Shuttle Retirement Costs Divert Science Funding 160
FleaPlus writes "Although overall NASA funding is expected to increase next year, NASA has announced plans to divert money from its science program to help pay for the expected cost overruns for flying the Space Shuttle safely until its retirement in 2010. A number of science projects are being canceled or delayed indefinitely."
Painted itself into a corner (Score:5, Insightful)
They really need to make some hard choices. One possibility would be the diverting of funds to find out how to assemble the ISS with existing hardware, mainly Russian, as they are the only ones with heavy lift vehicles, though this might be very difficult. Another might be to try to reconfigure the shuttle platform as a heavy lift vehicle, thought that would take time and the ISS would be on hold. Of course the ISS is on hold now too...
The problem with the shuttle is, that a tremendous amount of energy is used to lift not only the required ISS part, but also a heavy hunk of 70's junk covered in tiles. This is not a smart way of lifting things into orbit.
I'm sorry, but NASA really needs to find a way to ditch the shuttle real soon. Considering the fact that the new Federal budget gives no hope of fixing the huge deficit, NASA money might be harder to come by in the near future, even thought they did get their money this time around.
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:2)
Even now, each piece that goes into orbit is bigger than what most rockets can carry. Once there, you then have to have some way of moving the piece into place. Basically, you would need a space tug. Well, we do not have that. It would take as long as the new stuff will take. During that time, the ISS will be simple holding 2 ppl in place doing very little. Until a few more pieces are there (namely some form
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:5, Informative)
If you wanted to, you could launch the module in a sort of adaptor that held the modules as they would be if the shuttle was carrying them. However, that would be heavy, to the point where even a Delta-IV Heavy may have trouble launching the module+adaptor combination.
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:3, Insightful)
More expensive than keeping the shuttle in operation for many more years?
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:4, Insightful)
For getting modules to ISS, I think they should actually use a Soyuz (with bigger service module and American CBM adapter on nose) to meet and tug the EELV-launched modules into the proper orbit. It's still pennies on the dollar compared to maintaining STS.
Josh
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:2)
That's an engineering/design problem. I don't see why that would be a show-stopper. Engineers are smart. They get paid to solve these kinds of issues. That's what they're there for.
COTS (Score:4, Interesting)
NASA is studying commercial alternatives. A number of hungry alt.space companies will be in the hunt, like Space-X [spacex.com] (first Falcon launch is planned for this Friday). In my view [slashdot.org], this is a subtle end-run around the hugely expensive ESA.
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:2)
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:2)
The hard choices have been made for them. The Shuttle is being retired in 2010. But the US is treaty-obligated to finish construction of the minimal ISS, so the money has to go into the shuttle for the short term. Its a collossal waste, IMO, but that's the hard choice. Some very interesting science has to be placed on hold in the meantime.
We're obligated to finish ISS, and we want to build the CEV and launch vehicles to take us to the Moon and Mars in this centu
Re:Painted itself into a corner (Score:3, Interesting)
The entire EELV program (Atlas V and Delta IV) was conceived and executed specifically because of the Challenger disaster, as a backup means for the NRO to get payloads on orbit.
The problem was - NASA didn't hop on the bandwagon in 1987 when they should have, and work to get EELVs human-rated. So while the NRO and USAF have their backup ve
Re:Saturn V (Score:3, Informative)
Problem solved, ditch the shuttle.
The only rocket to ever exceed the Saturn V's capacity was the Russian N1. Only problem with the N1 is they all blew up on the launching pad.
Time to also ditch LOX - Liquid Hydrogen, and go back to LOX Kerosene
Cheers
Wonderfull (Score:3, Insightful)
Kill the shuttle and keep the science, after all they are going to spend 100 billion dollars to get back to the moon and do nothing there AGAIN, no base, no telescope, no science, most likley just golf.
STUPID
Re:Wonderfull (Score:4, Insightful)
Manned space travel should be given over to the sort of missions being run by Branson and Rutan. That's where the real innovation is going to come from. Even if it starts off being for multimillionaires, it will become for everyone, whether for pleasure or science. Scientists reap the benefits of cheaper more powerful PCs that are often the result of research for commercial markets.
Re:Wonderfull (Score:2)
I agree. I think we'll see a private version of Mercury within 20 years, then things will start getting really wild.
Space is a frontier, and and expensive one at that. Government space agencies have a role in breaking the trails, but as we've seen with government-funded space exploration in the last 30+ years, government is not good at developing the fronti
Re:Wonderfull (Score:2)
I think it'll be sooner than that. SpaceX [wikipedia.org] has already announced its intent to compete for the $50 million America's Space Prize for orbital flight, which has a 2010 deadline. SpaceX is set to launch their first orbital rocket on Friday, and the Falcon 9 (which will be man-rated and large enough to lift a Mercury-style capsule) is scheduled to launch in 2007.
Re:Wonderfull (Score:2)
I like to play the estimates conservatively.
The technological hurdles are pretty high for private parties without very, very deep pockets. I hope to see it by 2010, but I'm not holding my breath.
Re:Wonderfull (Score:2)
There are people that will pay $20 million to spend a week on the ISS. I'm willing to bet that the market for a week on the Moon in a Moon Hotel is even larger. To get there requires a large infrastructure for lift, tra
Re:Wonderfull (Score:3, Insightful)
It's one thing to be a fan of private space travel. But at least look at the companies that actually go anywhere even remotely close to orbit instead of zipping around on an unscalable low delta-v rocketplane. For example, why is it always Rutan who gets mentioned, when SpaceX is about to launch a from-scratch developed *orbital* craft? Sure, it has no cockpit, but a cockpit is a nothing component compared to the difficulties of reaching orbit
Re:Wonderfull (Score:2, Interesting)
I wasn't trying to be specific, more that what they are doing will generate progress. Aircraft were at one time experimental, like the Wright Brothers, then between the wars, we saw something development and challenges (like Lindburgh and the Schneider trophy). After the war we got commercial air travel, which over the past 50 years has been put further and further into the reach of everyone.
It was a couple of decades between the first flight and Frank Whittl
Re:Wonderful (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like the early rocket launches built up to Apollo, current projects test the technologies we will be using in the future. Ion drives and such.
Just having a quick browse through http://exploration.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov] shows the stuff they want to develop - for unmanned and then manned flight.
Re:Wonderful (Score:3)
Yes, it was--in 1969.
-Eric
Actually, ... (Score:2)
Funding Diverts... (Score:4, Funny)
OH NO!! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:OH NO!! (Score:2, Funny)
By submiting to the dark side of the force!
Re:OH NO!! (Score:2)
Name change (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Name change (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Name change (Score:2, Insightful)
On the shuttle's safety record, it's in the same ballpark as Soyuz. One accident on Soyuz would tip the balance back in the shuttle's favour. The difference is not significant. Also, Soyuz has had plenty of c
Re:Name change (Score:2)
Probably account for some of it but far from all.
they're flying them on a ship that's vastly less capable than the shuttle.
So it's a better design for the job of getting people into space, amusing how you can't simply say that. The shuttle does a lot of stuff, and all of it badly.
On the shuttle's safety record, it's in the same ballpark as Soyuz. One accident on Soyuz would tip
Re:Name change (Score:3, Interesting)
Two Soyuz crews have died, if I remember correctly, just like the shuttle.
The difference is that the last Soyuz crew death was over thirty years ago, when it was still a new launcher. It's had problems since, but they've all been survivable because it's a capsule, not a brick with wings (or without wings, in the case of Challenger and Columbia post-accident). It's vastly easier to design a high-survivability capsule than a high-survivability
Re:Name change (Score:3, Insightful)
It's vastly easier to design a high-survivability capsule than a high-survivability 'space-plane' because it can take much higher stresses and still be able to land.
My point basically, for the foreseeable future a capsule is simply a safer (and cheaper) design to use. You can't r
Re:Name change (Score:2)
Re:Name change (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing the shuttle is good at is launching payload and people at the same time when the payload has to be delivered to the same place as people and possibly serviced prior to installation. In reality this is usefull only for space construction and nothing else which funnily enough is the program US insists on closing. Even in that case sending the payload on a proper heavy booster like Ariana, Proton, Energia or Delta 5 and people separately will end up being cheaper and safer.
Re:Name change (Score:2)
The new plan asfaik involves a small capsule or glider (mini single heatshield shuttle mounted on top of the rocket) for people, and a heavy booster for cargo.
Which may or may not be usefull (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Which may or may not be usefull (Score:2)
Of course at the same time the current safety record would make the shuttle utterly impractical, a failure every few week
Re:Name change (Score:2)
So what if it can reach a higher orbit? It's not higher enough to be significant. Nor does it have longer 'autonomy'. A Soyuz has a powered lifespan of about 96 hours. (Nor can you launch a Soyuz [capsule] with a significant payload.) Soyuz is a highly optimized 'commuter car' - vastly simpli
Re:Name change (Score:2)
Then somewhere around day 10000 almost everyone was using their 10/20 hindsight (no way it's anything close to 20/20 on average) to agree it was always a clusterfuck and should have been foreseen as such on day one.
What can we learn from this? Mostly that 10/20 hindsight will never go out of fashion, secondly that any average J
Re:Name change (Score:2)
Instead of scrapping the program once hindsight revealed it to be an albatross, they played the statistics game to appear to be safer. (one boom every 50 la
Re:Name change (Score:2)
Way I remember it, albatross was a ship's good luck... till some idiot
killed it. (beat) Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
It was a bad idea from day one.
Actually, there's very simple economics behind it. If you can build a reusable rocket with low maintenance, you can lower costs - and rocketry costs are ridiculous (and with good reason; these are incredibly complex and delicate beasts due to the tremendous task they have to perform; i
Re:Name change (Score:2)
among the best in the world with over a 98 percent success rate. There are a lot of bogus comparisons made, however. Yes, the Shuttle has had more casualties on it, but that's because it caries far more people. Yes, Soyuz hasn't had lost a crew member in decades, but it's killed almost a hundred ground crew and unmanned Soyuz craft keep exploding (it's pure luck that only the unmanned craft have been exploding, not the manned ones). And Soyuz has had so
Re:Name change (Score:2)
That's a neat little way you have of disqualifying their previous accident(s?). The way I see it, if astronauts died on a NASA mission, then they died on a mission, regardless of whether it happened inflight or on the launchpad.
NASA's safety record wasn't perfect before the shuttle, and I doubt it will be after the shuttle. We've been building cars for a hundred years, and people still die in them every day. Do you really expect space exploration to b
Space shuttle overruns? (Score:4, Funny)
So we're spending billions of dollars to preserve old spaceships, when things like SpaceShipOne [scaled.com] only cost tens or hundreds of millions [space.com] for test flights?
This is kind of like my father's insistence on maintaining his 1972 Cadillac (at a ridiculous annual cost) instead of purchasing a newer vehicle (say, a Honda) that gets three times the mileage and has much lower support costs. Of course, it just isn't as big or masculine... that's probably what this is all about.
Re:Space shuttle overruns? (Score:5, Informative)
#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:5, Interesting)
IMO most economical if all you are doing is heavy lifting/cargo - thats all the Shuttle ever was in the first place - a glorified bus to take up people and supplies. Go ahead and try to argue that the shuttle was also used for science expirements, the only reason that happened is it has a decent amount of space inside to put shelves with expirements in the shuttle.
BTW: previous points I've made here on
One: no more buying million dollar per pound of thrust rocket fuel.
Two: If you make it an electromagnetic rail (a rail-gun) or a gauss gun system and power it with a nuclear reactor, you could sell the electricity being produced when you arent launching things, and so in the long run cutting costs and maybe even paying for the whole launching system (mass driver and reactor). If you are worried you might not get enough energy at once, do what that laser-fusion facility is supposed to use - basically a bunch of capacitators with a fast discharge rate - the fusion facility claims it only costs a few pennies (actual pennies, not just that it doesnt make a dent in their budget)
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2)
Actually this may may not be as simple as you would think. I suppose you'd build a reactor that's not magnitudes too powerfull for the mass driver, so when you do are launching things you'll not be delivering much electricity. The problems lays with that that electricity has to come from somewhere else. And generators that can start fairly quick, diesel powered generators for example, are expe
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2)
And this would generally be sharp high power pulse demand, so some sort of super-capaciter bank would help spread out the load.
Large magnetic fields are bad for electronics (Score:2)
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2)
This is the first time I've heard that term used for capacitors. Maybe it's from some other country or era?
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2)
How does a rail gun work for launch from Earth? Have you done any serious analysis, because I don't see it. It's isn't just a matter of getting up some speed. Thos speeds (around 7 km/sec) are impractical on the ground, and you need a second boost at high altitude to get into Earth orbit, which the rail gun can't give you.
With carbon nanotube technology maturing, there is some hope for space elevators, although the engineering issues are non-trivial.
Re:Do some Research! (Score:2)
I took a quick look at this article. Of course, we've all heard about satellites launched by glorified artillery pieces - Jules Verne originated the concept. It is also clearly useless for nearly any payload of interest. I'm not surprised no one is pursuing it. What kind of second stage would your propose that would endure those environments? And even 15,000 feet is tough to do, but that is very unlikely to be an adequately high altitude, as the scale height at sea level is roughly 7,000 meters.
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2)
Sure - once they finish developing the unobtanium heatshield to protect the cargo during it's passage through the atmosphere.
The current costs per pound of thrust as somewhere down around $.01/lb, not even remotely near your claim. Rocket fuel is cheap. (Last time I heard a price, the LOX and LH2 for the Shuttle cost about $10 million per launch.)
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2)
Build the thing on the summit of Mona Kea in Hawaii. We already have telescope observatories there (I don't remember if Keck is on Hawaii or Maui). We have tracking radars at Barking Sands. The muzzle of the thing is at 10,000+ ft altitude, taking a significant chunk of lower atmosphere out of the friction component, plus a virtual guarantee of good weather most of the time, UNLIKE Florida, and Hawaii is at a reasonably low lattitude that takes advantage of momentum from the Earth's rotation.
Nuclear waste storate is actually pretty easy... (Score:2)
I was so happy when the president showed support for reproccessing/recycling the waste. It's coming at a fairly good time as the older waste from the plants is getting cool enough that reproccessing it won't create as much ancillery nuclear waste. It's no longer radioactive enough to contaminate materials around it.
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2)
Nuclear power plants don't have a monopoly on generating radioactive waste. Coal burning power plants generate their share too:
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/tex t/colmain.html
"For the year 1982, assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year."
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2, Insightful)
Low radioactive waste (ILW ) includes parts of the building, cooling water, steam generators etc. Probably several hundreds of tons of material... imagine the uranium mill tailings from the initial processing of the urainum ore. If you need to shoot this stuff into space, you have probably done the most unprofitable investment ever.
My point is that if you incur these cost into the cost of a nuclear plan
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2, Interesting)
If you do that, it will not continue on a straight line to the sun, it will stay in sun orbit. To dispose it in sun, you would have to lower the perihelion and to do that, you have to shoot your waste in the direction opposed to Earth velocity, fast enough to have it to go in the sun's atmosphere.
There's also another possibility : aim it in the direction velocity to the sun's escape velocity, I don't know which option requires the least deltaV...
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:#1 replacement candidate = 2 words... (Score:2)
Solar gravity will do the rest.
Manned programs are more important (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Manned programs are more important (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Manned programs are more important (Score:3, Insightful)
Such as?
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for manned space research (and one day I hope to be up there, too). But seriously, think about what "living in space" alone would accomplish in the next decade or so. Especially on board the ISS, which cannot function in the foreseeable future (I'm thinking the number of 10 yrs right now).
At this point the ISS is simply a money drain. It's not doing anything at all. It cannot do muc
Misconceptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Note I'm not saying this is the way things should be, but if you want an actual space program instead of a white-elephant jobs program you have to address the real problem. The continued existance of the shuttle program is a symptom of a structural problem in Congress, and that has to get fixed before you can expect anything useful from NASA beyond the odd robotic probe.
Re:Misconceptions (Score:4, Interesting)
A bizarre claim, given that there were plans to turn the X-15 into an orbital spacecraft launched on an expendable booster (similar to the Dynasoar).
Odds are very high that Rutan will put people into orbit in the next decade in a spacecraft he's designed and built. I can't say the same about NASA.
Re:Misconceptions (Score:2)
Rutan was using design information derived from NASA. I've heard him speak, he and his engineers read NASA technical papers, the engine manufacturers read NASA technical research. They didn't start from square one. They made use of millions of dollars and many man-years of NASA research. You can't say that Rutan did it all. He used a lot of NASA research and
Re:Misconceptions (Score:2)
Yes, and what came of those plans? That's what I meant by "dead end". They couldn't make it work.
Odds are very high that Rutan will put people into orbit in the next decade in a spacecraft he's designed and built. I can't say the same about NASA.
We'll see. Rutan's a smart guy, but he simply doesn't have any experience with hypersonic flight control or h
Re:Misconceptions (Score:2)
Ask yourself why we have so many "space centers". Wouldn't it be more efficient to have one big center, so all your scientists could talk to each oth
Well, there you go (Score:2)
This has been going on for years now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This has been going on for years now (Score:2, Insightful)
The first A in NASA used to stand for aeronautics, now I'm not sure what it stands for.
"Another".
Re:This has been going on for years now (Score:2)
Asinine?
Abysmal?
Apalling?
Atrocious?
Adversarial?
Anti?
Academic?
Ambiguous?
Agoraphobic?
Anemic?
Archaic?
Assimilate-your-tax-money-but-not-actually-promot
Re:This has been going on for years now (Score:2)
-Eric
Move on, nothing to see here... (Score:2)
That's governmenf for you (Score:2)
Re:That's governmenf for you (Score:2)
Government isn't supposed to be efficient. It's supposed to do the things that don't get done or don't get done right, by private business. For a few obvious examples:
universal education
national defense
space flight
food and drug safety
automobile emissions regulation
wilderness management
While, of course, we all want government to be as efficient as it can reasonably be, the actual services are the fundame
I, for one hope... (Score:2)
Re:I, for one hope... (Score:2)
Write your Congressperson (Score:2)
Jamacian Bobsled Team in Space (Score:4, Informative)
If we knew the shuttle would end up like this, I don't think we would have bothered. We've spent $145 billion on the shuttle for just over 1,000 days in orbit. This makes the math so depressingly simple even the president can do it in his head.
The lifetime cost of Voyager, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity, Galileo, Cassini-Huygens, and the Hubble Space Telescope combined is about $10 billion, while the ISS alone has cost $35 billion so far. Why throw good money after bad, pull the plug already and rethink the strategy.
There's no point sending humans to the moon (or anywhere else for that matter) unless we plan to stay. There may be large deposits of Platinum-group metals (PGMs) on the moon, and PGMs will be a cornerstone of the hydrogen economy, since each fuel cell needs a few ounces. There isn't much on Earth, and mining/refining the quantity needed to run a full scale H2 economy might cancel out the environmental benefit of fuel cells.
Moonrush by Dennis Wingo is a great read on the subject - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1894959108/103-9
Our only saving grace is the work being done by small entrepreneurs like Burt Rutan. It looks like the X Prize actually did a good job of jump starting the space economy.
Reduction in Force (Score:3, Informative)
But if you listen to the talking head that is Michael Griffin, "The science program has not--in our forward planning, we do not take one thin dime out of the science program in order to execute this architecture." (http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=181
Yes, Mr. Griffin, but you take out a few thousand employees overall.
How is this news? (Score:2, Informative)
From what I had been reading, the American shuttle has been grounded for the next few years. Perhaps even until 2012...
And despite other comments I've read and the lack of coverage of this in the news, we WILL be depending on Russia during this period to get us to the ISS. We are buying Suyoz vehicles.
The sale of them WAS out of the question since NASA could not purchase any space equipment from Russia because of the Iran Nonproliferation Act. Only a U.S. President could "bypass" the legislation.
Read
Shuttle gone. New CLV and CaLV for ISS, Moon, Mars (Score:2)
NASA's plan:
Finish the obligation to the ISS and retire the shuttle fleet before 2011.
In the meantime, use shuttle propulsion technology to develop new launch vehicles (Crew Launch Vehicle CLV and the heavy lift Cargo Launch Ve
Re:Shuttle gone. New CLV and CaLV for ISS, Moon, M (Score:2)
Look we appreciate the PR blurb here, Mr. Deutsch. But like we told you this morning [slashdot.org]--YOU DO NOT WORK FOR US ANYMORE!
-Eric
Re:Shuttle gone. New CLV and CaLV for ISS, Moon, M (Score:2)
Too bad... (Score:2)
I also don't like WHERE th
Terrestrial Planet Finder (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you think of anything that would light up the public's imagination, and interest in space exploration, more than finding Earth-like planets? Even if we didn't have any clear idea how to reach them, just knowing they exist would be huge.
If I were calling the shots, we would fly one more mission with the existing shuttle -- to service Hubble -- and then pack the shuttles off to museums. This whole mad scramble to update the shuttle and make it safe to fly, just when we are on the verge of retiring it, is ridiculous.
As for ISS, I say let's put it in mothballs until the CEV is ready -- and then restart ISS only if we can figure out what we're really going to use it for. Yeah, I know we have international agreements involving the ISS. We can re-negotiate them. Our partners have to realize the old plan no longer makes sense, if it ever did.
Shuttle costs in context of other space activities (Score:2)
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid =894 [hobbyspace.com]
* Florida Today points out that "In the past three years, Congress has given the [Shuttle] program $13 billion, and all that money has resulted in just two flights". Sword of Damocles: NASA must safely launch the space shuttles this year, or the program wont survive - Florida Today - Feb.5.06 [floridatoday.com].
To put that into perspective:
* Elon Musk has spen
Re:Christian Fundimentalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Due to problems with the shuttle and extreme caution involved with current and future shuttle projects, the cost of running the space shuttle program has jumped. They had to get the money from somewhere within the NASA budget. Grabbing more from Congress isn't going to happen when you've got an $8 trillion budget deficit and cost overruns left and right. Congress has no fiscal discipline, and this is the result.
Mod parent down! (Score:4, Insightful)
Real world calling, do you accept collect charge? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the same world where you and I exist; even if you would happen to a billionaire (I'm certainly not one) there is always some level beyond which you have to prioritize, beyond which you can't have everything. Most people learn this as little toddlers however a lot of (or all) politicans love forgetting it if it can get them elected
In the system which NASA exists that power of priority is in the hands of Congress (mainly) & Senate, however in this case it is NASA itself which is rearranging and reprioritizing at their own discretion.
Yes, one can argue for more money to NASA (even if they've already gotten more). Yes, I support "pet" projects of my own (like the Dawn mission which is on hold, and that's just a start; if I started listing all the things I'd like to see it would keep me occupied for the rest of my life) and I would of course love to see them get a massive increase in support. But neither changes the fact of how the world works or that there are other things than NASA which needs funding and/or which a majority of the elected representatives across any boundary deem important enough to manage to agree upon.
Enter the current plethora of private space initiatives; it's the only solution because it strives and directly aims to be economically profitable (something which 1. simply isn't NASAs job and 2. for the most part wouldn't even be legal for NASA as they as part of the US government aren't allowed to for example hold patents).
To sum it up: if you don't expect "this kind of thing" from anyone and everyone, always, you're going to be constantly disappointed (and to no gain for anyone including yourself).
--
this additional sig includes a portrait of Mohammed in support of freedom of expression, feel free to reproduce it
The Shuttle has always been a budget buster. (Score:2)
Re:Christian Fundimentalism (Score:2)
Re:Christian Fundimentalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Similarly the large number of Jesuit scientists should be enough to show that at least some parts of christianity can be seen to be in favou
Re:Christian Fundimentalism (Score:2)
I don't even know what crazy bits of mental gymnastics these people have to go through to justify their beliefs. If the bible is ultimate literal truth, then how come it's not OK to sell your firstborn daught
Re:Christian Fundimentalism (Score:2)
Really? What about Genesis where Adam & Eve were forbidden to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil? How does one know they have to obey such an edict if they have no idea it's wrong not to?
Re:typical... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:typical... (Score:2, Interesting)
I understand the ideals of pushing 8 year olds into the sciences, engineering and technology sectors, as these types of jobs do need fresh blood, but space exploration can be done much cheaper and better by robotic vehicles.
Witness Spirit and Opportunity; both these rovers are (relatively) simple in design, and yet both have far exceeded their original designs and goals. If you had th