56 replies to this topic

[Othran]

Just to offer the perspective of someone who worked at NASA for a bit.

1) Privatization is a great idea for simple/routine stuff. I love Space X, and they're perfect for doing things like fueling the ISS and taking people into orbit, but they're a space transport company, not a space exploration company. Doing something truly revolutionary does take a concerted public effort. If we want to go to Mars in a reasonable time frame then it has to be in some way have major government backing. Similarly a great deal of scientific research is funded by NASA, which again would not be done by a private company. Ultimately some aspect of NASA can be privatized, others can't, it's not a silver bullet.

2) NASA is too politically controlled. Too many programs are dictated by congresspeople who frankly don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Personally I think NASA would be far more effectively, even with they money they have now, if they had full reign over their budget and could actually invest in what should be invested in. A lot of money has been wasted of "cool sounding" programs of limited scientific value that were pushed by well-connected individuals. The reason the Space Race era worked is that the politicians set the finish line, not the route there. Nowadays there's no finish line marked, and politicians force NASA to go in 10 directions at once.

3) What NASA needs more than funding is a vision. As it is now NASA's mostly a grab bag of a bunch of different competing programs and efforts. What we need to collectively decide on is what NASA is supposed to do. Should they focus on scientific-research? Space exploration? Space tourism? Whatever it is we need to pick something, and then our goals should clearly dictate the budget necessary. If we just want to stay in Earth orbit and fuck about in the ISS then a small budget and heavy privatization is fine. If we want to go to Mars then NASA needs a significantly larger budget.

What does the NASA budget for 2013 say to you Bamar?

I'm interested to know as $13bn says to me "we can't terminate NASA (we'd like to); if we trash them too much then JWST is it and we look like luddites". SLS won't ever happen and MPVC will end up a capable vehicle with no launcher or purpose. That's NASAs current future from my perspective. Edit - I have an interest from the ESA side of things, although I haven't worked for ESA companies for a while.

tl;dr if its not military (and has an application within 10 years) then we don't want to know seems to be US govt policy.

[Old Toterra]

Bringing it back to space... did anyone check out the solar transit of Venus on Tuesday. Weather was beautiful for me and I had my son's cub group out in a field with my telescope for it. It was, when you understand what you are seeing, quite a fascinating event.

[Bamar]

Othran, I think it shows just how much NASA is suffering from a lack of vision. Ultimately I'd argue that NASA should be 3 distinct programs that work with each other to varying degrees. 1) Exploration - To boldly go where no one has gone before. 2) Scientific - A great amount of scientific progress today comes from looking around the Universe, either through space telescopes, satellite measurements, Mars exploration, whatever. 3) Practical - Making Earth orbit no big deal. It's been a while since NASA really did #1, it's always thrown out for easy PR points but tends to just lead to wasted money. We either need to do it or not, but if we want to do it we have to understand that it's going to cost significant money/resources. #3 is what the shuttle was supposed to be, but didn't fully live up to (it got the routine part down, but was always too costly). Most likely Space X and similar efforts will take over this mission. #2 is what NASA has mostly been doing in recent years, to varying degrees of success. In order to really do #2 well though Congress needs to be removed entirely from the funding/allocation process though. NASA's been trying to do all three and as a result hasn't been doing any of them particularly well. Refocusing efforts on purely scientific endeavors would help NASA a great deal, even with the current budget. On the other hand a truly ambitious exploration goal with the resources to back it up could be a great move as well.

[Old Toterra]

1. Exploration: I think this is where all of NASAs recent successes have come from. But I am counting the probes, telescopes and Martian Rovers here. The rovers in particular are smashing successes. 2. Scientific: Here NASA has a big problem... what to do. Mostly NASA science is either studying earth from space or studying the effect of weightlessness on astronauts. Unfortunately there are only so many things on Earth that can be better studied by leaving Earth, and only so much value studying biology in an environment impossible to achieve on Earth. 3. Practical: Space Shuttle turned out to be an expensive bust for getting humans to space. Nuff said. Launching satellites to orbit however is a routine activity.

[Nero Prime]

Bringing it back to space... did anyone check out the solar transit of Venus on Tuesday. Weather was beautiful for me and I had my son's cub group out in a field with my telescope for it. It was, when you understand what you are seeing, quite a fascinating event.

Had the telescope out in hopes that the clouds would break. Got rained on instead. So watched it live on Google Hangouts.

[Granger]

♥ NASA

[Bamar]

Personally I consider telescopes/probes/rovers to fall under scientific since they tend to be built around answering scientific questions. Exploration is more the landing a man on the moon because why the fuck not. Exploration is sending people to new places for its own sake rather than sending a robot to look for particular things to expand human knowledge.

[AkJon Ferguson]

The US is the richest, most prosperous, country on Earth. It has been for a century, and will almost certainly be for another century.

Quoted for posterity and bolded the funny bit.

[Old Toterra]

The US is the richest, most prosperous, country on Earth. It has been for a century, and will almost certainly be for another century.

Quoted for posterity and bolded the funny bit.

I understand that it is all the rage these days to beat up on the US, especially from Americans oddly enough. But there really is nothing else even close to it right now. A unified Europe could be close, but it is nowhere near unified. The BRIC countries are growing for sure, but they have a very long way to go and have some serious political problems to resolve first. (like a totalitarian communist dictatorship overseeing a capitalist economy in China for one) The mid-east has some rich areas, but it is entirely dependent on a single resource (oil) and has a deteriorating political climate. Canada is doing well these days, but that is mostly housing boom and oil revenue, which the government is failing to acknowledge let alone manage properly, plus at 10% of the US population we will never be the leader of the world.

What country do you see leading the world 50 to 100 years from now? Iceland?

The space program is the clearest example of what is happening. Yes the US's shuttle fleet is grounded, but there was no other country in the world that succeeded in building anything like it (Russia spent 10 years and most of their space program's money trying and had one suborbital unmanned flight). Now that it is grounded there is already a completely new vehicle that is undergoing testing and will be operational in a couple of years. Russia is still flying a derivative of a 50 year old design, as was china's capsule. Meanwhile US interplanetary probes, astronomical and yes, military satellites are way beyond anything anyone else has.

[AkJon Ferguson]

What country do you see leading the world 50 to 100 years from now? Iceland?

China. And more like 25, give or take. I'd bet on sooner.

Anyway, shouldn't have derailed the thread. Sorry.

On topic I'm with the fiscal hawks on this one.

[Bamar]

While China's certainly growing significantly it's important to keep in mind relative values here. In 2010 China's GDP was on the order of $5.7 trillion with $1.3 billion people or about $4,400 per capita, compared to the US's $14.5 trillion spread over 310 million people or $46,800 per capita. China has to grow its GDP by an order of magnitude to match the US in terms of GDP per capita. As China continues to grow it's going to start running into problems that counteract the strengths its been benefiting from thus far. Economic growth leads to higher wages, which leads to higher costs, which eliminates cost advantages over the West. Richer people tend to respond badly to abusive governments. Richer countries tend to grow slower, etc etc. If China continues pursuing growth at all costs it's quite likely they'll drive themselves into a major economic bubble which won't look pretty when it pops. China has a ton of potential it's not a foregone conclusion that they're going to dominate the world.

[Othran]

#3 is what the shuttle was supposed to be, but didn't fully live up to (it got the routine part down, but was always too costly).

Somewhat ironically the reasons the shuttle was a disaster in cost terms are almost all down to the military. It was the military who insisted on the heavy lift capability; likewise they wanted the cross-range capability to return from pretty much any orbit and of course they were the ones insisting that they'd be running launches from Vanderburg AFB, hence reducing launch costs.

Vandenburg launches never happened; the cross-range capability was never really used & complicated the design enormously; and of course the military ended up using Atlas V/Delta IV launchers for their heavy lift as it was much cheaper (and faster but thats a different story).

NASA got stuck with the shuttle as their sole manned vehicle for three decades and it gobbled most of the budget for that time. In the years following shuttle explosions the shuttle program pretty much ate ALL of the NASA budget.

Had NASA been in a position to tell the military to fuck off during the design stages we might be living in a world where LEO manned flight is a daily occurence. Hindsight 4tw mmm?

[Othran]

If China continues pursuing growth at all costs it's quite likely they'll drive themselves into a major economic bubble which won't look pretty when it pops.

They have an enormous property bubble now. One which makes recent property bubbles in the USA and Europe look like minor irritations.

However they have the currency reserves to ameliorate this without inflation/devaluation, unlike the USA/Europe.

Their real problem is the continuing influx of population to cities due to the disparity in income between urban and rural China. Any slowdown in growth has very adverse effects on the newly "urbanised" Chinese, any sign of recession and they'll have serious public order problems (they have the start of these in some cities now).

[Naritan]

The US government has proven time and again, through multiple presidencies and parties, that it will almost never spend tax dollars on what the dollars are supposed to be being spent on. Tax another half cent and NASA may get a small % of that tax money. Then again it may not.

[Ked Yatzs]

The US is the richest, most prosperous, country on Earth. It has been for a century, and will almost certainly be for another century. The US can afford a hundred NASAs if it wanted to. The only thing it can't afford is a continued lack of vision from it's politicians.

Of course I am Canadian, so what do I care.

Myopia, yay... Wait, didn't someone say that NASA gave us laser eye surgery? So we just need to send our politicians to the ophthamologist, right?

[cr8r]

Myopia, yay... Wait, didn't someone say that NASA gave us laser eye surgery? So we just need to send our politicians to the ophthamologist, right?

I would venture to say a proctologist may be better suited to removing their craniums from their rectal orifi

[PeterPeckerhead]

I watched the moon landings live when I was a child and now getting close to 50 years later I hate to say this but i'm pretty sure that NASA is going to dissapear fast. NASA's days are numbered. They need to vanish because modern technology is quickly proving that the moon landings were faked. Once the last of the Apollo mission guys has passed away the truth will come out and i'm pretty sure NASA will be gone by then too. I don't want to believe it but it's really hard not to, I mean come on now, those guys were driving a dune buggy on the moon over 30 years ago when most people didn't even have a color TV or an air conditioned car. A video screen was as heavy as a boat anchor. DVD players, VCRs and microwave ovens didn't even exist. We were listening to music by dragging a needle over etched vinyl records. You've got 10 times more computing power in your smart phone than those rockets ever had. They eventually made it into low earth orbit but I really doubt they ever went to the moon. Think about it, from the first manned space flight in 1961 to moon waking in 1969 and now another 40+ years later with huge advances in technology and production our experts are saying they would need another 10 - 20 years to get a man on the moon. Modern astronauts need special tools and months of training just to put a bolt in the space station. The apollo guys were walking around the moon changing film in their cameras with pressurized space gloves from the 1960s, right, sure they were. Gus Grissom was a stand up guy that knew the Apollo rocket was never going to make it to the moon. He probably would have told us the truth but he got torched on the launch pad. The first Apollo mission was a major failure, that's when they brought in the Hollywood film experts.

[Silas]

NASA's days are numbered. They need to vanish because modern technology is quickly proving that the moon landings were faked.

Great first post, man... LOL

Go troll some other forum please.

[PeterPeckerhead]

Listen I'm no conspiracy theorist i'm just looking at the technology that was around when I was a child in the 1960s and at the technology we have now and i'm saying "WTF it doesn't make sense". Go look under the hood of any automobile made in 1969 and tell me how we were flying men to the moon then. We went from walking on the ground not being able to fly at all in 1903 to combat fighter jets in 1943. 1943 was also when the first V2 rockets were being tested. The first time we launched anything into space was 1957 and the Russians did that. So 1969 we are walking on the moon and 1971 we're driving a dune buggy. Nowadays 40 years later NASA is trying to figure out how to keep a human alive past low earth orbit because of the intense space radiation beyond the protection of earths gravity field. It seems like the more our technology advances the more obsticles we find that prevent a moon walk from being possible. It's been over 40 years since the moon walk? Is it possible we did go to the moon but only because we were too naive to know that we couldn't? <---Think on that a while

[Kerzack]

The USA went to the moon because they had explorers. Radiation and technology be damned! They went because they wanted to. Explorers are a rare breed now... everyone is worried about the specialists' reports and other bureaucratic bull-shit. Once everyone learns that people control their own destiny and not some statistic pushing company we'll have explorers again. Yes some will die, they did back then, they did way back then and they died all the same in antiquity. They will also die in the future... that is what they do. SOME However will survive - thru tech or willpower and they will be the next people that earn a place in the history books. Rifleman #1 take a bound~! (you might not be trolling but you certainly have your head stuck somewhere)

[Challenger70]

Leave it to the internet! They have the solution!

[Homer1]

Very cool vid from the space station.

[Sancho]

I watched the moon landings live when I was a child and now getting close to 50 years later I hate to say this but i'm pretty sure that NASA is going to dissapear fast.

NASA's days are numbered. They need to vanish because modern technology is quickly proving that the moon landings were faked.

Once the last of the Apollo mission guys has passed away the truth will come out and i'm pretty sure NASA will be gone by then too.

How the fuck did I miss this gem...

[Karasuma Akane]

I saw this a few days ago:

If you watch NASA backwards, it is about a space agency that has no spaceflight capability, then achieves low earth orbit, then finally lands on the moon.

It's sad because it's true.

[roigon]

I saw this a few days ago:

If you watch NASA backwards, it is about a space agency that has no spaceflight capability, then achieves low earth orbit, then finally lands on the moon, soon after they started sending pets into low-orbit. Nobody knows why they actually did that.

It's sad because it's true.

FTFY