Katrina Delays Shuttle 374
guildsolutions writes "The scoop on MSNBC has it that NASA will not fly again until next fall. With NASA's reluctance to get back into space, and Hubble dying, We just wonder when private industry will put NASA out of the game."
yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anybody ever notice how whenever the free market fails at something, the government steps in to take the blame, which provides further "evidence" that government is incompetent, which results in further reduction of government services, and more privatization. Then, when private industry screws up yet again, we blame government, and round and round we go. It's a nice circular argument. This is of course the problem with privatization, is that private industry cares about one thing, and that is profit. Markets are horribly inefficient at solving certain kinds of problems, such as the evacuation of the city of New Orleans (or space exploration, unless the only thing we're interested in is sending rich people into space). It would be nice if the free-marketeers in the White House understood this fact.
Re:yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
They understand just fine. To them "privatization" means socialization of risk and privatization of reward. Basically let you friends make an ass-load of money and then jack the taxpayers with it when everything goes to hell.
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason government is taking the fall so easily is because they really don't care, their
Re:hehehe (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that GWB is doing his best to hide every single thing that goes on, and yet, it keeps showing how corrupt his admin really is.
Up till Xmas(for a 1.5 year), I was working on equipment that is to be used for patriot act and commercially. On the commercial side, we could read, copy and modify all unencrypted packets up to OC-48 speeds without any dete
Re:hehehe (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming:
1. There are any academic historians left in 50 years after Cato and Heritage (etc.) get through gutting science and academics in this country.
2. Assuming "executive privilege" protected documentation is ever made available. Bush's first official duty was to make sure Bush I's records and documents were never released. Same with Bush II's gube
Re:yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, I'm really confused. You really think that it was the private sector's job to evacuate New Orleans? How did you come to this conclusion?
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at it this way, if you hand over all control of transportation to private industry, then shouldn't it be their responsibility to transport people efficiently? Isn't this a valid test of the free market? If it isn't, then what is a valid test? The airline industry has
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nor did they do anything to alleviate the problem.
You sir have a very fucked up idea of what private companys are supposed to do.
I would suggest that it's a perfectly accurate idea of what private companies are supposed to do. They are supposed to make money. It isn't in their interest to provide transportation and shelter to people who don't have the means to evacuate themselves. In fact, it's generally in direct conflict with their entire reason for existing, especially for publicly-traded companies.
The whole point is that there are certain things which should not be privatized because privatization dramatically hinders (or prohibits) those things from being useful when they are most needed. A private "public" transportation system cannot be mobilized for a mass evacuation as easily as one that is under the direct control of the government. (Yeah yeah bureaucracy blah blah. I said "can not", not "is not.") If the interstate highway system were privately managed, it would not have all the features that make it so useful for national defense, because including those features increases the bottom line.
This is a government debacle, which is only being saved BECAUSE private companys are donating time and money before the government even spent a cent on relief efforts.
We've done well on disaster relief efforts in the past. Don't blame a debacle that is the direct result of the Bush administration and Congress mangling FEMA beyond all recognition, turning our entire homeland security system into a giant bureaucracy that can barely stand up under its own weight, and massively cutting our first response capabilities by cutting funding for everything disaster and emergency-related under the sun on the entire government in general.
This is the CURRENT government fucking up. If it were behaving as it should have, and as it has in the past, those private companies would have had their place, but they wouldn't have been there first because they couldn't have gotten there first - the National Guard would have been there from the beginning.
You lose sir, good bye.
Shut up.
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely not. Martial law is not a reaction to natural disasters, at least not in free societies. Its a reaction to open rebellion against the government. You don't send in the army to fight a hurricane.
The only reason relvant to the recent disaster he could use would be the looters/gang violence. However, even if they were determined to amount to a full out state of insurrection as oppose
Re:yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
---and 100% of those who left did so by car.
Those left behind were the sick, the elderly, the disabled and the poor. Those without transport. Those who had nowhere to go.
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm, I'd have to say no. Of course I don't live in NYC where taxicabs rule. But in virtually the rest of the country, we have "public transit" - bus service, light rail, trains (Amtrak - publically funded), monorail, etc. If I remember right, even NYC transports most commuters on a public subway. I remember going there once and parking at the Port Authority parking lot. Sounds pretty public to me.
So can you tell me how you believe that the private sector controls transportation?
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
the public market was to take care of the levee system, not the free market. it is people like you who are quick to blame it as a failure of the private market, when it is a public market failure to the core.
if it were the private market, for one, there would be no new orleans because it would be STUPID to build a city under sea level. it would do this because of the PROFIT motive, for no other reason.
educate yourself before you make a stupid post.
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's take it one step further - it was Congress that cut funding for levees. The White House proposed cuts, but we all know that it's Congress that ultimately holds the Power of the Purse. One of my Senators (from the State of Washington) has put out a zillion press releases about how she is bringing in funding for Homeland Security, and about how we need to spend even more because we're not doing a good enough job on port secur
Re:yeah... (Score:2)
Absolutely I would. You and I may not have liked the response, but firing everyone now and replacing them may be more disastrous. That doesn't mean that a bunch of people don't need to go. Let's just make sure that we take the time to find the right people.
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
A man working for a large company makes a critical mistake that results in $1 million in losses for the company. In due course he hands in his resignation to the CEO. The CEO refuses to accept his resignation stating that "Im not going to fire you, because i just spent $1 million dollars educating you..."
Sometimes the people that make mistakes are still the best person for the job...
Now, New Orleans was a monumental stuff up (with no disrespect to those who are suffering)
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:yeah... (Score:2)
I guess I'll go ahead and point out that NO wasn't build below sea level to keep someone else from having to take the time to correct you...
Private sector did a better job! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a pillar of the free market/libertarian ideal. People cannot depend on the government to help them, and most, not all but most, of the time it should not be the place of the government to provide support and assistance.
Persoanlly I think that the government did have a duty here and there was obviously a breakdown in the system.
However, in this situation, and many others, it has shown over and over again that people CANNOT depend on the government and SHOULD not.
Free markets, individual freedoms, limited government, and personal responsibility are the most reliable courses of action.
Re:Private sector did a better job! (Score:2)
Er... no.
Free markets are NOT evil! (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that our individual freedoms are being eroded away with time by the government. We have inalieble rights which are not given to us by the government, but rather secured by it. Thus having a smaller government d
Re:Private sector did a better job! (Score:2)
Re:yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Those that didn't evacuate for one reason or another relied on the GOVERNMENT to handle it for them. The gov't was more worried about their precious historic area than the poor.
Private industry was never asked to handle emergency evacuation of those people. GOVERNMENT was the one responsible for all the municipal school and city busses sitting in their parking lots, under water, instead of being loaded with people and somewhere safe. Good plan, that.
They might have been much better off taking the budget spent on Gov't planning and contracting with a private company to come up with and execute an evacuation plan. THEN you could have pointed a finger of blame at the private sector.
Right now the blame lays firmly with those directly responsible for those citizens and that evacuation plan: the gov'ts of the municipalities and the State of Louisana.
-Charles
Re:yeah... (Score:2)
Re:yeah... (Score:2)
Thus, there was no "need" and many people didn't really believe it could happen to them. Hell, they've survived storm after storm and the city was still there after 300 years, right?
There is no good economy for the plan. The capital for the plan went into the gov't, not the market. Federal, State and municipal funding over the year
Re:Hold a sec... (Score:5, Insightful)
Leaving these problems up to industry is not the answer. The reason, it's obvious, because industry doesn't care about poor people.
Re:Hold a sec... (Score:4, Insightful)
How many low-income workers are still getting paid by their supposedly uncaring employers? I've heard countless stories of compassion by employers both large and small. They don't do it out of guilt, or shame, or because it's going to make them money. They do it because they value their workers as human beings.
Re:Hold a sec... (Score:3, Insightful)
How many low-income workers are still getting paid by their supposedly uncaring employers? I've heard countless stories of compassion by employers both large and small. They don't do it out of guilt, or shame, or because it's going to make them money. They do it because they value their workers as human beings.
Care to provide some links? Because when I turn on the TV I see people (a lot of them middle classers) in line to get food stamps -- not in line at the local ATM machine because their lovely emplo
Re:Hold a sec... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sewell Auto Dealerships [sewell.com] is spending a huge effort to find and relocate all of its employees from the affected Gulf coast regions and their families to Dallas. They have promised the 114 employees equivalent jobs at their other dealerships at the same or better pay rate. When the TV interviewer asked the general manger how much this was costing the company, he looked at her like she was crazy and said, "I don't know and wont even consider it till we know everyone is safe and cared for. These people are o
Re:Hold a sec... (Score:2)
Re:Hold a sec... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, there are occasions where government provided solutions work better than private industry solutions. Thats why anarchy is not a very popular form of government nowadays. Evacuating an entire town before a hurricane strikes is one of those situations, which is why that is the responsibility of the local and state government
Re:Hold a sec... (Score:2)
Re:Hold a sec... (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as space efforts are concerned, private sector is going nowhere within our lifes. I've been hearing this wishfull thinking for a *long* time already, without seeing any real advances. The failures, on the other hand, include at least Delta Clipper, Kistler, and Beal. SS1 is a nice stunt, though, but it's still *far* away from being of any real sigificance.
Agreed. And I don't know about you but I'm getting sick and tired of hearing people around here berate NASA all the time. Do you really want t
Re:Hold a sec... (Score:3, Insightful)
And still money left to throw a really big party when the astronauts come back. But all of that isn't anywhere near the top of the priorities list.
Re:Puh-lease! (Score:3, Informative)
cheers, ben
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let private companies compete for the best and cheapest way off the surface and let NASA spend its time and money focusing on the science up in space.
Government Out, Private Sector In... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Government Out, Private Sector In... (Score:2)
Re:Government Out, Private Sector In... (Score:2)
would private industry do better? probably, but not necessarily. for one, new orleans would never have been built because it is a horrible place to build a city (or rebuilt from the last flood). no insurer is going to allow that.
could it have provided a means to protect
Re:Government Out, Private Sector In... (Score:2)
Re:Government Out, Private Sector In... (Score:2)
Re:Government Out, Private Sector In... (Score:2)
Competition (Score:2)
Re:Competition (Score:2)
The private sector won't do anything for decades, probably longer (that hasn't/couldn't be done by the government). Unprofitable ventures like this (and healthcare, and public transportation, although those two should not be
NO! NASA is needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
*bashes head on table*
I always hate it when people say that NASA should be on its way out, and private industry should take over. NO! Failures! F-! Private industry is out looking for profit, finding a dollar in something. If there isn't a dollar to be earned, they won't be in business very long. Private industry isn't interested in furthering the field of science, they don't care too much about contributing to the knowledge of mankind. This is why we need NASA-- to make scientific breakthroughs that are available to ALL for (ideally) noble causes.
Quickly sidestepping too much politics, NASA embodies what the government should spend its money on (yes, improving infrastructure of the country is important, but I'm sure there's a lot that the government shouldn't spend money on *cough*war*cough*). NASA is set up to do wickedly expensive, yet groundbreaking research which can be useful 30+ years down the road-- very few companies would make such an investment. It's the department that's set up to be the exploratory fleet of our time. Who else would put a couple of rovers on Mars? Where's the profit in that? We got tons of scientific benefit from it, and I think we all can concur that it was a damn good thing that we landed on Mars and scouted the area. What motivation would private industry have to do the same?
I agree that currently NASA is kind of a broken department. Politicians are more interested in financing bridges named after themselves and whatnot than advancing science. Society today is more interested in what some celebrity ate for breakfast than science. It's a damn shame too! Look, what NASA needs is a bit of a reorganization, a shakedown if you will. They need to get back in gear, and instead of being a political lapdog, they need to get back into their R&D groove. You can't argue that they've done great things in the past. Currently, they've got some of the best damn brains in the country. They were able to hit a friggin comet with satellite! I say that we throw more money into NASA, and tell 'em to make something of it. Make a new shuttle! Find a way to setup a moon base, or mine the moon for materials. Push further into ramjet/scramjet research. There's so much that they can do, we just need to let them do it.
Please, realize that NASA is not a detriment to the country. It's done a lot of great stuff, and has the potential to do a lot more. If you privatize all of NASA, science will be set back many, many decades.
Private != For-Profit (Score:3, Insightful)
Short answer: (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
When space travel and space telescopes become profitable.
Re:Obviously (Score:3, Funny)
Porn + Space = $$$
Depends on what is considered "private industry" (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the ARLA researchers, all you need is a gas cannon to fire a ramjet at the required 400 MPH, the ramjet then carries a rocket to the upper atmosphere and a starting velocity of Mach 5. It should be relatively simple to build a rocket that can start from there and reach LEO.
(Not trivial, but certainly within the capacity of a joint project by amateurs licensed to wield larger rocket motors.)
Ramjet designs are on the Internet - all it would really take is for someone to build one from light enough (but strong enough) material. If you use a liquid hydrogen fuel, rather than normal aviation fuel, you can get ramjets up to about mach 7 or 8.
There are three benefits of this design - ramjets are much more stable than rockets, so easier to build reliably. As this part would not need to leave the atmosphere, it may also be reusable. The second benefit is that ramjets are vastly more fuel efficient than rockets, making it cheaper for amateurs to launch such systems on a limited budget. The third benefit is that jets are more controllable, so a less sophisticated guidance system is needed.
The first stage could probably be replaced with a rail gun/linear motor, as all you need is an initial velocity. The direction is unimportant to the ramjet. An "Air Turbo Ramject", which can handle both subsonic AND supersonic speeds effectively might even eliminate the need for that initial kickstart stage.
Is this a viable possibility? Maybe. Jets work well up to about 30 miles. The "GoFast" rocket, on May 17, 1994, reached an altitude of 74 miles from the ground. Rockets do better in thinner atmospheres, as there is less air resistance and the air isn't needed for anything. It would also be starting off at Mach 6, not from a standstill. So, the combined altitude of 104 miles is definitely a major underestimate of what could be done by amateurs TODAY, no further work needed.
LEO starts at around 125 miles. If we're just adding altitudes directly, we'd be 21 miles short. But we aren't adding them directly, because we've the initial velocity for the rocket and the reduced air resistance. I don't know if these are enough to add 21 miles to the vertical range, but I imagine it would be damn close.
Can we make this a little more definite? Yes. Ramjets work extremely well in a thick atmosphere, but NASA engineers pioneered in the 50s a technique of adding supplemental oxygen to boost the altitude they'll work at. This is why a lot of US spy-planes can operate at the 50 mile range (and so get all those astronaut wings).
So if we revamp the ramjet to use hydrogen fuel, supplemented with oxygen to maintain pressure at high altitudes, we should be able to shift the point of launching the rocket to 50 miles. Furthermore, hydrogen fuel gives you better output on a ramjet, so our starting speed will move from Mach 6 to perhaps Mach 8.
Again, just adding altitudes, we have a combined total now of 124 miles. This is more workable. The initial speed, plus the lower air resistance, only needs to add one mile before we're in LEO. That would seem plausible enough.
At this point, a rocket like GoFaster isn't going to carry communications satellites into space. On the other hand, amateurs - especially amateurs who are open-sourcing their methods and techniques - who reach LEO are going to kick up an unbelievable stink in the space industry. They are going to be seen the same way Linux is seen by Microsoft - an annoying buzz that won't go away, can't be kept away and keeps getting bigger and louder.
All it would take is the sorts of investments comparable to those being put into Virgin Galactic going to amateur rocketry and distributed computing systems for the number-crunching, and
Not enough funding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not enough funding? (Score:2)
Re:Not enough funding? (Score:2)
Aliens attack? (Score:2, Funny)
Efforts continue to rehouse space workers from the Michoud plant that produced the disposable thirty-ton external fuel tanks used for shuttle launches. An estimated half of them are now homeless, and many have been relocated to temporary lodging near NASA facilities in Houston, Huntsville, Ala., and Cape Canaveral, Fla..
Sounds like they were attacked by Klingons or something
6 months off on their estimates - inexcusable (Score:4, Insightful)
Waiting from September til March to fix a problem is fine, but when you've barely done any work so far on fixing the problem (that I'm aware; I haven't seen any test summaries beyond "we got a few tanks to work on now" hit the specialized news sources), suddenly admitting that you never even really thought March was achievable -- if you haven't done any testing yet and you're already saying a 6+ month delay is going to happen), you're clueless.
I used to say that the time wasn't up for the Shuttle yet. Now given this latest example of incompetence, it's time to move on.
Either that or take a hint from id Software, and just say "When it's done". No false promises. No bullshit.
Re:6 months off on their estimates - inexcusable (Score:3, Informative)
Re:6 months off on their estimates - inexcusable (Score:2)
So yes, it IS great the Scaled Composites accomplished their goal. "By the seat of their pants", maybe, but they went with their intuition
Re:6 months off on their estimates - inexcusable (Score:2)
All the sensors and instruments went haywire but they didnt abort, they trusted the intuition of the guys in mission controll that it was only a computer glitch and could be fixed and that there was no need to abort.
If that happened today, the astronauts would have been told to abort befure they even knew what had happened let alone considered if it was fixable.
Re:6 months off on their estimates - inexcusable (Score:2)
They did what they were supposed to do. If the guidance computer had tripped, they'd have aborted
Re:6 months off on their estimates - inexcusable (Score:3, Informative)
but when you've barely done any work so far on fixing the problem (that I'm aware; I haven't seen any test summaries beyond "we got a few tanks to work on now"
Since when does lack of public news releases work done mean there's been no work done? Do you seriously think they're all sitting on their hands over at Nasa because you haven't read an article about what's going on?
Re:6 months off on their estimates - inexcusable (Score:2)
but of course this is Slashdot, where everyone is stupid (or worse) if they don't say exactly what you expect, right?
I hold people to the words they use. "barely done any work" sounds like Nasa isn't even bothering to try to fix this problem. If that's not what you meant I'd suggest using different words that don't imply that.
I'd also suggest that since you aren't a Nasa engineer, maybe you don't understand the complexities of the problem. Saying that Nasa is "clueless" simply because they haven't yet sh
How about some accountability? (Score:4, Insightful)
My advice? Stop work on the ISS, buy some Soyuz spacecraft to service it through the end of its tortured life, and spend the money that would have been spent on the Shuttle for a replacement system.
Re:How about some accountability? (Score:2)
The safetey record is about the same.
Re:How about some accountability? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure who you think "we" are. Even some Shuttle managers freely admit that they were uncomfortable with repeated foam strikes on multiple launches over the years and that it was just a matter of time before enough damage was done to take an orbiter down.
You're right, it's always been known by people in the know that the system has flaws. What I meant was the same "we" who think the Soyuz is safe. It's that same "it's safe until it blows up" mentality in operation. It's the same people who think Burt Rutan has somehow accomplished more than Nasa because Spaceship one in its 3 powered suborbital flights never blew up.
I do think, however, that you can look at the basic design and ask yourself whether it's prone to failure. I find it kind of interesting that the new head of NASA recently said that the US would never again build a launch system where the primary spacecraft and its crew were placed in a position where falling debris from the booster could do catastrophic damage.
That may in fact be true. I'm not a rocket scientist though, so I have no idea of the tradeoffs between the capsule and "attatch to the side" systems. My only point in this whole matter was to refute the original posters claim (and what seems to have become a common belief) that the Soyuz is more safe/reliable than the Shuttle. The capsule design may be one aspect of a safer design, but of course you have to look at the whole system. I don't know that anyone qualified has done that between the Shuttle and Soyuz. The superior safety claim of Soyuz seems to be the old "no accidents.. yet" claim.
The REAL reason (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The REAL reason (Score:2)
Because if they foam-coat all the people there they will float better in the water??
Some government response is better than no government response I say...
how? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:how? (Score:4, Funny)
A Better Question Is: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A Better Question Is: (Score:2)
As for the second point, I hate to break it to you mate but they are movies. The people in there have never actually worked for Nasa!
Re:A Better Question Is: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that people are advocating that private industry take over something (manned orbital flight) that it still hasn't even done once yet. You can pontificate on the virtues of privatizing our manned space missions till your head
Re:A Better Question Is: (Score:3, Insightful)
And the original astronauts didn't all look like cookie-cutter poster boys for Volvo?
High n tight military haircuts, mid to late 30's whiteboys. The epitome of safe n sane. The actual hardcore fighter pilots, like Yeager, didn't make the cut.
Reluctance? (Score:5, Insightful)
So being cautious is now a reluctance to go into space? Maybe they don't want to kill another seven astronauts? They are probably quite expensive to replace.
I would think that NASA want to be in space, as much as possible, but they are being careful because they figure that their last act of absolute incompetence put them on notice. They know that they have to be careful - or their funding will dry up because of the outcry that would result from being stupid enough to not do something as simple as "look at the wing".
Re:Reluctance? (Score:2)
Re:Reluctance? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reluctance? (Score:2)
A billion tax dollars' worth of man-hours should be more important than 7 potential deaths. The astronauts know the risks.
Profitability (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Virgin Spaceways (whatever it's called) will do their thing with ballistic shots, and very probably orbital shots someday as well.
But full-on space programs will be something that only governments will fund for a long time.
Certainly MS could fund a small space program... who knows, maybe Paul Allen can talk Bill into something like that.
Re:Profitability (Score:2, Interesting)
It was probably where Microsoft got the idea for the blue screen of death.
"Free Market" did help! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a pillar of the free market/libertarian ideal. People cannot depend on the government to help them, and most, not all but most, of the time it should not be the place of the government to provide support and assistance.
Persoanlly I think that the government did have a duty here and there was obviously a breakdown in the system.
However, in this situation, and many others, it has shown over and over again that people CANNOT depend on the government and SHOULD not.
Free markets, individual freedoms, limited government, and personal responsibility are the most reliable courses of action.
It won't be private enterprise. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It won't be private enterprise. (Score:2, Insightful)
"It won't be private enterprise that makes NASA irrelevant. It will be the Chinese."
If you extend it a bit further, Chinese will make US irrelevant.
Never (at least not without NASA) (Score:5, Informative)
Submitter is a troll. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a chance in the next decade. The space elevator has the best chance of meeting these goals, and it's still just an idea.
Won't happen. (Score:2)
It won't happen.
Space exploration is precisely the expensive, too-long term kind of planning private companies are notorious for avoiding, as they are driven to next-quarter results by greedy, scruples-less directors and frothing institutional stockholders.
People are fed-up with the growing pains of globalization of poverty and will slowly start to realize that government for the croporations only bring pain and suffering to the majorit
Let's see, next fall (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this a good way to spend money? If it were my money, rather than having spent it return to flight for a program which is almost dead, I would have spent it on something with a future. Rather than trying to patch up a system which never came close to delivering on its promises I would have spent it on a new system, that learned from the mistakes of the old system.
Faith-based "reasoning" fails again (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of New Orleans, the required investments in levees have consistently returned large benefits to the society. Because of the excellent location of the city, it was an efficient hub for shipping that benefited not just the Mississippi River basin, but the entire nation, and even the world. Sure, other ports exist and competed with New Orleans, but the city's ongoing prosperity was proof of how it contributed to the prosperity of all the other communities that helped pay the taxes that maintained the levees.
In the case of NASA, the people who talk about privatization are consistently clueless about the real numbers involved. Actually, this is also complicated by the fact that most of the return on space exploration is in the form of knowledge that has no short-term market value that could attract investors.
However, both New Orleans and NASA are suffering from the side effects of incompetent leadership at higher levels. Some of them are faith-based fanatics who can't deal with the complexities of the real world. Others are short-term profiteers whose only real mission is to steal as much money from the government as possible. A few of them even have delusions of recreating the Holy Roman Empire.
Whatever. For all of them the same response is appropriate. As Rocky said to Bullwinkle, "That trick never works."
Re:Faith-based "reasoning" fails again (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok Shanen, your comments were "insightful" right up to that point. I won't call it "a load of crap", like the AC did, but would ask you to provide evidence that this is truely the case. Otherwise, it simply looks like a cheap shot
Escapism Velocity (Score:4, Funny)
Cold War Relic (Score:2)
Today they try to live the big dream on a shoestring budget.
But it's just what Bush wants. (Score:2, Interesting)
Private industry? NASA failure? Try homeless staff (Score:3, Insightful)
As a weekend help desk guy, I personally have had 3 calls from people out there: 2 of them were living out of hotels. Any time one of them calls up, my coworkers and I give them priority: we couldn't imagine being in their shoes right now. They're still trying to figure out where everyone's gone. Employees from other states are going there to help out their relatives & bring them back with them. They know the "ET" is important. But right now, many don't even have homes.
American Red Cross [redcross.org]
You may even want to find out if anyone in your area is matching donations. I heard Albertsons was.
Are you serious? (Score:3, Insightful)
The idiocy of that statement is so profound, I can only attribute it to higher education. You must have gone to college to write something so moronic (1).
You realize that about 90% of the work done by NASA is actually done by NGOs, right? Boeing [boeing.com], Lockheed Martin [lockheedmartin.com], USA [unitedspacealliance.com] and a whole lot of other contractors do all of the actual grunt work. The overwhelming majority of work done for NASA is done by the private sector. It has been forever. NASA basically just manages what is done. The reason that NASA is having a hard time with space flight is that we're still in space flight's infancy, and space flight is fundamentally challenging. It's difficult to get people and materials off this rock we call home, and more difficult to get them back.
(1) Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Season 2 Episode 1: Peta.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:2)
*(Other People's Pmoney)
Re:Are you serious? (Score:4, Insightful)
All NASA programs, including unfortunately the Shuttle Program as well, have been working under the assumption of "get it done, regardless of the cost". The private sector companies working for NASA have had little incentive to try and knock the price of their efforts down to capture the next level of the market either.
Think about it in terms of just pure economics for the moment, if you will. Larger governments around the world have a few projects, like communication satellites, military surveilance equipment, orbital nuclear weapons (don't say they don't exist... you are fooling yourself if you think that dream), scientific research equipment, and things like the GPS satellite constellation. All of these items are of the sort (with the exception of perhaps strictly comm sats) that will be needed by governments regardless of the cost. Or more to the point, in a competitve global launch market the general price level per launch and what the "market" is willing to pay to get these kind of payloads to go up is about $100 million to $500 million per launch. And that is roughly what traditional commercial space launchers are charging in order to send stuff up.
The next "level" of economic demand to go up into space is for space tourism, but even multi-millionaires are only willing to spend between $10 million and at the upper end about $30 million for a trip into orbit. There is slightly more demand for this than is currently handled by the Russians, but this is about the very upper limit for what a private individual can come up with after nearly a lifetime of incredible success as a private entrepreneur. Those that have more money just aren't the type that would want to spend larger amounts of money (unless you are more like H. Ross Perot and don't care if you blow $100 million on a silly personal PR campaign that goes nowhere). The Russians have been able to capture this market exclusivly, but it is also very small. Boeing is not really interested in servicing this market in part because of how very few people there are that are willing to pay even those modest amounts. Keep in mind that the SpaceX rockets are going to be competitive in this general price range, but there really isn't going to be that many more rocket flights at $10 million per flight as opposed to $200 million per flight, so these private companies are saying essentially, "Why kill the golden eggs when we can continue to charge $200 million per flight?"
Do some simple math: If there are only 100 flights per year at $200 million per flight, compared to about maybe 300 flights per year at $10 million per flight, which price point are you going to try and market your stuff at? You actually start to seriously lose money by lowering your cost, with no real benefits except pissing off your investors and a general "goodwill" to mankind.... usually not a part of the corporate charters of any of these companies.
As Virgin Atlantic and some of the current space tourism companies have found out, there is a huge market for space travel that is in the range of $100,000 to $1 million, especially closer to the $100,000 range. Most middle-income people in 1st world countries will have that sort of money in their lifetime. Perhaps they have to mortgage their house, and certainly it would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try and go up in space for that kind of money, but it is something that many very ordinary people are willing to do.
Not only is space tourism going to be feasable when you can get space launches this cheap, but there are whole new tiers of commercial applications when you can get prices down to this level, including same day or previous day parcel delivery.... when crossing the international date line as an example. This pr
R/W (Score:4, Insightful)
Private industry is only going to explore space if there's a dollar in it. Scaled Composites and Virgin envision space tourism while other companies are looking towards resource mining. Boeing isn't launching probes to the outer solar system for the benefit of all mandkind, they're building satellites for DirecTV to pump more channels of HD video into televisions. While Boeing or Scaled Composites might contract for NASA or other research organizations they're not going to initiate the explorations altruistically.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to generate a profit, it drives people to work harder and become more creative. There's also nothing wrong with diverting tax dollars into blue sky research. NASA needs to rethink the ISS and SST programs. The ISS is never going to do us any good if it's only manned by babysitters rather than researchers. The shuttles aren't terribly useful if they're only being used as extremely expensive construction rigs and aren't launching with any sort of regularity.
What NASA's spending $1bn a pop on can be done far more efficiently with heavy lift vehicles that don't need to use up payload weight on wings and crew compatments. Crews can be sent up in capsules that aren't wasting payload weight on empty cargo bays and unpowered engines. A larger fleet of cheap less flexible vehicles seems like a step backwards but in the long run it ends up being far cheaper. Say you need a large crew to do EVAs to put together a large habitat for the ISS. Two crew vehicles can be launched from different pads (say KSC and Vandenberg AFB) while the habitat module could be launched from another location entirely. A construction crew doesn't pack everyone and their equipment into a single huge truck that can barely fit on the road, they take a couple different specialized vehicles to the site and the crew shows up after picking up coffee.
Put NASA out of... (Score:3, Interesting)
Did anyone else here first read that phrase as "put NASA out of its misery"?
Oddly, when I googled the phrase "put * out of its misery" [google.com] the first result was about... NASA.
Re:private industry? (Score:2)
Re:Which is it? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Which is it? (Score:2)