Not sure if you noticed, but our socialist Kenyan preznit just turned the keys of our previously government run space exploration to… private industry. Marxist! Saul Alinsky! Socialist! Liberal Fascist! Or something. IN ALL CAPS!
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calipygian
Obviously that isn’t soshulism, that is the fusion of government power with corporate power, i.e. national soshulism.
Dork
He’ll call it reverse anti-backwards soshulism.
trollhattan
Not returning Patriots to teh moon a.s.a.p. is de facto socia1ilst, nes pas?
Cilantro!
Bill E Pilgrim
Mars?
Easy.
Red Dawn!!
arguingwithsignposts
Buzz Aldrin on the Chuck Todd suckfest on MSNBC was speaking in favor of the President’s proposal today.
Elisabeth
From the link:
Hmmm, sounds like trying use taxpayer money wisely. WTF’s wrong with this guy? Just spend willy nilly and keep the wars off the books.
The Moar You Know
The serious answer is that it is being spun as “punishing states that didn’t vote for Obama”, since most of the Constellation/Shuttle work has been in, you guessed it, red states.
The stupid will never stop.
LuciaMia
Aren’t there more billionaires who’ll pony up major scratch to go up in the Space shuttle?
Amanda in the South Bay
Since it seems like I’m the only person on the left in this country who supports manned space exploration…
I honestly don’t see the logic in the left supporting turning manned space exploration over to the rest of the world (China, India, Europe and Russia). Considering the big toodo about HCR, it seems ironic that the left is essentially supporting the privatization of space.
The decision to cancel Constellation after all the investment already taken seems about as smart as stopping production on the F-22 and supporting the F-35…which hasn’t turned out to be cost effective at all.
arguingwithsignposts
I’d be willing to send the bankstas up as test crews.
BGinCHI
This is an easy one.
Wait till Glen Beck finds out Obama plans to send Americans to Mars.
arguingwithsignposts
@Amanda in the South Bay:
That’s a mighty fine strawman you’ve built there. Did it take you long?
Amanda in the South Bay
Ah, here it is
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36470363
I’ll raise your Aldrin with an Armstrong, Lovell and Cernan.
Amanda in the South Bay
@arguingwithsignposts:
Seriously, I’ve been around the left wing blogosphere for a while, and I’ve always seen nothing but me-tooing when it comes to these kinds of posts defending Obama’s decision to fuck over American manned space exploration. Seriously, where are the prominent left wing blogs coming out against this? Or are we now at the stage that if the Republicans are for it, we are automatically against it?
Chyron HR
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Yes! That was, in fact, his entire thought process: “What decision will fuck over American manned space exploration?” He couldn’t have possibly had a rational reason for this policy, he was motivated entirely by a desire to fuck over America. Why did he do this? Because he hates America, obviously.
Elisabeth
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I don’t mean to jump into the middle of this but did you read the article? He’s not “abandoning” manned space flight. He’s not sending folks to the moon since we’ve already been there/done that; he’s looking at new places to go.
Punchy
Name one tangible, concrete benefit an Average American has derived from the ISS.
Other than Hubble, name one research-related triumph all those tens of shuttle missions have produced.
Comrade Dread
Simple. Let me put on this wingnut hat my family sent me for Christmas.
____
My friends, when JFK proposed going to the moon he inspired us, showed belief in the greatness of our country, of American ingenuity, and a patriotic fervor not to let our great nation fall behind in science to other countries, but to boldly lead the way forward to the stars.
Today, Barrack Hussein Obama put a bullet into that vision and in doing so set America back in the space race, yielding up the stars to the Russians and Chinese.
Our nation is diminished further under the rule of this usurping Kenyan. We are all lesser for it.
It’s time to take this country back and make it great again. Buy my new book, “Why liberals suck and should be shot into space” for 39.95 hardcover.
____
You see? It’s pretty easy.
trollhattan
Just in time: space lightning.
http://gizmodo.com/5518132/first-space-lightning-captured-on-video
I’m all in for infesting our solar system with robots.
Redshirt
They will be for Government control of all aspects of Space Travel, of course, if for no other reason than to oppose Obama.
Big Government in Space forever!
Amanda in the South Bay
@Chyron HR:
And why the excessive bending over to accommodate and defend every Obama decision?
mr. whipple
Obama is not a socialist, but is obviously a fascist.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Punchy:
Um…what the fuck does the ISS have to do with this?
My beef is with the decision to fuck over the Constellation project and replace it with…medicore shit.
But hey, show your libertarian spirit and support the privatization of space travel!
Ferris Valyln
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I am sorry, but no, you aren’t the only supporter for human spaceflight, and yes, this is a good move
He isn’t turning it over to the rest of the world. He pushing for a new mechanism and mode of operations in doing human spaceflight – cheaper, more effective, and commercial.
The investment from Constellation was a wasted investment, by and large. Constellation was WAY behind schedule, and not going to deliver anything on the appropriate time. Nor was it going to do anything to allow us to actually start developing space, so large amounts of humans could utilize space. It was, at best, another shuttle.
We need a program that encourages the private utilization of space, so we can start space colonization.
tc125231
@Chyron HR: I am not impressed with this decision. It reminds of Haliburton and Blackwater.
The Moar You Know
@Amanda in the South Bay: The F-35 will end up being as big a boondoggle as the F-22, and that’s really saying something.
The F-22, as it turns out, is not exactly “stealthy” and can’t fly in the rain without destroying its radar proof material entirely.
Hell of an investment we get for 200 million per plane, there.
I’m not sure how you can say that it wasn’t “cost effective” to to shut down a production line for a plane we don’t need and doesn’t work.
Neither plane is cost-effective in any sense of the word. We’d be better off buying Typhoons from Europe.
By the way, I support manned spaceflight, and am as leftie as it gets. What I don’t support is spending money stupidly, and Constellation was a stupid, stupid idea, built with the intent of keeping red state high-paying government jobs in place, rather than producing anything of any use. The heavy-lift idea that NASA has been tasked with is the way to go, and I fully support it. No better use of our tax dollars than space exploration.
Ferris Valyln
@Punchy:
The reason why it hasn’t produced anything tangible, yet, is because we haven’t been funding the science budget needed to actually produce tangible results (at least if you want something you can use on earth)
What we do have is good knowledge for doing large scale construction in space, and we are very close to having a tangible new industry – commercial human spaceflight. It be a shame to lose out on a new industry
J.W. Hamner
When conservatives say they want “limited government” they typically exclude NASA and the DoD because of too many Heinlein novels and war gaming sessions as kids.
So I presume they’ll spin it the same as they do national security issues… and whine how this will create a “spaceship gap” with the Chinese and how we’ll be woefully unprepared to repel alien invasion… proving that the President is objectively pro-Centaurian.
Michael D.
@LuciaMia:
I don’t understand this comment. It’s never happened before. Why would they start now?
Ferris Valyln
@tc125231:
Its not. Constellation was much more like Blackwater & Xe, since it had only cost plus contracts, allowing infinite cost-overruns, and a profit.
This only pays for results, at a fixed price. Companies go over budget, they’ll pay the difference, not the government
Sentient Puddle
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Constellation was actually pretty much shit as it was because it was chronically underfunded. Replacing it with mediocre shit would actually be a bit of an improvement.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
DO. NOT. FEED. THE. TROLL.
Ash Can
Jonah et al. will say that, of all the non-military government programs, this is the one program that shouldn’t be privatized, because shut up, that’s why.
Of course, if the program were maintained as is or expanded, it’d be a profligate waste of taxpayer dollars.
Amanda in the South Bay
@J.W. Hamner:
And liberals have a reflexive knee jerk reaction to government funded manned space exploration because they always associate that with the military.
Welcome to the libertarian future of space exploration!
Amanda in the South Bay
Oh wow, everyone goes all OBot when I come out against one freaking decision by Obama.
Seriously, isn’t there room for any disagreement here? I’m glad to know my DFH queer socialist ass is now a closet conservative ass.
arguingwithsignposts
@Amanda in the South Bay:
If by “fuck over” you mean cancel a stupid second trip to the moon while there’s a helluva lot of space to explore, then yeah.
But your original statement: “The only leftie who believes in manned space flight” is bullshit.
ETA: Answer me why we don’t have a replacement for the Space Shuttle yet? Obama didn’t have anything to do with that. If we were serious about manned space flight, we wouldn’t be sending up jalopies based on a 30-year-old design to restock the space station.
Michael D.
@Punchy:
How to live in space for long periods of time. Ergonomics. Mapping.
Space shuttle benefits:
1. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission set out to generate the most accurate topographical map of the Earth.
2. Two girls who can not tolerate exposure to either the sun’s strong ultraviolet light or even bright indoor lighting, each received a special UV protection suit that was developed from space-based technology.
3. BSR created blanket insulation kits based on NASA Space Shuttle Thermal Protection System materials and had the first products bear a seal from the U.S. Space Foundation indicating their space origin.
4. Based on award-winning NASA telerobotics software, VEVI4 is a powerful tool used to represent complex devices graphically in a 3-D environment.
5. Building the Boeing 777 brought about the use of NASA innovations, from lightweight composite materials to the modern glass cockpit and aircraft control systems.
That was a quick Google search.
But most of this is probably irrelevant if you think only in the short-term.
Calouste
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Does it ever occur to you when you are the only one among many defending a particular stance, there is a tiny possibility that you might actually be wrong?
Manned space flight is horrendouly expensive and for scientific purposes, unmanned get a lot more bang for the buck. And it’s not like other countries have really big plans. India might have one astronaut in space by 2015, Europe is looking at 2020 and anything beyond space station range is even farther out than that.
DBrown
@Amanda in the South Bay: Yet spending between 1 and 2 billion dollars per launch of a shuttle makes sense? That’s right, having seven people in space doing nothing of any real value for a few billion dollars is logical – not. The space station is worse.
Last I checked, NASA was being run by people who’s only concern is getting people up into space to jerk off and little else. The Hubble repairs nearly cost more per each mission than a new Hubble!
It IS possible to put people into space cheaper than the current shuttle (using full shuttle sized vehicles) but it requires a new mind set – mag rail has been modeled and looks very doable (and the hydrogen engine is worse than useless – kerosene was shown to give better results yet NASA ignored it to keep doing what it is best at – wasting money!) and might lower costs. Still, without a breakthrough in reentry, that will be dangerous for any shuttle sized space vehicle.
As for the Russians and China, last I checked, they used very small boosters (like Gemini size) and just kept the same basic model and mass produce it to SAVE MONEY (NASA please read and note.) This, is of course, not in NASA’s mind set or future as long as astro-nuts have a say (trained monkey’s with thermocouples up their ass’s.)
arguingwithsignposts
@Michael D.:
I should note that Google was not a government-funded program. Maybe we should put them in charge of manned space flight.
PTirebiter
@Amanda in the South Bay: to cancel Constellation after all the investment already taken seems about as smart as stopping production on the F-22 and supporting the F-35…which hasn’t turned out to be cost effective at all
This is what’s known as not throwing good money after bad, or cutting your losses. The fact that the F-35 is problematic doesn’t the somehow make the F-22 cost effective. Two losers doesn’t make a winner.
We’ve been to the moon and Neil Armstrong was prescient enough to leave his balls behind for the Chinese to contemplate, if and when they ever get there.
JD Rhoades
@Comrade Dread:
And he did it because he wants to give more money to the undeserving, don’t forget that. Becuase he wants ultimate power and other bad stuff.
srv
As predicted. Threaten to kill it all, and then hagle on Orion. Ares was the STUPIDEST IDEA EVER, let’s put the ‘nauts on the end of a giant SRB and keep the whole STS welfare complex on salary.
Bobby Thomson
I can’t believe someone actually compared private health insurance with private funding of space exploration.
Health care is something that all Americans are going to need, rich or poor, and is a basic human right. Private health insurance is fundamentally unnecessary and simply creates deadweight losses to society.
Space exploration is not something that all Americans are going to need. Of all the places where the “invisible hand” argument makes the most sense, it’s with respect to risky, speculative investments such as this. They may pay off. Then again, they may not.
If you want the government to fund scientific research, there are plenty of projects offering more direct and immediate benefits.
Clutch414
I was about to write a explanation on how this idea that Obama is”fucking over manned space flight” and how we are “replacing the Constellation program with mediocre shit” are pants-on-head-retarded, but I’ll just let Phil Plait explain.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Calouste:
Or…maybe you all are suffering from groupthink?
I mean, I’m a long time lurker here who usually agrees with the status quo (like getting fed up with the Hamsher-esque antics of the Firebagger crowd and whatnot) and I think I have pretty good left wing (if not outright socialist) credentials. So, there’s no room at all for contrary thought?
Bobby Thomson
Not this one. I oppose wasting additional public funds on manned space missions because it is a waste of money.
Clutch414
The especially relevant parts for those who think the Constellation program was AWESOME!! From my above link:
David
The Wingnut spin will be that Obama doesn’t know the right things from the wrong things to spend money on and only certain people can tell the difference.
arguingwithsignposts
What the fuck!
Dungheap
Mars, bitches!
J.W. Hamner
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I equate them only in the sense that we spend more than an order of magnitude greater than China on space stuff and yet… anything that isn’t a massive giveaway to defense/aerospace companies is considered a crippling blow to our chances to combat the Chinese Menace.
Josh
I agree with Obama’s proposals, and I’m about as geeky as one liberal can get about space exploration.
NASA needs to innovate, not sit around and shove its thumb up its ass doing routine shit that any private company could do.
Really, the best thing that we can do is give NASA a nice kick in the ass and tell them to do something neat. One of the things Obama canceled was a NASA idea to install a permanent moonbase. While that might have been awesome shit four decades ago, it’s a bit of a joke now.
Especially when Mars is within reach and–who knows?
I like the idea of spreading space exploration around to spread the costs, and make it more efficient.
WereBear
@Clutch414: Thanks for that link: a succinct summing up, indeed.
I think we have to go into space; as a species, we expand to fill any space we know about, and there has to be a safety valve or worse things (than have already happened) will happen.
Did some miss the part where President Obama proposed to increase NASA’s budget?
Clutch414
@WereBear: You’re welcome. Phil Plait is awesome.
And I apologize for the ridiculous parade of blockquotes. It was supposed to be one contiguous quote but it got fucked up somehow.
Anya
@tc125231: I was thinking the same thing. But since I am ignorant about this area, I will let those who have knowledge debate it.
El Cid
Production was not stopped on the F-22. Production is continuing to the number of F-22’s on the original order.
What was stopped was a push to make the military buy more F-22’s than it, the military, wanted.
Clutch414
@Anya:
Here’s how it is not at all like Blackwater. From the link I posted in post #45:
colby
@Amanda in the South Bay:
“So, there’s no room at all for contrary thought? ”
Sure there is, so start allowing it. Y’know, instead of accusing people of “groupthink” and “excessive bending over to accommodate and defend every Obama decision” and claiming to be the only leftie to support manned spaceflight.
Dee Loralei
@Amanda in the South Bay: Amanda, I’m as geeky nerdy as the next girl and I love manned space exploration and have been in love with it since I was a little girl. Clutch up @42 had a good link as to why what Obama did is not a bad thing. And Olberman had Dereck Pitts of the Franklin Institute on last night and he explained that American manned missions were not being cancelled at all. They were being re-planned and NASA was going to be re-invigorated by going to a possible asteroid and then on to Mars. And Constellation was being re-purposed to acheive these new goals.
The idea is to let other countries and private enterprise do the low-earth orbit stuff, yes including going back to the moon. But that Obama’s plan would still keep us at the front of science and technology in space exploration. It really got me super excited once again about NASA.
Now I just have to figure out what I need to do and overcome to be the oldest woman in space. Any ideas?
kdaug
@Michael D.:
That’s because NASA does not allow private citizens on the space shuttle. Full stop.
My friend and ex-boss, Richard Garriott, went to the ISS on the Soyuz because that was the only way he could get there. Spent 6 days in low-earth, paid $30 mil for the privilege – TO THE RUSSIANS.
No civilian is allowed on the space shuttle. Over.
trollhattan
I’m not going to battle over whether we should have manned space travel, but if we’re to do so we need to adequately fund it, and that means more than 0.52% of the federal budget. Increase it a factor of ten and you’ll be back to where it was in the mid ’60s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
Comrade Tank Hueco
This won’t result in NASCAR-style logos on the moon, will it?
Martin
Honestly, NASA needs a long-term production mindset for space exploration. All of these relatively one-off initiatives are just insane. If we want to out there, and do it regularly, start building the infrastructure to do it. It may not be all sexy but done properly it will become increasingly cost effective to do the next piece.
I’m not convinced the attitude is there yet, and I think we should scale back space efforts until NASA and Congress and whatever other parties involved can get their head in this properly.
EJ
Yes, astronauts do tend to have a very high opinion of themselves and their accomplishments. However, there’s no reason right now to send people into space other than to prove we can. And we already did that 40 years ago.
Yep, that is really how they think of themselves. Maybe I’m biased, but my earliest memory of the space program was the Voyager I flyby of Jupiter. I seem to remember that being a pretty big media event. Then look at the public attention to Hubble and the Mars Rovers. Meanwhile a large number of people don’t even know the ISS exists, that’s how inspired they are by manned space exploration.
The unmanned probes continue to just get better, and can explore where humans could never survive. Nobody runs around lamenting that we abandoned manned exploration of the deep ocean after Walsh and Piccard’s 1960 dive – we’ve got remote probes that can do it much better and cheaper.
(forget the “mining on the moon” stuff – in the unlikely event there’s anything there that would be worth the expense of getting it back to earth, we’ll do it with robots, even if we have humans on the moon)
Now, I assume that humans will eventually travel to other planets, once propulsion technology evolves to the point where it makes economic sense. But this idea that we have to have exponentially more complicated and expensive manned missions in order to top ourselves and “inspire the world” or something is self-serving nonsense.
LD50
No mention of Ayers?
How soon we forget.
LD50
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Well, there IS the fact that we’re a trillion dollars in debt and that our schools suck. But I admit, colonies on the Moon are way sexy.
LD50
@Punchy:
Tang and Space Food Sticks.
Elie
Y’all are tearing me up!! LOL…LD50 — you finish up the string racously! Mee Likee!
Serious topic with serious choices and decisions – no doubt – but I enjoy, as usual, the wit of B-J folks and it puts a smile on my face…
Me? I agree that space exploration is important but also that we have many competing priorities and need to factor in how to wisely use our resources to accomplish same. I defer to other B-Jers to speak more coherently about which program and why, but I generally agree that we need something else..
Amanda: we don’t hate your thoughts or ideas. Just the assumption that somehow we don’t “get” the importance of the issue and that we just lock step and bend over… how insulting to us! If you had truly hung around here for a while, you would know that we don’t do that kind of tribal thing… don’t look at our agreement on some issues as some pre-programmed stance.
Frankly, don know about anyone else, but I had a bitchin week and I am going to have a tall glass of wine and contemplate the universe from the barcalounger…
Linda Featheringill
I am a little surprised at the emotional response to any questions about HUMANS IN SPACE.
I wonder if that is true just of this group [probably not], of North American types in general [maybe], or of humans in general [very possible]. Perhaps we are hardwired to explore and expand.
My theory is that Earthlings are alone in the universe and therefore it is our privilege, our duty, nay our DESTINY to populate the universe. But I must admit that I have no real data to back up that position.
It would be nice to see some of us living somewhere else. I would like very much to see that while I am still able to understand what is going on. Maybe I will survive that long and maybe I won’t.
But I can dream about it.
Morat20
Some notes: NASA’s yearly budget was basically spent each month we were in Iraq.
It’s peanuts. It’s peanuts compared to what it was in the 60s.
People complain about NASA’s vision, and while there are problems, the biggest ones are VERY simple: NASA’s goals are changed every three to four years, at the whim of Congress or the President, and they’re routinely starved of funds — and forced to play “shovel the money around” to try to fund whatever mandate just got shoved down the pike by a bored Congressman or a President deciding to go to Mars to take people’s minds off his losing war.
Take ISS, for instance. It was redesigned several times over, as Congress or the President changed it’s design goals. Anyone who has ever worked in complex design can tell you that if you want to triple a budget, make even a single major change halfway through a design process.
As for private industry taking over: They’re not even remotely CLOSE. Private industry has, barely, managed to replicate the first Mercury flights. Throw all the money at them you want, they won’t be shoving people into space anytime in the next few decades — their ability to get into space is basically publicity stunts, and they lack any capability to get to LEO. Much less regularly and safely.
I’m not a fan of Constellation, had serious critiques of the Shuttle Program (it was too ambitious for the tech. Hell, it’s still too ambitious now), and at least Constellation was smart enough to try to use off-the-shelf hardware and return to a simple transport modes (rockets and heat shields).
What Obama’s initiative will do is waste about 5 billion a year for the next three or four years, until it’s obvious Space X and their brethen’s promises were hot air. Then they’ll greenlight NASA to start the whole process over. Obama’s buying a 30 billion dollar, 5 year delay to returning to manned flight.
I’d LOVE to believe Space X was capable of it. They’re not, and they won’t be.
Alien-Radio
As a major lefty space nut and someone who was initially dissapointed with his cancelling constellation, this sounds awesome, SpaceX’s Falcon9 vehicle seems to be capable of delivering to orbit, and given how far they’ve come in 7 years the Constellation seemed like a boondoggle giveaway for last century’s tech. I like the plan, especially if it’s VASIMIR oriented, which is where the really interesting part is.
Michael D.
@kdaug:
Really?? Wow! I didn’t know that! Did you even read the comment I was responding to?
Nor should they be.
By the way, $30 million is NOTHING compared to what it costs to launch a shuttle. But it was great that you got a chance to name-drop! Congratulations!
Maybe you could tell your very dear friend, Richard Garriott, that $30 million would have went a long way to feeding one hell of a lot of people instead of indulging himself. Hope he had a good few days!
Susan Kitchens
@Michael D.:
Yippee! Glad to see another SRTM fan!!
My beau worked on that mission at JPL, mosaicing all the strips of orbit-maps into a whole continent-sized set of maps. They just had some 10-year anniversary lunch-style lovefest at the lab to celebrate the 10 years since SRTM flew in Feb 2000. The map datasets have a phenomenal download rate; something like the most downloaded dataset evar.
That dataset is used in Google Earth, Google maps (click Terrain). Also had a fun conversation when my USAF cargo-jet flying bro talked with SRTM beau and compared notes on the new navigation systems installed in USAF jets.
“You did that? Cool! It was much easier to land in Kandahar once we got those things.”
“The DOD put that in your planes? Cool! Glad to see it put to use. Oh, and yeah, those afghanistan mountains are gnarly.”
. . . .
I’m kinda disappointed by the continuation of the space station, b/c it’s multi-national space-faring feel-goodism sometimes disguised as “science” (as in, not any, really). Not thrilled that Obama wants to continue that. Here endeth my OBot-ness, for this particular moment.
The other science from shuttle missions, was, alas, aboard the ill-fated Columbia mission that failed on re-entry in Feb 2003. RIP, dear crew.
VincentN
@Amanda in the South Bay:
You can post all the contrary thoughts you want. I haven’t seen anyone trying to censor you or shout you down. Maybe you don’t get the nature of the internet. You post your opinions and then we post ours and *horror of horrors* sometimes those opinions are different!
And if you’ve read any of the previous manned space exploration threads you’ll see that many of the commenters have opposed manned space exploration or had reservations about it long before Obama ever said squat about it. You don’t seem to get that one can have nothing to do with the other.
And for the record I’m a liberal who supports manned space exploration. I can also somehow comprehend that one’s opinions about space travel can be separate from one’s opinions about political figures. But go ahead and play the suffering martyr if you want.
Yutsano
Gene Roddenberry and Carl Sagan would both like to have a word with you from their respective graves.
Wile E. Quixote
@Amanda in the South Bay
My beef is with the decision to fuck over the Constellation project and replace it with…medicore shit.
No, your beef is that you’re ignorant and stupid and think that Constellation wasn’t more mediocre shit and who also thinks that after 35 years of mediocre shit in the manned space program that the solution is to give NASA more money. Fuck NASA, NASA is the agency that killed two Apollo missions, missions that already had hardware built, so they could piss money away on the rathole that is the Space Shuttle. NASA is the agency that let a perfectly functional space station fall out of the sky back in 1979. NASA is the agency that could have launched another Pioneer probe to Jupiter in 1974, had the hardware ready to go, but chose not to. NASA could have launched another Skylab back in the 1970s, had the hardware ready to go, but chose not to so they could piss money away on the fucking Space Shuttle. NASA is the agency that killed seven astronauts in 1986 and another seven in 2003 by failing to exercise due diligence and encouraging a launch at any cost culture for the disastrous Space Shuttle program. NASA is the agency that could have built the ISS for much less money by building it on the ground and using a heavy lift vehicle derived from the Shuttle to launch it into orbit. But they chose not to because the important thing to NASA wasn’t building a space station or doing science, it was keeping the Shuttle program, which is nothing more than a welfare program for aerospace contractors, going.
The NASA manned space program has been a joke and a travesty since the 1970s. What the fuck has it accomplished? Well, we’ve explored the fuck out of low earth orbit. Boy, that is some thoroughly explored empty space there, and we’ve had some entertaining explosions. That’s it. The idea that the Constellation program was going to be anything more than another NASA money pit that would have kept lots of money flowing to defense contractors is completely and totally fucking stupid.
Mediocre shit? The entire NASA manned program is mediocre shit run by a bunch of mediocre shits. Giving NASA more money for a manned program wouldn’t give us anything of value, it would just give us more mediocre shit.
Wile E. Quixote
@Michael D.:
Big fucking deal. Ooooh, look, the incredibly fucking stupid Shuttle program wasn’t a complete and total waste of money, it was just a 99 percent waste of money. If you weren’t completely stupid Michael you might ask the question as to whether or not the benefits you cite might have been accomplished by other research programs. Let’s look at the list you compiled
Big fucking deal. You don’t need a bunch of astronauts in orbit to do radar topography mapping. You can do that sort of thing with satellites, and it costs less money and the satellites stay up longer.
Let’s assume that the scientific research that allowed the development of these super duper UV resistant suits was accomplished on one Shuttle mission. OK, a Shuttle mission costs $600 million, so each of these suits cost $300 million each. I’d be willing to bet that someone could have come up with equivalent technology for much less money, but if you don’t believe me, well I’ve got this really cool suit I can sell you that protects you from UV, IR, RF and intermediate vector bosons. It usually costs 300 million but I’ll let you have it for a cool 100 million.
How much research into developing better insulation would the 600 million dollar cost of a Shuttle launch buy?
And maybe if NASA hadn’t been pissing money away on the Shuttle they could have launched more sophisticated unmanned probes, including ones that had telerobotic capabilities. Who knows? How much telerobotics research could have been funded for the 600 million dollar cost of one Shuttle flight? Answer, quite a bit.
Bullshit. Lightweight composites had been in use on hundreds of other aviation projects before the 777 was designed, not just the Shuttle. Oh, and as far as the modern glass cockpit and control systems. That’s total fucking bullshit. The shuttle cockpits weren’t retrofitted until the late 1990s, years after the 777 and other aircraft using modern cockpit technology took to the skies.
kdaug
@Michael D.:
Uh, yeah. That’s the point. He went up for $30M on the Soyuz.
Space shuttle costs a shit more to launch.
Private companies (Virgin, SpaceX, etc.) are going up now. Give em a couple years and they’ll be in LEO. Then it’ll be even cheaper.
NASA needs to be the cutting-edge DARPA of space. Bring us magnetic shielding and ion drives. That’s government’s job.
Then turn the shit over to us so we can start making a profit.
Brett
No, it was stopped because Bob Gates hates the plane and loves the F-35, and he was putting tons of pressure on the Air Force (which wanted the plane) to go along with it.
How exactly do you propose that human beings develop better propulsion technology without actually putting money into making the types of vehicles that can do this? It’s not something you just pull out of your ass via techno-magic.
That’s what so idiotic about Obama’s decision. He’s more or less nuking the US’s only plans for a heavy lifter that can get beyond LEO, in favor of .. . a vague plan to develop a new one in the future, preferably after he’s been elected to a second term.
Exactly. Every single President comes in and takes shots at the pre-existing programs so he can then claim that he started some great new initiative that will create Good, High-Paying Jobs of the Future for Americans.
In case you forgot, that was the same period when their budget was getting hacked to pieces, and they were being forced to justify pretty much all their spending from being gutted (another one of Nixon’s fuck-you gifts before he was forced to resign). What the fuck did you expect them to do in such a situation?
I agree, it was stupid of them to put all their eggs in the Shuttle basket (they should have kept it as the “space truck” idea and then spent the money on keeping their heavy lifters alive), but consider the situation they were in. And after that, there were all kinds of interests promoting the prolongation of the Shuttle program, many of whom were congressmen who sat on the committees that determined NASA’s funding.
So we’ve been hearing for years now. I don’t exactly have a lot of faith in SpaceX, seeing as how they keep trying to re-invent the bloody wheel on getting into LEO and it keeps back-firing on them.
kdaug
@Brett:
I’ll give you SpaceX. But Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip2 had it’s inaugural last month. Not quite LEO, and definitely not a docking module, but a solid step on the way.
Susan Kitchens
@Wile E. Quixote:
Aforementioned beau (see my comment #74) — who worked on SRTM for JPL, so knows whereof he speaks — has this to say:
“Absolutely true. He’s right about the costs — it would cost less money to fly a free-flyer if we were building it from scratch.
“But we already had SIR-C (Shuttle Imaging Radar-C); it was built for the shuttle bay, operated, flown– everything — before SRTM; all we had to build was the boom and the 2nd antenna. We previously tried to sell a topographic mission — both with a single satellite and dual satellites, and it was too expensive. No one would fund it.
“But the DOD had a mapping requirement that they weren’t going to meet in time, and we had this hardware already. So DOD agreed to fund the additional hardware and software development that was needed, and we were off.
“NASA’s manned space program was the launch system, the instrument platform, and they changed tapes as the data were rolling in over the 11 days of flight.”
There you have it, Wile E, Michael D, et. al. The realities of actually funding space missions.
(Free-flying missions only cost hundreds of millions vs a billion/launch for a shuttle flight.) The SRTM mission itself (hardware, mission ops, data analysis) — not counting the shuttle — cost roughly 120 million. When there’s a shuttle manifest and they’re saying “What should we put in the shuttle bay” and we answer, “We’ve got hardware that works; it’s flight qualified, so fly it!” then they say Yes.
Tho that boom — 60 meters out of the shuttle bay — was harder to get shuttle peeps to sign off. At the time it was the lenthiest structure flown in space. (been superceded by subsequent ISS construction)