NASA Discussion

[LINKed up]

We're going BACK UP!!! NASA has announced a new Moon program. They're not doing any new things with the new spacecraft. No innovation, only things that have proven themselves and have a good track record. I got this info from my brother's PopSci magazine. Also, with the new rocket, no crew member will have to be left above the Moon, because new technology has allowed us to make an autonomous orbiter. The new program will cost less than half than that of the Apollo missions. What are your thoughts on this? When I read this, I thought "FINALLY!!!".

[Sree]

Finally. That disaster with the space craft was horrible, I could do nothing but stare at my TV as it happened. Even then, I knew that it would screw the space program.

But I've given up hope of anything truly spectacular happening in terms of space travel and such in our lifetime.

[ip82]

I like SF and all, but as for going back to the Moon, I have to ask... what's the point?

I mean, will they be doing there something useful or just take a few more rocks, stab a flag and pack up?

Meh, it's US money really, but I really don't see the point of going back there without 1) testing some new technology and/or 2) doing some serious work, like setting up a telescope or a permanent base.

[LINKed up]

Well, ip82, what the astronaughts will be doing on the Moon is currently under disscusion, as the projected luanch year is 2012. Right now, there is so much that we haven't explored on the Moon. One thing that is probably going to happen is the Astros searching for frozen water at the south pole of the Moon.

[Cervus]

I suppose it's a good thing as long as their planning on doing something useful up there.

[ip82]

What I heard somewhere is that they will leave a fueling station there or something like that, that would later be used for the trip to Mars.

But that's probably just SF speaking...

[LINKed up]

Well, setting up a base for training peoples to go to mars, maybe. I can picture the teritorial conflicts now for who gets what part of the moon.

[ip82]

Well, setting up a base for training peoples to go to mars, maybe. I can picture the teritorial conflicts now for who gets what part of the moon.

No, not that!

They have neither technology nor funds to create a permanent base on the moon. Hell, even ISS is hardly sustainable.

What I was thinking was start some sort of mining operation for water, air or fuel and leave robots to carry them up to space.

The biggest problem with space exploration at the moment is lifting material from the surface. And since the Moon has 6 times lover gravity, launching stuff from there would be much cheaper.

[Sree]

Well, setting up a base for training peoples to go to mars, maybe. I can picture the teritorial conflicts now for who gets what part of the moon.

No, not that!

They have neither technology nor funds to create a permanent base on the moon. Hell, even ISS is hardly sustainable.

What I was thinking was start some sort of mining operation for water, air or fuel and leave robots to carry them up to space.

The biggest problem with space exploration at the moment is lifting material from the surface. And since the Moon has 6 times lover gravity, launching stuff from there would be much cheaper.

True, it'll probably be a long time till moon bases become realized. I can't wait till it does though.

[LINKed up]

I'm just saying what was in the PopSci magazine. Bedises, they have plenty of time. Six years till the first luanch. And the first time that a Mars mission with humans could even be possible is projected at 2020, and I think that it might be possible in fourteen years.

[Midknight]

Wow maybe this time they'll get there for real instead of faking it.

NASA is the biggest freaking waste of US tax money, only being beaten out by one or two things. They accomplish next to nothing, their equipment is in many cases outdated as hell, bleh I'll stop. Look into the figures of the ISS to see what a collosal waste of cash the dept. is.

[LINKed up]

What about the Mars rovers that haven't blown up? While they haven't acomplished much, they have got some kick ass telescopes up there. The Splitzer is a really cool one, as it takes infrared pictures, allowing us to see what happens in nebulas.

[ip82]

Yeah, NASA really kicked the shit out of Russians and Europeans concerning Mars. I think they are the only one who ever managed to successfuly land a robot on Mars, with both Vikings and this new mission.

Soviets and Europeans had tried multiple times, but the best they got was orbit around Mars - all their probes and robots crashed.

[LINKed up]

Yup. Also, whats that one satelite thats almost outside of the Solar system?

BTW, ip82, congrats on becoming a Dark Lord.

[ip82]

Yup. Also, whats that one satelite thats almost outside of the Solar system?

Voyager? That's one tough spaceship, but it's not some technological miracle. Anyone can launch a spacecraft towards stars, it's only that Americans had thought of it first.

BTW, ip82, congrats on becoming a Dark Lord.

Noooo! I LIKED being "Headmaster", like my idol, Dumbly-bumbly... I don't wanna be a dark lord *like a petulant child*

[IndoGhost]

Why is NASA slow? They should try to make better rockets like everyday or at least design them. Mid's right they are a waste of money.
BTW, ip82, congrats on becoming a Dark Lord.
Welcome to the Lordship club at DLP :cheers:

[LINKed up]

Well, this time NASA is doing the basics, and there is a small comp between Lockheed and a Something-Boeing group for the final design. Honestly, I hope that this turns out well.

[Sree]

Why is NASA slow? They should try to make better rockets like everyday or at least design them. Mid's right they are a waste of money.
BTW, ip82, congrats on becoming a Dark Lord.
Welcome to the Lordship club at DLP :cheers:

Mostly because of that spacecraft that crashed a few years ago, Columbia I think.

[Giovanni]

This new program concerns me... Not because of its ambitions, I support those 100%.

The program concerns me because under the bush Administration NASA has had its annual budget reduced to an insignificant amount over the past few years.

History has shown that when NASA Cost Cuts, Missions Fail and Ships Blow Up.

One of the early Apollo ships: Engine Fire, killed all 3 crew members and destroyed spacecraft... Shoddy wiring.
Challenger: Wrong type of washer... Result? Dead crew, loss of spacecraft.
Columbia: A combination of metal fatigue, poor launch practices, and an out of date spacecraft. Result? Dead crew, loss of spacecraft.

Unless NASA gets a HUGE raise in its annual budget I am against this program.

[Midknight]

Even you must admit Gio, the money they spend each year, for the return they get, are astronomically (pun intended) unbalanced. The program is screwed up, and poorly managed.

[Giovanni]

Oh I admit it... But that is more of a beaurocratic issue, they actually have a legitimate need for their astronomical (pun intended) budget.

What they need is to have all the political appointee's kicked out and have people rise to the top based on competance rather than connections. It is after all a scientific research group... Imagine CERN being run at every level from the lowest project to the highest one by people who don;t even understand regular physics, much less particle physics.

NASA needs an obscene budget, and they need to be completely reorganized.

[Midknight]

You'll recognize this Gio, but I didn't want to waste a good post.


They need the budget for some of the customized alloys they make the ships from, unless I'm wrong, most specifically the plating on the outside of the shuttles, but it's been proved, hell at the time of the shuttle's inception, that it was a very cost ineffective way to get off the ground. Not to mention very few improvements have been made over the years.

To have so little to show from the organization over the years, shit, even the hubble was a failure until how many missions to fix it? All to look at shiny stars and identify meteors, something that was easily done, albit slightly less clearly, from the observation tele in Puerto Rico. How many failures have they had over utterly retarded mistakes?

Bottom line though, is they return so few results, in many years, no results and failure after failure. For what? Billions and Billions. Cut the damned space exploration, take care of the countries poor and sick, explore under the ocean, build communities there for fractions of what it'd cost to go into space. While you're down there, mine for all the oil underwater, the reserves we have in the oceans are incredible.

But nah, the government would rather spend billions and billions to take shiny high res pictures of light that is 100 million light years away... no fucking wonder these are the same folks who spend $900 on toliets.

I won't bother mentioning all the failures with the Mars probe, nor their famed Pathfinder having all it's issues, and then suddenly loosing communication, as I think something's going on in regards to the red planet.

[Giovanni]

Your right, it is a good post :)

However I will respectfully disagree with you. The scientific research NASA does is invaluable, and impacts your life in many subtle ways.

#1. The technologies they develop, things as trivial as velcro to as life altering as the flame retardant suits firemen wear.

#2. Their climate and environmental work. If the government followed their models and the army corps of engineers subsequent recommendations, then the New Orleans levees would never have been breached.

#3. Their funding of science related activities for the nations youth. I might be a bit partial because I am involved with FIRST Robotics though...

#4. Their actual deep space research is valuable. It might not pay dividends now, but at some point in the future we are going to fuck up this ball of dirt so badly that we will need to relocate to a new ball of dirt.


But thats all beside the point. My point is that they should get their old budget back if they are going to take on a new ambitious project (like the moon), and they should be reorganized. NASA itself is a beaurocratic nightmare due to different administrations pushing different political policies. You only need to read the Columbia Accident Investigation report to realize that.

What NASA needs is to have happen is a complete change in management.

[Midknight]

I agree with your points mostly Gio, but to be fair, how many billions upon billions of dollars did it take to get the technologies listed, while some dipshit in silicon valley named Gates has impacted your life far more, for multitudes less.

As for New Orleans, this may come off cold blooded, but it's well known that the city is below sea level, and it's only staying above water by an intricate series of canals, pumps, and leevees... any retard could of seen a really bad storm hitting that area would be catastrophic. The government's mishandling of the event, during, and even worse after, damned many, many lives.

I agree locating potential earth killers may prove valuable one day, but at the current rate, it takes them a half dozen + years just to decide to take a trip somewhere, I honestly think we'd be screwed and the research useless in any sort of emergency situation with less then a half decade of notice.

I'd support them going to the moon however, if there was a real point. None of this lets get there just to say we can shit, none of this kewl research for the hell of it that gives us nothing in return. Set up some sort of habitat, keep them there for a few months getting samples from all over, something, anything, other then the pointless stuff previous missions have given us.

I'm interested to hear thoughts on the statement about Mars I made. I'm not a nutcase, but something funny is going on when almost every Mars probe that goes near Cydonia goes down, but hey, lets slap Pathfinder way the hell away from it, and it'll land just fine... for awhile.

[Tobang]

Before I even make this post I would like to mention the fact that im officially a space nut and find everything and anything that has to do with space incredibly interesting…..

I’ll embellish on a tangent Gio went on first, about how space travel has affected your everyday life….do you own an ipod, a cell phone, a laptop? B/c if you do, you owe space exploration a favor. The whole ‘lets downsize everything’ era was started by NASA trying to fit as much shit as they could onto a space ship…Its hard to ignore the fact that it costs about $50,000 to bring 1 pound of stuff into space.

The hubble space telescope has literally redefined 90% of astronomy. For christ sakes, it even found a new planet in our OWN solar system that we didn’t know about. Plus, the fact that they could even get the telescope up there in one piece was a cornerstone in technological history, never before have we sent such a large precision measuring device up into space. It was one of the boldest things people have ever done in the name of science.

As for space exploration being costly…well of course it is, if it was cheep it would have already been explored. When people were exploring the oceans they lost countless ships, those things were extremely hard to make back then but did they stop, no. But how much do you want to bet that a lot of fat ass nobles in France and Portugal a thousand years ago thought that they were just wasting their money and resources, who the hell cares about finding savage people and places.

Did they NEED to explore the ocean…no. Did they even immediately benefit from exploring the ocean…no. Why did they do it then? What if they wouldn’t of explored the ocean? Where would our society be if it never tried expanding? We would never of become more advanced. Expanding is vital for our way of life. If we don’t keep expanding our society will go stagnant and die.

P.S. I seriously made up the whole ocean exploration/space exploration analogy off the top of my head like ten minutes ago while reading your posts, im by no means an expert in the history of ocean exploration so forgive me if I made any glaringly obvious mistakes.

[Zevrillion]

I'd support them going to the moon however, if there was a real point. None of this lets get there just to say we can shit, none of this kewl research for the hell of it that gives us nothing in return. Set up some sort of habitat, keep them there for a few months getting samples from all over, something, anything, other then the pointless stuff previous missions have given us.

If you can go half around the world to a country of sand to look for oil, why can't you go to the moon? :D

Anyway, I hope they can come up with a way of interstellar space travel soon. It would be awesome with a nice vacation on a distant planet.

[LINKed up]

BTW, there actually was a Mars rocket under plans during the Apollo times. It was called the Nova project. I went on vacation to the NASA space center in Florida, and at the place where they built the Apollo rockets, there were poles sticking out of the roof. Why? Because the roof on that building was just temporary. The building was going to be used to make the Nova rockets, which would be able to go to Mars. A problem that NASA would have to get around would be the "fact" that with a rocket that powerful, the calcium would leave the bones. NASA probably would have gotten around that somehow. Now, if they had, would we have ostiporosis? No, we would have a cure to it. Good things come from NASA going farther.

[Midknight]

Plus, the fact that they could even get the telescope up there in one piece was a cornerstone in technological history, never before have we sent such a large precision measuring device up into space.

The fact that it went way over budget, and took several repair missions to get the thing functioning evidentally mistaken. Nasa nuts seem to enjoy the coolness factor of some of the stuff, and miss out on the other things, such as is being able to see something XX times clearer, that will have next to zero impact on our society at all, if any at all, worth the massive amount of money? No.

As for space exploration being costly…well of course it is, if it was cheep it would have already been explored. When people were exploring the oceans they lost countless ships, those things were extremely hard to make back then but did they stop, no. But how much do you want to bet that a lot of fat ass nobles in France and Portugal a thousand years ago thought that they were just wasting their money and resources, who the hell cares about finding savage people and places.

Most of the land that was liveable at the time was crowded, they had no choice but to go elsewhere. Mankind is not at that point yet, and under the oceans is a far better alternative then spending millions upon millions per launch just to get off the planet, not counting the billion+ per project to do something worthwhile up there. Pathfinder is one of their greatest recent projects. It was plauged by problems, took a buncha photos of nothing, some samples, wow nothing's alive, rover dies. Nice way to spend all that cash.

P.S. I seriously made up the whole ocean exploration/space exploration analogy off the top of my head like ten minutes ago while reading your posts, im by no means an expert in the history of ocean exploration so forgive me if I made any glaringly obvious mistakes.

Most of the ocean exploration was also done by traders looking for ways to get across the known world faster. It wasn't simply done for the hell of it, or to go look at rocks.

I'll agree to disagree, Nasa fanboys are amusing, no insult intended, but Velcro and mini annoying tech devices ain't worth goddamned billons upon billions. They get accredited with shrinking things in this thread. I'm sure Motorola, and the various other folks just rent ideas from NASA, it ain't that cut and dry.

If you can go half around the world to a country of sand to look for oil, why can't you go to the moon?

They knew the oil was there, or had a high likely hood of being there, they didn't spend billions to go send someone to core into the center of an iceflow, or a rock and confirm yep there's oil here. That's a big difference between the waste that oganization uses. Some of it falls on the government themselves for having such bloated, inflated contractors, but as Gio mentioned previously, piss poor management. I'd much rather see that cash go towards getting our soliders better body armor to stay alive, when our president sends them into bumf*ck for invalid reasons.

[Giovanni]

Here are my objections to Bush's NASA Policy.

#1. Underfunded for the projects he wants.
a) Sending a human to Mars is far from cheap and needs additional cash in the form of a budget increase.
b) Sending a human to the Moon is far from cheap and needs additional cash.
c) Refusal to fund a replacement vehicle for the aging shuttle fleet. Shuttle age WAS one of the contributing factors to the Columbia burn up.

#2. Unqualified political appointees.
a) I know everyone does it... But the guy he had forcing intelligent design language into NASA's website and quelching climate change research didn't even have a college degree... And what he was majorng in was in no way relevent to the research he was charged with overseeing.


b)

[Midknight]

I don't know if you're ignoring it Gio, but I've mentioned I want to hear your thoughs on:

I won't bother mentioning all the failures with the Mars probe, nor their famed Pathfinder having all it's issues, and then suddenly loosing communication, as I think something's going on in regards to the red planet. I'm interested to hear thoughts on the statement about Mars I made. I'm not a nutcase, but something funny is going on when almost every Mars probe that goes near Cydonia goes down, but hey, lets slap Pathfinder way the hell away from it, and it'll land just fine... for awhile.

You'd think it'd freak out the shirts that everytime they go anywhere near it something goes wrong, save for one or two times when they stayed far out of the planet and zoomed in to take the famous face shot (trick of light my ass)

[Zevrillion]

If you can go half around the world to a country of sand to look for oil, why can't you go to the moon?

They knew the oil was there, or had a high likely hood of being there, they didn't spend billions to go send someone to core into the center of an iceflow, or a rock and confirm yep there's oil here. That's a big difference between the waste that oganization uses. Some of it falls on the government themselves for having such bloated, inflated contractors, but as Gio mentioned previously, piss poor management. I'd much rather see that cash go towards getting our soliders better body armor to stay alive, when our president sends them into bumf*ck for invalid reasons.

I was just joking. As long as no one have travelled to the moon and dumped a lot of oil there, than we will never find oil there, as oil comes form organic life that is millions of years old.

But I do think it better to go to the moon than that country of sand.

[LINKed up]

Zev, you've gotta good point.

[ip82]

I won't bother mentioning all the failures with the Mars probe, nor their famed Pathfinder having all it's issues, and then suddenly loosing communication, as I think something's going on in regards to the red planet. I'm interested to hear thoughts on the statement about Mars I made. I'm not a nutcase, but something funny is going on when almost every Mars probe that goes near Cydonia goes down, but hey, lets slap Pathfinder way the hell away from it, and it'll land just fine... for awhile.

I think that's just a coincidence.

The fact is, they still don't know how to create a robot that would know to find it's way around unfamiliar surrounding - and then pack it up in the smallest possible volume and mass. So, it's only natural that things get lost and start malfunctioning.

Like I said, Russians were the first one to try to send probe to Mars - they sent like half a dozen spaceships in "Mars" program and all of them failed to land on Mars. The only two crafts that ever managed to send immages from the surface were one Viking, I think, and this robot from the last year.

But anyway, if NASA is trying to keep something on Mars hidden, then they wouldn't have helped European Space Agency to find their lost ship last year - I'm not sure about this (I'm not that big space-exploration fan), but I think that they've lost contact with one of their ships heading for Mars and NASA had helped them reestablish it...

So, conspiracy? Hardly... Even if it was a conspiracy, it'd have to be something like... they've found huge reserves of gold or some other valuable metal on Mars and they're keeping it hush-hush for now....

[True Story]

I wonder if there are different types of metals on other planets.......hmmm.......I'll have my company satellites and or personel look into this when I become the richest man in the world. 8)

LOL Jokes.

p.s. Seriously, NASA potential findings and findingsk> Cost

[Zevrillion]

I wonder if there are different types of metals on other planets.......hmmm.......I'll have my company satellites and or personel look into this when I become the richest man in the world. 8)

LOL Jokes.

p.s. Seriously, NASA potential findings and findingsk> Cost


No different metals as atoms are the same wherever you are in the universe. But it might be other universes out there with different physical laws.

The are very heavy atoms that only exist in particle accelerators, and in some scifi there are theories that the atoms will be stable over maybe a atomic mass of 300 or something, but I don’t know if that is true. It’s unlikely for it to exist in any bigger quantity as you have to add energy to create atoms higher than iron.

It would be cool if there are worlds built on anti-matter, but I don't want to the astronaut that makes first contact.

[LINKed up]

Anyways, if Bush gives NASA enough money, do you people think that this program will work?

[ip82]

Don't know... the plan IS fucking ambitious.

On NASA's site they say that after the first mission (in which they'll spend 7 days on Moon), they'll be having like 2 trips / year. Seems highly unlikely, unless they make that new spaceship damn economic...

[LINKed up]

I hadn't gone to the site. That does seem quite ambitious. One trip a year, I can understand, but two, highly unlikely.

[Giovanni]

Don't know... the plan IS fucking ambitious.

On NASA's site they say that after the first mission (in which they'll spend 7 days on Moon), they'll be having like 2 trips / year. Seems highly unlikely, unless they make that new spaceship damn economic...

They have had over 25 years to design a new one...

[LINKed up]

Good point there Gio. They have had plenty of time to make their new rocket. Anyways, has anyone else here seen pictures from the Spizter telescope? Its basically Hubble in infrared. It takes pictures of Nebulai so we can understand the formation of solar systems.

Andromeda through Spitzer telescope (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Andromeda_galaxy_Ssc2005-20a1_halfsize.jpg)

[Midknight]

I won't bother mentioning all the failures with the Mars probe, nor their famed Pathfinder having all it's issues, and then suddenly loosing communication, as I think something's going on in regards to the red planet. I'm interested to hear thoughts on the statement about Mars I made. I'm not a nutcase, but something funny is going on when almost every Mars probe that goes near Cydonia goes down, but hey, lets slap Pathfinder way the hell away from it, and it'll land just fine... for awhile.

I think that's just a coincidence.

I could take coincidence if we didn't send probes and sats a ton of other spots and make them function fine until they go out on their own, but send something to Mars, specifically near that region, and things get screwed really fast.

[LINKed up]

They made a movie based on that fact. There was like humanoid martians living in that region. Basically, the humans got stuck in the middle of a lot of Martian religious and moral shit and stuff like that.

[Amerision]

You guys are too harsh on NASA...

Can you imagine sending a robot probe into space, planning out every trajectory, factoring in gravitational pull, solar wind, random space rocks, calculating Mars's position on monday, the 25 of Semptember, 5:35 PM at 13 seconds?

And then adjusting the boosters so it goes in at 46.75 degrees?


It's a miracle we get in space at all.

You shouldn't expect a good record from NASA. We are sending machines in a realm of no gravity or air, where the smalelst problem can get you killed.

And plus, doing this missions is more than just economic fufillment. Science improves with each mission.

Ultimately, would you stifle science just because you're not a millionare after the mission is over?

[Midknight]

Theres a difference between hard to accomplish, and incompetant though, and NASA keeps seeming to the world that they're one of the bigger money wasters and provice very little, if any, point/results to what they cost to run.

[Taure]

They should build a bio-dome on the moon...

[pimpostrous]

Lol, all this talk of nasa moon mission reminds me of that conspiracy moon missions video. cant find the good one online but here is one of the long as crappy ones taht can be found. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1913474363747128107&q=conspiracy+moon
not nearly as convincing:P
i found that this one special on the apollo mission and the MARs problems were both very cleverly made and convincing. But then again, after doing some research to all the claims they said, facts prove that it was easily possible for man to reach the moon.

[Zevrillion]

I think they should spend some money in developing a Nova Bomb (Andromeda) and launch it into the sun.

[Giovanni]

These conspiracy theorists are idiots. They cherry pick "evidence" and have probably doctored most of them.

[Midknight]

I dunno Gio, I stand behind the theory that we never went to the moon.

Do some research on what we had to work with back then, and then figure out how they reasonably did it. I'm too tired atm to link books, but google for them, there's ton's of great reads out there.

Remember, at the time the public was by and large dozens, if not hundreds of more times more ignorant of how things worked back then, pulling something like that off would of been simple for the time.

[Giovanni]

Let me put it this way. The Soviets had one of the Premier intel agencies in the world, and they had infiltrated most of the USA technology centers, it's why they managed to get the H-bomb so quickly after we did.

If they were convinced we went to the moon it means that their spies **who would have been aware of it if the moon landing was faked** were also convinced.

As a rule I think that most conspiracy theories are wrong -- but posess some grain of truth. However in the case of the moon landing, I'm positive that they are dead assed wrong, and I say this after seeing that stupid video, and wading through al the info 30 mins of google searching could bring up.

Also, their "why was the camera so far back from the window?" segment was pointless. Putting it close to the window would result in a ruined photograph. Hence the distance.

[ip82]

The funny thing is, with the sort of technology they've had back then, it'd be easier to truly send people to the Moon, than make all that special effects... in real time (low gravity, for example).

So I agree with Gio - if that was all a set-up, someone would have squeeled years ago.

[Yarrgh!]

Amerision...sure, it's hard to calculate stuff like that, but it's the small fuck ups that are hilarious, but costly.

EDIT: After reading it, I thought i should mention that i HEARD about this from reliable people, but that i am NOT 100% certain about it's veracity.

For instance, on one of the mars missions, they miscalculated the speed. Now, the difference between meters per second and yards per second is only 3 inches per second, not that great.

When talking about huge distances...fuckup.

Instead of Yards/s, they did m/s, and that extra bit caused their space probe to blast a 100 feet or so into mars' surface and explode.

Can't remember everything i knew about this...just this little fact. Made me crack up then.

[Cupspeaker]

I think that sending space probes into space to search for new stuff on planets or what not is idiotic. It is a waste of good time, money, and resources that could have been spent helping those starving kids in africa or somehting. Sure science advances and all that but still it is pretty pointless. Who the fuck cares iwhat the moon is like? You can\'t have life on it. Period. If we stop all that NASA bullshit and use all the money to actually HELPING the people who need it and do things that actually matter America and the whole world would be much better of.

I think NASA is a complete waste of time, and completely pointless. Just like memorizing facts about horses... completely pointless.

[Cypher3au]

I'm wondering if they're gonna take a couple more golf balls up there to smack around. That's one of the few things that really interested me in the space program. That, the face on Mars, and the numerous exploding spacecraft.