single expletive. Sorry, bubs.
Given the choice between my own two Mk.I eyeballs, and the insult of an internet troll, I choose my eyes.
There were GREAT Democrats on defense who were serious about defending this nation and the west generally, but the last of the good ones was JFK who modern Democrats would despise for his muscular foreign policies and massive nuclear weapons arsenal. LBJ was strong, but more derailed into Vietnam than Bush was in Iraq. Jimmy Carter was an absolute nightmare. The man plunged the economy into double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates, double-digit inflation, his foreign policy was so bad we had gas rationing (you could only get gas for your car on certain days based on your license plate number). There is NO stat by which Obama inherited something worse from the feckless Bush43 than what Reagan inherited from the moron Carter. If you are defending that total bozo, you were clearly not there, or you are the sort who cheers at car crashes, plane crashes and train wrecks. There is a REASON why Reagan was re-elected in 1984 in a 49-state landslide (trouncing Mondale, the NASA hater coincidentally). Think about it.
how President Jimmy Carter saved the space shuttle program.
I like Carter. But I guess no one is perfect.
tl;dr: They told Carter that the shuttle would help spy on and verify Russia's compliance with arms treaties.
President Carter was not all that enthused about human space flight to begin with, adhering to the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe.
...what? Robotic space probes are most certainly adequate for exploring the universe. At least they are now. In 1978, they had just launched Voyager 1, which was a huge success, right? So it was looking pretty true THEN as well. Jimmy was right on the ball. Just how and when was this crazy notion of sending tools into space discredited?
But ANYWAY, the space shuttle program was a bit of a boondogle. It wasn't worthless, and it achieved a great many things. But all in all, there were better solutions and it never delivered on it's big selling points:
- It wasn't cheaper and faster
- It never captured Russian satellites and brought them back to earth for reverse engineering
Back in 1970, to win Department of Defense support at the program’s outset, NASA had redesigned the shuttle to launch national security payloads. Now, that decision paid off
...Why put the payload inside of the shuttle on top of rocket and not just put the payload on top of a rocket like before and after the shuttle?
You have no idea . . .
As in, you have no idea how much I love to see that be such a fucking thorn in your side!!
[ROFL on floor laughing]
Fuck you and your metric system. We ain't changin'.
Trump 2016.
One word in response to you:
Diazepam.
Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.
The most economic benefit we've received from anything spaceflight related is from satellites.
Fair point. However bear in mind that manned spaceflight has been an integral part of many of those satellites. Hubble not the least among them. Servicing a satellite in space (currently) often requires a manned mission so it's not as if they are neatly on one side of the ledger or the other. A lot of that value from satellites would never have been realized without a manned space program. Furthermore some of the potentially most valuable things we might ever do in space will probably require humans to actually go there. It will take humans longer to get to someplace like Mars but once we are there we will be able to do far more than most machines. We are the most adaptable "machines" we have access to even if we are comparatively fragile.
Again, I'm not trying to argue in favor of one or the other. I think both are necessary and both are valuable. Having both makes us better off than choosing just one or the other. They complement each other.
and I would argue that the scientific value has been at least equal.
I don't think this is even close. From the Voyager program to climate satellites, we've learned far more from unmanned missions.
Completely disagree. We learned a VAST amount from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions as well as later manned missions and arguably much of the most valuable information came from learning how to keep people alive in space. We learned many things that we would never have learned from just sending up probes and satellites. To pick a random example I would argue that something like learning about the effects of prolonged zero-g on the human body is every bit as valuable as something like pictures of Pluto and it may have a lot more potential application back here on Earth. It's hard to compare the value of random bits of science but I take strong issue with the notion that the science we've gathered from our manned expeditions is any less valuable than what we've gotten from probes.
The shuttle was never about science.
The reason for the shuttle was to launch, repair, and recover spy satellites. It was also used to launch and repair the Hubble (which is nothing more than a spy satellite looking up instead of down).
As usual, the Ars Technofools have completely and totally missed the point:
The shuttle program should have been canceled. It was a wasteful boondoggle with no purpose other than the one-up the Soviets; unless you want to add it to the Cold War strategy of forcing the USSR to spend money on similar boondoggles, but look how that turned out.
The problem is that you hit material and physical limits. That's the end of the space fantasies, you neck-bearded virgin. Look at air travel, same thing there too, a lot of development in a short period, then... coasting. We don't even have the Concorde anymore, you four-eyed sci-fi writing nerd.
Wow. I'm flattered that you actually went to the trouble of reading my bio. If I had mod points, I'd mod you up one just for that (except obviously I can't, since I've already commented in the thread.)
Yeah, in my own 20-20 hindsight, I now wish I'd managed to take a trip on the Concorde back when it was still flying. Talk about the glorious but un-economical engineering dreams of the '70s!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Here's one for you: Haldol. It comes in subcutaneous form, you can get rid of your space voices for 6 months at a time!
Agreed robotic space probes ARE adequate for exploring the universe. The only reason anyone sends meat sacks into space these days is to do experiments on low orbit space stations. Going anywhere further requires wasting money at a rate that only politicians flattering their own vanity can afford. The last time humans were part of the space race was in the 1970's.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
"Talk about the glorious but un-economical engineering dreams of the '70s!"
But the vastly more impractical, unrealistic and utterly non-viable space fantasies, those are great, huh?
Oh, and the Concorde was many things, but it was not a dream; it was, unlike your brain-rotting space pablum, actually built!
You want dreams from the 1970s that were never, and will never, be built? O'Neill habitats.
What is the source of all of this anger on your part? And is it an "Oh, I'm so goddamn angry!" sort of rage, or a "I am a righteous sword of truth, you all suck and I'm great!" sort of rage?
This is a genuine curiosity, as I don't quite understand how a person like you thinks.
That would be the story submission, instantaneously discredited by the Slashdot effect, in vitro. Wish that happened more often.
What a buffoonish POV shill to stick in there.
A person like me thinks like this: When I was a child/teen, I also believed all the emotional nonsense that NASA wrapped around space. Then, as I grew up, I saw it as the ridiculous facade it is. Then I realized the time and energy I wasted when I was young, and I don't want YOU to waste that time either.
Now what *I*'m curious about, is why do you see anger?
What is the source of all of this anger on your part? And is it an "Oh, I'm so goddamn angry!" sort of rage, or a "I am a righteous sword of truth, you all suck and I'm great!" sort of rage?
This is a genuine curiosity, as I don't quite understand how a person like you thinks.
*nod* This seems to be the case with all the self-proclaimed "anti-Space Nutters". And yet, according to these folks, those of us who attempt to take a rational view of the issue are the "obsessives". Projection much?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You do realise that nearly every other country on the planet uses it, and that US companies bear the costs for conversion, right?
Depends on whether you have tiny primitive space programs like what we have today or something far more. The joke is that our stuff is so primitive that we can only fly it once then its thrown away. In comparison to what is or may be possible we're just space cavemen.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
So it's more sort of a "disappointment that what I wanted to see when I was older hadn't happened" sort of thing?
The constant name-calling? Including to people who have hardly even commented on the topic that you're mad about? In case you didn't notice, but nobody else here is doing that. Because that's not how adults generally behave unless they're in some sort of rage.
Whoop-d-fucking-do.
See the look of concern on my face?
Yeah, me neither. Cuz it ain't there.