SHE KNOWS IT'S A MULTIPASS.....

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This is based on population density. Raleigh is far more spread out than SF. And you definitely can't tell me that Baltimore is a "smarter" city than Raleigh. After all, Baltimore is full of people who aren't smart enough to get out!

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This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
--Emerson

I personally side with those that think it was NASA's time to have their budget pulled back. They hemorrhage money and don't see a proportionate amount of success and breakthroughs like they once did. That aside though I truly feel that the future of our space exploration will be dependent upon private businesses and individuals. Private companies can do a lot of what NASA does for pennies on the dollar and they don't put up with wasteful spending as much or lack of results. I don't see the budget cut to NASA as a bad thing at all but rather a start of a competitive private market that will get more accomplished. Yes, I did sound like a Republican for a second.

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Actually, you sound like someone who doesn't know how minuscule NASA's budget is already.

The ROI for NASA is unbeatable.
Especially compared with everywhere else we're flushing money down the toilet.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

Sure didn't see that one coming.

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NASA's budget should be increased overall, but in certain areas.

I completely agree that we should be using commercial services. But right now, commercial services to orbit is a challenge. We are at the point where that is a challenge that should be undertaken - and it is.

But private companies cannot get us beyond earth orbit. They don't have the launchers, they don't have the spacecraft. And it's not financially viable for them to do so, not for awhile anyway. That is where NASA needs to shine. That's where the money should go.

We need to fund a heavy-lift vehicle, preferably shuttle-derived as it would be the most economical, and fund a beyond-Earth-orbit spacecraft. We need to develop them in the foreseeable future, not ten or fifteen years from now. Set goals like that and you'll only push them back.



I cannot agree with that. The numbers don't back it up. If anything, there is a greater proportion of success and breakthroughs. During the Apollo heyday, NASA was getting close to 5% of the federal budget. Now, it gets less than 0.5% - proportionately less than a tenth of what it once was. NASA, the entire agency, operates on less than $20 billion per year. The return on that is huge.

However, there are some areas that I do not like. The Ares program was a huge waste of money (notice I did not say Constellation - Orion would have been very effective). Solutions are still being looked at that would be inefficient.

But whose fault is that? Congress, the president, and the people they appoint! Bush appointed Mike Griffin, who forced Ares through despite the signs that it wasn't going to work and was going to cost way more than available. Obama's proposed budget has little improvement - let's use commercial services (which is fine), but oh yeah, we'll continue developing Orion as a rescue vehicle from the ISS, at a cost of billions.

That's a jobs program. There is no need for a rescue Orion - Soyuz already exists for that purpose. It's going to be a huge waste of money.

Money that would better be used for a shuttle extension and the acceleration of the next program.

It's not the engineers and managers that are at fault. It's the administration - those who the federal government puts in charge. For example - look at the recent firing of Constellation program manager Jeff Hanley. He was removed (well, "moved") for studying the migration of Constellation into a shuttle-derived heavy launcher. Which would work very well, and would be very efficient - but is not what the administration wants to see.

It's truly disappointing - I'm disgusted by it. A reduction in funding would only be done by the same people who are responsible for causing this mess in the first place. As an agency, NASA functions very well. It should get more money. But it could be a whole lot better, on the manned end - and that's the fault of the federal government.

The next few weeks should be interesting though. Congress, under the lead of Bill Nelson (one of the guys who actually has a clue when it comes to this stuff), seems to be pushing a shuttle-derived heavy launcher and accelerated BEO exploration. This would be great.

Commercial spaceflight will be great for low earth orbit - ISS access and stuff. And it can work hand-in-hand with a NASA program as well.

Sorry, but saying NASA is wasting our money when it's somewhere around 0.7% of our budget doesn't pass the smell test.
I could go look up the numbers but I'd bet you we throw away more on medicare fraud than we invest in NASA.

...and I knew S2S would be coming back to respond to you.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

I'm sorry I stated my OPINION. I will make sure not to do that in the future Dad. Also there's a difference between coming across as a prick and how S2S chose to respond. Just saying.

I agree with a lot of what you said S2S. All I'm saying is that I agree with critics that think bringing in private groups is a positive not a negative. Many professionals have been critical of various projects, budget busting and exceeded time frames but that doesn't mean that NASA is useless, and I didn't say that. In these times of budget constraints and economic crisis it just makes sense to look at ALL programs but we're talking about NASA here. It's not a good argument to simply say other programs are less effective so why mess with NASA?

I also am not sure that having a mission based program is the best way to come up with the technologies needed to get into space more efficiently. Then again this is my OPINION, so fuck me right?

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Well, a mission based program is almost a necessity - without a goal, you have no reason to develop the vehicle.

The mission, however, does not need to be a destination. You don't need to tailor a spacecraft to only landing on Mars - that is quite narrow-sighted and will not benefit a lot of other areas. Now, it's granted that a Mars mission would take a fair amount of proprietary technology, but a lot of it should be developed to be used as universally as possible.

That essentially sums up the "flexible path" approach - that we don't concentrate on Mars right away, but that we use missions to the Lagrange Points, Near Earth Objects (asteroids), Mars's moons, etc, to build a "spiral" approach, developing the vehicles as we go along.

That would probably be the best approach - and it's almost what the proposed budget does. Almost. It mentions going there and then throws a HLV development timeline that does not fit, and does not give any sort of transition from now to then. It's a bunch of loosely defined goals with no coherent plan.

The R&D is important, but no R&D is done without a goal in mind. That is pretty useless.

Makes sense. By mission oriented I'm speaking from a military mindset here. Goal oriented and "mission" oriented approaches are slightly different in my experience in that a goal oriented program is less rigid in it's layout and has a tendency to foster the development of technologies that might otherwise be seen as not critical to the mission. From what you're saying we're in agreement that the approach needs to be more flexible, and perhaps I have misunderstood how NASA structures their projects if indeed they aren't as rigid as some critics have suggested.

My response to the original post was simply a disagreement with your pessimism in reaching our space goals. I think that we're gonna see growing pains as we transition from a government run program to a cooperative style but I'm overly pessimistic about the long term marriage of the two sectors. I think that the sharing of technology and the competition this opportunity affords private companies will be amazingly benifical in the long run.

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Me: Your opinion is flawed
You: OUTRAGE

Someone else: your opinion is flawed
You: ahh ok, I agree

Seriously, I'm done.
It's grossly apparent we can't have civil discourse so I'm just not going to respond anymore.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

thank you.

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The thing that shocks me isn't the fact that people believe in Jesus returning, hell they have believed that every year for centuries. What blows my mind is the Harris poll done in March:



The actual percentages of adults who believe these things are true are as follows:

* He is a socialist (40%)
* He wants to take away Americans' right to own guns (38%)
* He is a Muslim (32%)
* He wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government (29%)
* He has done many things that are unconstitutional (29%)
* He resents America's heritage (27%)
* He does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do (27%)
* He was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president (25%)
* He is a domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitutions speaks of (25%)
* He is a racist (23%)
* He is anti-American (23%)
* He wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers (23%)
* He is doing many of the things that Hitler did (20%)
* He may be the Anti-Christ (14%)
* He wants the terrorists to win (13%)

What Republicans, Democrats and Independents think

There are – no surprise here – huge differences between what Republicans and Democrats believe. Majorities of Republicans believe that President Obama:

* Is a socialist (67%)
* Wants to take away Americans' right to own guns (61%)
* Is a Muslim (57%)
* Wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government (51%); and
* Has done many things that are unconstitutional (55%).

Also large numbers of Republicans also believe that President Obama:

* Resents America's heritage (47%)
* Does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do (40%)
* Was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president (45%)
* Is the "domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitution speaks of" (45%)
* Is a racist (42%)
* Want to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers (41%)
* Is doing many of the things that Hitler did (38%).

Even more remarkable perhaps, fully 24% of Republicans believe that "he may be the Anti-Christ" and 22% believe "he wants the terrorists to win."

While few Democrats believe any of these things, the proportions of Independents who do so are close to the national averages.

One big surprise is that many more Republicans (40%) than Democrats (15%) believe the president does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do.

That's some scary stuff right there.

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I'd like to know the sample size of that poll

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2,320 adults

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Yes and no. Many things are rigid - and they have to be. Especially on the unmanned side of things - each satellite or probe is custom tailored for its mission - but it has to be. A universal spacecraft in that case wouldn't be very effective.

On the manned side of things, it's a little less, but a little more of a shady area. Apollo was developed to take us to the moon - but interestingly could be adapted to other things. Skylab was the only one that ever happened, but Google "Apollo Applications Program" and you'll find a lot of interesting concepts that were made at the time.

Shuttle was developed more in between, as I see it. A lot of military requirements went into the shuttle, heavily shaping its design - but it's purpose was to be a low-earth orbit vehicle with different capabilities.

The future is definitely going to be more flexible, by it's nature. Mars is probably the ultimate goal - most people agree on that - but jumping straight to Mars would not work very well (Robert Zubrin would disagree, though). That is why I see the Flexible Path as the best approach - it spirals upward and lets us develop and use the technology for other destinations. The Lagrange points are huge - if we develop propellant depots there (although developing propellant depots anywhere would be nice) - we open up a lot of opportunities.



There's already a "cooperative style" in place. NASA doesn't build anything - contractors like Boeing, Lockheed, ATK do. And NASA isn't completely responsible for the work done on the shuttle - United Space Alliance does a lot of that. All unmanned launch services are provided commercially.

We are now at the point where buying manned launch services to low earth orbit is becoming a reality. I agree that it will be beneficial. It will lower the cost to get there and make it more accessible.

But our future isn't in low earth orbit. We need to go beyond. And while I have high hopes for the future, it is depressing to see everything held up so much because of those in charge. At this rate, we're not going anywhere anytime soon. We're letting our only capability to get to space (the shuttle) slip away into retirement as we debate on what should be done next - with the president's proposed budget not providing any concrete plan.

What about technologies though? A close friend of mine is one of those "Can't talk about work" egg heads for Pratt & Whitney and though he says that they are constantly working on new ideas there he said the industry is relatively narrow because NASA and the military for that matter typically go with one of a handful of companies. He's not happy about the budget deal since apparently they lost some contracts and as a result jobs but he does think that opening the door to other companies to be more involved and get a wider technology sharing happening will churn out more advances. I mean I'm just an artist so I can't speak as an expert but the deal Branson had with the low orbit race was great. It made me think about how competition like that really fuels the advances we make as a society.




I wouldn't get too bogged down in the right now though. I think that this is just an evolution of the space industry so to speak and though it may not happen as quickly as we want, scientists will keep making advances and get us up there. I hope that there is a healthy international exchange of technology and information like they are doing on the fusion front instead of holding everything so close to the vest like we did during the Cold War. To that point I have a question. With a wider involvement of non-military contracted companies will we see more transparency in the space community?

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If we're looking for life, we need to take our eyes off of Mars and look towards Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons. It's surface is covered in methane lakes which could support life. If we started now, we could have a program in place to go there and search for life in 30-40 years.

That's what I love about life. It's such a steadfast thing that finds any way possible to continue living. Once life is created, it can adapt to anything. Even if Earth gets blown to shit in a nuclear holocaust, life will still find a way to survive. Even if it's just a microorganism, that organism alone could adapt to the radiation and find a way to live off of it and then thrive.

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"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." ~ Han Solo


We truly are not worthy of Miller!

Titan is acceptable. Just remember...

ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
USE THEM TOGETHER
USE THEM IN PEACE

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This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
--Emerson

Yes, there are the "traditional" contractors that the government usually goes to.

However, beyond the scope of LEO, I don't see how there will or can be any competition - and how it will fuel advances. Yet. Because there's no money to be made there. It costs so much to develop and there is little money to be made. A huge scientific benefit, but companies don't make money off scientific knowledge. But yes, the more approaches we take to it, the more people that try, the more advances that will be made.

Oh, and Branson had nothing to do with low earth orbit. The whole Virgin Galactic premise is suborbital right now. Space tourism. SpaceShipOne was suborbital, SpaceShipTwo will be as well. Which is of little usefulness when it comes to science. I support it and think it's awesome - but it has little to do with national goals in space.

SpaceX (Elon Musk) is more fitting when it comes to LEO - and they have the potential to have a huge impact. They can potentially make a great decrease in launch costs (not important to the government so much as the private sector) and crew transport (very important for government). That's why commercial to LEO is a good thing.

But, it's limited in what it can do.



I'm not sure that I necessarily agree. If you look at the last thirty years, it's been basically flying the shuttle in low earth orbit. The ISS is a magnificent achievement - but it could have been done much more efficiently. The problem that I see now is that we're losing our manned space capability without any real idea of where we're going forward. At the end of Apollo, there was Skylab for a few years while shuttle was developed - there was still a gap but the shuttle program was well underway and the goals were clear (even if the expectations were a tad unreasonable). This time, we through a ton of money and effort into what amounts to a simpler launch vehicle, that wouldn't work very well at all. The obvious eventually shows, that it is unsustainable, and meanwhile shuttle extension is allowed slowly to slip away.

There certainly are a lot of possibilities for the future - and many good ones. But I don't have faith in the people in charge to pick the right ones. And therein lies the problem - the engineers and program managers are not the ones making the decisions on which direction to pursue - it's the administration, who is working on behalf of the White House and has to try to please Congress as well.

It can be pretty depressing. It's been 38 years since we last walked on the moon. Right now, we lack the capability to even do that, and pretty soon, we're losing the capability to even go into orbit. That's not progress. Isn't it time to go somewhere?

As far as transparency, I'm not sure. The space community is fairly transparent now - everything that's not ITAR (which is mainly just DoD stuff) is accessible. Knowledge is shared - and we have a great relationship among international partners (Russia, ESA, Jaxa, etc).