What's Wrong With NASA?

[Berzerker]

Probes are mostly a waste too, they sent Magellan to Venus for study. The argument I heard at the time from the weenies at JPL was we wanted to find out why Venus had a runaway greenhouse effect so we could prevent the same thing from happening here. We didn't need to send a probe for that, Venus is upside down, not rotating much at all, and ~ no magnetic field to deflect solar radiation. JPL knew all that and they still sold that waste of money to us with lies.

[Spiffor]

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

Please tell me how inhabited the planets on our solar system are.

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.

What is false is your claim that the exploration of the new world didn't solve problems. It considerably improved the diet of millions, and New World plants are largely responsible for the rarity of famine in today's world (even in Africa: most African will never experience famine in their lives - they are plagued by malnutrition, which is a different beast).

How many would have survived had anti-biotics been developed first?

I strongly doubt we would have ever given anti-biotics to the natives.

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...

I don't see how "improving our part of the world" would make us any less prone to abuse a new source of wealth. It's human nature.

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.

It was a jibe
And I don't love the shuttle. It has outlived its usefulness, and it siphons money out of actually interesting science projects. What I'm defending is space exploration (something pretty cheap), and not the white elephants that are of very little use: the shuttle and the ISS.
And Space science is not useless at all, because of its great many technological offshoots.
If it wasn't for space science, we wouldn't have the computers we have now, nor Internet nor mobile phones, and these devices are instrumental in the amazing economic change we've been undergoing for 20 years.
If it wasn't for space science, we'd have much worse weather forecasts, which would mean a much more dangerous air and sea travel (especially in this day and age, where air travel is generalized, and international trade means a great amount of ships).
Militarily speaking, if it wasn't for space science, our ability to have "surgical strikes" would be much less, and every splendid little war would kill many, many more innocent people.

In short, even in a day where space isn't economically exploited, we're benefiting from very important technological offshots. The day we can exploit the riches on other planets, space exploration would pay off even more. Just imagine us strip mining other planets and stopping to do so on ours: much, much earthly pollution would be avoided, and many people would benefit from the improved environment.

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

5 billions (which is the cost of the actual space exploration at NASA, the 11 other billions are for white elephants) are nothing. One day in Iraq is more costly to the US than the yearly Space science budget. The Space exploration programme yields very interesting results from an academic perspective, and yields technological offshoots. I fail to see how it is a waste.

[chequita guevara]

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

To which part of your cells have extra-terrestrial virii evolved to attach?

[chequita guevara]

Anyway, people like DanS running the government are the reason why NASA has done such a poor job with the shuttle program. They've cut the funding to the marrow to the point that they crippled it. Then like every other program whose funding they kill, they then point to the results of their starvation and claim they were justified since the project failed. It's the reverse of a tiger-protecting rock.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Anyway, people like DanS running the government are the reason why NASA has done such a poor job with the shuttle program.

Actually, I don't understand at all the usefulness of the Shuttle. I mean, it's not like we carry anything back from space, except for astronauts (and a Soyuz can bring them back just as well). Why do we need a gigantic re-useable space truck, instead of non-reuseables?

[chequita guevara]

So we don't have to build a whole delivery system each time. Right now, the fleet really serves no purpose, but had it not been deliberately stripped of much of its funding, it could have been so much more.

Here's how the whole conservative destruction of government in the U.S. works.

Someone proposes Program A to fix problem A.

Conservatives decry it as big government, too expensive, etc.

Moderates agree to cut funding in the spirit of compromise.

Program A now has barely necessary funding to moderate problem A, let alone solve it.

Conservatives claim the results justify their initial opposition.

Moderates, in the spirit of compromise, agree to additional funding cuts, since reality seems to have proven the conservatives correct.

Program A now no longer has the funding to do its job at all, and only survives as a pet project. It serves not its originally intended function, but instead becomes a rallying cry for conservatives and "moderates" alike about the wastefullness and inefficiency of big government, but it is never actually killed, because conservatives wouldn't be able to ***** about to rile up supporters anymore.

Thus is the history of all good ideas in the U.S. government.

[Richelieu]

Damnit! Missed the gay thread by a minute.

[Japher]

zenofeller's thread is there...

[DeathByTheSword]

i find it always so funny that people think that the ISS doesnt have any scientific purpose...to is a testing bed for a lot of new technology for creating habitats outside our own planet. if we ever go to mars or have a perment base on the moon...the people have to life somewhere...were will that be in habitats that will be designed with the lessons the scientists learned form the ISS...and about the tests on the ISS..no a fully operatiol oxygen and water recylce system in outerspace (and on earth) is not handy. the same as it is not handy to know if wheat can be grown succesfully in outerspace thus creating oxygen and food for mars trips...yes i agree the ISS will mostly help space travel and not directly earth living...but the same could be said about the atomic bomb..the wheel and the combustion engine...before you say anything just think about where the stuff comes from you nike air is made of or why it is possible to make a meal in 30 seconds in the microwave or why in the middle of no where you can pick up your cell phone and talk to you love 1000 miles away...

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
So we don't have to build a whole delivery system each time. Right now, the fleet really serves no purpose, but had it not been deliberately stripped of much of its funding, it could have been so much more.

I agree with your description of the way conservatives destroy your government, but I think the shuttle was a bad idea from the beginning.

The re-useability of the shuttle makes it much more heavy than a non-reuseable (because you can't just throw off useless weight, you have to keep it around). As a result, it's economically much more expansive to launch a shuttle than to launch a non-reuseable. Every rocket launch is expansive and polluting (there is much, much fuel in these things), but the shuttle is worse in this regard.

The shuttle would have some merit if there was any reason to have a space vessel land gently on Earth when it comes back. For example, if the vessel brought back material from space. But for the time being, this is wholly useless, and it actually eats up tons of money that could go to genuine space science (and NASA is doing a very good job at it).

The shuttle may be cool, but it's not useful.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
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.

The Russians would be no worse for this comparison. They acquit themselves well on a budget that is economical.

[Tingkai]

Really? What have the Russians done lately? Compare that to all that Nasa is doing.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Spiffor
The shuttle would have some merit if there was any reason to have a space vessel land gently on Earth when it comes back.

It produces considerably less space debris than using staged vehicals.

[DanS]

Good question.

The Russians spend a half billion to a billion dollars year -- depending on the exchange rates -- on civil and manned space (what NASA does), about 1/20 NASA's budget.

For this, last year -- a year in which NASA did not launch a single manned mission -- the Russians put together 4 Progress resupply missions to the space station and 2 Soyuz manned recrewing missions, as well as their normal ground operations activities for the station. In addition, they put an earth remote sensing satellite (weather satellites aren't part of NASA's work but is rather part of NOAA's work State-side, but some other work such as climate change is part of NASA).

NASA launched: (a) Gravity Probe B, a satellite that had been "sitting in the hangar" for 40 years; (b) Messenger, a small probe to Mercury; and (c) Swift, a small gamma ray burst telescope. In addition, it did ground station operations, ground Hubble operations, and ground Mars rover operations, etc.

Every time the Shuttle launches, it spends the entire annual budget of the Russians. Even if the Shuttle doesn't launch, it still spends the money.

[boann]

One of the things people don't realized is how serious NASA takes even the smallest thing that is used for space flight...

When I worked for Texas Instruments years ago, I was
given responsibility as inspector for just one device they made for them.. Every part had 100% inspection..
every part had a serial number.. Every part had a log for tracability... I’m talking about something as small as a resistor or capacitor... even stupid screws and washers.
It was time consuming ... lots of a 1000 resistors had to be checked electrically and just to log the serial numbers and make sure each was the right size.. We are talking about hours and hours of work . during that time that’s all I did full time was work that project.

And put that in perspective of the whole space program its mind blowing.. And I was just one small person in the cog of the machine.