 |
Obama says "we've been there" in his declination to support further Moon missions...
Yet he says he's eager to support trying to land someone on an asteroid.
I'm not any smarter than Barak Hussein is, but dang ... doesn't he have any decent advisors?
... or just does he just ignore them? :(
BoBo has watched far too many "Star Trek" episodes.
The Warp drive isn't due to be invented any time soon, and that's the only POSSIBLE way we could ever do what he claims we will do after firing all the engineers that would be needed for such a major undertaking.
We all know his advisors are liars and tax cheats... we can expand that to dumb taxcheating liars.
Perhaps he thinks his homeboys in the Chicago projects will dream up a solution during a crack induced stupor.
They do know Star Trek is NOT on the science channel... its science fiction... don't they?
There seems to be genuine disagreement between those who want to go back to the moon as an intermediate step towards going to Mars ;and those who think we can bypass the moon on the way.
I'm of the opinion that the development of the heavy lift booster should continue ,and that a colony should be established by the lunar poles .
Water has been found there and that can be used to create hydrogen fuel for further exploration in the solar system .
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/1...asa/index.html
The truth is that he would like to get rid of NASA ;and I think he would've except for the fact that his Democrat delegation in Congress reminded him that Johnson cleverly spread NASA around as the ultimate pork ,and many districts have a stake in the perpetuation of the agency .
But the President really doesn't have a vision of the future in space ,so he had some cubicle dwelling flunkies draw up his list of goals .
His vision for ISS that the US primarily built ? Well we'll given them a 1960s capsule to dock there in case they need a quick exit ;but he won't extend the Shuttle missions until the next generation of low earth capable boosters are developed . In the meantime we will pay $55.8 million to the Ruskies per astronaut to hitch a ride on a soyuz fire cracker .
He then asked private companies to develop a future launcher I'm OK with that... it is already being done by Elon Musk of Space X and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson .But in the meantime it seems silly that we shouldn't continue the
shuttle missions until such a time that the next generation is ready to fly. The problems with the heat tiles appear to have been solved
Space exploration beyond the already developed still needs to be pursued .
Nasa has done wonderful things with robotics ,but except the Hubble ,it has not really done much to inspire the imaginations of children to pursue a careet in physics and the sciences . I don't think landing on an asteroid qualifies as a generation inspiring event.
Landing on an asteroid?. sounds like Zero has been watching too many Bruce Willis movies .
Somebody tell JBeaucaire to get a job with Virgin Galactic, quick.
It may actually be a good idea to put space into private hands. We might be able to count on something lasting past November then.
Warp drive has already been invented its just in baby shoes at this time.
As far as NASA's redirection he is missing the boat completely. By undertaking moon missions and the possible settlement of the moon is how you can get to the asteriods and back. NASA already had plans and paperwork in place to harvest sunlight and beam it back here for "nonpoluting" energy. Also it will take a NASA to jump start everything before private enterprise can be involved. There is too much risk otherwise. Its just plain ignorance to turn a blind eye like that on a successful program and a dark day for not only the U.S. but the planet.
I've spent a LOT of time... at Goddard Flight Center. I know a few people there quite well. And yeah... I know where the center dealling with the Hubbel is at and have been in it numerous times over the years.
Nasa won't get over the "Brain Drain" Obama will impose on them.
You can't retask burger Flippers and Parking garage attendants to do what NASA needs.
And Chicago project dwelling drug dealers and welfare recipients certainly aren't a more worthy recipient of tax dollars.
Snoop Dogg isn't going to create a Shuttle replacement... as much as he might envision flying in one during a stoner hallucination.
BO has turned out to be smarter than the average bear, he has broken the government monopoly on space. The move to get space into private hands has excellent potential and therefore massive investment might be premature but it is a good recover measure. Branson has already shown there is the will in private enterprise to be part of the initiative. BO knows the US can't afford space for the next 10 years but setting the goal on Mars he knows that investment in R&D will continue because he has dared to say what the average person is thinking "we have been there before" the moon just doesn't capture the imagination in the way Mars does. A little later it will be convenient to discover how an intermediate base might be useful
It is swred politics to cut the program that won't get political support anyway
Far more likely its going to kill it altogether. Nothing shrewd in stupidity... and I know far more about the Space program than he is capable of grasping. And no, NASA isn't chasing after me either. Nobodys even seen if he's taken a physics class much less passed it. All his records are still national secrets for some reason.
Just not enough private money LEFT for private investment after the big tax hikes hit next year.
Assuming people even get back to work that soon, which is also highly unlikely with the massive tax hikes draining corporate resources that might have gone to new hires or expansion.
So far Branson is close to getting suborbital ;about as far as Alan Shepard got... and Branson's enterprise is not exactly on solid financial footing .
I am in favor of the privatization of some of the stuff NASA does.I would like to see cargo and passengers to ISS travel on private vehicles ;and I think space tourism is a fine idea. Hope to go one of these days .
But space exploration is for the grownups .
I think you have just agreed with me that the US can't afford space at the moment, If there is no private money, there certainly isn't any public money. Sometimes it is politically expedient to state the obvious, it does't fit the yankee gung ho attitude, and, "yes we can" went out the window. NASA would have been better off getting the aircraft industry to adapt some of their bigger craft to a new vehicle it would have demonstrated more imagination than a capsule on top of a rocketQuote:
Originally Posted by smoothy
Not the way I read it... Government investment in the space program has spawned many advances. I do not believe we would recognise the world today without them.Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
NASA is a FAR better investment than bailing out financial corporations based on their political contributions... And those who gave more to the republicans... were told to take a hike... while those who gave more to the Democrats got massive bailout money. Nothing based on merit in who got what.
What scares me most about having a brain drain at NASA and them going to private enterprise is that at least while at NASA if it were 100 scientists then they all could openly speak to one another where in the private sector if they are divided then that pool will be drained by silence. There may be many many ideas that won't see the light of day because it isn't "profitable" enough. I hope NASA manages to stay afloat and continue to be a leader amongst our brightest minds.
They didn't suggest there isn't a role for NASA just that there is no money for a repeat performance. Ultimately the enterprises that government invent they privatise. The chinese will go to the moon and there will be advances from that and they will commercialise them. Science is about incremental improvement and it doesn't often take risks so closeting scientists where they can only measure their performance by reference to each other is not a good thing. We don't need more million dollar screwdriversQuote:
Originally Posted by califdadof3
They go to the moon with stolen and /or technology obtained through shady methods. There is absolutely nothing innovative in what the Chinese will do.Quote:
The chinese will go to the moon and there will be advances from that and they will commercialise them.
History tells us that Queen Isabella told Columbus there just wasn't the money available to finance exploration...
Hello:
Well, if I didn't know better, I'd say there's a bunch of right wingers on this thread who think government is pretty good and want spend some of your tax dollars on it.
Sure sounds that way to me. But, what do I know?
excon
I have to disagree about your assessment of science. They do take risks. And that is how goals are achieved and how equations are proved. Theory is just that until it can be repeated. Even when they were creating the atomic bomb they really didn't know what was going to happen. The proving grounds of discovery are the risks taken to get there.Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
NASA is a far better use of my tax money than supporting "Tyron" and his twelve kids by twelve different women living in public housing... who are all too lazy to get a job.Quote:
Originally Posted by excon
You ARE aware that The Apollo missions are directly responsible for semiconductors... and everything that made possible since.
Yeah and look what that got us tobacco and the clap. In hindsight it might have been better to have listenedQuote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
Tell me again cause I'm dump, exactly what benefit has that been to usQuote:
Originally Posted by smoothy
Well maybe, but they must be doing something right because they have a vibrant economy and you don't. You can suggest they stole the technology but in reality you gave it to them along with your industries.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
Yes it's strange what government programs are good and what are bad. Spend tax dollars on more military technology that isn't worth it and that's OK but save a life and that's bad. NASA needs new blood, its thinking is out of date and if you read between the lines that is what BO said, How do you change the guard painlessly, you pull the plug on their pet programs. Suddenly this old thinking finds a home in the private sectorQuote:
Originally Posted by excon
Ex ,investment in science is a traditional acceptable role of government . You mischaracterize us by stating we don't think there is any role for government .
There is also of course a national security component in space exploration.
Clete ,the Chinese economy is a Potamkin village ballon waiting for the mother of all ballon burts .
Much of the American technology they have was given to them for campaign funds by the Clintonoids .But much was also stolen by outright espionage,intellectual property rights violations ,and patent violation.
There economy exists because of currency manipulation ,trade pact violation that creates trade imbalances suppression of freedom in their country that stifles consumerism and allows them to be a one sided export giant. They horde the money from foreign purchases rather than letting it be used for the purchase of imports their consumers want.
Right now they have created a massive real estate bubble to "make work " because consumer demand world wide has slowed during the economic downturn. But there is no occupancy for their real estate development .
Remember that massive Olympics construction that was done ? The whole thing is ready for bulldozing because it is unused .
Back to NASA.
The President did sort of promise to continue to fund research on heavy lift rocketry (you can't make it to an asteroid otherwise) ;but he kicked the can down the road and said that he would commit to a decision to which heavy lift plan to build in 2015 .(Well into the next President's 1st term).This could be the emptiest of his many empty promises .
I do believe that more of our problems on this ball of dirt can be solved by getting industry out where energy is perpetually free and raw materials are waiting to be mined and pollution is impossible than by "exploring inner space," whether that means oceanography or psychology.
Science fiction? Just like portable computers and television and microwave cooking and the internet, it certainly is.
The question here is who's going to fund it. I'd rather see GE or US Steel going into orbit than NASA or the People's Army.
Cats ,even when NASA was the lead agency in lunar exploration the agency was purchasing their technology from private industry. There is room for both a government role in research and scientific exploration as well as a private sector role .
Tom I get the idea you have never been to China, the real estate bubble is fueled by so many people suddenly experiencing prosperity, suddenly eveyone wants to get beyond a one room house and who can blame them, sure they are offered soviet style apartment blocks in new towns but it seems good to them, wide streets, town planning, super highways, massive bridges, shopping malls, it's the communist way, I wonder where else we have seen this phenominon.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
As far as NASA is concerned, all you guys are talking about is national pride. You can't be all things to all people and the GFC demonstrated that. NASA has been going nowhere for at least twenty years, if they were serious they should have had a manned mission to Mars by now, but all they have had is the shuttle program which is really a subsititute for doing nothing, forty year old space craft and nothing to show for it. What they have in fact demonstrated is the futility of a space program when you have neither the finances or the technology
What inner space means is solving the immediate problems we have right here. Climate change, carbon fuel dependence, food security, endemic poverty, endemic warfare.Quote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Energy might be free out there but it is only if the technology has relevance right here that it will be developed. What is so hard about understanding that someone has to pay for the dream? Forget about mining minerals out there anytime soon, the costs of refining and shipment are prohibitive. The Moon might actually be made of a reactive material but how do you get it back here without a major calamity, It might as well be made of blue cheese for all the good it is to us and Mars might be made of aluminium or iron but what good is it to us? We can be like the Man of La Mancha and dream the impossible dream but one day we need to wake up and see that this is the space ship we have and we need to look after it. Now if we had a program focused on mining Moon rocks and generating energy here on Earth from them it would be both useful and fundable by private enterprose, they would be lining up, but what has NASA been doing, looking for our origins. No money in it but they have been doing it, so much for yankee ingenuity
Clete ;then the China housing bubble won't burst. But George Soros is betting it will. I don't have to visit the realize that when you continue to build when there is a 30% vacancy rate then something is terribly wrong .
How do you get it back? Been doing that for decades. Put your manufactured goods on a plane and land in the Outback, the Gobi, or the Mojave. Assemble the cars or washing machines and you're golden.Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
Solve your carbon fuel dependence? Stop using 45% of it to manufacture goods and improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells so you can make goods cheaper and carbon fuels will become too expensive for your SUV.
Global Warming will be solved in about eight more years regardless of anything humans do. The wheel turns, and has for eons.
Food security would be assured if ADM were allowed to go into orbit. We've had the technology to build orbital farms for 30 years. NASA's monopoloy on US space travel has left us dependent on politicians for funding for way too long.
Endemic poverty will not be solved. Somebody said "The poor are always with us." (Matthew 26:11)
War won't end until Religion ends. Funding Chemical Boosters or Magnetic Rail guns might detract from the amount of war material available.
Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
I don't know where your getting your NASA information from but they have been far from a stagnent in their ventures. This is just a short list of contributions.
Ref:
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/pdf/Shuttle_spinoffs.pdf
Is it in part national pride? I would hope so but the current administration doesn't seem to think so. NASA has been an important feature that goes well beyond the boarders of the U.S.
Cats there is a vast difference between transporting minerals on Earth and doing so in space and delivering them back to Earth. We haven't solved the problem of lifting large vehicles off Earth yet, or crossing the vast distances quickly, let alone delivering a heavy load back to Earth without it burning up. I would like to think it is as simple as flying it down but apparently it isn'tQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
So your solution is to remove the basis of economic activity in order to solve the need for fuel and to replace existing fuels with the most expensive subsititute. Do you have any idea of the environmental cost of refining silicon? How about obsoleting the SUV? Finding ways to remove the need for all the mad running back and forth we doQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Yes you may be right, it is a cycle, but there may be other issues, such as fresh water, ice, on the other hand we may not be here in eight yearsQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Not sure what ADM refers to. Is this a corporate? Back to my earlier comment such solutions rely on solving the little problem of how to get it up there and how to get it back. Politicians want us to be dependent on them, that is unlikely to changeQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
So if they are always with us let's forget them and get on with it, not a great solution and so we will continue to have mass migrations, famines, wasted resourcesQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Religion won't end anytime soon, and not all war has a religious base, some of it has to do with poor allocation of resources, or scarse mineralsQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Build the Factories up there where the materials and energy are. Only the finished goods come down.Quote:
Cats there is a vast difference between transporting minerals on Earth and doing so in space and delivering them back to Earth.
It actually is just that simple.Quote:
I would like to think it is as simple as flying it down but apparently it isn't
Not remove, just move.Quote:
So your solution is to remove the basis of economic activity
Archer Daniels Midland = Agribusiness.Quote:
Not sure what ADM refers to
Again, getting it going requires still further investment in both time and money, which is why getting shuttle/taxi services into profit making hands now is a good idea. Spy satellites and weaponry and other classified payloads can then pay for space exploitation instead of space exploration paying for them.
I agree butQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
1, no viable world has yet been discovered
2, huge ships are required, we haven't got beyond a small plane at this stage 3. space is a hostile environment, prolonged weightlessness causes serious health problems and we don't have the technology for robotics on this scale. So all this is science fiction not science fact
.see aboveQuote:
It actually is just that simple..
.I thought that is what you meant, well BO has just thrown the door open so let them make the investment, all of it including transportation systemsQuote:
Archer Daniels Midland = Agribusiness..
Luna has sufficient gravity to avoid health problems. We need to be there permanently. Bring in a piece of ice from an orbiting comet and you've got water, fuel, and air.Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
Ships aren't required for anything but up and down. Everything else can be done with tugs.
The Outback is a hostile environment. Siberia is a hostile environment. Sealab is set in a hostile environment.
The technology is available. The research has been done. All it will take now is getting the funding away from Luddite vote-buying politicians or permitting private enterprise to stay private.
There is sufficient water on the moon to begin colonization already ;at least enough to support a base camp for further exploration . Gravity on the moon and Mars is sufficient to avoid the health concerns of weightlessness ;and advances have been made in that area with astronauts living in weghtless conditions for extended periods on ISS and MIR .Quote:
Bring in a piece of ice from an orbiting comet and you've got water, fuel, and air.
Construction of an explorer vehicle can be done in space .But what is still needed is heavy lift cargo rockets to get the components there . That is why the President's defunding of the Ares booster ,which would be capable of lifting 55,000 lbs to low earth orbit is short sighted .
I was thinking more of methane to be used for fuel. Much simpler than cracking water.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
Good call .I had forgotten that NASA once considered the possibility of methane booster propellent and dropped the concept . This was a policy mistake they should reconsider .
But the methane boosters is still not fully developed and is conceptual whereas we know how to make hydrogen rockets .
I was thinking in the now ,because if it were me ;I'd give a Kennedy like hard deadline for a lunar colony .At a minimum we should establish a goal to beat the Chinese and India .
Of course to press on to Mars and maybe even Titan (where abundance methane ,nitrogen and water is available).. new technology has to be invented .Mars has plenty of methane ,so perhaps a flex booster system is the future.
To quote an author (Heinlein) - "It's raining soup" We need to build a bucket.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
Nasa already had one on the books for 2018. That was the starting point of a colony on the moon. The jumping off point was to take advantage of the lunar cycle and land in the south near the pole where the sun is in plenty and use inflatable rooms covered in Kevlar for protection. Also compounds on the surface can be reprocessed for radiation protection. Once everything was going and in place private enterprise can take over from there. On the moon there is plenty of realestate for solar farms that are unavailable from here on earth. One of the first export products can be electricity.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
I think you are forgetting that neither Luna or Mars has a viable atmosphere so as a hostile environment it is in a different league, Ships are required to preserve life during the trip and provide an habitable environment until a base is created. Whether they are self propelled, projectile, or tugged is incidential. You are talking about a level of sophistication we won't achieve in the next century if we continue at the pace of the last fifty years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
There is only one way to get the funding and that is create jobs in constituencies and realisticly there aren't enough to go around so there will always be competing alternatives. It isn't like an auto plant, it is specialist work. You have to solve other major issues before space will enjoy sufficient focus and will to get the funding. Industries "up there" don't benefit the folks back home much. I think BO has spelled it out, there are more important things to do right now. What we could do when we had 4,000,000,000 people becomes much more difficult when we have 7,000,000,000 or 9,000,000,000
| All times are GMT -7. The time now is 11:52 PM. |