NASA To Send Luke's Lightsaber Into Space 290
Verunks writes "In honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, NASA will launch Luke Skywalker's original Jedi lightsaber into space along with the crew of the space shuttle Discovery. The launch is slated for October."
Glad to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA must have too much money (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do they let wookies on airplanes? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Next Generation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Glad to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
You could look at it in another way too -- without publicity for the masses (and not just space geeks), theye will lose interest in it. This seems like a very effort free way of raising publicity, and quite different on truly having their wrong focus by launching satellites for fun.
Re:NASA must have too much money (Score:2, Insightful)
Saying a lightsaber doesn't add an extra cost to a shuttle is like saying you should ride the bus free because the bus is driving anyways, and 1 more person won't change the cost of paying for the gas or the driver's salary. But that either means someone else won't be able to get on, or the bus generates less revenue which will simply rollover to either less bus service in the future or higher ticket costs for the rest, to cover for that loss.
There's a REASON there's such a huge pricetag on lifting anything in orbit, and you can't say "well the shuttle's gonna fly anyways so I might as well throw this trinket in", especially when there are a ton of legitimate things waiting YEARS for a chance of being lifted into space.
Re:NASA must have too much money (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad they weigh enough that they don't fit in this flight's spare capacity, like the light saber does. There's a limit to how much each flight can carry. They fit as much scientific stuff as they can on each one. But there's often spare capacity.
You're just wrong.
Re:The Next Generation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Glad to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think NASA could more easily improve their image by putting a few cameras on the shuttle.. and showing us what the astronauts are actually doing when they're going through the procedures to return to earth, say, instead of showing us shot after shot of the landing strip, 4 hours before the shuttle is even scheduled to enter the atmosphere.
Maybe put together some CG of the shuttle doing what it does when the astronauts press the buttons on the flight deck. Show us that when they're going through the procedures.. instead of the same shot of the earth from the ISS for 40 minutes.
Ya know, actually engage the people on the ground in the process.
glass of water (Score:2, Insightful)
The average cost per pound to send to Low Earth Orbit is $3632 - $4587. [1]
WoWz! So why aren't we training horse-jockeys [jockeysroom.com] to be astronauts?
And if each astronaught has a glass of water before getting onto the shuttle? That would be pretty expensive too!
I suspect the weight of the light saber safely falls within the margin of error they build into their fuel calculations and as such won't really cost them any more than they are already going to spend/use in fuel anyway. Well worth it in my opinion. There isn't any reason why we can't make all our endeavors a little more fun and inspiring, it's what humans are all about.
Your tax dollars at work (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Careful... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:NASA must have too much money (Score:1, Insightful)
As for the value of sending Luke Lightsabre into orbit? 9 000 dollars/kg, the value of selling Luke Lightsabre (post-space travel) on eBay? Significantly more I'm betting.
Why would NASA possibly do it? Because they're probably sick of being given bullshit objectives and being underfunded - they're planning to raise some money on the side so they can fund actual research instead of whatever hype-word is currently on the present administrations tongue - remember that they're geeks too and have geeky dreams of seeing progress occur. (or maybe this last part is just my wet dream of a space agency that produces results).
Mark Hamill? (Score:4, Insightful)