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Space Science

Sounds from Polar Lander? Well, Maybe Not 121

Posted by Hemos from the deeming-it-lost dept.
rosewoodwrote to us saying that those faint signals from the Mars Polar Lander have turned out to be much ado about nothing. NASA has said that based on the fact that other sites have been unable to hear those faint sounds, the sounds were probably terrestrial in origin.
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Sounds from Polar Lander? Well, Maybe Not More

Sounds from Polar Lander? Well, Maybe Not

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  • From the martians! Really, this is too bad. i was sorta hoping the plucky little rover would pull through.

  • I know what it was! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "ET phone paramedics! Get this %$#@ thing off me! Damn humans!"
  • Probably just Calvin & Hobbes playing, like with the Viking probe. :) Or extra-terrestials trying to contact us.

    Anyway, these space programs must be quite expensive because NASA has been hunting & hoping for signals from the probe since the 'crash' and still keep going.

    Actually it'd be very nice to see their programs advance and not get setbacks like this. Because I want to code my last lines of Linux code in outer space. :)

  • It probably was jodi foster trying to drum up hype for another bad movie. (2 hrs and the damn alien was her father?!?!? GRRRRR)

  • What really happened (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Martian Picture Association (MPA) managed to get an injunction giving them a monopoly on Martian pictures.
  • We are sorry to report that the faint signals heard over the past several days are not coming from the polar lander, Its only aliens.
  • OK NASA. Let's just admit it. The Polar Lander pancaked.

    BTW, to the moderators. Pancaked is a term for going splat, this is not a pancake troll.

    kwsNI

  • I hope that this will not stop NASA or other Space agencies from going to Mars. What would be good is if NASA and the european space ageny joined forces and then sent a similar lander to Mars. Then America would not have all the costs.

    I am sure that there is enough money floating around, and if there was some cooperation between europe and America on this then maybe, just maybe all those Americans will stop saying 'spend less on Space and more on Welfare'.
  • TURN THE STEREO DOWN ALREADY!!!
  • Are we supposed to buy into this lame weather balloon story again?

    NASA should fess up and release the alien heads to the public.

  • New job for all those SETI screensavers... (Score:3)

    by maroberts ( 15852 ) on Thursday February 17, 2000 @04:20AM (#1265513) Homepage Journal
    ..search for signals from Polar Lander.

    Why couldn't they have given it a mobile phone ? You appear to be able to use them almost anywhere else. Maybe next time they should install a few mobile phone antenna masts in the vicinity of the landing zone as a backup to the backup comms system. :=)
  • Not!
    So it turns out CNN has been interfering with their dishes.
    Big deal.
  • I have heard on good authority that the signals we recieved earlier have been translated and they in fact a message that came from mars, the message contained the following data; "If You Keep Sending This Junk To Us, We Are Going To Get Pissed Off."
  • Being a Dutch amateur-astronomer, the news of a Dutch radiotelescope looking for the Mars Polar Lander sounded nice to me. Finally a small country like the Netherlands can help a large organisation like NASA finding one of their landers.
    Unfortuneally the Netherlands is a small country which is very high populated, so the amount of background interference is very high. We sometimes want to take a telescope out of the city to watch nebulas etc. but background interference is everywhere. If you look at air-photographs of Holland during night, you see one big light. That's probably the reason that our radio-telescope didn't find anything: a signal so faint as the one expected from the Mars Polar Lander is undetectable around here :((

  • Should we give them a break? (Score:3)

    by Sway ( 153291 ) on Thursday February 17, 2000 @04:26AM (#1265518)
    I always have mixed feelings when a NASA project goes awry. Sure the project cost millions of dollars and all it did was teach us that Polar Landers don't bounce well. All I know is I couldn't even begin to pretend to dream about sending something to another planet. First of all, I have the worst sense of direction. I'd get lost in a tunnel. Some of you may work on systems just as complex, but to me, every NASA stunt that DOES work is magical. I couldn't get enough of the Mars Pathfinder, and I'm not even into astronomy or planet science or whatever that field would be.

    I just think that we should simply encourage new technologies rather than laugh everytime another space robot goes boom. I once saw a show or something about scientists developing these little sensors that were so small and light that, when the machine that got them to a planet ejected them, they would kinda just fall to the ground and scatter like a spilled bag of Cheetos. It would be these Cheeto-bots that would take all the readings and data. It sounded like a cool idea to me at the time. I should think that if UMass students are doing graphic design [slashdot.org] on blood cells, we could build a Cheeto size robot.

    Of course this is all coming from an Art major. So feel free to ridicule me with Scientific jargon.

    Peace. Sway icq 5202646
    Peace. Sway

  • Unknown (Score:2)

    by 348 ( 124012 )
    "We saw something ... that had all the earmarks of the signal and we felt we had to check it out," project manager Richard Cook said. "Based on the latest results, it is unknown to us what exactly the signal means, the signal we have recorded, I'll play it for you now."

    kackle kackle, buzz buzz asckk asckk bzzt fffffiiiirrrr bzzt sssssssttttttt kackle kackle pppppppooooossssss asckk asckk ssssstttttttttt

  • have been unable to hear those faint sounds, the sounds were probably terrestrial in origin.

    Surely the sounds where from terrestrial originin. Everybody knows that sound do not travel in space ;-)

    I did not know that Radio telescope where in fact giant microphones.

  • My own recipe to win the Space:

    1 - develop telepresence, i.e. remote control via Virtual Reality and sensorial feedback. With that, we don't have to build expansive life-supporting space infrastructures. And such technology will be greatly useful on Earth, too.

    2 - Develop faster-than-light communication. Well, this is the SF part. Without that, telepresence would be limited to the Moon.
    Any idea out there?
  • You forgot to mention your name was Bill Clinton.
  • "Why couldn't they have given it a mobile phone ? "

    Actually if I remember correctly when the lnader was supposed to land the smaller probes that detached from the lander basically had the equivlent of a cell phone that dialed the global surveyor to relay a signel back to earth.

  • Re:New job for all those SETI screensavers... (Score:3)

    by Mindwarp ( 15738 ) on Thursday February 17, 2000 @04:37AM (#1265526) Homepage Journal
    Mainly because, due to budget cuts, NASA couldn't afford the roaming charges from Mars.

    --

  • Those faint signals are really the Martian version of Jerry Springer being broadcast live.. it looks like Marvin the Martian wants to blow up Earth because it's obstructing his view of venus but the government insists that it's useful because it keeps sending spacecraft over for dissection and provides comic relief for the martians... so Marvin pulls out a vaporizer and #$!.. NO CARRIER

  • Sure they do............

    I mean when Voyager flies past us, it goes 'Voooooooom' and all those space battles, X-wings and Tie-Fighters going 'zapzap' 'powie' 'kersnuffle' (well ok, maybe not 'kersnuffle')

    And the explosions, planets and ships going 'bang' (but very loudy)

    I mean if there wer no sound in space, the gigantic spaceship would go past going ' ' (loudly), release the hoardes of smaller ships, which would go ' ' (more hight pitched), shoot each other with ' ' and ' ' and ' ' (well maybe not ' ') and finally the plane would explode with a spectacular ' '

    Are you telling me Hollywood is wrong and the boring guy with glasses at school was correct all along?

    I think I'll cry

    Troc

    PS ;) for the Humour-impaired
    • NASA should fess up and release the alien heads to the public.

    I'd much prefer it if the aliens would release the NASA heads to the public.


    -Jordan Henderson

  • This is too bad. Shit happens I guess.
    After the Polar Lander was lost, I recall NASA saying they were going to use the orbiter to try to get images of the landing site to see if there was any sign of the lander. Were there any images released?

  • Probable failure scenario (Score:3)

    by coreman ( 8656 ) on Thursday February 17, 2000 @04:51AM (#1265532) Homepage
    from http://www.reston.com/nasa/watch.html

    16 February 2000: Mars Polar Lander Failure Uncovered? According to someone@jpl.nasa.gov: "A potential problem with the MPL descent sequence may have been located. During footpad deployment for the MPL, tests indicate that the touchdown sensors may have thought that the spacecraft had landed due to the force of landing gear deployment. If this occurred, the spacecraft would have separated from its parachute and descended normally to an altitude of forty meters. When the radar indicated this altitude, the spacecraft was programmed to descend at constant velocity until it touched down. But if the footpad sensors indicated a touchdown, the spacecraft would have shut off its descent engines at 40 meters altitude, dooming the mission."
  • I think you mean Venus. Mars' atmosphere is mostly Carbon Dioxide, so there's not much Oxygen to actually oxidise anything with. Venus has a very nasty atmosphere (I.E huge clouds of sulphuric acid) that tend to corode things.

  • Cheaper, Faster... Better? (Score:3)

    by Orville ( 104680 ) on Thursday February 17, 2000 @04:53AM (#1265535) Journal
    This type of thing is becoming a little too typcial. NASA has been forced to do "less with more" and have tried to push a lot of spacecraft projects out the door in a hurry to get the PR gains, but seems to take an awful lot on shortcuts.

    In the 'heyday' of Pioneer, Voysger (even the Galileo and Cassini projects) the projects were getting more expensive and 'bloated' (according to the Congressional budgets) This money wasn't just being thrown away, but spent on backups, backups, and more backups and a lot of testing. (As a matter of fact, an "extra" spacecraft was often built to work out the bugs...)

    The result: even through seeming distaster, these spacecraft did some amazing things:

    • Voyager 2 was able to continue the "grand tour" of the solar system even though its systems were *pummeled* by particles in Saturn's rings. (There was a project that measured the density by 'listening' for spacecraft collisions on the plasma wave antenna)
    • Galileo returned a huge amount of data even though the primary antenna was crippled.
    I guess my point is that cranking out cheaper spacecraft in a hurry is not the best way to go about things. (Gee... sounds like software development) It would seem prudent to possibly have fewer missions if the extra time and budget to devote to testing and double-checking. (Granted, landing a spacecraft on another planet *is* a tricky thing, but hey, the Viking series seemed to do pretty well..)

  • No! (Score:1)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 )
    It's my opinion that NASA hasn't been using the technology available to it to build "better, faster, cheaper" technology. There are several commercial institutions getting ready to kick off their own satellite launch programs simply because it would be cheaper for them to do it than NASA. NASA continues to use the antiquidated space shuttle even though /far/ superior technology exists. What's the most expensive component of the space shuttle? It's the main tank - and it costs a small fortune. Why not use technology from the x2 project and throw away the tank altogether? We have airplanes that for all intents and purposes can obtain low earth orbit.. add some maneuvering jets and you got a spacecraft - why does it cost a billion dollars to do THAT?!

    No, NASA is wasting my taxpayer dollars, and unless they get their act together, I'm not going to be terribly sympathetic. Yes, space exploration is a worthy goal - but there are other organizations that can be created to accomodate our exploration than NASA... in my opinion, it has failed it's charter.

  • This thing is SO pancaked that the Martians are probably pouring syrup on it right now.

    To the moderators. Pancaked is a term for going splat, this is not a pancake troll and I am not in anyway, shape or form trolling with things about food. I am simply expressing my agreement with Mr. kwsNI that the polar lander is flatter than Natalie Portman's chest.


    Munky_v2
    "Warning: you are logged into reality as root..."

  • As everybody with an opinion and the belief that they should control national policy comes schleppin out to shout their theories... blah. Big militaries suck. Little militaries suck. No military sucks. There's always some tradeoffs and some advantages and goddammit this sudafed is makin me freak out so I'll shut up now.
  • Wow it must be too early in the morning for me to speak english. Sorry about that it should be:

    If I remember correctly the smaller probes the lander was supposed to detach in orbit, had the equivlent of a cell phone that dialed into the global surveyor to relay a signel back to earth.
  • This is rather amusing.... at least to anyone who's familiar with the work of Oscar Wilde

  • Re:Should we give them a break? (Score:3)

    by cowscows ( 103644 ) on Thursday February 17, 2000 @04:59AM (#1265542) Journal

    I think nasa takes way too much heat from all sides. First off, they've got a really difficult job. The fact that they're pretty much the only organization doing the stuff that they're doing testifies that it's a bit more than just a hobby. They're constantly being blasted for wasting money, even when they're suffering constant budget cuts. And they try and fight these issues with their "Better, Cheaper, Faster" policy, and they're getting their asses kicked over that with words like incompetent, and careless.

    I'd just like to point out, if you watch some videos from around the beginning of the space race, back when space exploration and rocketry had a far larger budget, you'll see rockets and stuff blow up. Lots of them. Watch a special on it on the History channel or something. Half the damn things blew up before they even left the ground. Back then people realized that sending stuff into orbit isn't all that easy, and throwing more minds and resources at the problem works better than cutting funding and whining.

    I think a problem is that with things the space shuttle program being very sucessful (with a couple exceptions of course), people have unfair expectations for NASA. Nobody cares about shuttle flights anymore, they haveta pull pr stunts just to get attention for doing anything right. When you percieve something as a routine, you'll come down on someone a lot harder for screwing up. But people need to realize, no matter how routine a manned shuttle mission is, it's completely different than sending stuff to mars, and then having it work completely on its own.

    I pity NASA...brilliant people choking on red tape thrown at them by people who understand so little.

  • NASA opted for a cheap, quick fix to Congress' habitual pilfering of research funds to buy weapons for a war nobody wants to fight.

    The result? We're more ignorant about Mars -now-, than we were when the Viking probes landed.

    America has a simple choice, IMHO. It can spend vast sums of money on weapons, most of which are likely to be banned by International treaties before they are ever deployed. OR it can spend that same cash on raising educational standards, improving the conditions of those on welfare, AND enhancing space technology.

    "But what about potential invaders?" bleat the Hawks.

    If your technology is advanced enough, there -are- no "potential" invaders. There is no threat so great that a sufficiently enlightened civilisation cannot build a non-offensive defence.

    By bleeding NASA dry, and by NASA opting to be top-heavy, America has no central resource for space R&D. Indeed, it has no resources for space R&D at all. All the high-tech eggs are in that one basket. The Polar Lander is proof that Congress prefers scrambled.

  • Yeah, have you tried to play Wing Commander 4 with the sound off? Or hit mute during all of the space scenes in Star Wars? It SUCKS.

    Hey, I was the boring guy with glasses in school.

    kwsNI

  • It is unfortunate. NASA keeps screwing up, and people are losing any interest in a space progrem. Personally, I think it is very important to continue our exploration of space... but I do not think that a private company would be able to generate the funding necesary to do the things that really need to be done. That money most likely needs to come from the tax-payers. Seriously, what mega corporation out there really cares if we are able to put a man on Mars? Yet I think it is in all our best interests that we do just that.

    The only real chance to individually fund it is to find large individual benefactors... like say Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. But giving money for a space program is not the most popular thing right now... given the general public outlook on it.
  • Anyway, these space programs must be quite expensive because NASA has been hunting & hoping for signals from the probe since the 'crash' and still keep going.

    Actually, I think it was probably more a mix of wanting a little good pr if possible, and just a sense of disbelief or maybe even a slight refusal to let go.

    Imagine that you lost your dog. If you're like most people, you'd be kind of upset and you'd go looking for it. Now imagine that you had spent a few years of your life, building this dog from scratch, programming its brain, etc...oh yeah, and this dog cost just a bit more than the average puppy (say $100mil+), and that money came from an orgainzation that is already having a hard time to justify even their laughably small funding. Of course you're going to spend some time putting up signs, and driving around the neighbor hood yelling the dog's name.

    I just hope that this doesn't set off another round of media bashing on Nasa, especially since they already got it for the polar lander.

  • I saw the result of the measurements done by the Dutch radioastronomers [cnn.com], that even made it to CNN [cnn.com] and the campus newspaper [tudelft.nl] (in Dutch ;-) , and, as predicted, there was no signal there. Just a stripe in a nearby frequency that could be anything...

    I did not see the following ones, where they would try to point to another spot on the sky and check for the same signal again, and try to prove its Earthly origin ...

    You can see the radiotelescope here [tudelft.nl], the staff, and the equipment, but the data analysis was done afterwards at the university. They managed to produce some extremely cool plots but no traces of the lander. :-(

  • Now low earth orbit is starting to become possible for aircraft. To a significant extent, this is a result of the National Aerospace Plane [ornl.gov] (which curiously enough, was conceived by engineers working on the Avro Arrow [maverick2.com])

    Be happy NASA did that work, or you wouldn't have low orbits possible from aircraft.

    Also, NASA would love to forget about this low earth orbit crap. Carl Sagan and others have been haranguing it for years to do some Real Work [slashdot.org]. Funding has been cut, so they have been required to change to the "faster, better, cheaper" model. It's a good idea; some $200 million probes will be lost. But no $5 billion probes are lost.

    The Soviets beat the US into orbit, were damn close for the moon, yet none of their Mars probes survived. That NASA has been successful shows a great deal of technichal excellence.

    The greatest hope for space exploration is China. They have a big space program, which will, hopefully, scare the Americans into spending more on space to beat the "Communists", like they did against the Soviet Union.

  • Reality check: it is not my fault that homeless people are homeless!

    Since you live in a community, you have community rules and community obligations and community advantages. Question: whose fault is it that a certain form of community does not work for certain individuals? Answer: not answerable. Question2: do you care about the people around you? Answer: answer yourself, but don't start complaining if your answer boomerangs back to you. Btw, the vs has the highest CRIMERATE in the world, despite of its large community enforcement agency. THIS IS the boomerang mentioned...

  • to: nasa
    from: big green dude

    please continue to send tasty satelites in our general direction [stop] they coincide nicely with our breeding cycle [stop] failure to comply would be bad [stop]

    My .02
    Quux26
  • Knowing humanity as I know it, I am terrified of the 'average joe' with a handgun.
    I am not so fearful of the same guy with a knife.
  • And in related news, the Martians have launched a lawsuit against earth for littering. This is the largest lawsuit since the MPAA tried to sue the internet over DVD encryption.

    kwsNI
  • Damn those terrestrians! Oh, wait... thats us. Doh!
  • Sorry, but the movie was pretty lame. One of my favorite books ever.
    ---
  • And if America followed your advice, what would we have? America would become England or -- worse -- Canada, bankrupting itself on ineffectual social programs and depending on the good graces of a military superpower for protection against anyone with a slingshot and a rock.

    "The entire concept of having a standind military is outdated..." I laughed my head off when I heard this one. Obviously the product of someone who's grown much too accustomed to not having guerillas or angry neighbors pointing assault weapons at their ass on a daily basis. Go live in Hebron or South Korea and tell me how you feel.

    Never mind the American military pulled Europe out of the fire -- twice -- and kept the Soviets at bay (as inefficient as their weapons might have been, when you're outnumbered 10 to 1, things tend to even out). Never mind the scientific, technological, and medical advances that military-sponsored research has brought.

    Give me a call when your eyes open.
  • This is certainly too bad, but not especially surprising. Considering how long the probe has been out of contact, the chances that it was still operational had to be roughly nil. That, and the fact that the Global Surveyor didn't pick up any signals when they tried exactly this experiment before ... as I said, not too surprising.

    However, NASA should be praised for trying, and especially for having the guts to make an announcement like this, despite the low chances of success. What other government agencies do you know of that will come out and say "This probably isn't going to work, but we'll keep you posted anyway" ?

    In the end, lets just hope NASA (and the people holding NASA's pursestrings) have learned a few lessons. There's nothing wrong with "faster, better, cheaper" as a design objective, but if you want to minimize the failure rate, you can't cut all the way to the bone. $5 mil more and we'd know what happened to the lander.

  • I don't think yoir quite on track. It wasn't the landing gear controlled from JPL, it was MFN2K.

    Not only do I think this was done by Martians at a the probes border routers, but also on all routers within the NASA network. Programs like AED (Alieneldraht) attempt to determine if they can successfully send packets with forged alien addresses, and both it and MFN2K (Martian Flood Net 2000) have code to randomize packets on a per probe basis (not exactly GRITS compatible (Global Redundant Interstellar Troll system) , but still pretty clever and effective.) This means that if you have a /16 probe communications network with several open sourced probe-lets, the alien agents could forge the final two octets, looking like they are coming from probes on Mars. Depending on NASA's probe infrastructure and the Governments political relationship with a particular set of Martians, this can either force the probe to have to sniff on *each* planet, or do its own planet-by-planet debugging of packet flows to locate the actual planet(s) sending the. If no Alien can forge source addresses beyond its own planet, the task is greatly simplified (and you only need to put filterprobes on one planet to stop the flow from one alien agent host.)

  • 2 - Develop faster-than-light communication. Well, this is the SF part. Without that, telepresence would be limited to the Moon.

    Actually... Maybe not. If the sensors on the craft could see well into the future, say give about an hour warning of any impending collisions so that the route could be adjusted, remote controlled navigation could work. Of course, faster than light communication would enable much more flexibility. I don't know for sure that is is scifi. Before Chuck Yeager, everyone said the sound barrier was impenetrable. And there are slight indications that some deep space objects travel faster than light. Besides, just because you can't linearly travel faster than light doesn't mean you have to travel linearly to your destination.

  • I suppose if those faint radio signal were terrestrial in origin, that's not nearly as exciting.....



    LOL

  • Yeap, time to give it up. It's ether scattered all over the landscape or it landed in the equlivant of a martain trailer park and right now is being parted out.

    "What the hell is it M"ukk's? Don't put your lips on it!"

  • I think The Onion [theonion.com] summed it up best...

    "Mars Lander staggers into NASA headquarters drunk, broke"
  • Russia not a threat? You must miss that their fighter aircraft are some of the most advanced in the world, a match for ours technologically, and able to operate from less built up airfields. The MiG-29 can operate from a grassy field. I'd love to see an F-16, or any US fighter do that without exploding from FOD damage. The Russian infantry weapons beat ours in some respects. Their rifles are more reliable than our M-16. They use .30 caliber rounds so they are less deadly than our .223(its true, too much to go into here.) The point is all things balance out. The Russian armed forces if they could be brought up to the funding and morale levels of US forces would be exceedingly dangerous, nearly a match for ours. And if it wasn't for our head start, they would beat us. Don't dismiss the threats that are out there. There are alot that could erupt into war against US interests. Thus we must remain ready to fight for those interests.
  • The UHF system only puts out 6 or 7 watts max and that's through an omnidirectional antenna. I tried getting the radiation pattern for the antenna but they think omnidirectional is truly omnidirectional.
  • LOL!

    Not used to gaving guerillas or unfriendly neighbors? This deserves to be marked up for humour. England has been in a state of virtual war for 2/3rds of my life. My home city was almost destroyed by the largest conventional bomb since World War 2. When I've walked down the streets, I see bomb-proof waste bins, designed to contain explosions.

    I have grown up around armed conflict. I've been to schools, where lessons were interrupted by reports of who had just sunk which ship. The beaches I used to go to had "Danger, Sea Mines!" signs along the coast.

    I've found unexploded bombs, whilst metal detecting. My landlord, when I was at University, was a tail-gunner for The Dambusters. A great uncle was one of those involved in The Great Escape. I have probably more direct experience with armed conflict than the majority of non-military Americans. And, frankly, it sucks.

    There's nothing glorious about war. War IS hell, and hell deserves to be condemned for what it is.

    As for the Americans pulling the Europeans out of the fire - there would BE no America if England hadn't single-handedly defeated the entire Luftwaffe, WITHOUT help from the oh so mighty US of A.

    I'd gladly go to South Korea, if I'd the budget to build effective ECM systems, missile and projectile interception systems, and a nice, high-speed, high-efficiency vehicle. Sod the Korean threat! Given that, there's not a damn thing anyone on either side of that purile war could do.

    Better still, I'd gladly build a rocket capable of carrying me, life-support systems, and PURELY defensive systems and fly to the moon or Mars. For the same reason that England remains the ONLY country never to have been invaded, for over 1,000 years (and even then, it was by invitation), not a single military power on Earth would be capable of shifting any homestead I chose to make there.

    You can spend your money on progress, OR destruction, but NOT both. The military nations choose destruction, and as you can see, their technology is floundering and they are all but dead, socially.

  • This isn't rocket science...or is it? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Stating the obvious, getting to space is still a difficult venture.


    The US doesn't have problem just with Mars missions...it's Delta launch vehicles are not the most reliable also, and the shuttle fleet is aging. Japan just recently had a failure launching a satellite. Russia....where to begin? We'll see if the fledgling Chinese program can avoid problems. Will they steamroll over problems in order to get the job done?


    It seems the ESA has avoided problems for a while; they specialize and do one thing well: launching other people's stuff. Is that the way to go? Should NASA specialize on making landers and instruments and leave the launches to other countries and private industry?


    Yes, we need accountability for the use of our money, and we also expect returns. We also need an understanding that, despite our starry-eyed Hilton-in-space dreams, space exploration is still somewhat new, getting there and doing something other than just orbiting is difficult, and that most of the successes we do have (SOHO, Hubble, Chandra for some) are hardly ordinary achievements.

  • The US has Harriers - bought from the UK! - which are quite capable of taking off from a grassy field. In fact, sod the field. You can take off from any forest clearing physically capable of holding the aircraft, with ZERO risk of damage.

    The Harrier can't outfly a MiG, true, but it CAN out-manoever it. You can't hit what you can't see.

    Of course, you don't really need aircraft to deal with aircraft. Most modern aircraft have very sophisticated and therefore sensitive electronics. Confuse the computers, arc the switches with a high EMP, and watch the aircraft blow themselves up.

    As for infantry weaponry, armies march on their stomachs (Napoleon). Take out the supply lines, and the toughest army in the world will rapidly disintegrate. Sure, some soldiers know which bugs to eat, but if you're using more calories than you're gaining, you're going to fall over, eventually. It's not an IF, merely a WHEN. If timing is tight, throw in some artificial snow, or drop firecrackers from a glider. Adrenaline rushes and cold both consume a massive amount of energy. Energy they're not replacing.

    So far, I seem to have dealt with most of the Russian threat with a radio dish, a generator, a few Molotov Cocktails, and some bog-standard psychology. To produce the same effect, with much higher death rates, America needs to spend several trillion dollars, plus an unknown (but probably comparable) amount in it's black budget. Money it -COULD- be spending on creating a healthier, more enlightened civilisation.

    There's nothing wrong in protecting yourself from aggression, but when that involves beating others to a pulp IN CASE they think about doing anything, it's not the others who are the aggressors.

  • Actually a couple of 15 year olds with too much time on their hands managed to launch a DDOS attack on the Mars Polar Lander, flooding it with so much data that NASA could not connect to it. The signal they though came from the lander was actualy the inter-planet version of 404 Not Found.

    ;)

    -dvorsd

  • As for the Americans pulling the Europeans out of the fire - there would BE no America if England hadn't single-handedly defeated the entire Luftwaffe, WITHOUT help from the oh so mighty US of A.

    Actually, the Luftwaffe was still active when the US came into the war. Shot down quite a few US aircraft too. And as for their being no america? WHo in gods name would have successfully invaded and conquered? No nation had the naval capability to launch an invasion. Any fleet would have been destroyed before it got anywhere vital. At most we might have lost Alaska and the island territories. Remember the top two navies in the world were the British and the American. And if Britian were defeated, the surviving government officials would have fled to Canada and cooperated to keep US shores secure. Not to mention the fact that if they did manage by an act of god(thats what it would take) to land a serious invasion force on the US mainland, there were quite a few guns in the hands of private citizens, who would stand up and fight off any invader. The US would not fall. Lose territory, yes, but even if the other allies failed the US would have held out. You cannot defeat a people that are 100% behind a war for the survival of their people, who have more industrial might than any other nation, who produce enough food to feed the entire planet, with some of the most advanced technology in the world, fighting on their home ground, with freedom to own personal weapons. Only a fool expects to win against that sort of enemy. It would literally take an act of god for the axis to conquer the US.

  • I guess my point is that cranking out cheaper spacecraft in a hurry is not the best way to go about things. (Gee... sounds like software development) It would seem prudent to possibly have fewer missions if the extra time and budget to devote to testing and double-checking. (Granted, landing a spacecraft on another planet *is* a tricky thing, but hey, the Viking series seemed to do pretty well..)

    In an ideal world yes, but NASA isn't half the agency it used to be. Even apart from the funding issue, it doesn't have the overwhelming public support that it enjoyed in the heyday of the space race, when beating the USSR was a matter of national pride. People (and I mean the average Joe here, not the enlightened /. elite :) ) don't really care any more about what NASA are doing or what's going on - "Oh, it's another Shuttle launch to put a satellite into orbit. *Yawn*."

    If NASA don't do at least something then the budget-makers are going to decimate their funding even further, saying "Oh well, they aren't using the money any way." If they were to attempt a large-scale mission such as the ones you mentioned this would take up all of their budget for years and leave them open to criticisms of being wasteful with their money. While the current spate of small, cheap missions isn't doing as well as they might have hoped, they can do enough missions so that they can turn around at any point and say "Look, here's what we've accomplished in the last year. We're still active and worthwhile."

    One of the major problems I think is that the technology for acheiving these kind of smaller missions isn't entirely there yet, or at least isn't in line with NASA policy. NASA needs to work on their methodologies - how they launch the missions, how they are managed etc. When they get to the point where almost all missions are successful and cheap then they will be at a point where they can claim they've chosen the correct strategy.

    Lets face it, while the Viking series may have done well, the cost of launching them was most likely astronomical compared to the cost of the Mars lander. Those days were a haven of politics as much as science, and it wasn't usually the best solution that was used, it was whichever company were persuasive enough to get the contract.

  • actually, the V-ger probes are still running and sending back data.

    check out http://vraptor.jpl.nasa .gov/flteam/weekly-rpts/current.html [nasa.gov] for the feb 4 status report on the v-gers.

    half-assed probes produce half-assed results. the voyager probes pretty much prove that over-engineering a probe pays back a millionfold.
  • Before Chuck Yeager, everyone said the sound barrier was impenetrable.

    No they didn't, people had been sending objects faster than the speed of sound once the first high powered rifle was developed. If you want to talk powered objects exceeding the speed of sound, the V-2 did that quite nicely.

    In fact, they made the fuselage of the X-1 like a rifle bullet (30-06 maybe) because they knew they were shot a supersonic speeds.

    The sound barrier was an engineering barrier, they weren't sure how the X-1 would control, and how much buffeting it would take when it penetrated it. They knew there wasn't any Physics reason it couldn't be done, unlike the Speed of Light.

    George
  • Still, you don't know as much as you think. The Harrier was a joint US/UK project. I fact the current versions the RAF/RN and the USMC are quite different, both countries have gone on their own development path after the initial models. And Harriers for all their benefits are some of the most unsafe aircraft in any militaries inventory, are unreliable, limited in ordinance they can carry, etc... The vertical takeoff is almost never used, they can't carry enough weapons that way.

    As for food, the average infantryman can carry several days worth of food in MRE's. And the MRE won't go bad for oh at least 5 years. Solves that problem. Plus, in combat if they need to keep going, theres always methamphetamines which do get issued in dire situations, and research on a variant of a nicotine patch that delivers nutrients instead.

    EMP is great, but the only technology that can set loose a practical blast of EMP is nuclear weapons. Resaearch is continuing, but it is not a practical tactic yet.

    I'd like to know the experience you have to judge the need for military power. Have you spent any time in uniform? I am currently serving in the United States Marine Corps Intelligence community, and trust me, if you saw all I do, you would believe in the need.

  • America has a simple choice, IMHO. It can spend vast sums of money on weapons, most of which are likely to be banned by International treaties before they are ever deployed. OR it can spend that same cash on raising educational standards, improving the conditions of those on welfare, AND enhancing space technology.

    Yes, but the weapons developed by the US military are still there, and if push comes to shove I very much doubt the US would hesitate to use them if push came to shove. Lets face it, the US hasn't really ever worried about using overwhelming force before, even in the face of international opposition. And the military mentality says that if you don't develop them, someone else will and then they'll have the tactical advantage over you.

    If your technology is advanced enough, there -are- no "potential" invaders. There is no threat so great that a sufficiently enlightened civilisation cannot build a non-offensive defence.

    Yes, but it's the phrase "advanced enough" which is the stumbling block. The technology required to develop a non-offensive defence to a given offence is usually more advanced than the techbology required to develop the offence itself. A spear or club is simpler than a suit of armour, a gun is simpler than a kevlar composite body armour and so on. So in the time it takes to research and develop the defence you are at a distinct disadvantage. Again, this is what the military will argue. Unfortunately this has lead to the arms race which is a bad thing.

  • And there I was thinking that the thing used radio waves to communicate with earth.

    Jeff

  • Telepresence? Heck, no....download a human brain into the onboard computer (like Ray Kurzweil suggested a while back), then send that to do the exploration. When it gets back, view the data first hand. ;)

    -- WhiskeyJack

  • Re:Probable failure scenario - more info (Score:3)

    by pq ( 42856 ) <rfc2324&yahoo,com> on Thursday February 17, 2000 @06:53AM (#1265580) Homepage
    Since one of the instrument team leaders who works down the corridor has been tearing his hair out over this, I thought I'd put in a clarification:

    One failure scenario involves the leg deployment: the recoil might trigger the landing sensors on the footpads, so a little flag is set saying "Ground detected". Now, much later, when the parachute is cut away, the computer checks that flag which has not been cleared due to a software error. And it says, "Oh, hey, I'm on the ground! Time to turn off the rockets." Projected impact speed on the ground is over 80 mph. SPLAT.

    Another interesting scenario: there was talk of searching for the lander parachute using the Surveyor spacecraft, so NASA asked Lockheed Martin, "Where did you say the parachute would fall again?" Lockheed Martin redid the calculations and it came out that the parachute could very well be draped over the poor lander. Imagine the lander - "Help, help, I'm trapped in a parachute." Yes, these are the same guys who screwed up the units in the previous orbiter fiasco.

    And there are many many many other failure scenarios, too depressing to enumerate further: in summary, too little money, too little testing, and not enough redundancy means that not only was this mission likely to fail, it is unlikely we'll even know why it failed. Faster, better, cheaper - bah!

  • Okay, the movie sucked compared to the book, but that's always going to be the case (with the sole exception of the Running Man). Given the books depth and complexity the film version was never going to fit the entire book into it. It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.

  • and whats wrong with Canada eh?

    depending on the good graces of a superpower for protection?

    1)the military machine of the US would have ground to a halt without the natural resorces of Canada during WWII

    2)the fact that our regular troops beat your "elite" troops in every military games since the 60s.

    3)US military/industrial conspiricy vs the Avro Arrow. (nuff said... i dont need to get on a rant)

    the current concept of the military is outdated. the nature of war has changed so much in the last 30 years that the current/previous system is in need of change. (see your own militarys experiments with the new "tech warriors" and the changes that face the military machine.)

    funding for space reserch is needed. i belive more advances that benifit mankind as a whole have come from space reserch. (as opposed to new ways of killing us off then preventing it. the millitary has a habit of cause before cure discovery)
    personally i really want off this rock...

    i find it hard to belive we put people on the moon in a tin can and got them home and due to bugets we can't but a tin can on mars.

    Proudly Canadian eh!

    "long live the new flesh"
    -videodrome

  • ACtually, there was a point where it was believed you could not travel faster than sound. May have been a bit before the X-1, but it was believed at one point.
  • it responded alright. take a look at http://marstruth.tripod.com to see what REALLY happened. The truth RULES!
  • Why go to the ESA for funding? Why not approach some private investors? This probe cost LESS to make and launch then it did to make the movie Waterworld.

    Surely some one would be willing to invest some money in this. Take a cue from the Soviets and put some adds onto the side of the rockets.

    So it's tacky. So what? If it gets me one step closer to a chance to retire to LEO or the moon then I can put up with it.

  • I almost thought you were serious until the Bible thing.

    anyway, if you want to be 100% logical, you might have a point

    however, most human beings have some sympathy for others, and don't think it's OK to have people starving in the streets. it's like Dennis Miller said: you can't just keep tinting your car windows until the homeless people on the street go away.

    now, after saying that you may think I'm one of the "Welfare not space" people. I'm not. In fact I think that our spending on space should go way up.

    but the first thing we should do is pay off the debt. If we do that, we'll have $250 billion/year more to spend on whatever, money we now spend on interest payments on the debt.
  • he was referring to a quote from Southpark where Mr. Garrison gets a nose job and looks like David Haselhoff. Before they put him under, he quips about how Contact sucked. Hilarity ensues.

    --

  • I think you mean Venus. Mars' atmosphere is mostly Carbon Dioxide, so there's not much Oxygen to actually oxidise anything with. Venus has a very nasty atmosphere (I.E huge clouds of sulphuric acid) that tend to corode things.

    No - I did mean the Martian atmosphere. The gases which make up the Martian atmosphere are about 95% CO2, about 3% Nitrogen and 2% Argon. But there is also dust and UV. Because the Martian atmosphere is so thin and the thin ozone layer on Mars, the UV levels on Mars are quite extreme. This UV bombardment of the surface rocks (aka regolith) is thought to result in the formation of strong oxidants on the surface of these rocks. And while the atmosphere is thin, there is enough wind to pick up the surface dust and carry it around, resulting in those pristine circuits and mechanical joints getting gummed up with highly oxidizing muck.

    If you are interested in more information, there is an interesting summary of the Martian environment and the possibilities of terraforming Mars here [colorado.edu].

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • Before everybody starts kvetching about the satate of NASA funding (oops! too late!) it's worth noting that the FY2001 budget that Clinton submitted to congress calls for a 6% increase in NASA funding (compared to a 1.5% increase in the total budget). I realize that this still has to pass congress but it's a sign of confidence and a good starting point. This brings NASA's annual funding into the neighborhood of $13 Billion.

    Also, recent successes by NASA, such as the Eros asteroid study and the earth mapping mission (which could have and maybe should have been done unmanned) have attracted a lot of positive press.
  • I'm anxiously waiting for the Voyagers to find concrete proof of the location of the heliosphere (the sun's 'backyard fence', as it were)

    *That's* gonna be cool.

    (As a side note, the Pioneer spacecraft are still operational, but not being actively tracked because the probes are too far away for us to track the signal!

    It's a shame that kind of engineering doesn't happen at NASA anymore. (again, not enough budget to plan and test adequately...)

  • Why NASA used to work better (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday February 17, 2000 @08:49AM (#1265594) Homepage
    The good years for NASA were back when they had all those experienced aircraft designers from the '40s and '50s available, people with a half dozen plane designs behind them. And they had the Nazis: Von Braun, Dornberger, the whole Peedemunde crowd, with thousands of launches behind them. All the real progress in space hardware came from the days when they had both. The Shuttle, remember, was designed in the 1960s.

    Those guys looked good because they launched a lot of birds, and eventually succeeded. If we sent ten probes to Mars over a short period, some would work and some wouldn't, and we'd get data back. Look at Iridium - dozens of launches, a few failures, operational on schedule. (The service isn't selling well, but it works as designed.)

  • One problem with most failure scenarios I've seen is: "What happenned to the two separate probes?" These probes were to have separated from the lander at a fairly high altitude and make their own separate high-impact "landing".

    Why does nobody mention them? Doesn't the failure of three separate "landers" imply a failure during the initial re-entry before the separation?
  • > "Help, help, I'm trapped under a parachute." The Russian Venera program has a few amusing snafus of its own. After building a probe strong enough to survive the Venusian atmosphere (extreme heat, pressure and sulphuric acid rain), they successfully landed it on the surface. Unfortunately they didn't get any pictures because the lens cap had melted and stuck on! A subsequent mission did get the pictures, but when the arm designed to place a sensor on the surface to measure its properties was deployed, it landed (you guessed it) on the ejected lens cap...
  • the pioneer probes are not as far from earth as the voyager 1 probe, below are the statistic from the voyager and pioneer probes Voyager 1 top stat. Voyager 2 Distance from the Sun (Km) 11,445,000,000 8,987,000,000 Distance from the Sun (Mi) 7,111,000,000 5,584,000,000 Distance from the Earth (Km) 11,499,000,000 9,106,000,000 Distance from the Earth (Mi) 7,145,000,000 5,658,000,000 Total Distance Traveled Since Launch (Km) 13,251,000,000 12,465,000,000 Pioneer 10 Distance from Sun (1 February 2000): 74.46 AU Speed relative to the Sun: 12.24 km/sec (27,380 mph) Distance from Earth: 11.07 billion kilometers (6.879 billion miles) Round-trip Light Time: 20 hours 30 minutes Pioneer 11 Launched on 5 April 1973, Pioneer 11 followed its sister ship to Jupiter (1974), made the first direct observations of Saturn (1979) and studied energetic particles in the outer heliosphere. The Pioneer 11 Mission ended on 30 September 1995, when the last transmission from the spacecraft was received. Its electrical power source exhausted, the spacecraft could no longer operate any of its scientific instruments, nor point its antenna toward Earth. The spacecraft is headed toward the constellation of Aquila (The Eagle), Northwest of the constellation of Sagittarius. Pioneer 11 may pass near one of the stars in the constellation in about 4 million years. So you see the distance isn't the reason we can't track them, Pioneer 11 is "broken" and we still actively track Pioneer 10, and it is looking for the heliopause as well the voyagers. And yes I totally agree with you about finding the heliopause that will be the definitive answer in telling where the solar system ends. PS - the Pioneer info was updated on the first of feb this year, and the voyager stuff was updated on the fourth of this month. And all of this can be found at JPL's and Ames research centers web sites.
  • I was insulted/disgusted that they took the bit about "pi" out. I mean, if the average american can't grasp that, we're in deep sh*t.
    ---
  • okay, I have to give the British credit for the Battle of Britain. Half-credit, though, because there's no chance in hell that the RAF alone could have stood against the Luftwaffe.

    The more I read, the more of a fruitcake you sound like...Mars is safe because England is. Hmmm. Last I checked, you can shoot a rocket to both...

    We have a place in my country for people like you: it's called Montana.
  • *WE* put people on the moon? No, *Americans* put *Americans* on the moon. Canadians watched it on TV, when they weren't too busy watching the "All Moose Porn, All The Time" channel.

    What's wrong with Canada? Let's see...there's the grand triumph of socialism, nationalized health care -- which bankrupts the country and forces people to come to the US for surgery. Then there's Quebec. Just go smack ol' Frenchie in the face a few times. Or better yet, let them go independent and turn into a Third World country.

    Crappy weather, high taxes, poor health care, tiny industrial base...who wouldn't want to come, eh?

  • Re:No! (Score:1)

    by Xenu ( 21845 )
    What's the most expensive component of the space shuttle? It's the main tank - and it costs a small fortune.

    It isn't the most expensive component. Figures are hard to find, but the external tank costs about 50 million dollars. That is about 10% of total costs for a shuttle launch.

    We have airplanes that for all intents and purposes can obtain low earth orbit.. add some maneuvering jets and you got a spacecraft - why does it cost a billion dollars to do THAT?!

    Please point out the airplane than can get remotely close to low earth orbit, let alone carry a cargo there. Space is hard, drawing pretty pictures of non-existent space planes and bitching about NASA is much easier.

  • America has no central resource for space R&D. Indeed, it has no resources for space R&D at all. Do a search on the phrase "US Space Command" on google.com and feast your eyes on the thousand or so references. USSC has 250,000 employees and *no one's ever heard of it*! That's where all of America's space resources are going. While everyone's watching the civilian side [NASA], nobody's keeping track of America's *military* use of space [USSC].

  • SHHHHHHHH......

    *** BOOOOOOOOM ! ***
  • If they can't handle SI units, how do you expect them to handle multiple languages?!*
  • How are the high-tech jobs over their? After graduating from college I'm going to move out of America. I'm sick of this fucking country. (Espically after just getting arrested for only 7 grams of cannabis.) I would like to work as a network admin but I would guess that the country is quite popular, and their aren't that many jobs. Or the government makes it a pain in the ass to get a work visa.
  • Looks like the aliens are not to blame. The below describes a fatal design flaw. Enough of rocket science reality, now back to Eno and Deep Blue Day. http://www.spacer.com/spacecast/news/mars-polar99- 00f1.html Cameron Park - February 16, 2000 In a surprising development, an industry source told "SpaceDaily" Tuesday that the Failure Review Board for the Mars Polar Lander has located a fatal design flaw that is regarded as the most probable culprit in the Lander's disappearance last Dec. 3 somewhere over the southern polar regions of Mars. According to our source, the flaw is remarkably simple -- and involves the simple "ground contact" switch system designed to turn off the Lander's landing rocket motors the moment one of its three landing legs touched the Martian surface. After its initial high-speed entry into the Martian atmosphere, the Lander's planned sequence of events was as follows: At about 7.3 kilometers above the surface, while the Lander was still moving at about one-half km per second, it would have deployed its 8.4-meter-wide parachute, which would substantially further slow it, but which -- in Mars' faint wisp of an atmosphere -- would be unable to slow it below about 80 meters per second.
  • Typical media/public reactions we've seen, go somewhere else if you can't take a wise ass:

    Come one, NASA can get off their butts if we tell them too. The best way to solve this is to cut their budget in half each time they mess up. Yeah. Then they'll have to make missions with less money, less resources, less time, and they will have to succeed. I mean come on, I go to the grocery store every week and it doesn't cost me millions of dollors, nor do I crash each time I go.

    Eventually, their budget will be so small, they will only be able to hire one man. That one man will be none only than, Quinn Mallory. I mean, if this college student living with his mom can manage to traverse universes/dimensions on his own, it can't cost that much. There's nothing that he can't do if he sets his mind to it. All we have to do is learn from his diary tapes how to slide, locate and bring him back home before the Kromags run us over, brainwash that goofball that's taken over his body to bring the real Quinn back to the forefront, and then he can start some real work on going to Mars. That's the way to do it...
  • Thanks for that link -- it's pretty amazing to contemplate the extent of human technology's reach. Almost half a light-day's journey in Voyager 1's case, and it's still going strong.

    Looking at the performance of these spacecraft, built with decades-old technology, makes one realize just how much is gained by spending the extra dollars up front and doing the job right the first time. Here's hoping things go half as smoothly with Cassini as they have with the V'gers.

  • The ages of space explo{r,it}ation:
    1. Cold War Toys -- will the world survive?
    2. Mercury/Gemini/Apollo -- will the crew survive?
    3. Shuttle -- will the mission succeed?
    4. Iridium -- will it make money?
    5. Space Station -- why?

    Low Earth Orbit is getting easier. This is the result of learning all of the hard lessons the hard way, and not taking the risks for granted.

    Mars exploration is still very difficult. Partly this is because Mars is a more difficult environment than LEO. But the constraints of BFC are leading teams to make some of the same mistakes that were made before. The MCO interim failure report [nasa.gov] seems to indicate a certain... well, lack of rigor in the development and operations.

    I, too, would like to see a radical change in the NASA Mars Exploration Program / MEP. The current program seems to combine aspects of Iridium technology (commercial practices, comparatively low unit reliability) and NASA program design (one-off design, albeit with component re-use) -- but combines them in a bad way. The addition of political pressure does not help, as opined [space.com] by Donna Shirley, program manager of the successful Mars Pathfinder project.

    So, what's wrong with MEP? Simple: There Is Only One MEP. Apollo succeeded because the guys working on it were convinced that the Soviets could get to the Moon. They had real competition. Likewise with Iridium -- until the finances fell apart, everyone thought there would be several competitors snapping at their heels.

    The competition for Mars ended when the contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin Astronautics. There was competition at the contract level, but none at the program level.

    Look, I don't care if you call it 'Red' and 'Blue' but there have to be at least two competitors. Cycles of competitive innovation, followed by cooperative synthesis, will produce the best results.

    OK so JPL has one team already. Hmmm... who else could do this kind of thing? CMU, JHU/APL, MIT, USU, maybe even some Big 10 schools. Start with some GFE hardware -- flight computer, telecom equipment, pyros, motors etc. Hand out $50M to each team and stand back.

    Neither team could afford a flagship probe a la Mars Observer ($1B). Perhaps one team would build a single lander with lots of high-tech instruments. The other team might bang out 5 small landers at $10M a pop. In any case there would not be any single team with a 'royal warrant' to probe Mars.

  • But you see there are these special "space sounds" that will not travel very far. In space, sound waves will only go about a meter, then they suddenly stop.
    It is much easier to see this if you use light-waves instead. That is how they make light sabres!

    Oh and there is also those special laser beams which travel at a detectable speed. Otherwise you would not be able to manouvre away from enemy fire and that would be very unfair (and forbidden in the space-geneva-convention)

    PS I did not wear glasses, so I was probably cool.

  • Well.. I remember seeing a Discovery-show about mans quest for high speeds. Here they mentioned that when the first car was built and someone said "Hey.. How fast will this thing go..?" someone else said "Humans can't survive speeds in excess of 30 mph"... :-) /S
  • If God didn't want people to eat animals He wouldn't have made them out of meat!

    Ryan
  • i still think it landed on a little gren mans door step either that or it was really a supply drop for martian colonists that the goverment has not told us about so if they fail no one will notice
  • wow i like that theory im smart hahahahahahahahahaha grammar and spelling suck
  • NASA has some REAL fundemental problembs, and it's all down to beaurocracy and lack of real direction. It's going to be vry bad for NASA if the ESA's Mars Express mission works out 100%. Even worse if Beagle 2 performs properly. Not only does it have a certain (if eccentric) style to it, namely carrying a piece of artwork by Damien Hurst and a specialy composed Blur track to announce it's all clear and landed, but it was done on a shoestring budget and has the highest since to mission ratio so far in space exploration. After the loses of teh Mars probes, and the possible desgin eras in the workhorse landers, and the fact that the mars express mission has nothing that is particular technicaly advanced over NASA (hell, chunks of it are based on NASA expertise), I'm sure it wont be long before politicians start asking questions. Is it time for an ISA? Well, maybee. For space exploration is science and science has always worked best in co-operation. The ISS is a red herring, largely political IMHO. But some of the European co-operative science programs are working very well, and would beneit both the USA and Europe if the USA got in on them. Cern is probably one of the most succesful European Co-operative efforts (and I'm a eurosceptic!), not to mention the Joint European Torus fusion project. ESA seems to be much better at getting things done for less cost (barring the occasional mess ups). However, if we want colonies on the moon and in space, forget NASA, ESA or an ISA. That needs industrial/commercial will, not from the state.

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