NASA budget is NOT cut. There are increase fundings of $6 billion over 5 years. There are different priorites. Constellation was apparently deemed not the right course. You can discuss what the right course is but you need to keep the facts straight.
Check out the administrator's remarks below... http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420994main_2011_Budget_Administrator_Remarks.pdf
Ideally I agree but laying aside nationalism is there a reason that NASA has to be the primary agent through which that is done?
Quoted for reality and truth and the un-wringing of hands. And judoka, here is the 7 to 1: PS -- did not forsee that a "tang" search could be dicey at work.
When we were trying to get to space back in the 60s did you think they thought . . .MAN WE GONNA HAVE CELL PHONES . . GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS . . . SAT TV . .etc Some might but most didn't The point is We won't know until we know! If we don't look . . we will never know commercialization of space. . is going to be a COSMIC FAIL! Rocket River truth is our alien master have told our government to slow it down
So are you trying to say the reason we have these technologies is because of NASA/Space exploration? If so, I disagree. Necessity is the mother of invention, if we needed it, we'd figure it out. Somebody was eventually going to invent memory foam, teflon, and pens that could write upside down (well, maybe not that last one... as that is specific to the space environment)... if we didn't need it, we wouldn't miss it.
Perhaps the money and effort spent on re-living Buck Rogers could be just as effectively targeted towards developing green fuel, transport and technologies. Conducting space experiments is like having a ghetto homes tour.
This would be a better point if we weren't talking about going to the Moon (perhaps Mars instead). The technology to send people there obviously exists already because we've done it.
Some of the technologies derived from manned space flight have made manned space flight obsolete. In the near future there won't be fighter pilots or deep space astronauts, there will be AI technicians. The required energy budgets and time/distance factors dictate that humans probably won't ever travel outside the asteroid belt. Science marches on. But JFK's exhortation "to land on the moon in this century" was a propaganda stunt designed to influence the Soviet Union during the cold war. There is no time sensitive reason to get back to the moon or to Mar's (GWB's bush league attempt to be JFK). If we solve the fusion puzzle and need the H3, then lets go. Sophomoric colonization dreams tend to distract us from the pressing need not to screw up the one planet we have.
It's not necessary for survival unless you talking a billion years down the road. Sustainability is necessary for human survival on the near term. Expansion to the point of over exploitation will probably be what does us in. Life like any system can only keep expanding until it fails.
So very true. Even the innovations we use every day (vital things like Tang and velcro), while quite handy, aren't necessary for our survival. We can have technology directives and innovation without spending billions blasting disposable hardware into space. I like how the right-wing complains about Obama being this big spender (which is especially ridiculous, given the circumstances), but then complain when he tries to save some money. He can't win for losing. The space program was necessary to jumpstart our technology industry. But we don't need that now: we need a new growth area. I think it's going to be alternative fuel/energy development.
I worked on the Cx program side ~3 years ago. Trust me when I say this was probably inevitable. Politically motivated design decisions + inept engineering = it don't work.
Yeah I see how looking for "tang" at work could get you in trouble. :grin: Anyway that was the Apollo program so I am curious what has been the return of investment overall for NASA? Have we been getting that same return since Apollo?
Theoretically though any complex engineering problem with a virtually unlimited budget will likely produce tons of spinoff technology. For example if we undertake colonizing the Ocean floor or create an artificial black hole we are likely to develop all sorts of technologies. I don't think it makes much sense though to undertake a major endeavor just based on what unexpected spinoff technologies might occur.
