What's Wrong With NASA?

[Berzerker]

Oh yeah, 2 shuttles disintregated, not one. And a third, the one up there now, came close to following in their footsteps. But hey, whats 100 billion? We've wasted a trillion on a drug war and consumption rates are no lower than when all drugs were legal.

[Bill3000]

Should increase funding of NASA one-hundred fold.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Exactly...not the point you wanted to make I suspect...

Yes it is. DanS made a flawed comparison. He can only compare it to other space agencies, such as the ESA, or Russian and Chinese counterparts.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Exactly...not the point you wanted to make I suspect...

Only if you're a luddite or a crazy libbie... oh.

[Berzerker]

Only if you're a luddite or a crazy libbie... oh.

Its crazy to oppose launching wads of money into space while there is so much here to do on this planet?

Yes it is. DanS made a flawed comparison. He can only compare it to other space agencies, such as the ESA, or Russian and Chinese counterparts.

He wasn't comparing NASA to other agencies, MrM was lamenting how we spend only 16 billion to explore all of space and Dan pointed out how priorities get in the way of wasting money on pie in the sky adventures.

[Daz]

I see the Russians having no problems with their space program. Ok, its basically a sending-satelites-to-orbit program, but thats also the shuttles main objective. And they are spending waaay less money on it....

[Bill3000]

[q=Berzerker]Its crazy to oppose launching wads of money into space while there is so much here to do on this planet?[/q]
yes

[Berzerker]

You guys remind me of Ted Turner throwing money at the UN to better mankind.

[Bill3000]

Because exploring the New World was useless and futile when there were plenty of problems in Europe.

[Berzerker]

Wasn't useless or futile for those "exploring" or those being "explored", millions died here and back in the old world as the riches of the new world fueled more wars instead of solving problems. Now, where up in the sky do you see something comparable to the new world?

[Skanky Burns]

All those little points of light.

[Berzerker]

Those are called stars, better work on this little ball of rock before trying to find new ones.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Wasn't useless or futile for those "exploring" or those being "explored", millions died here

Considering we're exploring uninhabited planets, this won't be a problem.

and back in the old world as the riches of the new world fueled more wars instead of solving problems.

1. This is false. Thanks to the discovery of the new world, new plants were found (tomato, potato...), which considerably improved the ordinary man's life.
2. Besides, such a thing can be said of absolutely any economic venture: the wealth it creates can be abused. Should I understand that you're a hippie who wants us to abandon wealth and go back to the caves? Finding wealth through exploration isn't more conducive of abuse than any other economic venture.

Now, where up in the sky do you see something comparable to the new world?

Remember why the kings and merchants sent ships to the new world (and to most other parts of the world as well): to gather resources that were rare or inexistant in Europe. In this regard, you can look no further than the moon, which has rich deposits of a material useful for fusion power, which material is very rare on Earth. Or if we ever reach "peak oil", we could find huge quantities of hydrocarbons on Titan.

[Impaler[WrG]]

NASA has been VERY succesfull at in its Scientific Probes, yes they do fail often but the important point is that they fail "Going ware no probe has gone before" and that makes all the difference. Each Probe is unique and it strives to answer a REAL scientific question and build our knowlage.

The Shuttle and Space Station programs are just the opposite, they repetedly do again what has already been done and do not add to our knowlage in any way. We have had decades to study the human body under weightless conditions (and the russians having had a space station of their own were able to perform much longer studies then the US), the chessy little experiments like watching the web a spider spins in zero gravity and other "science fair" dribble do not justify the costs involved. The whole Shuttle/ISS boodogle represents one of the most agregess wastes of funds ever, not because of wastfull enginers or buricrates but because the work fundamentaly serves no purpose and dose not move us towards any greater understanding or exploration of space.

To realize how this could happen you must go watch the space voyage scene in 2001 (the part ware they play the Blue Danue). Now remember THIS was seen to be the future of Space. People expected us to be on the moon in perminent settlments in about 50 years. The Shuttle was actualy designed to be A SHUTTLE, a mear space taxi to take us to massive Pinwheel space stations from which we would travel to the moon and assemble nuclear powered ships to reach Jupiter and other such grandious endevers.

But it was all too much too fast. The tecnology simply wasn't up to the task, a single stage to orbit vehicle wasn't feasable (and still isn't today as the X-33 shows). The Shuttles massive maintance costs combined with Budget reductions left nothing but table scraps which were used for Probes (ironicaly this has been the only money put to good use). The Giant Pinwheel stations were never built, the moon was never colonized, the missions to Jupiter sound laughable. At first this didn't seem so bad their were Satalites to launch and studies to make in Low Earth orbit, but if one looks closly you can see the cracks. All this mucking around in LEO and the much touted "spin off" tecnologies like tang and thouse airo-foam matresses are a proxy goal feed to the world to mask the UTTER AND COMPLETE FAILURE OF THE INITIAL VISION!!

Even now as we pour Billions into the ISS, we will not move any further "out" into space. If the Shuttle is a space taxi with no destination the ISS is a space RV with no destination. We cant colonize anything in space with the shuttle lift costs and the ISS wont be used in any kind of manned mission beyond Earth, like a landing on Mars for example. No concivable mars missions involves space based assembly of vehicles. The cheapest and thus likliest senario involves several complete boster stages being lifted seperatly and docked in a train to a crew capsule then injected to mars without the astronauts even using the station. Likewise the return to earth would involve the astronauts entering a small apollo size capsule and simply splashing directly down in the ocean, this saves millions of pounds of fuel because no fuel is expended to brake a ship into earth orbit.

The solution is clear, imediatly scrap the Shuttle and ISS, the Billions that would be freed up by this (even after we buy off the other nations that were going to be part of the ISS) could be put into basic research which has been neglected for decades. Their are so many new ideas for drive systems out their. Take the Ion Drive for example againits the Probes that are realy advancing our understanding here both in Astronomical knowlage but also in drive tecnology. These things should realy be developed untill they can become the backbone of a "post rocket" space transportation system. Then we can return to manned space flight with the vigor and enthusiam that comes from going ware no one has goon before.

we could find huge quantities of hydrocarbons on Titan

Spiff are you listening to yourself?? Oil from Titan a Moon what ~8 Astronomical Units away! It could be raining Diamonds on Titan and it wouldn't be economicaly viable. For that matter the moon could be made of solid gold bars and it wouldn't be worth mining. The production of Biofuels from crops (a major industry in Brazil) would be orders of magnitude cheaper even if it required every internal compustion or turbine engine on earth to be replaced.

[Berzerker]

Considering we're exploring uninhabited planets, this won't be a problem.

Uninhabited? Euros lucked out in the virus wars, I'm not eager to test that luck again with extra-terrestrial viruses.

1. This is false. Thanks to the discovery of the new world, new plants were found (tomato, potato...), which considerably improved the ordinary man's life.

It ain't false, the Spanish plundered the new world for gold and used it to fund even more warfare and millions died in both the new and old world. How many would have survived had anti-biotics been developed first?

2. Besides, such a thing can be said of absolutely any economic venture: the wealth it creates can be abused.

Which is why the world would have been better off had Europeans concentrated on improving their part of the world first. The fact is the wealth was used for abuse...

Should I understand that you're a hippie who wants us to abandon wealth and go back to the caves?

Abandon wealth? My position is we shouldn't waste wealth, not abandon it. You wanna abandon wealth? Shoot it off into space on your beloved shuttle.

Finding wealth through exploration isn't more conducive of abuse than any other economic venture.

It is when so much wealth is wasted in the name of exploration.