Former NASA Chief On US Space Policy: "No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" (arstechnica.com) 171
An anonymous reader writes: During a congressional hearing Thursday, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had harsh words for the space agency and the space policy crafted by President Obama's administration. Under the Obama administration's guidance, NASA has established Mars as a goal for human spaceflight and said that astronauts will visit the red planet by the 2030s. However, a growing number of critics say the agency's approach is neither affordable nor sustainable.
On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics. The United States has not had a serious discussion about space policy, he testified, and as a result, the space agency is making little discernible progress. NASA simply cannot justify its claims of being on a credible path toward Mars, he added.
On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics. The United States has not had a serious discussion about space policy, he testified, and as a result, the space agency is making little discernible progress. NASA simply cannot justify its claims of being on a credible path toward Mars, he added.
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Burma shave
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Money will return once China lands on the moon (Score:5, Insightful)
China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.
Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.
Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it won't. Not only is the Space Race long over, the political conditions that lead to it no longer exist, and the general public of the US never supported the race that much in the first place.
Apollo only had political support because JFK took a bullet to the head in Dallas. And even then that support barely lasted two years before the budgets started getting slashed - by the time we actually landed, the program was already running on vapors.
Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon (Score:5, Insightful)
A good indication of how public feeling was fading was that Apollo 13 wasn't going to be televised during the lunar approach, and doubts were being had about the landing itself.
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Ironically nowadays it will be, with all the channels.
Cable channels need content... (Score:2)
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Apollo was also backed by a legislative genius name LBJ. His "small" role ensured there would money for the 10 year investment (actually 6 years); and expenditure IIRC would amount to 4-5% of the national budget per year (US federal budgets were really small back then...).
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If only he hadn't tied himself to the Viet Nam conflict. When Kennedy died we had, IIRC, 52 military advisors on the ground. And that whole imbroglio yielded NO promise of national advantage that I've ever been able to detect. The way it worked out there was certainly no advantage. ... Unless you count the ending of the draft, which allowed the govt a relatively free hand with how it used military force. *I* count that as a negative, but I can see why some might think it a bonus.
Re: Money will return once China lands on the moon (Score:1)
Then let's elect Trump and get it over with quickly! What'll we fund?
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Steely Eyed Missile Man have been replaced by Squinty Eyed Metrosexual Bureaucrats
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Well there's your problem...
We just need another program that the military can use as a stalking horse for their priorities.
Of course, that didn't work out too well with v2.0 (the Shuttle program)...
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No, it won't. Not only is the Space Race long over, the political conditions that lead to it no longer exist, and the general public of the US never supported the race that much in the first place.
You are mostly likely a self-loathing millienial sitting in yer' mommies basement without a clue, without even a single clue in this world. Or you are LIAR. Most likely both.
I was there and the US population did indeed fully support, and was in fact enthralled by the activities of NASA in that time. It actually brought a lot of people together that would not normally be together.
Apollo only had political support because JFK took a bullet to the head in Dallas. And even then that support barely lasted two years before the budgets started getting slashed - by the time we actually landed, the program was already running on vapors.
Take your morbid revisionist bullshit and peddle it to your acquaintance in the trailer park. You are seriously full of shit. And I now see you are just a liar / Bernie lover.
You were mostly right till you started with the infantile name-calling. Bernie lover? Really? What the fuck does the OP's political allegiances (which you know nothing off) has anything to do with anything. What type of personal demons are you projecting? Chill the hell out.
You said a lot of things that are right and accurate, but they seem to be the only thing right about you. Stop acting like a deranged lunatic.
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I do agree, but I also think that it's a mistake to reach too far. Not that NASA is actually approaching that.
If we weren't wasting money on new models of fighter that are worse than the last model, etc. and the money went instead to NASA, then a lot more could reasonably be done. But it's also true that given the US political environment no long term government funded plan has any security unless it's pushed by either a large majority of the people or by a strong special interest. An election cycle or t
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You don't think that China putting a railgun on the moon won't reinvigorate space exploration?
That, or we will buy one from them. If China can pull that off, it means we didn't do squat to either prevent it or do it first. And that will be the moment when we jump the shark as a nation... but we will be too busy fucking and drinking electrolytes as we cheer for President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
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I have to disagree. The real value in space exploration has been the technology that came out of the effort. Its debatable if that is even really the origin of much of that tech. Certainly rocket and delivery technology came out of WWII and that isn't terribly useful for doing anything but hurling weapons at each other or tossing stuff into space.
We did get a lot of valuable computer technology, and some spiffy things like Velcro out of space exploration effort. We also made a number of materials scienc
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There's reasonable evidence that we've already "jumped the shark". This is something that can only be really determined a century or so later, but there are reasonable lines of evidence leading to that conclusion. The reason we can't tell for sure is probably that the next "leading nation" still hasn't gotten it's ducks in a row. China is a big contender, but it's not the only possibility.
OTOH, it is usually possible to recover from a stumble if you make correct moves, but Hillary? Trump? Of the major c
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Now that we've discovered how (1) incredibly harsh that outer space is, and (2) stunningly expensive it is to supply everything that we take for granted here on Earth -- from the downward force needed to keep our bones from cracking and our eyes from exploding, to the UV shielding that prevents us from (a) toasting and (b) going blind, and radiation shielding so that our sperm still works, and we don't die of cancer before having the chance to use it -- to the air, water and food all around us to the fuel a
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What you're saying, then, is that China will get a colony going first, whereupon (Trump | Sanders) will accuse them of "cheating" somehow.
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As long as I get to pilot a ship with Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin and Jewel Staite! (Throw Melinda Clarke in for good measure...)
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What? No Christina Hendricks? Who cares if she's batshit crazy when she has curves like that...and a redhead to boot!
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Morena Baccarin has all the necessary curves.
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One female I won't be sleeping with is Vera.
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His ID is too high to be an old man. But everything else you wrote is spot-on.
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After we have colonized several planets,
Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.
(It) is a certainty that if wee do not get off the planet the human race will die.
You've been reading too much sci fi.
We need nuclear power rockets yesterday
Yay, let's spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere than we already have!! And near places that are a lot more populated than Las Vegas in 1958!!
understand you are cool with killing off the white race
The only thing worse than some Utopian sci-fi nerd is a Conservative sci-fi nerd.
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> Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.
Human life? Yes, without extensive terraforming and environmental support. But life at all? Several moons, such as Europa and Enceladus, have enough liquid water and energy to possibly support native life forms.
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But life at all?
That is what the "conversation" is about...
have enough liquid water and energy
"Where do we get the oxygen to burn the oceans of methane?"
"Crack the water, of course."
"But where do we get the energy to crack the water?"
"The methane, of course!"
smh
to possibly support native life forms.
And iron, aluminum, sodium, calcium, etc, etc ad nauseum?
The light that plants need?
Warmth?
Lead to shield us from the Europa's 5400 mSv (enough to cause severe illness or death in human beings exposed for a single day) background radiation?
And the constant earthquakes?
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There is a tremendous difference between "habitable by human life across an entire surface", which is what you seem to be describing, and "the environment and resources that we need to sustain life". I did mention the possibility of native life, given the existence of the tube worms that live near Earth's underseas volcanos, harvesting energy and chemicals from the volcanic vents, it seems quite possible that there may be life on extreme worlds that have energy and chemistry enough to provide liquid water.
I
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What's the relevance of that whole, long bit of obviousness to whether we, in the near future, can not just live on -- for example -- Europa with a shit load of gargantuanly expensive support from Earth, but independently sustain ourselves on Europa?
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> What's the relevance of that whole, long bit of obviousness to whether we, in the near future, can not just live on -- for example -- Europa with a shit load of gargantuanly expensive support from Earth, but independently sustain ourselves on Europa?
Where, in this thread, did that ever come up? I became concerned about your statement quoted below.
> Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.
You're adding a new goal, namely to I
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Where, in this thread, did that ever come up?
The whole point of "colonize other planets" is to escape reliance on this polluted, over-crowded, might-be-made-uninhabitable-by-an-asteroid Earth.
Colonization of _any_ remote region takes lengthy support from the colonizing nation.
I'm not sure you quite understand how remote that Europa -- and even Mars -- is, how little (both in weight and volume) rockets can carry, and how much stuff that a high tech society needs.
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Several moons, such as Europa and Enceladus, have enough liquid water and energy to possibly support native life forms.
Too far, and simply not worth the trouble.
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> Too far, and simply not worth the trouble.
There are genuine and quite expensive difficulties, certainly. Please note that this is a quite different claim than "Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life."
The difference has reminded me of the very, very old joke described at http://quoteinvestigator.com/2... [quoteinvestigator.com]. The situation is somewhat reversed: instead of establishing that we'd "sleep with another world" if paid millions of dollars, and now haggl
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But how low would the price have to be to allocate the budget to pursue this?
Depends on what you get out of it. I don't think we'll ever have a profitable space industry outside Earth orbit, so the possible access to water near Saturn is useless.
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> Depends on what you get out of it. I don't think we'll ever have a profitable space industry outside Earth orbit,
Even Earth orbit stations need water and solid raw material. SpaceX is breaking the $1000/pound price barrier. But if the price for asteroid or planetary ring water farming gets low enough, particularly using cheap solar sails to navigate them, the difficulty might well be justified by the savings. I look forward to finding out over the next few decades.
Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon (Score:5, Interesting)
Other environments require technological modifications to allow successful human habitation. Perhaps you've heard of them: Clothing. Buildings. Et cetera.
We, as a species, modify the local environment to suit habitation. We can already sustain life deep underwater, and in extreme Arctic conditions. Space and other planets ability to sustain life are technological and political problems, but are eminently doable if and when the decision is made to proceed. . .
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We can already sustain life deep underwater
So.... exactly how many people currently live (as in "make homes, produce stuff, marry and make children, etc", as opposed to just visit for research) deep underwater?
and in extreme Arctic conditions.
Again, how many people live in extreme Arctic conditions? (No, Eskimos *do not* live there. They go occasionally on hunting expeditions, but that's it.)
Space and other planets ability to sustain life are technological ... problems
And so is taking a stroll on the Sun. Throw enough money at it, and easy peasey. :eyeroll:
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And so is taking a stroll on the Sun. Throw enough money at it, and easy peasey.
Just go at night...
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Mars would be harder, but not essentially different.
The lack of air, and levels of radiation are much different than any place on Earth. And even on Earth there are plenty of places where nobody settles.
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Yet if you dump me outside in February with no house, no clothes and no tools, and I would be dead in a day.
If I dump you on Mars with a house, clothes and tools, you'd be dead in minutes.
Mars would be harder, but not essentially different.
That "dead in a day" vs. "dead in minutes" is caused by some seriously essential factors.
And speaking of houses (the kind you'd need on Mars), clothes and tools...
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If you say that we'll just mine it on Mars, that won't work because the heavy equipment isn't up there, and neither are the refineries, smelters, fuel, etc.
On top of that, there's no infrastructure for moving stuff around. No shipping waters, no road network, and no atmosphere for flying. In order to build a factory from dirt, you need a lot of different stuff, and it is very unlikely you'll find everything within a short distance. It is more likely you'll have to go to every corner of the planet to collect the things you need.
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If you say that we'll just mine it on Mars, that won't work because the heavy equipment isn't up there, and neither are the refineries, smelters, fuel, etc.
Why be so short-sighted and ignore the obvious solution? You don't start with stone axes on Mars and build your industrial society from there. You take some of your technology with you when you go. Yes, it's fantastically expensive to move mass from Earth to Mars (hence my earlier comment on why the Moon is a better initial target) but it's still less expensive than starting from scratch. And there's nothing impossible or even difficult about sending stuff like smelters, excavators, extruders, and so fo
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And there's nothing impossible or even difficult about sending stuff like smelters, excavators, extruders, and so forth to Mars; it's just expensive.
I don't think you realize how incredibly large and heavy this stuff is, compared to the spidery save-every-gram stuff that we can launch into space.
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So.... exactly how many people currently live (as in "make homes, produce stuff, marry and make children, etc", as opposed to just visit for research) deep underwater?
Deep ocean habitats, along with the other examples like Arctic habitats, aren't readily done not because it's a technological challenge but for other much more practical reasons. For example, there is no pressing need for us to inhabit such extreme climates because we have much more habitable ones in plentiful supply right next door. Further, such climates are not only physically difficult but they're psychologically inhospitable in that you can't find too many people with a compelling desire to live in s
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There's a huge difference between the places on earth we've turned into productive habitats and those we just sustain as research outposts through massive external support. Even in Norway that's a cold and hostile country we have cave dwellers from 9000 years ago right after the ice cap melted from the last ice age, so the description of most of earth as particularly hostile is exaggerated. It has air, it has water, it has radiation shielding, as long as you have wildlife to provide food and furs you're mak
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We need nuclear power rockets yesterday
Yay, let's spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere than we already have!! And near places that are a lot more populated than Las Vegas in 1958!!
Umm...I don't know if you're being intentionally ignorant in an attempt at humor or just uninformed, but nuclear rocket designs generally call for them to be used only in space. Furthermore, spewing ionizing radiation into the air isn't remotely harmful unless something organic is being struck by said radiation. It's not like it hurts the air molecules.
There was a Cold War project to build a nuclear-powered bomber. They constructed the actual engine and it worked. Yes, it was hideously dangerous to be b
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It's not like it hurts the air molecules.
You're the one ignorant of ionizing radiation. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=483&tid=86 [cdc.gov] When ionizing radiation from outer space hits the upper atmosphere, it produces a shower of cosmic rays that constantly expose everything on earth. Some hit gases in the air and change them into radioactive material (such as tritium and carbon 14). That rocket engine nozzle is pointed down, towards us.
I'm aware there were some designs -- even scale prototypes -- of fission rockets for atmospheric use that did spew fallout.
First you ask if I'm ignorant, and then you admit that it happened.
None of these were seriously considered for obvious reasons.
They were considered seriously eno
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Without that drive to dominate other men and impress females with what great offspring we'd sire, we'd still be frightened primates on the plains of Africa.
BTW, chimps and apes have that same dominant, show-off streak.
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Chelyabinsk was a wake up call to the Russians. The belt is chock full of nuke-scale explosive ordinance (rocks + velocity + impact = boom).
I'll give you a hint, the rocket you would need to change the orbit of a belt asteroid would contain more energy than you would achieve from hitting a city with it.
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I'll give you a hint, the rocket you would need to change the orbit of a belt asteroid would contain more energy than you would achieve from hitting a city with it.
You, sir, get a fail in orbital mechanics. With gravitational assists and a long-running ion drive, you can get some rocks up to a very impressive speed, especially since everything in the belt (presumably your source of asteroids) is "downhill" in the gravity well direction of Earth. You don't need a very big rock, you just need it to go very, very fast. A rock the size of a bus would do quite nicely if you accelerated it to a few times orbital velocity.
Granted, such a thing would be immensely expensive
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It's just cheaper to use good old fashioned bombs or nukes.
You just reiterated what I said. That is exactly what I was saying, it makes no sense as a weapon to hit a enemy country, it costs too much, and has no accuracy. The amount of energy you would need to put into the asteroid wouldn't be worth it.
Orbital bombardment is great against a whole planet, but targeting a strike against only your enemy is unlikely to be effective.
Not in the cards. (Score:1)
Americans are just not in the mood to pay for humans on Mars, unless somebody finds a cheapo way to pull it off.
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Yeah but we are in the mood to drop bombs on children and pay taxes to spy on everybody. Just imagine if we spin all that into a positive and put our efforts, instead, on the cosmos.
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Yeah but we are in the mood to drop bombs on children and pay taxes to spy on everybody.
No, we're not.
Power-hungry government morons do that. We peons have no choice in the matter.
Technically, we could replace those morons with someone else. But the current presidential race proves that our only choices are either morons or liars.
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"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ? (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, that third one might be the cause of the first two...
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You know the first two might be the cause of the third... NASA publicity would have us all believe that a major Mars mission is just a small step up in difficulty from landing on the Moon, despite the fact that most of that Apollo expertise is aging and dying AND the fact that NASA hasn't done squat outside of LEO in 40 years (manned flight, of course). Nevermind ROI, people just want to believe that the
Minority Vision, Deceitful Plan, Wasted Budget (Score:2)
What more could one expect taking guidance from the commander-in-chief.
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Wait, NASA has a space policy? (Score:1)
Sad state of affairs and how we got here (Score:5, Interesting)
Before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, the Apollo program was already winding down. NASA had purchased the final Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets and Apollo spacecraft. As much as President Johnson supported NASA, he valued his Vietnam war and his "Great Society" programs, including his "War on poverty" even more.
When Nixon walked into the oval office, he inherited the space program of JFK, the man he believed had cheated him out of the White House in the 1960 election. Every success of the program that landed a man on the moon in Nixon's time was attributed to JFK and LBJ, and this probably made the deeply flawed man even more insecure. The Apollo13 incident occurred on his watch and his administration was certain that it would be blamed for any fatalities, so they wanted NASA to stop the missions that went to places where rescue was not possible. The number of moon landings was cut on top of the Johnson cuts and hardware was re-purposed for safer Earth-orbit uses like Skylab and Nixon's Apollo-Soyuz. Nixon approved the space shuttle program but selected the least-expensive-to-develop option (reusable orbiter on the side of the stack, boosted by 2 SRBs). There were designs that would have been cheaper and safer to OPERATE, but cost more to develop including one that flew inline atop a Saturn V 1st stage, one that flew mated to the side of a manned fully-reusable flyback booster, and others - but as a typical politician he picked the one that would look best on the books during his time in office.
Ford ignored NASA. He was focused on the post Watergate mess. With NASA in an R&D and building phase, there was nothing there to provide him with the photo-ops that all politicians crave, and as a congressman from michigan with barely enough IQ points to play football and who'd been appointed VP (rather than being elected) and then elevated to President (again, without an election) he lacked any sort of mandate to do anything.
Carter ignored NASA. He inherited a program with no available spacecraft, and poor non-human-rated Launch Vehicles and with no desire to do anything with NASA he just neglected it. NASA just used the Carter years to quietly push ahead with the money congress provided to do the development of the shuttles.
Reagan loved NASA, embraced the Shuttle program including showing up at Edwards to welcome one of the early missions home. He called for a winged single-stage-to-orbit "national aerospace plane" to be developed to eventually replace the shuttles, called for a permanent American space station (which he named "Freedom") and ordered NASA to plan to eventually transition shuttles to commercial service like an airline with private sector operators. When Challenger exploded, he made sure the congress provided the funds to build a replacement orbiter. Unfortunately, with political problems in his last two years, his attention was elsewhere and he lacked the political power to get his higher priority items funded and still have the clout for the NASA items. The Space station and NASP were both funded, but not to the levels needed. Both survived his administration, but not with much inertia.
Bush41 had been involved with NASA during the Reagan years (it's customary for the VP to be involved with NASA) but seemed tepid. He is famous for saying that he just did not get "the vision thing". On the 20th anniversary of the moon landing he announced a "Space Exploration Initiative" to return to the moon, then move on to Mars, but rather than doing it on a pile of new money like Apollo, he proposed a pay-as-you-go pace .... then he never funded it, and he was booted out of office after only one term. in the middle of his one term, Bush appointed Norm Augustine to run a committee, which recommended ending human exploration beyond Earth orbit.
Clinton seems to have taken no real interest in NASA (presumably it did not help anyone but Astronauts "get the chicks", so it was of little use (yes, I'm joking here)) but his VP Gore did appear genuinely interest
Soo (Score:1)
Well, with major program put on shelves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I don't really know whom to blame, Obama, for sparing money on it (NASA's budget is roughly 18 billion $, which is about 0.5% of the federal budget) and effectively stopping the program, or NASA, for Constelation program being behind schedule and much more costly than planned.
Probably more of NASA's fault.
Anyway, as far as I get the recommendation of the committee::
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
goes, the plan is to skip the Moon (as
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Neither affordable nor sustainable.. (Score:1)
Base politicking is no substitute for vision. (Score:2)
No vision? Well, arguably NASA has served its purpose; founded to "beat the Commies" after Sputnik "terrorized" the USA by orbiting over it, and then the Sovs. got the first human in orbit, NASA was successful in beating them to the moon. With a bit of help from some ex-nazi scientists and engineers...
An amazing achievement, but it was always a "because it's there" kind of thing.
Kennedy's remarkable "we choose to go to the moon" speech made no mention of establishing permanent moon colonies; that was neve
Maybe stop stealing from the cookie jar.... (Score:1)
It is my understanding that NASA is essentially denied the ability to make any money off of its innovations. Maybe if they where allowed to do that they would have been able to supplement a decent part of their own budget over these past decades.
P & S earthquake waves, remember? (Score:1)
wow, this is super interesting.
iff it proves to be the case that the same event causes G.W. & G.R.B observations and there is a relationship that connects the speed of the two arrivals,
like in an earthquake's P&S waves, this is a whole new tool to trace events in the cosmos, as they occur. Combining with an extra handful of observations points,
it would be possible to easily find the source point via triangulation, at distances which are mind-glowing (pun intended!). Good luck with this - literally!
Well for a certain value of "no vision". (Score:2)
In this case "no vision for putting a manned mission on Mars in the foreseeable future."
I know "politics" is a dirty word for most nerds, but if you want to spend the hundred billion taxpayer dollars that the optimists think it'll take to mount a manned Mars mission you should at least do them the courtesy of convincing them it's a the best use of their space science money.
"I want to go to Mars at any cost," isn't a vision. Taking a few half-assed first steps toward Mars in the hope that future admistrators
No vision, No plan, No budget (Score:1)
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Two recessions? I just remember a really long one that's lasted most of his administration.
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Yeah, let's just ignore the fact that was because of a certain right wing party refusing to do anything, and blame it on Obama.
Moron.
We don't need NASA (Score:1)
NASA broke the ground for us, but their day is over. Nobody has gone past near-earth orbit in 40 years. Let's not relegate our space exploration to a risk-averse government bureaucracy, paid for by taxes. Elon has the right idea.
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It's widely believed
Weasel words.
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It's widely believed Mars once had life.
Is it? Widely hoped, perhaps, but I wouldn't even say it's widely suspected, let alone believed.
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I'm so glad I live in the EU where we don't invade countries, don't cause global warming, don't spy on our citizens, and aren't dumb and fat.
Are you sure about that? Every single thing you mention is actually wrong.
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if Mars were made of solid oil
Then it would be Evil Saturated Fat, and former Mayor Bloomberg would try and get it quarantined!!
Mike Griffen always has harsh words. (Score:3)
Mike Griffin has complained about NASA priorities ever since he was fired in 2009 and stopped setting the priorities. You may remember the public campaign he and his wife waged to keep his government job. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2845... [nbcnews.com] And he hopes a new incoming President will re-appoint him as NASA head.
Griffin wants to go back to the expensive paradigm of sending humans to the surface of the moon. This may be an engineering objective (it's fun to build cool stuff) but it is not a top scien
Re:Mike Griffen has always had a hard-on for Mars (Score:2, Informative)
I took a class from him in the 90s (space vehicle guidance and nav). Final exam: plan a trip to Mars. It's no secret he really, really wants a Mars mission. I haven't seen him since '95 or so, but I wouldn't doubt that, with all this talk of Mars, he would really, really like to be in the drivers seat.
IMHO he's very smart, but in an assholish way. Sort of the opposite of NDT's smart but very affable public persona.
Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because he's an asshole doesn't mean he's not telling the truth.It could just mean that he's finally free to say what he should have been saying when he was director.
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Just because he's an asshole doesn't mean he's not telling the truth.It could just mean that he's finally free to say what he should have been saying when he was director.
Do we really need to go to Mars, now that we know how to go to the moon. What minerals have been returned, or hotels constructed for long term stay.
And then the question is: "Can we use the moon as a garbage dump?"
The only benefit of moon flights is the development of technology.
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Griffin wants to go back to the expensive paradigm of sending humans to the surface of the moon. ... NASA is planning for exploration and eventual colonization of Mars. The truth is that it is astronomically (pun intended) expensive to put humans in such a hostile environment as space.
It's like you need a testbed environment for those technologies to go to Mars. Something that represents the harshness of going to Mars but we'd like to not have our astronauts die so if something happens, getting home would somewhat quicker. Something relatively close seems like a great idea. Oh? They thought of that? Interesting!
In pursuit of these goals, the Vision called for the space program to complete the International Space Station by 2010; retire the Space Shuttle by 2010; develop a new Crew Exploration Vehicle (later renamed Orion) by 2008, and conduct its first human spaceflight mission by 2014; explore the Moon with robotic spacecraft missions by 2008 and crewed missions by 2020, and use lunar exploration to develop and test new approaches and technologies useful for supporting sustained exploration of Mars and beyond; explore Mars and other destinations with robotic and crewed missions; pursue commercial transportation to support the International Space Station and missions beyond low Earth orbit.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Now I hated the 2004 NASA plan because it basically gutted Aeronautics money and I was doing technology forecasting for Aero as an under
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There is really only one goal that makes such expenditures worthwhile. That is the establishment of a permanent self-sustaining human colony off the Earth.
Not to be pithy, but "the moon" qualifies as "off Earth" you know. Yes, it's not as sexy as Mars, but it's much closer. Much easier to get to and support a manned colony there than Mars. That equates to cheaper. And therefore all this makes the moon a better target assuming your "one goal" is really that. What makes Mars a better target for colonization? It's atmosphere is so thin there's little difference between it and vacuum as far as survival goes. There's water on both the moon and Mars. Neithe
Re: Mike Griffen always has harsh words. (Score:1)
Re: Not True (Score:1)
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They're even better in Gravity, the movie that taught us all that NASA still has a shuttle program--and not just any shuttles, mind you, but kick-ass super-shuttles that can easily travel between Hubble and ISS.
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