Obama: 8 Billion For High-Speed Rail, 0 for NASA & JSC

If you're going to question the validity of my statements, at least provide some facts or links. You have just been spewing your opinion so far and I doubt they hold weight unless you are an expert in the field of space transportation systems.

I stated that the Shuttle is a unique and needed vehicle for the ISS due to payload deployment interfaces with the ISS. This is a fact. Neither the Progress vehicle nor the Soyuz Vehicle can do this. You are twisting my words to say the only way to get experiments there. Please re-read what I wrote. I said very complex experiments can't be tranported via any other vehicle than Space Shuttle. We're not talking about ant farms here.

You stated "We never should have gone with a reusable reentry shuttle". Please explain to me why we should not have. I don't want your opinion, give me concrete reasons. You also stated that we easily (L-O-friggin-L easily) could have developed something else. What are you basing that statement off of?

I just posted a link for you. Did you even read it? Just pick a few experiments and see why they are prime candidates for being performed in zero-g.

 

Hate to quote a Shovel Face post but this needs to be reiterated. He has plain broken his promise. THERE IS NO GAP CLOSURE. But he is justifying it by saying that "well they can all work for the speedrail project". You can buy into that if you want. But I can garauntee you that there's no technical connection from aerospace technology to lightrail technology. The transition will be painful and incomplete.

For me, I'll chalk one up on the negative side. In my book Obama has a lot of positives than negatives but this one really hurts.

 

Actually that's precisely what we're talking about in many cases.

yes and most of them hearken back to the days when NASA promised the ISS would become a revenue producing micro-g factory...lol.

 

Yes, I read the link. It does not address my point, which was that the Shuttle was a mistake from the start. As I said earlier (repeatedly), it was more expensive to rescue, evaluate, repair, and upgrade the shuttle after each launch than it would be to build a simple system from scratch.

You provided ONE link, which did not address my point in any way. You still aren't addressing it.

I didn't just make that up. Here's a link of my own for ya .

It started life as a flawed b*stard of the Air Force and NASA. Then we continued to waste money on it AND the ISS for 40 years that bore no results. By far the most reliable results we have gotten from NASA have been via unmanned exploration. It's not even close. While the Shuttle program gave us John Glenn going to space in his 60's and a crazed would be assassin, the Hubble gave us pictures of the galaxy and rovers told us there is ice on the moon.

You act like it is incontrovertible slam dunk proof that the Shuttle can deliver cargo to the ISS. I don't give a damn. I am not impressed that the Shuttle is the only vehicle that can take payloads to the ISS. The ISS was and remains an unnecessary waste of cash as well. I already asked for an experiment being done there that we couldn't do cheaper in a controlled lab or via remote link. Since your rant didn't include one, I'll take it you don't have any.

 

but don't expect the American taxpayers to fund your 'cool' dream

"You work hard, you get rewarded. Nobody owes you ****."

 

We already went.

Jesus was Spain still flogging the 50th guy to stumble across the West Indies? Or did they actually find somewhere else to go?

 

The better parallel would be, what if Apple investors pulled funding for iPhone and its predecessor iPhone II. Now apple can keep working on the iMac but loses its footing in the smartphone industry.

That's the issue here. You are inherently considering NASA's manned space program to be not well thought out. I beg to differ. I just don't see why some here are just plain assuming this. Why do you guys really think that Manned Space Program is crap?

And please don't say it is expensive, less than .6% of the budget. I also provided some insight into the science aspect but seems to be ignored.

 

Hypocrite.

 

lol Sam, I don't even know what to say to this. Who expects research to be garaunteed profit? How do you even measure that? Would you apply the same logic to experiments done in universities? Maybe we should stop funding the research at a government entity such as University of Texas?

And ISS experiments have shed new light on a lot of topics. Maybe not every single one but in general the experiments have been worth it.

But I will agree that none of the experiments ended up curing cancer which is what so many of you seem to expect lol.

Btw, your article is completely nitpicking on a few experiments and then generalizing on all of them. Reeks of being newsworthy by FOX.

 

Maybe you can replace the broke NASA program with private charity from libertardian wingnut organizations.

 

Uh, actually NASA itself did this a decade ago, offering paid access to anybody who wanted to use their microgravity manufacturing. It's been one of their sell points for years. Guess how many takers there have been.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/nasa_tech_fair_010308_wg.html

Why do you think they are doing all those microgravity experiments? Do you think NASA actually wants to know how plant root systems work in low-G? LOL...

Not - mind you - that I think botany research is bad. On the contrary, I think it's important and I support it....but I am going to hazard a guess and say that most botanists don't care too much about how plants grow in space, and would poop a brick if they ever got a fraction of the kind of funding that "plants in space!" gets and could probably do a lot more with that funding.

Which ones in general have been worth it? Scroll back a few pages, as B-Bob pointed out, most of the current experiments can be performed by an unmanned satellite at a fraction of the cost.

So then which are the ones that we are supposed to care about? As we saw earlier in the thread, the ones going on now include taking pictures in space. Wow.

Again it reinforces the same theme - everything that NASA currently does is circular but nothing that anybody outside of NASA wants or needs. Shuttle exists to serve ISS. ISS exists so that Astronauts/Shuttle have something to do. MIcrogravity experiments that yield little and are funded at mulit-hundred million dollar cost in order to justify ISS/Shuttle existence.

 

Again - a perfect example of the circular rationale of the manned spaceflight program. We should learn how plants grow in space, so that we'll know how plants grow in space. It has nothing to do with botany or driving other scientific discoveries or basic science or anything like that....it exist solely to perpetuate its own existence.

We need to put men in space....so that we will be able to put men in space.

That way we don't have to think of anything for them to do up there (we can't) and unpleasant questions like "why?" can be avoided.

 

1) Low earth orbit is the only way to maintain satellite optimum operations. Can you imagine a military satellite trying to take photos from a high earth orbit? How about relaying communications? Would you want your 3G coverage from a satellite that has a cone of coverage that hits your area for one day out of the week? You could pull it off but need like 50 satellites compared to 8 or so.

2) Stupid question. Large crew compartments are necessary to sustain non-payload items such as food, water, medical supplies, equipment, wires, small hardware, communication devices, cameras, crew equipment, bio areas to account for avg of 7 crew members. This larger design for crew compartments was a direct result of crew compartment being too small during apollo era. And what is this relatively large to? What vehicle are you comparing this to? (oh you don't know do you? you just decided to ctrl-c and ctrl-v)

3) False, shuttle has the ability to rendezvous, deorbit and land autonomously. Astronauts CHOOSE to do it manually.

4) False. The shuttle has 3 engine systems. OMS, Aft RCS, and Forward RCS propulsion systems. And I have no idea how the aerodynamic characteristics of the shuttle can be compared to a brick. Stupid question.

5) LOL firecrackers. They are called SRB boosters and they have solid propellant. Why not use this? SRB boosters are pretty efficient for low altitudes as they give the most bang for the buck. The Shuttle engines are less powerful but have better control mechanism. SRB boosters can only yaw and tilt while SSME's can more range of motion. The combo of both give you best results.

6) It's not made of "glass" lol. Ablative material burns away during re-entry, very expensive to use and weighs a lot compared to the tiles on the shuttle. Underbody of the shuttle is huge so this is not feasible.

7) Yes, the tiles are fragile. The issue isn't that debris from the ET can hit the tiles, it's the fact that NASA overlooked it and did not have the precautionary methods in their process. What resulted was the Columbia tragedy. It wasn't a technology problem, this is a process problem.

Considering you have just copy and pasted articles so far. www.idlewords.com? Are you serious? You got your answers for your BS article. Now answer my question....How about you provide an experiment that was done in space that had no business being done in space. How about you actually provide a reasonable source....

From your language about how "you don't give a damn", I'm concluding that you also aren't here to debate. You have no knowledge of spacecrafts or space exploration but maybe you played a video game or two and you think you do. You don't know jack **** about the shuttle. You have no idea what you are talking about but are marginally good at playing google.

 

Here's one of those experiments. Towards the end, the researcher explains why zero-g is important. Even states that why it has to be manned mission. The quote is from the researcher, not NASA.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/iss-science-01b.html

 

Putting satellites into orbit is a feat which is achieved many times per year all over the world - far more cheaply and efficiently than strapping it onto a giant space bus.

Honestly if you are arguing that the Space Shuttle program has been anything but an epic fail, you are going to have a hard time finding many friends even among the most ardent NASA defenders.

sorting through the fluff this appears to be the real experiment:

So basically - the point of this experiment is to see if cells made in an expensive pre-existing NASA microgravity centrifuge at JSC are the same size as ones that they could make in space - all the hallmarks of a textbooks NASA project made up to justify it's own existence

I mean I couldn't make this kind of stuff up if I tried.

 

How's about testing the scent of rose petals in space. Nah that was critical and the Government has to provide such funding. How can we colonize Mars otherwise? You are just a blind defender of your own job if you really think there isn't one example of an experiment being done in space that had no business being conducted in the first place. You could be the worst googler on earth and find a dozen examples. Stop relying on some logical fallacy that only those paid to defend the Shuttle are qualified to opine upon its effectiveness. Guess anyone who isn't employed y the Rockets can opine on their quality. You just defend this bureaucracy because you are in it.