Atlantis Blasts Off On Final Mission 143
shuz writes "Space shuttle Atlantis lifted off today on its STS-132 mission to the International Space Station — the final flight for the venerable vehicle. The mission involves three spacewalks over 12 days (PDF), during which the team will replace six batteries on the port truss which store energy from solar panels on that truss, bolt on a spare space-to-ground Ku-band antenna, and attach a new tool platform to Canada's Dextre robotic arm."
NASA has video of the historic launch and reader janek78 adds this quote from the mission summary: "Atlantis lifted off on its maiden voyage on Oct. 3, 1985, on mission 51-J. Later missions included the launch of the Magellan probe to Venus on STS-30 in May 1989, Galileo interplanetary probe to Jupiter on STS-34 in October 1989, the first shuttle docking to the Mir Space Station on STS-71 in June1995, and the final Hubble servicing mission on STS-125 in May 2009."
And one to go (Score:2)
Re:And one to go (Score:5, Informative)
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Any way you look at it, it's a colossal waste of money and expertise. The shuttles represent an existing viable launch platform with all the necessary manufacturing, engineering and logistical support already in place.
To me, it's like a successful national effort to paint the mona lisa, where once you finish the painting you simply burn it. All the work is wasted and we're left with nothing but memories.
It's mind boggling that this program will be simply dismantled when we don't have another launch platfo
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Maybe we could coin it 'the Goundhog decades'.
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Things that are built for using are not meant to last forever.
That may be true, but they used to build stuff to last a long time instead of, as now, just past the warranty period.
I am sorry to see the shuttles shut down (no pun intended), because they're as beautiful an example of 80's industrial design as the Macintosh SE was. Still, I concede that everything has its time, and this time has probably passed.
Re:And one to go (Score:4, Insightful)
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Tasteless bitch.
Well done, Atlantis... (Score:3, Insightful)
Return home safely.
Why, oh why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Will someone please explain to me why we can't keep the shuttles running for another few years while we figure out how to replace them? Now that Obama has canceled the Constellation manned booster, and he granted a stay of execution to the Orion capsule (but it's still basically on life support) doesn't this leave the United States with no means to get humans into orbit? For several years? How is this give the United States any kind of strategic advantage?
Granted, the Constellation project was controvers
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Because the supply chain for Shuttles has been disrupted some time ago (FYI - yes, "before Obama"). Trying to restart it now to keep those costly mistakes flying would be a task not that far from a new space programme.
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More than that. Other essential components of the Shuttle (from the top of my head I remember some high pressure tanks, inside the orbiter, crucial for the main propulsion system; I'm sure there's a lot more) are not produced even longer than ETs. Many of those parts actually got a life extension few years back, on the condition that they will not be used in more than x launches. Shuttles not only would be without parts in the future, they are on life support already and would need overhauls.
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Re:Why, oh why? (Score:5, Interesting)
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First of all the space shuttle is mostly 70's technology. Second of all there is no reason why "old" should be equated with "inferior". Soyuz is the most reliable manned spacecraft and it has direct roots all the way back to the start of the Soviet space program. Old can also mean simpler and less likely to suffer from mysterious technology failures. I have lab equipment older than you and it ticks along nicely and serves its purpose just as well as it ever did.
Re:Why, oh why do we rest on laurels (Score:2)
Which is what happens when you build a 'platform' and then continually develop it, which is what *should* have been done with Apollo.
To give an example of similar complexity (and whilst I'm not an aviation expert) it's hard to imagine the original 747's released continued to the latest model 747 without any improvements to their systems. When I say 'systems' I don't just mean air
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No, it's a mix of 70's, 80's, and 90's technology. The Shuttle has been heavily modified, updated, and upgraded over the years.
Well, in the first place Soyuz's reliability rating is roughly the same (that is, within a few tenths of a percent
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It's ok if it's all "in family".
Yes, this is a sarcastic comment, the CAIB document is very revealing.
Re:Why, oh why? (Score:5, Informative)
To what specific 1980's tech are you referring? The SSME's were upgraded in the 90's and early 2000's, as were the AP-101 flight control computers. The original 'steam gauge' cockpit was also upgraded to a fully modern 'glass' cockpit in the same time frame. The airframes have been well maintained and many smaller parts/systems have been replaced or upgraded as needed as well.
Seriously, saying "80's tech" is nothing but FUD. There's plenty of places where 80's (or even older) tech does just fine.
Heck, just a couple of miles from me the shipyard still uses a lathe installed in the 1940's. The forging furnace a few buildings over (modulo a few overhauls) basically dates from the 1930's. A few miles in the other direction is the submarine base, where the hydraulic valves in the submarines are basically unchanged since the 1950's. The missiles they carry are built with 80's technology in their electronics - and the still can achieve a CEP of [a classified but very small number] of feet. The submarines navigation system uses computers designed in the 1970's.
Don't be misled by consumer culture into believing that 'old == useless'.
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"Pair that with the old tech, and it's seriously time to replace/upgrade."
It's not the age of the technology, it's the age of the spacecraft. Old does not equal bad when it comes to technology. We're still using the axe, shovel, and pencil, after all. Our primary bomber will continue to be the 1950's era B-52 for another 30 years. It'll be over 90 years old when we retire the last of them. The 747 was introduced when I was a toddler, but Boeing is still building newer, better versions of them.
The answer her
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Yeah, and imagine this stupid old technology we are still using today from like 4 BILLION years ago?! The DNA thing, it's way outdated. It's easy to pollute, it's not nearly as efficient as the new quantum computing stuff, now that's stuff. And the Oxygen, oh boy, who is tired of the Oxygen thing? Why can't we move on already to something more modern, this is ridiculous.
Falcon 9 (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking of that, the Falcon 9 [wikipedia.org] is scheduled to launch this Sunday (May 16th, 2010). This is one of the potential replacements of which you speak.
Re:Falcon 9 (Score:4, Insightful)
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There are a few safety issues with the shuttle, and when they fail, they fail spectacularly.
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Yes, and no. There are certain classes of failures that are not preventable, sure, but in the case of both shuttle disasters, the accidents were entirely preventable. The first one was caused by NASA ignoring the thermal specifications for the SRBs and launching anyway. The second one was caused by NASA ignoring all the engineers screaming for inspection of the heat tiles and landing anyway. In both cases, the primary fault rests squarely on human error, and the secondary fault lies in design error---a
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No, minor failures happen with regularity. It's just selective memory. Nobody remembers the minor ones. The last minor shuttle equipment failure was just five weeks ago [usatoday.com].
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There actually was one shuttle abort, STS-51F---one of Challenger's last missions. Also, STS-93 ended up in a lower orbit due to a fuel leak in one of the main engines. They didn't classify it as an ATO because they just plain ran out of oxidizer; no human explicitly hit an abort button. That same flight also had a major electrical short causing multiple main engine controller failures on that flight. Had the backup controllers also failed, you would doubtless have seen an ATLS on that flight.
And of cou
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No, I just read a lot.
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The second one was caused by NASA ignoring all the engineers screaming for inspection of the heat tiles and landing anyway.
They had another choice? Like teleportation?
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Possibly. It certainly isn't completely out of the question. Either way, we'll never know if they could have done anything because they weren't given the opportunity to try.
First, the shuttle can land safely with certain tiles missing. It does that with regularity. There's a sizable safety margin everywhere but the leading edge of the wing. They could have spacewalked somebody to pry a tile or two off of less sensitive areas (e.g. near the OMS engines where a dozen tiles fell of [nytimes.com]
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Even General Motors got some $18 billion in relief, talking about an organization that deserves to fail. Without GM, we'll still have a domestic car industry--Ford, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda are all operating in the U.S. and doing just fine--
Minor nitpick, GM repaid the money already. I agree fully with the rest of your comment though, we should be pouring funding into NASA after all the things they have brought us in so many fields.
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Even General Motors got some $18 billion in relief, talking about an organization that deserves to fail. Without GM, we'll still have a domestic car industry--Ford, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda are all operating in the U.S. and doing just fine--
Minor nitpick, GM repaid the money already. I agree fully with the rest of your comment though, we should be pouring funding into NASA after all the things they have brought us in so many fields.
"...But the loan money is only a fraction of the cash that the federal government gave to GM over the past 12 months to stop it from going out of business. Overall, GM received $50 billion in federal help, with the government receiving $2 billion in preferred stock and 61% of the company's privately held common shares in return for the rest of the money..."
http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/15/news/companies/gm_repayment/index.htm [cnn.com]
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They shutdown the Shuttle supply chain years ago. A lot of parts are now irreplaceable. The Shuttle was canceled by a Republican Administration and congress. The initial follow-on program with a lot of tested hardware (OSP and related programs were actually at the flight testing stage) was canceled by Griffin and turned into a jobs program.
Also, on a somewhat bureaucratic side, but with real implications, the Shuttle's Certificate of Airworthiness needed recertification this ye
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It's worth noting that the Shuttle's demonstrated safety level is equal to any other manned vehicle.
The Sh
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I guess I'm old. I remember that there was no human spaceflight between 1975 and 1981. Somehow our international standing survived.
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Why not? What vital national interest are we serving by putting people into LEO? There simply isn't anything you can do in space with people that couldn't be done more cheaply with machines. By an order of magnitude. We shouldn't have a manned space program at all until we can figure out how to dramatically reduce costs to orbit. There are a couple avenues to explore - SSTO, tethers, cannons for carg
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When people post "Oh I'm posting as AC to preserve my karma." I usually think how idiotic it is because most of the time their post isn't nearly as much flaimbait as they think.
You sir have made a wise decision in going AC, your post is wrong in just about every detail.
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Re:Why, oh why? (Score:4, Insightful)
This comment is very ignorant. As I look at the projected budget deficits for the next few years I'm struck by the fact that the vast majority of this deficit is really the war coming due. Things like the health bill don't even figure in (the CBO calculates the health bill is paid for from other budget savings). So basically the Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which countries we now have a huge moral obligation to fix things, have cost us trillions of dollars, and continue to cost u, that we haven't really paid for yet, and can't afford to pay for.
The republicans are big on the idea of tax cuts, but they are traditionally the ones who run up spending and increase government size (goes back to Reagan). The hypocrisy coming out of that party is mind-blowing. Bush simultaneously decreased taxes, increased spending by a staggering amount, and increased the size of reach of government by an unprecedented amount, more than at any other time in recent history. The party of small government I think not.
Honestly, if we had plowed even some of the money we've wasted in Iraq over the years (IE if we'd not gone to war) into things like NASA, we could have paid for constellation several times over and covered social programs and other important things easily. Scientists are clamouring to send new robotic missions to the planets. As one scientist involved put it to me, 3 days of war in Iraq and Afghanistan could pay for an entire mission to Europa. Three days!
"...moral obligation to fix things..." (Score:3, Insightful)
So basically the Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which countries we now have a huge moral obligation to fix things, have cost us trillions of dollars, and continue to cost u, that we haven't really paid for yet, and can't afford to pay for.
I'm pretty sure it was John Candy who said, in 'Planes, Trains, and Automobiles', "I've never seen a man helped up by hist testicles before".
Given the kind of "help" we've given them so far, they would probably be better off without our "help" than with it.
-- Terry
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Now we know what War is good for.
Nah, it's still nothing.
Um, no sir (Score:2)
"This comment is very ignorant. As I look at the projected budget deficits for the next few years I'm struck by the fact that the vast majority of this deficit is really the war coming due. "
Even with war costs, the vast majority of the budget still goes for entitlements [wikipedia.org].... social security, medicare, etc.
About 40 percent goes to SS and Medicare. Another 17 percent goes to "other mandatory spending", including current interest on the debt and other social program. DOD is 23 percent of the budget. GDP spent
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You have a lot of stones calling other people ignorant and then blaming the wars for our fiscal situation. We spend about 4% of our GDP on the military, which is less than 20% of total federal government outlays.
The only way you can pretend entitlements aren't what's sinking the boat is to pretend social security and medicare are off in their own dimension somewhere. Well, they're not. What we've spent on Iraq and Afghanistan is quite literally lost in the noise of the coming tidal wave of entitlement o
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So, when Obama proposed to increase NASA's budget, what social injustice is he intending to redress?
Though I admit it makes sense if you use a broad enough definition, one more akin to "societal ills".
FWIW: I believe it's environmentalism... (Score:2)
So, when Obama proposed to increase NASA's budget, what social injustice is he intending to redress?
FWIW: I believe it's environmentalism...
He's basically retasking NASA with a lot of work for which NOAA is already responsible and already funded to do. That's what the funding is earmarked for, not for projects that NASA, in its role as the national aeronautics and space administration, have which correspond to its intended mission mandate.
-- Terry
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You know, you'd have a really interesting point there, if what you wrote had any relation whatsoever to reality.
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...health care which businesses have had a proven track record of doing better than governments...
So...where's your proof?
...Why is it that we can give tons of money to failing businesses that are going to fail eventually but can't give money to improve national defense and research (and yes, supremacy in space allows for supremacy in war as many of the technologies go hand in hand)?
Are...you...serious? You want to spend more on "defense" (nice newspeak, BTW) than what US already does? (hint: most than vast majority of countries in terms of "% of GDP", dwarfing all in absolute amounts). Is this just about more of a military dick-waving and funneling funds to very few "lucky" ones suddenly?
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OK, so looking at some singular failings (one of whics is of "maintainance" type) constitutes "the proof" to you, got it. People not trying to convince themsevles of something look at "life expectancy at birth" or "infant mortality".
In the first there are over 20 (UN list) countries ahead of you (including UK and Canada), vast majority of them with very social medical systems (maybe all, no time to check (probably not; "vast majority" is enough anyway))
Oh, CIA World Factbook list actually says there are 40
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Because the Space Shuttles are old, decaying and really unfit. It takes a major disaster (Challenger, Columbia) before they fix basic design problems. I wouldn't trust an aging Commodore 64 as my primary computer, nor should we rely on the Shuttle. Really, Bush, Clinton and Obama should have all pressed for a new launch vehicle long ago.
Agreed. The Space Shuttle program was already extended well past when it should have been ended, and was continued only because of the OP's "but we have nothing else" logic
12 days? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:12 days? (Score:4, Insightful)
More like "without up or down".
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Not quite. That allows too much freedom of motion and visibility.
Try an arctic survival suit over a wetsuit with a full motorcycle helmet, faceplate down, wearing hockey gloves, carrying a hundred pound backpack, all while hanging upside down in the dark. Now begin by changing the batteries and...
I outlasted Atlantis (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked on mission 51J (first Atlantis flight) and now it's done. Man, I am old...
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All due respect but I must jest: Tell us a story grandpa!
What did you do for NASA? ./ is curious!
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He installed the only remaining non-depleted Zero Point Module. (There's just not enough Naquadriah to go around.)
Re:I outlasted Atlantis (Score:4, Informative)
Are you one of those kids I chased off my lawn last night?!
I was an MCC console analyst on the mission control team for the payload. So I didn't work for NASA, but a contractor working for our governmental customer.
A lot of people don't realize this, but NASA is not the biggest player in the space business. Some individual DOD and other government customer *programs* have budgets rivaling NASA, and there are a pretty good number of programs.
Brett
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Time flies. I remember getting Chicken pox and being over-joyed because I got to stay home from school and watch all the coverage of the first Columbia mission, and then I was out at the cape (for most of the week), till Challenger went up (and blew up). Wish I could find the Kodak Disc Film (oooo trendy).
Here's hoping the next launch vehicle (Government or Commercial) helps gets us that much closer to a permanent place in space.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Mod parent up (and this down if you must, since I wrote the parent and I'm asking for an upmod there). I forgot to click the selfmods, and I think the parent post is worthy of them and I don't want it to be missed in the /. dross so I'm following up with this feeble plea.
Of course if you think the parent sucks, mod it down and this post too, but first please read this. [nasa.gov]
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1960' and 2010's space flight equations (Score:4, Insightful)
60's: Country + Government + NASA = Man on the Moon
10': Country vs. Government vs. NASA = Bum a ride with the Russians
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Big deal, cash is the easiest thing in the world for the US of A, just print a few more dollars, why not? Cash is EASY. It's the technology that is interesting and hard.
Perspective (Score:2)
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The Air Force laughs at 25 years (Score:2)
How many of us are still driving a 25 year old car?
The Air Force is flying B-52's that are on average about 46 years old. The last BUFF rolled off the line at Boeing in 1962. USAF plans on using them another 30+ years. The last ones will be about 90 years old when they're finally retired.
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Al Bundy, but that's it.
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Homer Simpson.
Now, granted, Homer doesn't drive a mighty Dodge Dart, but man is his car old and ratty!
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too early to get teary eyed (Score:2)
Atlantis' First Last Flight (Score:4, Informative)
When she lands later this month, Atlantis won't be mothballed. She'll be put back in the standard post-flight turnaround process to ready her for the Launch On Need (LON) mission STS-335, intended to provide rescue capability if necessary for the last currently scheduled shuttle mission, Endeavor's STS-134. It has been pointed out that, assuming all goes well on STS-134, there will be a bought-and-paid-for STS stack checked out and ready to go... why not use it? STS-335 would become STS-135, and would fly next year with a four-person crew to the ISS, delivering a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module and extra supplies and equipment. Russian Soyuz ships would be used if rescue became necessary.
Source [spaceflightnow.com].
Serious Question :: How much original content? (Score:2)
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After 25 years of maintainance and upgrades, what percentage of this Atlantis, was part of the maiden flight in 1985?
In terms of launch weight: ~57%
In terms of landing weight: ~74%
In terms of individual components: ~60%
Not including cargo, crew, food, OMS fuel, or non-orbiter stack components.
Watched the launch from home (Score:2)
We only live about 75 miles north of Kennedy Space Center, and yesterday was a nice, clear day. We went outside and watched the launch, as we do most of the shuttle launches. It was kind of sad, realizing this was the last time that orbiter would be launching.
Re:It doesn't come soon enough (Score:5, Insightful)
when we cannot afford anything on Earth
We can afford most everything on earth. We just simply can't pay billions of dollars that we don't have to failing businesses, ruin health care and do a million other things.
I just hope we can keep the space program close down long enough (along with many other ineffective members of the government) so as to get our country back in the black.
The problem is, how are we going to get ahead in technology then?
If the US government released all taxpayer-funded studies to the public to jump-start private businesses, that is one thing. But in reality everything is so classified that private businesses are starting from 1950s-era technology with very little funding.
The US needs to take a clear stand and do one thing or another.
A) Let a private company buy-out NASA and release all information for free to any US business or individual with an interest in producing spacecraft.
or
B) Continue to spend money developing new spacecraft and using taxpayer money to do great things.
We can't continue to have an under-funded NASA. If Obama wants to waste taxpayer money on bailouts and such thats one thing, however then let the taxpayers have their money spent in research fulfilled, let a private company take over all of NASA and release information to the public. We can't move on with a crippled NASA and a crippled private sector. It just doesn't work.
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Information is classified to help slow down the development of weapons by countries we are not happy with such as Iran and North Korea.
If you can think of a way around that I'm sure someone would like to listen to you about it.
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We already use a lot of scattered contractors for NASA, if
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Both Iran and North Korea have made getting WMDs and the launch vehicles needed to use them a top priority. Even though both countries are rather poor economically, they are not above starving their citizens to achieve their goals.
[citation needed], as they say? (sure, I will be the first to give you "starving" part with N.Korea, not really with Iran though; and "top priority" seems pulled out of your ass)
Also, did you just propose there forcing all assets into one legislated monopoly?...
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The thing is your far left is still to the far right of most other countries in the world, and it's not because we're all 'commies' either.
just sayin...
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"Far" left/right is most likely an overstatement, though (or so I would hope...)
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I know you have an anti-Obama slant, but you forgot to mention paying for a long, pointless war in Iraq.
I thought that I heard that Obama was increasing funding for NASA, just cutting manned space flight for awhile until we figure out how to do it right.
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I thought that I heard that Obama was increasing funding for NASA, just cutting manned space flight for awhile until we figure out how to do it right.
Increasing funding though doesn't mean much when there is so much to do. Myself, I'm not a huge fan of NASA, but unless private spaceflight increases dramatically in the next few years (which it won't until they get more research done which would be redundant to NASA's research).
Too little funding is worse than no funding. It leads to more taxpayer waste and unfinished programs.
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What "redundant" research? That was the original point behind NASA/NACA, to direct research; results of which could be later used by others.
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A) is what everybody in the world who wishes you to not "get ahead in technology" (why would you? I mean, why are you treating it, it seems, like a neccessity? If you have what it takes to be ahead, you will be; if you don't have it in our changing world, you won't be; simple as that)
B) will happen anyway, but in a more sensible manner - why duplicate LEO efforts being done right now by few independant private teams?
Also, the thing with bailouts was that you, your nation (and large part of the world, really
Re:It doesn't come soon enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Poverty will exist so long as mankind is mankind. There will always be good, hard working poor people so long as there is greed. There will be lazy poor people so long as there are people who are neither motivated to better their lives or crafty enough to cheat. There will be disease so long as there is life. There will be natural disasters so long as we live on a planet. To wait for humanity to solve all it's problems before expanding into the universe is to wait for extinction.
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The money required to pay off all the debt and solve the counties problems is orders of magnitude greater than the money required to properly fund the space program to do great things
Just so - especially when you consider the trillion dollars going into defence spending every year. Some people may argue that defence spending stimulates economies and provides jobs but it strikes me as absurd that those same people couldn't be equally gainfully employed developing similarly advance technology for peaceful space exploration.
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In the short term only.
President Dwight Eisenhower warned U.S citizens [wikipedia.org] to quote:
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
Until all citizens of the world are, at least, in control of this Iron Triangle we all will never truly be free of the constraints that hold us in the territorial not
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On behalf of everyone with a long-term view (Score:2)
On behalf of everyone with a long term view, let me say: fuck you you ignorant fuck. My apologies to those few readers who are still sensitive to the word "fuck", but this fucking idiot is trying to promote an error that will fucking kill my fourth generation offspring, their progeny, and my hopes for the survival of mankind. Forgive me for being emotional about that, but if you can't get emotional about the Death of Man, you're dead inside already.
The rise of science occurred in an interglacial age that
Re:Obsolete ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, curse old technology. Why haven't we moved on from this 'wheel' shape, by the way? Surely, new = better...
Oblig, Futurama (Score:2)
"We used to have a way to move things without robots. What was that again? - Ruth Gordon had one....Oh, The Wheel!"
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If you get a nail in a wooden tire... (Score:2)
If you get a nail in a wooden tire... ...it just holds it together better. If you get a nail in an inflated rubber tire, it's time to buy a new tire. Surely, new = better...
-- Terry
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How many times have you been in Earth orbit...? Atlantis wins.