5,200 Days Aboard ISS, and the Surprising Reason the Mission Is Still Worthwhile 219
HughPickens.com writes Spaceflight has faded from American consciousness even as our performance in space has reached a new level of accomplishment. In the past decade, America has become a truly, permanently spacefaring nation. All day, every day, half a dozen men and women, including two Americans, are living and working in orbit, and have been since November 2000. Charles Fishman has a long, detailed article about life aboard the ISS in The Atlantic that is well worth the read; you are sure to learn something you didn't already know about earth's permanent outpost in space. Some excerpts:
"Life in space is so complicated that a lot of logistics have to be off-loaded to the ground if astronauts are to actually do anything substantive. Just building the schedule for the astronauts in orbit on the U.S. side of the station requires a full-time team of 50 staffers.
Almost anyone you talk with about the value of the Space Station eventually starts talking about Mars. When they do, it's clear that we don't yet have a very grown-up space program. The folks we send to space still don't have any real autonomy, because no one was imagining having to "practice" autonomy when the station was designed and built. On a trip to Mars, the distances are so great that a single voice or email exchange would involve a 30-minute round-trip. That one change, among the thousand others that going to Mars would require, would alter the whole dynamic of life in space. The astronauts would have to handle things themselves.
That could be the real value of the Space Station—to shift NASA's human exploration program from entirely Earth-controlled to more astronaut-directed, more autonomous. This is not a high priority now; it would be inconvenient, inefficient. But the station's value could be magnified greatly were NASA to develop a real ethic, and a real plan, for letting the people on the mission assume more responsibility for shaping and controlling it. If we have any greater ambitions for human exploration in space, that's as important as the technical challenges. Problems of fitness and food supply are solvable. The real question is what autonomy for space travelers would look like—and how Houston can best support it. Autonomy will not only shape the psychology and planning of the mission; it will shape the design of the spacecraft itself."
"Life in space is so complicated that a lot of logistics have to be off-loaded to the ground if astronauts are to actually do anything substantive. Just building the schedule for the astronauts in orbit on the U.S. side of the station requires a full-time team of 50 staffers.
Almost anyone you talk with about the value of the Space Station eventually starts talking about Mars. When they do, it's clear that we don't yet have a very grown-up space program. The folks we send to space still don't have any real autonomy, because no one was imagining having to "practice" autonomy when the station was designed and built. On a trip to Mars, the distances are so great that a single voice or email exchange would involve a 30-minute round-trip. That one change, among the thousand others that going to Mars would require, would alter the whole dynamic of life in space. The astronauts would have to handle things themselves.
That could be the real value of the Space Station—to shift NASA's human exploration program from entirely Earth-controlled to more astronaut-directed, more autonomous. This is not a high priority now; it would be inconvenient, inefficient. But the station's value could be magnified greatly were NASA to develop a real ethic, and a real plan, for letting the people on the mission assume more responsibility for shaping and controlling it. If we have any greater ambitions for human exploration in space, that's as important as the technical challenges. Problems of fitness and food supply are solvable. The real question is what autonomy for space travelers would look like—and how Houston can best support it. Autonomy will not only shape the psychology and planning of the mission; it will shape the design of the spacecraft itself."
Ground Control... (Score:3, Interesting)
NASA, as far as astronauts go, is very "ground control" centric. To wit:
"Just building the schedule for the astronauts in orbit on the U.S. side of the station requires a full-time team of 50 staffers."
What the true scope of their work is not given.I suspect that a few do the "schedule" part.. it is a 24/7 operation. The rest are doing logistics: What supplies are needed, do we have power, oxygen, fuel.
However, ISS is a very labor intensive thing. To get a document signed off can take dozens of signatures from all over the place. Most of the signatories are really signing to say "nope, this document doesn't impinge on anything I'm responsible for", but still, you need the document signed.
But ultimately, everything is manually done: typically with processes developed in the 70s to use systems designed in the 70s. Send a request to do X to person Y, who verifies that time is available, then they send it to person Z who verifies that power is available, who then sends it to person A, who verifies that there's no conflict with operation Alpha, Beta, then person B verifies there's no conflict with operations Charlie, Delta, and Echo.
ISS operations is like a small village of 10,000 people each of whom have their specialized area of expertise.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
First: Why? everything in life is a risk
Because NASA is funded by politicians, who care very much about bad news. When a shuttle crashes there must be congressional investigations! Congresscretters must be seen doing something about it.
"Proof" in mechanical systems is usually demonstrated through redundancy which only gets you so far: Not nearly as far as the engineers are taught...
It's not the engineers who are confused about this. Nor is it the politicians. Both groups understand the situation well.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that over-engineering is not going to be the way forward, but the greatest value of lessening risk is the PR aspect and it should not be overlooked.
Just look at the people in this thread who argue that the space program and all of the research and the eventual benefits from extraterrestrial energy and resource production are a waste of money. Now, add some deaths to it. It doesn't matter if there are one or two or a hundred.
Those deaths will get exploded in the media in a manner that mirrors how p
Re: (Score:2)
The idea is interesting but I'm not convinced. (Score:2)
Re:The idea is interesting but I'm not convinced. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not like your average scientist can just ask to get whatever tested in microgravity.
It will be even harder for the same scientist to get his stuff tested on a mission to Mars. The problem is of course not the available time (plenty!), but the extra mass, power and space required by the experiment.
Re:The idea is interesting but I'm not convinced. (Score:4, Interesting)
Which highlights what I'd really like to see added to the ISS - a farm module. Test a farm module on the ISS, getting the concept ready for a Mars mission. Do we really plan to send something on the order of 2 years of consumables on a Mars mission, recycling only the water? We need much more complete recycling, and we'll need it for any permanent presence anywhere beyond Earth. For that matter the only reason we don't need it on Earth is because we've got this giant biosphere that has handled the details pretty well for us, up until the past several decades.
I rather like the idea of such a farm module even on Earth. No doubt it would be designed for compactness, efficiency, and minimal hand-holding. Sounds good to me - put one of those in the back yard and cut the grocery bills. (I realize that the initial outlay is likely prohibitive, but the idea is neat.) There are also likely places on Earth where such a thing would be worthwhile, say Antarctica or other inhospitable locations.
(Note that I didn't say that a farm module would use sunlight - that might not work for Mars, and probably not beyond.)
Expert systems (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Or we could cease the pissing contest of getting people to Mars first, ASAP, and continue with our low Earth orbiting ISS investment, and do our long-range exploration and tests using cheaper rocket engines and instruments, which are working very well, especially over time. Hopefully with less financial and environmental costs over time. I'm not anti-science, but can't these questions wait to be resolved, until like 100 years from now at least? Technology always gets cheaper and we have other priorities for
Useless money pit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Useless money pit (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that there's no actual use for people in space, so the practice is useless too.
As far as anyone can tell, there's no actual use for people here, unless you count self-propagation, pollution, and destruction. But any bacteria can do those things.
Re: (Score:2)
As far as anyone can tell, there's no actual use for people here
Quite true, but people have a remarkable resistance to getting killed. What can you do ?
Parent is insightful+++++ (Score:2)
Best comment comeback to anti-space I have ever seen.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not very insightful actually. People on Earth keep themselves alive for the most part. To keep people alive in space needs an infrastructure that cost hundreds of billions of dollars on the cheap end.
And Earth is different HOW?
Re: (Score:2)
Not very insightful actually. People on Earth keep themselves alive for the most part. To keep people alive in space needs an infrastructure that cost hundreds of billions of dollars on the cheap end.
Why do "people" have a special place in existence again? I'm not really sure I get your argument?
Re: (Score:2)
You're rather full of yourself. We can't "destroy" nature - we are nature.
That's actually implied by what the GP said.
Re: (Score:2)
...unless your final goal is permanent human habitation of space.
There would be very little accomplished by doing such a thing, especially when compared with the insane price tag. But, sanity aside, even if you wanted to do something like that, the best first step for such a project would be to practice landing heavy things on Mars. So, let's send more robotic rovers, and make them heavier each time. That way you can combine practice with actual interesting science. When you get to a point where you can land 1000 ton objects safely on Mars, that's when you can start th
Re: (Score:2)
Any 1000-ton payload to Mars is going to have to be assembled on near Earth orbit
I didn't mean to suggest that we start with 1000 tons. Start with 10 tons, and slowly work up from there. But until you can do 1000 tons, there's not much sense in figuring out how to deal with humans in space. And even if you decide that you want to assemble in orbit, I bet that could be done without building a space station.
Autonomy (Score:3)
The fact that NASA allows the astronauts so little authority now to make decisions implies their reluctance to trust human judgement in stressful conditions. Too many variables.
Send the robots first. Figure it out. Then the ones who need food.
Re: (Score:2)
Not a problem. We can send them up with a HAL 9000 that will ensure completion of the mission.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Make space travel commonplace.
Pretty much impossible task. The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation is a harsh mistress.
Re: (Score:2)
The Rocket Equation gives us guidance on how to get around it. Increase exhaust velocity or reduce velocity increments. For lots more detail, see my book ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/S... [wikibooks.org] ), but here are a few ideas:
* Replace some of the bottom part of reaching orbit with higher efficiency engines. That can be anything from subsonic jets (Stratolaunch) to ramjets, to ground accelerators. Replace some of the top part of reaching orbit with electric thrusters transferring momentum to a fractional space
Re: (Score:2)
The US could have done t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:scheduling (Score:4, Insightful)
And here you aptly demonstrate what "just about anyone" in their cluelessness doesn't grasp - there's a vast gulf between a thirty second conclusion, and actual analysis. Among other things, the Crew Survivability study discovered an unexpected failure mode in the titanium structures of the crew compartment.
I can completely guarantee you have no clue what you're talking about. The man-vs-machine debate is one of the loudest, deepest, and bitterest debates there is when it comes to space travel and exploration. There's many people who want NASA to be doing *more* science, and much less of anything having to do with people in space.
You're off by at least twenty years and a second world war's worth of engineering investment. You also fail to note that air travel has an economic function (in connecting existing destinations and enabling economic activity) - while space travel is largely a money pit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> while space travel is largely a money pit.
Space industry worldwide is $300 billion a year, of which NASA is about 6%. Most of the money, and most of the recent technology improvements, are from satellite communications. High efficiency solar arrays and ion propulsion have been used on satellites for about 15 years now. The Dawn asteroid mission (which has electric thrusters) was 7 years later and 1/4 the mass.
Collosal waste of money (Score:2)
Certainly one of the biggest boondoggles ever. At an estimated cost of $150B through 2015, that is $24 million per day! (based on 6250 days by end of 2015). Extending the math, that is just over $1.5 million per orbit.
And for what? What inventions or unique processes have been discovered or perfected and put into use on earth to better our own lives? What scientific results have been significant? (I won't even ask for memorably significant) What non-human experiments were done what could not have been done
Re: (Score:2)
ISS is worth the dollars spent. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd argue this given how little a budget has been given to NASA when compared to things like the F-22 and F-35 programs the US Government runs. People who bedevil the space program aren't looking at the big picture of return we've gotten over the years. Yeah they always can do better but they already have done exceptionally well especially when compared to some military defense contractor spending projects that would dwarf NASA and have no return of value other then money spent in someone's district and a product that was substandard and/or delivered late.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:ISS is worth the dollars spent. (Score:4, Interesting)
And exactly what should they produce then? What do you consider results? And why should we listen to you?
NASA has produced results. Perhaps not the results you like, perhaps they were not as profound or as glitzy as you would like, but they got results. Including a smooth-running ISS, a mars rover that goes on and on and on and on and on, and a new launch system.
Now, I understand that proving that you are a hoopy frood by slagging of NASA on /. is too tempting for some people, but that doesn't mean it is a sane point of view.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That mars rover has produced some interesting information about mars, but in what way does that knowledge benefit me?
You could ask the same about football or Marvell movie adaptations. Mostly entertainment. The Mars rover entertains a different audience.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
and I am equally unhappy about my money being used to subsidize those other things
Tough for you then. But I'm sure you are enjoying other things that have been subsidized by tax money. Also, the Mars rover programs have been fairly cheap for the amount of data returned.
We'd be better served taking NASA's entire budget away and giving it to sir Richard Branson or Elon Musk.
Branson or Musk aren't going to send a rover to Mars. There's no profit in it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Old news (Score:3)
That's old news to anyone actually paying attention. It was highlighted as a problem as far back as the Skylab SL-3 and SL-4 missions. In an email exchange with NASA scientists working with the Flashline Research Station back in 2002 (or so) I outlined the need to streamline communications and transfer some of the decision making and planning authority from the (simulated) mission control to the station commander and from the station commander to his subordinates. Unsurprisingly, the NASA study ended up reaching the opposite conclusion - the existing system worked,and there was no need to even seriously try any other system. That, ultimately, is why they don't have any real autonomy or practice having real autonomy.
Send probes not people (Score:2)
At this point, send probes, not people.
Seems almost all the solar system's objects have been studied most effectively by probes.
Would rather see future space research be to study and send probes to promising 'Earth 2' exoplanets.
If another human-habitable planet is discovered, then might fuel real breakthroughs to get humankind finally spreading across the galaxy to colonize it.
It seems once we see a real Goal (which to me would be finding another human-habitable planet), then we really start working toward
Re: (Score:2)
If another human-habitable planet is discovered, then might fuel real breakthroughs to get humankind finally spreading across the galaxy to colonize it.
Interstellar travel would require unimaginable breakthroughs in propulsion. Even sending an unmanned probe, capable of slowing down to orbit another star, and then communicating over the enormous distance back to Earth is totally impossible with current technology.
What an irrelevant statement. (Score:2)
"We’ve got a permanent space colony, inaugurated a year before the setting of the iconic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey."
Sorry but this is one ludicrous comparison, it's akin to saying a man on the moon was inaugurated long before the 7 wonders of the world.
And where I quit reading as the rest was just going to be sensationalism.
Re:Shut it down (Score:5, Informative)
Different ways of looking at it:
The space program has been, on average, 1.15% of the US budget. Giving it a proportional share of the debt means that it contributed 204 billion.
Even if you consider space exploration as entirely frivolous, it has only contributed 508 billion to the debt (before interest). That amounts to 2.85% of the debt.
Yes, the US needs to get its "house in order". Yes, NASA needs to produce better results in order to justify its existing budget. On the other hand, attacking the space program will do very little to address the debt problem. Actually, it will do very little to address the deficit. (Again assuming that space exploration is completely frivolous, it only accounted for 2.48% of the deficit in 2013.)
Re: (Score:3)
I have probably heard a hundred different times how eliminating a program that is only 1% of the budget will not fix the debt problem.
Re:Shut it down (Score:5, Insightful)
Eliminating space program would mean that lots of R&D wouldn't be done anymore (domestically).
That's a dangerous gamble.
USA should trim the military budget first.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Of course the US is still the remaining superpower in world, look up the definition sometime. It probabably doesn't mean what you think it does.
Re: (Score:2)
I really have a hard time understanding where you get the idea that US is so weak and irrelevant. We spend 1.7 trilliion dollars on defense on this planet and 36.6% (640 billion) of that is done in the US. China is the next most prolific spender on defense and they spend around a third of what the US spends (188 billion).
The comment about legacy yet relevant weapons really doesn't make sense to me.
The value of NASA has never been commercial. It is a pure research area. WE are learning how to live and wo
Re: (Score:2)
That knowledge flows into the private commerce section of our economy and slowly brings benefits that we have yet to imagine.
Exactly how does learning to live and work in space bring commercial benefits ? Or is that "yet to imagine" ?
Re: (Score:2)
Knowledge is funny sometimes. It just doesn't follow narrowly defined lines. It just doesn't go where you think it will go.
One of the enduring legacies of Apollo was managing giant, hi tech endeavors with tens of thousands of people involved. Same sorts of endeavors that bring you giant aircraft, giant boats, enormous power projects, the Internet.
While you can argue about how safe or sane searching for knowledge really is, it's clear that it does have major effects on our economy and ecology.
So tune in,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The value of NASA has never been commercial. It is a pure research area. WE are learning how to live and work in space, which is an environment so alien to us that our bodies don't even function properly. That knowledge flows into the private commerce section of our economy and slowly brings benefits that we have yet to imagine.
I keep hearing this argument, in fact I've been hearing it for around 20 years. And during that time, we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars on NASA. So it's about time to ask... where is all this spin-off technology we've been promised for the past 20 years? Most of the major innovations we've seen are either military (GPS, internet) or commercial (cellular networks, smartphones). It's hard to point to a single transformative innovation to come out of NASA recently, and historically the military has d
Re: Shut it down (Score:2)
You quote two excellent examples. Do you even read your OWN posts?
Re: (Score:2)
really have a hard time understanding where you get the idea that US is so weak and irrelevant
There's a long distance between "superpower" and "weak and irrelevant", no?
We once had a military to fight "two and a half wars", with simultaneous control of every ocean. That's a superpower. We're at around half that strength now. Our naval power is mostly older hulls, and new capital ships are not being built at replacement rate. We'll still be able to project power, no doubt, but not like we used to. Now responding in strength in one part of the world means leaving "opportunities" elsewhere for ter
Re: (Score:2)
NASA and the military have a long, close and contentious relationship. Remember, NASA does few things internally. It outsources most of the manufacturing to other companies. Which companies? Why the very same companies that comprise the military-industrial complex. The Shuttle was a joint Air Force / NASA program (that wasn't terribly smart but that is another story). Many NASA positions require military security clearances.
All of NASA's boosters derived from military stock.
At a lot of levels, they ar
Re:Shut it down (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you name a single instance of a country that stopped all exploration until domestic debts were paid and all people reported that they were happy with things as they are?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You are wrong, the waves of peoples who came to the Americas and various Pacific islands prove you wrong.
Re:Shut it down (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at this way, modern humans have been around for about a quarter of a million years. The first migrations out of Africa were only about 30,000 years ago. If exploration were really some fundamental human constant, it seems odd that we spent 90% of our time in a relatively small portion of one continent.
Re: (Score:2)
I can get to one hand only in the Europe: the Portuguese, the Spanish, the British, the Dutch and the Italians. I'm not as well versed in the history of other parts of the world, but I'm pretty sure that between Asia, Africa, and native populations of the Americas, you'll probably reach some multiple of that number.
Re:Shut it down (Score:4, Insightful)
Exceptions that prove the rule. Out of thousands of cultures, the number of premodern societies that attempted any serious, sustained exploration can be counted on one hand. And really, its doubtful that premodern migrations to the Americas were any kind of deliberate exploration effort. It was probably just nomads following the herds.
Look at this way, modern humans have been around for about a quarter of a million years. The first migrations out of Africa were only about 30,000 years ago. If exploration were really some fundamental human constant, it seems odd that we spent 90% of our time in a relatively small portion of one continent.
Actually, proto-humans migrated repeatedly out of Africa. Homo erectus, Homo antecessor, Homo neanderthalensis, and finally two waves of Homo sapiens moved out of Africa and into Eurasia. North America was colonized repeatedly by Homo sapiens, by the Amerindian, Navajo-Dene, and Inuit peoples. Migration probably is in the genes. Lineages that become widespread are harder to wipe out as a result of drought, famine, climate change, etc. so lineages with some innate tendency to disperse probably tend to survive. But it's kind of a moot point. The places they went to already had atmospheres, normal gravity, ambient temperatures, radiation shielding, abundant game and edible plants. Mars has none of that. It was simple enough to move out of Africa that a cave-man could do it, literally. It doesn't follow that because humans could and did repeatedly move from continent to continent that it's a good idea to try to colonize a cold, barren, airless wasteland millions of miles away.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, most human settlement in new lands has taken place as short moves from existing settlements into new territory. That is human expansion, nonetheless, and has been responsible for most of our occupation of the whole Earth. Where long-distance exploration jumps come in is when a "giant step" is required, say to be first into a new continent. As soon as Musk or anyone else does this for an extraterrestrial destination, the usual legion of incrementalists will follow.
Re: Shut it down (Score:2)
It's taken us this long to get beyond subsistence.
Re: (Score:2)
"Throughout most of history, wandering beyond the horizon would have been suicidally insane and very few to attempted it were ever heard from again."
Not from the tracks our ancestors laid down. We left tools. We traded with other humans far from our homes as far back as we can find records. Humans have wandered over the horizon for as long as we have been on this planet. The archeological record demonstrates our many migrations from place to place as does our complicated genetic heritage. We are wander
Re: (Score:2)
[Citation Needed]
"Too many to name" is not an excuse to not justify a statement. It should always be followed by notable examples so that sources and claims can be checked. Otherwise, it's an impossible statement to defend against and fact-check, and that kind of statement has no place in debate.
So, please, name a few so we can see how accurate that statement is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We can already study space from right here in our computer chairs. Does getting 600 kilometers closer to Andromeda help anything?
If fact, it does. Being outside of the atmosphere means visible light telescopes are tremendously more useful. Radio telescopes on the far side of the moon would be far more effective. Studying each of the planets is far more effective if you're actually on or near them.
Yes we can create robots that go out there and study very specific things. They are planned well in advance, do only very limited things, and frequently fail because they're not totally autonomous and adapt poorly to the unexpected..
Re:Shut it down (Score:4)
Yes we can create robots that go out there and study very specific things. They are planned well in advance, do only very limited things, and frequently fail because they're not totally autonomous and adapt poorly to the unexpected.... case and point: Rosetta's Philae lander....or any number of probes that have malfunctioned or been lost. If you put a single human out there, they can fix the problem. A person can conduct hundreds of experiments where a machine is limited to a few. A person can analyze and interpret results onsite, even design new experiments. A person can build things, onsite.
It's a bullshit argument. The problem is that a robotic mission is going to cost on the order of 1% of a human mission to do the same thing. If there's a risk of the lander failing, the cheapest and easiest solution is to create two or three separate robotic probes which minimizes the chance of failure. Obviously a 100 billion dollar manned mission will be more capable than a 1 billion dollar robotic mission. But a 100 billion dollar robotic mission would be vastly more capable than a comparably expensive manned mission.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Shut it down (Score:2)
I'm betting those nations ended up doing exploration and 'research' in the name of commerce.
Re: (Score:2)
Energy
We can't keep using stored solar energy (fossil fuels) for much longer without making the planet uninhabitable. There is too much resistance to nuclear fission, and we don't seem to be bothering to exploit stored nuclear fission energy (geothermal). Even if we put up solar panels everywhere on this planet it wouldnt be enough, so we are either going to have to go out and put solar collectors in space, or develop our own fussion generators (which may need He3 that may be found on the moon, or in the lo
Re: (Score:2)
Not really, what is the "spice" from space in your example?
On Arrakis, silly.
Re: Shut it down (Score:2)
11? You are way, way off. 18 is the latest.
Re: (Score:2)
The one thing this comment does not recognize is that national debt is not necessarily bad [winthrop.edu]. As long as the debt to GDP ratio [wikipedia.org] is reasonably consistent and less than a year (the US at 0.7 years now), we are not overleveraged.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Shut it down (Score:2)
Re: Shut it down (Score:5, Insightful)
conservatives spend bribing old people with freebies
So Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Pensions (collectively over half the budget) are conservative programs now? Man, when did that happen - I can't keep up with these shifts in the political landscape!
Meanwhile, the defense budget is only 1/6th of the federal budget and falling. The left got their way: America's military dominance is fading. The Pax Americana is ending.
Re: Shut it down (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know where you get your 1/6th figure. US military spending for fiscal 2014 according to the wikipedia page is 43% of the total amount budgeted. Only 1.4% goes to NASA and 0.6% for the National Science Foundation.
Re: Shut it down (Score:4, Informative)
That's 43% of discretionary spending, which is itself about 30% of total spending. Spending Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are both individually 1.5x as large as medical spending.
Here's that in pie chart form [nationalpriorities.org] and in infographic form [nationalpriorities.org]. All numbers from the Congressional OMB.
Re: (Score:2)
You've fallen for the "discretionary spending" sales pitch. This pie chart [wikipedia.org] is a bit old, and still has some war spending that we don't have for 2014, but it's still informative. http://usdebtclock.org/ [usdebtclock.org] is up to the minute, and cites every number.
Mostly what the federal government does is mail checks to old and/or poor people. Stuff like infrastructure and NASA is collectively an afterthought, and much (most?) of that is pork. As others have said, our government is a pension plan with a military.
I'd like
Re: (Score:3)
Meanwhile, the defense budget is only 1/6th of the federal budget and falling. The left got their way: America's military dominance is fading.
The defense budget is 20% of the federal budget, which is around 1/5th. America's defense budget exceeds that of the next 10 largest defense budgets *combined*. The U.S. still has unquestioned air superiority in every conflict it enters, a fleet of aircraft carriers to project that air power, ballistic missile submarines that can rain down nuclear death at a moment's notice, a rapidly growing drone army to silently hunt our enemies from the skies, electronic intelligence and cyberwarfare capabilities to spy
Re: (Score:2)
You must be joking. The U.S. spends more on defense than the next eight countries combined [http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison].
Re: (Score:2)
Relative spending doesn't matter the way you think it does. For example, it doesn't matter how much we spent if there's no aircraft carrier in a particular ocean the month we need one, and that requires a fixed minimum count of hulls. We've fallen below that count (and it will fall over time) - now we can pick a few places where we can project power, but as soon as we respond to one crisis, any asshole tinpot dictator can see we're tied up there and can send troops across his border.
All of which is only r
Re: (Score:3)
America's military dominance is still more than enough to ensure no nation will take up arms against the US. The current threat to Pax Americana isn't military action from another nation, but US military actions abroad that foster insurgency and terrorism. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq have shown that military dominance isn't enough to win a war against a determined population.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, unlike the billions given to ILLEGAL aliens, wefare queens so they can continue to pop out more & more children. The "welfare" et al budget is many times that of Veterans, military, senior citizens payouts. Both parties in some part stopped long ago doing "the business of the country", and instead, concentrated on doing whatever keeps them in power.
The govt, state or federal doesn't give billions to illegal aliens. On the other hand, they pay sales taxes, income taxes and social security taxes like everybody else. Of course, if their employer pays them under the table or doesn't report and remit those taxes to the govt., well, the problem is with the employer, not the immigrant. As for "welfare," well let's be fare. If the so called job-creators actually created jobs with the record profits they are reporting, then maybe they wouldn't have to pay so
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't we skip Mars and set our sights on mining precious metals from the asteroid belt. Much more complicated, but:
Planetary Resources says that platinum from a 30-meter long asteroid is worth 25Ã"50 billion USD.
It costs more for the fuel to de-obit platinum safely than the value of platinum. We can't start there. We should either:
1. Find a country we really don't like, and declare it "America's new platinum mine", so we can skip the whole "safely" part of "de-obit platinum safely"; or
2. Start with a CHON asteroid. Most of the expense of space past LEO is the cost of the fuel to lift the fuel. If we could make endless fuel in orbit, well, whole new worlds of space exploration open up to us. (Plus then it's cos
Re: (Score:2)
Asteroids seem to deorbit pretty effectively on a fuel budget of zero.
Your return chunks of asteroid are their own ablative. Ideally you'd give them as optimal of a reentry shape and trajectory as possible, but you wouldn't brake them, you'd just aerocapture, and then give them just enough of a drogue chute that they don't disintegrate fully on impact.
Re: (Score:2)
Asteroids seem to deorbit pretty effectively on a fuel budget of zero.
Only for a limited range of sizes. Too small, and they'll completely burn up. Too big, and they'll explode on impact.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is why you send as optimal of a size and shape as possible. Note that asteroids normally come in randomly and have random shapes. Humans can have a huge impact on the behavior by choosing an optimal shape and trajectory. And, as mentioned, drogue chutes could be used to further reduce the free fall velocity - not for a gentle impact, simply to keep the velocity down to a level that it won't completely obliterate itself in the atmosphere or on impact.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly - like I said, just pick someone we don't like, and deorbit all the chunks of asteroid we want to down on them, then just pick up the pieces. :)
Seriously, the scenario as I understand it is: we'd park an asteroid in a high orbit (you wouldn't want it dangerously low), maybe above GEO. Slicing off a chunk of platinum itself takes a bunch of energy, but lets pretend we could use a solar furnace or something (seems plausible). We've still got to change the orbit for a chunk of metal for a high orbit
Re: (Score:2)
By picking the shape and trajectory, we can have quite good accuracy on where to land the debris. Pick a piece of federal desert land and there you go.
Bad assumption right from the beginning. That's a terrible waste of energy. You mine an earth-crossing asteroid. Chunks mined off an earth-crossing asteroid can be put onto an earth-intersecting trajectory with only the tiniest of delta-V (you might have to wait a long time y
Re: (Score:2)
Maxwell and Newton were one-in-a-million. (if not more) Do we really want to only harness that small a portion of the human race's mind-power? Yes there will always be some who will have found their motivation in the natural world, and don't need any artifice. But is there really a problem with providing inspiring artifice? Does that make contributions those people make worthless? They may well be second-rate compared to Maxwell or Newton, but that also takes in the vast majority of mankind. To do bet