Sigh, the Taliban have nothing to do with what is going on in Afghanistan.
I don't understand why Americans have so much trouble understanding what war is... there's nothing going on in Afghanistan that is anything like a war.
There's not even a civil war going on. What's going on is that the government of Afghanistan is trying to keep power and expand their territory to the designated borders. There's pockets of Afghanistan that are completely cut off from the government and they can't collect taxes, hold elections, and exert their will.
For *some reason* the US is there helping the Afghanistan government to get control over their territory. I'd love to explain to you why the US is doing that but we don't know.
Wow, your post is full of ignorance (for instance, there is no war in Afghanistan, the US is aiding the government to suppress it's own people), perhaps if you read some of the documents that have been leaked you'd understand what is going on.
Wow, I either have a distorted view of what "digital native" means or you do.
The US is full of car natives. When you wanna go to the mall to hang out with your friends you don't go saddle the horse.
This younger generation is full of Internet natives. When you wanna talk to your friends you don't reach for the telephone or pull out the quill and ink pot, you jump online.
FFS, what are you people talking about, you're on a god damn Internet forum.
to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. Juno will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 km/h.
At it's peak the Apollo program had no more than twice the budget than they have now. I wrote an article about this because Bob Zubrin of The Mars Society often says that the average budget during Apollo was the same as the average budget of the comparable period up to today. It isn't, but people who say it was 4x or 8x or 10x or "a budget they could not even dream of today if you ignore inflation", are just as wrong. Yes, the motto of Apollo was "waste anything but time" and that meant they got all the budget they needed, but they had that motto because people didn't think like that, and it had to be drummed into them. Compare that to NASA today.. they piss away money on frivolous programs that are poorly justified, go nowhere and get canceled, then they start another one. In a word, they're "adrift".
Wow, so you're really saying that it is *impossible* for the astronauts on the ISS to fix anything? Really? Can they even have a look at it and see what's wrong or is that impossible too?
"Making the ISS self sufficient for that long is essentially impossible on two grounds: First, it wasn't designed to be so. Second, we lack the experience to know what level of spares and maintenance are required."
If that's not a can't do attitude I don't know what is.
Go study the Russian program someday, you'll discover what a real space program looks like. It's not "prefab everything and don't do anything in space without a 12 point plan".
If you actually bothered to go to belowtheline.org the first thing they do is show you how the preferences fall out for voting above the line, and recommend you vote above the line if you like them. But obviously it's more fun to just be a cunt.
And watch as the funding levels go down to the level of astronomy and other scientific research. The Human Genome Project, possibly the most important scientific research ever had to fight and scrape for $3 billion. The upcoming Mars Science Laboratory will have a comparable total cost of about $2.3 billion. Without the human spaceflight program to boost NASA funding the robotic exploration program would have to actually justify why space research should be funded over terrestrial research, and frankly, without the funding going into some day sending humans into the cosmos that would reduce the importance of planetary science to competing with other pure science.
Again, completely missing the point. You don't put humans into space to do "science", or to do "exploration". It's not a cost-benefit analysis. You can't say "oh, let's just cancel the human program, nerds sitting at desks operating robots can do it instead". Why not? Because we've been doing that for hundreds of years, it's called astronomy, and its never attracted as much capital investment as the robotic spaceflight program which gets all its funding by riding on the coattails of the human spaceflight program. Cut the human spaceflight program and you won't even have enough money to pay for the launches, then you'll be "exploring" the Nevada desert.
Human spaceflight is the last bastion of pure Progress. Technological, secular ideological, grand society style progress. It's the same reason why the British and the French set out to colonize the world. There was no economic justification for it, it's just what great nations do.
If this were a Russian failure they would have been out the airlock the same day. They're trained for that, in Russian they call it: .
I think a better question is: what is NASA going to do when the ISS sized vehicle they want to go to Mars in has a similar issue? Spend a few days worrying about it and calling back to Earth then go replace it with a spare and hope the spare doesn't break? Sooner or later they're going to have to break their addiction with resupply and ground based mission control. I say, do it sooner. Make the ISS self sufficient for at least 12 months at a time.
Us nerds think the rovers on Mars are awesome.. your kids don't care. The simple fact is: robots don't explore space, people do, and when they do it through a robot they're doing it from boring desk. Ever taken your kids to work? That was exciting for about 15 minutes wasn't it?
There's one thing robots in space can never do that humans can: be humans in space.
And hopefully one day everything we do in space won't have to fly under the banner "exploration".
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh, the Taliban have nothing to do with what is going on in Afghanistan.
I don't understand why Americans have so much trouble understanding what war is... there's nothing going on in Afghanistan that is anything like a war.
There's not even a civil war going on. What's going on is that the government of Afghanistan is trying to keep power and expand their territory to the designated borders. There's pockets of Afghanistan that are completely cut off from the government and they can't collect taxes, hold elections, and exert their will.
For *some reason* the US is there helping the Afghanistan government to get control over their territory. I'd love to explain to you why the US is doing that but we don't know.
there are over a thousand Australians in Afghanistan
Wow, over a thousand! What a major contribution!
I tell ya, if there was ever a question of why the US is in Afghanistan, there's even more of a question why we are.
No-one is calling for Assange to be charged with treason because Assange isn't a US citizen.
Oh wait, I guess there are people who are, stupid people...
Wow, your post is full of ignorance (for instance, there is no war in Afghanistan, the US is aiding the government to suppress it's own people), perhaps if you read some of the documents that have been leaked you'd understand what is going on.
Except that no wifi drivers support the mesh topography standards.
Wow, I either have a distorted view of what "digital native" means or you do.
The US is full of car natives. When you wanna go to the mall to hang out with your friends you don't go saddle the horse.
This younger generation is full of Internet natives. When you wanna talk to your friends you don't reach for the telephone or pull out the quill and ink pot, you jump online.
FFS, what are you people talking about, you're on a god damn Internet forum.
Fat planet eats too many sweets.
to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. Juno will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 km/h.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)
and ya know what, those friends of yours talk about you when you're not around too.
At it's peak the Apollo program had no more than twice the budget than they have now. I wrote an article about this because Bob Zubrin of The Mars Society often says that the average budget during Apollo was the same as the average budget of the comparable period up to today. It isn't, but people who say it was 4x or 8x or 10x or "a budget they could not even dream of today if you ignore inflation", are just as wrong. Yes, the motto of Apollo was "waste anything but time" and that meant they got all the budget they needed, but they had that motto because people didn't think like that, and it had to be drummed into them. Compare that to NASA today.. they piss away money on frivolous programs that are poorly justified, go nowhere and get canceled, then they start another one. In a word, they're "adrift".
Hey, at least two of my youtube videos consist entirely of soundclips.
http://www.youtube.com/user/quantumg
Oh noes! They dumped a product that no-one liked! What next? Google Buzz?!!
Nice use of the weasel word "essential" there.
I think you're essentially a self important asshole.
Wow, so you're really saying that it is *impossible* for the astronauts on the ISS to fix anything? Really? Can they even have a look at it and see what's wrong or is that impossible too?
Here's some raw attitude for you: fuck off.
"Making the ISS self sufficient for that long is essentially impossible on two grounds: First, it wasn't designed to be so. Second, we lack the experience to know what level of spares and maintenance are required."
If that's not a can't do attitude I don't know what is.
Go study the Russian program someday, you'll discover what a real space program looks like. It's not "prefab everything and don't do anything in space without a 12 point plan".
If you actually bothered to go to belowtheline.org the first thing they do is show you how the preferences fall out for voting above the line, and recommend you vote above the line if you like them. But obviously it's more fun to just be a cunt.
I *love* the "can't do" attitude of people today.
Learn how to live in space or go home.
I think I made myself clear, "scientific endeavour" is not the goal. It's a nice side effect, nothing more.
As for good TV, if you could point to any recent good TV coming out of the space program, I'd appreciate it.
And watch as the funding levels go down to the level of astronomy and other scientific research. The Human Genome Project, possibly the most important scientific research ever had to fight and scrape for $3 billion. The upcoming Mars Science Laboratory will have a comparable total cost of about $2.3 billion. Without the human spaceflight program to boost NASA funding the robotic exploration program would have to actually justify why space research should be funded over terrestrial research, and frankly, without the funding going into some day sending humans into the cosmos that would reduce the importance of planetary science to competing with other pure science.
Again, completely missing the point. You don't put humans into space to do "science", or to do "exploration". It's not a cost-benefit analysis. You can't say "oh, let's just cancel the human program, nerds sitting at desks operating robots can do it instead". Why not? Because we've been doing that for hundreds of years, it's called astronomy, and its never attracted as much capital investment as the robotic spaceflight program which gets all its funding by riding on the coattails of the human spaceflight program. Cut the human spaceflight program and you won't even have enough money to pay for the launches, then you'll be "exploring" the Nevada desert.
Human spaceflight is the last bastion of pure Progress. Technological, secular ideological, grand society style progress. It's the same reason why the British and the French set out to colonize the world. There was no economic justification for it, it's just what great nations do.
If this were a Russian failure they would have been out the airlock the same day. They're trained for that, in Russian they call it: .
I think a better question is: what is NASA going to do when the ISS sized vehicle they want to go to Mars in has a similar issue? Spend a few days worrying about it and calling back to Earth then go replace it with a spare and hope the spare doesn't break? Sooner or later they're going to have to break their addiction with resupply and ground based mission control. I say, do it sooner. Make the ISS self sufficient for at least 12 months at a time.
Maybe everyone is just waiting for NASA to do it, so no-one is doing it.
Frontier? Really? Try Orbiter.
Us nerds think the rovers on Mars are awesome.. your kids don't care. The simple fact is: robots don't explore space, people do, and when they do it through a robot they're doing it from boring desk. Ever taken your kids to work? That was exciting for about 15 minutes wasn't it?
There's one thing robots in space can never do that humans can: be humans in space.
And hopefully one day everything we do in space won't have to fly under the banner "exploration".
There's a thing called creative commons.. in fact, the film itself is under a creative commons license.