K4YZ wrote:
wrote:
K4YZ wrote:
Of course those programs have had failures.
Heck, Apollo had two
spectacular failures, one of which cost the lives of three astronauts
without ever leaving the ground. But no one with any sense would
describe Apollo, the shuttle or the ISS as "failures" because they did
not reach every goal set for them.
I am sure that some aspect of "A" mission failed, ergo
Mark thinks
he can write it off as an "I Win"...If that's what float's his boat, let him be happy.
Seems everyone else is STILL using the shuttle AND the Space
Station...Which I had a chance to observe at 05:36CDT
Wednesday
morning...spectacular. (www.science.nasa.gov) And they intend to do so for many years to come.
Not too many, though...
ISS is sceheduled to stay manned through 2020-somenthing...
But not the shuttle. In fact it's grounded - again.
I HAVE read about numerous persons saying that
the "mission" has
outgrown the shuttle...That the Shuttle,
esentially 1970's technology,
should be updated...
Agreed!
MY biggest disappointment is that we are as close to Mars
as we've
been in centuries, but we don't have a manned mission there yet.
???
Not sure what you mean, Steve.
Going to Mars is at least 100 times more difficult than going to the
moon. Mars never gets closer than 30 million miles - more than 100
times farther away than the moon. A Mars mission would be years long
rather than a week or two. Martian gravity and atmosphere make the
problems even worse.
If it costs $100-200 billion or more to go to the moon, what would Mars
cost?
Just like the automakers bring out new model years.
More like the automakers rethink the basic design.
Remember when most cars were body-on-frame, longitudinal-front-engine,
rear-wheel-drive, with V8s and bias-ply tires? Now most of them are
unibody, transverse-engine, front-wheel-drive, with V6s and inline 4s,
and radial tires.
And 20 years from now they'll look back at THOSE cars and laugh...
"THOSE" cars have been pretty much standard for 20 years now...
Yet they still burn gasoline and other petroleum based fuels. The fleet
mileage standards are not improving. The USA imports much more energy
(almost all of it in the form of oil and natural gas) than in the
1970s.
Why isn't there a massive program to solve our energy problems? The
White House has been in the hands of a former oilman for more than half
a decade now. You'd think there's be some understanding of what needs
to be done for the future, but where's the leadership?
Forward...always forward...
The question is: which way is "forward"? Should we all drive SUVs?
No one ever expected the Shuttle to the "end all" of the manned
space program.
Yes, they did.
Oh?
Yes.
They were going to fly the Shuttle and then call it quits after
that?
No. They said that the future of space flight was in reusable craft
rather than one-use rockets. Turns out the reusables have not solved
the problems.
The Shuttle was supposed to be a "space truck" that
would totally replace and outdate the "spam in a can"
one-shot capsule
systems used for Mercury/Gemini/Apollo. But in fact
the complexity of
the shuttle system and other design features (like having the
heatshield tiles exposed for the entire mission) have limited its
success and performance.
That doesn't support an "opposition" to what I said...
Yes, it does. The "old" one-shot rockets are almost certainly the key
to the "way forward"...
It's just time to go on to bigger and better.
I'd say "smaller and smarter".
Of course some of what is said is all about getting funding. Bush wants
to go back to the moon, which NASA says will cost $100 billion.
Probably double or triple that in real life. Funding such an effort
will require convincing a lot of folks that it's worthwhile, and part
of that is showing them that the shuttle's time is past and we need new
systems. The shuttle is therefore portrayed as "last year's model"
Of course one has to ask why we need to spend $100 billion to get a few
folks to the moon, when we couldn't even evacuate two cities
effectively here on earth.
Several issues there, Jim.
First of all, much of the radio and TV media had been talking
about the storm swinging wide and not causing "that much"
damage.
Not the TV and radio I saw!
That
was misleading and I am sure "reassured" the local populace
that this was rideable.
Yet the NWS said the opposite.
Secondly, the topography is such that moving mass numbers of folks
OUT of NO in a hurry is a gridlock nightmare in and of itself.
All the more reason to get out early.
And what about Houston? Why was that evacuation such a fiasco? You
can't blame it on the Dems...
Third, the residents themselves have to swallow some culpability
for CHOOSING to live on a below-sea level chunk of real estate in a region known for hurricaines and high sea states.
Agreed - and so can the various levels of govt. for allowing and
encouraging them to live there and build more. The govt. builds the
levees and issues the building permits.
If we become so presumptuous as to assume the government can
bail
us out of each and every conceiveable disaster, there will be
precious
little money left for anything else.
I say the best thing to do now is to *not* rebuild the parts of NO that
are below sea level. Salvage what can be saved, and move away.
Will Our President exhibit leadership and say that's what should be
done? Or will he make exorbitant promises, pouring much more money into
rebuilding than it would take to relocate?
Back to NASA...The technologies in my chosen profession alone that
have benefitted from the Space Program are phenominal. I think if we
pulled the rug out from under it any time soon, the "trickle down"
effect in lost of impetus in technology development would be rapid and
deep felt.
Can you guarantee that those advances would not have happened if the
money had been spent on research in the fields directly affected? IOW,
why not simply go after a problem directly?
73 de Jim, N2EY