Plans for International Space Station Cut Back 268
Sajma writes "Reuters is reporting:
NASA and its space partners on Friday approved a scaled-down International Space Station with fewer astronauts and less science so the United States can meet a 2010 deadline for ending shuttle flights, a top NASA official said. Space agencies in Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan gave unanimous approval to a NASA plan that means the orbiting platform, now about half completed, will never become the beehive of scientific and commercial research once envisaged."
NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:5, Interesting)
One of two things has to happen.
A: Existing programs are going to get slashed in order to move the money from existing projects to fund the new one.
B: The mandated project isn't going to go very well due to having not enough funding to get it done right.
While Democrats get accused of being "tax and spend" types at times, the Bush Administration seems to have taken on a "forget to tax but spend anyway" policy. NASA's budget just doesn't match its assignments right now, and that's what's leading to half-baked projects coming out of there.
NASA's got to get the shuttle program that's currently grounded back on its feet, meanwhile the Hubble Telescope is in need of a scheduled service visit and the IIS isn't completed yet. On top of that, Bush wants them working on a people to Mars project they didn't ask for. The Mars request didn't exactly come with a budget attached...
Would you like your taxes low or would you like NASA funded properly? It doesn't seem like you can have both.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance, ( i mean we could get rid of the nukes, not just stop taking care of them.)? Just get rid of ICBMs all together, i mean, is it all that important that we be able to kill someone in 4 hours instead of 8 hours with a nuclear cruise missile?
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:4, Insightful)
The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and here to stay, and there is NO WAY that we should give up our nuclear systems while certain elements of the third world continue to work on theirs. In addition, if Russia happens to fall back into an ultranationalist stance we could be in trouble there.
If you want to cut something, cut the NON-WORKING anti-ballistic missile system that's supposedly going to cost 60 billion dollars. The system testing to date of the aforementioned is so contrived it isn't even funny. I've worked defense contracts just long enough to smell bullshit at 10 miles away.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [bullatomsci.org], the US has a little more than 7,000 warheads [bullatomsci.org]. Russia has roughly 6,000 warheads [bullatomsci.org].
The US is also probably a decade or two away from
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
And you need like 100 to blow up the world. (ie. nuclear winter) So what are the rest for?
The US is also probably a decade or two away from a real arms race with China. I see incentive there for maintaining the level of nuclear weapons. More likely, the US will upgrade its nuclear arsenal to more precise lower-yield weapons since these would be more in line with the tactic
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Insightful)
Me? I'd prefer to keep our robust defense capabilities.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, the US's social welfare system is a fraction of that found in western Europe. And wouldn't you know it, but their economies have been gaining on the US's notably since the 1970s. Go fig...
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Informative)
And there will be even less nukes in the coming years. [newscientist.com]
And yes, it is fairly important to be able to nuke somebody before they can nuke us. The US has enemies, and defending America is the top priority of the US Government. Space travel isn't the big concern most Americans have today.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody would guess. I'd even say the main concern of the US government is making new enemies.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2, Informative)
While the stockpile is down, it's still gigantic. Even the second link seems to be talking about a reduction to some five thousand nuclear warheads.
Also the important part isn't being able to "to nuke somebody before they can nuke us" since that only works if your the first to attack. The theoretical idea behind the massive numbers was the "assured destruction" part of mad. i.e. the ability to nuke the rest of the world not once but several times over, so that some intercepted warheads wouldn't mean survi
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2, Insightful)
Come to think of it, they specifically DIDN'T surrender to your warped and selfish will. Maybe that's the real origin of the surrender meme, what? Mutated and projected as Americans are won
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. If you want cool stuff, you have to pay for it.
Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance, ( i mean we could get rid of the nukes, not just stop taking care of them.)? Just get rid of ICBMs all together, i mean, is it all that important that we be able to kill someone in 4 hours instead of 8 hours with a nuclear cruise missile?
No, we cannot cut funding for nuclear weapons research/maintenance. You a
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
Maybe you (the US) should have thought of that before you built the damn things.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
I don't really want to get into a debate about the basic issue right now, but you're completly misinterpreting what the grandparent poster originally said. They suggested we should get rid of _ICBMs_ NOT all nuclear weapons. This was followed up by a question about whether we really needed ICBMs when we've got nuclear cruise missiles.
That may or may not be a good idea, but if you'r
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:4, Informative)
The bulk of them date from the Eisenhower administration. They built lots of them because thats what you did during the McCarthy years. Claiming there was a strategy to it is to vastly over-rate the process. Kennedy beat Nixon using the 'missile gap' issue, when they came into office they discovered the gap was real and vastly in favor of the US.
There was a certain amount of re-engineering that went on under Reagan and many warheads were remanufactured for newer missiles. In the process the number of warheads increased. But this was part of a strategy of putting pressure on the USSR to stop its attempts to expand as it had in Afghanistan and as far as the Reaganites were concerned Nicaragua.
Reagan was not building nuclear missiles because he thought they were actually going to be of any military value. If the Soviets were building nukes the money could not be going to build tanks, rifles etc which were the weapons that their proxies were buying. So actually the attraction of building nukes was the exact opposite to the one stated.
In the event the Soviets were much much weaker than Reagan and his advisers realized. If you think through the intended consequence of forcing the Soviets to produce more nukes this makes no sense at all if you think the Soviets are on the brink of collapse. Unless that is you think that they wanted large numbers of nukes to end up in the hands of the splinter states. Equally Star wars was at best a psychological factor since the Soviets never made a significant effort to even develop counter measures. Thatcher was telling Gorbachev at the time not to be worried about it because 'as a chemist I know it won't work'.
The weapon that really brought down the Soviet Union was the stinger missile, a conventional weapon that brought down the Soviet helicopter gunships. The Stingers tipped the balance in favor of the mujahadein.
Incidentally, the blowback theories peddled that Bin Laden was a CIA agent are somewhat off base. Bin Laden was the primary conduit for Saudi funding of the rebels. There was never any reason for the CIA to pay him, or for him to need CIA funds.
There is an example of the blowback theory though. Before the invasion the KGB quickly came to the conclusion that the soviet backed communist revolution was not going to last long. They tried to persuade 'the great teacher' that he had to lay off the religious persecution, be more moderate etc. to no effect. So they organized a coup to replace him with his main rival in the party. After a few months the KGB decided their replacement was showing too many signs of acting independently so they spread a few rumours that he was a CIA agent. About six months later they started to get word from their local spies that the guy was an american agent, which as it happened was completely untrue, the KGB were just hearing the rumors they had planted themselves. The Soviet invasion was ordered on the basis of those reports - proving that its not only clueless Texans who launch disastrous invasions on the basis of bogus inteligence.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to bring up the elephant standing in the room or anything, but we _are_ occupying a (now) hostile foreign country larger than California and paying for that on future debt. (And half-ass occupying Afghanistan, which is somewhat less than twice the size of California).
Maybe we should cut local government some more? Like fire, police, schools, libraries? "Spare money" was back in the Clinton surplus. The U.S. doesn't have "spare money" now.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Funny)
So, when do we get around to actually occupying California? (Almost the size of California.)
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
National government != local government.
Here in what we pretend is a federal system state and local governments are supposed to be responsible for their own revenues. For example, most local governments get their money from property taxes, water bills and the like. Congress has little to no say in things like that.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:5, Interesting)
Or the $250 billion spent so far on the Iraq war with another $250 billion or so that is going to have to be spent if we want to prevent Iraq being essentially annexed by Iran.
If you look at the federal budget most of it is eaten up by so-called entitlements. The government has to pay pensions, social security, medicare, medicaid come what may and there is not much that can be done to reduce that. Those retirees in Florida are not going to allow their pensions to be cut.
The rest of the budget divides into roughly two halves, military spending and the rest, that is education, health, transport, energy, farm subsidies, corporate welfare, state aid etc.
The military budget itself consists of roughly two halves which we can call the defense budget and the political/corporate welfare budget. The defense budget is the stuff that actually has some military purpose. The political/corporate welfare budget is the bases that are only kept open to keep the local senator happy, weapons systems that the army does not want, planes that the airforce has not asked for and so on.
There are still plenty of $700 hammers and $1,200 toilet seats, in Iraq Haliburton took the spare tires off the brand new Mercedes trucks it was using, when they got a flat tire they just abandoned the truck. Cost plus you know... But the 168 billion overcharged on the fuel contract only shows what happens when they know the administration is deliberately turning a blind eye. The same thing goes on in the US on pretty much every cost plus contract, just not quite to the same extent.
Padding out the military budget with pork is a bipartisan consensus. There are a handful of folk willing to stand up to the waste. John McCain being one of the few, ever since Goldwater the folk in Arizona have not been impressed by polticians who bring back pork anyway.
There was a lot of silly speculation about Kerry choosing McCain as his VP candidate. I don't think it was ever seriously considered. McCain knows he has much more influence as a Senator wielding a swing vote than a VP with a competent President. There is only one job that I think would persuade McCain to leave the Senate and that is the only job that only he can do, Secretary of defense.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:4, Insightful)
While we could get a lot of money by curtailing our military endeavors, we could also get plenty by ending the war on drugs, and we could get even more by legalizing some of them (not the same thing as ending the war on drugs, which would be decriminalization, a dubious term at best, kind of like "war on drugs") and taxing them as tobacco is taxed. Half the price of your pack of smokes or more is taxes. This is true of some other things, like gasoline, as well.
We spend a bit over US$40B (yes, billion) on the unwinnable war on drugs. If I were in charge, right after I gave all the idiots a brand new religion, I'd end the war on drugs and split that money between the space program and drug rehab services.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
If you don't think that taking drugs can scramble your brains take a look at the idiot in the Whitehouse.
He stopped flying after he failed to 'accomplish' his medical. His medical records end after compulsory drug testing was introduced for pilots. He refuses to state the reasons he could not turn in a satisfactory medical, he
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
If this is not a troll, you do not know what you are talking about. Bush's speech patterns suggest that he's either an idiot, or dyslexic - or a dyslexic idiot. I am from Santa Cruz, I grew up there and lived most of my life to date there, and so I know many many people who have consumed assorted quantities of LSD on a fairly regular basis. None of them speak anything like dubya.
As for the shuttle and the ISS; Losing the shuttle is a good thing. It's lon
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
Through the classified appropriations process. Most of this goes on through the Senate intelligence committee, but there are some hardware programs in that category (the original B2 bomber program for example).
The $700 hammers were pure padding by the contractors. They were buying them from a 'supplier' that they owned themselves. So they bought a $1.50 hammer then sold it to their subcontracting arm for $700 and then claimed an additional $70 profit under 'c
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
Response time is considerably less than 4 hours. Also, aside from the US and Russia, there really isn't anyone with any ability to stop ICBMs. Nuclear cruise missiles are less reliable in that Russia for certain has developed tactics for destroying incoming nuclear weapons near the Earth's surface by detonating nukes in atmosphere in the path of
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's incorrect. As I understood it, the reason why there's never any time for science is that he ISS was intended to have a crew of six people. If there were actually six people up
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the DOD gets about $400 Billion a year, to put the above into perspective. And I believe our national budget is something like $3 trillion.
In short, lately, our policy here in the U.S., the nation that put mankind on the moon with the support of basically the whole country only 35 years ago, is, "Fuck Space".
I mean, it's not like we'll ever need to leave Earth or anything. Without question, our star will last forever, and our planet will always been inhabitable.
Right?...
Right?
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
We can't increase funding for agencies that are doing a good job, and increase agencies that are screwing up and attributing their problems to budgetary shortfalls. At least not forever.
As for the DoD, well the trip to Iraq is a big expensive boondoggl
NASA's budget is HUGE! (Score:5, Insightful)
The budget for the National Institutes of Health is about 30 billion. They fund most of the basic biomedical research. Every university biology department in the US runs off this money.
The budget for the National Science Foundataion is about 6 billion. They fund most of the physical science and mathematical research in the US. They also pay for telescopes and most of the real space research.
In contrast NASA's budget gets us a pointless space station, a broken space shuttle and a few (very expensive) inter-planetary probes. (For example, Cassini cost 3 billion dollars!)
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Interesting)
Unsurprising. Before Nov 22, 1963 the countries attitude was essentially "Fuck Space".
The Apollo program got the national support it did, not because it was a bold leap, but because it created a black eye for the Russians and as a monument to a slain President. Even that support didn't last too long. NASA's peak budget was in 1967,
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Insightful)
The truth is closer to the fact that NO administration (Republicrat or Demican) has full control over anything anymore. Congress pushes in bloated bills with a bunch of crap no one wants - except maybe one line item. And yet, if a president doesn't sign for it he'll be accused of killing babies.
What REALLY should happen is the president should explain how much pork went into each bill - what he approves of and what he does not.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Insightful)
At what point did I say a damn thing about the Bush admin.? Seriously. Go back, and quote where the fuck I said, "Bush is cutting NASA's budget." Go on, go and find it. Wait, you can't, because you're trying to drag presidential politics into a discussion that has nothing to do with them, you partisan moron.
While I personall
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Funny)
When do you propose we start thinking about the problem? 2.99 billion years from now?
No, I figure a thousand years should be long enough to work this out. So let's wait 2.999999 billion years.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
I.e., other programs may suffer, and suffer greatly. But whenever the administration is accused of failing children by not promoting science, they send a chunk of cash to NASA and the defense, er.. space program and can then claim support of science on their annual glossies.
With hundreds of billions of dollars ($650 billion, most recently) going to Defense it's very to difficult to understand why a few hundred million is cut from the budgets to smaller research programs. And I'm not saying a few hundred million to *one* program, but rather, the *entire* budget for all smaller research programs is in the hundreds of millions. You think Microsoft is evil?
So we again cut science budgets -- not only because it clashes with the President's ideologies -- but because it just doesn't add any value to some defense contractor's stock portfolio. On top of that we make the deficit huge, in the *trillions* of dollars. Our kids are going to love us.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Informative)
It's pretty sad when somewho claims to support the space program allows *his* ideology to get in the way of the facts.
The budget under discussion is the product of *Congress*, not the Administration. The President that yo
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's true of everything, including things that most consider a lot more important than NASA.
I live in the UK, so there's no NASA to worry about funding. However, it really annoys me when, in the run-up to elections, the political parties start talking about reducing taxes, amongst other things. If the system was running perfectly and there was a funding surplus, I'd say cutting taxes is a good idea, but while hospitals continue to close and downsize, and education funding drops through the floor, we either need to raise taxes or optimise the systems that are in place.
I hear that there are over ten managers per patient in national health service hospitals here. I also see schools wasting money on computers that are five times faster than mine just to run Microsoft Office. The money's going to the wrong places. Either refocus the existing money or increase tax. Those are the only solutions.
This applies to NASA in the US, too. I wish voters would think it through and realise that, until we've got the system working properly, tax decreases are a bad thing, and that they should vote for parties which don't claim they are going to cut tax. That's the problem with allowing everyone to vote, though, I guess!
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
Increasing tax would be a pretty bad solution, but it would work unless it also got wasted.
Of course, removing the waste is the ideal solution. Removing the waste and increasing tax (but not going crazy) would allow public services to improve faster, and perhaps tax can be lowered later once the system's working more efficiently and a surplus is discovered.
Re:Increase in tax != Increase in revenue (Score:2)
You make a good point. Raising taxes isn't a blanket solution and we should be careful when we raise them. But I think, at the moment, it's warrented.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
Yes, there is a way to spend more and tax less; Borrow it! [brillig.com], why pay today when your children can pay tomorrow!
The Hubble has been great, but I believe that we need to focus on observations from the l2 point [esa.int]. Execution of Bush's 'plan' to go back to the moon first would push the technology for that mission, but somehow I don't think that he will ever come across with the money; too busy give cont
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
Criminalizing civil offences for the MPAA, RIAA and SPA. I bet there are a lot of people drawing from the welfare programs fraudulently, but that doesn't seem to be checked. The military is being given equipment it doesn't want or need, because of pork barrel. The USA does not need to be stockpiling helium. There are too many middlemen and odd certifications required in government purchasing. The government doesn't need to be paying $1000 for
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:3, Informative)
There is no incentive to save since the more you spend the easier it is to keep your budget or get an increase. Once your budget gets cut you have to fight like hell to get it back when the money is really needed.
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
That's funny; last I checked there were more lines on this year's budget than one. I can think of lots of ways to achieve that. If we had back the >$100 billion we'll end up wasting on this frivolous war we could double NASA's budget for the next decade. If we stopped wasting $400 billion a year on the Department of Offense we could increase NASA's budget tenfold from here to eternity and still
Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs. (Score:2)
A guest engineer speaking at a seminar imparted this bit of advice on us undergraduates. The number rule of departmental funding: NEVER GO UNDER BUDGET. This applies equally well to companies as it does with government programs.
You see, it the
Never ? (Score:2)
Never say never. Sure the current budget and time makes this too expensive. But with things like the X-Prize going on and the on-going march of technology there is no way to say that in 2010 there won't be a different decision for different economic and social reasons.
It isn't never... its just not planned right now.
Re:Never ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Simpsons reference (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Simpsons reference (Score:2)
Yes, but I'm sure women already have, "He was faster than the speed of light" jokes lined up and ready to go.
Well... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure the word "beehive" never appeared in any ISS prospectus. It was, and is, a facility that lacks any single compelling reason to exist.
Except for monitoring long-duration human spaceflight (mimicing the Mir experience), little, if any, of the research conducted on ISS will make human space travel easier, safer, or cheaper. Certainly, nothing will contribute to that objective in a way commensurate with the station's outrageous cost. The station itself is only marginally engaged in space travel, since it does not go anywhere.
The ISS is the product of the ill-informed and, simply, bad space policy that began with Nixon's decision to build the compromised and targetless Space Shuttle in lieu of continuing humam space exploration.
Re:ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation (Score:2)
Re:ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation (Score:2)
I believe the only serious purpose for any space station is as the assembly and fueling point for space missions. In other words, a glorified train station. In the case of the ISS, we've got a station but we still have no railroad.
35 Goddamn years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just plain pathetic. There's $135 million for the (proven to be ineffective) "abstenence education" programs, but we can't seem to find the money to maintain NASA at even minimal levels. $200 billion (and rising) for a pointless war in Iraq, but a program that could give the USA a serious strategic and scientific boost gets budget raped. $9.6 billion in tobacco subsidies over the next five years, but screw NASA?
We don't need any furthur evidence that they're smoking crack in Washington people.
35 years ago a human being walked on the moon. Today the furthest we get is Low Earth Orbit. That's bullshit, total bullshit.
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Columbus was looking for a trade route; the Spanish founded colonies and traded things like gold and food; what do you think the U.S. should be mining from or growing on the moon? Or is it simply a case of colonial expansion for its own sake, now that it's not politically correct to colonise other countries on
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:2)
Won't someone think of the inocent moon men before we destroy their fragile and beutifull culture??
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:2, Insightful)
That actually might have been a better choice for Spain. As it was, in the first couple of decades they focused on hauling back as much of the New World's plentiful gold as possible. Instead of making Spain fantastically wealthy, the new glut of gold caused a crash in its value in the Old World, which was
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:2)
I'm not saying that its a quick buck, but it is a terriffic long term investment. From a military standpoint, ho
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:2)
Here [wikipedia.org] is the wikipedia article if interested. Though the conclusions drawn by the wikipedia article could be
Spanish Armada (Score:2)
Upon arriving south of England, the Spanish did not attack the British fleet, but waited. The British waited too, not because Drake wanted to play bowls? but because the tide was wrong.
When the tide turned, the British attacked, but the Spanish made their halfcircle, which is good for defence. Even though the British had superior guns, that
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:2)
I think that's incorrect. If one thinks of it, Spain shouldn't have had that much difficulty with gold since gold was a desired product in the rest of Europe. It was wide
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:2)
Budget priorities are totally screwed up but the story you're getting is that the shuttle is too dangerous. Welcome to America, the land of the half-truth. In a little place I like to call reality, two things are true:
it's much easier to fail to invest in the future than to trim a potential voter's piece of pork today
the space shuttle is too dangerous to fly, but it is still in operation only because the geniuses in Washington have sat on their asses for the last three decades
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:2)
Is that a good thing?
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I was opposed to the war in Iraq (still am, actually, bu
Re:35 Goddamn years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not if it's:
A) Not true
&
B) Beyond his capabilities
Saddam could only do the equivalent of hitting us with pointy sticks. Weapons inspections were taking place in Iraq as well. It was completely moronic to go to war when inspectors were finally back in, rather than letting them continue.
Also, 100% of all of the evidence used to justify the war was bullshit, and everyone, everywhere, knew it was bullshit before we invaided. A
It's a bad platform in a useless orbit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Done well, it could have been an incredible asset. But it wasn't done well.
Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit. (Score:2)
Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit. (Score:2)
>geopolitical gesture, but their hardware requires
>too much maintenance
As opposed to the American hardware - the Space Shuttle. No maintenance required there . .
If we hadn't brought the Russians onboard, we'd be royally and truly f***** right now, with no way to get supplies to the ISS or get replacement crews up to the station. She'd be unmanned and probably tumbling out of control.
Not that I'd consider that much of a loss, since the ISS is a
What's the fucking point, then? (Score:3, Interesting)
~Philly
Obviously (Score:2)
It's obvious (Score:2)
It's obvious they should turn it into a hotel.
It's finally come to this... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just a shame that some of NASA's problems are probably nothing more than politics over practicality.
Re:It's finally come to this... (Score:2)
Re:It's finally come to this... (Score:2)
Obviously the general public isn't or there would be outrage. We take what we can get.
What a waste... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What a waste... (Score:2)
Orbiting Space Barge of Death? (Score:5, Insightful)
While folks may note like ELVs, they're the most economical method for putting payloads into orbit. You aren't carrying around all the Shuttle mass just for the purpose of being able to fly it back.
If we expect to maintain any kind of space presence, our launch structure needs to split the hyu-mohn function apart from the cargo function. Haul the ugly bags of mostly water up in a vehicle designed specifically for that purpose, and only on missions requiring the hyu-mohn presence. Everything else goes up in unmanned vehicles. Screw the "reusable" cargo transport. It's less expensive to build the base vehicle for each launch. The crew transport could be reusable, maybe, but should be optimized for crew functions.
Unfortunately, there's a huge industry that's built up around supporting the Shuttle infrastructure. They're not going to let go of the cash cow without a fight.
Not accurate (Score:2, Interesting)
NASA may retire but that will make
We used to have fire but the inventor died (Score:5, Insightful)
staying alive (Score:4, Informative)
a scaled-down International Space Station with fewer astronauts and less science
Less than zero?
The huge successes are the uncrewed probes, like Cassini and the Mars rovers. Budget cuts to the ISS are good news for space science, because that means more might be left over for projects that actually do science.
Re:staying alive (Score:2)
So far a being a reliable and creditable reference, Popular Mechanics is only slightly better than this [members.shaw.ca].
That being said; It's more correct to say that the *current* ISS crew spends all of their time doing said work. Adding 2 scientists on top of the 2 engineers already there would not double the work, in fact they add little to the total work.
Bigelow Aerospace inflatable habitats (Score:3, Informative)
Scientifically useless from day 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
There was never any real scientific rationale for the ISS.
It was always a political project in search of justification.
Cassini is significant science. NEAR Shoemaker was significant.
The Mars rovers are significant. Galileo was significant.
Hubble is significant. Stardust is significant.
The ISS is a waste of money.
Bush's "Man on Mars" directive is more of the same, in spades.
Re:Scientifically useless from day 1 (Score:2)
Re:Scientifically useless from day 1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Correction: Building a space station for 7-9 persons where 2 of them are required to operate the station itself, and the other assigned to do research, and then cutting the persons on board down to 2 is a waste of money...
Re:Scientifically useless from day 1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Too much vibration, orbit too low (so the shuttle can reach it).
Not a good enough vacuum.
NASA had to browbeat scientists into making up some sort of
experiments that could be done there. No important science
was _ever_even_proposed_.
---
He's no fun -- he fell right over.
The Real Problem is (Score:4, Funny)
In this day and age, when there's metric shitloads of technology all over the place and the internet makes valuable porn as free as air, President Bush gives a trip to mars seventeen years. What a tool.
See, Kennedy had the balls to lay a firm deadline down. "You bitches will put a man on the moon before January 1, 1970 or I will come back from the grave and kick your ass," he said. He knew he was going to get shot. That's how hardcore he was. He also got crazy laid by Marilyn Monroe.
President Bush says, "You ought to think about just possibly putting a man on the moon sometime during this five year period."
President Kennedy showed us that you have to slap NASA around a little bit to get them to do anything worthwhile with manned space exploration. You can't be all lovey-dovey and set long gradual timetables.
And Bush mentions "the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods." So we'll have another Skylab ISS, but on the moon. The only differences will be that it won't crash into Australia like Skylab (it will crash into the Moon instead - that might sound hard to acheive since it would already be on the surface of the moon, but they will find a way to do that), it will leak more than ISS, and since it won't even be international we won't be able to bum rides from the Russians.
If Kennedy was alive in this day and age he would have said, "Fucking NASA, I am still alive in this day and age so you assholes better have a self-sufficient Mars base by the year 2013. Also make me a space elevator. And resurrect Marilyn Monroe." Then NASA would complain that it is not their job to resurrect people and Kennedy would punch NASA in the eye.
I bet the "Crew Exploration Vehicle" thart they are working on is going to blow the fuck up about twenty times too. You can probably trace the suckiness of manned space exploration to the decision to switch from cool names like "Mercury" and "Apollo" to crappy names like "Skylab" and "STS." When the Apollo blew up they fucking fixed it and came home, but when the Space Shuttle gets fucked up they make Powerpoints about it and ignore the problem.
If we have a space elevator... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the worlds limited resources are best spent on the space elevator, since that effort might give us an economical way of getting to space.
OH FUCKING GREAT (Score:2)
Why dont we also stop sending probes out as well, since those are *SUCH* a waste of money as well NASA?
at this rate we might as well just go back to staring at stars through little $600 ground based telescopes. The only good telescope we have is going to be scr
This is Bush's fault, not NASA's (Score:2, Insightful)
Not NASA's fault. IIRC, Bush had existing NASA funding reallocated towards Mars work. It is not new news. Take a look at this article [cnn.com] from 2001: Bush's budget was to:
(CNN) -- While giving a boost to Mars exploration, the proposed 2002 budget for NASA would scrap a mission to Pluto, tighten the reins on the international space station and cut programs that monitor world climate changes.
ISS is a technological dead end (Score:4, Insightful)
We already know that microgravity is bad for bones. What about 1/6 G (the level of Lunar surface gravity)? If that is also unhealthy then we will definitely need more physiological research, but if 1/6 G is sustainable than it seems that the right answer is to use tethers to spin up that level of gravity.
Radiation is the other big problem. But unless I'm way off base here, the level and character (energy spectrum) of radiation in Low Earth Orbit is very different from that outside the Earth's magnetosphere. If you want to study deep space radiation, go to deep space (initially with petri dishes full of bio-goo, then small animals, etc).
The objection I have is spending another 6 years and $50B to complete ISS, when the only scientific rationales are poorly addressed by ISS. The only rationale that makes "sense" is that we're doing it to avoid angering the international partners on ISS, who have invested big bucks in equipment that is nearly ready for launch.
But this is a poor rationale. I think our partners would be just as pleased to work on the Moon-Mars program as on a technological dead end. So what we really wind up with is that this is nothing more than a jobs program and pork barrel for big aerospace firms.
Space efforts scaled back? (Score:2)
Seriously (Score:2)
Re:BREAKDOWN (Score:2)
Re:BREAKDOWN (Score:2)
Private industry and space (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, the only economically viable approaches I can see that private industry would prov