The Fight Over NASA's Future 288
swestcott writes "The New York Times has an interesting article about the transition to the Obama administration and NASA's transition to the new Orion."
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The Fight Over NASA's Future
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"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz
Can't keep putting everything on our credit card (Score:2, Insightful)
NASA will last exactly as long as the American people are willing to keep spending money that we don't have and adding to the U.S. national debt. Coincidentally; that is also the exact lifespan of medicare/social security without income limits, the Iraq military budget, the government bailout packages, and the budgets of a wide variety of unnecessary pork projects.
Sadly, NASA is a drop in the bucket compared to most of this other stuff and is doing important research, but it is still money spent that we ju
Re:Can't keep putting everything on our credit car (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to die in a fire, then I suggest you go do so.
Re:Can't keep putting everything on our credit car (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can't keep putting everything on our credit car (Score:5, Insightful)
Even after a large asteroid hit
Why do we have to take the hit if we have a workable space program? I'd rather deflect [wikipedia.org] the damn thing than start digging tunnels while meekly accepting the fact that the vast majority of the human race and biosphere would die off.
The space program is pretty cheap if you look at it that way.
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Except that diverting an asteroid from hitting Earth isn't really NASA's area of expertise.
The response for such a threat would involve nuclear missiles almost certainly delivered by existing (or modifications of) ICBM rockets and infastructure.
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Think again. Most of the deflection strategies I've seen don't necessarily require the use of nuclear weapons. Even if you were to use nukes to accomplish it though you wouldn't be using ICBMs to deliver them. ICBMs don't have the energy to achieve earth orbit -- let alone escape velocity.
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Actually no they didn't
Older ICBMs like the Atlas, R-7 "I think", and Titan had to throw really big and heavy warheads. They all could put a lighter satellite into orbit.
Modern US missiles have less throw weight but even then a Peacekeeper or Trident could reach orbit with a light enough load.
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I didn't "equate" it with NASA. I used it as a justification for keeping a workable space program in place. You seemed to shoot down the idea because it's a "pipe-dream" to think we'd be able to survive on other bodies within the solar system. I pointed out that a space program gives us multiple options -- including saving our own planet.
Besides, if not NASA, then who? Do we have another institution with similar spaceflight experience that I'm not aware of?
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But there is just one problem is equating this with NASA. NASA has, AFAIK, never done any research into deflecting asteroids and has never implemented or even proposed such a program.
Thought I'd do some checking on this and share with the class:
B612 Foundation [b612foundation.org]
We've been anticipating the conclusion of a contract we issued to Jet Propulsion Laboratory in early 2008, and it's now available. We asked JPL to analyze, in detail, the performance of a transponder equipped gravity tractor (t-GT) in determining the precise orbit of a NEO with which it has rendezvoused, and to evaluate the towing performance of the GT per se.
And elsewhere on their site: [b612foundation.org]
NASA's NEO Report to Congress (see #15 below) has stirred considerable controversy due to both its rejection of Congress' request for a recommended program to support the new Spaceguard Survey goal and it's technically flawed deflection analysis. The analytic work supporting the summary report to Congress is being withheld from public review by NASA despite it having been published as a 3-color glossy "Final Report" and distributed internally.
The sky is falling, really [iht.com]:
The bad news? While this all looks fine on paper, scientists haven't had a chance to try it in practice. And this is where NASA's report was supposed to come in. Congress directed the agency in 2005 to come up with a program, a budget to support it and an array of alternatives for preventing an asteroid impact.
But instead of coming up with a plan and budget to get the job done, the report bluntly stated that "due to current budget constraints, NASA cannot initiate a new program at this time."
Why did the space agency drop the ball? Like all government departments, it fears the dreaded "unfunded mandate." Congress has the habit of directing agencies to do something and then declining to give them the money to do so. In this case, Congress not only directed NASA to provide it with a recommended program but also asked for the estimated budget to support it. It was a left-handed way for the Congress to say to NASA that this is our priority like it or not. But for some reason NASA seems to have opted for a federal form of civil disobedience.
I think this ties in with NASA's, and specifically Administrator Griffin's, emphasis on manned missions over unmanned missions. I hope Obama replaces the man. Because, not having a space mission is a good excuse for the dinosaurs, we can't use that one.
Re:Can't keep putting everything on our credit car (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, we have no freaking clue what killed the dinosaurs. But even if it was a meteorite/asteroid (as you smugly imply),
Given the evidence, the odds point to it almost certainly being an asteroid that did the deed. The crater at the same time, the iridium deposits, etc, all support the theory. Can we say that it was an asteroid without a shadow of a doubt? No, there is a slight possibility it was something different, but we're a hell of a long way from having "no clue" as to what did it. That's the same backwards ass thinking that throws up evolution as "just a theory" every time it's brought up.
As to the rest of your post, as another poster pointed out, a space program is far more useful in deflecting asteroids than in evacuating the whole planet. Something as simple as parking a satellite next to the incoming body for long enough (talking a span of years/decades here) can gravitationally perturb it enough to move it off of a collision course.
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I'll tell you what my grandma always used to tell me when I was a little kid: "Better to have your head in the dirt breathing oxygen than standing on a planet with no atmospheric pressure trying to breath methane."
Grandma was a strange woman, but her advice does hold true.
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Just exactly how would you breathe methane with no atmospheric pressure?
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Let me tell you how grandma died...
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Why do you say that? Because some asteroid hit the planet and wiped them out? Maybe they just didn't have ships large enough to get the entire dino population off of the planet. Maybe they didn't have anything large enough to deflect the killer asteroid. Maybe there's a fleet of dinosaur ark ships fleeing to another star right this very moment.
Re:Can't keep putting everything on our credit car (Score:5, Funny)
I find it highly suspicious that we haven't been hit with an ELE from space in the past 60 million years. The most probable explanation for that would seem to be that, roughly 60 million years ago, someone or something blasted off into space with a mission to protect the earth from future bombardment.
It was probably the raptors (it always is). I'm guessing they saved as many as they could in the seed ships while sending hunter-killer probes after near-earth asteroids. Even now, a society of hyper evolved Raptors are probably awakening from their cryogenic fugue out in the Ort cloud. Any day, they'll be sending a probe our way to evaluate the habitability of Earth as they've no doubt done every 20 million years or so.
What's gonna happen when they find out an infestation of not so furry primates have taken over and are now molding the remains of their ancestors into cheap plastic hello kitty christmas ornaments? I'm guessing they'll either capture a comet from the Ort cloud and send it hurtling our way, wipe us out with death beams from space, or send crack teams of Raptor ninjas down to exterminate us in hand to hand combat.
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I find it highly suspicious that we haven't been hit with an ELE from space in the past 60 million years.
You may have been going for a funny mod, but...
Actually there was a "minor" extinction level event approx 35 million years ago at the end of the Eocene. There are several craters associated with this event, including the one under Chesapeake bay, and one in what is now Siberia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene-Oligocene_extinction_event [wikipedia.org] is a good place to start if you want to know more.
Re:Can't keep putting everything on our credit car (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can't keep putting everything on our credit car (Score:5, Insightful)
Further, people talk about spending money on "space" like we take the dollars, stuff 'em in a rocket, and shoot it off. Those dollars are spent here, on earth, and create jobs and opportunities for lots of people. Not to mention the spinoffs we get as a byproduct.
We can either just give money away (welfare), or spend it to create jobs and knowledge. I prefer the later.
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The government budget is controlled by corporate interests who bribe our politicians. The only role of the 'American people' is to pay for it.
Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
Quit whining about budgets and work on cutting edge projects?
HELLOOOO
Why do you think they are not? Simple because their budget isn't there. They can't pie in the sky because they aren't getting money. They don't generate enough votes.
Politicians look for votes. Our money buys them votes. As such they will put the money to where it gets the most votes for the least investment. NASA is a large investment for a small return, 10 billion spent at NASA doesn't cover nearly as many votes as 10 billion on a new bridge or entitlement program. I am quite sure they have lots of CE projects on file, they just know they will not even get a hearing because the politicians are more concerned about feeding the greed of America's new looter class because that class keeps them in power.
Science and Math will become a priority when they generate votes. Just like your child's education, when those kids can vote then education will become a priority, they don't worry about the parents because every parent thinks their school is fine - its just those other schools. Hence education gets dumbed down, kids don't learn, instead of wanting to become a scientist they want to play ball and space sits out there waiting for a nation driven by pride and hard work will be the one to exploit it.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Informative)
Hey there--it's John, the guy who wrote the story. There are other factors at play besides the number of votes that an initiative can generate. For example, the place that the votes are generated is important, and space states like Florida have pretty important votes. The companies that benefit from space spending are also influential. NASA centers and NASA work is spread out all across the country. There are many reasons that Congressional support for NASA remains high and bipartisan -- not just the ones I've named, but the inspiration that NASA can provide to kids who might pursue careers in science and engineering. But the support hasn't been there to give NASA substantially MORE money, and that's why there's going to be a gap in US space flights.
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Some comments:
The quote from Neil Otte: ... said that solving tough problems was what engineers did for a living. When they encounter a particularly difficult challenge, he said, their attitude is, "Hey, it's starting to get fun now, and we're earning our money."
To me, that's the real engineering attitude that makes stuff like that works. I agree with those who say that engineering difficulties are expected for a new system like this.
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This concept of a 10 billion dollar bridge intrigues me. Please describe this bridge.
Normal Clothes!? (Score:2)
I think that maybe the only photo I've ever seen with someone in normal clothing anywhere near a piece of kit belonging to NASA and going into space.
Are all the news stories sensationalist? (Score:4, Informative)
TFNYTA seemed head and shoulders above what I've read of Aries before. This quote struck me:
TFS wasn't nearly as good; the transition team was barely mentioned. Actually I was glad; there was more discussion of the actual Aries project itself and the problems with abandoning space for a few years while Aries is being finished.
Re:Are all the news stories sensationalist? (Score:5, Interesting)
Griffin's quote and basic sentiment reminded me of JFK's 1962 Rice University speach:
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Well, you know, my journalistic motto has always been "dare to be dull."
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Were you TFA's author or simply its submitter? If you wrote the NYT article, then bravo, sir.
Alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to see a move away from the Ares-Orion stack and a move towards the more versatile Jupitor plan.
I'd also like to see us make serious use of the press and make our move back to the Moon and eventually to Mars as much as an event as the original Mercury-Gemini-Apollo missions. You have to make it romantic for the public so they feel like writing their Congresscritters to support funding.
Re:Alternatives : DIRECT / JUPITER (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, since you asked...
The Jupiter is a straightforward evolution of the Shuttle system into a traditional rocket. 1) The Shuttle itself is removed from the stack. 2) The external tank is modified and strengthened to carry a payload on top and engines on the bottom. 3) The three expensive shuttle main engines are replaced by two expendable engines and moved to the bottom of the external tank. 4) A 10 meter payload fairing is mounted on top of the fuel tank, with a capacity of up to 20 tons of hardware. 5) The Orion spacecraft is placed on top of the payload fairing. 6) A crew escape system is placed on top of the Orion.
Now, that sounds complicated, but it is much simpler once you see the results: DIRECT Launcher [directlauncher.com].
What that gives you is a versatile rocket for placing a six man crew PLUS 20 tons of cargo at the space station in a single launch. This configuration by itself is almost a complete replacement for the Shuttle, except for the Shuttle's ability to return payloads to Earth. Or, the Jupiter could lift 50 tons of payload to LEO in an unmanned configuration. Ares-I can't do either of those jobs, now or ever. No existing or planned EELV can do that. Ares-V would be such a behemoth (if it ever flies) that it would be much too expensive to fly on a regular basis. That is why Jupiter-120 is more versatile than Ares-I.
The second phase of the Jupiter proposal is to add a second liquid rocket stage on top of the core stage, while at the same time adding a third engine at the bottom. That will enable the Jupiter to place up to 110 tons of payload in LEO in a single launch. For the lunar mission there would be two launches, just as for Ares. One launch would carry the Orion CEV and the Altair lunar lander. The second launch would just lift extra fuel and the upper stage. The Orion and Altair would dock with the upper stage, then use the upper stage to send them to lunar orbit.
Jupiter can also be used to launch exploration missions to Near Earth Orbit (NEO) objects, launch large scientific payloads such as really big telescopes, Earth recon sats, etc. Jupiter is small enough and affordable enough to be used on a regular basis, but still twice as powerful as any existing or planned commercial launcher (including SpaceX).
Because Jupiter is so cleanly derived from the Space Shuttle, it needs much less development money than Ares. In fact, the entire Jupiter project, including lunar capability, would cost less than half of what is planned for Ares. The Ares-I project is going to cost around $15 billion by itself, with another $16-17 billion for Ares-V. Jupiter is projected to cost less than $12 billion for both the initial LEO version and upper stage. This economy is possible because both versions use the exact same "common core", with only the addition of the third main engine and the upper stage to allow lunar missions.
So the whole DIRECT premise is to build a single new "medium" sized rocket from the Shuttle heritage, which can be used for Earth orbit and lunar exploration. Ares requires the development of two entirely new rockets, neither of which have much at all in common with Shuttle or each other. Jupiter can use most of the existing launch infrastructure, including crawlers, crawlerways, and the fixed portion of the existing launch towers. Ares-I and -V both require extensive modifications of the launch pads, and both launch pads will be dedicated to one or the other vehicle, since they are so different. And at this point, the Ares-V is getting so large that it may require completely new pads and crawlerways to be built.
Jupiter can be used with or without an upper stage. It can launch manned missions with or without payloads. It can launch payloads with or without crew. It can be ready up to three years sooner than Ares-I, which is actually planning their first manned flight for 2016. 2016! Jupiter will still take until late 2013, but that is because it has to wait for the Orion CEV to be finished.
And that's why Jupiter is more versatile, affordable, and sensible than Ares.
But teh gubment is BAD! Corporations are teh GUD! (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA is being set up to fail, because of the prevailing pro-corporate attitude in the US. The idea is that private entities are efficient, responsible, and capable of long-term planning and technological development. So nobody wants to be accused of being 'socialist' by giving more money to a government agency.
The original Apollo program cost $135 billion in modern(ish) money over about 10 years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_costs_and_cancellation [wikipedia.org]
Whereas Constellation is being given $3 billion a year for about 20 years, or about $60 billion in current money.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/detail/10004394.2006.html [whitehouse.gov]
So the US government is expecting a great deal more, for a lot less money, when there has been no real development in interplanetary manned travel since Apollo.
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there has been no real development in interplanetary manned travel since Apollo.
Sure, but there has been Apollo. We already went there. That's supposed to change some things.
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Yeah, it's not like there have been any major advances in computer-aided design or modeling since then. And materials research has been at a STANDSTILL.
And don't even get me started on the sorry state of the slide-rule industry...
Re:But teh gubment is BAD! Corporations are teh GU (Score:3, Informative)
The moon program was sold in a time when people in the US were afraid of a world ruled by Soviets. Manned space travel needs to be sold better, or rather, it needs a reason to be. Science is a hard sell since robots can do maybe 95% of the same work with maybe 5% of the budget.
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Exactly, and that was even the case during the Apollo missions. Kennedy had been told that, in terms of science, all the work planned for human astronauts could be done by robots, which would be less dangerous and less expensive. Of course, non-scientists are not really aware of this...
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Re:But teh gubment is BAD! Corporations are teh GU (Score:5, Insightful)
How does space exploration have "no obvious returns"? The return is the ability to travel into space. Just because something is not profitable doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.
This is why corporate space exploration will never be any good.
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This is why corporate space exploration will never be any good.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. If we are really facing a metals shortage [slashdot.org] here on Earth that could change. There's a whole solar system full of resources just waiting to be utilized.
Re:But teh gubment is BAD! Corporations are teh GU (Score:4, Insightful)
Bailouts should NEVER be just gifts of cash (as recently done). A quid-pro-quo should always be demanded. A space program as a bailout is not good (it should be done for itself), but it's far superior to a cash handout.
Similarly, the bailout of the finance sector should have resulted in massive government ownership and control of the sector. It should have then sold those things off as quickly as the market would bear, but a cash handout was extremely bad. It follows an extremely bad precedent and maintains it. The lesson is "It's ok to gamble recklessly with other peoples money. If you lose, someone else will pay."
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So... what exactly is your point? This is like arguing with a college student over why idealistic communism will fail.
Turns out reality has quite a bit more variables involved in it than Locke or Marx previously considered.
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Turns out reality has quite a bit more variables involved in it than Locke or Marx previously considered.
That's a nice little bald assertion you've got there. Were you planning to affix any content to that... or were you hoping it would stand on its own?
Re:But teh gubment is BAD! Corporations are teh GU (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, sure. There are approximately 6 billion people in the world, all with their own particular values and opinions. You could surely collapse some values of certain swathes of people into a group of norms, but we're still talking at least hundreds of thousands of viewpoints, if not millions (depends on how specifically you try to categorize said opinions). Just looking at their books and various other writings, I can easily assume that they did not take into consideration hundreds of thousands of viewpoints. Therefor, they did not take into consideration all of the variables involved in reality.
I do not have to get more specific than that. They may have focused on the most prevalent viewpoints, but to say they considered every last aspect of humanity's individuality and its' effects on the average social viewpoints is patently absurd. The problem is, since everybody is different, the interplay between the individual and the social norm is subtle. The best way to describe the reality of society is to liken it to determining the weather. Chaos theory, perhaps, describes it best.
In essence, Marx and Locke focused on abstracts. The problem is reality has so many specific instantiations of unforseeable behavior that their economic models tend to break down the moment you put them into play with large groups of people. These models then need "fixes" applied, like patches, over time. It's not to say that Locke or Marx were idiots; they were quite intelligent men, regardless of your opinion on their socio-economic models. But to say the abstract models they specified will work flawlessly in society is foolishness. Every model currently in play in the world is an example of that. They were adopted with the purest of intentions, but patch after patch was overlaid upon them to rectify some perceived flaw in some specific case. Then you get American Capitalism, British Capitalism, German Socialism, Vietnamese Communism, Chinese Communism, etc, etc. They're all examples of how these models broke down upon entering society. In an ideal world, no one would want to modify the models at all, and then Locke or Marx's utopia would flourish and everyone would be dancing in the street as they basked in the fruits of their perceived "right way to live" socio-economic model.
But it has never happened and it never will happen, and therein is the entire point I was trying to make.
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Okay, sure. There are approximately 6 billion people in the world, all with their own particular values and opinions. You could surely collapse some values of certain swathes of people into a group of norms, but we're still talking at least hundreds of thousands of viewpoints, if not millions (depends on how specifically you try to categorize said opinions). Just looking at their books and various other writings, I can easily assume that they did not take into consideration hundreds of thousands of viewpoints. Therefor, they did not take into consideration all of the variables involved in reality.
Please note that the viewpoints of the irrational need not reflect reality. That Euclid did not discuss the feelings of triangles should not count against him. I will acknowledge that most people have not considered all viewpoints, but am not sure what your point is. We were originally talking about economics, and you've somehow drifted off to social studies.
In essence, Marx and Locke focused on abstracts. The problem is reality has so many specific instantiations of unforseeable behavior that their economic models tend to break down the moment you put them into play with large groups of people.
I will not defend Marx, with whom I completely disagree, nor even Locke, who founded natural rights in the Divine. With respect to your argument, thoug
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Actually, I was always discussing sociology. I was discussing economic models and their implementation in reality. You cannot have a reality involving humans without social studies being integral. I guess you missed that part of my previous statement (way up there, when I mentioned "reality"). That was (in my opinion) the important part of my statement. I fear you may have focused on the rest and not on that one part. A communication error, perhaps.
I definitely see what you're saying and I can respect
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And exactly what you are saying is why Democracy is doomed to fail. When everyone has a right to vote for what they may or may not get they'll eventually vote themselves benefits for which the economy cannot sustain. Why not just have a vote to make everyone a millionaire? Too much money?...how about $500k?....$1k?...$500? If handing out money some how makes everything better why is the economic stimulus so low? why not make everyone a millionaire?
The fight from the personal rights advocates are afraid
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That's a nice little bald assertion you've got there. Were you planning to affix any content to that... or were you hoping it would stand on its own?
That's a nice little attack on his post you've got there. Were you planning to affix any content to that... or were you hoping it would stand on its own?
You can be lazy on calling people out on their ineffective arguments, but not many people will care if you don't provide any evidence to oppose such a post. And no, I don't care either way to comment on the topic, I'm just suggesting that your posts are as constructive to the conversation as this one is.
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Spare me the neoliberal party line. Its clear your philosophy is bankrupt by opening any newspaper these days.
The profit motive isn't any good for driving large space exploration, for the same reason it isn't any good for managing credit risks; prices can only reflect what has happened before and have zero value in forecasting future risks.
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It depends a lot on where the money needs to be spent. There have been a lot of advancements in technology (especially computers) since the 60s, so I imagine that pretty much the entire control system would have to be replaced. Plus it's a larger rocket and a larger capsule which will require new design rules and testing. And it's hard to imagine that the price to actually build and operate the thing, once designed, has dropped a lot. The raw materials are still the same and the fuel is governed by phy
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I'm not sure it matters so much where the money has to be spent - you can't expect 75% cost reductions in an area of design and manufacture that has been pretty much untouched since the last time it was attempted, 40 years ago.
There has been work done on space habitation aboard the ISS, but that is one of the easiest parts - there has been no work done since Apollo on manned planetary landers or very heavy lift rockets such as Saturn V.
stagnant budgets (Score:2, Insightful)
it is pretty ridiculous to keep budgets stagnant or to lower them and then expect the same output or better. inflation, hardware price increases (we used a lot of legacy systems that were very expensive), annual raises (believe me, not much), and everything else make up the shoestring budget that we were running off of. i
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it is pretty ridiculous to keep budgets stagnant or to lower them and then expect the same output or better.
Better not say that too loud or the private sector managers might get some ideas...
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If the private sector managers (especially top level, CEO and boards, etc) had gotten those ideas the world's economy might not have collapsed.
Where have you been for the last 15 years? Economic reports hailed the fact that productivity (output/cost) was rising and that costs were being contained (workers worked more for the same amount of money). What this translated into was less money for the workers who then had to re
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The main problem is that these things going on under NASA aren't understood by the public. And until someone in NASA can come along and sell them to the average person, all we can do is take your (and other engineers') word for it. Seeing as how you are making money from it (even if it isn't quite enough), the average person has every reason to question you at your word. This is not to say that you are lying, but to say that, despite evidence (and subsequent understanding) to support your word, the avera
Interesting conversation... (Score:5, Interesting)
"I don't frankly know what the answer is," [Dr. Crowley, of MIT] said, "but I know it's a lot closer and a lot more complicated answer than the one playing out in the media and the blogs."
I think they're talking about us.
===
But in all seriousness, the cost of running the shuttle for 5 years is $x and the cost of developing the Constellation program in 5 years is $y. Meanwhile, NASA's budget is not x+y and if they wanted to try to develop Constellation in 3 years its cost would be closer to $y^2.
It seems like people can't grasp the rudimentary guideline of engineering development: you've got limitations in quality, cost, and timeliness, and on any challenging project you need to pick one of those limitations that you won't particularly worry about.
I do like the articles conclusion though... NASA's budget is way too small for the amount of good that it can do for the world and for the amount of high-tech science jobs that it can create. As long as everybody in the nation has food, shelter, telecommunications, and power... there is no reason NASA's budgets shouldn't balloon.
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Food and shelter are NOT luxuries. If you can die without something it is a NECESSITY, not a luxury. And anyone who is heartless and callous enough to simply let people die when those people can be saved by something that there is enough of to go around, like food, well, I see why the world's economy has collapsed. Hint: it wasn't socialism or liberalism, it was the failure of capitalism.
The failure of capitalists like YOU. Funny how the people who cause the world's misery never suffer themselves. Your atti
Re:Interesting conversation... (Score:4, Insightful)
How many people in the USA lack food and shelter because of circumstances beyond their control, and how many of them lack food and shelter as a direct result of their own choices?
Is it right to take resources from productive people in order to allow other people to survive the consequences of their bad decisions?
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How many people in the USA lack food and shelter because of circumstances beyond their control, and how many of them lack food and shelter as a direct result of their parent/guardian's choices?
There, fixed that for you. In all seriousness though, there will always be people who failed on their own, and people who were given no chance to succeed.
Maybe you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but then turned around and used the spoon to cook up a hit of heroin.
Or maybe you were born into a poor, abusive family, but had a natural aptitude for science & math. Unfortunately, you'd get beaten to a pulp in school if you actually showed off your talent, and made the self-defense decision
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What fantasy word are you living in? Every state has gifted schools for kids who do well in math/science.
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If they're lucky, they'll stumble across a teacher who's good/interested enough to get paperwork started to get he kid admitted (provided the school isn't full with a waiting list). It's not likely that the gifted school is near the bad neighborhood, so the kid is either going to need daily rides from their parent (hah!), or hope that the school district has the resources to bus them in.
And even then, they're sti
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You seem to have this fantasy were Jocks rule and "Nerds" are beaten to a pulp on a daily basis...
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How many people in the USA lack food and shelter because of circumstances beyond their control, and how many of them lack food and shelter as a direct result of their own choices?
OK, take your average dirt-poor ghetto kid. His mom's a crack whore, he never had a dad, all of his neighbors are gang bangers.
Did he CHOOSE to be born to a drug addict in a neighborhood where all the schools are abysmal and none of the adults are responsible?
I know several people who have become homeless. Only one of them had any
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At a street corner near my workplace, there is this (presumably homeless) guy that continually hold up a sign "need a hamburger and a beer".
I know for a fact that jobs are easy to come by (even now) in this city. I also know that my boss actually offered this man a job (janitor) but he refused.
Perhaps the majority of hungry and homeless people throughout the nation are truly victims of circumstance. But right here in a city where f
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It's guys like Donald Trump, Ken Lay, and the guy with the fifty billion dollar Ponzi scheme. The people who never wanted for anything whatever in their lives, who never got their hands dirty, who think that they're somehow better than the poor slob who actually produces his wealth for him.
This should probably be modded off-topic because it's far from the discussion about NASA, but I'd leave Trump off the list of "arrogant rich". Having read his autobiographical "The Art of the Deal", he grew up as a normal shmoe in Brooklyn with a dad who built 6 family houses in the seedier parts of the 'hood. And his wealth, IMHO, is created from (a) being a visionary, and (b) not taking shit from contractors who make promises that they can't keep (i.e. time and cost guarantees).
And I was in Trump Towe
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"Donald Trump was the son of Fred Christ Trump" [wikipedia.org]
"Frederick Christ Trump was the father of the prolific real estate/entertainment magnate Donald Trump, his fourth of five children. [wikipedia.org]
"His father, Friederich, was an entrepreneur who began his fortune running the Arctic Restaurant and Hotel in Bennett, British Columbia, during the Klondike Gold Rush, but died during the 1918 Spanish Flu when Fred was only 13."
The man was hardly a "normal shmoe". According to wikipedia he was born the son of a rich man, with all th
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You should try reading posts that you are responding to, son.
Cancel Orion, keep the Shuttle (Score:2, Interesting)
That's heresy in some quarters, but at this point, I don't think we can justify another trip to the moon, because we certainly aren't going to Mars anytime soon anyway, which was the whole point of going back to the Moon in the first place... to begin the process of setting up a Lunar base for future Mars exploration.
As expensive as it is, right now, the Shuttle is actually useful for some tasks that we're committed to... ISS support, for instance. The whole Orion program was basically just a re-do of Sat
Re:Cancel Orion, keep the Shuttle (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole Orion program was basically just a re-do of Saturn/Apollo anyway.
Columbus' journey was basically just a re-do of Leif Ericson's anyway. The ISS was basically just a re-do of MIR.
Re:Cancel Orion, keep the Shuttle (Score:5, Interesting)
We managed to find $25 billion to fund bailing out a moribund auto industry. It seems to me putting that money into a forward-looking industry rather than a backwards-looking one would have been a much more worthwhile use of the money.
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We managed to find $25 billion to fund bailing out a moribund auto industry. It seems to me putting that money into a forward-looking industry rather than a backwards-looking one would have been a much more worthwhile use of the money.
A common logical fallacy -- "We wasted $x on A, so it's okay to waste $y < $x on B.". I am not in favor of the government bail outs. So far as I'm concerned GM should just spin off Corvette to Honda (the only GM car people actually dream about owning) and let the rest o
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A more "direct" route to consider, Mr Obama? (Score:3, Interesting)
You need to look at Direct Space Transportation System [launchcomplexmodels.com]...
NASA history (Score:3, Insightful)
What would worry me here is NASA's history. The Apollo 1 fire. Challenger. Columbia. The common thread in all of them is NASA engineers saying "We have a problem, we need to stop and fix it.", and NASA management going "It's OK, we haven't had a problem yet.". So when I hear NASA engineers saying "This isn't going to work.", and NASA management going "Everything's going to work, we just need to fix a few little things.", I start wondering what reason I have to believe things aren't going to work out just like the last few times.
NASA engineers are really good at solving problems. NASA management is very bad at acknowledging they have a problem that the engineers need to solve.
I need rehab (Score:5, Interesting)
Troll biter's rehab. Damn but it's hard to ignore the clueless trolls. I guess I'm off the wagon again, I have to respond.
"Pork"? WTF??? Do you have any idea how many technological advances, especially in medicine, that have come from the space program?
Do you have cable TV? A cell phone? GPS? None of these would be possible were it not for the "pork spending" on space. All of them rely on sattelites.
"physics"? What kind of drooling anti-nerd can't understand that launching a heavy machine into outer space doesn't use physics?
"Chemistry?" You realise how much chemistry work is involved in fuels?
If I were modding I would be undecided whether to mod the parent as "troll" or "funny". Who let all these clueless MBAs in here anyway?
Re:I need rehab (Score:4, Insightful)
Where did he say the ends justifies the means?
I think you're making the assumption that everyone here is against the means used in this situation. Spending money on a mega highway in Alaska is the true definition of pork. Government spending on far reaching projects that otherwise wouldn't be immediately profitable for the business sector is perfectly fine, in my book. Don't assume that just because you think this is pork, everyone else is going to agree with you.
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Where did he say the ends justifies the means?
You mean, where did he say "look at all this shiny stuff we got", completely detached from and with no comment on how it was gotten? Well, that was his entire post...
I think you're making the assumption that everyone here is against the means used in this situation.
I do not believe so. On the contrary, I believe many here are in favor of such means. That is why posts such as mine are necessary - to contradict "common sense".
Government spending on far reaching projects that otherwise wouldn't be immediately profitable for the business sector is perfectly fine, in my book.
And now you simply have to do the following:
1. Show that in a truly private, laissez-faire system, business would be interested only in "immediate profitability" - note that I am no
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Oh, and because both you and Thomas Paine feel it is right and true, it has to be taken as gospel truth?
You're basically saying "just because I fervently believe I am right and you are wrong, you should believe me too". You're going to need to prove to me that your way is better than the one we have now.
Take your time, I'll be here to look it over when your proof is complete. Until you do that, please refrain from being so damned self-righteous, mmkay? I'm quite content stating our current way is not the
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That's actually an excellent question. What is better?
Is it better to have an enlightened society where everyone is in-as-perfect-health as it can be, water is clean, food is always in tip-top shape (no mad cow - ever), every road has a bike lane and a sidewalk beside it, corporate greed is kept in check (there is a difference between prudent business and avarice, after all, though the line is subtle and easy to cross), but where taxes are obscenely high and certain individuals live lives of sloth and exce
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Maybe we just go further up the chain, then, and you can prove to me why "ownership" is a "good" thing, much less a "right".
I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but if you want to split hairs about who has to prove what, let's start at the core of your thesis and move on from there, shall we?
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I'm saying that you have to prove these things first before you can use them. These are not axioms - at least not in the logical sense. The United States Constitution clearly holds them to be axioms, but as we all well know, the US Constitution is not the defining document on what is and what is not held to be true, universally.
My point is that if we're going to start arguing over who needs to prove what, then fine: we can start at the lowest point first and move on from there.
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Or not. I'm quite content ignoring you. After all, I'm not the one taking the fruits of your labor; the government is. That I support them is an indirect assault upon what you consider your person (which you clearly feel property is). That's fine. The point is, when you wish to resolve this by force, the onus is on you to come after me. I already have what I want; it's up to you to go out of your way to stop me.
You'll forgive me if I don't anticipate your coming with any alacrity. Something tells me
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Excellent!
This is a specific proof that applies to the individual. Now what about external objects? What about property (physical property; let's not complicate things by including intellectual property).
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Every person owns their body..
Then why can't I put THC into my body without being arrested?
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Well here we have a problem. You are seeming to assume that because I do not agree that property rights are an *axiom* that I am willing to agree that all the other rights (treated as axioms) still are not in effect.
To me, liberty has little to do with property, but has much more to do with thought, speech, assembly, press, etc. Property rights are niceties, but I don't hold them to be so important as to claim they are axiomatic to the concept of liberty. I believe that is where we fundamentally differ.
S
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We'll have to work this one backwards. Property is obtained via mutually agreed-upon transfer from the old owner to the new owner.
Everything that is owned must have originally been un-owned (or created from something else that was owned). So there must be a process for the first owner to gain ownership of something that is unowned.
The best answer I can come up with is that the first user of an unowned property gains ownership.
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plan to take his (and everyone else's) shit.
It's the programmer, the fry cook, the cashier, who creates wealth. It flows upwards. The wealthy scream GOVERNMENT IS STEALING FROM YOU!!! when in fact it is he, the aggregator who produces nothing and controls everything (including the government he complains about) who is taking the wealth of others and living off others' labor.
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Karl, nice to hear from you, I thought you were dead all this time.
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Maybe or maybe not. I wonder if the entire crisis could have been averted if the rating agencies had done their job properly and provided an accurate risk rating of mortgage-backed securities.
Perhaps additional regulation to limit conflicts of interest between rating agencies and the companies that create securities would be in order.
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But you might have regulation that requires a firewall or third-party organization.
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Capitalism is the only true amoral economic system. All others are immoral
By whose morality? Yours? Who put you in charge of deciding what is and is not moral?
People just don't seem to get that you violate my rights by taking my hard earned funds and applying them to your favorite project
The worker creates the wealth for the wealthy, whose job it is to aggregate that wealth (some job). Who is taking whose hard earned funds?
The carpenter sweats to build a house that a landlord will rent out while sitting on
Re:I need rehab (Score:4, Funny)
And now it's your job to show they would not have come about otherwise.
You're offering me a job? How much does it pay?
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All cellphones have a GPS receiver? Don't think so. GPS is the only timing source? Don't think so.
Really? All of it? When they're showing a movie they don't just have a player feeding direct into the sytem at the studio, they beam it up to a satellite and down again just for the fun of it? Don't think so.
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GPS is the only timing source? Don't think so.
It's the only timing source used in CDMA systems. What about the other uses of GPS, like navigation and surveying? Gonna tell us that none of those are important either?
Really? All of it? When they're showing a movie they don't just have a player feeding direct into the sytem at the studio, they beam it up to a satellite and down again just for the fun of it? Don't think so.
Most television is distributed by satellite. Even if you just receive over the air broadcasts how do you think your local network affiliates receive their feeds from NBC/CBS/ABC/etc?
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I never said they weren't, in fact I never mentioned those uses. But Important != necessary. Columbus managed to cross the Atlantic without it. The Egyptians built fairly accurate pyramids without it. Kids today are just soft.
That's an interesting line of logic you are using. I suppose we don't need electricity either?
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for text try http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=getting-a-handle-on-space [sciam.com]