NASA budget cuts

[Afternoon Tea]

Okay I don't like the fact that the U.S is cutting the budget funds for NASA! The space shuttle is being retired because some believe it is no longer economical and cannot be flown safely. There are cheaper, safer methods for getting people to Earth orbit. Basically THE LAST AND FINAL shuttle will be launched I believe April 19. This means NASA will not send anymore Humans into space! What does this mean? If anything goes wrong in space; lets say a broken satellite. We won't be able to repair the satellite and will be forced to send a new satellite which will Cost way more then a repair. Also the only way we can conduct experiments in space is if NASA RENTS a spot/seat on a shuttle from a private Company. I believe going to space is an important thing like advance into space, and with the Obama Budget cuts we wont be seeing a Shuttle Launch for a LOOOONG time. What are your thoughts?

[synaesthetic]

They're building a new launch vehicle. The space shuttle is being retired because it's... really, really old.

Going to space is not even remotely economical no matter how you slice it. It takes a hell of a lot of energy to get up there.

[Afternoon Tea]

True, but I herd they were going to go back to the Saturn V or Gemini type of rockets since its cheaper, Doesn't Russia still use Rockets? but anyways I don't like the fact if they do, do this we would be basically downgrading, I would rather see a upgraded version of the space shuttle that can get to space better.


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Why is Nasa going backwards, dumping a shuttle for a rocket?
The new rocket is called something like Orion. Weren't the shuttles a step up from the old technology of rockets? So with the Ares, are the astronauts going to splash down in the ocean like in the old days?!

[synaesthetic]

More complex technology is not always better than simpler tech. Remember, what matters is the technology can safely do what it is designed to do for the lowest possible cost.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by CaptnAwesomee

Why is Nasa going backwards, dumping a shuttle for a rocket?
The new rocket is called something like Ares X1. Weren't the shuttles a step up from the old technology of rockets? So with the Ares, are the astronauts going to splash down in the ocean like in the old days?!

Maintenance and cost issues. To keep something means you have to maintain it as a fixed cost. Since currencies appreciate over time, the longer you keep it, the more you have to pay to keep it running.

Also, with rockets, they can simply dump the metal in space and forget about retrieving anything other than the data (and probably the astronauts if they didn't die). The immediate area outside the exosphere is simply a large dumping ground for redundant space technology.

[synaesthetic]

When we start putting colonies up there, someone's gonna have to clean it all up...

I think I've heard that story before... *coughplanetes*

[Afternoon Tea]

^ lol soo true, its funny how humans pollute/ trash everything lol both on earth and in space

I gauss, well the Shuttle was initially conceived as a cheap routine way into space but because of budgetary constraints during the deign phase it ended up far more compromised than initially intended. This included things abandoning the original idea of aircraft launch which made it less safe and paradoxically more expensive over the long haul, and the desire that a single vehicle be a jack of all trades, suitable for both manned missions and heavy cargo lift.

I can see the results as a expensive, unsafe vehicle that does not do anything particularly well. IF this is the case I have I HOPES for Orion just becuase it is more focussed on manned missions and less restricted - the Shuttle cannot reach geostationary orbit, yet alone the Moon. The Orion capsules will have no such restrictions. Cargo lift will be given over exclusively to unmanned rockets that can lift more cargo and at far less cost than a manned mission. I see your point

[Gamer_2k4]

Aren't private companies picking up the slack left behind by retiring the shuttles?

[Ithekro]

There is only so much private companies can do right now. Sure they will probably be able to launch stuff or people into orbit, but they can't send stuff back home. However, maybe someone will send up a spacecraft designed to stay up there as a tug or repaircraft. Or just to move a damaged object to the Station so the crew can repair it, then use the spacecraft to put it back into a proper orbit.

The Space Shuttle may get one more flight around June or July as well. The mission is planned, but not funded. They have just enough equipment left to do it even. At which time the Space Shuttle will have been in service for 30 years.

NASA seems to be doing a program to get the next launches out of Earth's orbital path to near Earth asteroids and later Mars (they seem to have scrapped the return to the Moon plan of the Bush administration using the Orion spacecraft in 10 years or so).

[Tri-ring]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

When we start putting colonies up there, someone's gonna have to clean it all up...

I think I've heard that story before... *coughplanetes*

JAXA already announced a plan for that.

Japan's space agency teams up with fishing net maker to collect space debris

[Vexx]

One of the biggest problems NASA has long had is that both political parties simply view the projects in it as either "ours" or "theirs". One party gets in, they kick around anything the other party started. Its so short-sighted, both sides deserve any well-aimed kicks to the head. Moon Project? A 'democrat' thing. The Return to the Moon? a 'republican' thing. I could do a long laundry list of projects crippled by this utter bullshit.

Thanks to this sort of pathetic testosterone crap, we are now literally caught with our pants down. Shuttles were supposed to vanish long ago - to be replaced by (insert Dem/Rep pet project here) and now they're way over their warranty-so-to-speak. There are some very interesting things being worked on (e.g. VASIMR) ... but there's now a time gap of perhaps years on the manned launch front for the US.

[Ithekro]

Feels like that gap between the end of the Apollo/Skylab program and the start of the Shuttle Program...only potentially longer (no space flights between 1975 and 1981...so about a six year gap. Now we are looking at nothing from 2011 to 2016 or so..and five year gap, but only if it is on time).

And everything looked fine...in 1985. The shuttle was rolling, things were happening, then Challeger blew up. Okay, we has a slight problem, its recoverable. Thing were mostly fine again, a little slow and lacking progress at times...until Columbia...it hasn't been fine since then. Only the Station got finished after that...well and someone kicked someone into to keep Hubble operational for a little while longer.

I miss those days when I was little. When Cosmos was reairing on PBS, when the Voyager probes were discovering things. When it looked like we might get at least something closer to that 2001 future as oppose to 1984. Now...now what do we have?

Also, how would one get a job with NASA as a historian?

[Tri-ring]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Thanks to this sort of pathetic testosterone crap, we are now literally caught with our pants down. Shuttles were supposed to vanish long ago - to be replaced by (insert Dem/Rep pet project here) and now they're way over their warranty-so-to-speak.

If I remember correctly the space race started as a　TESTOSTERONE thing. It show how little we change.

Seriously if humans combined efforts instead of being caught in our petty differences we would have a space solar generator plant orbiting the planet that could generate enough energy to power a continent.

Don't believe me?

Consider what would happen if we connected all the solar panels that have been placed into orbit from the start.
There are at the moment thousands of various man-made satellites orbiting the earth right now and thousands more that had burned out of orbit. Most all of them are/were powered by solar panels.

We just need to collect them place them all in a higher orbit and connect them.
Transferring that energy to the surface may be tricky but Japan is already experimenting that using microwave.

[Renegade334]

The shuttle was indeed supposed to be replaced, at various points in time, by theoretically better concepts but each time issues like budget cuts and technical problems spelled the end of the announced successor - as was the case of the Lockheed-Martin X33 (and its derivative the Venture Star), which would have become a completely reusable launch vehicle had it not been for technical failures that led to its cancellation in 2001.

Then we have the Constellation project, which was slated to introduce new rockets such as the Ares I->V but Obama cancelled the entire thing in October 2010, even though NASA had just launched the first Ares I-X prototype (which could've taken over some of the SS' common tasks). The entire 'return to the Moon' thing just suffered another major setback, along with other projects, such as the programmed ability to send large-scale satellites (among others, the massive ATLAST telescope, spiritual successor to the HST) to the Lagrange points.

There were plans to reuse the Space Shuttle external tanks (SSETs) to create low cost rockets but they were deemed not as capable as the Ares IV-Vs, but now that those two are gone courtesy of cutbacks-loving POTUS, maybe NASA will fall back on the Space Shuttle-Derived Vehicle (SSDV) blueprints as springboard for a new replacement. But the real issue is whether the current administration is actually willing to open its own wallet to finance further R&D. And I'm afraid it's not the case.

[MeoTwister5]

Well there's a lot of problems on this planet that can be solved WHILE on this planet, as opposed to spending billions looking for said answers in the unexplored vastness of space.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

When we start putting colonies up there, someone's gonna have to clean it all up...

I think I've heard that story before... *coughplanetes*

No worries! All we need is a charismatic anti-Earthborn posthuman nut piloting anything red three times faster. Given the fact that there are people blabbering about Zeitgeist and Islamic caliphates today, there will be one of the abovementioned tomorrow.

Originally Posted by Tri-ring

We just need to collect them place them all in a higher orbit and connect them.
Transferring that energy to the surface may be tricky but Japan is already experimenting that using microwave.

I wish microwave was that safe! The wife of the author of Frankenstein blew her head up in one.

Originally Posted by Vexx

One of the biggest problems NASA has long had is that both political parties simply view the projects in it as either "ours" or "theirs". One party gets in, they kick around anything the other party started. Its so short-sighted, both sides deserve any well-aimed kicks to the head. Moon Project? A 'democrat' thing. The Return to the Moon? a 'republican' thing. I could do a long laundry list of projects crippled by this utter bullshit.

Thanks to this sort of pathetic testosterone crap, we are now literally caught with our pants down. Shuttles were supposed to vanish long ago - to be replaced by (insert Dem/Rep pet project here) and now they're way over their warranty-so-to-speak. There are some very interesting things being worked on (e.g. VASIMR) ... but there's now a time gap of perhaps years on the manned launch front for the US.

Not exactly. The shuttle is built to last around 15 years of its lifetime, though that is pretty much the limit of the piloting system being able to accept new software and avionic components.

For the rest, I agree with you. There should be an executive committee that puts NASA away from politics - though that might tear apart the mutual relationship between the US defence forces and NASA, the former which is using most of NASA's technologies for military and political surveillance.

[Gamer_2k4]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

And everything looked fine...in 1985. The shuttle was rolling, things were happening, then Challeger blew up. Okay, we has a slight problem, its recoverable. Thing were mostly fine again, a little slow and lacking progress at times...until Columbia...it hasn't been fine since then. Only the Station got finished after that...well and someone kicked someone into to keep Hubble operational for a little while longer.

The way you're talking about it, one would think the two accidents happened close together. A full eighteen years separated the two space shuttle disasters.

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by CaptnAwesomee

Okay I don't like the fact that the U.S is cutting the budget funds for NASA! The space shuttle is being retired because some believe it is no longer economical and cannot be flown safely. There are cheaper, safer methods for getting people to Earth orbit. Basically THE LAST AND FINAL shuttle will be launched I believe April 19. This means NASA will not send anymore Humans into space! What does this mean? If anything goes wrong in space; lets say a broken satellite. We won't be able to repair the satellite and will be forced to send a new satellite which will Cost way more then a repair. Also the only way we can conduct experiments in space is if NASA RENTS a spot/seat on a shuttle from a private Company. I believe going to space is an important thing like advance into space, and with the Obama Budget cuts we wont be seeing a Shuttle Launch for a LOOOONG time. What are your thoughts?

I find it annoying that NASA's old shuttle fleet hasn't been replaced yet.
The X-37B was supposed to be the test body for the shuttle's replacement (according to Boeing) but since funding ran out, the project is now in the hands of the USAF.

Article here:
http://www.space.com/11006-air-force...et-launch.html

It would be nice if one of these election cycles (soon) we got another JFK in the White House.
If a private company can make a spacecraft that takes off from the ground, goes into low orbit, and then comes back again safely, why the hell can't the US government?

http://news.discovery.com/space/priv...st-flight.html

[Ithekro]

Actually I was hoping Bush would have gone the JFK route and sort of did with the return to the moon plan. If he'd put it into his State of the Union speech it would have been better. I've not been happy with Obama's space program as of yet, since I still have only marginal faith in the private sector's space programs.

That and I really wanted us to be at the 2001/2010 movie level of techology by now. Space colonies (one station at present), tourism (nearly there) moon bases (nope), and interplanetary space missions using large spacecraft (even if they have small crews, the mass is needed for supplies and fuel). We seem close to HAL-like computers (minus the personality), but space tech seems far behind.

[Vexx]

I fully believe countries should cooperate like crazy to fund exploration and utilization of the solar system... I'm just thinking that though the US and Russia/USSR led the way, there might not be many US flags on the plaques of multi-country ventures down the road.

As for the cost.... NASA's entire budget is less than the "fraud and waste" error margin of the US DoD budget, even *less* of the 'human services' sector. NASA pushes technology in a non-violent way, it encourages cooperation/competition among countries in a healthy way. Historically, warfare has been the primary driver of innovation.
"It costs too much" has always been a false strawman argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget

excerpt: Public perception of the NASA budget is very different from reality and has been the subject of controversy since the agency's creation. A 1997 poll reported that Americans had an average estimate of 20% for NASA's share of the federal budget, very different from the actual 0.5% to under 1% that has been maintained throughout the late 90's and first decade of the 2000s.